Movie Muhfriday 13: the Losers - 7-out-of-10 T's

There was only one thing about this movie that I really, really didn't like, and it only lasted about 3 seconds. Literally. It was a shot that went on just a few seconds too long, and left a spoken line in that I really, really hated on a visceral level. That, and this movie's MacGuffin, are why this isn't an 8 or a 9 on the T-ometer.

I loved the actors in this movie. It cast is completely made up of "Oh, THAT guy!"s, the ones that you see in other stuff, on TV maybe, and they act the crap out of each of their roles. The two famoustest people in this movie were Zoe Saldana of Star Trek and Avatar fame (so she's doing okay for herself, I suppose) and Chris Evans, who was the Human Torch and will be Captain America. I think we'll be seeing more of these kids in the future. Just a hunch.

I love ensemble movies when they're done right, and done right this is. The characters back each other up, they make fun of and support each other, and as a team are greater than the sum of their parts. Awesome.

Then there's the bad guy, Max, played by Jason Patric. He was the main character in the Lost Boys about a bajillion years ago, and played Jim Bowie in The Alamo back in ought-four. He's awesome. He's quirky, evil, and the best part is, he doesn't think he's evil. Or, if he does, he doesn't care: he has a goal, a plan for what he thinks the world should be, and he doesn't give two craps what he has to do, or who he has to kill, to make it that way. ("That wasn't a 'toss him off the building'-nod; that was a 'break a few of his fingers'-nod, at most!" Great line.)

On the downside, the scene I hate is one of his: he gives an order, an underling asks for clarification, and he repeats the order verbatim. That was fine. Up til there, I got it: "This is what I want you to do; don't ask questions, just do it." I can dig that. Then (and this is so... infinitesimally small that I'm surprised it affected me this much) he repeats it again. That third time, it just felt like too much, and my loathing for this character multiplied a thousandfold. If that bit would just go away, if they'd left it at 2, I would have been very happy with this obviously evil but still tons-of-fun villain, but now I just don't like him. That has never happened to me before.

And, of course, the MacGuffin: a crate full of *ahem* Snukes. They're Sonic Nuclear Destabilizers, and when we see one go off, it annihilates an entire island, which is swallowed by the sea. The upside to this weapon is massive, nuke-level destruction, but no nasty radiation to deal with. I understand the appeal. And Max wants to set one off in San Francisco, then blame it on some of America's enemies.

The snuke demonstration, and just the stupid name, took me out of the film. It stopped being plausible, and I was reminded every time they said that stupid, stupid name. After the demonstration, I could get back into the plot, okay, the good guys need to stop the bad guy, awesome, let's do this, and then someone mentions them, aaaand it's dumb again.

Stupid snukes.

Anyway, these are minor things. Seriously. This was a great movie, the characters were awesome, the comedy worked, the plot was good, excellent film. I'm probably gonna buy this. You should check it out.

GRAAAAAH FRUSTRATION

DARN YOUR SELF IMPOSED SILENCE!!!

The second worst part about this job is when I CAN'T DO IT because people won't talk to me. That happens a lot. They don't want to go on record because they're scared that they can't go back and change what's been recorded. It's a feeling I understand, but I wish there were some people here who'd go on record, consequences be damned.

Today's foray into the realm of deafening silence was brought on by a local commissioner candidate being arrested last night for a DUI.

SCANDALOUS!!!

My assignment this morning was to roam around town and get people's opinion on this: Were you gonna vote for him? Are you still going to? Does this flagrant law breaking infuriate you? Also, would you mind giving your opinion on camera so we can post it on the interwebs?

The answer was a resounding, "Naw, thanks, brah."

Several people complimented me that I was going around asking about it, because it's important that people know and talk about it... but "I have no opinion".

MY. EYE.

So now, I look like a slacker in front of my boss. Awesome. Thanks, folks of Darke County, for worrying about your image. That does me no good.

It's gonna be a loooong weekend...

I'm right there with ya, kid.

I have a couple jobs. And, as this is my blog and I can talk about whatever I darn well please, I'm going to talk about how sleepy I am right now.

Yesterday, I got up at 8 a.m., got to Job #1 (the Daily Advocate, awesomest newspaper in Darke County) at 9, and wrote hard-hitting journalistic masterpieces for a solid 8 hours (minus when I went to lunch, and checked my e-mail, and read some funny stories, but mostly hard-hitting blah-dee-blah), then got like an hour off, then went to Job #2 and did movie theater business until nearly 1 a.m. [like breaking down two movies, putting one together, changing the marquee ("Hot Tub Time Machine" was a bear to get right), doing an inventory with paperwork and numbers and making my brain not work good]. Then I got up at 7 a.m. today to go back to work for something early this morning, and then I'm up til midnight again tonight before getting up at 7 again tomorrow and then doing another "til-midnight".

Man-o-man, I's a sleepy sonuvagun. In honor of that, have some pics of sleepy things.

Daaaaawwww...

You're still pointless, but now you're pointless and sleepy.

Hey, look at how sleepy this hollow is!
... I'm sorry.

Have a nice weekend, folks.

One of my favorite handicaps

How many of these have you seen today?

Among other things [that I hate (tomatoes, tap dancing) or like (having my head scratched, oatmeal-butterscotch cookies)] that I consider to be my weaknesses, I will freely admit that I've never been any good at color, and that saddens me a bit.

When I was at the Columbus College of Art and Design, I saw things that other people created that had some really fantastic colors in them and got more than a little jealous. But, try as I might, I couldn't duplicate what they could do, let alone get creative with the visible spectrum of light. It might have been sloth, as my Color Concept teacher suggested (a very unpleasant woman), or it might have been my innate impatience, but I also know that I just don't understand color. When I observe what others have done, I can appreciate it, but I couldn't apply it in a satisfactory manner to save my life. And that saddens me.

It's spring time. There are colors everywhere now. One thing that did get through my thick skull is that I see a lot more than I did before. Well, not "see", maybe "notice" is a better word. The subtle shades of yellow that happen when the sun peeks through the clouds, hints of purple in a black shirt that the lady walking down the street is wearing, how trees are only green in the most basic of senses (I can see a tree out the office's front window that's a lovely shade of pear chartreuse). While I don't know if that new found ability is worth the $70,000 I spent at CCAD, I'm glad I have it now.

Check it out. Look around, try to notice something you didn't before, or to look at it in a different way. I still may not be able to color worth a darn, but I can appreciate the colors I see. It's nice.

Retro Review: Turner & Hooch is the greatest movie ever

This is frikkin' cinema gold, here.

If you've never seen it, I pity you, and invite you over to my home to watch it with me. It will be awesome.

This movie has everything that any movie needs, and it has it in spades: excellent character development, a plot that's easy to follow, buddy cops, a big funny dog, comedy, a sort of twist ending that is triumphant and sad and everything still ends up okay, and Reginald VelJohnson.

There. Now everything is okay.

In case you are one of those people who missed it and you have no intention of watching this glorious masterpiece of 80's cinema (you philistine, you), Turner (Tom Hanks) is a skinny, anal-retentive cop in a small town in California where nothing happens. He's a good cop, so good that he feels his skills are being wasted on all the nothing that goes on there. A few days before he transfers to a bigger city, a friend of his, an old hermit named Amos that lives in a boat with a huge slobbery monster that loves chocolate chip cookies and beer (Hooch, played by Beasley the Dog, R.I.P.) is murdered.

Hooch witnessed the murder, and it's now Turner's job to take care of the only eye witness: his carefully pressed and groomed and sorted life is turned upside down, and wacky hijinks ensue as Turner and Hooch begin to bond while they look for Amos' killer.

It's the bonding scenes that are my favorite. This dog could probably eat Tom Hanks, and yet he fearlessly wrestles the dog into a bath tub, chases it around the house, tackles it with a pillow and bed sheet. It's beautiful, the story of a guy and his dog.

I would say that Tom was in rare form here, but he wasn't: he was Tom Hanks in the 80's and 90's, which means he was stellar, providing better acting in his sleep than the entire cast of all three High School Musicals and anything with Channing Tatum combined and squared.

In short, I loved this movie when I was a kid, and it still stands up. In fact, now that I know WHY that lady veterinarian spent the night, the latest showing had even more character developing nuances. There should be more movies like this: Hollywood would be in much better shape.

Movie Monday 12: Kick-Ass - 9-out-of-10 T's

How many times have you ever heard someone say, when referring to a movie, that "the book was better"? I know that I've been guilty of uttering that phrase myself at least a few dozen times for a few dozen movies. It is rare that a celluloid-committed adaptation is, in my opinion, a more satisfying version of the tale than its source material.

Kick-Ass is that rare occasion.

As you can see from the rating I gave this film, I enjoyed it very much. Was it perfect? No. Was it still amazing? Oh, yes indeedy. The following is a collection of words that describe this film in my mind:

Action-packed, bloody, revealing, satirical, intense, hilarious, vulgar, touching, and above all, balls-to-the-wall-amazing.

Do not take your grandmother to see this film. I made the mistake of trying to show Zombieland during a family movie night, and my mother had to leave: this leaves Z-land far behind when it comes to "Cranking that crap up to 11." Zombieland was an 11. Kick-Ass is, what, a 17?

I enjoyed the source material for this film, which was, of course, a comic book. Up until the last 3 pages of the last issue, it was a great read, but it ended on a soul-crushing note that took all the fun out of the first 6.9 issues. It did not have a happy ending. This film does. A glorious, bazooka-round exploding, mini-gun bullet riddled sequel-set-up of a happy ending that makes me more eager for a follow-up than I've been for a while.

There is blood in this film, and horrible language that comes from the mouth of an 11-year-old girl, and terrible violence that brings you down from your high of "yeah, the good guys are gonna win!" before rocketing you back up to those highs in the final sequence, and I loved nearly every second of this amazing love-letter of a movie. It gets a little slow in the middle, but picks back up wonderfully. If you liked Fight Club and Spider-Man and Zombieland and enjoy the idea of these films getting together and having a crazy love child of a movie, then you should see this.

Even more that that, you WANT to see this film, even if you don't know it yet. Just don't let your mom see it.

These are a few of my favorite things

GLORIOUS...

Be they items you can touch, taste, hear, see, or smell, and sometimes not even those, these are a couple things that I really love:

• When the temperature is just right (Mid 60's to low 70's), there's a long stretch of road, I've got a full tank of gas, the windows down, and a really great song comes on the radio, like "Love Gun" or "Crazy on You" (both of which have amazing guitar bits).

• I come home and everyone's in a good mood, even the dog (especially the dog, she's always happy), and Mom made a roast* (*read: HEAVEN) or Dad made burgers or steak on the grill and Kevin's Famous Potatoes (you'll have to try them sometime).

• After a long day at one of my two jobs, my boss says something along the lines of "You've really been cranking them (stories) out today" or "Wow, that was a good night (sales)!" It tastes like... vindication.

• Baseball games and a bag full of peanuts, surrounded by friends (this is something that needs to happen more often, so who wants to go to a game?).

• Days that turn out much better than expected, like, I expected that family get-together to suck and it actually turned out pretty awesome, or that party I wasn't too sure about ended up being a blast.

• Impromptu throwdowns of Super Smash Brothers with people who actually care about the game and probably get waaaaaay too into it, dropping F-bombs in voices that are way too loud, then come back with a vengeance after a loss. (BONUS: Successfully getting off a Falcon Punch.)
  

• Finding cinnamon buns on the oven after I wake up on my one day that I can sleep in (thanks, Abbey).

• Random texts from friends with pictures of their cats being waaaay too adorable.
  

• Jeans. NEXT QUESTION.

• Wind that smells really good, like right before it hit my nose, it stopped by a rose bush or a fruit roll-up factory (bonus: girls that smell like fruit roll-ups. It's like a perfume or hand creme or something, and they don't know that they smell like some of my childhood snacks. BUT I KNOW.)

There are more, but that seems like enough for today...

Good gravy, it's gorgeous outside

I cover everything but sports here at the Advocate, which means the sports guys are the ones who spend most of the time being paid to go outside. Me? I do most of my work on the internet or over the phone. I'm cool with that, but on days like today (73°F and Sunny), I've got to get sneaky.

This event is perfectly newsworthy, because people love pictures of toddlers messing with flowers and other outdoorsy stuff. When you put aside the notion that nature wants to kill you (something I'm actually cool with: me and nature, we has an understanding), flowers and bumblebees and gophers are pretty cool. I loves me some nature, and I love kids, so the two combined is like... Reese Cups.

Person 1: "Hey, you got toddlers in my nature!" Person 2: "You got nature in my toddlers?"

Toddler Eating Bear: "And they taste great together!"

So, anyway, I got to go outside and see the natures. It was glorious.

Pandas are pointless

"Whoa, whoaaaa, man, what's with the hostility?"

SHUT UP, PANDA, you're a panda. You're pointless. You won't breed to keep your species alive, you won't utilize your carnivorous digestive system properly (choosing instead to eat bamboo, which is like eating nothing but pre-chewed gum: you don't get many nutrients out of it, and you poop most of it out), and you are unjustly adored by billions just because you're cute.

You utter, utter douche.

There are only two reasons I can think of to keep you around: my childhood stuffed animal was a panda, who I still have and love dearly, moreso than any other inanimate object I've ever encountered; and so in 50 years, I can show my grandkids Dreamworks' Kung Fu Panda and they'll understand what they're looking at. AND THATS IT.

Also, this is what you look like as a baby:

NGAAAH! KILL IT WITH FIRE!

Man, panda, you suck.

(Most of this content stolen from an article that can be found right here.)

Movie Muhfriday 11: Date Night - 4-out-of-10 T's *SPOILERS!!!*

This is gonna be my first really spoiler heavy review, for the simple fact that I can't really relay just how ridiculous this movie was without them. So beware, for:

****HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!!!****

This movie... this movie surprised me. I really, really wanted this to be awesome, because I loved everything about the premise: two of the greatest screen comedians (Steve Carell and Tina Fey) playing roles that I totally believe they could be in real life (a married couple who are kind of stuck in a groove) who do something daring and get thrust into a situation that is anything but boring. That, my friends, has the potential to be cinematic and comedy gold.

The film did not live up to its potential. Here's a handy graph I whipped up, which I will refer back to in the remainder of this review. It gets kinda long, so forgive me. I'll try to throw in enough witty "zings" to keep this entertaining. Also, lots of links, because I like links, and if Wikipedia were a person, I'd elect them President of Everything Awesome.

The movie begins on a pretty good note: Steve and Tina are married, they're pretty successful, and they're comfortable with each other... but the spark is gone. Everything is predictable, and then one of their married-couple-friends announce that they're getting divorced. They don't hate each other, but neither are they in love... they're just "Really excellent room mates."

You can see that this strikes a chord with our heroes.

So, on their next scheduled Date Night, Tina gets all gussied up (which is awesome cause I have a bit of a crush of Tina Fey, for which I am not at all ashamed), which prompts Steve to make some extra effort as well, and they go into the city to try dinner some place fancy and new. Of course, they can't get in, so they do that little bit of daring and take someone's reservation. The reservation makers were no shows, so who's it gonna hurt, right? And they have a great time.

Then, come the bad guys: they believe that Steve and Tina are the ones who made the reservation, the Triplehorns, and the Triplehorns have something that the bad guys want. Great setup, right? That's what I thought. I was digging the movie up till right about now. Then, there's the shooting.

You remember the action scenes in "Walker, Texas Ranger"? There was a way the camera moved, which is pretty common for all action scenes on TV, but that's where I noticed it first. It was different from movies. Well, when S & T make their escape, I felt like I was watching a TV movie. Just... the way the camera moved, the way the heroes were avoiding bullets, how they moved just a little too fast, like they took out one frame for every 4 or 5, so they look like their in more of a hurry but it doesn't quite jive with our senses. That's what it felt like. Not bad, I guess (I love me some Walker) but it kinda took me out of the movie.

And here begins our Ridiculosity Curve.

The bad guys think S&T have something, a flash drive that has something they want. S&T can't go to the police for reasons I shan't divulge, so they go to somebody that Tina knew years ago, who works private security/mercenary jobs/government shenanigans: Mark Wahlberg.

I like Marky Mark. He grew on me after the Italian Job, then I saw Shooter, Invincible, i ♥ huckabees ... the dude won me over. In this, he is the Deus Ex Machina, he's the God in the Machine, he's the person they go to to make the more ridiculous bits of the plot make some semblance of sense, and it doesn't really work.

Then, they steal his car. What follows should probably be insulting to black people (that doesn't really require a link, but there's a Wikipedia article, so I had to let everyone know about it) everywhere. There's a cab driver, who is black, and is in the film for the entirety of the car chase, so about 4 minutes, which is just long enough to spout every token-black-guy phrase ever committed to film, including "that is whack" and other stuff I've blocked out from embarrassment. Then he jumps out of the car. Awesome.

Well, they find out that the person who's looking for them isn't the person they thought, its some other guy, who frequents a strip club that comes with hookers. Before they go in, though, they return to Marky Mark, who apparently helps them with more ridiculousness.

They go to the hooker-club, Tina pretending to be a hooker, Steve pretending to be her pimp, and they get into the room of the guy that's been looking for them. He doesn't know who they are, though, and for some reason before they tell him, they play along with his erotic fantasizing and do the most awkward two-person pole dance I've ever seen ever (not that I've seen many, so that isn't really hard, but it's still just... bad to watch).

Once they spill the beans, they are taken to the roof, where they instigate a fight between the people who they thought were looking for them and the people who were actually looking for them, and then the cops show up. Yay! Also, Steve had a wire on (provided by Marky Mark), so when the bad guys were talking as they fought, he caught their confession on tape! Everyone goes home happy.

Here's where it gets back to the movie I wanted: I knew this was going to happen before I saw the movie, and I was fine with that. Sometimes, it's okay that you know how a movie is going to end, as long as the journey has some new stuff in it. This ending I was cool with... I just wish the body of the film had been different.

Steve and Tina have breakfast, talk about why they love each other, they go home, and in the safety of their yard, proceed to make with the passionate kissing on the lawn.

****THE SPOILERS IS ENDED!!!****

There were funny bits. I just think that they lost track of what they were doing during the middle of this movie, and it suffered for it. I really believe that this could have been a great movie, which makes the disappointment of what it actually is that much more of a let down.

You'll be okay renting this, and I'd even recommend seeing it at a dollar theater maybe, but this movie isn't worth an $8 ticket.

Regret sucks, and humble pie tastes like crap

It's waaaaay too early to be looking back at my 23 years of life and regret things that I've done, or haven't done, but look back I do, and regret I do.

I saw a MySpace quiz that someone I know filled out back in 2005 (you know, when MySpace was still relevant) and one of the questions was "What do you regret?" The person had replied with a brief and to-the-point "nothing", to which I threw up my hands and cried out "BULL!"

Everyone regrets something. I, for example, regret that I wasn't a better looking kid (cause lemme tell you, I was horrifying for a few years there; it comes as no surprise to me now that I was less than the Lothario I am now during those elementary-to-middle school days), something that could have been remedied if I'd spent more time outside hitting things with sticks and less time behind wind-blocking garbage cans at recess reading books (true story).

I also regret the pent-up aggression and self-loathing that comes with having a better-looking, more-popular, and more-successful younger brother and sister, but I salve that raw spot with the belief that they saw what I did wrong and learned from it (Abbey is great at hitting things with sticks). Whether or not that's actually the case, I hope I can take that belief and the comfort it provides to my grave.

Then there's the fact that I talked a big talk throughout High School and College. I told everyone, everyone, that I was gonna be a big-shot comic artist, and then a designer, and then a toy designer... and when it came right down to it, I couldn't back it up. All my talk for eight years, including the now groan-inducing talk I had with my parents about how "I can't fail, I refuse to fail" and then a year later I was living at home, that all came crashing down around my ears.

I have a good job. Two, actually. I can't complain, and moreso, I refuse to. Ohio's unemployment is nearly 11 percent. That means that if you got ten strangers together, one whole person and another person from the ankles down would be unemployed. And I've got two jobs that I actually enjoy pretty well. Not bad, if I say so myself.

Still, people still come up to me and ask me what happened to the Hasbro job, or when my comic is coming out, or if I'm still drawing, and the answer is "I couldn't hack it", "It's not" and "no, now go away you crazy person". That's followed by an awkward silence. Nothing is worse than talking big and then failing to back it up.

The last few months have been invaluable. Aside from the silences, I've worked my butt off for 9 months, working two, and for a while there 3, jobs, paying loans back, making a niche for myself here. People know me now, and they ask about the news, or what movies are coming out. Sometimes, I actually have something valuable to contribute. Honestly, I'd rather have a crappy job (which I don't) in the greatest nation on Earth than be a Ph. D. in Choppayuheadoffistan, because the crappy jobs here really aren't that crappy.

It's just been a learning experience. I've still got, like, 3/4's of my life left, barring horrible and debilitating accidents or diseases. I never have a problem with learning stuff.

I still wouldn't mind running Disney, though, but that's filed firmly under "Future Plans" and cross-filed under "Keep that close to your chest", so don't tell anyone; we'll just keep that our little secret.

What does a bunny have to do with Easter?

(Pic unrelated, but still pretty awesome.)

It’s pretty common knowledge amongst the scholar-community that many current religious holidays are amalgams of church-sanctioned holidays and pagan holidays or natural events.

One such explanation for Christmas (which is when the birth of Christ is celebrated, an event whose date no one has been able to actually agree on in the last 2,000 years) is that, in the 4th century, the church worked out their official calendar, placing Christmas on the day of the Winter Solstice, Dec. 25. Over the last 16 centuries, due to the Earth’s rotation and changing position, the solstice is currently between Dec. 21 and 22, but the Christmas celebration stayed put.

But today is Easter, which is marked as the day of Christ’s resurrection and defeat of death, a time of rebirth and renewal. Plants return to life after months of dormancy, the weather starts to get nicer, birds start to sing and animals start to make babies. It all makes sense… until you include the egg-laying rabbit that sneaks into houses and leaves goodies: the Easter Bunny.

When Christianity began to spread to Northern Europe, it seemed like a good idea to take those pagan holidays practiced by the people missionaries were trying to convert and put a Christian context on them. One of those holidays was the Eostre Festival, which celebrated life and fertility, and was held in honor of Eostre, goddess of dawn, spring, and fertility. Her symbols were the hare, which is known for it’s quick rate of reproduction, and the egg, from which life springs.

So, those Christian missionaries saw these festivals and celebrations, and figured they’d use them to explain the Resurrection of Christ to the pagan masses. By their figuring, the Resurrection even happened around the same time, so this easy comparison seemed to be a gift from God. Naturally, a little give was necessary on the part of the missionaries, so the hare and egg got blended with the celebration of the Resurrection, and they even kept the name, which has changed over the centuries to it’s current spelling: Easter.

The Easter Bunny came to America with Pennsylvania Dutch settlers in the 1700s, known by them as the Oschter Haws (that’s German for “hare”), and got thrown into the Americanization Machine, and started bringing candies and pastries alongside colored eggs, picking up a bright pink bow tie and waistcoat along the way.

Here’s a fun fact: European settlers even took Easter to Australia, along with rabbits, where are not native to the land down under. In the last few centuries, those rabbits have multiplied vigorously, and are now considered a serious pest problem. They’ve caused millions of dollars in crop and property damage, and led to the decline of several native species. Thus, since its a bad idea to use a species everyone hates as a symbol for a religious holiday, they’ve replaced the Easter Bunny with the Easter Bilby, which is a small mammal that looks like a rabbit crossed with a kangaroo, and with a longer snout.

And that’s why the celebration surrounding the Resurrection of Christ has an egg-laying mammal in a bow tie as a mascot.

20-foot bubbles of poo

First, let me state, this is not a joke. I promise. Or, if it is, it isn't my joke, and I have fallen for it as hard as you will. I doubt that, though. Anyway.

So, this dairy farmer in Winchester has about 1,650 cows, and what do cows do? They poop. It's nature. Everybody poops. (Heh. Poop. It's funny because I'm actually 12, and I've been fooling you all for years.) What do you do with the manure from 16.5 hundred dairy cows? Why you put it in a pit, lined with the things they used at landfills, and let it liquefy, then sell it to people to use on their crops. This liner is a fairly new idea, I guess, because this guy was among the first Indiana farmers to use it. Getting his permit to farm hinged on it, actually.

Well, in the fall of 2006, some bubbles started to peek out of the surface of these open air poo-pools, and the farmer said, and this is a quote: "This doesn't look right." I frikkin' love this guy.

The black liner that is keeping the poop from seeping into the groundwater and contaminating in a way that only 21 million gallons of liquid feces can (21 MILLION GALLONS. Of poop!) has detached and filled with methane gas, popping up above the surface of the pools, sometimes growing to 20 feet (wide or tall, I'm not sure), and can be seen in satellite photos. Really. Click that, then click "Aerial Map".

His proposed plan to deal with the problem, though, is my favorite part: it includes a gas mask, a small boat, and a Swiss Army Knife.

... Awesome.

Indiana officials are considering his proposal. In the meantime, I'm imagining what will happen if he does: scenarios range from explosions (which happened to a pig farmer who had a similar problem, launching him 40 feet, and he sustained burns and singed hair) to a tidal wave of poop when that pressure is released and the pool is allowed to settle. I just hope he doesn't get hurt... though if he gets doused by a poo-wave, it would be absolutely hilarious.

Congress outlaws April Fools's Day

Tony MacKenzie

Staff Writer

tmackenzie@dailyadvocate.com

DARKE — After over 600 years of unjustly punishing the gullible, The United States Congress has finally enacted legislation to protect those who are taken advantage of on April 1, more commonly known by the insulting monicker “April Fools’ Day”.

Section 04.01.2010 of the controversial Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act that President Barack Obama signed into law on March 30 stated that Congress found the usually harmless shenanigans, hoaxes, pranks and practical jokes enacted by friends, family, enemies, or complete strangers annually on April 1 to be “unconstitutional and prejudicial against otherwise rightfully trusting citizens of these United States.” (Rep. Jonathan Buck, D - MA.) Therefore, April 1 will now be removed from every calendar in production within the United States, jumping straight to April 2. What used to be April 1 will now be referred to as “Noday”, and is now a National Holiday.

“I can’t believe they slipped that one by us,” said Rep. John Boehner, House Minority Leader in the 111th Congress.

The earliest known reference to April 1 being used to play tricks on others is in Geoffrey Chaucer’s "Canterbury Tales", which was published in 1392. In the story "The Nun’s Priest’s Tale", a vain rooster named Chauntecler is tricked by a fox on “March 32”, which is April 1.

Other examples of Historical Aprilfirstian Tomfoolery include an incident in 1539, when a Flemish poet named Eduard de Dene wrote about a nobleman who sent his servant back and forth on absurd errands on April 1st, supposedly to help prepare for a wedding feast. Another, which first occurred in 1698, consisted of several British citizens being tricked into visiting the menagerie at the Tower of London to “see the lions washed”. That has since become a tradition event, tricking the uninformed, and occasionally, people will even give away tickets to the “Annual Ceremony”.

Other famous tricks include a 1998 article in the monthly newsletter New Mexicans for Science and Reason, claiming that the Alabama Legislature had voted to change the mathematical constant “pi”, which starts out with 3.14 and continues on into infinity, to the “Biblical value of 3”; or, in 1957, the British Broadcasting Corporation ran a hoax in 1957 showing Italians harvesting spaghetti from trees. They received a large number of phone calls after the program ran, with people asking about how they could cultivate their own pasta-producing plants.

While this new law is only in effect within the boundaries of the United States of America, tourists from this great nation are not protected from these heinous acts perpetrated while on foreign soil, so Congress suggests vacationing within the country, lest U.S. citizens be accosted by tasteless pranks.

Also, in a minor footnote to the bill, the word "gullible" has been removed from all copies of Webster's Dictionary sold in the United States of America, marking the first time in history that the U.S. Government has outlawed a word.