hi scary pumpkins.

yeah, well, we fucked up and forgot that tomorrow was your birthday, why didn’t you tell everyone.

aw, well you know me, im a little timid about telling people personal details about my life.

nah huh. how old are you gonna be?

109.

wow, you look terrific, how do you do it?

drugs, alcohol, barely legal girlfriends.

you don’t take drugs.

i know.

and you rarely drink.

shhh. i have an image to uphold.

and that girl isn’t even your girlfriend!

please, will you shut up, please! don’t make me get a big spoon and scoop out your insides.

so what do you want for your birthday?

i would like for the world to be a better place.

tangible things, please.

i would like to go to a strip club with my two ex girlfriends.

yowza. anything else?

no, not really. i said earlier that i want to kiss 36 girls. i think now i’ll settle for six amazing ones.

why the change?

kissed thirty over the weekend to warm up.

aren’t you afraid of catching something?

cant catch anything kissing. it’s kissing!

not herpes?

fuck herpes.

what about mono?

you know what pumpkins, that’s one thing i’d like for my birthday. i’d like everyone to put aside all their bullshit fears surrounding good for just one day. real good. like everyone, if they want to eat cake that day, say the hell with the damn diet that theyve been on for half their life. eat a piece of damn cake.

right on!

and if you want to say hi to that pretty girl on the third floor, march up there and say hi. get her number even. quit listening to that same old stale voice that tells us that the things that we want somehow are either wrong, impossible, or in someway threats to our stable, miserable lives.

preach, preacha!

i have a dream, holiday gourds.

that we can all live together in peace?

no. that people can kiss each other at bars and in night clubs and their hearts flutter and their blood pressure goes up and they don’t need so much booze any more. i have a dream, my friends.

yeah, that’s a dream alright. we don’t even have lips.

then it’s done. we’ll kiss since pumpkins can’t.

we would.

yep.

a lot.

i bet.

ah, fuck.

Hello, Tony.

S—

S—,

Great question.

I don’t get these sorts of questions enough.

The Ring is more creepy than it is scary. Not really twisted, not really gross, not really violent. I didn’t learn until later that it was PG-13, but that made sense to me because it had no nudity, cursing. It played more like a very well educated fright film than a slasher one where you get vomit and bile and little babies ripped from the wombs of the decomposed.

There is one scene where someone pulls a long string from their mouth. I’m not sure if that qualifies as something that would sicken your spouse, but as soon as you see the woman pull something from her mouth, cover your wife’s eyes. It’s more confusing, that scene, than it is sick. But then, again, i’m not emetophobic, so i wouldnt know.

My friend Karisa hates blood, and this movie would be good for her because theres not an awful lot of it.

hope this answers the question,

tony

[ update, i’m being told that that scene also includes dry heaving, so beware ]

Columbia Records, 1979

“Hateful”

(M. Jones, J. Strummer)

Well, I got a friend who’s a man

What man?

The man who keeps me from the lovely

He gives me what I need

What you need?

What you got?

I need it all so badly

Oh, anything I want he gives it to me

Anything I want he gives it,

but not for free

It’s hateful

And it’s paid for and I’m so grateful to be nowhere

This year I’ve lost some friends

Some friends?

What friends?

I dunno, I ain’t even noticed

You see, I gotta go out again

Again?

My friend

I gotta see that main man

I killed all my nerves

My nerves?

What swerves?

And I can’t drive so steady

I’ve lost my memory

My mind?

Behind!

I can’t see so clearly

Tony, your site is incredible! really, I’m impressed, it’s like you have some amazing stream-of-consciousness rap that you can capture in print.

-Adolfo

Adolfo,

thank you for your email.

you’re right. the site is incredible. and it really does seem like i have some sort of stream of conscious thing going on, which means to me, that it has some sort of flow. some writers don’t like being called stream of conscious, but i don’t mind.

but most importantly you’re correct in your analysis of my less than handsome looks.

i take no offense.

i too am amazed by not only the quality of this blog, but by the lifestyle that an average looking fellow like myself can sustain despite the lack of blessings of height, muscles or Grecian good looks. instead of long flowing blonde locks, mine are brown and curly and thinning. instead of six pack abs, my belly bulges slightly and is fuzzy with curly hairs. instead of hulking vin diesel arms, mine are scrawny and wanting.

how do i get laid so often? how do i get to go out on dates with the finest women in all of los angeles? how do i get to have the coolest friends in the world? and do it without a car or money or a fancy house or a big time fancy job or a powerful family or a ten inch tongue or a twelve inch schween?

hell if i know.

and the more you read this thing the more you will discover that i ask these questions every time a girl kisses me, or takes off her top, or whispers something incredible in my ear, like, “i just came from the nordstrom’s lingerie department and the woman measured me and said that i am a 34 triple d. would you like to see?”

i don’t know how these things happen to me. i know im being victimized in some way. haven’t figured out how yet.

but as soon as i figure out what the hell is going on, you, adolfo, will be the first i will tell.

good luck with your blog.

that might be the secret secret.

tony

p.s. the stories that i haven’t told are the ones that would completely blow your mind. i say that not to brag, but because that fact still stuns me.

who’s a blogger. who even knew doonesburry was still around?

are they shooting for that prized 18-34 demo who probably dont even know what doonesburry is?

does this mean that blogging has jumped the shark?

does this mean that bloom county will return introducing a character who is an accompliss to corporate fraud?

does this mean that peanuts will come back introducing a club kid tweaked on ecstacy, wearing a moby sweatshirt with pacifier in his mouth trying to feel charlie brown’s three hairs but ends up lapping water out of snoopy’s bowl?

or does this mean that calvin and hobbes will make a come back for one very special panel where a patriotic hobbes ties up saddam huessein while calvin prepares to urinate on him?

hope so.

Sean Penn’s full page dissing of George Bush’s plan to blow Iraq to hell is distributed to about 800,000 washington post readers.

eleven a.m., eastern, friday, Reuters publishes a summary of Penn’s opinion.

noon, pacific time friday, i write a blog post (below) asking the blogosphere why none of the so called warbloggers have either discussed Penn’s full page diss, or linked to a scan copy of the writing, or have transcribed the piece.

five minutes after two pm, pst, friday NZ Bear summarizes the Reuters article and hints to his readers that he’s looking for the full text.

three pm pacific, saturday, nobody on the web has a transcript or link to a scan of the washington post page.

three thirty pm, pacific time, saturday after approximately 25+ comments on my blog saying that they don’t give a fuck as to what sean penn has to say about war, i post on Metafilter asking the readers two questions 1.) is there a scan on the web of the penn’s post page 2.) why is it that only republican actors are allowed to talk politics.

five ten pm metafilter user “puffin” says she has the ad and a scanner and says she will scan it and put it on the web.

5:27 pm, PST, saturday “puffin” posts penn’s post piece at http://imaginaire.nu/penn.gif

8:16, pst, saturday ray garraud posts the link to puffin’s page in the comments section of my blog. the request has been successfully answered nearly 30 hours after i asked for it.

10:51 pm PST, sunday the link to the penn scan is #12 on blogdex, the post racked up 61 comments on Metafilter (the highest commented saturday post on the community blog), and 41 comments on this blog (the highest commented post ever for the busblog). still only a few bloggers pay any attention to it because they believe it isn’t worthy, despite the numbers that say otherwise.

midnight, pst, sunday i mirror the penn piece here, for that’s the polite thing to do.

over the weekend jeff jarvis wrote a piece agreeing with me that voices of dissent of this war are not getting proper coverage, pontifexexmachina transcribed the entire penn article and says he couldn’t care less what penn has to say, the Instapundit has completely ignored the story, and Drudge has a prominent link with a headline that says “Drugs Found on Kid Rock’s Tour Bus…” which is really a story about the fact that an anonymous motorist called the cops who pulled over the bus that didn’t have Kid aboard, infact no one except the driver was aboard, and a drug sniffing dog found a joint and a pipe. this is what drudge considers newsworthy.

is this the way the web is supposed to work? instead of looking to warbloggers for transcripts of open letters to the president, a guy has to post a request on Metafilter and hope a 15 yr old highschooler/metafilter reader will do the right thing and scan in the article in question from her local paper?

where were the war bloggers? layne was on his wedding anniversary/birthday vacation, welch was getting the angel mojo working, doc searls was traveling to florida, instapundit was on the road: all legit excuses.

which means sean penn’s piece doesnt get on the web until a guy who fake interviews escalators bitches about it on his busblog and metafilter?

putting aside what penn actually had to say, the whole gist of my beef was that bloggers are missing their windows of opportunity. people have plenty of ways to get to their news and columns from more famous writers who editoralize. what the kids want today are links to things that no one else is linking to. tell them something they dont know.

let us believe that you really do read four or five papers a day by scanning in something that newspaper readers got from the wp that online readers didnt.

lord knows drudge wouldnt put out such an effort.

odds are the washington post probably isn’t going to do a linkable news analyst piece on an ad that they run because papers typically leave their advertisers alone. and wp.com isnt going to touch it even though that ad was basically a wp exclusive, because since it was an ad, they would start some mighty nasty precidents if they started giving free bandwidth on their web site to ads that only paid for newsprint distribution.

and the new york times isn’t going to comment on an ad in the washington post because competing papers usually dont tell you about great reasons to go out and buy their competitor’s paper.

now isnt that where the poltical blogs should be coming in? filling the gaps left gaping by the traditional press who act and write like wimps in situations that are unfamiliar to them?

and strangely, open letters from celebs to a president isnt something that the press knows how to cover very well when the opinion isnt via a traditional op/ed peice or press conference.

and similarilly, the warbloggers let us down on this story and got scooped by a 15 yr old girl in maryland and dissed by a 108 yr old in hollywood, distracted by the fact that the words came via a paid page in big time newspaper.

apparently, packaging is everything to this cynical society.

therefore, in my comments, a few people were surprised that i would feel let down by the wide net of self proclaimed news junkies who couldn’t get it together enough to produce a scan or a transcript of the actor’s statement in a timely manner.

you really needn’t be so surprised.

be surprised when i don’t call attention to the higher good of my fellow bloggers.

be surprised when i don’t give a shit.

the tower of babel wasn’t destroyed because it wasn’t any good. it was destroyed because it was too good. don’t be so surprised when im trying to make this glorified science fair project actually provide a freaking service.

and the best way to improve this whole daisy chain is to link everything. even stuff written by academy award nominees who might actually have something worthwhile to discuss, and if they don’t at least you have his text to make fun of.

the truth of the matter is most bloggers do this not because theyre pathetic failures like drudge, but because they love you.

drudge doesnt love you. if he did he wouldnt link to “news” like a joint being found on a rock n roll tourbus.

the networks and big time news agencies dont love you, otherwise there’d be no need for war blogs who analyze and get into great details about the things the news agencies dont want to get their hands dirty with.

some of you think that drudge loves you with his links, but thats cuz you’ve been denied real love for so long that you have a hard time figuring out any more what love really is.

instapundit loves you, as does welch and layne and jarvis and all the others who bust their ass to tell you things that you’d probably like to know.

do i love you?

everytime i dont capitalize or use punctuation consider that a secret message from me to you that i care so much about you that i’d rather type a few more words of love to you than worry about using that ridiculous shift key when you know damn well what i’m talking about.

and every time i dont tell you about something that anna k. did, or every time i dont tell you about a super hot girl with triple d’s spending the night with me, or every time i just let huge holes of the blogosphere go unnoticed without sliding in my dutchboy finger of awareness, that’s me not loving you.

let’s leave that sloppiness to guys like drudge who dont even have it together enough to register his own damn name.

me, i’m glad this is now all over so i can go back to lying about all the tail i get.

aloha,

tony

to call the president an asshole. okay, he didn’t say asshole, but he did buy a full page ad to say that he disagreed with blowing iraq to hell.

“bombing is answered by bombing, mutilation by mutilation, killing by killing.

“I beg you, help save America before yours is a legacy of shame and horror,” Mr. Penn wrote, so says Reuters, but where is the full ad? where’s the entire damning transcript?

if Chuck Heston had put out a similar ad back in the days of Clinton, a guy like Matt Drudge would have had that shit on his web page transcribed with a nice big picture of Moses next to it.

But since Drudge is nothing more than the towel boy at the right wing bath house, he wouldn’t dare “publish” Penn’s pleas.

why have a balanced blog?

and whiners complain that the media is liberal, and i say hogwash. i like saying hogwash. especially when its bullshit that i’d rather scream. so instead i resort to saying hogwash.

i say hogwash today because i go to the Instapundit and i don’t see Penn’s transcript. i go to Little Green Footballs and i see that some other actors have chipped in to decry the war cry, but i don’t see their ad either, instead they get called “high profile idiots on the anti-American left”, because apparently freedom of speech is anti-American when it comes from the left. i go to blogdex, nada. welch, layne, jarvis, no one has it.

i may as well be in russia. dissenter? kill him or ignore him, but at all costs, dont pick on king george.

what’s a brother got to do to get his words read after he puts his money where his mouth is and gives the raspberry to the commander in chief?

i thought you people ran political blogs focused on this war on terror?

you cant seriously tell me that this isn’t newsworthy.

its only newsworthy when you talk tough? or some wonk in congress? or if The Factor says it on his show? i’ve seen m-f’ing Bill O’Reilly being quoted and bits of his show being shown on tv this last month more times than i’ve seen the President and the Vice President combined. think about that. theres a sniper in DC, congress said it’s cool to bomb, the prez even addressed the nation, still i see O’Reilly’s mug on the screen almost as much as i see Regis’s. now how is that a liberal media?

sean penn married madonna, people. he was in fast times at ridgemont high as a stoner surfer! he punches paparazzi. his new wife is a complete piece of ass. and now he does the right thing and where are the so-called reporters?

what more does a man have to do to get a little attention? shoot innocent people from a van?

exactly.

all these so called war bloggers arent anything more than what the rest of the press is: followers.

if cnn ran the transcript, then everyone would link to it. but because the washington post or reuters doesn’t want to give penn any more press than what he paid for, the news dies in the fish wrap of record.

pardon me, but it is news when a big time, a-list, real deal movie star puts out a full page ad and publicly calls bullshit on the president of the united states in a time of war.

and pardon me once again, friends, but now im going to have to call bullshit on you.

to get the medal of bs removed from your good names, either write down and put on your blog the damning words of mr. penn, or link to someone who has the entire transcript of the ad.

otherwise i will consider you nothing more than another towel boy like drudge.

why? because im insane.

strangely, ashley never lets me break up. no matter what i say.

the other day right before my softball game, i went over to her online diary to see if she wrote about me, and i saw that for the second day in a row she wrote about how much she loved her first boyfriend ever, who i think is an idiot. so i told her that its obvious that she needs to either finish things up with him, or pursue him or end things with him before she starts hanging out with someone else. but in the meantime, i told her, she needs to lose my phone number and return the keys to my mansions.

she thought i was kidding but i wasn’t kidding. plus i had a softball game to go to so i hung up on her, something that i rarely do.

so we tied at softball. lame, i know. and when i got home i showered, went to bed, and was not disturbed by a tearful phonecall from orange county and i was grateful.

now, xfoo.org says that he wants me to tell the truth more in these entries, so here goes, bro.

theres good news and bad news for letting the hotties have keys to your crib. the good news is they can show up and make their selves comfy while you’re saving the world and when you come home they can be lounging in the lazy boy in high heels and garterbelts.

the bad news is they can break into your home when you’re least expecting it.

got home last night through the back door.

first thing i notice is a trail of little candies leading to the great hall. there the candies formed a heart. in the middle of the heart was a hand written sign that said:

tony, october is the month of tricks and treats, follow the path to find your reward

i was scared. what would i find? i saw that one trail of candies led to the front door and one led to the bedroom.

i followed the one to the front door and considered flying to the beach house.

instead i shut the drapes, turned off the lights and followed the treats up the spiral staircase to my bedroom.

i could smell candles. i was hoping i wouldn’t find a blood soaked corpse and a dramatic farewell note.

i’m barely a reason to click over to while killing time on the web, im certainly not worth

omg

opened the door and saw a blond girl with her back to me, laying in my bed with a pink plaid miniskirt, knee high f me boots, and a see thru black blouse.

mama mia!

made sure she was alive with a few curious pokes with my pointy finger, stirred the tearful princess, hugged, and reconciled.

my life couldn’t be stranger, xfoo.com. i am not a handsome man. my little castle only has one spire. my moat’s not heated and instead of a pet dragon all i attract in it are ducks and algae. in the summer it sorta reeks.

why do i end up with a special guest star in my home sniffling back her tears apologizing and saying she’ll do anything that i want? it’s not because of my mighty sword. its not because of my tangy cous cous. and it’s definitely not because of my unlimited supply of simpsons memorabilia.

i think it happens because i avoid it.

what you resist persists, they tell me.

and lord knows i resist absolute good for some reason.