Tinted back window with a bubble in the middle

On April 29, 2016April 29, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

51NDuZehByL._SY355_.jpg My car is a 2001 Ford Escape with just over 150,000 miles on it. I got it when I traded in my beloved Toyota Yaris (shut up, it was the perfect city car) for something with a backseat big enough to put a car seat into. I literally walked into the dealership with one car and walked out with another; the Yaris was paid off and we did an even swap off the lot. I traded a relatively new vehicle for a much bigger, older one.

Calling it a hooptie is probably overstating things. It actually runs pretty damn well for its age; there’s an oil leak deep in the engine where it’s not worth the money to fix, and the brake lines chose a surprisingly convenient (that’s not a typo) time to blow a couple of years ago, but it’s done well for a car that is itself actually old enough to drive.

The running boards were rusted out enough that several months ago I tore them off the car barehanded. For the last little while, then, these ugly, rusty, sharp brackets have been hanging off of the sides of the car where the boards used to be attached. I finally got around to trying to remove them myself last week and my ratchet sheared off on the first bolt, so today I took it in and had professionals remove them. My car looks 50% less garbage now than it did this morning, which is nice.

There was a television in the waiting room, which made the experience way more surreal than it ought to have been. First of all, I’m so glad that the primary is just a few days away and that our usual television-watching methods don’t involve commercials, because holy shit does Ted Cruz have a lot of commercials. And he’s simultaneously running against Trump and Clinton, which is kind of hilarious. There was one Trump commercial and what seemed like a hundred Cruz commercials during the hour or so I was waiting.

The actual program being shown was the Today Show. The Today Show was celebrating 90s hiphop for some reason. Either that or I took some very serious drugs this morning before dropping my son off before school and then forgot I did it, which… might be possible? I guess? I brought a book, and was buried in it when the first verse of Ice Ice Baby broke into my brain, and I looked up to see Vanilla Ice dancing on a stage with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And the word live was up in the corner.

vanilla-ice-turtles_769aab1f0a208872f581d7833ebd7699

I thought, for a moment, that I was either hallucinating or had gone back in time. Only the crowd, filled with old white people, managed to convince me that the body shop hadn’t warped back to 1993.

A performance by Salt n’ Pepa followed, which was also weird, as I could have sworn that at least one of them had sworn off rap forever. Kid n’ Play were interviewed. Fucking Kid n’ Play.

This is why I never leave the house, guys.

Creepy Children’s Programming Review: SPECIAL AGENT OSO

On December 13, 2015December 13, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, Television6 Comments

oso

This is, I believe, the fastest I’ve ever written one of these things, as my son just discovered this terrible program last night. I banned it forevermore before he went to sleep, only to get up this morning and discover him watching it again, apparently because my wife overruled me. I shall have my revenge, I swear it. Because Special Agent Oso is godawful, and I will not have any of its stupid songs running through my head.

Lets start with the theme song, which is like 20 minutes long. First of all, Oso’s last name is Special. Oso Special.

GET IT IT’S A PUN DO YOU GET IT HE’S OSO SPECIAL THAT’S A JOKE DO YOU GET IT.

Oso is a special agent for some unnamed agency, and the names of the episodes always contain James Bond references, which is the only interesting thing about the show, because it’s not like any of the kids watching the show will get any of them so they’re clearly the result of the writers trying desperately to entertain themselves. This special agency hires stuffed animals– yes, Oso is a stuffed bear, and the theme song specifically describes him as such. He’s not a real bear. He’s an animated toy. What dark magic allows his limbs to move is also left unclear.

At any rate, the episode always starts with Oso doing some secret agent shit, which would be cool if it weren’t for the part where Oso does not know how to do even one thing. It’s amazing that he can even breathe given how dumb the show represents him as. But they’ve got him doing all sorts of stuff. He was in freaking outer space in one episode:

At some point the show will cut away from Oso doing his secret agent shit and find some kid on Earth who has a completely random problem. This problem is always terribly minor on a level reminiscent of Super Why. At that point the doohicky on his wrist will vibrate and Mr. Dos will let him know that he needs to drop everything and go solve this kid’s problem. This is true no matter what he is doing or where he is. Including outer space. Go help this kid find the library or tie his shoes or whatever. LEAVE OUTER SPACE FOR THIS.

You may wonder how they find the kids who have the problems, because these kids never actually contact the agent themselves. It’s because this horrifying organization has the entire world under drone surveillance. Think I’m kidding? I’m not kidding:

Screen_Shot_2014-01-28_at_10.29.59_AM

The drones, who are always watching you, tell a floating space station that there’s a kid with a minor inconvenience, and then Oso is notified. He finds the kid and then begins asking questions that make it clear that he has no idea what the hell he’s doing and shouldn’t be a secret agent. For example, on TV just now, he asked what a circle was. Secret agents should be able to identify circles.

And then the worst part happens. He asks his chest computer, who is called his Paw Pilot, what his “three special steps” are to solve the kid’s problem. There are always three steps, and, underpants gnome style, the second is always “do the thing.” For example, if the problem is you need to find a book at the library, the second step is “find the book.” Need to wrap a gift? The second step is “wrap the gift.” It’s fucking weird.

Also fucking weird? The floating animated head that is the Paw Pilot sings a terrible song and looks like nothing so much as Mystique giving birth:

Let’s pause for a moment to let that image sink in.

…

So, yeah. Initially he will know literally nothing about how to solve the problem without help, but spoiler alert: he’s gonna solve the problem, whatever it is. He solves the problem, Paw Pilot sings another terrible song, and then something about whatever he just did helps him with whatever his special agent shit was at the beginning of the episode.

They also always manage to contrive some way to have a 10-second countdown at the end of the episode as Oso is trying to solve the problem. Is Oso trying to write his name on a library card? 10 SECONDS UNTIL THE LIBRARY CLOSES. Is Oso trying to wrap a present for someone’s little sibling? MOM WILL BE DOWNSTAIRS IN 10 SECONDS. Kite Day starts in 10 seconds. It’s never anything where could ever possibly matter if the thing he’s doing takes 12 seconds. Ever.

I hate this show.

A curious psychological phenomenon

On May 24, 2015May 24, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

South Bend is celebrating its 150th anniversary this weekend. They’ve been pulling out all the stops; there’s been a crazy amount of shit going on downtown all weekend and while at least a couple of things probably ought to have gotten somebody killed from what I’ve been hearing and seeing most everyone’s been having a good time. My wife and I brought the boy downtown this afternoon for a bit, mostly intending to just walk around. As expected, finding parking was a bit of a difficulty.

Now, you’re just going to have to trust me, because I didn’t get a good picture of this part, but a lot of the streets near the event downtown were filled with cars parked right next to “NO PARKING SATURDAY OR SUNDAY” signs. Apparently what the signs mean is don’t park on top of the sign, because there were plenty of blocks that were completely full of cars except for the small amounts of space taken up by the actual no parking standees. Again, I should have gotten a picture.

It’s been a long time since I lived in Chicago, but I was well trained during my time there. If your ass sees a No Parking sign in Chicago, what that sign means is if you can see this sign with a telescope, you shouldn’t park here, because those motherfuckers will fine you if there is a sign underneath a car six blocks from where you’re parked.

Now, I watched a ton of cops stroll right by those cars without ticketing anybody, despite the potential bonanza in ticket fees. Watched people pull out. Drove right past some empty spots. Did not park. I’m a Chicagoan still. I know better.

We finally found a spot. A whole road, even. This is the view behind my car:

Let me make sure y’all understand the logic here:

TONS OF “NO PARKING” SIGNS: park wherever the hell you want, nobody cares.
ABSOLUTELY NO SIGNAGE AT ALL: Do not park.

I swear, I was nervous leaving my car here.

There’s a word for this, I just don’t know what it is.

Creepy Children’s Programming Review: OCTONAUTS

On March 29, 2015March 29, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, Television21 Comments

6630bc3207651991e913e0e48d119eeeaa360e59 So here’s the new hotness: Octonauts, a show about British (mostly) animals (mostly) who live underwater in a giant octopus and Do Science. Most of them, as I said, are various flavors of British, and their accents are region-specific. Then there is the one with the southern accent (and by “southern accent,” I mean “southern US”) and what might be an attempt at a Mexican accent, maybe, since the character’s name is Peso? Only they’re all done by British voice actors, and they are perhaps done by British voice actors who have never met southerners or Mexicans, because the southerner (“Tweak,” the rabbit) sounds like the worst stereotype of a toothless Mississippi white-trash hick you’ve ever heard and the Mexican accent sounds so un-Mexican that I thought the character was supposed to be Asian at first.

Here are the Octonauts. They are so, so, so British, even the ones who aren’t British.

You’ll recall I said they were mostly animals. Note the plant on the right. His name is Tunip, but I thought it was Turnip until seeing it in print just now. The rest of the characters have personality and agency; Tunip and his other plant-based lifeforms appear to be either vegetable-based Oompa Loompas or actual slaves, and they really don’t fit into the rest of the show very well. It’s bizarre.

At any rate: Every episode involves the Octopod tooling around in the ocean and dealing with some sort of sea animal’s problem, or sometimes the sea animals are the problem. The animation is kind of cool and the ocean backgrounds are really neat even without the massive, Thomas the Train-level Britishness.

So goddamn British.

There’s a weird colonialism thing going on here, too: the white … polar bear? in the middle up there is Captain Barnacles, who has the Britishiest of the accents, and he’s in charge. He’s supposed to come off as this nineteenth-century naval captain dude. In practice, this means that he assumes in any situation that whoever he’s dealing with will understand and assume that he’s rightfully in charge and what he says is the best thing for everyone. Even if it’s a indigenous culture species of animal they’ve never seen before, obviously everyone ought to just agree with what the white animal thinks. He’s the Captain! Don’t you understand what that means?

Then there’s always a song at the end. It’s the Creature Report. It lives in my brain now, and I hear it all the time, everywhere I go, no matter what, forever. Let it be in your brain now:

I like the show. It makes me crave crumpets, and I don’t know what crumpets are, but I like it. That said, if I try to drift off to sleep one more night with the Creature Report running through my head, I will kill a substantial portion of the Midwest’s population.

No big deal.

Creepy Children’s Programming Review: BUSYTOWN MYSTERIES

On December 17, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, Television4 Comments

335px-Busytown_Mysteries_Complete_Series_(2009)_-_Home_video_trailer_for_this_animated_series Haven’t done one of these in a while. After the last few days? IT’S TIME.

So the new hotness for the last few days has been BUSYTOWN MYSTERIES, which is a show based on characters from Richard Scarry’s popular Busytown series of books.

Before we get into this, can we take a second and appreciate the name Richard Scarry? Because it’s an awesome thing to be named.

Anyway. BUSYTOWN MYSTERIES is all about the anthropomorphic animals, right? There are no humans in this show; everyone is some sort of animal made human-like to varying degrees of weirdness and they run around and do stuff. The main character is a cat named Huckle who inexplicably dresses like a Bavarian rentboy. He hangs out with his sister, whose name is Sally, a worm named Lowly, and two pigs named Pig Will and Pig Won’t for some reason. I don’t know who the hippo is in the picture. She’s not around that often.

Anyway, they solve mysteries. Unlike the contrived bullshit of Super Why, the mysteries they solve are generally at least in the neighborhood of actual mysteries, even if sometimes they’re kind of silly. The show genuinely emphasizes critical thinking and reasoning skills even if no one but Huckle ever really displays any, and it’s kind of fun to watch the cat work through how the goldfish ended up in the middle of the street or whatever. There are a couple of songs and a weird bug who always shows up at the beginning and the end of every episode to interview Huckle about his mystery. I don’t know what this bug’s deal is and I feel like it’s entirely possible that he might be a creepy pedophile of some sort.

But that’s not what got me writing about the show. Let’s talk about their cars.

Every character on the show drives a car at some point or another. Huckle and Sally, weirdly, drive a real car and a scooter. Huckle’s car has a picture of him on the hood. They’re always careful to show people putting proper protective gear on when they start driving, too– Sally always wears her helmet and Huckle always belts himself in. The weird thing? Almost all of the rest of the characters drive cars that look like food they like to eat. The worm drives an apple car. Somebody’s a pickle, or a doughnut, or an ear of corn, or something like that.

And then there’s Pig Will and Pig Won’t.

That, folks, is a sausage, being driven by two pigs, and just in case it didn’t drive home the idea that the pigs eat sausage, they’re hauling a bunch of sausage with them too. What is sausage made of? Pig. So we’ve got this whole weird Easter Eggy-style subplot where two of the main characters are cannibals. Also, the alligator character we see every now and again? Drives an alligator car.

Also, there are anthropomorphized goat characters, but there are also real goats who are kept as livestock. I don’t know what the deal is with that.

So: outwardly sweet and simple, but this show hides a creepy little bolus of insanity and horror in its midst. So two thumbs up, obviously.

In which I tell a ridiculous true story

On December 14, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories10 Comments

Gnat_1_(FFXI) So there’s a bug in my room.

I mean that literally. Not “there are bugs in my room.” I think there is a bug in my room. As in one.

It’s not a scary bug. It’s a little bitty thing, like a midge or a gnat or something like that, some little black flying thing that’s way too small to be an actual fly but otherwise acts like one.

The problem is it’s immortal.

I have to read before I sleep, right? It takes an exceptional level of exhaustion to get me to simply hit the sheets and try to go to sleep. My wife, however, is very much not like that; my wife can be dead asleep within ten seconds of pulling the covers up. What this means in practice is that for the last six-years-and-change of my life I’ve been doing a lot of reading with a booklight after she’s fallen asleep.

There is only ever one bug. I have never seen more than one.

It only comes out when I’m reading. I’ve never seen it during the daytime, and I’ve never seen it when the lamp by my bed is on. Only when I’m using my booklight.

And it lands on my book, then flies away, then lands on my book again, then lands on my booklight, then I get annoyed and kill it. How do I know there’s only one, and it’s not flying away and another, suspiciously similar-looking bug is then flying over to me? Because when I kill it, it doesn’t come back. I’ve never had to kill two. And I’ve never seen a second one after killing the first one.

Until the next night. It takes 24 hours for the resurrection process to complete, I assume. And then that same one bug will torment me again, while I’m trying to read, until I kill it.

This has been going on for months.

I’m not crazy.

I swear.

Hmm.

On December 5, 2014December 5, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking14 Comments

Anybody else feel like WordPress isn’t counting traffic properly tonight? Since I put my last post up my likes and comments have been outweighing my page views by something like ten to one, which isn’t actually possible.

On the hotel

On November 5, 2014November 5, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Work2 Comments

The hotel is somewhat suspect.

This is the pool. You may notice that it is in the middle of the damn lobby, which means the entire hotel smells strongly of chlorine. There is a reason most hotels do not do this even above and beyond the ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE CAN WATCH ME SWIM aspect.

This is the rest of the lobby. It’s a big nothing.

The view from my door. No, not my window– my door, because apparently for $10 less, you can book the motel rooms at the hotel, which our travel agency did, which had my boss spitting nails. I look out over the parking lot.