Manic Oppressive

So there are some of us that think that David of the bridal place was a hack, and only trying to make money off of his flawed cycle of divorces. Then he got rich.

Well, other people have given him some competition with toilet paper, glue, and tape.

I just kind of hope that there aren’t any entries from Greece.

If you thought that Finnegans Wake was too easy, give this a shot…

So Seattle has a radio station that even the most critical listeners will enjoy. It’s one of those “open” stations that play whatever the DJ wants instead of the random over-used playlists that the other stations play. Anyway, if you’re jaded with respect to commercial stations, check out KEXP. They can stream to you.

Oh, and they have a membership drive going on right now, so if you have some money that you would be willing to cough up so that you can listen to cool music…

The fine art of insulting, or “Jonesing” as Dick Gregory called it, has become a lost form. The insults of today are neither derogatory nor funny. In an attempt to correct this before it spirals completly out of control, I am writing this guide to insulting. This will prevent the average person from resorting to really boring insults, such as those generated using (not a good link at work:) this tool..

The first rule is that unless you’re really trying to be hurtful, you should avoid the truth. So if you are trying to really bring someone down, then this guide is useless to you.

Moving on.

The “Easy” trick is to come up with a physical characteristic, and then make a random statement about its origin. A lame example:

Is that your body, or have you been shopping at the morgue?

Another example:
Was your makeup applied by a five year old with a Sharpie?

Both of those were off the top of my head. Given more time, obviously one can do better. However, “Give me twenty minutes for a snappy comeback” isn’t really all that helpful on the front lines. Sometimes it does make sense to come up with a few in advance and save them for when they can be useful.

For example: (You can ues these, I have others)

One can also take the “physical attribute” and make a remark that doesn’t even mention it. This method is best not to be used on strangers, due to their obscurity.

Example:
Is the dog taking you for a walk? That's rough. (The bad pun on the end helps…)

More examples:

Another method of creating insults is massive contradiction. The idea is that you state what the reader expects, and then step back and give them the “unexpected opposite”. This works really well when describing something or reviewing something. Example: The band review:


The band had a lot of talent. Unfortunately, none of it was musical. You know that sound that the hyenas at the Zoo make when they're starving? Well, for the cost of these tickets you could easily bribe the zoo keeper to keep them starved for a long time and listen to that instead. When the sound of someone moving a rake across a chalkboard is the de-facto sound in today's music, it's no surprie that people who dropped out of school failed to create their own sound. Oh well, at least the lyrics were Ok; it's good to know that some people are still creative enough to plagiarize cereal boxes for their songs.


My brother and I went to the Cherry Creek Arts festival today. Neither of us had been there in years. Like, early nineties. So I for one was rather unprepared for the new media category, “Digital Imaging”. These are canvas stretchers that have the paint printed on them. The only real difference between them and normal paintings (in the classical sense) is that the piece is composed on a computer, but it’s still oil on canvas.

The artist who was explaining it to me was dumbing it down as much as possible. “We use this thing called a computer, and software called Painter, and print it onto the canvas…” she would say, gesticulating wildly due to my incomprehension.

It reminds me of something that I wanted to do a couple of years ago, when I walked into a studio downtown (in Republic Plaza, if I remember correctly). It had a bunch of canvases with limes on them. Crystal Clear. The project that I never started was this: I would take a picture of something and skew it into perspective, and then paint an easel and an artist painting on the easel. I would give it a beat-name, like, “Portrait of an artist painting a photo of a painting.”. And then I would put it in some seedy gallery on the west side of town with a $3000.oo price tag.

Cause I need that to support my bohemian lifestyle, you know.

The other weird thing about the festival was the lack of local artists from Colorado, but I don’t think that’s anything new…