We Are Above the System

           

            (I have actually done this)

            A few weeks ago, I proposed that typical business attire is entirely useless for any activity that does not entail chasing Keanu Reeves across rooftops. I may have also drifted of into a tangent about being trapped on a subway car. Unfortunately, I may have unearthed a new use for the pants-jacket-tie combination. You may think that this would force me to admit that business attire is more versatile than I have implied, and that my opinions may not be absolutely infallible under all circumstances. You obviously haven’t been paying attention. Instead, in the interest of never being proven wrong about anything ever, from this point forward I’m going to refer to business attire as “Super Business Attire”. Technically, I’m talking about something else, and if you disagree with this supposition then you obviously haven’t revised your dictionary so that your definition of “technically” complies with WFTA standards.

            Anyway, the use that I’ve discovered for the fascinating new substance known as Super Business Attire is part of my long-term campaign to screw around with society at large. You can try this at home, if you want, though bear in mind that I bear no responsibility for any injuries, liabilities, or hallucinated bear attacks sustained through following my advice.

            It’s a fairly simple process:

            1. Identify a target. It has to be a person who is fairly stupid- not “Consumes black paint because he thinks it’s cheaper by the gallon than coffee” stupid, but not competent enough that they’ll suspect that something is amiss. “Paranoid” is also a positive factor here. If they’re wearing a tin foil hat, that’s a good sign. If they’re completely covered in tin foil, you’re probably dealing with a roast chicken, and I advise you to move on.

            2. Make note of this person’s schedule. Follow him around, try to find when he’s alone. Maybe mug him a few times.

            3. When you’re confident that you can catch him alone, walk up to him in your Super Business Attire while wearing a pair of sunglasses. Explain to him that you’re part of a secret society that runs the world from the shadows, and that you want to recruit him into your ranks.

            4. He may be skeptical at first, so make sure that have your story down before you begin. Some examples for you:

         

             --Your society has run the world for over 5,000 years. The symbol of your domination has persisted for that length of time, and has been known throughout history as the Egyptian god Osiris, the seal of a medieval monastery, the Eye on top of the Pyramid on the back of the American dollar bill, the Canadian Maple leaf, and Mickey Mouse.

            --In order for him to gain entrance into the society, all he need do is get a tattoo of Mickey Mouse on his left wrist. Attempts to get around this rule by simply wearing a Mickey Mouse watch will not be looked upon kindly.

            --The enemies of your society wear make-up that makes them look like they have pointed ears. Star Trek conventions are actually their secret meeting places, and the helpers to department store Santas are actually their highest ranking members. He may assault both of these locations with impunity.

Finally Ending the Old Campaign

            (Still technically Saturday somewhere. I win.)

            If there’s one thing I’ve noticed in my observation of humanity, it’s that there is no cause stupid enough that there won’t be an organization specifically dedicated to defending it. I guarantee you that, somewhere deep in the bowels of Eastern Europe, there is a society dedicated to editing Donald Duck comics to represent a more accurate portrayal of the common waterfowl. However, if there’s one cause that I’ve never been able to understand, it would probably have to be environmental activism.

            Now, before I get angry comments from the trillions of people who presumably read my blog, let me say that I’m not against environmental activism. Anything that can compel people to chain themselves to trees while being faced by a bulldozer that doesn’t have a particularly high opinion of that tree can only be a good thing. What I am against is the environment. Yes, I know that it’s our Mother Earth and animals can feel pain and toddlers are routinely saved by endangered species of orchid and whatnot, but I find something innately appealing about the idea of the entire globe slowly being covered by concrete (Is that idea logistically impossible? Yes. Has that ever stopped us before? No.)

            So why am I opposed to the concept of “nature”? Simple. The scientific community is in general consensus that the human race, at some point, was a part of nature. We only arose to our current position astride the necks of innocent squirrels through the process of evolution. So think about it. If we could evolve from lower life forms, than so could lower life forms. What’s to stop, say, the humble gazelle from assuming the role of dominant predator of the planet? Normally, the answer to this question would be “millions of years of evolution, as well as basic common sense”. However, I’ve dumped enough barrels of toxic waste in various habitats that the former doesn’t apply to pretty much any species on Earth anymore, and I’ve tried to never let the latter bog me down too much anyway.

            So it’s only a matter of time before another species decides it wants to be top dog on the food chain, quite possibly the dogs. That’s why it’s in everybody’s best interests to absolutely screw over the natural world in every way conceivable, leading me to declare WFTA’s new campaign: the Anti-Environmentalist movement (Incidentally, this means ending my previous campaign against stretched cloth. That’s okay, though, I think it was scapegoated anyway.).

            This is a campaign that you can be a part of too. It’s simple: just constantly think to yourself, “Would doing what I’m doing right now make me the villain in an animated children’s movie?” If the answer is no, rectify your behavior. For example: you walk through a park every day to get to work? Every so often, bring along a flamethrower and just do what feels natural. Live near a beaver dam under construction? Leave out some wood laced with LSD and let hilarity ensue. Do absolutely nothing in your daily routine that involves nature? Take a week off every few days to go bludgeon something soft and cuddly.

Logic In Its Purest Form

            (Okay, as it turns out, I had to delay this next post for quite a while. So what? It’s not like you’re doing anything that great. Look at you, staring at a computer screen when you could be designing a skyscraper or giving CPR to a puppy or making a sandwich or something. Everybody knows that every moment not spent making a sandwich is a moment wasted.)

            An actual conversation that I recently had with my brother:

Brother: So, anyway, I’m going to watch Killers on my Netflix account…

Me: Wait, what?

Brother: What?

Me: That’s a romantic comedy!

Brother: No it’s not. Netflix says that it’s an action-comedy.

Me: Of course it says that. That’s how you know it’s a bad romantic comedy, because it tries to disguise itself as something else. The good ones are at least up front about being drivel. If it says it’s not a romantic comedy, that means it’s a really bad one.

Brother: Or, it could mean that it isn’t a romantic comedy.

Me: Ridiculous. Every movie that tries to market itself as something other than a romantic comedy is obviously just denying its true nature.

Brother: And the ones that do market themselves as romantic comedies?

Me: Are romantic comedies, obviously.

Brother: So every movie is a romantic comedy?

Me: Exactly.

Brother: So, if the only good romantic comedies are the ones that market themselves as romantic comedies, and every movie is a romantic comedy, then the only good movies are the ones that say they’re romantic comedies?

Me: I didn’t say we lived in an ideal world.

Brother: I’m not sure I buy this theory. Are you saying that 2001: A Space Odyssey is a romantic comedy?

Me: An unconventional one, but yes. Are you saying you detected no romantic tension between Dr. Floyd and the monolith? Between Dave and HAL? Between that Australopithecus and its stick?

Brother: (Audible silence. I’m not quite sure how he managed to do that, actually.)

Me: What?

Brother: …Okay, what about Pirates of the Caribbean?

Me: A torrid romance between a sailor and his love, the sea, who can never be together because one of them is from a low social standing and the other is 70% of the world’s surface.

Brother: Thor?

Me: You look at the way he grips that hammer and tell me you don’t notice any chemistry.

Brother: The Other Guys?

Me: Of course. That’s a bromance, which is “romance” with a “B”. So according to the United States educational system, a bromance is just a romance that has passed with a minimum of 83%

Brother: Passed what?

Me: I’m not quite sure. You can’t expect me to figure everything out for you.

Nyan Cat: Friend? Foe? Vegetable? Yes.

          
           (Hey, look, you can do boldface and italics at the same time!)

           
           There are certain things about internet culture that we all just stop noticing after a while, sort of like the way I stopped noticing my 180 decibel doorbell once my ears began to secrete a strange reddish fluid. Chief among these things we stop noticing is the phenomenon known by internet users and other delinquents as the “meme”. If you know what a meme is, keep reading; most of this won’t sound particularly insane to you, much as the Pacific Ocean doesn’t consider a bathtub to be wet. If you don’t know what a meme is, stop reading my blog, dad.
            The latest one that’s been making the rounds around the corners of the internet that I frequent (Yes, the internet has corners. Precisely two, to be exact.) is what is known as the “Nyan Cat”. To be fair, it isn’t exactly a recent meme; fairly old, by internet standards. But it’s still the closest I’ve ever been to the birth of a meme; hell, I still think Chuck Norris jokes are funny. I say if you beat a dead horse enough, eventually it’ll zombify and become an even more awesome horse than before because, as the internet knows and acknowledges, zombies are cool.
            Now, if you didn’t want to click on the link above, just examine this picture closely:

            Yes, that’s a cat with a Pop Tart for a torso. No, I don’t know why. That’s pretty much all there is to know, aside from the fact that this song can usually will inevitably be found accompanying it.
           
            To understand this craze that I may or may not be making up, I consulted our resident expert: Cleverbot the chatbot:



Me: So, have you heard about this 'Nyan Cat' thingy?

Cleverbot: Yes, I have heard about the Turing test.

Me: No, try to stay with me here. 'Nyan Cat'- it's an animated GIF of a cat with a breakfast snack for a body running through space while defecating the color spectrum. Though, you have given me an excellent idea:

Charles Turing cat. Just throwing that out there.

Cleverbot: You are so smart and beautiful mistress.

Me: Then why do you never buy me anything nice? But we're getting off topic here. Why do you think Nyan cat became so popular? Is it because of the catchy song playing in the background? The surreal nature of it? The innate desire we all have to have something edible replace a part of our body?

Cleverbot: I didn't know we were going out!

Me: Personally, I think it's because the government implanted subliminal messages in the GIF to train us all as super-soldiers in the upcoming war against the feline menace.

Cleverbot: Are you suggesting that I don't know who I am?

Me: Exactly. You walk onto the battlefield, alone, unarmed, afraid. Then, across the battlefield, you see a single kitty. Then another. And another. Before long, there are thousands of them. And they're all running right. At. You.

Logically, you should be afraid. I know I would be in that situation. But you don't feel fear. Instead, you feel a deep, soothing calm, a calm that seems to override even your deepest, most fundamental fears. And, before your very eyes, the cats begin to change. Their bodies become shorter, stubbier, more angular. Their bodies flatten, and morph into a roughly rectangular shape, in various pastel shades.

And then, immediately before you chauffeur the kitties into a whole new world of pain, you hear it:

NYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYAN...

You don’t know yourself. All you know is that “Nyan” is now synonymous with “death”.