MUDGEON HILL

2012-01-11T17:40:00.000-05:00

Christmas Music

2008-12-18T17:41:00.003-05:00

Sloppy Seconds once proclaimed that they love lesbians more than anyone. Well, while I don't really feel passionately one way or the other about lesbians, one thing that I do love is Christmas music. More than anyone! (Maybe. It's dangerous to deal in absolutes during such unpredictable times.) And so, here is a list of 50 Christmas chestnuts that are shuffling through my iPod this holiday season. Mind you, this is not every Christmas song I have, but merely the best of the best.

In no particular order . . .

“A Change at Christmas (Say It Isn’t So)” The Flaming Lips
“2000 Miles” The Pretenders
“Christmas Tree on Fire” Holly Golightly
“Happy Christmas” John & Yoko
“Don’t Shoot Me Santa” The Killers
“Please Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas)” traditional
“Merry Fucking Christmas” South Park
“Snoopy’s Christmas” The Clumsy Lovers
“What Christmas Means to Me” Stevie Wonder
“Christmas” The Who
“Come On! Let’s Boogie to the Elf Dance” Sufjan Stevens
“Hard Candy Christmas” Dolly Parton
“Christmas Number One” The Black Arts
“Jingle Bells” Bing Crosby & the Andrews Sisters
“Christmas Time in Hell” South Park
“Step Into Christmas” Elton John
“The Christmas Song” The Raveonettes
“Father Christmas” The Kinks
“Christmas All Over Again” Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
“Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” Darlene Love
“Good King Wenceslas” Crash Test Dummies
“The Chipmunk Song” David Seville
“Feliz Navidad” Jose Feliciano
“Christmas Is Going to the Dogs” The Eels
“Donde Esta Santa Claus” Guster
“A Holly Jolly Christmas” Burl Ives
“Santa Clause Is Back in Town” Elvis Presley
“Mr. Heat Miser” Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
“Run Rudolph Run” Chuck Berry
“Christmas Wrapping” The Waitresses
“Christmas in Hollis” Run-DMC
“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” Andy Williams
“(Ho! Ho! Ho!) Who’d Be a Turkey at Christmas” Elton John
“Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight)” The Ramones
“Christmas at Ground Zero” Weird Al Yankovich
“We’re a Couple of Misfits” Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Soundtrack
“Christmas Is the Time to Say I Love You” Billy Squire
“Oi to the World” The Vandals
“You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch” Boris Karloff
“Merry Christmas Baby” Charles Brown
“Mele Kalikimaka” Bing Crosby
“Welcome Christmas” The Whos of Whoville
“Santa’s Beard” They Might Be Giants
“Christmas Time Is Here” Vince Guaraldi Trio
“Lonely Christmas Eve” Ben Folds
“Back Door Santa” Clarence Carter
“(Everybody’s Waitin’ For) The Man with the Bag” Kay Starr
“Sleigh Ride” The Ronettes
“Little Drummer Boy” Bing Crosby & David Bowie
“If I Can Dream” Elvis Presley

I realize that last one might be controversial, but it was the closing number to Elvis's '68 Comeback Special, originally a Christmas special. And it's easily one of the high points in his catalogue from that era.

Feel free to bitch, name-call, debate, or otherwise attempt to ruin my love of Christmas music. It'll never happen. (One absolute I am sure of.)

PS: As usual, that Pogues song can fuck right off. And I avoid that Tom Waits song because I prefer not to spend Christmas contemplating whether or not to pull the trigger.

TAR

2008-08-01T10:40:00.002-04:00

Today I miss the smell of fresh tar.

Remember those days growing up when your dad would lay down a fresh coat of tar on the driveway? You'd leave in the morning to go ride bikes with the kid down the street who moved away just before your interests grew apart (but just after you started to think his older sister was cute). When you came back from the park, there would be those buckets sitting at the end of the driveway, twin plastic sentries, maybe with a two-by-four set across them, letting you know where not to step. No basketball today. No kickball. No setting up shaky, makeshift ramps at absurd inclines to launch your skateboard off of. Take your R/C car--your Grasshopper or RC-10 (if you were really lucky)--out to the street and hope the battery didn't run out just as someone in their Dodge Caravan came driving by. You want back into the house? Navigate the periphery of the driveway by way of the side lawn and use the back entrance near the grill, sidestepping the old green turtle-shaped sandbox with its cracked lid half off and the sand overgrowing with grass and weeds. Maybe inside mom will have a fresh jug of Wyler's grape drink ready for you, made just the way you like it, with a thin skin of sugar scuzz floating on top that lets you know there's just enough sugar in it to keep you going until sundown. After dinner you watch Real People or That's Incredible before you go to bed. The windows are open and all you can smell is the tar cooling on the driveway below. Tomorrow it will be okay to walk on. Tomorrow it will be okay to play on. Tomorrow you'll find a spot at one of the edges where the tar isn't fully secured to the pavement. And you'll start to peel.

Random Bits from Other Novels

2008-07-12T18:38:00.002-04:00

“Sometimes I feel like my life is just a shitty remake of the most boring movie ever made.”

“What movie would that be?”

“I don’t know. Dr. Zhivago?”

“Dr. Zhivago?”

“Yeah. You ever actually try to watch that thing? Oh my God! Boring!”

“People consider it a classic.”

“People consider Coca-Cola ‘classic’, and that’s just flavored sugar water.”

“Don’t you find joy in anything?”

“I should have been born Russian. Then I could write stories about me walking around pointing out all the crazy, depressing shit in the world. Then people would consider me ‘classic.’ But no, I had to be born American, so people just think I complain too much.”

Don't Believe the Hype

2008-06-17T09:25:00.001-04:00

New York is a city for the young and the rich.

Everybody else is just part of a glorified service industry.

(Yes, I am feeling particularly bitter and cynical today. Thanks for asking!)

ORGANOMICS

2008-04-11T14:38:00.002-04:00

From an MSN article about Organic Food Myths:

MYTH #1: ORGANIC FOOD IS ALWAYS BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT.
Organics don't contaminate soil and groundwater with pesticides and chemicals like regular farming does, but there's a surprising downside: Since organic farming is only about half as productive as conventional farming, it requires far more land to produce the same amount of food. Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute's Center for Global Food Issues estimates that modern high-yield farming has saved 15 million square miles of wildlife habitat, and that if the world switched to organic farming, we'd need to cut down 10 million square miles of forest. Less-productive farming could also lead to even less food for the world's undernourished.

I bold that last sentence because it's the most ridiculous part of the whole thing. Are they really trying to play on people's fears of a potential food shortage? You've seen the Average American lately. We all know how fat they are. The fact is, "the world's undernourished" aren't starving because there isn't enough food to go around. They're starving because of three things:

1) Totalitarian regimes that would rather see their people supplicated and docile through starvation, so they deny any foreign relief programs to enter their countries and feed their people.

2) The generally shitty state of foreign relations around the world. Everybody's building walls and circling wagons. Everybody hates everybody else. And until we can all talk to each other like civilized monkeys, no progress will be made to get food to people who need it.

3) Like Audrey 2, fat fucking Americans are eating anything put in their path.

There's no food shortage. There's no threat of a food shortage. There's just an obscene disparity in the distribution of food. Bertha, the 348-pound housewife in Danvers, Massachusetts, is eating a 182-ounce bag of Doritos everyday because she can get the damn things in bulk at the Costco. Food is the new Manifest Destiny. Which is to say it's a retarded idea perpetrated by those in power to keep the ignorant masses from asking too many questions about the more important issues. Bread and circuses, fer chrissake. Bertha's not going to care about Darfur or Tibet when she can get a quintuple bacon cheeseburger off the dollar menu at Wendy's.

Maybe if we didn't have as much space to grow food, the food we did grow wouldn't be turned into edible garbage, and that food would be considered a little more precious. I remember when I was a kid steak used to be like "treat" meat, which is to say something we ate maybe a couple times a month or on special occasions. And I hardly grew up poor. Now it's about as affordable as iceberg lettuce (and probably about as nutritious nowadays). What does it say about this country that beef has turned into a discount item? And if meat is a so cheap, ya think maybe we could pass a little of that on to the starving kids around the world?

Stop me before I start sounding like a USA for Africa song.

The only thing I can comfort myself with is the fact that Bertha will be dead by 45 from a massive coronary.

Who am I kidding? Bertha's insurance company will drop $750k to get her a spendy new heart to keep her alive another thirty years and then pass the bill on to me and all the other people getting sucker punched.

Baby's Love Cancer!

2008-03-28T10:09:00.003-04:00

I'm on a charity committee at my company, and last night we decided how much to give each organization that applied for a grant from us. Everyone makes their case and there is much discussion and arguing. It's all kept very civil and polite. But how can you be polite when you morally object to the very premise of one of the organizations?

That organization shall remain nameless, however, the point of the organization is to educate and assist people who have been diagnosed with cancer and still want to have the option to have children following their cancer treatment.

So, you're taking people who already have cancer and you're harvesting eggs or vialing sperm so that these people can later reproduce . . . and have a kid who will be genetically predisposed to have cancer also! Wow, thanks mom and dad, that's some gift! You're already bringing the kid into the world with one strike against them. Way to go!

How about educating these people on the fact that since they have cancer they are bad for the gene pool and should, oh, I don't know, maybe adopt one of the countless unwanted kids who might otherwise end up thrown into our shitty foster care system--where, after most likely being beaten or molested by a series of fine people, the child eventually will give up hope and turn to a life of crime and/or substance abuse? (You can put it in nicer terms when you tell them, of course.)

Here's why: Because people want their OWN baby. Because people feel some kind of primitive animal belief that their DNA is so amazing that it absolutely must be carried on. Which is clearly bullshit or else you wouldn't have cancer, now would you?

Would you love a child less if it were adopted? If it didn't grow up to look just like you in 20 years? If it didn't squeeze out of your own womb?

Pregnancy only lasts nine months. The whole point of raising a kid isn't just to say you punched one out of your vagina and were done. Birthing a baby is the easy part. The purpose of having a child is to raise a decent human being. And what lesson are you teaching your kid from the very start: That rather than help out a child who is already here and needs a loving home, you were so selfish that you needed to have your own progeny even though that offspring will most likely have to face the same life-threatening, painful disease you had to.

Chemo is so much fun you just have to share it with your kids!

Yeah, that's just good parenting.

Eostre Candy

2008-03-24T16:08:00.002-04:00

I finally get what all those snooty Europeans have been talking about calling our chocolate junk. I am now one of those snobs. My palette has grown too used to high-end dark chocolates from all over The Continent. I am now ruined (forever?) from enjoying Eostre candy.

It's all just so goddamn sweet, and, dare I say, lacking nuance. Real chocolate--the kind where you pronounce the second o (chock-o-laat)--has a natural complexity to it, a life. Once you get up over 58% real chocolate you can start to sense something going on. You let it sit on your tongue and reveal itself. Hints of strange fruits or spices that are infused in the bean, dusty notes as you get up around 78% (any more and you cross over into the realm of baking chocolate). Where it was grown actually means something to dark chocolate.

Good chocolate tells you a story. A delicious, delicious story.

For Eostre I had a King Size Reese's Peanut Butter Egg, a chocolate and almonds bunny, and a Cadbury Cream Egg. You want to know what kind of "story" those things told me?

Here's a big wad of sugar in your mouth! Now shut the fuck up!
The End.

Dear European Guy in the Gym Locker Room,

2008-03-19T14:47:00.002-04:00

How about covering your dick?

I'm already in a bad enough mood when I walk into the gym after a shitty day at work, knowing I have to spend 30 minutes sweating my own balls off on the elliptical when what I'd really rather be doing is lying on my couch with a bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies and watching Paranormal State. The last thing I need to see as I'm being bombarded by the putrid reek of musclebound sub-verbal XY's is your uncut wang dangle. It's kind of hard to miss, what with it being surrounded by that massive bush you have.

And that's another thing: Could you maybe do some grooming so if I absolutely have to see your cocksmanship, at least it doesn't look like an uncooked bratwurst poking through a giant slice of Black Forest cake? I happen to like bratwurst and Black Forest cake, and your donk is ruining both of them for me.

Cover your dick!

Thank you

PS - Guy in the locker room who lotions his junk: Why do you lotion your junk? Seriously, I'm totally in the dark on this one. The only other guy I ever saw do this was Jamaican, and I assumed it was like the problem black people have with dry elbows. I mean, really, nobody wants an ashy johnson. But you, you're a white guy. If you're longfellow gets ashy, who's going to notice? And anyway, why isn't your dork getting enough moisture? Are your nethers the only nethers that don't get enough moisture? In that case, may I suggest corduroy pants?

Purple Power!

2008-01-29T16:18:00.000-05:00

Why is it, when some cracka is trying to prove to you he/she isn't racist, they always say something like "I don't care if someone is black, white, or purple . . ."?

When have any of us really had to worry about purple people? It's not like there are packs of purple people crossing the board from Purplico and stealing those dishwashing jobs we used to really enjoy.

Have the purple people begun producing superior consumer electronics in Purplokyo?

Are we figthing purple insurgents who are upset over our occupation of Purplistan?

I don't know. As long as we keep the purple people confined to the purpletto of South Central Los Purpeles, Purplifornia, I'm really not going to worry about it.

Besides, it's those orange and green people I really can't stand. I just don't get what our white women see in those tangerine and olive muthafuckas.

Adult Onset Illiteracy

2008-01-17T12:58:00.000-05:00

PUT DOWN THE HARRY POTTER!

I just came across this 2-star review for the book Specials (part three of the young adult Uglies Trilogy):

It tackles an ambitious subject but doesn't translate to an adult audience.
If you are 18 or below you might enjoy it and may even be challenged by it.
An adult will find it boring and recycled from hundreds of science fiction novels.

Folks, just because you cried at Goblet of Flames (or whatever the last Harry Potter book was), doesn't mean every YA novel is going to resonate with your 30-year-old ass. There's a reason these books are shelved in the YOUNG ADULT section.

They are not for you, geezer!

And if you are really determined not to act your age and read a book for grown ups, at the very least don't go on Amazon and bitch about how a book designed for fourteen year olds bores you.

If you really want to criticize the Uglies Trilogy, you could talk about how each book stretches 250 pages of story across 500 pages because thanks to JK Rowling the book consumer has been conditioned to think that more pages equals better story. To that I say: Catcher in the Rye is 288 pages.

SUPER HETERO

2008-01-14T15:24:00.000-05:00

This just in!

Dateline: Detroit Auto Show

The new Hummer concept car just announced is called the HX.

Way to assert your ultra-masculinity, you self-centered, planet-raping, insecure douchebags . . .

. . . by naming your latest model after Homo Xtra magazine.

Does this mean that if I ever need someone to shave my ball bag for me, I should just track down the nearest Hummer driver?

The Hummer HX: Ohmuhgod, it's sooo butch!

DEUS EX FRYING PAN

2007-12-17T15:49:00.000-05:00

Four words that will change your life:

Egg Nog French Toast

I like to use Southern Comfort Egg Nog.

You mix this carton of joy with some eggs and soak your bread in this holy mixture, and you're on your way to knowing what Jesus tastes like.

After you've cooked it, dust it with some powdered sugar and drizzle a small amount of real maple syrup over it. REAL Maple Syrup. Don't try this with Mrs. Butterworth's. You need to use the actual stuff that comes out of trees, not some corn syrup and artificial flavoring concoction.

And if you truly want to experience the power of Christ in your mouth, here's the final ingredient.

Savor the taste of the Son of Man!

You Want to Be Like Me!!!

2007-12-14T15:28:00.001-05:00

You know what bores people?

When celebrities sing songs about how hard their lives are.

Take any writing class or ask any editor or literary agent what they think the most important thing is in a main character, and they will almost always tell you the character needs to be "relatable." Some will toss out the horrid work "sympathetic," which is completely bogus. Jack Nicholson made an entire career out of playing unsympathetic characters. But all his characters are relatable.

How is an ordinary person supposed to relate to how difficult the media spotlight and having millions of dollars is?

Look, I hate getting my picture taken too. But seriously, if that's the worst thing that happens to you today, it's still about a thousand times better than the shit the rest of us have to deal with. I know, I know . . . it's so hard being so awesome. It must be a tremendous burden being the greatest thing ever in the world ever. But can't you just go back to writing innocuous love songs?

Of course, there's the other old saw that says "write what you know." And, for a second, I'm going to allow that some pop tarts actually write a bit of their music. And this is their reality, so that's what they can relate to. They think it's some kind of deep personal statement.

But there's a line where it becomes so self-absorbed and self-pitying that the rest of us just lose interest.

Motley Crue. Often credited with the first power ballad. And what is "Home Sweet Home" about? Well, on the surface it's about being in a band and growing weary from touring. Not really something most of us can relate to, you might think. But the real essence of the song is about missing someone or something. It's that idea of "you can't go home again." It's about longing. That's something we can all definitely connect with.

And maybe I'm giving the Crue a bit too much credit, but they were the metal equivalent of Britney Spears. Being in a band was eating away at Nikki Sixx, but the song isn't about just him complaining. He's tapping into a collective feeling.

Britney's new song follows in the tradition of MJ's "Leave Me Alone." That being the whiny celeb who's seeking out pity because it's just oh so hard being rich and famous and woe is you that you can't get any privacy. That's because you live in California! You want to live like a normal person, move to Montana and volunteer as a rescue pilot like Harrison Ford does.

Now I'm not saying the average pop music consumer is giving this much conscious thought to what they're buying. I mean, we're mostly talking about teenage girls here, who, traditionally, have the absolute worst, most vacuous taste in music imaginable. But go look at the discographies of some of these pop stars and compare the chart positions of songs like "Hit Me Baby One More Time" and any of her songs about the hard-scrabble life of a celebrity. I think the message is clear:

Shut up! We're here to dance, not listen to you bitch about your problems!

Winter in NYC

2007-12-13T14:11:00.000-05:00

New Yorkers Hate Snow!

I don't mean people like me who moved to the city from somewhere else. I mean hardcore, born-and-raised New Yorkers. Any time there's even the rumor of snow, you'll hear the natives start to moan. And I don't understand why. New York has never seen snow. I mean REAL snow. I'm talking Blizzard of '78, Blizzard of '80, open your door to find a four foot drift blocking your exit snow. Buffalo snow. Worcester, Mass. snow.

In New York City we get two hours of snow, followed instantly by two days of freezing rain.

And I have a theory why.

The hate from all these people creates an umbrella of energy that hangs over the city, so only the most serious of snowstorms can even hope to penetrate. And then, having travelled through the Hate Umbrella, snowstorms that blanket everywhere else in the area turn into a dusting that is quickly transformed into an awful gray mush by the metropolitan traffic.

It's this mush that natives complain the most about. The very mush their Hate Umbrella caused!

This happens about a dozen times between late November and early April. Though, by the time February rolls around, there's next to no chance of snow in the city because the Hate Umbrella grows super insanely powerful on Groundhog's Day, when every New Yorker starts bitching about how "this has been the worst winter ever" (the reality being, we got two snowstorms with three inch accumulations and the temperature dropped below 30F only a few times). They start saying stupid shit like, "I can't wait for this winter to be over." Yeah, because I know I'm always looking forward to the start of another wonderful 100% humidity, temps in the upper 90s, concrete retaining the heat so there isn't even relief at night New York summer.

Nut up, New York. You bitches are supposed to be tough. You have entire stereotypes built up around how hard you are. And yet, in seven years, this suburban New England kid has yet to experience a snowfall that comes even close to making me rush to the Key Food to stock up on canned goods and bottled water.

Let it snow!

CHRISTMAS MOVIES & SPECIALS

2007-12-11T11:29:00.000-05:00

Divided by loosely defined categories:

Classic - Been around forever, will be around forever
It's a Wonderful Life
Oddly, most of the movie isn't set at Christmas, and the moral seems to be that abandoning your dreams is okay as long as everybody else is happy. No wonder it was once considered a Communist propaganda threat by the US government.

Miracle on 34th Street
Santa ends up in Bellevue. Makes me wonder where kids send their wish lists now, in the age of e-mail.

A Christmas Carol
Stricly OG. Scrooge might be the character most identified with Christmas after Santa.

White Christmas
Never seen it. I believe Hollywood made this movie to cash in on the popularity of the song.

Cartoons - You still watch them as an adult
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Even Jim Carrey and Ron Howard's pointless live-action film couldn't diminish the greatness of Chuck Jones collaborating with Boris Karloff and the Doc.

A Charlie Brown Christmas
It wasn't until I was 24 that somebody pointed out to me how sad this cartoon is. I prefer bittersweet, which is what Christmas often is.

Frosty the Snowman
Happy Birthday!

Mickey's Christmas Carol
Come on, give it a chance. Yeah, I know it's "Disney" (in quotes to enhance the loathesomeness people attach to that name), but it's fun just to see how they cast the Disney mainstays in the various roles.

Comedy - Bringing the ha-ha to the holidays
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
The second best of the Vacation movies, and one of the last good movies Chevy Chase made. We have all been Clark Griswold slowly breaking from sanity at one Christmas or another.

A Christmas Story
For many, the single greatest Christmas movie of all time. Fudge, I won't argue.
Scrooged
"Cross: (noun), something you nail people to."

Trading Places
Eddie Murphy in his prime. Dan Aykroyd drunk, in a Santa suit, putting a gun to his head on Christmas Eve in front of a bunch of asshole stock brokers. And Jamie Lee Curtis's jingle bells.

Family Comedy - Blame it on your kid for watching these
Elf
Could probably be in the regular comedy category, except for the part at the very end with the singalong that reboots Santa's sleigh. Still great.

Home Alone
Another "give it a chance" movie. Ignore the fact that it's Culkin. It's all about the scene where the two crooks break into the house and the kid fights back. Classic Tom & Jerry action.

A Very Brady Christmas
Pure cheese, but perfect Brady.

The Night They Saved Christmas
North Pole City is threatened by an oil company dynamiting nearby, so Santa kidnaps the lead geologist's wife and kids to convince them he's real. Obscure, and kinda lame, but it's also kinda quirky and endearing.

Puppets - Creepy!
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
What isn't awesome about this show? The elf who wants to be a dentist. The Island of Misfit Toys. Yukon Cornelius. And, if that's not enough for ya, there's an Abominable Snowman. This thing's got a friggin' Yeti!

The Year Without a Santa Claus
Fast forward to the song and dance revues by Heat Miser and Cold Miser.

Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
The bad guy is a German anus named Burgermeister Meisterburger who hates the sound of children laughing. Just like all Germans.

The Muppet Christmas Carol
See also Mickey's Christmas Carol.

Strange Christmas - WTF?
Gremlins
Her dad's corpse was cooking in the chimney! Dude, that's just messed up.

The Nightmare Before Christmas
More puppets. Tim Burton puppets.

Silent Night, Deadly Night
A Santa Claus slasher movie made by Belgians. What else do you need to know?

Santa Claus Conquerors the Martians
I wish I had something clever to say about this movie like on one of those VH-1 clipshows, but this one is just too screwed for words.

Manly Christmas - To be watched while drinking one of those fruity holiday lambic beers your family gave you

Bad Santa
It's the caper we all wish we'd thought of. And it's got an angry midget. (Like there's another kind.)

The Ref
Denis M-F-in' Leary. He spends the entire movie crapping all over everything, and still somehow manages to reconcile a couple near divorce and reaffirm their relationship with their wayward son.

Die Hard
It's like Die Hard, but at Christmas.

Lethal Weapon
I think most people forget that this movie is set at Christmas. That's really just sprinkles on the sugar cookie of this, the first installment of the greatest heterosexual man-on-man love story of all time. "Whadda ya say? Would you like a shot at the title?"

Urinational

2007-12-07T17:04:00.000-05:00

Bathrooms fascinate me.

Bathrooms frustrate me.

As a dude, I'm particularly interested in urinals. I could talk for hours just about urinals alone.

There's the privacy issue: some have dividers, others are really close together, some are even just an entire wall and you have to jockey for your spot at the trough.

The sanitary issue: some cause a ridiculous amount of spray, others take a little time until you find the sweet spot that doesn't cause any spray at all.

Technique: Do you aim for the cake, try for a cascading arc against the back, or shoot for the loudest noise the impact in the water will make?

And then there's etiquette to consider. Personally, I don't want anybody talking to me while I'm doing my biznuss--I already feel dehumanized enough essentially having to piss on a wall in public. Some people have their best conversations while up against it.

Of course, everybody has a funny public bathroom story to tell. Like the time a guy walked up to the urinal next to me, unzipped, shivered and said, "Damn, that water's cold!" Who knew there was urinal schtick?!

This is just a salty taste of my thoughts on the subject. More later.

300 and 1

2007-07-18T17:51:00.000-04:00

George Washington Carver

Most of you probably recognize him as the so-called genius who invented 300 uses for the peanut. You might think PB&J would applaud a man who found so many ways to present that most honorable of legumes. However, PB&J knows the truth! We know that Carver didn't stop at 300. We know that Carver developed another use--one that he never told anybody about, but the fruits of which he is only now beginning to reap.

Need proof? Here is an article from 2002. And another from 2004.

And another.

And another.

And another.

Allergic to peanuts?! Whoever heard of such a thing?

Now, I didn't actually read any of those articles, I just scanned the blurbs I got on Google. But I think the headlines make it pretty damn clear that this is all part of George Washington Carver's elaborate plan to get revenge on the white man for slavery.

Be strong, fellow Americans! We won't let the Jews take all our money. We won't let the Mexicans take all our jobs. And we certainly won't be scared of a black man's peanuts.

You hear that, Mr. Carver? That is the sound of freedom filling it's mouth with your nuts!

An Open Letter to Mr. Peanut

2007-07-18T11:40:00.000-04:00

Dear Mr. Peanut,

Just where do you get off? I see you, walking around with your tophat and cane, and that high falutin' monocle of yours, and I want to know just who the heckfire you think you are? You think you're better than the rest of us? Is that it? Well, nutboy, I got news for you: You ain't.

See, my daddy taught me the best thing a peanut could ever do was to up and make itself into peanut butter. That's the spirit of cooperation. That's the spirit that made this country the best country on God's green earth. It's why the terrorists hate us: they don't like us trying to spread our peanut butter all over their backwards hellhole.

You ain't helping, Mr. Peanut. You with your fancy duds, all duded up like a fancy Mr. Fancy. It's cuz a' you the terrorists won't even try any peanut butter. You're a classist and a racist and a very, very bad (peanut) man.

Get some dirt on your spats and join the rest of us workin' folks who's trying to make this nation even greaterer than it is.

Sincerely,
PB&J

Peter Pan - Satan's Nutter?

2007-07-16T09:42:00.000-04:00

PB&J will support any boycott of Peter Pan brand peanut butter.

As we all know, Peter Pan has a companion in the form of a fairy named Tinkerbell. Fairies are not mentioned in the Bible, and therefore clearly promote paganism and heathenism. Is this how we want to raise our children, in the image of a man-boy who openly cavorts with the forces of darkness?

And now that I think about it, there's also a good chance that Peter Pan himself is a kiddie diddler. In the story, he never grows up and continues to play with children well past the age of decency.

Satan and pedophilia? Not on my sandwich!

Let me know if anyone needs help mounting a campaign to get this terrible influence removed from store shelves and return honor to our nation's markets.

Fluff

2007-07-14T16:11:00.000-04:00

The Fluffernutter sandwich is the retarded cousin of PB&J. Its parents bring it over one Saturday a month and PB&J has to spend the day watching out that the other sandwiches don't pick on it, that Fluffernutter doesn't eat bugs or dig in the trash, and that Fluffernutter's helmet stays on properly.

At the end of the day, Fluffernutter's parents take it home and put it back in the Cage of Shame where it belongs. They go to bed crying, wondering if they're being punished for all the drugs they did and all the free love they had in the '60s.
(They are.)

Fluffernutter has special medication to keep it from flipping out and having seizures.

Fluffernutter is the sandwich that is giving you the finger as the short bus rides by.

One day, you will walk into a public restroom to find Fluffernutter standing in there naked, without its bread on, asking you if it can see your "crunchies."

The Bread

2007-07-14T13:43:00.000-04:00

Well, this is going to be a short discussion, because there's really only one bread you can use: Wonderbread.

Some people tell me they use Pepperidge Farm. I politely smile until they go away. Then I call the Department of Homeland Security hotline and give them whatever info I have on these traitors.

Pepperidge Farm what? Might as well be the official bread of them Al-Qaedas.

The Jelly

2007-07-14T13:39:00.000-04:00

I use Welch's Grape, because that's what Dwight D. Eisenhower would have used, I think.

Smucker's has been around a while, so they're probably acceptable as well.

There's this stuff, Polaner All Fruit? If I want fruit, I'll go to Costco and buy a gross of maraschino cherries. Besides, Polaner sounds French to me. And, frankly, I'm tired of helping those people out. Wasn't WWII enough for them? Jeepers!

The Nutter

2007-07-14T13:35:00.000-04:00

Ok, which is best: Skippy, Jiff, or Peter Pan?

Creamy, crunchy, or super crunchy?

I've seen organic brands and sugar-free brands out there, but they don't seem very American to me. I thought that nice man Ronald Reagan killed all the Communists right before he lost his mind.

Did I miss any brands?

The Sandwich

2007-07-14T12:59:00.000-04:00

I just had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the first time since I was a kid. Remember when we were kids and we watched cartoons and now all we do is talk on the Internet about the cartoons we used to watch. We are so insightful. And I plan to be just as insightful about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

This is not the place to talk about the Zips you just bought.

This is not the place to talk about the rerun of Jabberjaw you just watched.

This is not the place to talk about the Robilon from Mars commercial you just saw on TV.

This place is about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Mine was tasty.

How was yours?