Christmas Cookies

My niece and I made christmas cookies tonight. Yes, she made most of them. However, I successfully added icing without breaking them, which most people could not do, because of their inferior homemaking skills. The bottom line is that some people are just good at one thing, such as lovemaking or crossword puzzles only, whereas I am good at multiple things. You get the gist of what I'm saying.

Not to mention you can see the cookies below for yourself if you don't believe we made them. Please notice the testosterone-themed cookies--guns for one thing, as well as other powerful tools such as tanks and mustaches.

We also made a set of cookies with more of a standard christmas motif, for people who can't handle guns all up in their face, or more to the point, for those who derive their happiness exclusively from traditional cookie shapes. You know who you are. Here are your cookies, I hope you're happy:

Lookin' Good Vic!

Victoria Beckham, promoting her new diet book, Menstrual Cycles Are For Fat People

If looking like Skeletor and repelling heterosexual men are high on your list of requirements, this is the girl to emulate. Start purging ladies, that brownie isn't going to throw itself up!!

Europe--Maybe You've Heard Of It

As I have just returned from a 2 week expedition to Europe, I thought I would jot down a few helpful notes on the topic since none of you have been there except me. No wait let me guess: You don't want to read something that might make you smarter. I don't know what to say about that, but it won't take you very long to read because as we know, all countries besides the United States of America can be summarized in one paragraph--probably less than that in reality. Larger countries such as China or Antarctica require as many as three paragraphs to properly summarize, but five or six paragraphs is too much.

Still, I feel obligated to mention that the Chinese invented fireworks, and Antarctica is not a country but deserves mention for its vast open spaces. Now before I say anything that might accidentally be true, let's move on.

Here are some countries I visited, and I won't apologize for how exotic one or two of them may be. How sick am I? Raise the roof!

Malta: This island was named after a famous spy movie called 'The Maltese Falcon'. Most of Malta's inhabitants are descendants from the production crew who worked on the original movie. If you want to know more about the origins of the name, you should Google it, because I may have ad-libbed that part about the Maltese Falcon. The island may actually be named after Malt liquor. It was a long time ago, and many records were destroyed in a fire. That I can almost guarantee.

Spain: There were so many beautiful women in Spain I think I'm going to kill myself in honor of them. I don't know if you can see the wisdom in that, but if you saw these women you would understand. If I decide to spare my own life, my alternative plan is to spend an indefinite period of time composing love songs about beautiful Spanish women. Then I will sell them to Enrique Iglesias for 5 million dollars each, because that's how moving these songs will be. And that's how how desperate Enrique Iglesias is.

Germany: What can be said about these people, that some of them aren't Nazis anymore? I guess I'm supposed to be impressed by that? Not really. Their trains run on time, but then so did their Death trains to Auschwitz. Maybe if their trains were less punctual, it would make everyone feel more relaxed.

Switzerland: Unfortunately, the Swiss think they're special because they're not part of the European Union. Indeed, despite my best efforts, this country is still politically "neutral", or perhaps a better term is "treasonous".

In an unsuccessful attempt to jolt the doe-eyed citizenry out of their catatonic apathy, I was forced to use my bullhorn at the Zurich train station and give them something to think about, high-volume style. The central theme of my call to action was that if they didn't stand for something, they'd fall for anything. Yet not one citizen thanked me for my sage words, post-speech. That's certainly the last time I try to help a country by remembering a bumper sticker and then repeating it over and over again. Make no mistake, I will not be expending that level of effort in the future.

In the future, I will send email messages in massive quantities to all of Switzerland. These messages will contain pictures of American troops holding a litter of kittens. At the bottom of every email message will be a reminder that our troops are coming soon to liberate all Swiss citizens from apathy. Preferably with deadly force.

So anyway, my trip was really fun. Check out my pics, coming soon!

You know when people post those flyers on telephone poles that say, "Have you seen this dog?"

Well, I've never even ONCE seen that dog, and I'm beginning to think that people are just putting the flyers up for the fun of it. Please don't do this because sometimes I'll spend up to 3 days looking. I'm very soft-hearted that way. But don't take advantage of me.

As a serious blogger, it is my responsibility to watch over mainstream news websites in order to advocate the responsible use of words, syllable-usage and sometimes even individual letters.

I haven't appointed myself Chief Journalistic Ethics Watchdog because it's an easy task, or because I thought it would attract women. Quite the contrary. The reality is that I didn't even feel like doing it, but then I realized I didn't have anything else going on, so it seemed like a good fit.

However, it wasn't long before I realized that the task was a daunting one, and quite larger in scope than I first imagined. So I focused all efforts on abcnews.com due to time constraints and its high standing in the alphabet.

Abcnews.com is interesting in that they specialize in what I like to call "soft news." It's a term I've coined myself and it means news with a low probability of being accurate. The other meaning of this term is news which has 5% informational value, and 95% entertainment value. Seriously, that place is basically TMZ with a splash of Obama thrown in every once in awhile to mix things up.

Yet this offense alone is not significant enough to warrant a response by my global watchdog organization. Even the hidden camera investigative reporting exposés are acceptable in my book--I think all of us deserve to know if auto mechanics are honest (no), or if we accidentally donated 25,000 dollars to Nigeria's non-existent sister country, Nigeria II.

The problem is, this reporting style wasn't exciting enough for abcnews.com. They felt they had to move things to Reporting DefCon Level 9. DefCon Level 9 is where you pay actors, set them loose on the public in various real-world situations and roll the tape. It's like Magic News! Except not so fast, because the watchdog (me) is on the case and he has a few things to say about it.

Two recent "stories" come to mind. The first was when abcnews sent two hired actors to Paris, France, and had them play over-the-top obnoxious Americans. Yes, apparently you have to pay people for that now. Are there currently not enough tools of all nationalities to start four separate global tool companies, or what? I highly doubt it's necessary buy them all Tommy Bahama shirts, fanny packs and plane tickets to Paris.

Not to mention, this reporting technique seems a lot like having your camera man break into someone's house, kill all occupants, and then film it. Big surprise, we got the exclusive!

The other story they ran recently was about hate crime, and the number of bystanders who were willing to intervene when three (actor) skinheads assault a Latino man (actor) on a public street. This is supposed to measure what, how many people were willing to die that day? That's like throwing a Latino man into molten lava and then booing any bystanders who don't immediately jump in to save him. I don't want to have to spell out the analogy for you guys here, but I think both scenarios are equally poor indicators of race relations in America.

Just remember, whenever abcnews tries to suck you in with a "late-breaking news story", that just means it was late in the day before they were able to hire enough actors to stage a realistic-looking forest fire or something. And yes, they will probably have the exclusive.

Now that hype surrounding the vampire movie "Twilight" has diminished, I can safely file it under "decidedly unimportant", (one of the main qualifiers for Not Totally Inept subject material) and write about it. Let's get started.

Flaw #1: The asian guy was so effeminate he should've burst into flames, especially since this is supposed to be a vampire movie. But not only does he not burst into flames, he asks Bella (main character) to the prom and ends up dating a different girl, which was never explained to my satisfaction. I have to assume his homosexuality is dealt with in subsequent books. I will label it a semi-flaw at this point, and wait to see what exciting discoveries and social challenges lie ahead for this young man.

Flaw #2: Edward, the main vampire character is at least 100 years old, yet he's enchanted by a 17 year-old...Hello, road work ahead, *pLot*-hole warning! I've dated some younger women, and that's my bad--I'll be the first to take the blame for that. But an 80-year age gap is a little over-the-top, even for me. Whatever, I just hope they're happy.

On a related note, Wouldn't it be embarrassing to be a vampire, live for 500 years, practice piano all the time and then still be horrible at it? I could see that happening to me. That's why I will refuse to be turned, if a vampire ever offers. Inability to learn a musical instrument after practicing for 5 centuries would be hard to bounce back from.

Flaw #3: The special effects are so poorly executed, I would've rather the director just showed a black screen during the action sequences and explained what was happening--that would be a less jarring cinematic experience. As it was, I had to watch Edward the androgynous mime as he jumped to and fro, running around the forest with blurry legs. I couldn't tell if I was watching a road runner cartoon, or a vampire movie. Think "Guy in a rubber Godzilla suit knocking down buildings in an unrealistic and uncoordinated way", and then you will begin to grasp the magnitude of what I'm referring to.

Picture of action sequence from Twilight:

In a poor attempt to redeem itself, they play a good Radiohead song at the end of the movie. If you were stupid, you might think this to be a redeeming quality. However, not so, because it had the simultaneous effect of being totally meaningless to the entire target demographic of the film (7-9 year olds), and making me bitter that I'm now at the age where I'm concerned about the lack of musical taste evident in today's youth. This may sound complicated, and it is. It's a veritable rabbit hole of self-despair and introspection. Just take my word for it.

As I understand it, there are 3 more full-length Twilight films slated, which I will tentatively refer to as "3 steaming piles of excrement" until I know differently. Maybe for the second film, the director will watch a fight of two claymation dinosaurs for special effects inspiration. Or here's a suggestion: Watch "Interview with a Vampire", a film in which Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt's characters are obviously gayer than a french horn, no ambiguity. That's honest film-making right there.

Vampires with ambiguous sexual preferences--very distracting, to say the least. Let's hope Twilight "II", Return of the Hermaphroditic Roadrunner, handles this delicate subject matter with the same care that I've shown here.

Let's Go Extreme!

Let's get right to it, so there can be no mistake about the topics at hand. Firstly, America is a country of extremes, please don't argue with me about that. We even have a deodorant called "Extreme", if I recall correctly. It's fine to make deodorant with that name, but the problem is, we don't know how to do anything in moderation. If an enormous meteor called moderation crashed into the earth at 97,000 mph, we would just go buy a 42-liter Pepsi or something.

One of the most obvious examples of our inability to do anything halfway can be found in our politics. It used to be that lying with impunity and creating policy based on special interests was awesome. Suddenly, it's not as cool. And that's not a bad thing. But in classic American fashion, we went overboard. Now, if you're a typical "Washington politician", or if you have a vague idea of where Washington might be located, or if you can find Washington without a homing pigeon and a map of Washington tattooed on your forehead, you risk banishment and scorn.

Even Obama should watch his back, now that we have new standards in place. In the New Order, I'm not sure you're even allowed to know the three branches of government.

Panel of American citizens: Senator Obama, can you name the three branches of government?

Obama: Easy. Legistlative, Judicial, Executive.

Panel of American citizens: Ooh, look at the smart guy. You're from Washington aren't you? --and we thought you were different. Let us guess, you probably know how to pass laws and understand how the electoral college works? The panel dismisses you.

But it's not just us, the campaign spokepeople must also share the blame. Example quote from Obama's camp regarding Palin's claim to be a political outsider: "...for someone who makes the point that she's not from Washington, she looked very much like she would fit in very well there."

Ok, but can we have someone that knows Washington? Even a teensy bit of knowledge would work for me. Don't get me wrong, I understand the value of promoting a new political dynamic, and I'm up for change as much as the next guy. So if the new President really wants to be a "political outsider", he can set up a tent out on the lawn at first, if that makes him feel better. Ultimately, though, we may need him or her to be *inside* the actual White House. There are phones and other telecommunciation devices inside the White House that may facilitate conversations with leaders from other countries, for example. But based on the campaign strategies used to date, I'm becoming less and less sure that the candidates will have any idea what to do should they actually make it inside city limits.

McCain scenario

Assuming he doesn't get lost on the way, I could see things going south in a hurry: "Where's the Maverick room? Is there place here where the Mavericks hang out? This place is extremely confusing. C'mon you guys, are you serious? We need less government, not more. I'm going to cut the Whitehouse in half, and let the poor people (5 million annual earnings or less) live in the other half.

Obama scenario:

Obama, to aides: People, I wasn't lying when I said I wasn't another Washington guy. I have no idea what's happening here. Does anyone have a CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN sign? I'd feel more comfortable if there was a room I could go to where people had the CHANGE signs.

Erik scenario:

If I was running, the basis for my platform would be how utterly lost I am politically.

"Look, I'm barely a US citizen. I was born in Canada and my parents moved here when I was very young. I have no idea what the Oval Office even looks like. Anytime I saw the Oval Office on TV, like in that show The West Wing, I would turn away. Consequently, most of those storylines seemed very choppy, but so be it. It was worth it, to not know anything about how to accomplish any of the tasks you're electing me for.

American panel of citizens: Thank you for being ignorant, that's so refreshing. We haven't experienced leadership like this in a long time. Just kidding, we have.