Pinkerton's Weblog

That's So Feenstra...

So here’s the thing about Scott Feenstra. He’s one of the funnier guys I’ve known, but he isn’t much for getting his stuff online. This makes him, among the folks who know him, one of the best-kept comedy secrets out there. On a Yahoo Group I created to keep in touch with funny people I’ve known who are now all over the world, Scott can be counted on to say barely anything for months at a time, then show up with a funny cartoon about bees or retarded people that has everyone in tears for a week.

Yahoo Groups recently changed its policy about posting images, clearing out its databases; I only hope Scott managed to keep copies of some of those cartoons and may eventually get them online, or some of the funniest shit I’ve ever seen will be lost to the ages.

Even when Scott does put stuff online, he usually doesn’t make too much of a thing about it. So I was pleasantly surprised to stumble on a page he apparently put up some time ago with some of the older cartoons he drew in college, for a paper he and I both used to write for. I hope you enjoy them for the first time as much as I enjoyed strolling through them again.

There was a time when Scott’s approach to punchlines was so popular that we all tried to emulate it, to limited success. Actually, I think I may even have made the Arby’s Funnyland comic – I can’t even remember now; if it ultimately goes down as one of Scott’s, I couldn’t think of higher flattery.

For all that, though, there really is only one Scott Feenstra – to the point where among my college friends, to say something is a “feenstraism” is comedic shorthand for a joke that makes absolutely no sense at all, but manages to be fucking hilarious anyway. There are probably about thirty to fifty people on the planet right now who, if you said “That’s total Feenstra”, would know exactly what you meant.

Anyway, I invite you to check out Stocc’s Comic Central. Sadly, it’s but a small snippet of the things Scott’s done over the years. I really do wish there was more available – because for me, there’s no better yardstick to measuring a person’s coolness level than finding out whether or not they “get” feenstraisms. I’ve heard many people express their frustration that there “isn’t anything to get” with Scott’s jokes; possibly this is what makes it even more special if you're one of the few who laugh your ass off anyway.

We Are All Made of Stars

Our global population currently sits at roughly 6 billion; it is hoped by scientists and eco-conservationists that this number will level off to 8 billion in 40 years, though more pessimistic experts have offered reasons why it might just keep on going. Certainly a combination of ignorance (a group in which I grudgingly include myself, except perhaps for the barest factoids I may have remembered to impress in conversations), religious and cultural dogma (“population explosion be damned; keep fucking and converting or else we won’t win!”) and a general squeamishness on the part of most to evaluate what we’ve managed to do to the Earth in a thousand short years seems to indicate it would be safer to guesstimate on the side of disaster when contemplating humanity’s capacity to avoid making a supreme mess of things.

You could make yourself red in the face wondering why it is we don’t, on the whole, seem to really care about increasingly dire problems. I always love telling a story I heard through David Suzuki that, to my thinking, puts a darkly comic perspective on our collective inability to pay serious attention to these sorts of large-scale issues. Some years ago a group of Nobel prize-winning scientists combined all of their knowledge and research to compose a document explaining precisely what the captains of industry, world leaders and everyday people should change if we wanted to avoid large-scale extinction. Matters of the environment, over-population, pollution, drinking water, susceptibility to disease were all covered, taking into account past trends and current statistics. The scientists even helpfully included a “good until” date on the essay – essentially, the year that, assuming we changed none of our current planet-obliterating practices, we would no longer be able to save ourselves. At some point, we could do enough damage that it would, in essence, be irreversible.

The paper was completed and distributed for immediate release throughout the world. What I love about the story is that this ambitious, comprehensive planet for avoiding the total obliteration of the Earth made it to page 36 of the Lifestyle section in the paper where I live. On the cover was a story about Wayne Gretzky being traded.

The date by which we would have been fucked, by the way, has since passed. As far as I know, this wasn’t reported in any news media.

So, yes, it’s tragically hilarious, but why? Why don’t we care? I suspect humanity is simply incapable of wrapping our brains around concepts as large as these. Much like we couldn’t ever conceive of the vastness of our galaxy, or even the vastness of the distance between our planet and the sun, or how much a trillion actually is, I don’t think we are able to easily conceive of the large-scale damage we do to ourselves. If our slow destruction of Earth were drops in a bucket that over time fills the bucket, we would only be able to see to grasp the idea of one drop at a time, perhaps commenting that it’s only a drop of water, without grasping the larger problem that drop represents. As a pampered, fat-assed, minivan-driving, latte-sucking North American, I’m as guilty of this as anyone – though I hear about the destruction of forests, there’s a tree outside my apartment; though I hear about overpopulation, there’s always an apartment for me to rent; though I vaguely understand the third world hardship and blood that goes into making my clothes and food plentiful and inexpensive, I’m never terribly bothered by it on a day-to-day basis. Why should I give up my comforts, my energy consumption, my excessive food consumption, simply for some mist-enshrouded far-off concept of conversation and the future world. The world looks fine, why sweat it?

Even when we attempt to make things better, we usually go in the wrong direction. If you asked any North American what the ideal solution ultimately is to inequity and starvation in the world, it would be that everyone should have the right to the same goods and comforts we do. We invest money into attempting to make this happen, despite the fact that it’s patently ridiculous. If every person on the planet enjoyed the per capita consumption (grains, meat, energy) of a North American, the planet would have to be four times bigger to accommodate this. This isn’t even taking into account that if we’re all suddenly a global North America, who might actually be willing to work the eight-cents-a-day jobs that make our plentiful supply of goods possible. The key, of course, isn’t that the rest of the world needs to catch up but that North America and Europe have taken too much – we are excessive consumers.

But again, it’s difficult to wrap your head around numbers like that. Human beings define ourselves by our deluded conception of our own uniqueness and specialness, which is reflected in our movies and advertisements and our blogs, all of which blast the idea that we are all the center of a multi-centered universe. Despite the fact that we’re hardly special beyond our own sentience and ability to breed like locusts, the key to saving our planet lies, I think, in the recognition that we aren’t in fact special. That we are mortal. That the ultimate goal isn’t to be a rock star actor loved by millions but to be happy with the short time allotted to us. That an omnipotent being isn’t listening and responding to our prayers. That we don’t deserve $300 pants as an inalienable right. That every human life is not sacred. Every human life is a dice roll.

Contemplate the idea of a population of six billion people. If the human brain could conceive of a number that enormous, it might put the delusion of our own unique specialness into perspective. Think about the romantic notion that somewhere out there, your special soulmate someone is waiting for you. Now crunch those numbers into the idea of 6 billion people on a planet of our size, dispersed randomly. Assuming our planet had exactly 6 billion people (good thing it’s a round number, or one poor fucker’s soulmateless), the odds of 3 billion soulmates finding one another is astronomical. If you believed in soulmates, I invite you to contemplate the fact that, with a population of six billion, you would be more likely to have a 747 land on you than find yours.

Another excellent example of our incapacity to understand large issues is the quaint maxim, “one in a million.” We say this because, to us, a million really is a large number, and it buttresses our feeling of uniqueness, because you, my friend, are better than the other 999,999,999. But if you take into account a population of six billion, being one in a million actually still makes you fairly common.

This isn’t advocate a fascistic world regime or anything – without the human capacity to conceive of our uniqueness, we would never have been able to make poetry or write literature or express ourselves through music. The power of uniqueness and intimacy is as much what makes us great as what makes us so ignorant to the concept of vastness and enormity. All I’m saying is that we need to temper our self-centered worldview if we want to continue having one for years to come. You and I are not the center of the universe, sadly. But there’s nothing wrong with being a star – the sky is littered with them; they aren’t unique like snowflakes; they’re actually fairly uniform from our limited perspective. But each one is still beautiful, and capable of shining from time to time.

How I Got Stung By a Hornet: A Dramatization

Hornet: "Man, I could just roll around in sugar all day. Am I right? This shit is awesome."

Jay: "Walks in a forests are the fun!"

Hornet: "Who's this shithead? Well, I'll just lie low until he's gone."

Jay: "A bees! You are for special extra friend, yes!"

Hornet: "What?"

Jay: "You go in my special friend place with ants and my M & Ms!" [attempts to put hornet up bum]

Hornet: "Aghh! Sweet Jesus!" [sting sting sting sting]

Jay: "My hand is big like a cars!"

A Tingling, Burning, Skin-Eating Sensation

Hardly slept at all last night -- a collection of bad nightmares and fitful sleep, for some reason. So it took me forever to wake up this morning, stumbling around plugging the kettle in, putting a toothbrush in my mouth, walking into the shower rod, circumventing the rod and making it into the shower itself.

During the course of my morning routine, I plugged the iron in, came back a bit later and thought, "Wow, the iron's plugged in. Did I leave that on last night? That's dangerous." So I unplugged it, then came back five minutes later: "Didn't I plug that in? Damn it, I need to press my pants." Plug in again. Five minutes later: "Egads, someone left the iron on!" ecetera.

It still hadn't occurred to me how insanely tired and half-asleep I still was, though, until I went to shave. I got the hot water going in the faucet, tried to focus on the mirror with bleary, half-shut eyes, grabbed the shaving cream off the mantle and shook some out into my hand, then started lathering it under the water. I looked over at the mantle. There was the shaving cream, still unopened, way over at the far end. Closer to me was a tin of Comet toilet cleaner. My fatigued brain struggled to create the sparks to put this together, and maybe come up with a reason why my hands were starting to burn.

"Waiiiiiit a minute," I thought. "You don't shake out shaving cream as a powder. You spray shaving cream. What the hell am I lathering?"

Well, obviously, the Comet toilet cleaner. "Ow!" I yelled, grabbing the soap and trying to get the toxic skin-eating chemicals off my hands. "Jesus, that hurts! And who the fuck plugged the iron in?"

A strong argument, I think, that the work day shouldn't officially start until noon. Either that or that I should be declared mentally retarded by the federal court, and given round the-clock supervision until well after 10am, so that I don't accidentally bring harm to myself or others.

Fan mail for The Trailer Trash

"I had recently spent five minutes on your website, and I would have to say hands down it was probably one of the worst websites I have ever visited in my life.

"I had come across your page on the moive "Pokemon Heroes"...

Can I just break in here for a second to point out that this grown man was searching for information on Pokemon Heroes.

"...and after I read it, I came to the conclusion that either you:

"1)You work for Disney, and are obviously trying to degate a competitor to fatten your own wallet.

Oh, I degate competitors all over the place. I also fimt, croom, and remorglap competitors if given half a chance.

"2)Have truly no idea what Pokemon even is, and that you blame this movie on account of your own ignorance."

Can I just break in here again to admit my shame at my ignorance of Pokemon. I unfairly lashed out at Pokemon Heroes, I'm sure a fine. fine film.

"3)You're overly obsessed with Spongebob Squarepants.
But whatver the reason, I never plan on visiting The Trailer Trash again, because your website truly is trash, and everyone on the Internet is now less intelligent just by being in the same realm as your website."

Well, whatever. My point on this is that every time I get hate mail, it's from an AOL user. What the HELL is wrong with AOL users? I don't mean to suggest that there's something wrong with people hating my site -- they're more than welcome to -- but why do only AOL users feel the need to write me long, grammatically obscene hate mail? Is it some kind of chemical applied to those free CDs they give out that enters the bloodstream through the fingertips and heads straight for the brain?

After the Blackout

Me: [sitting against the wall, talking to power outlet] "I'm glad you came back, baby."

Power outlet: "..."

Me: "I know I've said some things before that I didn't mean. I got thinking about every one of them last night, when you left me all alone. Like when I'd plug my kettle in and sometimes the lights would flicker, and I'd say you weren't good for nothing. That was crazy. Or that time you caught me watching Fight Club and nodding at Brad Pitt's speech about returning to feudal society, then looking over at you like you was nothing. That also was crazy of me to do."

Power outlet: "..."

Me: "But, baby... living without you for these past..." [checks watch] "...twenty-two hours, I realized that you are my everythang. I cants live without you, baby. I needs you."

Power outlet: "..."

Me: "Yesterday, when you walked out, I didn't know what to do. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't.. you know, watch TV or check email. It was misery, baby. I so glad you back."

Power outlet: "..."

A pause.

Me: "...why don't you give me a little sugar..."

BZZZRRRT!

Me: "Agh fucking jesus fuck! Baby, damn. You know I love that. Come here, you sexy..."

BZZZZRTTTT-ZZRTRTT-ZRRRTT!

"Fucking cock fuck jesus fuck! What if I..."

Power outlet: BRZZZRRRT!

"Mother son of fucking..."

Power outlet: BRRRZZZZZRTRRRTTTT!

"...so dizzy, can't...one more time, I..."

Power outlet: BRZZZZRRRTTT!

"...maybe if..." [sound of pants zipper]

BRRZZZZRRAPPPP! BZARP BZARP BZARRRRP!

"Ow." [collapses smoking to floor] "Glad to have you back, electricity."

Home Alone... With Lust

BI-CRAZY GOTH-TEEN LUSTNESS
A Sexy Book by Me

CHAPTER ONE: HOME ALONE... WITH LUST

Bambi walked into her bedroom, making sure not to break the doorframe again with her 36C tits. She shuffled in sideways, and thought about how she was home alone with her tits again. She and her tits stepped over a pile of her lingerie-type clothes.

"My parents are always leaving me alone with my massive 36C tits," she said aloud. "I'm only 16, that doesn't seem right." Her 36C tits were silent on the matter.

Then bisexual curiosity took hold of her and her 36C tits. The three of them became overcome with bi-curious 16-year-old lust.

"This book is great!" said Bambi's 36C tits.

"Maybe I could help you with that bra," I suggested from under the bed.

"What are you doing there? Omigod, I thought I was alone!" Bambi screamed. Her tits were inconsolable.

"I'm writing a book and touching myself," I replied.

This excerpt courtesy of Random House

Test

Test test test...

Okay, there we go. Apparently if I dont update for seven days, my old entries dont just stay up -- it's just suddenly a blank page. Lovely.

According to the Help Forum at Movable Type:

"The usual reason entries "disappear" is that the 'Number of Days Displayed" in Weblog Config is 7, and there have been no entries in that time. Make sure that whatever you have in that option, you have a post within that time. Otherwise add lastn="5" or similar to show the last 5 entries regardless of when they were posted."

Well, shit on a biscuit, why didn't they just SAY so? Of course, they don't specify WHERE exactly I'm supposed to put this lastn="5". And when I open up, for example, one of the seven different template files in my directory, I'm scrolling through ten dense pages of CSS code, all which looks like: MTDateHeader h2 class="date" $MTEntryDate format="%x"$ !compltfcking -gib.berish$-- class "nonsense". So where in all that I'm supposed to insert lastn="5" is a magical mystery tour.

Anyway, if you're good at programming CSS, come live with me. I'll pay you in Cheetos and beer.