To Russia, With Love!

This is a short, but sweet post. I just wanted to say that, for whatever reason, the country that looks at this blog the most (besides my native USA) is Russia.

Maybe I have a Russian sense of humor? I don't know.

But I wanted to say "Thanks!"
So...
спасибо

I hope Google didn't butcher your language too badly.
I apologize if it did.

Here's a special doodle for my friends in east...

Yes, it's just a copy and paste with "спасибо" thrown in. So? I'm lazy. Get over it.

"A Modest Tribute" aka The Poem I Wrote, Lost, Subsequently Found and Ultimately Forgot the Meaning Of

So I cleaned my room this morning... EARLY.

I haven't even gone to sleep yet, and it's 3:18 AM.

I finished cleaning my room maybe an hour ago. :\

Anywho... the point is this:

Whilst throwing away trash I stumbled on a piece of paper with a poem I wrote who-knows-how-long ago.

My room was dirty. :\

Anywhosits, I've decided to share the poem I wrote, lost, and subsequently found with you. (I'm leaving all the grammar, punctuation and capitalization exactly how I found them. Some of it's kind of weird... so... sic!)

Here 'tis:

A modest tribute in a thousand words

could utter we

To the flowing of the faerie's sigh

Wishing we could see

What heaven hath brought with Michael's name

A conqueror of Smiles

A lover's game

From Something past to something more

With someone laughing

And Someone's war

Shall be to see what they can make

Of this and that

of give and take.

Yeah... I don't get it either. :\

If it ever meant anything--a claim I cannot swear to--I have forgotten it entirely.

So, really, this is the question: What does it mean to YOU?

Comment and tell me. ^_^

(Yes, I know this one is a quickie... but I had naught else to brighten your day with at this very early moment.)

So, Ciao!

And, as per my usual request, go do some evil!

~Rafe

Thanksgiving and birthdays on the 24 of November, 1982

Yeah, the title pretty much says it all.

So, I posted on my facebook asking for blog ideas from my readers. :D

Only one responded. :(

It was Satchel, nonetheless.

Satchel Posting

What she posted was  "thanksgiving and birthdays on the 24 of nov. 1982" [sic].

After a day or two NO ONE ELSE wanted me to blog about anything. :( Obviously my other fans hate me. However, I'm willing to do this blog dedicated to the ideas of Satchel, because I'm lobbying her to name her next child Pavel... even if it's a girl. :D

So, first, we will delve into Thanksgiving.
It's a day for giving thanks.

Nuff said?

Now for birthdays on November 24, 1982... >:)

A little bit of math (2011-1982=29) shows us that any person or persons with this birthday is about to become AO. Which, as everyone knows, is "Almost Old."

You see... ages work like this:
0-1 Baby
2-4 Toddler
5-12 Kid
13-19 Teenager (aka mentally imbalanced individual)
20 Limbo
21-25 Young Adult
26-29 Adult
30-45 Old
46-65 "Middle aged"
66-79 Young at Heart
80-89 Old (again)
90-99 Very Old
100+ Ancient Relic of the Dinosaurs...

Anyone born on November 24th of 1982 is approaching their last year of "Adult," and is almost Old! Shortly (very shortly) we'll have to drum said person out of the ranks of the youthful. :\ Unless he or she is a celebrity. Somehow they can stay young for decades...

Go figure.

Now, if we do some assuming, we should assume that Satchel wanted us to blog about birthdays on November 24th of 1982 because HER birthday is on November 24th of 1982.

I can see the tabloids now:

SATCHEL TURNS ALMOST OLD! REGRETS NOT NAMING CHILD "PAVEL"!

Obviously we have to prevent this from happening.


We have a few options:
1) Make Satchel into a celebrity (this can buy her a few more years).
2) Kill her before her birthday (sadly, not a legal option).
3) Get her to sign a contract legally naming her child (be it male or female) Pavel.
4) All of the above.


Personally, I'm a fan of #1... sadly, the most celebratory thing she's done is give me minions. :\ Not many people gonna buy her CD for that.


Her brothers, dad, and husband are big and scary, so killing her is basically off the table.


Number 4 is just stupid.


That leaves us only one option.


Satchel, if you're reading this, NAME YOUR CHILD PAVEL!
Or Melville... I like Melville too...


Anywho... peace out, ciao and go do some evil. -_-

The Legend of the Spider of Death (AKA "Can you find the iguana?")

Are you a sufferer of arachnophobia?

I am.

It sucks more than a vacuum cleaner.

And that’s a lot.

One night I was in my room, sitting in bed, and enjoying writing a story about someone or something or whatever. Pen in hand, tea by my side, paper in front of me… *ah* …the only thing that could have made it better is if the tea was soda and the pen was candy… and the paper a movie starring Eddie Izzard, Ed Helms and Will Smith. Let’s throw Keisha Castle-Hughes and Karen Gillan in there for balance.

(Of course I would still wanting to be writing said movie, and would need at least a $100,000,001.82 budget. I’m not picky.)

This film would be entitled: “Snow White Powder and the Seven Dealers” it would win all kinds of awards (including “Coolest Writer”) and make me famous.

Me getting famous:

While I was trying to get famous, I innocently glanced at the floor.

*Was that movement?*

I glanced again (this time not so innocently)…

*GASP!* IT WAS MOVEMENT!

It was a spider…

…of death.

But it wasn’t just ANY spider of death. This was, I shit you not, the biggest, baddest, baby-eatin’est son of an eight-legged, creepy, crawly, she-devil I have EVER seen in my entire life.

Then it began running towards me.

Now, let me take a moment to say that I know I suffer from arachnophobia. I know that what I actually saw was probably something like this:

But that knowledge doesn’t help me.

It doesn’t help me one bit.

What I SAW, What I remember seeing, what has been seared with a hot-iron into my memory FOREVER looked like this:

I was terrified.

I was Petrified.

Mortified.

Stupefied.

By a spider.

That was charging me.

I jumped up.

And I screamed.

Like a girl.

And it ran under my bed.

At the sound of my heart exploding, Behemoth, my brother—who was asleep in his bed across the room, woke up… ish.

He (kind of) opened his eyes and (sort of) looked to see why I was screaming like a banshee.

Of course, by this point, I was merely hyperventilating.

So he did this:

And then he went back to sleep.

I was (for all intents and purposes) alone in my room with a giant, man-eating demon sent straight from the bowels of HELL to torment me for my SINS!

There was a spider in there too.

Okay, I kid…

…the spider WAS the demon.

Somehow (I don’t remember exactly how) I escaped the bedroom with my life.

I was determined(ish) to defeat this atrocity of creation, and reclaim my right as the ONLY ONE who could hide under my bed.

But I needed to find something to aid me in my quest.

I went looking for a flashlight.

I couldn’t find the bloody flashlight.

Damn.

I stumbled on an electric lantern.

After I got up again, I took it into my room and tried to peer under the bed. This is difficult to do when you refuse to get closer than ten feet from the bed in question. (I wasn’t going to stick my face down there for it to feast on!) Luckily my bed is raised a bit high off the ground, and none of my blankets were hanging down. So I could see decently well as I looked for the beast below.

I didn’t find it.

The next day my mother brought a flashlight in from the truck.

FML

I still couldn’t find it.

Actually, I never found it.

To this day a demon-possessed spider dwells in my room… and I sleep on the couch.

Did you find the iguana?

Quick--Run With Me, Friend, Towards the Danger!

Many of you who are MST3K fans will know that the title of this post is a quote from "Cave Dwellers." Any of you who know what MST3K IS will know that it was a very funny quip.
But we're not here to talk about MST3K, and for someone who's not here to discuss MST3K, I sure am discussing MST3K a lot.

Moving on...

Once upon a time there was a friend of mine who, though she thought she was a princess, was more akin to a wicked witch named Satchel. :) Even though she probably doesn't practice witchcraft, we'll STILL call her Satchel.

Satchel, as it were, had three boys who we will call, from oldest to youngest, Jose, Jimp, and Lex. (These three boys are destined to be my minions... as soon as they're old enough to understand what it is minions do.)

One day after church (where she was pretending to be holy) Satchel was leading her three boys home. They live fairly close to church, so they walk. (I don't live far from church either, and I would walk but for the fact that I'm lazy.)

The scene was one of peace and tranquility. It looked like this:

"Hmm... Hmm... Hmm... I'mma just walking home..."

Then, because my sister, Evic, is (almost) as evil as I am, she drove up real close behind the happy little family (we were in the church's parking lot) and did what any God fearing American would do.

She honked the horn.

Satchel looked back at us and smiled a pleasant, "hello" type of smile.

This was not Jimp's reaction.

Jimp flipped.

After taking one look at the looming death car behind him, the scene of peace and tranquility became anything but.

It became this:



You gotta love Jimp's reflexes though. I don't think a pouncing lioness could have caught the little guy. As he waddled away at record breaking speeds, I could almost hear his thoughts.

"Must... escape... car... QUICKLY! Run into the oncoming TRAFFIC!" <--(This is what the title's referring to... in case you missed it.)
Run to the road to escape cars? Gotta love children's logic.

Luckily for everyone involved, mothers are faster than pouncing lionesses, and Satchel reached Jimp before the traffic did. Then she shot Evic a look of "Gee, thanks for trying to kill my son."

Then she smiled again...

And it was this last smile that made me question her "I'm a saint" ploy.

Would a saint smile after their son nearly became the main dish at roadkill cafe?

Who knows?


Here's something I think I meant to post a long time ago:

Flashes in the Dark Ages
(Did I post this one already?):
Before Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, great ideas manifested themselves as gas-burning lamps. This was dangerous due to the many dullards who could start the thinking process, but not quite ignite the gas that emanated from above their heads. It's true. Many would-be great innovators lost their heads in massive fireballs in those days because of an overabundance of mere idiots. (In most cases the idiots were blown away too, so it all came out in the wash.) Because of the relatively frequent nature of this phenomenon, this era of history is often referred to as the "Flashes in the Dark Ages."

It's not as funny after the Jimp and Satchel story...

...oh well...

Ciao!

And, as always, go do some evil!

~Rafe

Rafe and Mae and the Franken-Fan **UPDATED**

Mae may not wish to be acknowledged by her real name; Mae may not wish it known that she fraternizes with me at all. So, know that "Mae" is not Mae's real name. And, although I do know a Mae--though Mae would be that Mae's middle name--I do not want you to assume that Mae may actually be Mae's real name. It is not. It is a pseudonym. (Which, coincidentally, is today's word of the day.)

Pseudonym: v. to alter or embellish the truth so as not to be associated with Rafe.

We may now begin.

Mae and I had been discussing cluttered desks, homework, and the Pope (whom she would probably not clean for) when--somehow--we got on the topic of cleaning fans. (Because we have fascinating conversations.) To be clear, we were not discussing fans that do the cleaning, but the cleaning of fans. Apparently she was entertained by this.

Now, I know what you're all thinking: "Did he use 'whom' correctly?" I believe I did. However, if I didn't... shut up.

Some of you are probably also wondering how one goes about making cleaning fans an entertaining topic of conversation. I assure you, it is no easy task. One must begin preparing for the conversation literally weeks in advance.

Sinful Fan.

Here's how it goes:

Rafe is bored and suffering from insomnia.
Rafe stares hard at fan.
Fan is dirty.
Fan should not be dirty.
Rafe gets bright idea.
"I shall clean Fan!" Rafe thinks.
Rafe tries.
Rafe fails.
Epically.
Fan is dirty on the inside.
(Like sin, only made up more of dust and grime than moral corruption.)
Rafe cannot reach Fan's equivalent of moral corruption.

--At this point my notes say "Write message to C.W."--In case anyone was worried. I have sent the message.

Rafe gets another bright idea.
"I will disassemble Fan!"
Rafe goes on epic search for screwdriver.
Rafe fails at epic search for screwdriver.
Rafe finds pocket knife with screwdriver.
Pocket knife fails.
Rafe curses the Swiss and all they stand for.
Rafe, while giving up, accidentally spies screwdriver atop the  pantry.
Rafe goes "WTF? Who put that up there?"
Rafe uses it anyway.
Rafe disassembles fan.
Rafe tries to clean fan.
Rafe (can you guess?) fails.
Rafe needs pressure steamer.
Rafe needs to not be doing this on his desk in his bedroom if he is to use a pressure steamer to clean Fan.
Rafe sighs.
*Sigh*
Rafe goes to bed, leaving disassembled dirty fan on his desk.

Many weeks pass.

Rafe talks to Mae about his fan.
Mae is (for whatever reason) entertained.
Rafe goes home and, suffering from insomnia again (possibly due to two lattes drunk late in the evening) Rafe reassembles fan.
Rafe wonders "Why are there all these pieces left over? Oh well... they probably weren't important anyway..."
Rafe plugs in Fan... then screams "It--It's alive! It's ALIVE!" <--I totally left that out before. THE WHOLE FRANKEN-FAN BIT!!!
Rafe never cleaned fan.
Rafe is failure.
The next day Rafe finds pressure steamer.
FML.

You see? It all makes sense now... to someone. I hope. Somewhere...

This next portion is entitle: CRYING IS FOR LOSERS

Well I've always said I was evil, but few seem to believe me. Tell me, could anything BUT an evil mind even think up such an outrageous idea? Read on, and thank God that this is only a (very sick) joke...

This is what a sadistic mind comes up with when it's half asleep... don't judge... well, okay, you can judge... but don't hurt me...

This TV show is called "A$$holes" "Mean for the Money" or "Light Child Abuse"

Four adults and one child are competing for cash and other prizes.

The four adults take turns saying horrible things to the child, the first to make the child cry wins. If the child can stand a set time limit without crying, (s)he wins the money.

There are themes (where what the adults say has to revolve around a central idea) comeback prizes (where the child gets money for witty comebacks) and even adult v. adult bonus rounds where the studio audience decides who said the nastier things. We even have bonus shows where high scoring children come back to face off against each other.

Of course, after two successful seasons, despite immense popularity (among sadists, masochists, and schadenfreude specialists) the show was cancelled due to massive complaints concerning (not cruelty, but) cheating.

Apparently some of the adults were sneaking in tear gas in small sprayers to cause the children to cry prematurely; parents, on the other hand, were often having their child's tear ducts surgically removed.

After determining that anyone who would submit to this show was some kind of moron, yet believing that even volunteers for suffering needed to be protected, a new organization was founded to prevent such shows from airing again: the SPCI or the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Idiots.

I hope you enjoyed, maybe, whatever.

Happy Birthday MR! (You know who you are... if you're not stupid.)

Ciao!

And, as always, Go do some evil!

~Master Rafe

"God doesn't really need to punish us. We're so very busy punishing ourselves." ~from The Moving Finger, by Agatha Christie.

Quotations From my Quotable Friends

I haven't posted in almost a month... and for that I am sorry. :\ I'm still working on that crossword puzzle I promised, but I lost the paper with the answers, and my sister repossessed the computer I was making it on... so it may be a while. :D

I hope this entertains you in the mean time. It is a collection of some of my favorite quotes from friends, myself, and others that I really like. Though, because my friends may not wish to admit they fraternize with me, I'll only identify them by initials.

"After the punch line, you need to shut up." ~Old Gubaran proverb. "YOU LIKE IT CEITAINLY WE BLESS YOUR HEALTH THE STYLE IS NUMEROUS!" ~Actual text from the packaging for a toy bazooka. Bad grammar and spelling as well. "What is a rafe?" ~J.C. (No, that's not "Jesus Christ," although God is a friend of mine, He knows what a "rafe" is.) "Well it's entertaining writing, and someone got pudding on this." ~M.B. "We will discuss it. End of discussion!" ~M.A.B. "Have people always been stupid or is it a recent development?" ~Danae from "Non Sequitur" "Give me a fly swatter and I'll show you how much of a teddy bear I am!" ~C.R. Also (not) Known As: "Teddy Bear" "The jokes in life are funnier than the tragedies are sad." ~Anonymous "You know, its really too bad you are a guy, you would make a great girl." ~K.M.V.K. (A girl said this to me.) "He's like my girlfriend, except he's not gay." ~L.J.S. (Again... a girl said this about me. I'm beginning to see a pattern... But, she's correct, I am not gay.) "Aaaaugh! I broke the Bible!" ~ M.A.B. Me: "I call it art." M.A.B.: "I call it a bent straw." "Remember... [long pause] ...I forgot." ~My Mother "Let's start over, and I won't blonde this one up." ~T.O. "If you read that E-mail, it's proof that something is wrong with your brain." ~Alice from "Dilbert" "Would you mind not standing on my chest? My hat's on fire." ~Doctor Who (Tom Baker) "Stupidity has a knack of getting its way." ~Albert Camus "Cleverness and stupidity go together." ~Ovambo proverb "You have issues, dahling, ok?" ~P.B. "Don't worry, stupidity produces antibodies." ~Susie from "Calvin and Hobbes" "Which way is straight for me?" ~Me. "A folk song is a living organism; it is ever changing." ~Charles Hoffer "The saying 'I think therefore I am' is not necessarily reversible." ~Me. (Aren't I wise?) "Raphael is always right." ~K.V. “When in doubt, kill cute things.” ~Stephen Pastis "Of all the people in the world... you are one of them." "The greatest thing about America is that we are not judged by what we are, but by who we can schmooze." ~Aubry Anne Carechild "I can only be nice to people for so long. It's like a countdown clock. Some people's time is longer than others. Some people never had any time at all. I'm grateful to have friends that stuck around even after their nice time was up." ~M.R. (Seriously, one of my favorite quotes ever.) "Sometimes the chai tea flows through your blood stream and makes you giddy enough not to care about grammer or spelling!" ~K.V. "Rafe's just gonna make a shitty comment, ignore him." ~J.J.B. "Penguins are the highest form of comedy." ~An old Gubaran proverb. "Swine, ceramic sentinel, Guard the golden disc!" ~Dwight Erthenwall "Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it." "A well developed sense of humor is the freezer that adds balance to a penguin's steps as it waddles the iceberg of life." ~L.H. "Hunt for ways of adding the twist of funny." "The best friends you could ever surround yourself with are the type of friends who would murder your enemies with a rusty spoon just to see you smile." ~S.P. "Hey, what do you think of Pavlov's theory that the Pope is Catholic?" ~Bucky Katt from "Get Fuzzy" "No shame. No mercy. No glory." ~P.B. "My eyes were vomiting." ~M.A.B. (Discussing "Transformers 2." Apparently she didn't like it...) "Explosions are cooler than kites. Word." ~M.A.B. "A true genius will spread the genius' work so that the lesser can know as well." ~S.P. "Dude, if stealing a stick of gum will keep me out of Hell, I'm gonna go rob Wrigley's" ~M.K.V.K. "If you were coming at me with a weed whacker I'd be scared." ~M.B. (Even in context, that was a weird one...) "If you need instructions on how to wash your hands, Maybe you shouldn’t have a job." ~KJ52 "Lost is just like Gilligan's Island... only trippier... and on steroids." ~Me... I have the right to quote myself. Anyway... I hope you enjoyed at least SOME of those. I know I did. I tried to take out the ones that are only funny to me because they recall a funny memory. Still... I'll try to post again this month, and hopefully I'll have that crossword puzzle up soon. For now, Ciao! And, as always, go do some evil. ~Rafe

Investigating the Paranormal Significance of the Big Toe

To begin with a quote: 

"[Saint Eusebius] lived alone, spending his days in devotion and contemplation. But when a dragon appeared up on the plateau and started eating the people's flocks, he felt he had to do something...Saint Eusebius took his crucifix and went to face the dragon, to command it in the name of Christ to leave the area...Inspired by the devil, the dragon began to eat the holy man. But a desperate group of peasants had banded together, armed with spears and meat hooks. When the dragon tried to swallow the saint, it miraculously began to gag and choke on him. While the dragon was thus occupied, the peasants burst out of hiding and attacked it. One of them got in a lucky stroke with a meat hook and pierced the dragon's throat at the one spot where it was vulnerable...But they were too late to save Saint Eusebius. All that remained of him was his left big toe."

                ~C. Dale Brittain, from The Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint

Obviously the above account is entirely fantastic—indeed it comes from one of my favorite fantasy novels—but it introduces to us (in a sort of indirect byway fashion) a question quite unforgivably ignored by established pseudoscience: What is the paranormal significance of the big toe?

As everyone knows, our toes are not mere lumps of kind-of-funny looking, wiggly things with no use other than stubbing and judging the apparent beauty of; our toes are indeed gifts of God and evolution intended to help us not fall on our ugly faces when we stand erect and apart from our simian brethren. (*Can anyone say “convoluted sentence alert”?) Yes! Our wonderful toes are tools, tools that help us balance when standing and walking upright.

So they’re not useless…                                                       

But are they paranormal?

A quick Google search of “big toe” + “paranormal” does bring up many hits, but most of them are like “someone was tugging my big toe” or “I wiggle my toes to get myself out of a dream” or someone using the acronym TOE (I didn’t check what it stood for… probably “Totally Original Energy” or “Toes Of Earth”).
 
Maybe the tugging of the big toe was important? Maybe otherworldies (entities from other worlds, dimensions, times, or—sometimes—Taylor Swift fans) are attracted to big toes? Maybe it’s somehow deeper (and more sinister) than that… maybe it’s downright creepy!
 
I know I’m right. I'm always right. So today, for the first time, I am sharing my thesis with the world:
 
Disembodied spirits have big toe fetishes.
 
To put it in its original Latinish: “Ghostusts Haviest Hallux Fetishi.”

In other unrelated news, I finally watched “The Blair Witch Project.” (I know, talk about behind the times…)

I have nothing real to say about that,  I just thought I’d mention it… because I can.

So, for your homework, I want you to (do my research for me and) find me information correlating ghosts, poltergeists, and other otherworldies with halluxes. (Hallux = big toe.)

Anyway, I’m making a crossword puzzle for you peoples, so expect that in the not-too-distant future.

Imagine you are wearing a large vest that can be puffed full of air. Now imagine that that vest is attached to a couple of tubes which in turn attach to a large, box shaped machine. Imagine that the single purpose for this machine is to cause the vest (which you are wearing) to shake like a baby rabbit blended on puree… now imagine you’re riding an exercise bike… now imagine you’ve got another contraption hooked to a different tube that is puffing vapor into your mouth… now imagine it’s all going at once.
 
Yeah.
 
I was doing that today.
 
Fun mental image, eh?
 
Anywo, Ciao!