Every year around this time, I write some long-winded, bloated post noting that I’ve been on the web for X number of years (tomorrow, it’ll be 8 years), that’s almost always distorted by my somewhat tenuous grasp on reality. This year will be different. This year (and feel free to be as unmercifully honest as you like), I’d like YOU to tell me what you’ve thought about the past 12 months of knowing me/interacting with me/reading my stuff, and, if you’re so inclined, tell me what you think of me in general. Good? Bad? Ugly? I wanna hear it.

P.S. I’ll find my frog

Do you hear me, motherfuckers? I’LL FIND MY MOTHERFUCKING FROG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YOU CAN’T STOP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GODDAMN YOU ALL!!!!!!!!

If you were a 6 year old kid on the Internet, and you found a picture of your mom making out with some chick on her MySpace profile, how would you react, keeping in mind that both the mom and the other chick are pretty hot stripper-lookin’ types like 90% of the girls on MySpace?

(As an aside, I’m honestly starting to think that these girls on MySpace are CG creations and not actual people.)

I’m thinking that, whenever someone breaks up with someone else, they should get a Real Doll of their ex as a “parting gift”, you know, sort of like they do on game shows. “Here’s a copy of our home game!” This rule would apply to both parties in the relationship, and people could do whatever they wanted with the Real Doll. Sit it in your living room to fuck with house guests, fuck it, throw rocks at it, sell it on eBay, set it on fire, dowhutchalike. Plus, if Real Doll was doing this kinda volume, it’d drive the per-unit cost WAY down. Who’s with me here?

What was your most recent profoundly life-changing experience?

The Transporter gets better every time I see it, and if you like to be entertained without thinking at all, I highly recommend it.

Onto much weightier subject matter, The Graduate is the fucking story of my life (speaking generally here, not dwelling on many of the specifics or the thing that most people take away from the film) which is pretty scary for a person of 30 when Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock is a guy of 21, and I hope that American Beauty never will be the story of my life. Regardless, both are every bit as brilliant as the last time I saw them (which, in the case of the former, was a long fucking time ago).

Gimps Gone Wild!

I am amazed, disturbed, and at least a little proud to know that this exists. I am also urging Geoff Precious to consider hiring some of them as go-go dancers for our stage show.

“Dude. Man. Fuck.” That’s harsh.

No spoilers, don’t worry, but…fuck.

Any of you pro audio types want a free, legally licensed copy of Tracktion? If you use it before I get to, let me know how it is.

I think it would be really funny to create a bunch of bogus email accounts, and create a Yahoo Group where I use the bogus email accounts to create a bogus ongoing discussion between characters who are essentially parodies of people I’ve fallen out of favor with about what a terrible person I am, just to see how closely it mirrors any real Yahoo Groups or similar entities that may exist of this nature. Yeah, I know, it sounds pretty black helicopters of me to bring such a silly thing up, but at times like these, I’m reminded of that Ellis quote (either his or one he borrowed from someone else) from “Transmetropolitan”: “Remember: a paranoid is simply someone in possession of all the facts.” Actually, what I should really do is compile an email list of all of the people I allude to in question here, and distribute it to anyone who decides that they don’t care for me anymore, as sort of a parting gift. Maybe I’ll even create the actual Yahoo Group for them, and just skip the meager attempt at social satire I describe above. Sometimes, real life is a much better social satire than any fabricated attempt could ever hope to be.

Secret or quasi-secret discussion groups like this are a funny thing, as you know if you’ve ever been given the key to the executive washroom, so to speak. Most of them are the online equivalent of 5th grade girls making those group tape recordings where they all make fun of someone they don’t like at a slumber party (no, you sickos, I don’t spend much time at 5th grade girls’ slumber parties, but I’ve heard many second-hand accounts from “survivors”…), but once in a while, you do stumble across some real gold. Once upon a time, I was privy to an “insider” one run by one of those girls who sells her underwear on the ‘net, where other girls who did the same could discuss trade secrets, exchange amusing anecdotes about regular customers, and be catty about other sellers who they didn’t care for. Folks, if you’re actually in the market for used ladies’ undershorts, this shouldn’t be a surprise to you in the first place, but let me tell you anyway: the women in this line of work may have even more contempt for their customers than the pharmaceutical companies do. The discussion about what the proper red/brown food coloring mix was for, well, you know was pretty good, but not quite as good as the one where the ringleader divulged her secret for making her wares really, um, damp: Robitussin (though the sub-brand, or letter combination, is sadly escaping me at the moment; feel free to experiment, but please, exercise caution when doing so). I kid you not.

Now that I’ve opened up a window into a world you probably never, ever wanted to visit, I must attempt to go about my day on 3 hours’ sleep.

This one’s a little lighter than Question #1, but is (mostly) directed at the other guys in the audience.

When you want to shop for clothes that are anywhere from slightly more to quite a good deal more dressy than t-shirts and jeans, where do you shop for them, typically? Thrift shops and eBay are disqualified as answers, as they can be a bonanza, but they’re largely inconsistent and vary widely not only from location to location, but also from visit to visit. Online stores and brick-and-mortar stores count, even if they’re smaller, regional places, as a lot of those do online ordering nowadays.

I ask because, while I love looking like a Ramone, I’d like to have the option of not doing so every day, and I seem to have lost that over the years.

What do you call it when someone feels both intense love and intense distrust for the same person simultaneously?

Was my perception of an average night of drinking THAT distorted?

Anyway, here’s the rest of the story…

Things like “Daddy’s secret penis really loves it when you cry” end up coming out.

On the other hand, I think that Get Precious could probably use that.