August 10, 2013

A strange encounter with a believer.

This happened many years ago, but for some reason I started thinking about it again recently.

I was living in a large apartment complex and went out early one Sunday morning to collect a week's worth of mail from the mailbox. The communal mailbox area was deserted except for a young hispanic woman I'd never seen before. She seemed agitated. She had her eyes shut tight, was clutching her cross necklace, and she was praying over and over again. It was in Spanish and nearly inaudible, but I think I caught the name "Jesus" a few times.

I walk pretty quietly and she never heard me coming until I was just a few feet from her.

She gasped and opened her eyes in wide amazement. I thought I'd frightened her and wanted to apologise, but she spoke first:

"Are you the archangel Gabriel?", she asked in a thin voice.

Now, as I said before, this was long ago and I was considerably younger and better-looking than I am now, but this was nevertheless a real WTF moment that left me rather gobsmacked.

"Uhm, no", I managed.

"But are you religious?", she demanded.

"I'm afraid not. I don't think I really believe in God", I said, considerably milder than I would ordinarily have answered that question.

"Oh, I believe in God. But he don't believe in me", she said. And she looked so sad, lost, and frightened.

I felt awkward and didn't know what to say. I waited for a bit to see if she wanted to say more, but she didn't. We exchanged some trivial remarks for a minute or two.

"Well, gotta go", I said.

She looked at me desperately, and said "You really are the archangel Gabriel, aren't you?"

I looked her straight in the eye and said "Yes, child, I am."

She let out another gasp and then all the tension seemed to drain out of her body and and she looked visibly relieved as I turned and walked away.

Back in my apartment I felt absolutely awful. Why had I said that? I never even thought before my reply. Was it just an impulsive act of kindness? Or was it a real dick thing to do to a desperate, possibly mentally-ill woman? Why had I not simply asked her what was wrong and asked her if she needed help? Probably because the whole situation was so awkward and uncomfortable. I certainly wasn't mocking her in any way.

I went out there again about half an hour later.

She was gone. I never saw her again.

This is a true story, but I never told it to anyone. Too ashamed, I suppose. Sometimes I think I told her what she really wanted and needed to hear and maybe it helped. Other times I think behaved horribly.

Religious people, answer me honestly: was that a terrible thing to do? I'm not looking to salve my conscience or looking for validation. It was a long time ago, so don't spare my feelings.

Also, what is the significance of the archangel Gabriel in (presumably) Catholicism? Is it a clue to her state of mind? Is he often portrayed as a scruffy lout in a Hawaiian shirt?

August 9, 2013

Blade Runner for me

I always considered Chariots to be one of his weakest, actually.

I remember buying the soundtrack of the Blade Runner on an LP after I'd first seen the movie at the cinema. I was so excited when I got home and immediately played the track I most wanted to hear: Blade Runner Blues. I was mighty puzzled when the sounds of a fat guy vigorously blowing his nose started coming out of the speakerx.

I looked at the album cover again. It wasn't actually the real soundtrack. It was an orchestral rendition of the score by the New American Orchestra since (as I found out later) Vangelis refused to release it. Blade Runner Blues was played on a Flugelhorn.

It was great when the actual score came out 10 years later. There are also three bootleg versions around which contain tracks that are not on the official releases.

June 27, 2013

What happened to the jumptheshark website?

I haven't been there in several years but it appears to have been bought and suppressed by TV Guide!

Have the contents been archived anywhere because it's even blocked in the wayback machine ("because of robots.txt&quot

What a letdown...

June 26, 2013

Blimey, who knew?!

I had NO idea penguins even KEPT a history of the world...

June 25, 2013

Things I don't get / like

Reality TV
Facebook
Twitter
Tablets
Zombies
Superheroes
Las Vegas
Justin Bieber
iPhones
Remakes
Windows 8
Hyperforeignisms like rolling every R and trying to pronounce foreign placenames the way the natives say them, but yet not daring to pronounce the capital of France Paree for fear of coming off pretentious
Curling
Hyper-puffed up lips injected with collagen
The franchise model of US professional sports
Harry Potter
TV shows/movies in which tiny 5 foot nothing girls savagely beat the crap out of big muscled hard men
Boutiques with twee names like Ye Olde Countrie Gifte Shoppe
Short-track speedskating
Boutiques with playful but wrong foreign-sounding names like Das Gifthaus which really means The Poison House
White Bread
Cricket
Porsches with automatic transmission
Cars with small 4 cylinder engines with automatic transmissions
Truck Nutz
Casinos
Child Beauty Contests
American Idol
Toddlers on tricycles wearing kneepads, elbowpads and huge helmets
Goatees Vaginas with teeth. 'Nuff said.
Right turn green arrows for cars simultaneous with green lights for pedestrians going straight
25 mph speed limits on roads wide and straight enough to land a 747 on
Boring safety-first playground equipment that no self-respecting child would use like that stupid chicken on a spring.
Pedestrian underpasses that smell of piss.
Starbucks
Star Wars
Star Trek
People in sleeping bag queues in front of Apple stores overnight
Synchronised Swimming
Using the letter u for the pronoun 'you', or even worse, u r for 'you are'. Blech!
Excessive facial piercings that make it look as though I could tear your ear or nose off like a perforated postage stamp
Advertising
Boombox Cars
Marketing Speak,
Knock knock jokes
Rap Music
Gomer Pyle The first one to say "suPRIZE suPRIZE suPRIZE" gets it right in the kisser.
Yoghurt
Video Game Consoles
Country Music
Religion
Overbred, yipy little dogs that do nothing but tremble and shit all day
The word "traveling" when spelled with a single L so that it looks like it should be pronounced traVEALing. When did that happen? My old books still say "traveller" or "travelling" with two L's. It happened when I wasn't looking.
Budweiser
Florida
Raw carrots served as though they were an acceptable form of snackfood, What am I, the village idiot munching on a raw carrot?
Adam Sandler
The Simpsons
Seinfeld
People who actually say LOL in real life
Belgians

This is, of course, not an exhaustive list and doesn't include the things we all hate around here (e.g. Republicans, sexism etc.), but I'm throwing it out in order to find like-minded people so that we can form a movement so that these things may be suppressed.

Feel free to add to this list, but should you add something I do like or if you disagree with any of the above, I will, of course, hate you forever and you can't be part of my movement.

June 6, 2013

The Omega Man

I was just talking to a friend about the movie the Omega Man with Charlton Heston. If you haven't seen it, a plague apparently kills off virtually all of humanity, but our hero is immune to its effects and appears to be the last human left on earth. My friend was saying how horrifiying he thought the opening minutes of that movie were with Charlton Heston moving around in a completely empty city, using whatever car he needed, walking into movie theatres, and taking what he needed from department stores.

I think I first realised I was a loner when I saw those opening scenes and had a very different reaction. I was thinking...

"You lucky bastard..."

"You lucky, lucky bastard..."

It seemed like heaven to me, though no doubt the horrors of so much solitude would have eventually got to me. Oh, and the zombies.



Anyone else share this experience? I suppose I could say this applies to the Will Smith remake as well, but I thought that one was rather forgettable as a film.

May 11, 2013

The meanest dog I've ever known was a bug-eyed Chihuahua with a Napoleon Complex called Fuzzy.

It belonged to a friend of mine I used to visit. He (the dog, not my friend) would spend most of his days engaging in his favourite hobbies of eating, trembling and shitting, but every so often he would take offence at something I said, stop in mid-tremble and cast a jaundiced eye at me. He would then launch himself with a flying leap at my midriff, where he would try to bite me in the bollocks, attacking them in that head-shaking fashion you might have seen other dogs do when ripping a pillow apart, growling all the time.

My friend would think this was just hilarious. He (my friend, not the dog) and I eventually fell out over political differences.

May 11, 2013

I bought an electric guitar. I can't play a note.

I bought an electric guitar. On impulse. At Costco. I can't play. What on earth possessed me?

I suppose I could try to learn how to play the damn thing, but my track record in this area is not stellar. My musical education began and ended in primary school, with my biggest success being a tinny performance of Frère Jacques on the xylophone on parents' night, which was met with polite, if muted, applause. At least I think I struck the majority of the notes nearly correctly that night. A nasal-sounding rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star failed to achieve a passing grade later that year and my version of Für Elise is still spoken of in hushed tones when elderly retired educators foregather to swap stories over a pint.

I tried choir, but was thrown out when the teacher figured out where the noise was coming from. I wasn't interested enough to learn the lyrics of songs either. Well, of clean ones at least.

My parents attempted to engage a music teacher privately, but we didn't really hit it off. The man simply had an odd prejudice against lazy, untalented smartarses, and he gave up quickly trying to teach me the piano. He thought that rhythm might be more my thing and suggested the drums, possibly as a form of revenge against my parents for inflicting me on him. That ended when my first drum solo was likened to the sound of a painful bowel movement. As an aside, fuck you, Mr. Holzheimer. Shame on you for humiliating a 10 year-old to get a cheap laugh out of the other kids. Bastard.

I've got to face it, I'm never going to learn how to play and this impulse purchase is just a vainglorious attempt at recapturing lost youthful dreams. I've become a sad, pathetic, middle-aged bastard whose dreams are now behind him. Buying this guitar confirms it.

May 4, 2013

What is your robot name?

To generate it, simply combine your initials with your full social security number, followed by a hyphen and and any bank account numbers you may have.

I'd share my own, but I'm more interested in yours.

Also, how about your WWF fighter name?

Simply combine the town of your birth, followed by the name of your first pet in quotes and your mother's maiden name. For example, Philadelphia "Fido" McNabb.

Hahaha, what fun these innocent little games are.

Oh, and finally, list all your login passwords. I've got 7 of 'em! Can you beat that? Be sure to show them with their url's to make sure you don't duplicate!

April 17, 2013

How are you fellow atheist arseholes this morning?

I evict orphans and widows for a living so my job's been giving me great satisfaction these past few years. Since the weather's been so nice lately, I've been able to walk to work and indulging in my special hobby of pushing wee bonny children who are playing outside face-first into the mud. It's the small pleasures that are so special, aren't they?

This morning I had the opportunity to beat up a damn hobo who had the nerve to ask me for money. Bloody scrounger! I very much enjoyed his screams of pain.

Isn't it great living without morality? It's gong to be a fine day today. Maybe I'll encounter some small animals to torture on my way home. One can but hope!