The Human Brain: Computer or Just a Jukebox?

Hello fellow patients,

Have you ever had a phrase from a movie, or a poem, or a stand-up comedy bit, or some other random sentence, get stuck in your head for like a week?

No! You haven't! No one has!

Information of that sort is not allowed to continually run in your brain. The only thing that gets to run an infinite loop in your cerebral cortex (or, "run itself over and over in your head", for those of you who do not speak nerd), other than the nagging suspicion that your wife is sleeping around with the guy from the video store, is: a song.

I bet if you think about it, you realize that pretty much most of the time, there is a song of some sort stuck in your head, just running, over and over and over ad nauseum (Author's note: Please note how the preceding Latin phrase is set off in italics. Only the finest writers care enough to let you know, via font variation, exactly when they are trying to sound more intelligent than they actually are. Remember: Italics. The sign of superior craftmanship in the literary arts.). How it got there can vary. Maybe you heard it on the radio on the way to work; maybe you heard it as a jingle for the ad for hemorrhoid cream you saw on TV last night; maybe someone else had it stuck in their head and sang it to you just out of spite; maybe it just popped in there completely out of the blue. However it got there, I can tell you how it did not get in there:

You didn't put it in there yourself.

Not only do you have no say in what song gets to go into the ol' cerebral 8-track (or, "I-Pod", for those of you who do not speak geezer), you have no say in how long it stays. It could be for a few minutes, a couple of hours, or all damn day. You have no say in the matter. Oh, you can try to get it out of there. You may even succeed for a minute or two. But it's coming back. It always comes back. You can't even stop it by killing enough brain cells via alcohol to short-circuit the whole process.

Trust me. I've tried.

The song leaves only when it's ready to leave, not a minute sooner.

Have you ever done this one? You manage to get some awful song outof your head, then you pause and think, "Hmmm... ...I did it. I can't remember what song it was." And then what do you do? You actually sit and think about it! You think for a second, and...

...manage to bring the song back. Hooray. You can't remember where your keys are, or when your kids' birthdays are, but you can remember that yes, it was in fact "Groove is in the heart" that you had finally vanquished from your brain.

"One... Two... Three... Wblwblwblwbl!!!"*

It makes you wonder, doesn't it? How much of our brains are we wasting running song loops through out head all day long? How much smarter could we be; how much more could we accomplish, if we could simply click the "X" in the uper right corner and turn that media player off? Could we solve all the world's problems, simply by putting that wasted power to better use?

Probably not. Let's face it; we can't even set the clock on the microwave without calling tech support. I doubt that just by wiping out that FreeCreditReport.com song, we'd be figuring out climate change.

But, considering I can't remember Maxwell's Equations (Author's note 2: What? Are you waiting for another one of those handy translations in parentheses? I just told you I can't remember them. Besides, I'm not trying to impress you with my genius this time. Otherwise, there would have been italics.), and yet I can easily pull up the music from a Dr. Pepper commercial that hasn't aired since 1976, it's hard not to feel that evolution, or God, screwed up somewhere (Author's note 3: I am not getting dragged into that debate today. Let me just say this: I am not trying to insinuate that God makes mistakes. Who am I to judge His plan? It's just that, if we are made in God's image, then He must have pretty bad taste in music, if the crap that gets stuck in my head is any proof.). At the very least, if this is the way it's meant to be, could someone at least put Maxwell's Equations to music?

And make it as crappy a song as possible, so I can remember.

I guess the point is this. I'm angry. It's four in the morning, and I can't sleep. Why? Because I have this "Halle Berry" song stuck in my head, this god-awful rap song (I know, I know. Redundant, these days.), just like it has been for the last eight hours. Hell, I've gotten sick of a song that I had only heard one time because it was stuck in my head for so long. It's irritating. It's frustrating. It's... It's...

"Miss Berry... Miss Berry."
"Miss Berry... Miss Berry."

Screw this. I'm going to bed.

His Holiness Pope Salty I

*If you have a better spelling for the sound that chick makes in that song, other than Wblwblwblwbl!!!, I'd love to hear it.

Just don't sing it.

HHPS1

Dark Chocolate M&M's Are Racist

Hello fellow patients,

I feel that needed to be said.

Why are we segregating our candy-covered confections, anyway? And don't get me started on that whole "green M&M's" thing, either. I ate three pounds of the things, and I'm still no bigger than an "A" cup, maybe a small "B" if I'm about to start...

You should be ashamed of yourselves. I don't care how cute your Christmas ads are. No wonder you made Santa faint. I'd faint too, if I ran into a candy-coated Klansman on Christmas eve. And why is it always the yellow one that freaks Santa out? Why not the red one? Or maybe the white one?

Oh that's right. There's not a white one.

I'll have you know, I've already consulted Al Sharpton about the matter, and a boycott and march upon Washington are already in the works. We may even start a letter-writing campaign! We'll see if you have the chocolate-covered peanuts to admit you were wrong, and allow all your candies to live together in the same bag. Seperate-but-equally-priced packaging is not going to cut it anymore.

You haven't heard the last of this, M&M's. I promise I will not rest until this injustice is righted, and all candies live in peace and equality.

Except for licorice. That shit sucks.

His Holiness Pope Salty I

p.s.: Don't think I'm not watching you, Chinese Checkers...

HHPS1

Trent and Maynard Wish the Eighties Never Happened

Hey gang,

If you're like me, there are few things in life more satisfying than telling a child there's no such thing as Santa Claus. There is a split second, before the bawling starts, that is sheer ecstasy. Their upper lip quivers a little, the pupils dilate, a cry wants to come out but can't...

...it's sheer heaven.

It is in this spirit of giving that your humble, infallible leader proudly shares the following video. If you love Nine Inch Nails, this is for you.

Who says da Pope never does anything nice?

Wow. How embarrassing.

Sure, you're never gonna be able to look at Trent the same way again. Sure, you're going to think of Boy George every time you see a NIN video (Like you don't think of Boy George enough already. Sicko...). At least you still have your Tool though, right?

Right?



I'm feelin' that hair, there, Maynard...

Well, I hope you enjoyed watching those videos as much as I enjoyed sharing them.

That isn't entirely true.

What I really hope is that I've scarred you for life. Or at least kind of taken the piss out of your favourite bands. If I have, then my work here is done.

Oh, one more thing: There is no Tooth Fairy. That was your mom the whole time who put a quarter under your pillow.

And she put a dollar under mine.

His Holiness Pope Salty I

All That and Looks Too?

Hello fellow patients,

Have you heard?

It seems America has a new singing sensation that is taking America by storm (The preceding sentence brought to you by the Department of Redundency Department, New York, NY.). That's right, folks, there is a new name on everyone's tongue these days. You can't go anywhere without hearing the name...

...Well, I don't remember her name.

But I do remember that voice. It was stunning. I had heard about her, of course, this Internet sensation who had dazzled the U.K. with her performance on the television show Britain's Got Talent and was now being heard all over the world. But I had never heard her for myself, until today. I was in the bathroom, testing the effects of curl relaxer on pubic hair, when I heard this angelic voice drifting from the television in the other room. I leapt up and sprinted into the living room...

...I tried to, anyway. I tripped and fell before I could get to the living room. Turns out pubic hair is longer than you think once you take the curls out.

I didn't let that stop me, though. I jumped up, threw my hair over my shoulder, and rushed the five feet into the living room (My place is a bit on the small side. Don't knock it, though. My tiny apartment makes my cock look bigger.).

I'll give you fellas a minute to jot that down...

I finished rushing to the living room. That angelic voice was still pouring out of my television. I looked up, and...

Ouch.

Okay, so she's not much to look at. She's kinda got this Ron Jeremy after a sex change thing goin' on that doesn't really do it for me. And judging by the general public reaction I've heard, doesn't really do it for much of anybody else, either. I'll put it like this: Here is a woman in her fifties who claims to have never been kissed, and people seem to have no problem believing her.

Still, I wanted to listen. I spent a few minutes going through my television's menu, trying to see if there was a visual equivalent to the mute button, and as I did, a couple of thoughts came to mind...

1. Whatever happened to the golden age of radio?, and...

2. Wow, this is really, really ugly.

(Author's note: If this were a sit-com, and we were in the middle of one of those "special episodes" they used to do back in the day when people on TV at least pretended to want to send a positive message to the public, we would be at the point where the "serious" music would start to play, to let you know that you were reaching the "time for your moral" part of the show. Since this is not a sit-com, and the odds of learning any life lessons here, other than "always save your prescription bottles", are pretty much zero, I guess we won't bother. As a matter of fact, forget I brought it up. Sure, I'm about to dish out a stinging indictment of modern society and its unhealthy obsession with celebrity and physical beauty, but I probably won't be able to do it without fucking it up with some tasteless joke like that pubic hair thing earlier. I really should grow up. You probably should, too. You can't spend your whole life pounding drinks and strippers and expect to get anything done.)

(Author's note 2: I'm sure you were all expecting me to make some sarcastic shit up to counter that last statement. Not to disappoint you, but I do not believe that is necessary. We all know I was lying. Let's just leave it at that and move on.)

So why is the world so taken up with this, um, chick? Hell, you can't throw a rock without hitting someone who can sing. Trust me, I've tried. Is it because her voice is just that superior to anyone else's?

Of course not.

The fact is, everyone is so blown away by her precisely because she is so homely. Without realizing it, we think,"How can someone without supermodel looks sing like that?" We as a culture are so used to the concept that beauty is synonymous with talent that we're stunned to see one without the other.

And that, my friends, is what is ugly.

Hey, I warned you there was gonna be a moral...

We are not used to seeing an unattractive person with talent because we're not allowed to. Looks are everything; talent is secondary. The sixties had Janis Joplin; we get Ashlee Simpson. The sixties had Walter Cronkite; we get Stone Phillips and that Robin in the Morning chick on CNN. Hell, they couldn't even remake Star Trek without casting it to look like a fucking Calvin Klein ad.

Let me ask you this: Who do you think is going to be better at something: The average-looking person that has had to earn every break they've gotten, or the pretty person that has been able to float to the top? (By "float" I of coarse mean fornicate, fellate, rim, fist, and whatever-the-fuck Lindsey Lohan did to get a career in Hollywood.)

Hey I warned you I'd fuck it up with a tasteless joke...

Well, I say enough is enough!

I'm tired of the myth that beauty equals talent! I'm tired of the media force-feeding us nothing but stunningly beautiful people 24/7! I'm tired of seeing hotness on every channel, in every music video, and on every sideline! I say we get all this hotness out of the entertainment industry (Except the adult-entertainment industry, of course. No use being a damn fool about this...), out of the media, and out of the music industry, and get it back where it belongs...

...on my face.

His Holiness Pope Salty I

Darth Vader Rap

Hey gang,

I know I shouldn't post this. I know that you have to be a total nerd to laugh at this, just like you know it.

And yet, here we are. A Darth Vader rap.

Is that what it's come to?

Yes, I'm afraid it is.

His Holiness Pope Salty I

The Anniversary Waltz, or What Day Is It?

Hello fellow patients,

My one-year anniversary is this week.

I know this because my girlfriend told me.

Ladies, I don't want to burst your bubble on this one or anything, but dating anniversaries are something us guys just don't keep up with. It's not that we don't want to; it's just that we don't have the mental capacity. That's the reason marriage was conceived in the first place. (Okay, maybe "conceived" isn't the best choice of words here. Not that it doesn't fit. It fits too well. Really, people. Enough with the breeding. Have you been in the express lane at Wal-Mart recently? I mean, all you want is to buy your whipped cream, dog collar, black socks, and copy of High School Musical 3, so you can enjoy a nice evening at home, and you're stuck behind the 19-year-old girl breaking out the food stamps to buy Sugar Puffs for those 6 goddamn kids she's got bouncing around the buggy like sub-atomic particles in a supercollider...)

What? Too nerdy? Okay, let me try again...

...those 6 goddamn kids she's got bouncing around like the collective sweaters of the Jefferson High School varsity cheerleader squad trying at the annual homecoming pep rally...

"We've got spirit..." [bouncey, bouncey]

"Yes we do..." [bouncey, bouncey]

"We've got spirit..." [bouncey, bouncey]

"How 'bout you??!!"

I'm sorry. What was the question?

No really. What was the question. I forgot what we were talking about.

...Oh yeah. Anniversaries. The whole reason weddings were conceived, other than as an excuse to get strangers to buy you presents, is so guys can remember anniversaries. Even though the groom is nothing more than a prop at a wedding, and the service could be run just fine without him, and even though the day is nothing more than a blur of "stand here", "say this", "take your picture there", "go say hello to this family member that you either can't remember or can't stand", and "go over there", maybe with an "I do" thrown in there somewhere, he still knows something important is going on. He's dressed up in a tuxedo and nobody has died.

Well, nobody other than his sex life, but he doesn't know that yet...

No, what he does know is that this day is important, it's all about her, and if he doesn't want to see that sex life die even faster than it already will, he better remember that day.

That's why the smart guys always put their weddings on a day they can already remember. Her birthday (apparently we're supposed to remember that too), Valentine's Day, Halloween, April Fool's (not a good idea, by the way, no matter how appropriate it may be...), something like that. Any day that will stick in you mind. Take October 7, for instance. It's her special day. And the fact that 10-7 happens to be the score of the Iron Bowl that year that you and your buddies drank too much Jagermeister after the game and you ended up going home with a girl that could not have possibly been the same one you woke up with, and that you swear to this day must have been swapped out on you in the middle of the night, because you went to bed with Marilyn Monroe and woke up with Marilyn Manson, and...

...it's not important. What's important is that you have a tool for remembering your special day.

And by "your" I of course mean "her"...

...but don't ever say that.

Ever.

The point is (Editor's note: There's a point?) (Author's note: Yes, there's a point, smartass. Just 'cause I don't remember what it is doesn't mean it doesn't exist. After all, if a tree falls in the woods, and you're there, but you're too fucked up to remember why you're in the woods in the first place, much less some shit about a tree falling, does it mean that there's no point?) (Editor's note: WTF?) (Author's note: Exactly my point.) that married guys have this big elaborate ceremony just to help cement in their tiny male minds that this is an important day.

Us single guys ain't that lucky.

I've been in countless relationships over the years, some of them even lasting more than overnight, and I have yet to figure out what event constitutes an anniversary in a relationship. Sure, back in the day, your parents could mark that day on the calender when they shared a malted at the corner drugstore, or whatever people did back then, but these days it's not that cut and dry. If you're like me, you've never once had a relationship begin with a first date. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I know how relationships even start. It just seems like you go from the state of not dating to the state of dating, without any real clue how it even happened. And yet, somehow, in that blur, she is always able to pinpoint an exact day that is your anniversary.

So what day is it? Is it the first time you met? The first time you kissed? The first time you made love? It's all so confusing. Which is why I strongly recommend, ladies, that you try to make all these events occur on the same day. You know, to avoid confusion.

But if your lady wasn't considerate enough to simplify things for you like that, you're stuck figuring it out on your own. Well, not exactly on your own. She will give you subtle little hints, hints like...

"Do you know what next week is?"

"You haven't forgotten about Tuesday, have you?"

"So what are we doing tomorrow night, you know, for our Special Day?" (Notice the capitol letters here, fellas. That is capital "don't", capital "fuck", capital "this", capital "up". Got it?)

"Hey dickhead. It's our anniversary. You're taking me to dinner, and then for a martini, and then back home for two hours of foreplay. And no, I don't count balancing the beer on my head while you watch Robot Chicken to be foreplay. Bring a miner's hat, 'cause you're gonna be down there a while, Sporty. Ya got me?"

Yes, you got her.

Or do you? I sure don't. We're expected to remember all these little things like her favourite colour, how she likes her coffee (Dammit, Salty, you know I don't drink coffee! You must be thinking of your ex-girlfriend! I knew it!), the name of that one bitch at work that she just can't stand, her mother's name, and so on and so on. We're even supposed to remember to change our MySpace status (For the record, mine still says "single". My girl's does too. That's probably the only reason we've made it a year.), and to remember to take out all the girls' numbers from our phone, or at least change them over to guys' names so she won't notice, and on top of all this, we're supposed to remember some arbitrary date when something may or may not have happened twelve months ago?

It's all too much.

For the married guys, it's simple. Your life ended years ago. You have little enough going on in your day that you can devote some brain space to remembering a date on the calendar. For us single guys, though, all you can do is poke and hope. Which is probably how you ended up with a girlfriend in the first place.

I guess what I'm trying to say is...

...Happy anniversary, baby.

Whenever the fuck that is...

His Holiness Pope Salty I

Newswipe (British Satirical News Show on BBC4)

Hey gang,

While wandering through Cyberspace looking for music to stea... ...um, no, wait... ...looking for gay por... ...no, not that... ...let me start over...

While wandering through Cyberspace looking for the perfect Easter e-card to send to my grandmother (Editor's note: It is possible that the author is full of shit, unless he normally sends e-cards to those that passed away years ago. We suspect that the gay porn answer is closer to the truth, but getting the truth out of this fucktard is about as easy as getting a gay blogger to come out of the closet, if you catch our drift...), I came across this clip from a new British comedy show called Newswipe.

Newswipe, from what I was able to research, is a spinoff of another Brit-com, Screen Wipe, both of which star some guy named Charlie Brooker. The closest thing to compare it to would be The Daily Show, I suppose, but it is done a little differently, and the comedy is drier and more, em, "British". Still, it's pretty damn funny.

The clip posted here is a segment on the differences between British and American newscasts. While it hits pretty much everyone, the stuff on Fox News is the funniest, at least to me. It's not as much political humor as it is making fun of the media.

If that kind of stuff sounds interesting to you, check the clip out. If you dig it, you can watch full episodes at www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jhp50.

HHPS1

Fermirotica (from xkcd)

This comic, sent to me by Daniel, is entitled "Fermirotica". It comes courtesy of a site called xkcd (www.xkcd.com). It's nerd humor, for sure, but a lot of it is pretty funny, and if you don't get some of them, that just means you're not an uber-nerd, and you should feel pretty good about that. It's kind of like getting the American Idol question wrong on Trivia Night. In certain cases, ignorance truly can be bliss.

The scary thing about this particular comic is that the math is correct. However, the truly sad and pathetic thing about this comic is that I know the math is correct. See, if you think of the area around you as a circle of radius r, with circumference 2*pi*r, then...

...then you should consider going into engineering. Not so much because you have the brains for it as because you should be able to save enough time by never getting laid to put the study time in.

I know this because, luckily, I live around engineers. Engineers never get laid, which means that Xf would be zero, and a zero in the denominator pushes the answer to infinity, except on a TI-89, where it says "cannot compute" or some shit like that, which leads to the conclusion that...

...that I'm not getting laid either.

Check the site out, though, if slightly filthy, highly nerdy humor is your thing. It's like Revenge of the Nerds as a comic strip.

Seems kind of redundant, doesn't it?

HHPS1

Tools of the Tirade: Your Source for "All Things Funny"!

Hey gang,

I have decided that, this being my big-time official-type website and all, that I should have some sort of official-type website theme. Since "immaturity" is a big vague, and "ravenous drug use" is liable to ruffle the wrong feathers, I have decided to go with...

All Things Funny

What does an official-type theme like "all things funny" entail, exactly? Does it merely mean the occasional comic, video clip, or link to other funny sites, mainly used as a cheap ploy to get my site to pop up on more Google searches, or is it something more: A devotion, nay, a passion, for the art of humor, a quest to search the globe, mining the land for Giggles, Laughs, and Grins?

The smart money, of course, is on the former. I don't really even know what that last part means. "A passion for the art of humor." What-the-fuck-ever.

So, now that we have established what is going on here, namely a marketing tactic, let's move on to the details. The web, as you know, is more than a source of free porn; it is a place to look for things to occupy your time while waiting for your free porn to download. And occasionally during this process, I come across something funny enough to share on these pages.

This is all theoretically, of course. The reality is, the time between porn downloads is perfect for watching free porn. Besides, my keyboard got too sticky to use years ago.

But yours didn't.

For this reason (and because of my sheer laziness), I am inviting you to send me your suggestions. Send me links to anything you find that makes you pee a little. Comic strips, clips of stand-up comics, anything good, I'll watch it all.

(Editor's disclaimer: Note the author said "funny". That rules out anything by Dane Cook, Larry the Cable Guy, or Carlos Mencia. If you find video of these guys getting hit by a bus or sodomized by a rhino, send it in. Otherwise, let's try to go with stuff a bit more underground, and a bit less, um, lame.)

So send in your links. It's time to get to work.

What, you don't expect me to, do you?

His Holiness Pope Salty I

Finally! Something Besides Words!

Hello fellow patients,

One of the harshest critiques I have received so far came from a girl I know, who was kind enough to point out the biggest problem with my ramblings with a conciseness that I could only dream of having...

"I hear your blogs are pretty funny, and I looked 'em up one time, but there was way too much reading..."

Point well taken.

So, in an effort to make these pages appeal to the mainstream American consumer, I am proud to present...

Pictures!

There. Now you can say you've read over a thousand words today.

I'm trying to decide, though. I took this photo in Rome, and I can't decide which lie I want to associate with it...

#1: To find the nearest government building, look for the "government in action" roadsigns, convieniently located around the city.

#2: In an attempt to cut down on the problems associated with casual sex, the city of Rome is unveiling its new "You don't actually believe he's not married, do you?" ad campaign.

#3: Look, honey! Even the signs know you're full of shit!

#4: Limbaugh X-ing

Feel free to make up a lie of your own. You could use the practice, especially if you're planning on going out this weekend.

His Holiness Pope Salty I