Fun Album Cover Game

This is very silly, and I'm really just posting it so that a friend can see the results of a game - similar to that in which you generate a porn name - that he posted on his blog.

You can participate here.

And my results, which will make no sense unless you've read the rules:


I believe this is the attempted 90s adult-contemporary comeback album of an 80s band with one hit, a single made popular through being on the soundtrack of a John Hughes movie.

Maybe Only Half a Sign

As the title of this post indicates, I'm not sure if this quite qualifies as a full sign of the coming Apocalypse:


This woman really looks like she's looking forward to flushing this piece of pizza from her already grotesquely overstuffed colon, n'est-ce pas?

Half a sign of the Apocalypse, folks. Half a sign. For a full one, she'd have to be doing the flushing in the photo, not building up the need for it.

My Mommy Is Ugly and Needs a Boob Job

A few posts ago, I found one potential sign that the Apocalypse is truly on its way - NASCAR themed Harlequin romances. (Just a quick note on that topic - a young lady friend of the Editor's saw one of these abominations on a used bookstore shelf, picked it up out of morbid curiosity, and reported to me that yes, it is just as classy as one might expect.)

And now, yea, I have seen the second sign, Hallelujah.

Some freak plastic surgeon decided that the big problem with cosmetic surgery in the United States is not the fact that it's dangerous, expensive, overused, and generally similar to Medieval torture except that you pay a lot for it (the Inquisition did it for free, at least). No, the issue really is that children are confused by the fact that their mommies go in to the doctor's office just fine and looking like they always do, and come out groggy, covered in bandages, and then - looking completely different.

FYI, Dr. Michael Salzhauer doesn't think that the best solution to this problem is, I don't know, getting less plastic surgery? No. The solution is to write a picture book explaining how Mommy's just fine, and once the bandages come off - she'll be pretty!

I shit you not. Of course, aside from the profit Dr. Wackjob is making from his wonderful book, he is doubtless hoping for a new generation of business from children who have been convinced along the way that no one is really pretty until they've had their nose broken, shaved, and molded. You can read an excerpt of the book here.

Time to Form a Cave

Inspired by my friend over at the Back of the Cereal Box, I've decided that it's time to share some of the stranger ways that internet users have found this site. The funny thing is that absolutely none of the keywords used to reach Notes From Overground have involved zombies - I guess I've succeeded in keeping the lab low-profile.

Regular readers may remember a post titled "The Love Poem of a Creepy Old Man" - that page has generated the most searches and the most hits, because apparently, despite the recipient of that poem having been both shocked and horrified by the experience, many people actually want to be written creepy poems. Is it that hard to get a poetic stalker? My friends' experiences would suggest no, but apparently it is for the type of people who end up on this site. They have searched for:

creepy love poems
creepy love poem
a poem of death and creepy
creepy poetry
love poem creepy
love poem+older man
love poems creepy
poem loose women
poem too old love
poems about creepy dream
poetry creepy

The first, "creepy love poems," generated 14 separate hits. That, I believe, is because this is the first site on the list for that search. Congratulations to me: I have become the internet's number one source for creepy love poems about/written by creepy old men. Cross that goal off the list!

Other noteworthy searches which lead to this site, and for which this is the first hit:

time to form a cave
astral kiss
joop necktie
your light forever trapped in the time and space

The very best search, however, is:

desperate christadelphians

This does NOT lead directly to Notes From Overground - in fact, this site is on the fourth page of a Google search. Which suggests, perhaps, that the searcher was truly desperate to find a desperate Christadelphian, for some sinister reason of their own.

Jungle Sex, Anyone?

Tonight's TV Guide feature: Alabama Jones and the Busty Crusade.

The description: "Three beautiful explorers enter a jungle to search for an idol that turns women into sexual slaves."

As the zombie lab isn't profitable enough to allow me to subscribe to Cinemax, I may never know whether or not Alabama Jones and her intrepid (and busty!) companions retrieve the mysterious idol. But my bet is that at least one of them turns into a sexual slave by the end of the film . . . any takers?

Best . . . Restaurant Review . . . EVER

I'm not sure who wrote this review of the Nordstrom Cafe . . . it might have been Lerx in disguise as the sinister "jessica ann simon".

BAD COSTUMER SERVICE
Reviewer: jessica ann simon from (town deleted), ca
YOU HURT MY FEELINGS WHEN YOU GUYS DID NOT LET MY TEACHER SANJA HUNT BRING HER DOG PEANUT TO THE OUT SIDE TABLES YOU GUYS WERE VERY RUDE AND INCONSIDERATE OF MY TEACHER WANTING TO BRING HER DOG TO OUR LUNCH DESTINATION YOU GUYS WRE NOT POLIET i FEEL THIS WAY BECAUSE MY TEACHER loves her dog peanut. and her dog is a small dog she is a toy dog and it will nice if you can under stand that a small toy dog needs to be with her owner

I wonder if the staff would have been more "POLIET" had they known in advance that the dog's name was Peanut. jessica ann simon apparently thinks so.

Why I Hate Academia: Part I of Approximately MMM

While searching for some (probably equally ungodly) article titled "Notes on Deconstructing the Popular," I chanced upon this: "Organ Transplantation as a Transformative Experience: Anthropological Insights into the Restructuring of the Self."

Which, I think, means that the author has made the great discovery that having one's organs transplanted is somewhat traumatic.

New Feature!

In what may become a continuing feature in this forum, I feel compelled to note that there is one highly underappreciated type of writing out there: the movie description on the TV Guide channel (or alternately, the guide function on a DVR). Tonight's winner: HBO's description of The Highlander, which may be one of the best movies ever made, although I know at least one of my regular readers will disagree.

This film has everything: swords, Christopher Lambert, highly quotable moments ("He's in league with Lucifer!"), a bad mid-eighties easy-listening soundtrack, and Things That Are Scottish, not to mention a villain who looks like a goth/punk pro-wrestler who eats arsenic on the weekends.

This is how my DVR guide describes the film: "A New Yorker beheads a swordsman in a parking lot, continuing a battle of immortals."

There's something about the way it completely misses the point, while simultaneously perfectly capturing the film's essence, that makes it so great.

John and Megan

I don't know John and Megan. I just happened upon their blog a moment ago.


But the fact that they only seem able to create one facial expression each somehow struck me as funny, that's all.

Oh, No They Didn't . . .

As some of my gentle readers may know, I'm doing my English honors thesis on romance novels. Yes, I am, stop laughing, please.

Specifically, I'm studying how representations of masculinity in the Harlequin Presents series of romance novels have undergone a paradigm change since the seminal studies in the genre, in the early 1980s. See? Academia is awesome, because you can say very little in very many words. Gotta love it. (This project, fyi, accounts for my odd Shelfari picks, if anyone wondered.)

But. The point is, this pursuit leads me to spend a fair amount of time on Harlequin's website, looking at writing guidelines and press info and sales statistics and new releases. And, today, looking at . . . the most . . . okay, imagine the worst possible combination of masculine/feminine pop culture, like, say, a Cosmopolitan magazine written by Carrot Top, or something, and then . . . oh God, it's too horrible to contemplate. I give you:


Ladies and gentlemen, please place a paper bag over your head, as it will make the coming Apocalypse slightly less disturbing.

Cake or death? Only it's not a joke.

Just today, I discovered a sect of Christianity previously unknown to me - the Christadelphians. Wikipedia, the ultimate repository of all knowledge and wisdom (until I find a real copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, at least) informs me that there are only about 50,000 of these folks in the world, spread throughout 120 different countries. There are also break-off sects of Christadelphians, which may only have 50 members. Other Christians consider them insane.

On the other hand, the Christadelphians consider the Jehovah's Witnesses to be insane, and so the moral seems to be: no matter how fucked up you are, there's someone even more batshit crazy than you. Unless you're the Jehovah's Witnesses, of course - that's the bottom of the barrel.

Be that as it may, the Christadelphians take pride in their literal interpretation of much of the Bible. They espouse the idea of a second coming and a general resurrection of the faithful; as a result they draw a sharp contrast between what they call the Kingdom of Men and the Kingdom of God.

Eddie Izzard has a particularly good routine on the Anglican Church, in which he comments that were that institution to have an Inquisition, it would be a little wimpy - something along the lines of "Cake or death?" The Christadelphians apparently also believe in cake or death, only they represent it thus:
The intro I've just provided aside, this may be one of the most compelling images ever created. Please note the contrast between the flaming skull levitating above a lava flow, on the one hand, and the giant hummingbird, on the other. Giant hummingbirds or flaming skulls? The choice is yours.

Success!

I forgot to mention that there is a follow-up to the bureaucratic battle which was waged between the Editor and the dark forces of Mandatory Alcohol Education. Although no spears were finally used in the confrontation, the Editor did receive a moderately courteous email waiving the requirement.

Such are the anemic victories of this modern age . . .

The Meaning of Art - Solved at Last!!!

Going back to the honorable roots of this most honorable blog (I think I'm turning Japanese, or at least my adjectives are, can anyone help with this?) this post has no plot, points of interest, purpose, or anything else that does or does not begin with the letter p. Unless you include pointlessness.

To continue: the Editor has always been a staunch believer that art is independent of the observer, unlike particles that obey the laws of quantum mechanics. (This will not be a discussion of how art differs from quarks, but it's a point worth noting nonetheless.) In other words, a painting is good whether or not it is seen, a piece of music is good whether or not it is heard (although it is ideally more frequently heard when it's good), and a book, or piece of writing, is good even if no one but the writer ever knows it exists. Beauty, in short, is neither in the bloodshot eye of the potentially illiterate, moonshine-swilling scum of this world, nor in the jaundiced eye of the poncy, pompous, pretentious and ultra-pc ambiguously sexualized artistes of this world. So why the desire to post writing on the ultimate public forum (except the surface of the moon - if I were a corporation, I'd have an enormous billboard up there so fucking fast) - the internet? Not, of course, that I am implying that my writing is good. Nor am I implying that it's bad. That's not the issue. The issue is, no matter what the grammatical or philosophical quality of the writing, why post it?

See, if I had real confidence in my own ability, it ought to be just the same to me, typing into a word document hour after hour. It shouldn't matter whether or not it's accessible to anyone else, because its quality is unrelated to the reader or lack thereof. So my posting of this dubiously worthwhile material is completely illogical. It's a combination of either a) the assumption that somewhere out there there's a person who will just love my style, or b) the desperate, hoping praying longing for some person out there to just love my style. The first implies that I'm a narcissist. The second suggests that I'm an idiot.

Both are true in differing degrees. But looking at this from a non-Editor-centric position, everyone has this same dilemma. How much to believe in yourself, versus how much to beg for attention, is the most difficult dichotomy of expression. It's hard to go through day after day hoping that someday someone will give a rat's ass; at the same time, if you care, you're negating any natural pride in your own objective worth.

I think that this is somewhat true for everyone who embarks on an artistic endeavor. Of course, this is just the sort of drivel that I deplore when I hear it, but bear with me. Everyone creates for a reason, and it's somewhere between an inability not to and a need to show that you've got something in you that can be put out in a form not entirely incomprehensible to the world at large. I guess it's the fact that the Mona Lisa would be great even if it were buried in the center of the earth, much like the Statue of Liberty buried in the sand on the Planet of the Apes - but the fact that enshrining it in the Louvre is what has made it great, to the world at large, really gets me. Get me? Probably not, since this is drivel.

Let's try again. Did Leonardo daVinci plan for his painting to be gawked at and admired by millions of people? No, probably not. Would it provide him with validation to know that this is so? Possibly, since most artists are insecure. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that in order to create art in its purest form, the critic can't critique, or even see, the art. The creation of true art then depends on an artist who is so supremely egotistical that no one else's opinion could possibly matter, and an artist in the possession of such self-confidence wouldn't need to show their art to anyone. There would be no urge to seek an audience, because it would be a pure impulse to create, with no ulterior motives.

If anyone has read this far, go have a cocktail and send me the bill. You people are better than a fucking shrink, in a multitude of ways: 1) unlike a shrink, your brain does not obey the laws of quantum mechanics on a macro level, i.e. your emotions exist in either a positive or negative state but not both, even when you are not observed; 2) you are not a shrink, which makes anything better.