MONSTERS OF TWITTER

It's a time of celebration. I have just reached my thousandth tweet. Huzzah! Cupcakes and Andre champagne all around! But how do you celebrate your thousandth tweet? It doesn't seem sensible to go out and get drunk or anything. I can't have a ring engraved for this. No, the best idea is of course to make a big deal about it on the internet and pat myself on the back, and just generally make a nuisance of myself over nothing of interest to anyone.

To that end, I've combed through 140,000* characters of solid gold to find the 25 top tweets that I've tweeted since I've been tweeting. I will then re-tweet them with a snazzy hashtag like #monstersoftwitter or #classictweets, hopefully to spark a trend. I will also blog the full top 25 for your perusal here. And here it is. Why am I doing this, you ask? Because I'm an asshole, that's why!!

More after the jump.


Alright, here's the top twenty-five, in chronological order.

1. If you are an obese man wearing a polo shirt, you definitely should not put anything in the breast pocket. 9:29 PM Feb 9th
   
2. Could you invent a toilet that used no water whatsoever? Maybe, if you weren't real concerned about cleanliness. 12:49 AM Mar 4th
3. I never lie. I merely make less-than-fully-truthful statements about non-material facts. 11:13 PM Mar 6th
4. You can't call yourself a drag king if you're wearing leggings and a skirt. 8:39 AM Mar 22nd
5. Every car in town is covered in a thick layer of pollen, so thick it looks like they're breaded and ready to fry. 2:02 AM Apr 18th
6. God just wrung out that great Shamwow in the sky. 12:20 AM Apr 21st
7. All my exes are anorexes. 7:41 PM Apr 23rd
8. Twitter, you have no idea how much peyote I crammed into my croissant this morning. Here's some idea: a lot. 8:08 AM Apr 24th
9. I am the Microsoft of poisonous snakes. 5:32 AM Apr 26th
10. If you're one of a set of twins, it would help the rest of us if one of you got really fat. 9:08 PM May 4th
11. I really get a kick out of the expression "Personal Watercraft." 7:25 AM May 13th
12. Gym or television? For once, it's the gym. Also nothing's on television. 3:21 AM May 14th
13. I can totally hear my neighbors having sex. Either that or they're eating really high-quality chocolate. 7:06 AM Jun 3rd
14. If I had a millions dollars, I'd probably buy a bunch of gold. Then I'd melt it down and resell it for profit. 2:07 AM Jun 8th
15. I'm watching a VHS tape on an HDTV. It looks okay. 7:32 AM Jul 3rd
16. Earlier I confused 'The Italian Job' with 'The French Connection,' and when my mistake was pointed out to me it seemed a little racist. 9:11 AM Jul 3rd
17. You know, if Bruce Wayne got a pimple on his jaw, his Batman disguise would be totally compromised. 12:02 AM Jul 11th
18. It is remarkably difficult to provoke a frog. 6:38 AM Jul 14th
19. A German boy asks a girl for her phone number. She says 999 9999. He says "Fine, geez, don't tell me." 3:13 AM Jul 19th
20. PROTIP: don't smuggle a liter of liquid LSD in a Gatorade bottle. Lotsa times security will make you finish your drinks before you board. 12:40 AM Jul 29th
21. The Pizza Hut P'Zone is basically a football full of heart disease. 7:32 PM Aug 5th
22. My roommate and I are arguing about which Woodstock had the most rapes. 8:46 PM Aug 13th
23. What do you get for the man who has everything? A robbery. 5:59 AM Aug 20th
24. MLK dreamed of racial equality, but he had other dreams too. For example, fistfuls of baby teeth tumbling out of a vagina. 7:22pm Aug 22nd
25. I put the 'semen' back in 'basement.' 10:49am Aug 23rd

I remember each of these tweets as if they were my childrens' births. I'd love to give you all the backstory behind each one, but maybe I'll save that for the interview or the TED talk.

And they call our generation self-absorbed.

We Need to Talk About the Baking Club

Guys, gather around, I want everyone to hear this. Francine, Benjamin, put down the cranberries. Augustus, Sylvia, leave that flan alone, it's not going to get any taller with you staring at it. Cleon, Snow, there's corn meal all over your leather vests; brush that shit off and come in here. It's meeting time.


Everyone. As president of the Baking Club it's my responsibility to make sure we're all baking on the same team. Baking Club is about expressing ourselves creatively though the mediums of gluten and fruit; that's what it's always been about, and that hasn't changed. We've grown a lot as a group - hell, as a family - and because we're a family I know I can speak frankly. We've all noticed a certain amount of tension lately; it's time we address these issues as a family.

Raymondo has approached me numerous times about ingredients left on the baking implements. I want to remind you all that we're to keep the kitchen in the same shape as we keep our home. That means washing up every time you use something, without undue delay. That's nothing unusual, though. What's particularly troubling is the variety of substances we've been finding. Now, I've worked with lots of fruit and fruit pastes, but Raymondo and I agree that the stuff on the rolling pins is probably dried blood. Amelie, I know you used to be in the Latin Kings, perhaps you could take a look at it later on. Also all the Christmas and Halloween cookie cutters appear to be caked in human feces. Again, look, we all know fudge when we see it, and more importantly smell it, and that ain't fudge. I want you all to feel free to experience with ingredients, but just be aware of, number one, the law, and number two, your fellow Baking Buddies.

Secondly. Fabrege, Adolf, do you want to put down those lemon bars and pay attention? Thanks. Okay, second. We all remember when the DEA came for Aloysius, don't we? That's right. Aloysius made the best weed brownies in the county, I'm not ashamed to admit it. I don't like drugs, of course, it's just that they tasted so good! But the DEA came and put a stop to that and D'Angelo tweaked the recipe to use oregano and cilantro instead, and we moved on. We do have a strict drug-free policy here, and people have been starting to test it. I looked the other way when Brock and Nitro made caffeine ginger snaps. And after Sophitia showed me the relevant statutes I was okay with the Salvia Divinorum snickerdoodles. But honestly, Winston, the nicotine cornbread is a little over the top. You tend to overcook it and the tobacco smoulders and fills the kitchen with second-hand smoke. Smoking kills. We can't have that here. Not to mention Muhammad's Robitussin cordials. Do you know how horrifying it is to bite into a truffle expecting a creamy cherry filling, only to get a mouthful of prescription-strength cold medicine? I couldn't drive home and ended up sleeping under the counter. No more psychoactives in your baking, please. That's final.

That brings me to my third issue. You all know that I've been having problems with the wife as of late. By the way, a personal thanks to Clarence for his advice; I'm a lot happier with the .45 than I with the 9mm. I have been sleeping under the counter on occasion, yes, and before you start yelling I want to point out that nobody's noticed until now. That's what being clean and orderly is all about; that's what you should aspire to. But every Wednesday, like clockwork, around midnight I have been party to your...look, there's no way to say it but to just say it. Orgies. You all have been having orgies in the kitchen. I don't know who is party to it, because I don't look. I'm polite, I just stay in the cupboard. And good Lord, there's no reason I want to see what's going on. Judging by the sounds I've been hearing I know there's a lot of urinating and defecating and quite a lot of striking with both bare hands and instruments. I'm not pointing any fingers now, but I'm pretty sure I can recognize Lucretia's thick Baltimore accent anytime I hear it, and after what happened last Thanksgiving I know how Raoul shrieks when he dips his genitals into caramelized sugar. And that's all I'm saying.

What you all do in your spare time is your own business, and I don't want to make any rules that keep you out of the kitchen and stifle your creativity. Just know that as president I place a high premium on the value of consensual sex. It's hard for me to believe that Charlemagne is consenting to have a bunch of naked people in chef's hats taking turns vomiting eggs into her mouth, and that's damn sure what it sounds like you're doing. If she's okay with it, that's fine, but since she has Asperger's I insist that you make sure she understands and remains engaged throughout.

And please, please remember to clean the kitchen before you leave, every night, no exceptions.

U.S. States, ranked by credibility

As in, “Oh, you’re from ______?” How impressed will your conversation partner be?

TIER ONE: Practically their own countries

• California
• New York
• Texas

TIER TWO: Everyone knows what’s up with these States

• Washington and Oregon (bff with California)
• Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts (wish they were New York)
• Maryland and Virginia (they fight for custody of D.C.)
• Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Florida, Nevada, Hawaii (we all kind of like these ones)
• Louisiana, Utah (some bad juju here)

TIER THREE: Everyone remembers facts about these States from high school

• North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Minnesota (vague generalizations)
• Kentucky, Colorado, Iowa, Indiana, Connecticut, West Virginia (we’re all glad we don’t live here)

TIER FOUR: Your boss’s brother lived here one time, you think

• Arizona, New Mexico, Kansas, South Dakota, New Hampshire (warm fuzzy feelings)
• Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Alabama, South Carolina (vague unease)
• Maine, Alaska, Nebraska, Mississippi, Vermont (never even met anyone from there)

TIER FIVE: These may as well not even be States

• Deleware, Rhode Island (They’re just tax havens with gas stations)
• North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho (guarantee you’d never miss ‘em)

BONUS ROUND: Did you know we own these ones?

• Puerto Rico (they’ll be a state in fifty years, guaranteed)
• Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands (how’d we get these?)
• the Phillipines (someday we’ll be back)

Live-Blogging the Kentucky Derby

Look people, I watch the Derby every year, whether I want to or not, and you should too. Did you see it? What do you mean you missed it? People, Kentucky asks very little of you. All it asks for is two minutes of your time per year. Is that so bad? Jesus. Here's what you missed.

**********

4:30
Woke up from a nap after my property exam. Well, not really a nap, I kind of just laid in bed for two hours listening to techno music. Read Hunter S. Thompson's essay 'The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved.' Remembered that the Derby was on, got the idea to live-blog it.

4:39
Got out of the shower. Made a cup of coffee and some peanut butter crackers, put on NBC.

4:41
"We can be heroes!" montage of trainers and their stories of their journey to the top. Reminds me of 'Rocky,' but with horses. I don't know who any of these people are. PROTIP: all trainers are overweight white men with facial scars.

4:44
Except Bob Baffert. He's kind of a big deal. He told the camera a story he just told Michael Phelps. Yeah, I know Michael Phelps, and he's here. I told him this story. He said it was awesome. Douchebag. He's training 'Pioneerof the Nile,' with a dumb typo built into his real name. I'll root against that one.

4:49
Trainer of 'Musket Man; couldn't be sleazier if he tried. He's got this shifty facial tic whenever he answers questions, the kind of thing you see on a guy who has NO idea what you're looking for, officer. He's dressed...well, he's dressed like I am, except 50 pounds heavier and a million dollars richer.

5:02
National Anthem. They got LeAnn Rimes? Oh lord. The Derby is so 1998.

5:10
Bob Costas shows us a film about horse safety. Probably kind of an issue since last year Eight Belles died on the track. That was Hillary Clinton's horse, by the way; probably cost her the nomination. Lot of talk about steroids. Think if a horse smoked pot it would be barred from competition? How do you make a horse smoke pot?

5:16
No, seriously. Maybe you could put pot butter in oatmeal. But horses like oats raw, don't they?

5:23
Bob Costas is still talking about horse drugs.

5:24
Some guy said that horses in most places race on oats, water, and nothing else. He is met by blank silence from Bob Costas. His headset microphone has a flesh-colored dust cover on the end and it makes his face look like it has a large growth.

5:29
SWINE FLU! MUSLIM CLERICS! FLASH FLOODS! POSSIBLE TORNADOES! WARREN BUFFET! Flim at eleven.

5:31
Are you kidding me? Extreme close-up of Larry Jones, Eight Belles' trainer, the horse that died on the track last year, IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE RACE? Are you kidding me? They put a camera in his face immediately after his Derby horse dies on live TV? This is awful. And he's retiring? Jesus, NBC, pull my heartstrings a little more. What are you, Steven Spielberg?

5:34
I could pretend that I have the faintest idea which horse will win, but I have no clue. All kind of stats and strange names and odds spreads I can't make heads or tails of.

5:37
Now it's time for 'Hat Parade' from Oil of Olay's ProX. Cut to shots of women in hats they should be ashamed of, while Sex In the City-type music plays. The horse 'Chocolate Candy' was named by Jenny Craig. No joke.

5:42
Kent Desmoreaux flashes his previous-winner Derby Rings in the locker room like he can't believe how gangsta he is. What are you, T-Pain? Get out of here with that jewelery, little man, this isn't the Super Bowl.

5:45
Literally every trainer is wearing huge mirrored shades like they're bouncers at the least-bitchin' club in the world. Or maybe they look more like federal agents. This isn't 'The Matrix,' dawg, it's Kentucky. One exception: Tom McCarthy, the charming 75-year-old trainer of 'General Quarters' is so adorable and nervous you just want to tickle him.

5:47
Alright, I'm game. I'll put $5 on 'General Quarters' to win, and what the hell, $5 on 'Dunkirk' to show.

5:51
Is that Ed Harris?

5:54
Picture flying a horse in from Dubai. On a damn airplane. Just picture it. Also, none of these commentators have any idea what's going on. They're just spouting off horse names like they know about horse racing. But hey, that's what we all do, every one of us.

5:59
It occurred to me that if a horse wins the Derby it does nothing but get laid for the rest of its life. I wonder if that has ever occurred to a horse.

6:03
45-second zoom-out shot of a tractor dragging a bag of sand. And they say horse racing isn't exciting.

6:06
I need to say that jockey uniforms are the most ridiculous garments ever devised. Call VICE Magazine, I found out where the DON'Ts come from.

6:09
Still proud of that last snap.

6:10
Yum! Brands, a Kentucky corporation that owns KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, is running tons of commercials to tell us that they're putting KFCs all over the world, even in China. Actually, it makes me kind of sad to think of a bright, garishly-lit Taco Bell in downtown Istanbul.

6:12
Big horse parade, trumpet solo, 'My Old Kentucky Home,' let's not get sentimental here. You know the drill. By the way, you do know in the original lyrics the line was "This summer the darkies are gay," right?

6:22
What does Rick James' 'Superfreak' have to do with Visa debit cards? If you use Visa, you're freaky and fun? What about all these people singing the song in different locations? RRRRR Send in Don Draper to fix this commercial.

6:26
Alright guys, here it comes. General and Dunkirk.

6:29
ok gogogo cmon RR coming in RR forward go general go go cmon where are you DK in 8 on outside around the turn GQ 12 down toward rail they're moving up none of my horses are in the fron who cares how bout papa clam cmon papa clem RR 2nd Pioneer coming in here comes hold me back join int he dance still in front CC coming around? Ardount toward home, Join still in lead RR!! Pioneer coming in! MM PAPA CLEM OH MAY WHAT IS THAT HE BLOWS IT OUT MINE THE BIRD what???? MINE THE BIRD RUNS AWAY WITH IT BY A COUNTRY MILE how did that happen? That's it, that's who won. Mine the Bird. Big upset, 50-1.

6:31
And that's it - it's over. Almost as quickly as it began. If you dropped $10 on Mine the Bird you'd have $500 now. You get money if you bet on Pioneer to place. If you exacta'd anything you're SOL, cos I guarantee you didn't put money on Mine the Bird. I dropped $10 (hypothetically), but you know, if when you gamble you expect to win money you shouldn't be gambling. Happy Derby day guys, and remember what Hunter S. Thompson said:

"Steadman wanted to see some Kentucky Colonels, but he wasn’t sure what they looked like. I told him to go back to the clubhouse men’s rooms and look for men in white linen suits vomitting in the urinals. 'They’ll usually have large brown whiskey stains on the front of their suits,' I said. 'But watch the shoes, that’s the tip-off. Most of them manage to avoid vomitting on their own clothes, but they never miss their shoes.' ”

Once more with feeling

We're going to try a soft re-launch of this blog. Again, again. But for real this time. If it catches on, feels good, I'll migrate over to here from the facebook notes.

Facebook has the advantage of making sure your friends see it, but there's a lot of disadvantages that go along with it. I'm going to try sacrificing audience for quality and see if anything comes of it.

So. There's that then. Actual content to follow.

What was wrong with the 90's?

I saw The Doom Generation (1995) last night: it was in the cult section at the video store, looked interesting. Mixed feelings about it. Great directing: the film was edgy and exciting and visually very creative. And it had incredibly explicit sex and violence and Rose McGowan spent pretty much the whole film naked, so there's another plus. This, however, doesn't make up for an abominably bad script and downright unforgivable acting.

But it got me thinking about the 1990s. What was wrong with the world then? You had Bill Clinton, the internet, video games, a good economy, you'd think things were going well. But the culture of the times seems (today, anyway) garish and nihilistic. Things were ostensibly going well, but I have to think that Nevermind and Blue Velvet and Rent wouldn't have been made if there wasn't some unexplainable current of despair running through the American collective unconscious. Douglas Coupland probably knows what I'm talking about.

Then again, maybe avant-garde nihilism was a way of escaping the cultural wasteland of an increasingly corporate/consumerist society. But that doesn't make it good art.

Here's an untapped market: Urban-marketed chewing gum. Picture a gold foil packet filled with nuggets of gum shaped like cut diamonds and little interlocked chains, in flavors like "Ballin' Blueberry", "Pimpin' Pineapple", "Gangsta Grape".

The key to ballin' is, of course, ostentatious spending. The gum will cost five to ten dollars a pack. How baller would you be if you spent ten bucks on premium chewing gum?