Wednesday, May 19, 2004
On Hiatus
This is probably a given to some of you, but I'm going on vacation and taking a couple of weeks off this blog to work on some stuff. Some writing, some work related.
Current events have been unbelievable, but I can't quite tap into that right now. That being said, if any of you would like to contribute a thing or two the next couple of weeks, just for shits and giggles, email me with your blog url and stuff and I'll put you up as a guest blogger here. I'm extremely low on the internet totem pole, but I'd definitely get a kick out it.
Anyway, I, Bill Duckwing will be back with a mission the first week of June. Until then, play nice...
-duckwing, at 8:31 PM
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Thursday, May 13, 2004
The Call of Cicada
 Some bug attacks another bug out in real time, baby...
Again, I apologize to the best of my ability for the lack of posts lately. It's springtime in the real world, and every 17 years or so, bloom the cicadas, specifically Brood X, which of course is the only cool and rock-out brood in the cicada world.
I'm a little freaked out, because most of my friends live in cool high-rises without parks or trees in Arlington, and they say they haven't seen a single one, and I'm stuck here in Suburban Maryland, which has lots of trees and lots of cicadas chilling out and molting around my porch. At least 50.
And that's just a big guesstimate, IMHO...
 There they go again, just freaking out about something normal humans cannot see...
In a way, they're kinda cute. Freaking out every seventeen years, and molting like crazy and stuff. I kinda feel sorry for all the people driving out here in the mid-atlantic when they peak out.
That's gotta suck.
But if you're a cicada watcher, the biggest point is: do not freak out. They're mostly harmless, but they totally knock themselves out with big gigantic pans and shovels when you guys totally freak out over about how big they are. Be careful out there.
-duckwing, at 10:10 PM
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Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Smile, Dammit!
 Sometimes, when I'm out walking the street, I get extremely annoyed by the people walking by. Eyes down, hands in pockets, and a perma-frown plastered onto their faces, in the Springtime, like the whole wide world is just this big crushing object hoisted up upon their narrow shoulders.
"Stop frowning, dammit!" I say to them as they passed by. Sometimes this gets a look, more often a sneer.
Which is a shame, because more often than not, I seek to brighten the moods of others. Sunshine doesn't grow on trees for others to pick like fruit and sequester for themselves. So I made it my goal so to cheer other people up.
"Stop frowning."
Frown.
"Stop frowning."
Frown.
"Stop frowning."
Big sarcastic grin from a goofball woman speedwalking by in tennis shoes.
"Cut it out, and cheer up."
This never works. Americans are individualists. You cannot exactly spell it out, because they hate being told what to do, directly.
So I started out doing intentional pratfalls. Y'know, what Gerald Ford ended up doing after he pardoned Richard Nixon (who some will say bears an uncanny likeness to me). I'd look out for public places, places with lot of people around, chatting or drinking coffee, or whatever, and take a big old digger.
And boom, lots of smiling people.
"Watch that first step, tee hee!"
"Man, maybe you need some new glasses! Hee haw!"
And so I'd set myself up, over and over again, to throw myself down again. And people got a big kick out of all of this. And so it went, a la Gerald Ford...
-duckwing, at 10:15 PM
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Thursday, April 29, 2004
You Have Totally Seen This Before
I got two emails about this guy, and sho nuff, it's funny, so I figure I'll just link to it here.
Story: guy sells ex-wife's wedding dress on Ebay. Hits: well over 9 million and counting. And he was on the Today Show for it.
It seems a few people have taken offense to my inferring a size 12 is big. One male even pointed out that Marilyn Monroe was a size 14. Now, I would agree with you that size 12/14 is small if I lived on Samoa.
Yeah, he changed "Samoa" to "elsewhere" -but it's still funny.
-duckwing, at 9:42 PM
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Tuesday, April 27, 2004
The Simple Art of DeLay
First off, I got a Gmail account today through my long and fruitful association with Blogger/Google. You may now email me at bill.duckwing@gmail.com if you find sending email to me at my Yahoo account sorta confusing and mind-blowing. Plus you can send me mp3 files and other stuff to me if you have a Gmail account, so I'll just go ahead and encourage it.
That said, I'll just apologize for the delay in posts last week. Really. What really amazes me is that the hit count for this blog was pretty high last week, more than most weeks, despite the fact the the only thing I offered last week as a cheezie analysis of the WashPost comics page, and also an almost outright plagiarism on Gene Weingarten's schtick. You guys knock me out -you really do.
I am incredibly and insanely jazzed about the Sox-Yanks series that concluded last weekend. 6-1. Yah-yah! Boswell got it right today -if this isn't the year for the Red Sox, they can take that Bambino Curse to the bank, and for eternity.
As you might've noticed, I'm trying to stay away from politics for the time being. It's way too depressing. I'll try to sum it up as honestly as I can -you guys who are jonesin for Kerry have to really put it in second gear. Donate, freak out and rant on your blog, whatever. I, like many, probably got a little too much lured into a false sense of security when I noticed that Howard Dean, the candidate far and away with the most amount of money during the Democratic primaries, got trounced by Kerry, who had to mortgage his own house. But don't do it. Not only is Bush a helluva charming guy, he also has a ton of a lot more money than Dean ever had to trounce Kerry, and Bush also has about 42% of America basically worshiping him for his ability to kick Blue Democratic Ass.
Most politcos and bloggers, of course, have already picked this up on their radars, given the neck and neck race between Bush and Kerry, despite everything that has gone "wrong" for Bush the last few months. I'll go even further -the thing we want to most avoid, is a definite possibility at this point. Bush wins in a landslide. No net gains in Congress.
If Kerry loses in a neck and neck race, as the polls show right now, it'll be a loss, but recoverable in 2008. And it should compromise Bush for his next term enough if he thinks a sizeable minority of the American people are breathing down is neck. It's affect the press, and might shape the Democrats back into a major opposition party with some big gains in 2006. A landslide, of course, kinda gives Bush cart blanche to do whatever he wants.
Which means that the Kerry people really have to fight tooth and nail all the way to November, and at the same time not get too demoralized if Bush in fact wins re-election in a squeaker. Donate, blog, canvass, put a sign up on your front lawn beside your old oak tree's yellow ribbon.
On the other hand, if you like Bush, sit back, relax, and light up that grill you got in the backyard. Really, I think the thing with Bush is that the harder you fight to make his case for re-election, the more annoying it becomes. Liking Bush is a tougher nut to crack when you have to force him to justify himself.
Blah.
-duckwing, at 10:35 PM
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Monday, April 19, 2004
Deconstructing the Comics Page
Typically, after reading war stories, lies, editorials, more lies, and testimonies from Senate Comittee Hearings, I quickly check out the Washington Post's Style Section for a bit of light-hearted bliss from the guys that do the comics. I have no problem at all with the fact that most of the comics seem to have been written in the style and mindset of the comics writers who flourished in the 1940's. Trust me, after reading the rest of the Washington Post, lame puns and slapstick are completely refreshing. If all the comics page had was sharp, bitting modern satire, I probably wouldn't follow the news much.
Give me the Family Circus and Garfield over Zippy the Pinhead's anti-consumerism rants anyday.
But I do have a big beef with comics that try to infuse modern sensibilites, and fail miserably at it. There is no middle ground when you write a comic strip. It either has to be modern and clever, or slappy and clueless. Strips like "Mother Goose and Grimm" make me cringe, and also make me shake my fist at the Editors of the Washington Post.
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Let's look at the above comic strip, and see what's wrong with it. There is no doubt this comic is attempting to be hip and alternative, by filling the strip with old iconic characters. This is one of the mainstays in alternative comics, from Matt Groening to R. Crumb to Art Spiegelman. Introduce the characters, but make them high on acid, or making witty intelligent social commentary, or doing something ironic for the traditional set-up the character finds itself in. In this case, "Popeye" is being interviewed by James Lipton, from Bravo's "Inside the Actors Studio."
Which brings us to problem 2. Impersonating James Lipton, or mentioning him in stand-up, or anything else for that matter, has been so overdone it is not even close to being funny anymore. James Lipton already parodies himself on Leno.
The Caption below the panel read's "Inside the Cartoon Actors Studio" as if we're too fucking stupid to realize what the comic strip is poking fun at.
But by far the biggest problem I have with this is the other iconic comic personalities in the audience. The thing with "Inside the Actors Studio" is that they're all students in theatre. Why the hell would Bugs or Goofy give a fuck about what Popeye has to say about being a cartoon actor. They're already sucessful in their medium. It'd be like Tom Cruise giving an interview on acting and having Nicole Kidman, Robert DeNiro, or Halle Berry take notes. It doesn't make any sense.
Get it together Mother Goose and Grimm. Your concepts are about as tight in coherence as this post is.
-duckwing, at 5:42 PM
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Thursday, April 15, 2004
No Updates This Weekend (I think)...
This is truly a bummer, but necessary. My computer was attacked by an extremely annoying virus/trojan this week, and at this point I can barely type this out without the size of the font growing two sizes two big, or the page freezing up entirely.
Anyway, since it hijacked my Norton Anti-Virus software and my firewall, I have no idea what the virus is or how to remove it (I'm pretty competent at checking my system registry, and also had my roommate, a computer programmer, check it out to see if I was missing anything, and neither of us could find anything out of the ordinary), so I'll be spending most of this weekend backing up my files and reinstalling Windows here.
Have fun out in cyberspace, kids.
-duckwing, at 11:10 PM
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