I’m not that big a fan of computer games, but back in 1994 the only things a computer could do were word-processing and running Myst. This was a game that let you walk around what you soon recognize to be the most boring island ever created. The goal of Myst was to try to kill yourself so that you didn’t have to continue walking around, but this was impossible, as there was no way to die. In fact, there was no way to do anything that didn’t involve walking around. You’d be like, “Hey, there’s a forest path I can walk through. Oh, wait, I don’t want to walk through a forest path. Fuck this.”

The only good computer games I’ve ever played were back when I was in elementary school. Occasionally the teacher would be like, “Alright, class, you can either work on your spelling packet or go play some Oregon Trail. It’s your call.” For those of you who’ve never heard of it, Oregon Trail was based on the actual adventures of people from the 1800’s who were walking around Oregon for some unknown reason. The object of this game was to try to cross a bunch of rivers without losing your entire supply of wheat and 20 goddamned oxen. This almost never happened. You’d see a river and be like, “Oh, shit, here comes another river. Dear God, please don’t kill off my oxen. I’ll do anything if you please just let me cross this one river without losing half of my freaking oxen.” Then the game would be like, “You have lost 12 oxen and have received the syphilis virus. Also, you are dying. Oh, and by the way, 3 more of your oxen have just died.” It was like, “Hey, screw you, Oregon Trail. I really don’t need to deal with this bullshit right now. I’ve got to go play some kickball to clear my head.”

What’s interesting is that, although schools nowadays are very uptight about not having guns represented in class, 50% of Oregon Trail involved hunting down various animals with a rifle. It didn’t matter how much food you caught because you knew that you’d lose it all the next time you tried to cross a river, but this was OK. Anything was better than working on some kind of packet that the teacher wanted you to do. In those days, teachers loved giving out work in the packet form.

My all-time favorite game to play was Number Munchers, which was about a frog who enjoyed doing math. The twist was that you had to deal with a bunch of monsters who seemed to be really pissed off that this frog was doing math, and they ran around chasing after you. They were like, “Oh, so you’re doing math, are you? Well let’s see how you like doing math after I kill you!” The game didn’t really make any sense, but it did teach me a lot of real-life skills. Now I can not only perform basic arithmetic, I can also perform basic arithmetic while a monster is chasing after me. Eventually, this is bound to come in handy.

Tomorrow is Independence Day, where everybody gets together and celebrates America’s history by lighting off fireworks in the grand Chinese tradition. But the fourth of July is not simply just a day to celebrate our nation’s independence from Canada; it’s also a day to get me gifts in preparation for my birthday on Friday.

Speaking of Steven Spielberg, a lot of people are talking about the movie A.I, which is apparently about a robot struggling to find his place in the human world. I liked this movie better when it was called Short Circuit, which is a film that chronicles the adventures of a robot who escapes from a factory and then reads books really, really fast. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to watch a robot read a book really fast? See this movie. (Insert Reading Rainbow sound effect here).

Short Circuit was made in the ‘80s, which was a good time for filmmaking because about half of all movies that were made during this decade featured an inventor who was having trouble in his inventing career. This was a smart move by the movie industry as it allowed for the audience to be treated to seeing all of the inventions that didn’t work out. For example, if there was an invention that was supposed to automatically turn oranges into orange juice, you can bet that the oranges would start shooting out at everybody in the room in a very hilarious, very intimidate fashion. Gremlins is a movie with one such hapless inventor. It starts off with said inventor looking for a Christmas present for his son, and so he walks into a mysterious shop. This is his first mistake. It used to be that the premise for nearly every single movie is that somebody buys a strange relic from a mysterious shop, only to find out later that the item in question has some sort of mystical power. In the case of Gremlins, the item is an animal who is capable of spawning off an entire race of monsters if water lands on his fur. The two other rules are as follows: The gremlins evolve immediately if they eat food after midnight, and, just like in real life, they instantly die if they appear in direct sunlight. The director was clearly focusing on realism.

The most inexplicable thing about this movie is that whenever somebody sees a gremlin, they’re like, “Aww, it’s so cute! What’s it’s name?” What’s it’s name? Are you retarded? It’s a bizarre animal that you’ve never heard of before! Nobody in this movie ever stops and says to themselves, “Now wait a minute. There’s no such thing as a gremlin. Shouldn’t I be surprised to see one of these things?” If you saw a gremlin in real life, you wouldn’t say, “Hey, that thing’s pretty cool. Where did you get it?” You’d probably say, “Holy shit, what the hell is that? Get that hellish beast out of my sight and burn it before it comes any closer!”

On a different note, F sharp. Also, a special shout out goes to all of the strange people who have been signing my guestbook. God knows how you found this thing.

I recently watched a movie called Stigmata, which is about a woman who is suffering from some sort of Jesus disease that causes her to receive wounds for no apparent reason. After receiving these injuries, she usually runs into a busy street and starts screaming like a maniac before one of her friends tackles her and drags her to the sidewalk. This cycle of being wounded and then running into traffic repeats about four or five times throughout the movie before some guy finds an old scroll written by Jesus and then she stops receiving mysterious injuries resembling the crucified body of Christ. I didn’t really understand this movie, but I did think it was funny that she kept running into traffic. “Ah! My face is bleeding for no reason! Now I have to go run into traffic!”

None of this is truly relevant to anything, but I wanted to mention it because it reminded me of how I’ve never really been physically injured in my entire life. This is my greatest regret. Occasionally I’ll see somebody with a cast over their arm, or somebody hobbling along on crutches, or somebody strutting around with a black eye, and I’ll just get really jealous. In my entire life history, I’ve never gotten wounded in any way. I’ve never broken or even sprained a single bone and I’ve never needed stitches, and in fact the last time I was the patient of a hospital I was being born. I’m either very durable or a big wuss. While not receiving injuries may sound like a good thing, you must consider the fact that I have no stories to tell about fantastic bicycle accidents, or about falling off of trees, or about having knife fights in the street. The single scar I have is a small one on the side of my right hand, but that doesn’t count because I was only a small baby when it happened. Apparently, as I was still learning how to keep my balance while standing up, my parents thought that it might be a good idea to let me run around the room with a glass bottle in my hand, and eventually I fell down and the bottle broke. I’m currently looking into whether or not this incident can be considered a form of child abuse, but I do know that it doesn’t count as a viable injury.

People with injuries really piss me off. They’ll hobble up to you on crutches with their leg all up in a cast and just look at you, waiting for you to ask what happened to them. Then you have to just roll your eyes and say, “OK, what happened?” They’ll say, “Well, I was skiing in Vermont while you weren’t doing anything cool at all, and then my leg broke while I was being awesome. Want to sign my cast?” It’s like, alright, you went skiing in goddamned Vermont and were being extreme. Do you have to rub it in with your broken leg? I’d really like to kick these people’s asses.

I’m very bitter about this. If you ever see me on the street, feel free to sneak up behind me with a baseball bat and bash my shoulder. That would be sweet.

By the way, I’m just kidding. Don’t really do this. I’m going to be very angry with you if you bash my shoulder in with a baseball bat.

I used to hate when people said something was “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” I was always like, “Sliced bread? What the hell’s so great about bread that is cut into slices? You take some bread, and then you slice it. Big goddamned deal.” Then I actually had some sliced bread, and let me tell you, I take that all back–it’s some good shit. With this “sliced bread,” you can have sandwiches, toast, French toast–you name it. The entire bread world is opened up for your dining consumption. In my opinion, nothing will ever be greater than sliced bread. Now I know why ducks are so into it.

Saying “this is the greatest thing since sliced bread” is but one of the many old sayings that people use in their every day life. What many people don’t realize is that almost all of these old sayings are really retarded. As proof of this, I will now list several of them and rate them on a scale of one to five dollar signs, with five dollar signs being the least retarded.

“Never look a gift horse in the mouth.” Since I’ve never personally received a gift horse, I can’t say whether or not this is good advice, but it sounds pretty solid. Horses would probably bite you if you looked at them in the mouth, or maybe spit on you. I really don’t know that much about horses. Rating: $$$

“The proof is in the pudding.” This one doesn’t even make any sense. Where is this magical pudding of theirs? And what proof are they even talking about? I’ve never heard of a lawyer saying to a judge, “Your honor, to prove that Timmy didn’t murder Sam, I’d like to call my first witness: A batch of pudding.” Rating: $

“Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” I’ve noticed that the earlier I wake up, the more money I have and, additionally, I tend to be smarter on those days. However, it burns when I pee no matter what I time I wake up, so I don’t think it makes me healthier. Either way, this saying gets an extra point for rhyming. Rating: $$$$

“A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.” Apparently, the bird exchange rate is very confusing. What I want to know is, if you have a bird in your hand, but your hand is in a bush, approximately how much is your bird worth? Also, what makes you think I even want a little bird? I’d rather leave it in the goddamned bush. Rating: $$

“The early bird gets the worm.” This statement is probably pretty true (unless the bird is trapped in your hand), but you’ve got to think that the early worm is just going to get eaten by the early bird. However, my real problem with this saying is that I think many birds are taking the advice. There’re outside my window every morning at about 4:30am, keeping me awake with their musical chirping. I’m always like, “Seriously, guys, chill out. They’ll be worms at 1pm. Get some sleep.” Rating: $$

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” I think this statement was first made by painters who were going poor because nobody wanted to buy their stupid paintings. They started going up to people and saying, “Oh, look at my picture! Did you know that pictures are worth … about, uh, one thousand words?” That’s good and fine, but how much is a thousand words worth? They don’t tell you. This saying should have been, “A picture is worth ten thousand dollars.” Rating: $

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” This saying means that, if you throw an apple at a doctor, he won’t go near you. I’ve never tried this, but since it rhymes, you know that it has to be at least partially accurate. If you want to attempt this, I recommend throwing the apples at their eyes to blind them, and then running. Rating: $$$$$

“When it rains, it pours.” This statement is the stupidest thing that anybody could ever hope to say. I mean, it isn’t even true: What if it rains lightly? What then? It would be raining, and yet it wouldn’t really pouring, which neatly disproves the whole idea. This saying would be similar to somebody stating, “When it’s 80 degrees, it’s 100 degrees.” It’s like, no it isn’t. Rating: $

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” I’ve never really owned a basket, so this advice doesn’t really apply to me. However, if I did own a basket, and if for some reason I had a strange compulsion to put eggs in it, I probably wouldn’t put all of them in. It would just get too heavy, and some of the eggs might fall out of the basket. I’d buy a few extra baskets just to be safe. Rating: $$$$

“Don’t count your chickens until they hatch.” This was probably made by the same guy who said the egg/basket thing. My objection to many of these statements is that they’re so negative. I mean, I can’t count my chickens until they hatch, I can’t put all my eggs in a basket, I can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. It’s like, what the hell can I do? Can I go downstairs and eat a Pop-Tart right now, or is that against they rules, too? Is there some saying that says “Don’t eat Pop-Tarts on Thursdays”? Screw that. Rating: $$

This past week I went to Florida, which you might remember as being the state that ruined the entire country during last year’s election. Florida is also home to the fire ant: nature’s asshole. These are ants that, in addition to being stupid, have also developed the ability to be extremely mean, thanks in no small part to natural selection. The human equivalent to a fire ant would be somebody who walked up to everybody they saw and just punched them right in the face. Fire ants don’t care whether you pose a threat to them or not, they just want to bite you. It’s their favorite thing to do. I’m not OK with that.

According to recent studies, Florida is also really, really hot. This makes it an ideal place to go to, as you don’t have the energy to do anything but go swimming all day. I much prefer this to the cold winters of Michigan, because being cold gets old real, real fast. Snow’s pretty cool when you’re about seven years old and want to make a little fort, but after that you don’t have the patience for any that nonsense. There’s nothing cool about being cold.