The First Timer's Comic Con Survival Kit

Everything you need to last three days at New York's fabulous labyrinthine Javit's Center!



1. Water. At least two 12oz bottles daily. A Vitamin Water is a suggested substitute as it replenishes electrolytes but has less sugar in most cases than Gatorade, so no crash. Energy shots are acceptable, half in the morning, half in the afternoon.

2. Camera. Or something with a camera. You will see some things. Oh man, will you see some things! Anything you can fire off a quick snap is best. If you're a smartphone user, look into that swipe-from-lock-screen kind of stuff beforehand.

3. Phone charger. You will not find three-prong outlets anywhere EXCEPT: power strips at info desks and on the uppermost anime floor. (The former are manned until the wee hours of the evening, the latter you merely have to assault a JSDF foxgirl cafe maid to get to.)

4. A backpack. Aside from holding all this stuff, it will—hands free!— hold all the stuff you're going to buy. Speaking of…

5. Like twice the money you thought you would need. Listen, you're going to be buying a lot of swag. Stuff you didn't even think you'd need. And there will be free stuff. You'll probably buy a thing that comes with a giant bag. These bags are awful. Put that inside a smaller, better bag. As for money, take 1/3 with you the first day, 1/2 the second day, and if you're there the rest on Day Three. With this plan you may only need to break out the debit card at after parties and for a train ticket home.

6. A book if you plan to stand in line for anything.


Additionally, Never bring the following items:

A. A coat. I know it's cold out. It's New York in October. However the temperature inside will quickly climb past "balls hot" with a stench to match after the first day.


B. Anything heavy. Remember that backpack? Still gonna get too heavy too quickly. The goal for most of your time is going to be "pack light." If it looks like you can save your buying until the end of the day, do it. Many vendors will gladly hold your 30lb, $400 Green Lantern statue for you at their booth, since you just gave them $400.

C. Your house keys. Unless you live in NYC and are heading home every night, leaving your keys and any non-essentials/valuables wherever you're crashing. You don't need them, you don't want to lose them, and, yes, it's possible even Iron Man can be mugged in New York. I think that's happened at least once in the comics.

D. Your computer. Seriously, don't be that guy. Unless you're already being paid to be there for a specific panel, you're not a reliable news source and you don't need to be leaching the cell networks trying to tether your Pad, Pad, Book, and MiFi through your phone's carrier signal because you're too cheap to shill out the $11 a day for Javits Center WiFi. Get your blogger apps ready early, prep posts, and bulk-update over meals and after you get out like the rest of us "blue collar bloggers." (I just heard that on The Daily Show. Neat.)

On Furries

I asked a furry today what her fox tail was made of.

Don't ask me why I was talking to a furry. That's not the point.

No, you don't need to know. It's no one you know, alright? Not some sordid thing a mutual acquaintance hides from the light of day. I swear we've known at least one person you walked around in high school with a faux tail clipped to their belt loop, so this certainly isn't some great thing you need to focus on, it was just some furry girl and that's not important.

Jesus, yes, a her, alright? I was talking to a person, yes, on the internet, who happens to be a low-grade furry. Come on, this is not that big a deal, let's be mature about this.

No, I was not hitting on furry girls. I don't cruise the AOL Instant Message chatrooms looking for vulnerable 16 year old Arkansans who got really into anime last year. There's an internet. Let's just accept that on it you will meet some really interesting people and some of them will be really gross and some of them will be really boring and sometimes you just meet someone interesting enough for a good story, and let's leave it at that, okay?

Anyway, it turned out her tail was real fox, which I think is pretty fucked up, like killing your own spirit animal, or something.

I mean, think about it, we keep lists of the only human beings to go around wearing human skin. We write books about them. Movies are made and remade to scare us. Students get their doctorates for studying these lunatics. What kind of psychotic furry goes around wearing real dead animals?

Maybe it's revenge-motivated, like the guy who goes vegetarian because a carrot killed his father.

Tangent: go watch "Some Like It Hot." Great movie.

Maybe that one fox did something really really bad to her. Maybe he cheated on her with Minerva Mink. I wouldn't be surprised, that chick was pure sex down at the Warner Bros. lot, back in Burbank. I'm sure the furries were lining up around the corner to get at a piece of that between takes on the Animaniacs set.

Oh, don't look at me like that, I know damn well you only watched Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers for Gadget and her little purple jumpsuit. And don't think I've forgotten about Roxanne and "A Goofy Movie."

You ain't got a leg to stand on here, pal. Just remember that.

Post-SOPA White-Out

I bought a snowboard off my little brother figuring if I go even once this year it pays for itself.

Mostly I just stare at it in the corner, wondering when I turned into such a dude, with my extreme winter sports and extra guitars and red furniture and fine art.

Thank God for the Optimus Primes in my closet.

SOPA/PIPA Plug

A Note on Internet Piracy:

The Sound a Doggy Makes is a work of parody and social commentary. As such, much of it's content will include clips, stills, or other media taken from original sources not in an effort to extract monetary gain, but to discuss in an open-forum the works in question. I will (attempt to) never compare Snooki to the Venus de Milo, but they're both artistic constructs and one is certainly more immediately relevant than the other, culturally.

The point: The Sound a Doggy Makes, under SOPA/PIPA would be immediately removed from the internet, my website URL banned, blocked, and appropriated, and I would personally end up under suspicion of internet piracy and copyright infringement on a mass scale. And Viacom would probably beat my ass.

So today, I am not blacking out my website.

1. Because I'm here and I have no plans to go anywhere

2. Because I want you to read this while Reddit, Wikipedia, and about 40% of the webcomics I would normally read each Wednesday are down, and

3. Because I suck at coding and a black image was the best I was comfortable attempting.


I encourage you to spend the 5 minutes it takes to add your name to the petitions to kill these ridiculous bills.

If you need a short version: SOPA and PIPA would allow certain connected and wealthy companies to block from the American people any website they believe is sharing copyrighted materials. Artistic works and legitimate parody, even freely available content would not be exempt. The bills are written by people who are scared of the internet because they don't understand how it functions, and therefor the broad, yet simple simple terms result in over-reaching power for those who would control public thought.

Just remember: It was also illegal every time you popped in a VHS and recorded a baseball game because you were going to be out of the house.

Fight tyranny. With piracy, if need be.


Signed,

David E. Zucker, Rev., ΦΒΚ

Writer, Internet Privateer

Furrydom: A Fetish Culture I Do Not Need Advertised Through Words with Friends

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Lo siento, no hablo Español

Last week a woman approached me and asked, "Eh-scuse me, ¿habla usted español?"

Dear lord, I'm the man who took 3 years of high school Spanish and a semester of advanced college Spanish and forgot how to say "No" the last time someone asked me that.

Hint: it's "No."

Thankfully, by the time I squeezed my fingers an inch apart and started worrying about whether it was racist to say "pequeño" with an accent or not, she got out, "It's okay, I speak little English." I asked her in English what she was looking for, and–to my great happiness–it was a cognate.

"Biblia." Real easy. Took her to the kids bibles. Because in English "-ia" reminds me of diminutives. As we arrived it ocurred to me she may have wanted adult bibles and just happened to be holding her baby. She started a pitying sound of disagreement, but finally, without thought, I began to process in entry-level, no-verb Spanish.

"Oh, ¿bibles para niños? ¿O para adultos?"

"Adultos."

"Ah!" and then I might have added "Aquí," or I might have just added that to my memory as I wordlessly motioned her around to the 'Libros En Español' shelves and grabbed one nice-looking Catholis Spanish language bible. She was very happy. I was proud, for my part, and only seconds later did I find the bookseller who actually speaks fluent Spanish.

Sometimes I feel a little useless with my Spanish, at least until I find something like this:

Now, knowing internet memes as I do, I got the gist pretty quickly. Took minutes and an online translator to get the exact words, but the translation itself requires some adjusting. For those of you who speak neither Spanish nor internet, the above image reads:

"Did you know that the speed of semen during ejaculation is 32 kilometers per hour? Neither did Carol, but she knows now."

Sometimes, I love my weird, inside-out brain.

An Open Letter To My Internet

Hey, fuck you, Internet. You don't want to work for me? You want to tell my computer that you're working just fine but not transfer any data to or from my house? Really? After all the delightful content I've provided you? All the good times? All the goddam porn I've watched on you?

I thought you were cool, Internet. I really did. In fact, I still kind of do. I can understand that this is a momentary slip-up. It's happened before, I'd understand, but it's the way you go about telling me. You keep hiding it, pretending like nothing's wrong and hoping I won't notice. You're acting like Sammi from "Jersey Shore."

No, I'm not calling you Sammi; I'm saying you're acting like Sammi. I know you're better than that. You know you're better than that. You can just tell me you're having service problems, baby. I'd understand that. We don't have to do this every night. I know sometimes you need your space. But you don't have to lie about it.

And you know what? I can still do me.

I don't have to put up with this kind of nonsense. I have a jailbroken iPhone with tethering and an unlimited data plan. I hooked that shit up as soon as I knew you were playing me. There wasn't anything wrong with my modem, you were just trying to hide the truth.

But I respect you.

That's why I turned off the tethering. (That and it's slow and I'm paranoid AT&T might notice the sudden explosion in data usage on an unlimited plan that doesn't already pay extra for tethering.)

Right now, I'm writing this from my phone, using regular old 3G and the official Blogger application. I'm not sneaking behind your back even though it might be easy, or because it might feel like I'm getting back at you.

I don't want that type of relationship. Not with you. Not with anybody.

Please come home, Internet. Please just stop the lying and the running away and come home and talk with me.

I miss you.

I love you.

You don't have to do everything on your own. Just trust in me to support you as much as you support me. I'm a big man if you look to see it.

Please bring my porn back.

-Your heat sink snuggle bottom

On Modeling Contracts

A dear friend of mine recently was offered a "modeling" gig. Perhaps "gig" is better suited towards being the word in quotation marks. The offer was real enough, and I suppose whatever the photo shoot actually consisted of constitutes modeling. It's just that the offer itself was phrased in the least legitimate manners possible.

For one thing, she was approached through text-only contact over the cam chatting site stickam.com. By a "woman." (Who just claimed to not have a webcam.)

Second, when they emailed her (under a fake name she gave them until she tested their veracity), they were somewhat unconvincing. Let's take a look:

Hello Angela:


A great friend and former model of mine, Sienna Baker, found you on the chat site and sees some real potential in you.  Sienna is a great judge of talent and has already helped a couple girls get some great pro work with a couple top magazines and thinks you could be very good too.


MY big concern is IF you are serious and I truly hope you are.  We are anxious to find models for various projects.  Based on what Sienna has told me you seem interested.  This is a highly competitive business and commitment is everything.  Plus we are on a major time crunch and need to make a selection within weeks for future modeling assignments over the next 12-18 months all over the world!!  That is why I think it important, if Sienna thinks you do well enough during her training sessions, we get some audition pictures of you ... specifically in lingerie and/or swimwear and other ways that show off your body and figure... so we can make some assessments of your potential.  Do not be concerned with having a "perfect" body.... we need ALL shapes and sizes for many different magazines and catalogs.


She specializes in artistic work for mags like Maxim, Allure, and has done some work with Cosmo Girl... and with Suicide Girls on occassion.  Mostly swimwear, lingerie and other sensual fashion.  The work we would want would be very much the same..   Being totally uninhibitted is the key.  Sienna does her initial interview and mentoring and training program online.  We do the audition shoots in person if you do well enough that she recommends you.  There are many BAD agencies out there that lure innocent girls in and then do things that are not polite to discuss.  Sienna never screen caps any of her training work; she is a huge advocate of models' privacy rights.  As far as our audition shoot is concerned, the one we will do in person, we will both sign a mutual release that states we can only show those pictures/videos to potential magazine clients so they can make their selects of models for various shoots.  Nothing will ever be displayed publically without your expressed written permission.

Sienna will expect a lot during her training, Angela.  More than you'd do for an actual photo shoot but she wants to open up, step outside the box but mostly she is wanting the prospect to have fun with what she does.  Just go with the flow.  Being shy will not make the cut.


I have worked with her for a long time and she is very professional and does great work.  Let her teach you and listen to her and you'll do great.


I wish you the best of luck!!

Cheers,
William Simmons

VP of talent Coordination
Tempting Sensations Modeling Agency

(formerly Attitude Models Ltd, UK)

Liverpool England (UK)

P.S.  We are a low-key behind-the-scenes modeling agency and, to prevent being bothered by thousands of girls that only "wish" they could model, we do NOT maintain a web site or publish any photos we do on the web.  We work strictly with the magazine and video industry.

Okay.

1) This guy must be really unprofessional, what with not knowing the name of the website a worker was scouting, double-spacing after sentences randomly, using CAPSLOCK instead of italics or even–god help us–bold, and of course not bothering to spellcheck his emails.

2) They want you to train (on camera) first, then take audition photos in lingerie and/our swimsuits. To show off your shape (but then assuage you that shape isn't everything). If you do well in all this, they will book you for up to 18 months of gigs they desperately need filled.

3) The "company" specializes in magazines you've definitely heard of, despite these magazines not having anything in common when it comes to the type of women they generally shoot. Also, they do softcore porn for a well known company which prides itself on open auditions through their own site. (Don't ask how I know that.)

4) "Sensual" is a word photographers use to describe shoots when they don't want to scare off naïve models with the word "nude." "Uninhibited" is likewise the word they use when they don't want to say, "just go with it if one of us gets naked too."

5) This is followed by very improperly mentioning that there are "BAD" companies out there who do these above things to naïve young models and then promises not to do any of those things or any other things of which you could conceivably think. They go on to promise that when they actually molest you on camera, you will sign a piece of paper they claim keeps them from ever showing it to anyone other than prospective "clients." Because you are a lawyer and you will know what it says.

6) 'Listen to what Sienna says and follow direction blindly or you will not become a star.'

7) The company is based in the UK despite agenting for models in US magazines.

8) The company does not have a website or contact information. Basic Googling reveals that neither version of the company's names actually exist. They are not even mentioned online outside of references to a London gazette from 2007. Also, even more typos.

9) What kind of modeling agency doesn't want young girls applying at every opportunity? What kind of business model is that?

Now, I can hear you thinking, "Man, that crane is never going to be able to lift that whole thing!" I hear you thinking this because nearly everyone who started reading this blog bailed a long while back, but if you're still reading or skipped all of the above, I can hear you thinking something different, and that thing is, "Well, maybe that guy's just bad at writing emails. He's a VP after all, not a recruiter."

Possible, but remember that he is a faceless dude on the internet promising lofty rewards for trust and showing some skin. Now consider that a Latino music producer approached this same friend for some acting work the same week and provided links to his Facebook, email, company, YouTube account, and the name of the artist for whom he was directing the music video in which he was offering a part. He also spoke with this friend at length. Dear Will didn't do much beyond send an obvious form email (unproofed) on the word of an underling who only has one name and some still photos for credibility.

And what happens when you blow off their stickam-based training session because they're unconvincing? Do you get written off because they don't want to waste their time on spazzes and flakes? Do they send a single email informing you that they're regrettably moving on? Or even checking to see if you are okay?

No, they get angry and threaten you back into stripping for them:

Angela....


I just got off the phone with Sienna.  I was VERY disappointed to learn that you never appeaed for your scheduled training appointment.
My time -- and Ms. Baker's time -- is very valuable.  Both of us have gone way beyond our normal functions to absolutely reassure you that we were seriously interested in you as a possible model and our legitimate belief you have that "it" we were looking for.  Emphasis now on the word "were"... we can NOT waste time on anyone that is as, apparently, unreliable as you have now proven yourself to be.
Unless you contact Sienna sometime within the next 24 hours with a reasonable reason why you missed your scheduled time with her we will totally remove you from any future consideration and pass along this information to the Studios' Network that you cannot be trusted as a legitimate modeling prospect.
I hope Sienna hears from you today.


William

That's right, more typos, more extraneous CAPSLOCK, and a huge guilt trip about how hard theyve worked to make you feel comfortable. You know, save for any form of contact more legitimate than a private message over a third-party cam site and promises of eventually sending binding contracts.

And yes, that second half is a threat, actually an ultimatum with a deadline, to blacklist a prospective, possibly hospitalized client from not only their company, but from others within the shadowy, ambiguous "Studios' Network."

This network, I assume, is William's mother's Linksys WiFi. The sultry "Tempting Sensations Modeling Agency, UK" is his room in her basement, and "Sienna" is the name he gave his polyurethane playmate, the one he keeps next to him as he goads young girls into removing most of their clothing for him on the internet, cackling maniacally as he violates both their dignity and his vow not to screencap their exploits, with the ever-crooked intent of blackmailing further seductive photography out of them with the black fruits of this initial endeavor.

Trust me, Angelas out there. I'm from the internet. I know what lurks.

UPDATE!

Sienna has responded in the comments below! But here's the text larger and in-line with the above correspondence:

Great piece of b.s. here, Dave. It's too bad that your alleged "dear friend" actually was just one of thousands of girls try to get into the industry that turns out is a WANNABE model ... like all the tens of thousand wannabe singers that try out for American Idol. It's too bad for her that she has no commitment... and pretty pathetic for you that she had you post this fluff nonsense to defend her honor.
Oh well, if it gets you off that you came to her defense thats kool for you!!!

Also, she gave me a shout-out on facebook, though not by name, which would have been fun.

I'm not really sure why I bothered to hide her surname or picture, as she used her full name below and linked to her Facebook, which seems to reveal that she frequently engages in the unprofessional behavior of calling girls who decide not to sign up with her as "wannabes" and unfriends them, (leaving her with just 22 friends).

Her position is "freelance photographer" and her job is "Finding new model talent for my old studios." No further specifics about any company are given. She studied "In England." A quick search reveals that her profile photo is actually a thumbnail of CURRENT runway model Ali Carr, taken by photographer Rupert Tapper for agency Elite New York's Fall 2010 fashion season. In fact, here's the comparison, since I now know it's neither a photo of nor by her:

In her defense, she could have easily been freelancing in the art department that week, which would explain why she has access to the thumbnail file of another photographer's work before it went to print. Or maybe she's just showing off her success story.

She calls me a loser, attacks 'Angela,' and erroneously assumes that I must her be her boyfriend to defend her. She also says I'm posting "false shit about me," which is very interesting considering at no point did I actually comment on anything Sienna did. All correspondence was with Bill Simmons and is documented. That this is a real company and a real agent seems somewhat more plausible now, since I can't imagine a creeper sitting home alone Googling his own fictitious persona to see if anyone's seen through it or railed against him. Currently, the most reasonable explanation is that this really is just an incredibly unprofessional company.

So, for the record:

• Sienna has a wonderful grasp of grammar and punctuation–she can properly space an ellipsis!–up until the final two words, but that's facebook speak for you.
• This just keeps getting more and more unprofessional.
• It's still kind of hilarious. Even if she were legitimately angry about anything previously posted, it's fairly easy to recognize this is A) a humor blog and B) doesn't particularly matter in the grand scheme of her company. I'm not flaming her wall posts and I'm certainly not going to actively seek out this company to berate them. If they didn't want people laughing to themselves about their unprofessionalism, they should strive to be more professional in the future.

This was a very interesting development for the day. Thank you, Sienna!


And it continues:

Dave, I could not resist responding this one last time to your latest post and comments about my reply. I just had to help you with some of your mistaken assumptions but dan you have soooo many!!!
First off, I am NOT an "agency" and have never worked for one. I modeled professionally in Europe when I was an exchange student and back here in the U.S. during college and after for a total of 12 years. As I tell prospects, I have done it ALL and seen it ALL so that is how I can help them get involved in the business with knowledge that an "agency" will never give them! Agents, agencies, and managers will suck you dry and take your money for their "services" and charging for portfolios and other things. If I feel a girl is truly serious I will not charge her (or him) because the studios pay me a finders fee...
Which leads to the second thing, I work with (not for) the actual photography studios...
and the third thing, yes, I do de-friend a LOT of girls!! Just like I said in my first reply, thousands of girls "wannabe" models just like all those sick-sounding wannabe singers that try out for American Idol. less than a few are truly serious and committed. My time is to valuable to waste on them so once I know they are wannabe-types. (BTW, your "dear friend Angela" is only a "wannabe LOSER" because she decided to use you to try to discredit me instead of just hanging her head and going to work quietly at the Hollister store like the rest of her kind.)
Next, although I look amazingly similar to Ali I am definitely NOT her. We all have a "twin" and I'd love to meet her sometime I guess but i usually stayed away from runway models. They always thought their va-ja-jas did not smell. Personally I was always told I looked more like a young Gwyneth Paltrow.
Last thing, Dave, YOU have actually done quite a bit to steal the dreams of some potentially VERY good prospects! They find this blog and actually think I am not for real and bail. That's sad because I truly thought a couple could have made it BIG... but that's on you now.
Please excuse any bad grammar or typos or whatever else you feel special about pointing out. I am not perfect nor do I want to be. And I am not a "pro"... we all know what girls that are "pros" actually are.
Luv and kisses, Sienna. 

I'm glad there's a dialogue going, at least. It's much more transparent.


I'll go ahead and accept that the profile photo is a "celebrity lookalike" picture, but not that it is a separate individual. It is clearly the exact same photo, pre-production. I found it via an identical image search. The fact that it's low-res implies (though does not prove) it is not widely available for distribution.


I'm also starting to wonder if Sienna is Bill Simmons, because she seems genuinely, personally affronted by my criticisms of his email comments, and that makes me sad. Why work for such a company? Why deny working for any company?


For that matter, why say I'm ruining young girls' dreams by defaming Sienna when her own comments are the only thing tying her to this blog? The only person critiqued originally was Bill Simmons at "Tempting Sensations Modeling Agency." In fact, checking my site analytics, I see only 1 6:16 viewing of two pages, with the search query being:

"william simmons vp of talent coordination tempting sensations modeling agency"

So yeah, think we're done here.

Impressionable girls trying to make it in the business: Sienna seems like a lovely girl. I encourage you to ask many questions of anyone offering you fame and fortune. Get business cards, check websites, ask your parents' opinions, look for reviews. Bill Simmons? Kind of seems to be a scumbag in his interactions, but that has little bearing on who else a freelance agent can work with. Find people who are wonderful and professional and if it is what you truly want to be doing with your life, go for it with gusto. I believe in you.

On Cute Animals

I don't know how I didn't see it before, it seems so obvious in hindsight. The clues, the emails, the links I'd get sent at three in the morning….

Every corner of the internet that isn't reserved for porn is designed to cater to a person's every need for adorable, furry animals. (And in some cases, even the parts of the internet that are also for porn.)

Photo Blogs - Obviously design to showcase pictures of adorable animals.

Flickr - Designed so you can show me your photos of adorable animals.

Facebook - So we can learn more about each other's adorable animals. (And give them their own pages.)

Livejournal - To blog about our animals. Hell, they even have "LiveGerbil." It's adorable.

Twitter - Tell me about the adorable thing an animal did.

FourSquare - Where did you see an adorable animal?

BBC/(lesser news services) - Who was recently saved by an adorable animal?

eBay - I would like to buy toys for my adorable animal.

Craigslist - Has anybody seen my…?/I would like to adopt a…/Where can I go to have sex with … an adorable animal.

4chan - Can someone draw me a picture of myself as an adorable animal?

Honestly, that all just makes LOLcats the most derivative and yet somehow also most direct and honest thing on the internet. Let's just imitate it shot-for-shot with hipster, call it LOLpeoples and go meta as hell and call it a night?

On Internet Porn

I'm not sure, but I think internet porn might be the purest form of distilled perversion imaginable.

It's the most capricious thing imaginable. Don't like short girls? There's still porn for you. Like redheads? You're in luck. Only get off to women being degraded by men wearing pterodactyl costumes at night in the forest? I can find it for you in about 3 seconds. Everything is available.

And it's all available at once. You can start off looking for plain vanilla guy-on-girl and end up miles away looking at pixelated Japanese women doing the foulest things imaginable in any of a myriad series of complex costumes. You can indulge your every perversion as the mood strikes you. You can't download music as fast as you can find any new type of porn you could imagine. Honestly, I can see why porn is always at the forefront of visual technologies and why the internet is forcing mainstream porn to adapt. Hell, I've seen entire documentaries on basic cable dedicated to the porn industry. It's on the History Chanel for God's sake. Don't try to tell me that porn isn't as common and suburban as in interracial gay couple with an adopted Asian baby, these days.

Sometimes, though, I just think the only thing keeping internet porn alive is the subtle hope of one day seeing someone you know naked on the internet. And then hoping that someone is at least attractive.

On Bureaucracy In Commerce

Alright, I'm not going to pretend this isn't my fault. I put a weight bench on my Birthday/Christmas list that was woefully unsuited to the workout routines I've adopted.

And I'm not going to pretend it isn't partially also my mom's fault for buying a birthday present back in October and then deciding to hold it for Christmas, thereby negating any chance of utilizing any return policy.

All I want to point out is the following craziness:

Modell's Sporting Goods will not accept returns from Modells.com. Not with a receipt, not without and all the shipping stickers meticulously pealed off (because now there's no barcode). There's a good reason for this. Modells.com is run by a different company than Modell's.

What?

How do you even manage that? Is Volkswagen.com run by Ford? Is Amazon MP3 run by iTunes? No. Because that would be insane. Who sells off their digital rights to keep an overpriced physical store alive? I mean what company is that stupid?

I guess what I'm saying is, is anybody interested in purchasing a brand new, never used weight bench?

It's real pretty. Flat/decline positions. Great for sit-ups, barbels.
Please buy my weight bench. Like $50. I'll even build it for you.
Desperation.

On Wikipedia II: Revenge of the Dark Wiki

So Wikipedia isn't the evil your college professors say it is.

However, like all great tools–be it the arrow, gunpowder or nuclear fission–mankind's own evil ways can turn even the greatest asset into a weapon of poor malice.

Case point: Tonight my friend Joanne convinced a young man in the U.K. that she too lived somewhere in England. He supplied his county location as Coventry.

From this I supplied Jo with the hometown of Allesley, higher education at not Conventry Uni but rather U. of Warwick, a concentration in Educational Studies and therefor a residency in Dunsmere Hall at the Westwood Campus.

And, a place to meet to show this kid around his own area: the corner of Charter Ave. and Gibbet Hill Rd. on the North end of campus. Perhaps they could get some food in the Cannon Park mall.

All this took about five clicks. Sometimes, it's not what facts you know but the processes of cheating.

Now when this kid gets stood up, it'll be from 4,000 miles away, and to Jo five hours in the future. Her bitchiness is going to time travel. It will be spoken of across continents.

On Wikipedia

Wikipedia generally gets a bad rap. People seem to doubt that just because anybody can edit it to say whatever they want it isn't a reliable source. Well, that's certainly the case at times. However, the Wiki company has hundreds if not thousands of volunteer moderators constantly combing the site for spurious edits and foolishness, and of course articles of controversy and unfolding events are frequently locked to avoid so nonsense.

Still, it's every few weeks somebody tries to convince the world that Justin Bieber is a twenty year-old lesbian or that Kel Mitchel died back in 1998.

Of course Wikipedia isn't a reliable source. Anybody can edit it. Jesus. I've seen students cite Wikipedia on term papers. Holy hell, people. "I read that [surprising but factual statement]." "Really, where?" "Uh … I forget." Sure. Fine. It's okay to say you read something on Wikipedia. It's a great place to get a simple explanation for many longer topics you would typically have to go to scientific journals or history books for. Fine.

But, holy crap, don't cite Wikipedia as your source in official documents. You know what you cite? Those long-winded scientific journals and history books that Wikipedia cited itself. Come on, kids, this isn't too hard. You've got a card catalog/encyclopedia/search engine that will not only explain to you everything you didn't read yourself, but do it simply and tell you what you should be citing right at the bottom of the page.

Many's the nights I've whiled away catching up on the most obscure and complex theories of astro- quantum and unified physics, or the books True Blood was based on, but in the end I can never forget the Wikipedia is only as reliable as the books it's based on and the willingness of nerds to compile it in a single place. Sometimes, you just have to bail on traditional Wiki and head over to some genre-specific knowledge dumps like Wookiepedia, the Buffy Wikia, Memory Alpha, or LOSTpedia. (Seriously, those are CRAZY nerds. The arguments there, mother of god.)

Tonight I spent at least two hours searching for an obscure name from a comic series that spun off of a Neil Gaiman series which was itself a spin-off of an Alan Moore series that spun out tangentially from Moore's old Swamp Thing stories. Frankly, that damned thing wasn't on Wikipedia, because nerds of that caliber just aren't on Main Wiki.

Then I remembered I had an issue of that comic myself, and it took me all of a few minutes to flip to a page where the exact thing I needed was prominently displayed.

Sometimes, you really just have to let go of Wikipedia and embrace source material. For your own mental health.

North Dakota Is Full of Cocks

What's your problem, North Dakota?

Seriously, you're the only fuggin' United State not to visit my blog. I thought we were United, North Dakota. I thought we were cool.

Just because you have a big mountain we carved up to look like some important dead white men you think you're better than the rest of us? Is that what you think? Well, I've got news for you, North Dakota: you ain't shit.

South Dakota's gotten in on this. North Carolina's got in on this. Hell, even West Virginia is all over my shit, so don't go acting like this is a regional thing. West side, East side, Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings, everybody's all over this so don't go acting like you can't because someone else got beef. Where's the beef? There ain't no beef here. I mean, Jesus! Even D.C. is in on this. D.C.'s been dick riding my junk since Day 1. D.C. dick riding so hard my shit's got friction burn. Shit's bent, son.

You really want to get into it? Really? Well, look at this shit: Singapore, 12 hits; France, 12 hits; Serbia, 4 hits; Sri Lanka, 4 hits. Sri Lanka, North Dakota. Vietnam, Slovenia, Slovakia, Iran, The United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia.

Jesus Christ, North Dakota, Ethiopia visits my site more than you do. You know what's in Ethiopia? Nothing. They have flies and famine and starving people and Angelina Jolie holding malnourished brown babies. I don't even think they have computers in Ethiopia. Do you know what that means? That means that Angelina Jolie handed some starving Cambodian an iPad so she could hold their kid and adopt it, and while she was doing that they looked at my web site. For like a minute and a half.

Jesus Christ, North Dakota, get your shit together.

On Justin Bieber

Justin Bieber, in addition to a 3D concert movie, is starring in a bio-pic of himself. He is also "writing" a memoir.

Honestly, at 14 or whatever, what do you really have to put into a biography?

On the other hand, you're 14 or whatever, and you've become a millionaire after people discovered your "good" singing on YouTube and you became famous. That's pretty much every American teen's dream.

But maybe I shouldn't say shit. I mean I'm not famous, after all. Oh yeah, and the last guy to talk shit about Bieber's friend had to shut down his mobile account after Beiger tweeted "Call me" followed by the kid's phone number, resulting in 26,000 texts.

Which, incidentally, violates Twitter's Terms of Service and is sparking a "Suspend Bieber" hashtag movement. Excellent.

"Internet Explorer Is Being Gay" - Web Browsers Personified AND Stereotyping People By Browser

Image © Anji 2007



I heard someone today say, "Hold on, IE is being gay." Really? Are we still using "gay" as an insult? Why not "queer?" At least that's using the word for what it was intended. Every time I hear someone say, "That's gay," referring to anything other than legitimate homosexual acts, all I hear is "That's so non-heteronormative."

And then that just sounds retarded.


Web Browsers Personified:

IE - If anything, Microsoft's Internet Explorer is the straightest of web browsers. It's like the most herteronormative browser there is. Everybody uses it. Which leads me to:

Safari/Camino - Clearly the housewife's web browser. Want to surf the nets after you've vacuumed in heels but before the roast is ready? Then you clearly log in to your AOL account on that cute little iMac your husband bought you in a pretty pink to match your nails. You're really the worst thing about this gender disparity.

Firefox - Mozilla knows it's the hot young stud, the star quarterback. F.F. gets all the girls and he knows it, but he also gets a lot of the guys too, the skinny, nerdy ones who are ashamed to admit they've lusted after his multiple plug-ins and his years of experience with tabbed web pages. But The Fox doesn't care. He loves everyone.

Netscape - The creepy old uncle of web browsers. Does he even do anything? We don't really know. He just sits there saving all his junk mail to his hard drive forever. That and look at really old, HTML-based websites of questionably-aged children.

Opera - That faggy kid from theater class who reads the newspaper and carries a satchel.


Users Personified By Their Web Browser:

IE - Anybody who only uses their computer for "pregaming" playlists and to writer term papers on Adderall.

Safari - Girls who were given a MacBook when they got into college

Camino - Girls who were given a MacBook when they got into college and spent the money their parents sent for an OS update on Bacardi Razz and plan B.

Firefox - Men who stream enough porn to understand how to maximally utilize plug-ins, tabbed windows and keyboard shortcuts.

Google Chrome - People who do not understand how to maximally utilize plug-ins, tabbed windows and keyboard shortcuts, and who are otherwise terrified of Firefox.

Netscape - Your anal retentive father who prefers his email download and store on his home machine and his mail server be utterly sanitized. Also, anyone on the show Hoarders.

Opera - That faggy kid from theater class who reads the newspaper and carries a satchel.

Nineteen Profile Pictures That Need To Be Retired

The Four-Square - Have an uninteresting photo? So did Andy Worhol! Until he resized it and made prints side-by-side with different colors! Now you've got a brand new kind of crappy art all your friends will be clamoring over. Bonus points for including another person in the picture, more if it becomes impossible to tell who is who. Final bonus for having 20+ similar shots all in a row.


Anything Sepia - Half of us are barely old enough to remember how to load a roll of film into a non-digital camera, let alone have decades-aged photos lying around. For that matter, those photos weren't designed to be that color, the faded from a better version. To put this on your wall says, "I have neither smarts nor class, but I'm pretty sure this fakes both pretty well." Congratulations, you've cemented yuppie photography as an enduring art form.

The "Up, Up and Away!" (Sideways) - This image can be said to do nothing more than confuse the eye. It's a bird's eye, at an angle, rotated such that gravity is pointing to one of the image's corners. This allows for increasing visual cleavage, decreasing belly rolls, thinning the hips, hiding the jowls, augmenting height and can even be combined with any other digital effect on this list for the most intelligence-insulting images imaginable.


The Baby Picture - We get it, not only were you cute once, but you've just had the stunning realization that you have to grow up and be an adult now, fully culpable for all her own screw-ups. Also, you seem to think your childhood was so much better than your life now, but you know what? You can drive now. You can feed yourself and get up to poop all on your own. You can open a credit card and rent seasons of Firefly off the Netflix. Unless someone close to you in the photo has died and it is the anniversary week of his happening, I don't want to see your dad's skinny man-legs in '80s cutoff shorts.

The Tagger - It's one image, posted 837,000 times by 837,000 people. Half the time it is unsolicited and reposted simply because people who weren't included in the image felt let down and did it all over themselves, slighting the people who slighted them with tags like, "the little slut," or, "the ditzy one."






The Eyeball - "My Best Feature" might be more accurate, but 'The Eyeball' has broader recognition for everyone. A single shot of somebody's sense organ, eye, nose, mouth, ear, even random body parts like a shin bone. Someone snapped a picture they thought would look "artsy," hit soft focus and called it a night. We're tired of looking not at a picture of you, but rather some weird selection of part of you from which we're supposed to infer meaning other than,"I'm apparently friends with an artistic plebeian."

The Beach-Bound Attention Whore - Seriously, this exact posed is utilized in a rather well known internet meme simply titled "ATTENTION WHORE." The very fact that searching for a real-life counterpart to this image through actual Facebook profiles yielded three different women and a dozen or so attempts at a handstand is nothing short of horrifying. This particular image is a particularly striking doppelganger to the original, the only difference being I believe the attention whore in the original was wearing a red bikini. Also, it read, "LOOK AT ME I'M AN ATTENTION WHORE!" But you're all whores.


The Overly Hopeful Celebrity Look-Alike - I don't want anyone to think I'm leaving the men off this list. Frankly, if every redhead on the net wasn't tagging herself in pictures of Scarlett Johansson, men would be the primary perpetrators of this face-crime. I'm light skinned with dark hair and a goatee. Do you see me tagging myself in pictured of Johnny Depp? No. Why? Because I don't fucking look like Johnny Depp. My jaw isn't sharp enough, my hair is too wavy and I refuse to wear black-rimmed glasses and a tiny fedora. (Rimless glasses and a full size, sure.) The point is you do not look like any of the celebrities who are often only famous for being good-looking. Stop it. This is hurting your chances with the ladies by making them think of all the differences between you and more sexified celebs. If you wanna score, through up a picture of Seth Rogan pre-weight loss. Make the ladies realize you are more attractive than someone famous!

Lemon Face Mmmn!! - Lion Face Arrrr! Also called the "superpucker," this does about as much to turn guys off of super-fine ladies as the overachieving celebrity profiles hinder decent looking men. Ladies, you have lovely lips. I can guarantee you that some time this week a guy will want to make kisses with. It's just nature. However, every time you make that ridiculous kissy face in photos we respect you a little less, and not in a good way. We just want you to look nice for us. It's simple of us, but it shows that you take pride in your appearance and that you take pride when we perceive you positively. Moreover, it gives us something to look at in our "alone time."

The "Photoshopped Beyond All Recognition" - Jebus Christy, what the hell were you thinking!? Was this one not even worth trying the Four Square on? Did you just say, "Oh, it's completely out of focus, but I can't bring myself to hit the DELETE key?" You had to save it anyway and play with it so much in Photoshop that it lost all semblance of an image of a human being? Picasso, for Pete's sake, would see one of these and tell you that it resembles only the mad watercolorings of a deranged impressionist grappling with his own hang-ups about breaking classical rules of shape and contour. Also, he'd tell you they weren't very good watercolors.

The Over-Captioned - This is a minor infraction spun out of control. Like lax enforcement of jaywalking or litter laws. First there's the main image, then someone plays with the brightness because it was shot at night at a party. Then it gets forgotten about for months and posted only on a fairly arbitrary month-iversary, tagged with a date, the original time stamp, a title card in curly-cue font and a message of love. Sometimes, the guy will have died of cancer or a car crash and "R.I.P." will be added next to a diminutive of his name, like Rickie of Robby or Johnny. Maybe there'll be glitter.

The Somebody Else's Baby - This profile says, "I have replaced my own desire for having children at a young age with babysitting for the same families for twelve years." Either that or, "My friends and family are all incredibly fertile sluts, but at least I get to play with one of these without spitting it out of my own happy-hole."
Odds are it'll also scare away any guys you are or will potentially be dating. Why? Because our biological clocks tick down to 'power usurped by younger, stronger males.' Not 'baby o'clock.'


The "Money Shot" - It's like Lemon Face gone awry. Why would you do this to yourself, girls? Why are you teasing us with this image and, more importantly, why are you putting twelve of them up at a time for everyone and your grandma to see? I could maybe understand it if you were doing the angry face tongue, or throwing up metal hands at the same time, but no. No, you're always smiling away and rolling out the red carpet to your esophagus like you love it and goddamit you know damned well you never act like you like it when we suggest it so why? Just why?

The Open Invitation/The Open For Business - What did I just get finished explaining to you?!







The Negative - This is either a mediocre picture made increasingly disturbing or a moderately whorey picture made fappable through inversion of color and reduction of the mind's ability to discern all the gross parts of you.





The Digital Polaroid - What? (Often combined with Sepia, Captioning and Beach Whoring.)










High Contrast Harlotry - Turn up that contrast, turn up that tan! Make your bleach-job look blonder, those intimately stained tank tops brighter! Hide your face under some insect-eye Prada sunglasses and a ventilated trucker hat and no one will know that's you showing off her underwear through the bottoms of her cut-off jorts! Sunny day? Even better! Now every item in your room that wasn't already black or white fades demurely into the background to allow for near-total anonymity, perfect for when all those pictures you're posing for and sending to your boyfriend up at school get passed around the internet like a bad case of gonorrheal Windows Vista.

Feet In the Sand - I'm tired of seeing your feet in the sand. I know I've said this a hundred times, yes, women are disproportionately angry at their feet the more attractive they are. It's something she can fixate on because feet really are just plain weird looking things. However, feet do look weird and I don't want to look at them either. There's nothing artsy about feet in the sand. Even the Christians have a poem and associated photograph about footprints in the sand. I think it's called "Footprints in the Sand." This is not a great accomplishment for anyone. More annoyingly, the types of girls who are fine with how their feet look generally have far greater issues with themselves to pick at. I don't need to be seeing your false bravado. I need to be seeing either good beach art or bad art of you at the beach in a bathing suit. Either way, everybody wins.

Your Farmville Photos - The worst offender of all. I really need to see what your farm looks like. Or what you look like on your farm. Or what a frigging pig looks like on your farm. It's not even restricted to Farmville, anymore. Tons of games are adding inane photo albums, which pisses me off. And you know what? This shouldn't even need an explanation. I don't look at pictures of farms in my spare time, and I don't play very many video games. The times I do play video games it's for entertainment and escapism. I don't need to be spending all my free time down at a fake farm growing nothing and earning nothing for all my efforts. If I really wanted to milk a cow, you know what I would do? I'd go out and find a real fucking cow and milk the fucking shit out of it. That cow would be like, "HOLY FUCKING SHIT YEAH, THAT'S A MILKING, ALRIGHT!!!" and then I'd pasteurize the milk myself and drink it with fucking cookies because I earned a real, tangible fucking reward after all that work.

*All images have been utterly stolen without permission (the fun kind of stealing) from people on Facebook and then altered to protect those guilty of these Facebook Infractions. In order to browse photos I had to keep it within a few degrees of separation from my own friends and have already been informed I circuitously snagged one person's photo, but her big sister said she shouldn't mind because it was funny. If I have used your picture and you do not think it was funny, please contact me directly a dzucker1@gmail.com and I shall remove your photo and replace it with something much more offensive.

On Going Topless

So I've mentioned a bit recently that I started working out. I'm not even going to pretend like it's for any reason other than looking better. There is no consideration to my overall health involved.

That said, I'm getting tired of having to tell people I'm in shape. Apart from my shirts all fitting a littler differently now, I can't show that I'm in great shape, which is a shame because I'm only doing this to get people to look at me! It's like putting videos up YouTube videos of getting hit in your crotch. No, you don't want to be "Flaming Nutsack Guy," but obviously you do want that.

That said, here are a couple lists I've compiled to help me know when it is and is not appropriate to be showing off:


Times It Is Appropriate to Take Your Shirt Off

• To work out
  
• Before bathing
• At the beach/pool/water park or when otherwise swimming
• After the first 30 minutes of yard work, assuming you actually sweat
• When suddenly needing to make a tourniquet
• If you have become wet and would prefer to be dry
• During a sporting event in which you are "skins"
  
• If it is really really hot

I wasn't really sure about this one, but it seems to be in line with basic survival, so I'm gonna call it:

• To show gang affiliation
  

Times It Is NOT Appropriate to Take Your Shirt Off

• To prove a point
• While dancing
• If you have a horrible tattoo, ever.
  
• If you're a fucking mopey werewolf
• Any time you are watching The Jersey Shore

As a personal note, I would in closing like to inform all my female readers that according to New York State Penal Code §245.01 "Exposure of a Person," it is illegal for a woman to bare the portions of her breasts "below the top of the areola," unless breast feeding, performing or otherwise entertaining in a public setting.

This was overturned by the New York Court of Appeals, however, in the landmark 1992 case People vs. Santorelli, which states a woman may for the sake of equality bare her breasts in public so long as it is not in a commercial context.

So you can show me your boobs, but I can't pay for it. Neat.

On Real Life Conversations III: On Pancakes (I Promise This Is The Last One)

Auto response from JOJO X ONO: "Withdrawal."

Me: "Pancake withdrawal?"
JO: "You know it."
Me: "I DO know it."
Jo: "You sureeee?"
Me: "I'm so sure, I drank Pediasure. Which can supposedly flush drugs out of your system, so you might not have to go through withdrawal. I'm not sure how long pancakes stay in your system for, or how jobs test for them now. I guess if you come into work with syrup on your face and they find forks and butter packets in your locker they realize you have a problem."
JO: "Don't worry. I am an avid addict; I know all the tricks."

On Blogging

Apparently Wordpress went down for two hours yesterday, losing the interwebs up to 5.5 million hits.

I would just like to take this opportunity to say, "Thank you," to Wordpress' ISP for screwing everything up and maybe getting me some extra hits while there was no one else to read.

Thank you, Wordpress' ISP, for getting me extra hits.