Posts Tagged ‘humor’


Thanks to Prayer, I’ve Never Been Attacked by A Bear

July 21st, 2008 by Waldorf Van Buren

The trauma a ten-year-old experiences watching a bear attack – even a fictionalized account on screen, stage or page – is enough to send the child into a mild form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is what I believe I have, no matter how many doctors tell me it’s all in my head. The “learned professionals” are constantly bandying about words like “psychosomatic” and “hypochondriac,” but they still charge my insurance for services rendered. (more…)

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Kill This Trend

September 12th, 2008 by Waldorf Van Buren

I’ve compiled a list of trends and ideas that just need to go away. It will be good for television, good for individuals, and good for society in general. This list is just meant for trends in current media. I have a “no more” list for current trends in society as well, but there were so many for media I had to make a separate list.

  1. No more Highlander sequels, television shows, comic books, radio shows, etc. There can be only one? Prove it.
  2. No more reality shows. These people are as real as a stripper’s boobs or a politician’s smile. Documentary shows and cinema verité are fine art forms that catch real life in action. Reality shows, however, just exploit the greedy, the stupid, and the false. Normally I’d be okay with that exploitation, but when it gets in the way of “quality” programming (like Jericho, Firefly… but you’ve heard that rant before) I get a little angry.
  3. No more news anchors telling me what I should think. I have a wife, a church, and a family to do that for me.
  4. No more fearmongering! You read? Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, yada yada yada. If you don’t stop, I’m sure an asteroid will hit us, God® shall smite us, the LHC will poof us out of existence, and the Democrats will let another terrorist attack happen. You’d better be prepared.
  5. No more American Idol. I have no words other than “Shit Sandwich.”
  6. No more Toby Keith. A moratorium on all things Toby Keith should commence immediately, and last until further notice.
  7. No more Paris Hilton. Ever. Well, maybe, but I have secret, wet and naked on top of me conditions.
  8. No more legislation of morality. Puritania(!) has been dead for a long while. Let it stay dead.

Editor’s Note: We cannot be held responsible for any sex tapes, STDs or bad mental images that result from exposure to Paris Hilton.

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I have a vagina and I’m not afraid to use it

September 14th, 2008 by Waldorf Van Buren

It’s actually a puppet.

With my puppetry-powered vagina, I shall energize the base of Republican voters. They shall swoon and cry and see me as the second coming. They won’t need to know anything about me, except that I have a vagina and a strange accent.

With my puppetry-powered vagina, I shall condemn others, yet still play victim. I will claim conservatism, while opposing everything the word stands for.

With my puppetry-powered vagina, I shall fart out talking points distributed upon White House stationery.

With my puppetry-powered vagina, I shall deflect attention from the things that could lose the election for me (and that strange old man that gawks at my vagina-ness) – issues and substance.

All shall worship the puppetry-powered vagina. Only when it’s too late will you realize that my vagina is actually someone else’s penis, and that penis shall penetrate the anus of every American willfully with excessive force.

****

Can we stop helping her now?

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Kill This Trend: US Edition

September 16th, 2008 by Waldorf Van Buren

Some trends I find extremely annoying in our society and culture of mix-mosh…

  1. Old Republicans telling us what’s best for us: Stop telling everyone you are a conservative when you support such horrid deficit spending. Just shut up.
     
  2. Young Democrats telling us what’s best for us: Just shut up.
     
  3. Libertarians: Guys. Lighten up. Pricks like you claim the government will just fuck everything up, then you prove yourselves correct by electing a guy who, indeed, fucks everything up. You claim the free market will shake things out and resolve everything. Right. You make Feudal society look like Paradise. I have a hard time accepting that the free market (capitalism) will come to my aid (Police or Firemen) or prevent a corporation from raping a city, polluting its population, then moving to another country, leaving the former workers without health insurance, jobs, or self-esteem.
     
  4. Making celebrity from nothing at all: I’m talking about Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Survivor winners, reality show cretins, and Sarah Palin.
     
  5. Laws prohibiting Marijuana: Come on. 420! I don’t partake in the ganga…  anymore. Not since last century. It made me defensive and paranoid, though I suspect I’ve always been that way. I don’t know why Head Shops, Frito-Lay, and Philly Blunts don’t all thrown in to lobby to get this prohibition struck down. For more background, I’m against this prohibition and I am a cancer survivor(?) who isn’t able to partake because of shit in my lungs.
     
  6. Two party system: Just get rid of it. It’s old, tired, and way past its sell-by date. The clumps of sour, clotted milk take the form of politicians, and it takes a lot of study to see any difference between member of the two parties. A lot of people give Smokin’ Joe Lieberman a lot of heat for rim-jobbing, whoever he serves at the time. But while Joey strides the line as a “turncoat,” many of his current and former allies are just like him. They just prefer to have the happy little R or D by their names, probably because they have no opinions of their own.
     
  7. Pharmaceuticals: Can we stop with the drugs?! I take handfuls of drugs each day and I hate it! Each of these drugs has caused a slew of other side effects controlled by…  more drugs. Let’s wean ourselves off of the drug culture, because we are making ourselves mindless, dependent zombies.
     
  8. Oil, Gas, and Coal: Come on, already! End the run! It’s no longer cheap or efficient to use fossil fuels. Let’s find some alternative resources, because the truth is fossil fuels are not renewable and that means once they expire, they expire for good. Poking into the earth like an old, blind man at an orgy only provides a quick fix to the blind man. Overall, it will be pretty unsatisfying for everyone else.
     
  9. Global Warming “Skeptics”: Don’t give me the bullshit that you don’t “buy into the religion” of global Warming because one scientist had a datum error, Al Gore has a huge… electric bill, or that this August’s chill factor is proof that it doesn’t exist. Why so negative? It’s not like you, Joe Schmoe (of the Schenectady Schmoes), are directly benefiting from Global Warming (Atmospheric Cooling, Climate Change, etc.). In fact, I’m pretty sure the causes of this “supposed” Warming are also polluting the air you breathe, the water you drink, the earth you dig into, and the food you eat. Fire, however, seems unaffected.
     
  10. Unification of Church and State: If we meld church and state into one conglomerate, then God will be on our side. Not just any God, but God of America®.
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I’d Like to Ruin Television for You 2009-2010: Saturday/Sunday

September 13th, 2009 by Waldorf Van Buren

I’d Like to Ruin Television For You: 2009-2010 Season: The Weekend

The weekend, to me, doesn’t matter, except it means I get to hang out with my friends who work for a living and I get my kids all day and all night until sitter/school on Monday mornings. So I don’t have much time for Television, much less anything else. However, I have researched what to watch, what to DVR, and what to avoid for the Saturdays and Sundays of lonely nights alone, warming your hands by the blue heat of the television.

Saturdays are lean on the original programming side, because execs understand that normal people go out and do things on Saturday night, so they don’t try to lure us in with Touched by an Angel or Covington Cross. Well, they don’t anymore. Saturdays is for Football and Reality TV. ABC is no exception as it gives us Saturday Night Football. College football, which is way more exciting than Professional American Football, so says I. Being a Buckeyes fan, I have a feeling I won’t have a good time watching any college football this year.

CBS is all about Crime and milking the cow until she’s dry, bleeding the turnip, and getting water from that rock. Crimetime Drama, as they so pluckily call it, consists of RERUNS of procedural police dramas, such as CSI, CSI:NY, CSI: Altoona, etc. They then follow CRIMETIME DRAMA with REAL crime with 48 Hours Mystery, a documentary of true crime in a 48-hour period. It helped usher in the age of the Reality program. I’m not knocking any of the programming, except, that in one sense, I am. It’s nothing new or original or exciting, just the bland leftovers of yesteryear.

FOX shows TWO episodes of COPS (holy crapola, that’s still on?), with America’s Most Wanted at 9:00 PM. Nothing new, borrowed, or blue; just old.

NBC gives us a documentary news program with Dateline NBC, which I watch when I remember to watch. Usually pretty good even if Stone Phillips’ voice makes my ears bleed. Just kidding, Stone. You keep doin’ what you’re doin’. They then give us ENCORES of shows they played earlier in the week. Trauma and Law and Order:SVU. I didn’t watch them earlier in the week, what makes you think I am going to give a shit about them on Saturday? Except to DVR Trauma. . . perhaps. I’ve been wrong before (oh have I), so maybe I will give Trauma a watch or two. I feel I will have to if my wife has anything to say about it (she also watches Ghost Whisperer and Two and a Half Men, so I am stuck).

SUNDAY

Oh, Lord, on this day of days to rest (if it were actually the day of rest, which it isn’t), please give me some of that sweet sweet pap of Sundertainment. And. . . Dammit!

ABC vomits out the same garbage as before, starting with America’s Most Horrible and Embarrasing Injuries, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (does it come with a fake Sears’ card?), Desperate (for ratings) Housewives, and Brothers and Sisters. And I watch none of them, neither should you. While DH used to have pretty sharp writing and wit, it has declined over the years. While last season did have some perky moments, it couldn’t keep my interest past five episodes.

NBC has NFL football, and unless the Pittsburgh Steelers (yeah, I’m one of THOSE!) are playing, I won’t be watching.

CBS shovels out 60 Minutes, which is still a great show despite Andy Rooney. On top of that is the Amazing Race, which used to be novel for a reality show, and is no longer. Follow it up with a helping of Three Rivers, a medical procedural drama in a fictional transplant hospital in Pittsburgh. I can see the titles now, “Kidney Beens”, “I Need a Heart from San Francisco”, “Give me my Spleen, Please!”, etc. I would not like it in a boat, on a moat, or with a goat. CBS caps off the night with Cold Case, which, again used to be a novel way of telling a story, but has grown somewhat stale – As with most network programming. However, creatives do face the trickiness of changing a show by adding more characters, creating implausible scenarios, or changing the structure of a winner, and by doing, taking a jump over that mighty shark.

FOX finishes up its NFL Sunday with a recap of the days highlights and immediately dives into Animation Domination, as it was called a few years ago. It sandwiches The Cleveland Show (a takeoff from Family Guy in which we follow the loveable Scrubs) between an ancient, toothless The Simpsons and the beat-a-dead-horse Family Guy. The Simpsons is probably my all-time favorite show. Of all-time. ALL-TIME. I used to be able to quote with the best of them. Alas, either I grew up (NEVER!) or the show declined in sharpness (say it ain’t so!). I believe that a mixture of both with a great heaping of competing with the faster paced LCD comedy of Family Guy did it in. Well, not did it in as in killed it, but accelerated the decline to what we have today. While it might never reach the heights it did in seasons two through six, it is still the smartest, funniest show on Sunday night. Oh yeah, American Dad also runs.

That’s it for this season, except for a quick rant I will do about midseason replacements, coming soon. I hope you enjoyed, or at least tolerated, this year’s I’d Like to Ruin Television for You.

You can hear a poorly produced audio version at brettfauver.multiply.com/music/

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