A Perverse, Twisted, Evil Nest of Pedophiles

Police in Utah recently broke up a rapidly-growing pedophile ring that was endangering the safety of local children. At least six – possibly more – local children were subjected to demeaning objectification for the sick pleasures of those involved.

The extent of the crime came to light when a cache of these filthy pictures were turned over to police after being found in the possession of one of the deviants. The pictures in question were of both boys and girls from the local junior high, all of whom were less than 15 years old.

The case is being turned over to the Davis County attorney to determine the extent to which these sick pedophiles should be punished. I’m sure you’re with me in calling for their immediate execution.

Unfortunately, this is a true story. What I failed to make clear is that the people being turned over to the police are the kids themselves. That’s right. A bunch of middle school students – without adult knowledge, let alone pressure – was having a fun time sending each other naked pictures of themselves on their cell phones. This is about as far from abuse as you can conceivably get. Not only were no adults taking advantage of the kids, but something tells me that even the weakest-willed middle schooler could manage to control the impulse to lock themselves in the bathroom alone and send nude pictures to all their friends if they didn’t feel like it.

The situation was all fun and games until one of the kid’s mom found the pictures and thought, “You know who I should show these to? Fox News.”

Now, the kids are facing felony charges for distributing child pornography. The school principle went on TV and said, “They may not have realized it, but they were abusing themselves.”

Because I’m retarded, I’m going to once again take the outlandish position of defending our nation’s “pedophiles.”

Nation, I do not think that these kids were abusing themselves. I’m pretty sure they did not rape themselves either. Your instinctive impulse to equate nudity amongst young people with rape and sexual deviance is exceedingly perverse. Your willingness to charge them as felons for a game of “I’ll show you mine” is beyond insane. You have just created six people who will likely have issues with shame and sexual dysfunction for the rest of their lives.

Mother-Who-Found-The-Pictures-And-Called-The-Police-And-Fox-News-On-Your-Kid, I wish I was in a position to call Child Services on you. You are not fit to be a parent. In fact, you almost make me question my own premise that no one was abusing any of these children. The fact that you were willing to make an unwilling pornographic example of your own son or daughter for a national audience is an atrocity. I hope your 15 minutes of fame was worth it.

Drugs Are Bad, Mmmmk?

C’mon here people. I know New Years was fun, but the vacation’s over. Let’s get back to work here.

I think I may be bitter for some reason. It’s cold outside. That doesn’t help. But it seems to me that most of the people on Earth have not exactly been living up to expectations in 2008.

A lot of friends and family members have been inexplicably cranky, prone to expressing outlandish and questionable opinions, and behaving… unwisely. (I’m not talking about anyone in particular.) When I first thought of this, I said to myself, “Bullshit. You’re just in a bad mood. What’s up with that?” But then I asked myself a follow up question to prove it. I thought to myself, “What things have people done so far this year that were unexpectedly thoughtful, kind, or impressive?”

“Uuuuuh.”

That was when I got worried. Fortunately, the majority of stuff my friends and family have been doing is more odd than really troublesome. When we open this up to the big picture though, things get a lot more concerning.

I won’t even begin to discuss my thoughts on primaries in the US.

Discussing work related observations is similarly not interesting enough to merit cataloging.

A more interesting example has been people’s developing responses to the housing market meltdown. In simpler times, people would default on burdensome mortgages. This year, people have taken to trashing houses before turning the keys over to the bank. There have been reports of taking sledgehammers to walls and windows, and one creative man who locked live pigs in the house before vacating. This is not what I would describe as mature, responsible behavior.

But for even more fun, let’s be starfuckers and play the celebrity game. First, Brad Renfro dies. When I saw the headline, I was all like, “His age is similar to mine. What’s up with that?” Then I saw that he died of some sort of massive illegal drug overdose. Oh.

Now, Heath Leger is dead. Again, I saw the headlines and was like, “Goddammit, why is everyone in my general age range suddenly dropping dead?” Then I saw that he died of some sort of massive legal drug overdose. Oh.

Now for my favorite example. I don’t pay enough attention to the Britney Spears scandals to qualify as a true American citizen. I generally cynically assume that celebrity scandals are staged as career boosters. But then I saw this article:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,323271,00.html
Ok, there is exactly a 0% chance that the actions and physical conditions described in that story could boost anyone’s career. I hate to say it, but by the end, I was really laughing pretty hard at the subliminal imagery. The entire closing third of the thing describes an unusually long list of physical features, behaviors, attitudes, and defects that can all be described as “sticky.” It also made me want to take a shower.

I don’t usually ask what, if anything, people resolved to do during the new year. But if I might make a suggestion… It appears that a lot of people made one or more of the following New Years resolutions:
--Determine the exact limit to the amount of drugs I can take, give or take 500%.
--Be bitchier.
--Yell at or ignore people if I’m tired, or feeling busy.
--Publicly flaunt character defects.
--Accomplish a lot less. Or nothing at all.

These resolutions are complete. Many of us did a great job accomplishing them in record time. Let’s get back to business as usual!

I Gave Them All Facelifts (Things Unsaid)

Some of you have noticed that one of my pet projects went silent in 2007. “Things Unsaid” (which many people have been delighted to tell me they do not like at all) came to a quiet stop right around the time I had my second Kinetics midterm.

That was not entirely a coincidence, but there was more involved than that.

I was actually really enjoying the project. To repeat, most people hated it. This was not unexpected. Many people are needlessly scared of me as a person too. I’m a little different.

Some people, on the other hand, were with me on “Things Unsaid.” For every handful of people who didn’t like it at all, there was a person who loved it. That’s actually better than I could have hoped for.

The thing got a lot of criticism. I like criticism. It’s informative. Most of the criticism about “Things Unsaid” came from people who didn’t like it. Some of it came from people who were actually scared of it. While I liked hearing from these groups, their advice had a common theme: “We don’t like this at all.” Suggestions from those people were many and diverse. I did not act on them.

From the people who did like the comic, one theme popped up a few times: “The art is kind of weak.” That point, I took seriously. The art WAS weak. The entire comic started as another inexplicable coffee-fueled high. (Don’t use drugs, kids.) The first forty-four strips were compiled from a handful of sketches I created in under an hour. Total. That’s it. The rest was just placement and the occasional expression tweak. I was doing edits in Microsoft Paint.

That was working remarkably well (all things considered), but as far as being a pet project of mine, my friends all know that that’s well below my typical quality standards. As I grew to like the project (rather than growing tired of it, like I expected), I knew more and more that I needed to fix a few issues. Most of those issues had to do with the art and resolution.

That work is nearly complete. I have completed an entirely new generation of drawings that make the old ones look… Well, they make them look terrible. I have been steadily updating the old comics into entirely new versions that are both more readable and prettier. I have moved the entire production into Photoshop, which has given me a great deal of control over final product quality.

The entire series will be transitioned to the new format by the end of the month. Once that’s done, backdated material will be uploaded at a rapid pace, also using the new quality standards.

A new character is right around the corner, and new scandals are brewing that might seem ironically familiar to anyone who reads newspapers regularly.

But by far the most interesting thing is that the entire comic suddenly looks shockingly professional.

At the time of this posting, I have three “Transition” posts at the top of the page where you can compare before and after strips. This will help you recognize the suddenly-attractive cast. Also, the first eight comics in the archives have been completely updated, along with the banner art.

Comics will continue to be updated start to finish. When all forty-four old-style comics have been converted, the “Transition” posts will be deleted. At the same time, the story will pick up where it left off, posting eight strips per week (instead of four) until I’m caught up.

You have until then to make additional suggestions on the new direction.

Please remember that the project is now hosted at a new location:

http://lakeunsaidit.blogspot.com/

Enjoy!

Parking On The Lawn

I’m really dating this blog with this one, because the huge mountains of snow plowed off of the employee parking lots were not playing citadel around the pavement when I got the idea for this post. Instead, it was late summer. I decided this post was less interesting than a lot of other things and have had it on the backburner ever since.

I came out of the office one afternoon and headed towards the first of our site’s four parking lots. It’s the lot I park in almost every day. It’s the one closest to my building. Many of my site’s workers use a very similar strategy when looking for parking.

What I didn’t realize was the near-manic degree to which some of my co-workers were willing to pursue this convenience.

On that day, I walked towards the lot only to discover that five cars had decided to “think outside the box” and park directly on the lawn after they discovered that the parking lot was full.

When I noticed this (I’d never seen anything like it before), I wondered if maybe they had closed off the other lots for some reason. We repave or hold career fairs on occasion. Things like that are generally what inspire me to use some other lot. I figured that space must be getting tight.

No dice. All the other lots were open and comparatively empty. I smiled slightly to myself that people were funny, but didn’t think much of it.

The next morning, I opened up my email program to find an email from the head of my site to all local employees. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person to look at the cars on the lawn and think, “Lazy.” We were told to park on pavement from now on.

I was glad to have that cleared up. I might have decided to try to top the grass-lovers and park in the firewater pond.

I’m Still A Whore

When I moved my blog to the new site, I did so in order to make money off of the ads. That was more than enough information for me. I did not really care what the ads were trying to sell. I signed up to let a computer program scan my content and post ads for me that it felt would make me the most money. This seemed a wise use of my time. I had no idea what it would come up with and did not care. To be honest, I assumed pornography would be involved.

That has turned out to have been a very bad guess. And thank God it was. I never expected the sheer delight of these ads. They’re almost as funny as my writing. And if you hate my writing, you might even think they’re funnier.

Because one of the factors behind my moving the blog was a desire to eliminate censorship concerns, many of you noticed that the first thing up on the new site was the entire “Bathroom Sex” series. For those of you joining us late, this series of posts details various thoughts and methods that may or may not have been used to seduce the towelboy at my office. Not quite a set of stories about anonymous stall sex, but close. Very classy material.

Well, my advertisement computer friend loyally appeared, “read” my posts, and found me some advertising clients. Guess what it posted.

“Find Local Plumbers” and “Rotarooters” were some of the duller entries. But much more entertaining material has visited as well. I can’t speak for what it’s displaying by the time you read this, so I provide here a photo of some of the better ads that showed up to party with the “Bathroom Sex” stories:




“Paper Towel Dispensers” is too good. Nothing I can say will make that any funnier. And anyone who has chatted with me on AIM long enough to spot a (slightly) hidden joke I came up with in college will appreciate “Is Lake Water Killing You?” I’ll leave the third ad open to interpretation.

Clever readers will quickly note that this post was just me taking credit for random humor the universe threw my way. That’s true. On the other hand, I wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t paying attention. I just hope you find it as funny as me!

9:15

Recently, I went grocery shopping. I needed walnuts late at night. It was a minor emergency.

After running some other errands, I pulled into the mostly-empty grocery store parking lot. I glanced at the clock in my dash as I turned off the car. It was 9:07. I opened the car door, but just as I was about to step out into the lot, I saw something glint on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat. It was a small fuse.

Leaving the car door open, I reached over, picked up the fuse and looked at it closer. From the size and shape, I managed to figure out that it was from my GPS system. I reached up, unplugged it, opened the chasse, reinstalled the missing fuse, and plugged it back in. Elapsed time: about 45 seconds.

I turned my head back to the parking lot only to discover the cart collector looking at me. Without missing a beat, he said, “Just so you know, we close at 10:00.”

I blinked. After a short pause, I answered, “Isn’t it just a little after 9:00?”

He replied, “Yeah, but I’m just saying as a courtesy so you don’t feel rushed.”

Though I was a little confused by this unexpected exchange, I decided not to draw it out. From the guy’s tone and general demeanor, I got the distinct impression that thinking was not his sport. “Ok, thanks,” I ended.

As I walked towards the store, I thought about this. I wondered to myself how his random parking lot message could count as a courtesy. I then wondered how him telling me that could possibly inspire me to NOT feel rushed. I wasn’t getting very far with these questions.

I entered the store. I went to the walnuts. I grabbed a bag. (Of walnuts.) I checked out. (Not the stockboy.) I went back to my car.

On my way out, the cart guy was still lingering. He again spoke to me without provocation. “Sorry about that.”

This confused me. I replied, “Uhm. That’s ok. You just confused me a little is all.”

He answered, “Yeah, I confused myself too.”

This struck me as funnier than it should have.

I started my car and looked at the dash. It was 9:15.

This is a true story.

Straightest Man Ever

Recently, I had the chance to meet the straightest man on Earth. By straightest, I mean most heterosexual. Before I met him, I wouldn’t have been confident that I could recognize the straightest man on Earth. In fact, I’d talked with him dozens of times before I realized. But I found him.

How, you might ask, did I come to this conclusion? That’s a good question. I’ll show you my notes on this subject and let you draw your own conclusions.

I regularly commute a long distance. By regularly, I mean that I cross state lines twice a week on a round trip. Every time I do this, I stop at the same Starbucks on a highway oasis both ways. Again, for clarity, I go to the same Starbucks twice a day, twice per week.

Every day, I head south wearing black slacks, a short sleeved shirt, and a belt. Every day a few hours later, I go back to the Starbucks having inexplicably changed into black basketball pants and a white tshirt.

I order the same thing every time. Is it a coffee? No. Is it an iced tea? No. I order a Venti Green Tea Soy Latte. The drink looks a little like the afterbirth from the Jolly Green Giant giving birth to The Hulk’s love child. It’s green. I’ve never seen someone else order these. And I have to imagine the soy substitution makes it even more foofy-like. [Author’s Note: This may sound gross, but it’s amazing.]

Three of the four baristas at this Starbucks quickly noticed the pattern. They get visibly cheerful when I approach, look genuinely pleased to see me, and know what I’m going to order.

The fourth barista brusquely took my order about forty times without the slightest hint of recognition. I eventually concluded that he was just a grumpy asshole. But then, after several dozen visits, he swiped my credit card one day, and appeared to have a minor epiphany. He looked up at me and asked, “Have you been here before?”

Similing, I replied, “Dozens of times. And about three hours ago.”

He smiled for the first time ever (that I saw) and replied, “I recognized your credit card.”

Not me. Not my weird drink. Not the fact that I was just there. He recognized my American Express card.

Right then and there, I knew I had found the straightest man ever.

“Same Thing, But Different”

Lately, I’ve been hearing a figure of speech a little too often. “Same thing, but different.” Are you familiar with it? People say it when they think they know a lot about a subject but accidentally call something by the name of something else that appears superficially similar.

I’ve been hearing it a lot at work, in reference to chemicals.

Perhaps I have a hearing disorder of some sort. My ears hear the figure of speech as stated. Similarly, my eyes can trace the words as framed by the lips of the speaker. I can see and hear them mouth the words, “Same thing, but different.”

However, by the time that message gets decoded in my brain, the line of thought that I perceive is, “I’m fucktarded!”

I’m not usually this harsh. But seriously folks. Let’s review. If you’ve worked in a chemical plant for years, you should have picked up on the fact that not all chemicals are the same. For example, sodium hydroxide and sodium bicarbonate. Same thing, but different, right?! Both are white powders! Both have sodium in their name! Sure, they’re the same. They’re the same in that sodium hydroxide (a strong base) will turn fats into soap, whereas sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) turns heavy cookie dough into festive, fluffy cookies in the oven. To me, that’s a little different. (This is a real example of what someone at work called the same thing but different.)

Let’s give another example. Propylene glycol and ethylene glycol (both are used as heat transfer fluids). Same thing but different, right!? Both are clear liquids with “glycol” in their names! Sure. They’re the same. They’re the same in that propylene glycol is the main ingredient in sexual lubricants, while ethylene glycol is a lethal poison. Let’s smear a little of both on our genitals and call it good, shall we? (Another real example.)

The expression only works if it’s used ironically, people. If you can’t tell the difference between talcum powder and rat poison, that’s your problem. But I don’t care to watch you scratch yourself all day as a result.