I am nervous about comps tomorrow, but...

I have realized that everything I have ever needed to know, I learned on Schoolhouse Rock, especially the one about the Preamble of the Constitution (professional historians may balk, but you have to let me think this for me to keep my sanity). Sing it with me!

The Preamble Song

Hey, do you know about the U.S.A.?
Do you know about the government?
Can you tell me about the Constitution?
Hey, learn about the U.S.A.

In 1787 I'm told
Our founding fathers did agree
To write a list of principles
For keepin' people free.

The U.S.A. was just startin' out.
A whole brand-new country.
And so our people spelled it out
The things that we should be.

And they put those principles down on paper and called it the Constitution, and it's been helping us run our country ever since then. The first part of the Constitution is called the preamble and tells what those founding fathers set out to do.

We the people,
In order to form a more perfect union,
Establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,
Provide for the common defense,
Promote the general welfare and
Secure the blessings of liberty
To ourselves and our posterity
Do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

In 1787 I'm told
Our founding fathers all sat down
And wrote a list of principles
That's known the world around.

The U.S.A. was just starting out
A whole brand-new country.
And so our people spelled it out
They wanted a land of liberty.

And the Preamble goes like this:

We the people,
In order to form a more perfect union,
Establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,
Provide for the common defense,
Promote the general welfare and
Secure the blessings of liberty
To ourselves and our posterity
Do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

For the United States of America...

Enjoy!

I like cartoons, but explain something to me...?

Yes, I realize that I am a grown-ass man. But, I am man enough to state that I enjoy watching cartoons on Saturday morning in my footy pajamas and my bowl of cereal. And one of my favorites is the new Batman cartoon on the CW network, appropriately titled The Batman. It has Batman and Robin AND Batgirl all fighting crime together in Gotham City. My question is, and realize that I am not a misogynist, but why Batgirl? Are we so hung up on girl power and all that to require that Batman and Robin can't just be Batman and Robin? Homoerotic allusions to the B and R team aside, Batman and Robin have always been the team - Batgirl was an ancillary associate of the Dynamic Duo. And, that is okay. It is okay to have guys doing guy things together, without women...isn't it? I'm not suggesting that women can't be crime fighters - look at the success of Murder She Wrote! And to those individuals that want to psychoanalyze the pederastic nature of the Batman and Robin relationship - yes, I've seen the comic strip to the left and know all about the weird and sick theories concerning Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson. Do all single male authority figures, such as Batman, scoutmasters, Big Brothers, have to be child molesters? Is that the only reason to have Batgirl on the cartoon, as a kind of chaperone so that Batman isn't going to take Robin into a dark alley and have his way with him? Why wouldn't people assume the reverse, when in the early episodes Robin had not yet been introduced to the cartoon? What kept Batman from gettin' it on with the Batgirl? I'll tell you what - it is because Batman is so consumed with fighting crime and exacting vengeance on the criminal element that ruined his young life by taking his parents away that he is unlikely to be wanting a sexual relationship with a young boy, especially as this could possibly jeopardize his secret identity as Bruce Wayne, playboy millionaire, not Bruce Wayne, millionaire pedophile. So, why do we HAVE to have Batgirl in the cartoon regularly? And, no, I haven't over-analyzed this too much...

Some of my new favorite mu-suck-ial groups - part one

Every one should follow their muse and do the things that make them happy (within reason - zoosadism and pedophilia don't count). I have yet to find my overriding passion, but these folks seem to have found their's, although perhaps in ways that make the rest of us scratch our heads and go "Huh?" or "Do what?"

This first is Leslie and the Lys, the brainchild of Leslie Hall, a gold lame beehive-hairdoed lady from Iowa who envisions herself as a rap / hip-hop genius (who's to say she isn't?). Here she presents what is probably the only (that I'm aware of) musical pop tribute to the Ron Howard movie Willow:

Watching this makes me repeatedly wonder: why didn't we do stuff like this in the TA office?

Why is this so funny?

Enjoy?

Sunshine Pop - a secret shame that freaks me out - part 1

This is the Free Design. They are a band from the sixties. I like them a lot. I like their song "Make the Madness Stop" and their song "Kites are Fun." Someday, when I grow up, I'm going to have a suit just like the guy on the right, as well as a vandyke beard with cool sideburns.

The Free Design make life a lot more colorful, with their cool harmonies and their technicolor music. They know about living with head injuries, even though they never ate fistfuls of STP-laiden sugarcubes.

These guys like the Free Design, too. I think they are okay, even though it's obvious that they were eating fistfuls of STP-laiden sugarcubes when they made this.

Enjoy!

Now, one of me as a South Park character

Thanks to Deb for this life-like portrait!

Me, with my short hair, as a Simpson's character

I don't know, but this was the closest I could get...

Things that used to (and still) freak me out...part 1

The 1970s was a difficult time to grow up. Sure, the intense racial antagonism in the United States had ebbed considerably. The Vietnam War was in its final days. Women's liberation made for the genesis of "girl power." The flower power movement had been replaced by increasingly plastic and disposable culture. And the creators of youth-targeted products must have been burning through their remaining mountains of mind-altering chemicals, because they produced several things that still can evoke moments of shear terror in me even today.

For example:

I was never, ever, ever tempted to drink drain cleaner because of this tripped out take on poison ingestion. Apparently, the makers of this commercial had experienced a horrible acid trip where the cleaning product bottles spoke to them and urged them to drink their contents. I hated this commercial and as a result I will not, to this day, drink Mr. Clean.

Similarly, this documentary on milk production from Sesame Street drove me f-ing insane then and now:

I guess the sense of urgency that all the people showed getting the little girl her milk struck me as being overly dramatic - looks like they're scrambling for a freaking national civil defense emergency. Not that I would claim that I was an early advocate for the return to breast feeding, but I suppose that I hated this because I knew there were alternate (and more healthy) sources of milk that might have been explored to quiet the little girl's despair. Likewise, the pseudo-prog rock inspired theme music with the annoying female singer seems to be the pinnacle of bloated rock excess that caused the angry reaction of punk music later in the decade. I guess that everything in the 1970s was exacerbated in our national consciousness due to Watergate - blame it on Nixon!

My next phone - a major decision in my life...

I have about decided that I will be purchasing a new phone soon and very soon. I have also about decided that I will need to get one that is either (a) waterproof, (b) floats, or (c) knows how to swim. As these are not typically cell phone options, I have decided that I need to get one that is easily recognizable and would, therefore, be easily noticed were it not in my pocket and sinking to the bottom of, say, a toliet.

Ergo, the phone that I am envisioning for myself is a Hello Kitty phone. I'm not a fan, nor do I have any real understanding of the Hello Kitty ethos. On the flip side, I'm not afeared of what people will think of me with such a phone. I just need a bright pink phone that will be easily recognized in the john. Likewise, the added weight of having a Hello Kitty phone sinking to the bottom of a port-a-john will make me more inclined to safeguard my phone in a more secure pocket. But not because I would be embarassed by Hello Kitty. The way I see it, if I have one, more people will automatically want to get one of their own, mainly because I am so hip and with it.

i'm lazy and need attention!

One was a doodle from White. This is a doodle from Brummett. I think it begs for a song cycle to be created, detailing the adventures of the robot jellyfish. I should do this now, especially as all I have to do is work on my studying for comps...

By the way, I like the hive mind concept. It inspired me to create a GSHA t-shirt design like this:

Enjoy!

In honor of the GSHA!!!! (for B and H, especially)

Who can forget this, perhaps our favorite phrase of all time?

I have had this dream a time or two...

This is in the same vein as the fetus and the toe dream! Enjoy!

You can't take the boy out of the man...

While I was of the generation who first played with Star Wars action figures, I was always somewhat dismayed at their lack of posability and their constraints on my youthful imagination (mainly because they were the products of George Lucas's mind and not mine). You couldn't do wild and wacky things with them because each figure already possessed a back story that was pretty well defined by the movies, as well as all the resultant cultural baggage that was attached to this saga (e.g. Luke Skywalker was a good guy, Greedo was not).

However, I didn't feel the same restrictions with another action figure line called Micronauts. While there were clearly defined good and bad guys, the figures were a bit more non-descript, they were much more posable than other figures, they had little "cultural baggage" and, in my mind, they were a hell of a lot more fun than Star Wars figures. Whenever I would play with the two, the Micronauts would nearly always win, taking over the Millenium Falcon and inihilating the Star Wars people, good and bad (since the Star Wars people would have to ally themselves together to meet the onslaught of the Micronauts!) Then, the Micronauts would have an internal struggle over who would hold supremacy over their race, leading to an intense afternoon of political intrigue, murder, and epic battles across the living room, ending just in time to watch Battle of the Planets! And that was just last week at my apartment!

Superheroes on Saturday, at last...

Finally, there are cartoons on Saturday worth watching - the Legion of Superheroes and The Batman. Johnny Test, though not a superhero, is really fun, as well. Now I have something to get up for on the weekends. Without my Superfriends fix, I've been lost for all these years...