Groonkly Bits

Oh I had so many plans and permutations for a Thanksgiving brand. Every one of them met with resistance by my own ignorance. Do you know how it feels to not be smart enough to complete the tasks you set for yourself?

It’s extremely disheartening.

I’m sort of happy with the Turkey Dinner brand. I’m mostly happy with the fact that I finally found a usable and sizable photo of a turkey dinner in the offing. You have no idea how hard it is to slave away over a hot search engine for hours at a time and not find the things you’re looking for, do you?

You should be grateful for my persistance.

(1680×1050)

Since the image is so honking huge, it can double as a desktop. that is, if you want the picture of a giant burned bird on your computer view screen.

No Comments | In: Branding, My Desktop | | #

I’m going to the parents for the annual ritual sacrifice celebration and, gods be with me, pie and turkey dressing. My mom makes a turkey dressing that you would kill your mom to eat. Once you mix that with her tender cooked bird, potato salad, and buttered rolls, you have yourself heaven on a plate. But goddamn if it isn’t worth the 10 pounds of holiday weight gain.

Most others call this ritual Thanksgiving. Today, I’m gonna calling a shovel a spade.

Going home tends to affect me in ways I can never fully describe. For one thing, I haven’t consistently lived in my parents house for over a decade, yet I always catch myself calling it home. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s mostly weird and unsettling. It’s unsettling because I’ve not made a home for myself and I don’t have any clear ideas where that home would be or how I’ll ever achieve it.

It’s weird cause everything in and around the homestead insists on staying smaller than I remember them being. And I’ll be damned if it doesn’t still feel like home.

I have a hope that thanksgiving will cure me of this can’t-give-a-fuck malaise that’s come over my thoughts the last month or so. At the very least it’ll temporarily stomp those bastard thoughts down. That way I can play at being a full human for, roughly, another 3 months.

I haven’t felt human in some time. This explains my lack of posting in this section. You try saying crap when you feel there’s nothing left in the world to say.

Enjoy the Thanksgiving, those who dare celebrate it. Give thanks for the food. Give thanks for the parents who continue to treat you like you’re 8 years old and just peed in the bathwater. Watch HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS cause it’s the best damn Thanksgiving movie that’s ever violated my eyes. Give a thought to the indigenous folk who kept this land warm for the future America.

And remember to ignore the whole parent-thing cause most likely they still love you and they best show that love these days by nagging you half to death every chance they get. Doubly so on holidays.

Go eat some bird and hug some people, America. And pray to whomever you believe that I get my pie and dressing.

No Comments | In: Holidays, Too Many Thoughts | | #

Which character from The Office are you (the american version)?

You’re Jim Halpert. You’re sweet, cute, funny, smart, an all around great person. You should be proud. And I’m sorry everyone found out you like Pam…
Take this quiz!

Quizilla |
Join

| Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

No Comments | In: Quizworld | | #

Now Fox News Channel, a primary source of material for Jon Stewart
and Stephen Colbert, is teaming with the exec producer of “24” to try
its hand at a news satire show for conservatives to love.

Joel Surnow, co-creator of “24,” is shooting two half-hour pilots of
a skein he described as ” ‘The Daily Show’ for conservatives,” due to
air in primetime on Saturdays in January.

If successful, the show could take its place on the regular schedule,
adding satire to FNC’s formula of news and opinion.

“The way I look at it, almost every comedy show or satire show I see
uses the same talking points against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney,”
Surnow said. “The other side hasn’t been skewered in a fair and
balanced way.”

It’ll never work. Can you ever remember any type of successful and memorable political satire that was conservative? Wikipedia or Google it all you please, but you won’t find it. I’m pretty damn sure about that. (And if you do find it, ready that link to prove me wrong in the future. At the moment my comments are still rubbish and I haven’t made the jump to phpBB yet. )

The fact is THE DAILY SHOW and THE COLBERT REPORT don’t limit themselves to satirizing only the conservatives. They hit all the bases. The conservatives just have more cannon fodder to choose from. that’s what happens when you put yourself out there as “holier than thou,” people are gonna find your faults. They’re gonna make fun at your expense and the jokes will stick because you dared place yourself above everyone else.

If you really put your mind to this thought, “conservative” shows are their own satire, without even trying. Colbert is the only one that comes to mind currently. His show is basically everything that a conservative show generates. The pompousness. The diatribe and rhetoric. The shouting matches and truthiness. Consider what happened to Dennis Miller when he bared his true ideas(which was a hard shift right compared to what he was selling on his HBO show). He dropped completely off the radar, at least for me he did.

The main difference between Colbert and the “real” conservative shows: Colbert does his shtick in complete irony, just as Colbert intended. The others believe(at least while they’re in front of a camera) exactly what they’re saying.

So, yeah. Try all you want Fox News. It won’t work. It’ll be nothing but cannon fodder for the rest of us.

Delicious and wonderful cannon fodder for those of us that “get” what THE DAILY SHOW is all about.

menckenite groonk

(The article, in its enitrety, is on Ellis’ website.)

No Comments | In: Too Many Thoughts | | #

I’m not exactly overflowing with Thanksgiving quotes. This will have to stand for all the petty bickering that may of may not occur around your table this weekend.

Oliver Stone: didn’t you
ever want to make a Film?
Quentin Tarantino: didn’t
you ever want to make a MOVIE?
–via Bad Signal

No Comments | In: Quotes | | #

Drama Club Leader(dry): Our stage…is covered with Pam.
Veronica(playful and smirking): Who’s Pam?
—VERONICA MARS “President Evil”

That quote played in a MARS episode a few weeks ago. It still makes me chuckle…inside and out. Ms Mars has exactly the right kind of sense of humor, now if only she were real.

No Comments | In: Quotes | | #

There is this thing I do a thing when I watch a TV show or movie or read a book. I over-analyze the crap out of it. If the TV show or movie kicks all sorts of ass, I try to figure out how they did it and make a mental note to use it in the future. Books get an instant mental edit as I read them. My read time doubles if the damn thing is atrocious. If the book is especially good or funny I make a note on that style. Basically, if any story stinks, I try to figure out what they did wrong and what I would have done to do it right.

Middle of the road tales get no memories or re-edits. They get chuckles that fade as soon as they’ve begun.

A few years ago, I had a class on the history of World War II in film. We watched various films and compared the stories to real historical facts. When I saw these films in class, I made notes. They were to be my touchstones so that I wouldn’t be working with nothing but empty memories when the weekly papers were due.

LOST is more complex than most mainstream shows. Two and a third seasons into their run I’ve decided to create physical notes as well as mental ones. I don’t have any papers due. I just want my own touchstones to what in hell is going on on that island.

These notes are not fully formed thoughts. They will not summarize the episode in detail. They are immediate reactions to what’s happening on screen or in the story. These bits are the gist to what I’ve gained from the episode. At times it will seem like I hate LOST.

I don’t.

I’m merely taking a step away from the fantasy in order to keep a semi-objective view on what’s going on. You always tease the things things/ones you love most.

I’ve found that making notes on virgin episodes take me out of the story. We can’t have that. I’ve decided to jot things down on the second viewing instead. This is what I did with the episode “The Cost of Living.”

Read the random typings of a madman. Try not to go crazy in the process.

Notes for “The Cost of Living” are after the jump.

…

No Comments | In: Television | | #

It’s two days later and every body with a blog, vlog, or captive audience TV show is making the same joke.

I should aim to be different.

There is a change in the air. The cats have pricked up their ears. They hear the rmble in the distance. The dogs smelt something they did not dealt. They howl approval.

Someone has finally accepted that Donald Rumsfeld is a loser at life. But maybe that’s to harsh. At worst he’s just a loser at his old job.

The Democrats have won seats in the half circle of power. I guess those door hangers Dean boasted about did their duty in informing while slightly annoying large parts of the country. Good on them.

Nancy Pelosi is now two heartbeats away from running the country. Scratch that. One dimwitted, slow heartbeat and a dark, dried husk of a thing away from running the free world. That would also make her the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House.

Sumbitch! It really IS the Year 21st Century. Who knew that crap I came up with a week ago would get repurposed so quickly?

Last and so least, the Spederline has finally been broken. The talentless beast that sat upon the Earth like a giant festering boil has been lanced. And by lanced I mean popped. Separately, they will spread pus and germs with twice as much efficiency.

Ah, hell.

No Comments | In: Too Many Thoughts | | #

This was totally gonna be something else but I’m nowhere near my scanner and I had in mind for this week’s bit, something to be scanned.

Alas, I changed my mind.

I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, so I took the first refuge of the lost: education.
—James Gunn “MY PROFESSOR’S DEAD/MY ORIGIN STORY “

No Comments | In: Quotes | | #

It’s a delicate balance. That’s no lie. But when they(by “they” I mean the grand high PTBs who run things) block the one thing that’s been giving them FREE advertising, they’re biting the fans that feed them. I’m not saying they should allow entire shows to run about the interwub video circuit unchallenged. I’m saying they could set a time limit on the clips allowed on YouTube Google or what have you.

Maybe they could get interns to create an online identity on those video servers and post whatver clips they fancy. Now the corporate types are gonna scream, “We have comedy clips on Motherload!” There’s a problem with Motherload. It sucks donkey balls.

I goofed the other day and watched a commercial during The Daily Show and heard them advertise free viewings of Daily Show on Comedy Central. They brazenly added, “It’s better than viewing clips on some crappy blog.” Well, when you have only two consistantly funny shows on your whole damn network, I’d be careful about my level of cockiness.

You know what the problem is with the South Park infested Comedy Central.com? You can’t email videos to friends. You can’t post videos on your “crappy” websites. The clips they think are funny are the blandest parts of the shows. The show celebrities can’t communicate with their fanbase as easily. Do you think the Stephen Colbert Green Screen Challenge would have had half as much juice without the love of You Tubers and ILM wannabes?

Fuck, no.

In this “new media,” or whatever you want to call it, you need to be fan accessible. Cause we’re the suckers who will spread your disease farther and cheaper than any slick advertising agency could ever imagine. We find that unturned rock in the wilds of Nomanisland. We flip it over. We shove our funny under that bitch until its inbox is stuffed with videos of cats running full steam into brick walls. And we do it all, free of charge.

(Well, free-ish since most of us are doing these things at work while the Big Boss isn’t looking, but that’s BB’s problem.)

In the future, in the year 21st century, you’re gonna need to treat your fanbase as friends or at least amicable acquaintances and not like psycho pirate lepers.

No Comments | In: Too Many Thoughts | | #