I learned a lot of valuable life lessons while growing up as a kid raised on Atari 2600 and Nintendo video games. For example, I learned that if I played enough video games every hour of every day of every week, I'd eventually grow up to become a fat, bitter, drooling webmaster with the sunny disposition of a 90-year old man who was kicked in the crotch by every member of the local high school marching band. I also learned that the world is full of deadly, legendary evil things which will instantly kill you if you come into contact with them in any way whatsoever, so the act of "going outdoors" should undoubtedly be reserved for experts like Super Dave and General Catton from "Samurai Pizza Cats" who combined the two crucial, life-affirming characteristics of "being very fat" and "having a giant cannon strapped to his back." While most of these murderous entities which inhabit our universe possess the advanced skill to walk towards the left, proceed to flip horizontally, and then walk back towards the right again, some of the most nefarious threats to our very existence are inanimate objects like the water from Super Mario Brothers which murdered you if you tried to touch it or invite it to your prom.
Now you might falsely believe that these threatening threats don't pose a threat to you. You may also believe that NASA faked the moon landing and Vanilla Pepsi was a good idea. Just because the more noteworthy threats such as the Eggplant Wizard and King Hippo currently inhabit a different country than yours (the Eggplant Wizard was recently promoted to Lead Engineer at Dell and relocated to Malaysia, while King Hippo went into exile after a military coup which killed his son and most cherished meatloaf recipe) doesn't mean you're out of the woods yet. Oh no, not by a long shot! Why some of the most evil, violent, ruthless enemies of humanity may live in your very own yard! Of course you don't really have to worry about that unless you live next door to a Scientology clinic, but the fact still remains: over 87% of bicycle accidents involving bears are caused by people on bicycles hitting bears or possibly bears riding bicycles. Also people who are not familiar with their own yards are 87% more likely to die in their own yards, particularly if they're walking around naked and drunk while cleaning a loaded automatic weapon. Today's update will familiarize you, the reader, with the many positive and negative objects which inhabit the area surrounding your house and prevent it from flying off into the stratosphere.
OBJECT #1: A bush.
DESCRIPTION: Bushes, often referred to as "the tree's retarded stepbrother," are one of the most welcome additions to most lawns because not only can you hide inside them and masturbate while elderly people walk by, but you can also... no wait, that's actually the best thing I can think of offhand. Many exterior decorators enjoy planting bushes in lawns because these squat plants take up space which would've otherwise been desolate or filled with something that didn't match the landscape such as a flaming crucifix or a fat retarded child glued to the ground. Bushes usually have dense, sturdy roots which burrow into the ground and will slice right through your water and power lines if you piss them off for any reason, particularly after political debates. However, these plants need a lot of healthy deadly chemicals to survive the harsh winters and dry summers of a temperate climate, so throw water balloons full of nitric acid at them when you're leaving for work each morning. Make sure you get a good running start or else they'll fire back green blades of death into your skull like Woodsman from Megaman 2. Some bushes produce tiny red or black fruits called "berries" which are poisonous if you try to eat them and are non-poisonous if you don't try to eat them. Never plant anything within a 15-mile radius of a bush or else they'll get into a diplomatic dispute and you'll have to call in the Justice League of America or Jessie Jackson to mediate while presenting him with one of those hilarious oversized checks and shaking his greasy hand.
BEST WAY TO DEAL WITH THEM: Grow lots and lots of bushes and they'll thank you later by raising your property value and possibly strangling intruders. If possible, plant and grow so many bushes that nobody can see your house and you can never leave. This will provide you with an ample amount of security for when the Venusian Saucer People invade.
OBJECT #2: An air conditioner.
ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Neutral.
DESCRIPTION: These large metal objects grow, seemingly by magic, in one random location outside your home. They do not have roots or berries, although the good Lord never explicitly said you couldn't tape either to them and then loudly exclaim to your neighbors, "why golly, look at this! My air conditioner is really coming in well this year!" Your neighbor should then ideally respond by going inside and staring at you from behind his livingroom curtain. Air conditioners differ from organic creatures like plants and vitamin C in the regard that they are not organic. If you don't believe me, go find an air conditioner and stab it with a knife. Now try doing that to a police officer. Did you notice the distinctly different reactions from the two? I hope so, because you usually get only one attempt when trying to perform the latter.
BEST WAY TO DEAL WITH THEM: Air conditioners are usually relatively harmless and have adopted a "laissez faire" policy, which is French for "lazy fair." I don't really know what that means or why air conditioners abide by this mentality, but this could also be said about my understanding of the French or at least that Jean Claude Van Damme guy who always seems to be beating people up because he's critically constipated. If you treat your air conditioner right, then it will thank you by making you cool in the summer. If you piss it off, then it will fuck your wife in the winter.
OBJECT #3: Dead patches of grass.
DESCRIPTION: Dead patches of grass once used to be considered "living patches of grass" back before they became so dead. Now they are plagued by the restless spirits of undead grass who will haunt your lawn until the day you die or you figure out a way to make them die again. You'll have to somehow brainstorm a way to make the grass come back to life and then you'll need to kill it again and instantly murder the ghosts or trap them inside a metal box like in that movie about the people who busted ghosts which rhymed with "Ghostbusters" but started with the letter "G." Many people start off with a green, healthy lawn, but after hours of neglect and cigarette withdrawal, the grass soon whithers and dies like a gingerbread man locked inside a concentration camp full of snakes. The only way to prevent dead patches of grass from spreading their illness and infecting the rest of your lawn is to hire an exorcist to spray a garden hose full of holy water all over the contaminated area while shouting words in Latin (it doesn't matter which words he says just as long as he makes sweeping arm gestures in the process). Sometimes dead patches of grass are in the shape of crop circles or regular circles, which is pretty good sign that you moved in to the wrong area of town.
BEST WAY TO DEAL WITH THEM: Adopt a strict "anti-grass" platform and begin campaigning for the systematic destruction of all grass. Once you get a few resolutions passed and all the "cool" kids start pouring gasoline and napalm onto their lawns, you'll be heralded as a man who was truly before your time, unless you are a woman, in which case you'll be heralded as a man without a penis who was truly before your time.
OBJECT #4: Dirt.
ALIGNMENT: Positively Neutral.
DESCRIPTION: Although some scientists claim dirt is also known as "soil," us smart lawn people know that this is nothing but a myth perpetuated by the Conservative fatcat Republican Christians running our puppet government like a yo-yo on a string. Er, the yo-yo's string is attached to the other string, I mean. Dirt is a mysterious, confusing character that lurks in the shadows and may never explain its true motives, even if you ask it nicely. On one hand, it allows good things like grass and bushes and abortion clinics to grow. On the other hand, it also permits and nurtures the development of bad things like weeds, snapping turtles, and those logs from Pitfall which never stopped rolling no matter how long you left your Atari on and waited for them to at least slow down a bit. WHY DID THE LOGS NEVER SLOW DOWN? Can somebody answer me this, please? I mean, even the most elementary of physics dictate they have to come to a halt sooner or later! Do the math, people! Additionally, dirt can easily turn into a muddy substance called "mud" when somebody makes the mistake of allowing a liquid of any kind to come into contact with it. Well, except mercury. You could dump gallons and gallons of mercury onto your dirt and it won't make any difference besides causing your trees to start sweating puss and producing grass which periodically emits bloodcurdling shrieks when you try to sleep at night. I recently saw a 70s movie about a mean paper mill which dumped mercury into a river and contaminated an Indian reservation, mutating animals and creating this unflattering drippy bear creature which knocked over tents and generally made a nuisance of himself. If you hate drippy mutated bears as much as I do, and I think you just might, then try to not be like this paper mill. Also don't be in any 70s movies because they had really embarrassing hair.
BEST WAY TO DEAL WITH THEM: Try to make grass grow on top of them. If that fails, pour concrete over the affected area and sell it as a parking lot to dumb New Yorkers who will pay $900 a day for such exclusive service. If they complain, then pour concrete over their cars while shouting, "you break it, you bought it!"
OBJECT #5: Enemy houses.
ALIGNMENT: Cautiously chaotic.
DESCRIPTION: If you live in a neighborhood, you're going to have neighbors. You might not have a hood, but you will always have neighbors. These neighbors unfortunately have the tendency to live in enemy houses, homes which may look fancier and nicer than yours, thereby giving you an inferiority complex and turning you into a revolting menace like Woody Allen or Josef Stalin. Every day you wake up, open your eyes, and look directly at their home, you'll be reminded of how much wealthier and better off they are compared to you. This will result in a chronic depression and you'll soon go back to sleep, refusing to wake up until it's dark outside or you have suddenly become blind thanks to some reverse miracle produced by Evil Jesus 2000. Enemy houses don't really "grow" per se, as they are built by large angry men who drink a lot of beer and curse at their wives and children when they get home from a hard day at work. These men hate the world because the housing industry is so incredibly popular right now that they have to build, on average, 28 new homes each day. They particularly loathe Alan Greenspan for making the interest rates so low and allowing any halfwit moron like me to purchase a house. If you are a construction worker or know a construction worker in the housing industry, please consider switching occupations to something much less stressful and self-destructive, such as adopting a fulltime heroin habit.
BEST WAY TO DEAL WITH THEM: You can make yourself feel better by building a complex series of "home enhancements" on your house, such as a deck or fence or guard tower or swimming pool full of liquid diamonds. Just make sure whatever you build doesn't collapse when you have an Israeli family dancing on it during a wedding celebration, because then you'll end up on CNN and your guests will have danced their way straight to hell.
OBJECT #6: Grass.
ALIGNMENT: Optimistically good.
DESCRIPTION: Everybody loves grass! Despite being the most difficult thing to grow and maintain, grass is the number one substance to have scattered across your lawn, ranking up there with "broken down car parts" and "the corpses of those who have wronged you." You'll generally want your grass to be thick and green, just like how I like my women. There are literally hundreds of different grasses including bluegrass, bentgrass, fescue (tall), fescue (short), fescue (irate), fescue (goblin overlord king +3), and astroturf. I don't know what the difference between all these grasses are, nor do I care, so I suggest picking up a damn book if you're really so interested. Don't tell your friends or family that you're spending hard-earned money purchasing books about lawns or else they might ostracize you and ship you off to a leper colony or even worse, Texas. If you plan on raising your own grass, you'll need some good dirt (see above) to scatter the seeds across. Then you'll need to put some more dirt on that. Then you'll need to buy bags of horse shit and dump that crap on top of that. After you've accomplished all this, you might as well move to a new home because your lawn will just be an utterly filthy pit full of dead seeds and poop. If you can't move out because the dirt has locked you inside your house and is calling in bomb threats every day, then hire a professional lawn person to haul over a bunch of pre-grown grass to bolt onto your dirt. Make sure to place heavy objects such as lamps and obese people on the corners of your property or else a strong wind might blow your lawn away and it could hit the President's motorcade, in which case you'd be arrested for treason.
BEST WAY TO DEAL WITH THEM: Water your lawn every day. Never walk on it. Play light jazz for it from 3:00 PM until 6:30 PM, preferably from a radio station with a name like "The River" or "The City." Don't ever mow your lawn because that produces harmful environmental damage such as eco-gout and holes in the Ozone lawyer.
OBJECT #7: Weeds.
ALIGNMENT: The Antichrist.
DESCRIPTION: Weeds are the bane of mankind's existence! Ever since Allah created Adam in 5,000 AD by taking his rib bone and burying it inside an apple located in the Garden of Eden, man has hated weeds. These stubborn, leafy assholes grow up all over the place and cannot be stopped, just like communism and those weeping retards who won't shut up about that goddamn 10 Commandments plaque being moved in Alabama. If you go to the store and buy a jug of liquid labeled "WEED KILLER - KILLS WEEDS - DOES NOT KILL GRASS - 100% SAFE TO USE ON GRASS - ONLY KILLS WEEDS," then it will instantly kill all your grass and fail to harm the surrounding weeds in any way whatsoever. In fact, most of the weeds will grow bigger and stronger, suddenly learning the ability to open doors and operate simple machinery. There are two ways you can get rid of weeds: you can either take a shovel and dig them out of the ground, or you can build a moat where the weeds were previously located. If you decide to use a shovel, then you must be sure to pull out each and every tiny root or else they will instantly regenerate in an accelerated cloning process that only the top NASA genius space scientists can fully comprehend. If you build a moat, then you'll be rid of the weeds, but you'll have to deal with a moat creature who will try to eat you every time you pass by. You can be as stern and strict as possible with this moat creature, saying things such as "NO" and "BAD MOAT MONSTER, PLEASE DON'T EAT ME" when he eats you, but he'll never learn and will always look for chances to continue eating you when it's least expected. This is why many lawn experts have dubbed weeds as "nature's moat creature," at least as far as I can tell.
BEST WAY TO DEAL WITH THEM: I have no fucking clue. My lawn is crawling with weeds and I've tried every way to get rid of them. I'm considering purchasing one of those poison rockets from Command and Conquer: Generals, but I'm afraid that John Ashcroft will come over to my house and beat me up and drink all my beer if I tried to buy one from Amazon.com.
OBJECT #8: Trees.
ALIGNMENT: Absolutely chaotically goodly neutrally good.
DESCRIPTION: My junior high school teacher once claimed that trees absorb carbon dioxide and turn it into monohydrogen peroxide or aluminum sulfate or some other kind of chemistry nerd shit. I don't know how this is possible since I've seen a lot of trees before and not a single one of them has had any kind of engine like a car which can mystically turn gasoline into motor oil. However, I do know that my junior high school teacher was arrested two years after I graduated for indecent exposure. Well, I mean he was arrested for indecent exposure, I didn't graduate in "indecent exposure," although I most assuredly would've if presented the opportunity. This goes to show you how photosynthesis can drive the average man to insanity and the below-average man into a pants dropping rage. Many environmentalists claim trees are good for the Earth because they help slow down and combat the greenhouse effect, but I claim that's bullshit. I mean, just walk into any greenhouse and you'll see a TON of trees! If these precious mammals are supposedly slowing down the greenhouse effect, then why are there so fucking many trees inside greenhouses? Riddle me this, Batman! Trees also provide homes for birds and bees and children's treehouses, which make the exploration of sexual issues very uncomfortable at times. If your kid grows up to be a homosexual, then you can probably blame it on your trees.
BEST WAY TO DEAL WITH THEM: When you initially install a tree in your yard, it will be small. After 10 years, it will either be much bigger or dead. The smart money is on "dead" because out of the three trees in my lawn, two croaked within days of moving in. I think they caught some sexually transmitted disease from that neighborhood dog which is always shitting green stringy crap everywhere.
Whew! What a hefty checklist! Be sure to print this list out and staple it to one of your many cubicle walls so you can remind yourself each and every hour which objects outside your house are friend and foe. Take solace in the fact that you've killed a few hundred thousands of the aforementioned objects in order to create each little piece of paper which you printed this list on! Well, except air conditioners; those things try to bite you when you shove them into the paper mill. You need extra mercury to soften those bastards up.
Cosplay Beautiful Nightmarish Hellworld of Drool Idol - Part Two!
Zack "Gayest Animator" Parsons here with the highly not anticipated second part to my review of "Cosplay Beautiful Breast Idol - Nao Oikawa" for our new "Horrors of Pornography" section. Be warned, the images in the articles are fairly "work safe" but anything you click on may contain a Pandora's box of terrifying imagery.
Eventually, the yakuza guy with the back scratcher gets tired of forcing himself to laugh at nothing and starts clumsily undressing Fujiko with his silver helping hand. This has to be one of the saddest and most ill-chosen stripping scenes in the history of cinema. While the bound Fujiko looks on in horror, the silver claw of the back-scratcher slllllllooooooowwwwly grasps pieces of her clothing and sllllllllowwwwwllllly moves them a few inches only to have them slip from its minimal grasp, which of course forces it to start over. This is very tiresome and roughly analogous to watching "Rambo: First Blood Part II" and being treated to a pre-battle scene where Rambo spends ten minutes trying and failing to win a bear from an arm-game carnival machine.
Go, read, conquer! Don't say I didn't warn you though.
And you thought women had one-dimensional script intros that treated them like sex objects. Ewoks have it even worse.
No one seems to like the new Doom box art. But it's still the same old Doom Guy under that space marine helmet. Right?
The Something Awful front page news tackles anything both off and on the Internet. Mostly "on" though, as we're all incredible nerds.