Dear Abby,
Organic products have decreased considerably the quality taste of our meals. The fad of "eating organic" has largely wrested control from some of the more run-of-the-mill grocery stores, like Albertson's, or Safeway. I ask you, Abby, is this fair to the Safeways of the world? Corporate deities need money, too. Down with organic!
My main problem with organic is that due to its high cost, children are getting skinnier. Half the children I see running around these days are simply skeletons with skin! What happened to the plump children of the past? Is anyone else concerned about the growing problem of child anorexia?
When children are forced by society to be skinny and eat organic, the community suffers. I urge you to encourage your readers to at least begin to question the importance of "eating organic." If our children can no longer enjoy the foods their parents enjoyed as a child, are they truly experiencing the fullest childhood possible? Stop starving the children! Feed them more corn and candy.
Sincerely,
The Witch from Hansel and Gretel
Monday, February 25, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
The Kanye West Algorithm
The Kanye West Algorithm for Success:
Obvious pop-culture references + repeated, slightly altered "rhyming" words + names of candy and cars + introspective revelations on difficult childhood + verbal expression of a love for Jesus + gratuitous swearing + the Kanye Romantic Allowance + self-referential commentary on past Kanye West Songs = $$$
I fit into the algorithm something I like to call the "Kanye Romantic Allowance." Kanye frequently offers to women fairly denigrating remarks. In "Drunk and Hot Girls" off of his latest album, Graduation, Kanye laments that he and his compatriot (Mos Def, in this instance) "go through too much bullshit just to mess with these drunk and hot girls." He urges the drunk and hot girl in reference to:
"Stop dancing with your girlfriend and come dance with me
Stop talking about your boyfriend since he is not me
Stop running up my tab cause these drinks is not free."
And then, in the finale of the composition, Kanye reveals:
"I thought I'd be with you for only one night
Now I'm with this girl for the rest of my life
That drunk and hot girl."
After spending an entire song emphasizing his annoyance with the fastidiously "drunk and hot girl," it turns out that the girl is now Kanye's wife. I feel that Kanye, in promoting the "Kanye Romantic Allowance," Kanye makes it somehow socially acceptable for him to degrade women, so long as he begrudgingly reveals his true commitment to them in the end.
In his "Gold Digger" opus, Kanye ruminates on a woman who seems to only want to be in a relationship if it ends in a cash transaction:
"OK, get your kids but then they got their friends
I pulled up in the Benz, they all got up in
We all went to Den and then I had to pay
If you f***ing with this girl then you better be paid
You know why
It take too much to touch her
From what I heard she got a baby by Busta
My best friend say she use to f*** with Usher"
The woman that Kanye sings about is clearly promiscuous and a bit money-hungry. However, all of the sudden Kanye backtracks:
"I don't care what none of you all say I still love her."
In the world of Kanye West, you can say all you like about a woman as long as you reveal your undying love to her in the end. (Happy Valentines Day!)
So I wrote a Kanye West song, trying to incorporate the entire algorithm, hoping it will end in dolla dolla bills y'all.
Here goes nothing:
A Trip to the Store
By Kanye West
Going to the store (x4)
Shopping cart, aisle twelve
so much food on the shelve
when we was kids, no cash, empty stomachs didn't please us
now I'm rich, dollar bills, Lexus, Benz, I love Jesus
Going to the store (x4)
Grocery store
You're a whore!
Grocery store
Whore on the ground floor.
But I'm gonna marry you
I'm like Howard Hughe
With a silent S
You want A big can of West
A big Kanye Best
You complete me
but you's a banshee
Where the milk be
must be in aisle three
Going to the store (x4)
You can't handle the truth
think I'll buy a Baby Ruth
Going through the aisles,
million dollar styles,
Jesus walks for miles
cruise the British isles
Elementary, my dear Watson
Elementary, drive a Datsun.
Going to the store (x12)
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Step Up 2: The Streets
Step Up 2: The Streets opens on Valentine's Day.
Personally, I know there is nothing more romantic than one guy spinning on another guy's head (Minute 1:27):
Personally, I know there is nothing more romantic than one guy spinning on another guy's head (Minute 1:27):
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Sam I am...not
I've never gone by Sam, mostly because it reminds me of that God-forsaken Dr. Seuss book. What an unnecessary waste of time.
I do not like them
in a house.
I do not like them
with a mouse.
I do not like them
here or there.
I do not like them
anywhere.
I do not like green eggs and ham.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.
If I were to be objective about it, the actual story is a good one, about trying new things, about not being judgmental, about changing your mind. But try growing up with a name that could justifiably be shortened to "Sam," and see how it feels to have that book quoted to you on a daily basis. I do not like it, Sam-I-am.
I do not like them
in a house.
I do not like them
with a mouse.
I do not like them
here or there.
I do not like them
anywhere.
I do not like green eggs and ham.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.
If I were to be objective about it, the actual story is a good one, about trying new things, about not being judgmental, about changing your mind. But try growing up with a name that could justifiably be shortened to "Sam," and see how it feels to have that book quoted to you on a daily basis. I do not like it, Sam-I-am.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Friday, February 1, 2008
The Maelstrom's Denouement by Samuel Merrin
I'll eventually add this to my site (Samuel Merrin: The Definitive Short Story Collection), but I thought I'd post it here first, just for fun. It's a heavy, heavy story of love, retribution, and the fickleness of nature.
The Maelstrom's Denouement
By Samuel Merrin
The ink dripped off the page after the rain had stopped. Somehow the pages seemed to extend the duration of the rainfall even after the sky had closed itself off, after Nature had ceased her promulgation of anger. The notebook had been dropped and forgotten, and as the water washed the words away onto the muddy ground the thoughts also lost themselves in the maelstrom's denouement.
The writer was a mystery, but some of the words remained legible. There was a story compiled there for the notebook's discoverer to decode and understand. It's possible that no one would have discovered it, if it weren't for John.
The only reason John found the notebook was because Nicole was too busy (or so she said) to see him. He couldn't define her, she always seemed distant but every once in a while she would open up, and her words would silently move him because he understood but had never before heard the ideas she was expressing. He knew instantly that they were true, that they were right, and that they were his thoughts, though he had never thought them before.
Her hair, he had always thought, was a thousand different colors, not one of them a hue he had ever found elsewhere in nature. Lots of girls he knew had chestnut tones in their hair, or amber, or chocolate, or any one of the myriad phonetic combinations that literary artists over the years had invented to say the word "brown." Nicole didn't have hair like any of them, though he couldn't put his finger on exactly how she struck him as so different. She barely let him put a finger on anything, now that he thought of it.
Sometimes he was filled with an irrestistable urge to reach across the table and grab her hand and hold it, hold it tight because he knew that this moment was as real as any he had ever experienced. The thought of her slipping away left his heart beating, quaking his ribcage with an offbeat drumline. But she had sent him away, and it wasn't the first time.
He wondered if she listened when he talked. She must know, he reasoned, that he breathed for her, that he had since that first day, back in March. Now, the rainy season had overtaken the city, and rivulets of the remnants of broken clouds ran through the cracks in the pavement. It was only now that John understood things, gazing up at the slate-colored clouds that seemed to be packing up their things to leave, at long last finished with their seasonal task. The blue crack in the sky expanded as the gray, nebulous mothballs retreated behind the mountains, out of site.
Seasons change, John mused, kicking a puddle as a whiff of cold breeze grazed the back of his neck. Seasons change and people change. But they had to change on their own, out of motivation of their own volition rather than the will of anyone else. John couldn't do anything to change her mind, even though the course of his heart was irrevocably cemented.
By the time he stumbled upon the notebook on his walk home, John had already come to a decision. He would tell Nicole how he felt, and leave. He couldn't bear to hear her answer, the one he knew was coming because he knew she didn't love him and never would. As his rubber soles suddenly tread on the waterlogged pages of the notebook, tucked invisibly under a wind-swept pile of loose leaves blown free by the cool breath of the abruptly-subsided rainstorm, he crouched down to pick up the leather-bound book.
At that moment, a fireball-meteor fell to the Earth from outer space and John exploded.
The Maelstrom's Denouement
By Samuel Merrin
The ink dripped off the page after the rain had stopped. Somehow the pages seemed to extend the duration of the rainfall even after the sky had closed itself off, after Nature had ceased her promulgation of anger. The notebook had been dropped and forgotten, and as the water washed the words away onto the muddy ground the thoughts also lost themselves in the maelstrom's denouement.
The writer was a mystery, but some of the words remained legible. There was a story compiled there for the notebook's discoverer to decode and understand. It's possible that no one would have discovered it, if it weren't for John.
The only reason John found the notebook was because Nicole was too busy (or so she said) to see him. He couldn't define her, she always seemed distant but every once in a while she would open up, and her words would silently move him because he understood but had never before heard the ideas she was expressing. He knew instantly that they were true, that they were right, and that they were his thoughts, though he had never thought them before.
Her hair, he had always thought, was a thousand different colors, not one of them a hue he had ever found elsewhere in nature. Lots of girls he knew had chestnut tones in their hair, or amber, or chocolate, or any one of the myriad phonetic combinations that literary artists over the years had invented to say the word "brown." Nicole didn't have hair like any of them, though he couldn't put his finger on exactly how she struck him as so different. She barely let him put a finger on anything, now that he thought of it.
Sometimes he was filled with an irrestistable urge to reach across the table and grab her hand and hold it, hold it tight because he knew that this moment was as real as any he had ever experienced. The thought of her slipping away left his heart beating, quaking his ribcage with an offbeat drumline. But she had sent him away, and it wasn't the first time.
He wondered if she listened when he talked. She must know, he reasoned, that he breathed for her, that he had since that first day, back in March. Now, the rainy season had overtaken the city, and rivulets of the remnants of broken clouds ran through the cracks in the pavement. It was only now that John understood things, gazing up at the slate-colored clouds that seemed to be packing up their things to leave, at long last finished with their seasonal task. The blue crack in the sky expanded as the gray, nebulous mothballs retreated behind the mountains, out of site.
Seasons change, John mused, kicking a puddle as a whiff of cold breeze grazed the back of his neck. Seasons change and people change. But they had to change on their own, out of motivation of their own volition rather than the will of anyone else. John couldn't do anything to change her mind, even though the course of his heart was irrevocably cemented.
By the time he stumbled upon the notebook on his walk home, John had already come to a decision. He would tell Nicole how he felt, and leave. He couldn't bear to hear her answer, the one he knew was coming because he knew she didn't love him and never would. As his rubber soles suddenly tread on the waterlogged pages of the notebook, tucked invisibly under a wind-swept pile of loose leaves blown free by the cool breath of the abruptly-subsided rainstorm, he crouched down to pick up the leather-bound book.
At that moment, a fireball-meteor fell to the Earth from outer space and John exploded.
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