What is up with me receiving upwards of 100 e-mails per day that try to sell me on products to "turn my trouser mouse into a monster?" Luckily the spam filter catches most of it, but still -- it's bloody ridiculous. Case in point:

from: Eliah Lillenes <eliah [email protected]>
to: [email protected],
date: Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 3:12 PM
subject: Develop exceptional length and girth

Lynn moaned in pleasure and cried that the feeling of my longer, thicker tool in her felt amazing.

http://www.lokivae.com/
Develop exceptional length and girth

Is that narrative excerpt really supposed to sell me on the product? Are men so obsessed with increasing the length and girth of their junk that they welcome these deluges of augmenting solicitations? On the one hand I guess that people are annoyed by the spam -- hence the creation of spam filters -- but on the other I think that if a significant number of guys weren't actually biting companies wouldn't keep sending out these messages ad nauseam. And that's kinda sad and gross and pathetic.

I'm not sure whether I'm drooling all over my pillow and then flipping over or what, but I had another dream last night in which I got shot in the head and spent the remainder of the dream bleeding profusely. When it began, I was traveling through a desert with a stranger in search of shelter. Eventually we came upon a gated military installation of sorts, but they refused to let us in... so my loyal companion deduced that they'd have to let us in if one of us were wounded and promptly fired a shot into the back of my skull. I blacked out.

I awoke within the installation, bleeding profusely as an emaciated man straddled me and with his hands pressed against my forehead (the exit wound, apparently) and the base of my skull to stem the flow of blood. Then, suddenly, I found myself sitting at home watching TV -- but still bleeding extensively from the head. The events of the dream were fairly normal from that point onward. I checked my e-mail and did some browsing on the computer, went to Toys 'R' Us in search of some DC Universe Classics figures, and so forth. Except all the while I continued to bleed from the head in two directions and wonder when I would finally die from the blood loss. Yep.

And then, when I finally woke up and returned to sleep, I had some odd dream involving Catherine Keener and Tom Hanks telephoning each other and showering in the woods and hitchhiking in the rain.

My subconscious is very, very strange.

How 'bout these Democratic primaries, eh? I'm not sure just how much I want to write here -- this could easily turn into a novel-length entry if I don't keep myself in check -- but I've been wanting to share my thoughts on the race for some time now. And it just so happens that Geraldine Ferraro's recent comments have given me a perfect occasion to do so!

According to Ferraro, "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is." In another interview, in which she discussed this response, Ferraro affirmed that she responded "in large measure, because he is black" when asked why Obama is where he is today. And now, rightfully so, in my opinion, she is taking a lot of heat for these remarks. But whereas Ferraro seems to think that she's being attacked because of her own skin color, I submit that people's response largely stems from the obvious ignorance of her comments -- whether they fully realize it or not.

Now, I admit that Barack Obama's skin color has played a role in his success this far. In fact, in the beginning, I didn't even like Obama all that much because he was clearly being used as the Democrats' token black. Every time I looked, he was being paraded out to give the same speech about how he came from mixed parentage and how that symbolizes the promise of America and blah-de-blah blah -- it basically amounted to, "My mom was white, my dad was Black, ergo America is wonderful." I wondered if he was capable of talking about anything else. People have accused Obama's more recent speeches on hope and change of lacking substance (I disagree), but these speeches are overflowing with depth and meaning when compared to his old rhetoric.

So certainly Obama's skin color aided his rise within the Democratic party, if only because the Democrats were so eager to use him to better appeal to the people and further their own agenda. And it probably factors into the reasons that people support him, though I would hardly state that it is the only or even primary reason -- or that, if the color of his skin were different, people would not feel so strongly about him. Rather, I think that the primary reasons that people are behind Obama are because he a) is an eloquent and inspiring speaker, b) is running an excellent campaign, c) appears cool and downright presidential in his debate performances, and d) successfully presents himself as being uniquely poised to bring about some much-needed positive change in this country. There are, of course, other important reasons regarding Obama's platform (which albeit is not that different from Hillary Clinton's), but still. Does Ferraro mean to suggest that people would vote for Obama even he were a poor and rambling speaker, seemed thoroughly uninformed, unkempt, and unfit to lead in his public appearances, and had been thoroughly defeated by Clinton in each of their debates -- simply because of his skin color? Please. (more...)

As noted in A Crayon Haiku #74 and the attendant Scary-Crayon blog entry, I really, really would like to stop watching this awful show. But I can't. And why not? Because Allison Mack is just too cute. Argh.

I was about to draw a parallel between my viewing of "Smallville" and many women watching "The Oprah Winfrey Show" -- despite both programs being undeniably terrible and headache-inducing -- but I don't think it's a proper comparison. True, women swoon over Oprah, but I don't think they're doing it in quite the same way. Unless, of course, they are.

Ick.

And with that brilliant segue into disgusting subject matter comes our other news -- which I suppose isn't really news if you've been keeping up with Scary-Crayon. The good folks at Basic Fun stumbled upon my review of the Series 1 Madballs and were kind enough to hook me up with an advance set of the Series 2 'balls! (Thanks again, y'all! ) So here's the review of those! I love Madballs even more than Allison Mack.

I was about to suggest perhaps combining Miss Mack and Madballs into an even greater entity, but somehow I don't think that would work very well.

Seriously. I think I look pretty darned good on paper, but then I get into interviews and blow them so badly that the hiring organizations don't even bother to contact me to tell me that I didn't get the job -- they just repost the classified ad and only let me know when I write to find out about the (fairly obvious, but still) status of my application.

Anyway, I mention this because I had an interview last Friday that was flipping brutal. I'm not sure how appropriate it is to mention many of the details in an online forum -- what I was applying for, specifics of the interview, etc. -- but let's just say that I felt like the lead interviewer essentially called me an ignorant American and at one point told me that I'd given a terrible response to a specific question. It was the kind of interview where I almost wish I'd flipped out, cursed everyone relentlessly, and maybe even tossed in a few German suplexes for good measure. Yeah, that kind of ferocity isn't really in my nature -- and I certainly wouldn't have gotten the job unless I'd been applying to the UFC competition (which I wasn't) -- but I a) wouldn't be worried about whether I got the job (which, amazingly, I'm still hoping for at this point despite the utterly abysmal nature of the interview) and b) could have walked out of that room with my pride intact. As it was, I felt utterly emasculated when it was over.

If I did anything right at all during the interview, I think it was that I probably came across as wholly docile and non-threatening -- which may be good considering that half of the interview consisted of the interviewers telling me how reviled and potentially feared I would be in the position owing to the color of my skin. I guess there were other parts of it that may not have been completely terrible. I got a chuckle out of my mention of octopus-flavored ice cream, even if I did choke on the word "octopus". I probably choked on more words that I don't precisely recall -- I know I choked on my words at least five times while saying goodbye to another interviewee with whom I had the pleasure of chatting during the bus/metro ride to and from the interview. Yep -- my Smoothest Dude Ever Award is in the mail.

I may have accrued some positive karma points, though -- and not just because the interview went so terribly, either. At the bus stop en route to the interview, this old woman happened to drop one of her gloves before going off to hail a cab (apparently the bus was taking too long for her). Now, I didn't notice her dropping the glove, but another woman at the stop happened to see it and stated flatly, "She drop [sic] her glove." And then I found myself in one of those moments where time stands still, because I was totally waiting for the woman to reach down, pick up the glove right in front of her, turn to the other side, and hand the glove to the old woman -- who, at this point, was still standing on the curb about an arm's length away. Instead, she did flipping nothing. When it became apparent that no one else was going to do anything either, I found myself dashing forward (I was standing on the opposite side of the bus stop enclosure), scooping up the glove from the ground, and running up to the woman just as she got inside a cab while waving the glove and shouting, "Ma'am! Ma'am!" The cabbie rolled down the window, the woman got her glove, and all was right with the world -- until the bus showed up about a minute later and carried me off to botch that interview in a very real and very, very unfortunate way.

But while I may be a terrible interviewee, at least I'm not an entirely terrible person. Right? 😐