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Beauty Is Imperfection A blog that makes some elbow room between the lobes of your brain, by Eric R. Rasmussen

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Eric



Last Updated: 12/4/2009

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Gender: Male
Status: Married
Age: 40
Sign: Sagittarius

City: NEW YORK
State: NEW YORK
Country: US
Signup Date: 3/12/2006

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Thursday, August 20, 2009 
My blog has moved!

As I mentioned before, I am now located in two other places and will no longer post at MySpace.

You can now check me out at http://www.beautyisimperfection.wordpress.com

or at www.theRetributioners.TV.

Please keep reading and posting comments in my new spots! I will always love my readers back!
11:34 AM 
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Tuesday, August 18, 2009 
The new episode of "The Retributioners" is here! Episode 16--The American Dream.

In this latest installment, Stephanie confronts a stock broker who lost her all her money.

Watch it here, but also be sure to visit www.theretributioners.tv to see all our episodes.

..

This episode features Christopher Burke, who also co-writes and co-directs as part of the comedy team at Manic Attack Pictures. Go and check out all their commercial parodies, music videos, and viral videos at Manicattack.com.


1:38 AM 
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Sunday, August 16, 2009 
The Never Before Heard Extended Version of “The Rain”
By Oran "Juice" Jones
CHORUS:

I saw you (and him) walking in the rain
You were holding hands and I'll never be the same.

Tossing and turning another sleepless night
The rain crashes against my window pane
Jumped into my car didn't drive too far
That moment I knew I would never be the same.

I saw you (and him) walking in the rain
You were holding hands and I'll never be the same.

Mix chorus and dialogue:
Singing:  (I saw you)
Hey hey baby how ya doin' come on in here
(Walking in the rain)
I made you some coffee and some steak
A porterhouse and some wine. Wine thins the blood, you know
(You were holding hands and I'll)
No, really, one or two glasses a day is considered healthy
By the American Medical Association. Really
(Never be the same)
Well I just wanted to tell you I missed you today
I missed you so much I followed you around town in my Honda Civic
(I saw you)
Now stop insulting my car. The point is I caught you
With that guy with the park. I’m so mad I can’t see straight 
(Walking in the rain)
But even worse is that I’m confused. It was raining. What in the hell were you doing Walking out in the rain in the first place? Don’t you know you
(You were holding hands and I'll)
Could have caught cold? Both of you. It was just irresponsible you know my first impulse was to punch the guy in the mouth, but my second impulse was to give you both some Dimetapp  Really, you could have gotten pneumonia. Stupid
(Never be the same)
I was going to just ream you out But I didn't wanna mess up this new coat from Men’s Wearhouse So instead I decided that dessert is a meal best served cold.
I mean, what I mean to say is REVENGE is a dish best served cold.
I always get that mixed up. But anyway, what I meant to say is I just chilled.
(I saw you and him)
So I called up the bank and took out every dime. No, not just the checking
Also the savings. And the CDs. That’s right, even the 4.5% interest rate high yield flexible term CDs
(Walking in the rain)
Then I cancelled all your credit cards. Even the zero percent APR card
I know, it was a really great deal, but you were very irresponsible with it
(You were holding hands and I’ll)
I also picked up all your jewelery. Yes, even the past, present and future ring
And the princess cut ring and the designer gold earrings with the diadems
Those were nice and remarkably pure, though they had no resale value
(Never be the same)
I mean the thing about diamonds is that they really depreciate.
They’re just not an investment; the problem with diamonds
Is that the buyers command pricing always
So they never go up in value
Not something like a painting or a classic car
(I saw you)
And don’t go lookin' in your closet because I’ve taken out those Manolo Blahniks
And your Jimmy Choos and your Miu-Mius
You may have gotten the last ones at a consignment store
(Walking in the rain)
So yeah, they were a little cheaper than at upscale retail, but they
Were still fairly expensive and I paid for them
(You were holding hands and I’ll)
At least $60, which isn’t cheap, not by everybody’s standards
Oh, sure I guess maybe on Rodeo Drive that’s cheap, but not in Atlanta,
Which I think is where you’re from
(Never be the same)
(I saw you—and him)
So all your stuff is in the guest room now
All that stuff I gave you: chiffon and crepe, pink diamonds
And that computer I put in your name. It had three years
(Walking in the rain)
Of free maintenance on it from Dell. And the battery was under
A year long warranty, and the customer service there is friendly.
Guess you’re not getting that anymore
(You were holding hands and I’ll)
Also I took away your punch card from Hale & Hearty Soups
Yeah, you know what I’m saying. Your tenth soup isn’t free anymore, baby
Guess you’ll have to pay for that extra Mulligatawny stew
I hope it tastes good baby
(Never be the same)
But now I can't give you nothing but advice.
Cause you're still young, yeah, you're young.
(I saw you—and him)
And you’re going to likely want to get
An adjustable rate mortgage
(Walking in the rain)
Well that’s just a piss-poor idea on its face because
The rates tick up with interest and you just have no control over that
(You were holding hands and I’ll)
The best thing is, if you think you’re going to stay in the house for a long time
Get a fixed rate mortgage
(Never be the same)
 
And you're gonna find somebody like me one of these days
And you’re probably going to want to get married
 
(I saw you)
But first you want to make sure that you have similar goals and values
Not like that guy I saw you with today. He really seemed like kind of a douche
(Walking in the rain)
Make sure instead that he listens and he’s attentive
And try not to focus on what he buys for you
In fact, if he buys you all this stuff like I did
It probably just means he has a problem expressing love
In more meaningful ways
(You were holding hands and I’ll)
He’s probably making up for having a distant father or a controlling mother
You’re probably better off with someone you just like to do little things with
Like flying a kite or going to the movies
(Never be the same)
Somebody who’s not going to just throw money at problems like I do
Until then ... well, I could go on, but until then
You dismissed!
Silly rabbit, tricks are made for kids!
Yeah, sorry, I just added that. We never really did have much to talk about, did we?


10:13 PM 
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Saturday, August 15, 2009 

Category: Web, HTML, Tech
If you're like me, you're always looking for new ways to get people to visit your blog. It's fun to create a community and get people talking about the important subjects of the day.

But many people are unsure how to get their blog seen and make sure their voices are getting heard. That's where it's helpful to know a few tricks of the blogging trade.
The secret is tags. These are the subject words that people search for--the things they are most interested in, and the items they plug into popular Web browsers like Google and Yahoo and Bing.

And the biggest secret of all is that you have to use the tag word "kittens" at all times, no matter what you're talking about.

Let's say that you've just done an excellent blog post on the state of the stock market. As we all know, it's been a tough year. Stocks plummeted last September, and the American economy is largely thought to be in a tailspin because of the antics of a few no-goodniks such as those who sold bad mortgages and tried to palm off the bad debt on insurance companies and investment banks. Let's say you've got a Nobel prize on the subject and you really want to get the word out that people were not paying attention to the market's systemic risk when they look for 10% annualized returns. You are biting your nails, because you are the only person you think in the world who understands that the algorithms just aren't taking into account all the stochiastic random elements that cause markets to collapse. You worry that portfolios will be smashed and retirees rendered homeless.

Now say that out loud. You sound pretty dull, don't you? Would you want to read that yourself? Probably not. It's OK to laugh. We've all sounded like a self-important asshole at some time or another.

But that's OK; fear not.

All you have to do is turn it all it around! If you had just added the word "kittens" to your tag, you'd have millions of people at your doorstep just dying to hear all about your dry "systemic risk" stuff.

Try this instead when you're tagging: "derivatives," "Lehman Brothers," "Paulson," "Goldman Sachs," "conflict of interest," "kittens," "kitten in box," "kittens with yarn."
Or maybe you've got questions about the current health care plan in Congress, House Bill 3200: America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009. Now health care is a confusing topic. Maybe you are a patient who has no insurance. Maybe you're a doctor who is worried about out-of-control legal costs. Maybe you're worried that too much government intervention would distort rational, efficient pricing of health goods and services. Perhaps you find it immoral that America is rated 37 on the World Health Organziation's chart of best health care because of our lack of services to the impoverished.

Well, that's all well and good, but ... is that all you've got? Really? Is that your pitch? Where's the hook? Where's the sizzle that sells the steak? How do you possible ever think you're going to fish in the kind of readership you want with a lot of fancy words that go over people's heads? Aren't you talking up your own wazoo a little bit here?

Try this on for size, and add these tags: "health care," "Obama," "socialism," "kittens," "Momma," "meow."

Why, before you know it, you'll have millions of people coming to your blog to hear what your problems are with the new 1,000 word health care bill, or maybe they'll just be looking for your kitten videos. You can offer them one or both. It doesn't matter! All that matters is that you've engaged your potential readership with language they can understand and you've brought them important information on a topic that will be important to them in the future, if not right this second.

After all, most people are only thinking about what's going on this second. The future is a scary place! Would you want to live there? No! In the future, we're all dead. But right now, in this moment, we have to enjoy the little things, and what we enjoy most is bright, furry, cuddly, fuzzy felines.

Perhaps you have been following the latest gossip about Pakistan and its unsecure nuclear weapons installations, which are dangerously close to the front lines in a war against fundamentalist Muslim Taliban militants who have already begun making strikes against nuclear labs, perhaps in an effort to steal technology. You may have spent your entire life in the intelligence community and know more about the real dangers than almost anyone else. You spend so much time thinking about nuclear Holocaust that you can't sleep and it's making you crazy in a way that literally changes the color of your urine.

But in the end, doesn't that make you kind of a smarmy know-it-all? I mean, if you're going to bring passionate, thoughtful national security items to the forefront of our dialogue, you've got to know how to speak the language of everyday folk. And what could be more heartwarming than pictures of kittens nursing at mama cat's milk-swollen belly?

Don't believe me? Try these tags and get results: "Pakistan," and "nuclear facilities," "Wiki Maps," "Taliban," "nuclear stockpiles," "rogue states," "black market," "terrorist groups," "kittens," "nursing," "meow, meow," "vomit," "hairball," "poop," "Roomba fight," "vacuum cleaner."

See, aren't you already starting to see how the right kind of tagging will get your blog instant validation and notoriety?

People love kittens with great passion--almost as much as they hate the threat of nuclear annihilation. What you've got to do as a blogger is pick up on the topics of the day if you want to become a taste maker, a pace setter and a thought leader. But you'll never get there if you don't learn the tricks of the Web world. So stop sucking your thumb and start thinking like a Web champion.

Don't think in abstractions your whole life, think in fun, vibrant tags, whether it be "cat," or "kitten," or even "warm pussy." And soon you'll be getting the drift.
5:43 PM 
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Friday, August 14, 2009 

Category: Life
What small pleasures do we ignore that would make us happier if we just thought about them a little more?

--*A smile from a friend

--*Warm bread

--*Your cat butting its head into your arm

--*The pleasing xylophone sound from the Microsoft operating system

--*A smile from a friend, even one you don’t talk to that often

--*The feel of suede on your shoes, your coat or even just a square of it you keep for fetish purposes

--*A bouquet of flowers from a friend

--*The smell of ozone when you turn on a space heater

--*A bouquet of flowers received by mistake

--*A full roll of toilet paper

--*A smile from a friend, even if that friend is not really interesting or good looking or worthwhile much at all

--*A skateboarder falling on his ass

--*Three extra caps that haven’t been detonated

--*A bouquet of flowers sent by the cable company when their van hit you in traffic

--*The refund of your money for telephone overcharges won on your behalf in a class-action suit you never heard of

--*The intricate designs of obscure vegetation on your dinner plates, which appear to be acanthus, thistle or palm

--*The still air during a cease fire

--*Watching a traffic accident for hours

--*A warm, snuggly displacement bear

--*A smile from a person who is not remotely attractive and who is actually a demonstrable idiot according to specific criteria set by the American Medical Association

--*A hug from your step-daughter Soon-Yi

--*A smile from someone who is clearly just dead

--*A hot, steaming cup of coffee

--*A hot, steaming cup of coffee thrown in the face of your worst enemy

--*Just a tiny dribble water given to you by the guards in the North Korean prison

--*Permission from Mistress Dominique to go to the bathroom

--*The sight of a man in a Polo shirt not getting what he wants

--*The feeling of accomplishment you feel at a town meeting when you have successfully filibustered, bullied and shouted down affordable health care for everybody
 
 
9:50 PM 
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Friday, August 14, 2009 
Sugar, fruit and bread,
Oh, how I long for you. Ugh!
Chicken strips again
 
The doctor attacked
My glycemic index. I
Din’t know I had one
 
Cut down my morning
Carbs; no bagels; no berries
Feels like fresh hell, this.
 
“Your blood sugar goes
Up too fast,” he said. Well how
else would things get done?
 
No honey, I don’t
Want another damn omelet.
Bitch wants to starve me
 
Ordering Splenda
In Starbucks for my latte
I feel like some skirt
 
Hmmmm .... Tofu eggs or
A bullet through the left eye?
A tough choice, this one.
 
Chocolate makes you
Feel like you’re in love. I feel
Like firing some guns

Low carb diets make
Your breath smell like a little
Man died in your mouth

It's how the fats break
down, or so they say to me
It's science I guess
 
“How about carrots?” “No.
Not until phase two at least.”
“What the F, man! Shit!”
 
Great! Wow! I can eat
All the string cheese I want ’til
It falls out my ass!
 
String cheese! Fucking string cheese!
String cheese string cheese! Fuck fuck fuck!
Fuckin' fuck string cheese!
7:47 AM 
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Thursday, August 13, 2009 
Dear Leticia,

Morning comes like a translucent angel’s wing flying over the harbor; old ghost fisherman trundle home with baits and splits of Mad Dog, yellow crabs, white fish and blue spotted porgies in their small rattling cages. What prize do I have in my cage? What guerdon lies in store for me? Where can I get cannoli at 3 in the morning? What was that I just stepped in?

I remember it was the year 2000, and I had fallen in love with a 9 foot tall Israeli model named Morlin who charmed me, enticed me and lured me back to her boudoir in Grammercy, a modish, Mid-Century Modern affair with Eames chairs and striped wallpaper, where I hoped shortly to be denuded and ravished to the ends of my fingertips by this woman of oft-surfeited appetites for whom perversion is the only thing left to really enjoy—and indeed we were ready to consummate this encounter in just a few more seconds, only to be stopped dead cold when Morlin, in the heat of passion, found out I disagreed with her on some procedural aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords. Turns out she had carried a rifle against the First Intifada and was in no mood to give up her prized fertile gullies and wetlands.

Now, of course, my luckless love life right then might have convinced me simply to go along to get along, but, as you know, even after months of celibacy, I cannot concede a political point ever, and I ended up sleeping on her couch, where she gave me a blanket and a copy of Theodor Herzl and told me not to wear my shoes in her house because she had just steamed her carpet.

“It is your carpet that has me steamed,” I thought to say, but alas it was only staircase wit. She had already left to go call another boyfriend, turning in a huff and, with arms folded, carrying away her generous embonpoint.

I lay there listening to her talk to one of her other boyfriends on the phone, dreaming of the yummy encounter missed and now staged and set to music only in my dreams, perhaps by Stravinsky or Prokofiev or the Starland Vocal Band. As I lay, I thought about all the women in my life that I desired but never hoped for. I thought of velleity—the basest human desire without energy to act. How much does velleity guide us, like the gravity of the sun, over distances so long we cannot understand their vector or their pull? How do I revolve thoughtlessly around my obscure objects of desire, unable to diverge from them, unable to decathect? How are they changing me subtly without my knowing about it? Why did I wake up thinking of Catherine Deneuve this morning and why was I eating a creamy Petite Choux Chantilly with such joie de vivre 30 minutes later? I tell you Leticia, it was all related!

I remembered how Kropotkin and I were discussing Monte Carlo theory and cosmic randomness in a walk by the Seine one hot muggy Paris afternoon in July when we began following a girl with long brown hair simply because she looked familiar to us, or perhaps that was the lie we told ourselves, since she seemed in any case to be attractive. We followed her for hours, talking about other subjects as we did so, perhaps not even consciously desiring her, yet never turning away. The sublime subconscious had taken hold, you must concur: the point at which your body becomes the host of the most basic atavistic stirrings. The strange sort of velleity that leads you even though you don’t realize how in a few hours you have already walked all the way from Pere Lachaise to La Defense and you also don’t realize that you have officially crossed the line from springtime giddiness to criminal stalking. Something we didn’t realize until the poor woman called the gendarmes and said we were terrorists trying to kill her. Because of our thoughtless summer concupiscence, we were arrested, deloused and then beaten by a drunken Italian soccer team. Later we got an actual close look at the woman. She was 62.

“Damn!” as they say in Tulsa. “How’d that happen?” I put it to you, beautiful Leticia!

Such is randomness. Everything is a roll of the die. One moment you are a giddy young boy lilting about on lust like pollen flies atop the air and the next moment you are eating jail gruel in the catacombs with Giuseppe the sodomizing halfback.

The most important base desire I can never act on, of course, is you, Leticia. You are the living sculpture that these desires and urges hope to make their shape upon. You are the spark of life that brings Caliban from out of the mud and makes him walk upright. You are the Apollonian beauty that gives the most base feelings symmetry and definiteness. What Aristotle called beauty.

And so I fly from you once again, to meet another day. Remember what we used to say on Carnaby Street: “If that’s not bestiality, I’ll kiss your ass.”

The country will bring us no peace,
Salo
9:31 AM 
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Wednesday, August 12, 2009 
--*I was mad

--*I was out of control

--*It just felt better

--*Didn't have any snappy comebacks

--*It was a demonstrable crime of passion, and after all, I was in Turkey.

--*Don't have a lot of book-learnin'

--*I saw her first

--*Man is a violent animal. It is in our genes to be territorial and combative. It is how we survive in a world full of natural enemies and ... just kidding, I was bused to the town hall by a Republican political action group

--*I was just doing what Kevin told me

--*I was just doing what Rush told me

--*The tools of skillful diplomacy had no longer worked to my satisfaction as an undersecretary of the Defense Department and I decided to press for invasion

--*The pitiful man insulted Dear Leader

--*I wanted his gold, therefore I took it

--*I wanted his iPod, therefore I took it

--*I wanted his degree from Harvard, therefore I knew no other solution than to beat him over the head

--*If a woman wouldn't tear out the hair of another woman to hold onto the man she loved, well then that ain't no kind of woman at all.

--*I'm a meerkat and nothing gets done in my colony unless I eat the young of my competitors

--*Seemed easier than actually reading the entire 1,000 page health care bill.
8:19 AM 
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Tuesday, August 11, 2009 
What happened on this day in history, August 11?

--*In 335 A.D., Claudius Silvanus, in a remote hiding place, and not having the benefit of modern telephones or e-mail, fails to realize he's been declared innocent of treason against the Roman Empire at trial, and so commits actual treason by declaring himself emperor.

--*In 2001, George Bush continues three-month long summer vacation.

--*In 1999, Amanda Jeffers, a college student in Des Moines, Iowa, declares to her mother that "let's agree to disagree" is the lamest debate tactic ever used, and that her mother must concede her point.

--*In 1919, the Weimar Republic adopts its constitution, which its framers call the finest beacon of Democracy ever made, one that will likely last forever and ever.

--*In 1898, U.S troops enter the city of Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, freeing that city from ... um ... imperialism.

--*In 1965, The Watts Riots begin, launching several days of playful shenanigans and tomfoolery after cops have a comical "wanh-wanh" moment with a black motorist.

--*In 1994, 14-year-old student Tom K. Brim declares his julienned potatoes "taste like ass." His bowdlerizing of the phrase "taste like my ass" is widely declared by linguists to be the beginnings of a coup in scatological slang.

--*In 1988, a fledgling group called Al-Qaeda is formed whose early club membership rules including being a good listener and having good manners.

--*1929, Babe Ruth hits his 500th home run in Cleveland, Ohio, in what we must simply hope was not due to performance enhancing drugs injected into his belly.

--*In 1956, the end of painter Jackson Pollock's life in a car wreck turns out to be a messy and difficult-to-understand affair.

--*In 430 B.C., "Father of History" Herodotus invents "This Day In History" segments.

9:35 AM 
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Sunday, August 09, 2009 
Like a lot of you Gen Xers, I have been feeling down since hearing the horrible news Thursday about the death of John Hughes, the creator of the “Acne Film” genre, the man who brought the Brat Pack into national consciousness and made America laugh at our growing pains. That may sound like a brief list of accomplishments, but of course, it doesn’t quite sum up the man’s enormous influence.

Because John Hughes was not just a jokesmith in such great classic '80s films as "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "The Breakfast Club," and "Sixteen Candles." He was more than that. He offered us a mirror on our teen lives. He not only accurately portrayed our pain with humor, he made us aware of how we were all simply playing parts in our own teen drama, and thus helped us transcend it. He did so with a keen eye for sexual mores, class divisions and pastels.

So, oh how I wish I had John Hughes here now to get me through my sadness. How I wish I could go through this melancholy with a Duckie or a Farmer Ted or a Jake or Watts or Amanda Jones. Or get a warm, loving talk from a portly, single, self-righteous and perhaps half-drunk working-class Dad. How I wish I could commiserate with a former high school cheerleader, and that we could cry together until, I don’t know—maybe she started kissing me and took her shirt off. How I wish I could be comforted by a wise member of building maintenance.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a John Hughes movie—perhaps one called “Dad’s Dead, Now What?”—to help us go through the steps of mourning in a humorous and thoughtful way?

Of course it would be full of stock characters, like adolescent cousin Joey, who has 80 facial piercings and offers us many seemingly cruel wisecracks about death—because in doing so he somehow helps us reflect on the inevitability of our own demise.

Or wouldn’t it be great to have jocky straight-laced older brother Aaron there to be judgmental about the rest of us and act like a total douchebag at just the wrong moments?

Wouldn’t it be great if Grandma Leslie showed up and threatened a lawsuit over some 40-year-old debt for a student loan she never got paid back? Wouldn’t it be great if one sister resented another sister for crying too loud at the funeral and making a big show of it? Wouldn’t it be great to have a Vietnamese foster child there named Flik Mai Bic?

Or wouldn’t it be great if distraught, aging uncle Ernie brought a whore to the funeral? I’m pretty sure that Kelly LeBrock is available for that.

Or perhaps one of the younger siblings could use his grief to get a high school cheerleader into bed. If only John Hughes were here, he could tell us: Worse things have been done by people at funerals.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a John Hughes movie unless we added a song by Oingo Boingo, destroyed a very expensive car and threw a high school principal out a window.

It could be a tragedy or a comedy. Or both. Life is like that.

Yes, there was pretty much no other way for a lot of us to get through adolescence, young adulthood and then parenthood without the guiding hand of Mr. Hughes. This is the greatest tragedy of his death. He taught us how to get along, but not how to get along without him.

Now we go off on our own, as awkward as new hatchlings, stumbling about in a world we will have to function within according to our own desires, flaws, idiosyncrasies, defense mechanisms and projections. At least I’ll know what to do when Oingo Boingo starts playing: I will dance.
7:27 PM 
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