I am so annoyed at the whole “parted lips, moo-cow empty eyes” thing. Kate Winslet here is a prime example of the mid-coital facial expression school of modeling I so despise.
    Sending her beyond simply annoying and well into the realm of annoyingly ironic is the fact that this picture appeared on an issue of Entertainment Weekly “dedicated” to the plight of women in Hollywood and their attempts to be taken seriously and land more important roles.
    If you put a starlet on the cover of your magazine in full f*&k-face, then follow it up by asking me to take her and others like her seriously, then you better put some money in the envelope along with the request because only by prostituting my better instincts will I be bothered to make the effort.
    On the bright side, my better instincts are relatively affordable. Slip me a $20 and I’m yours for the duration of the print run.

HEY! Did you already see the animated interview with yours-truly posted on Bathroom Hippo’s blog, That Thing I Sent? No? THEN GO THERE! I TOTALLY talk to a hippo!
Oh, and thank Arthbard for the totally awesome reworking of my animation. He’s so dreamy and talented!

    So Just Who Is Dr. Albert W Wily?
    A resourceful industrialist, gifted robotics engineer, ground-breaking pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, Dr. Wily is all of these things. But, more importantly, Albert is also a power-hungry megalomaniac with an adorable streak more formidable and fearsome than a million blood-soaked Beanie Babies. And, while his cute and cuddly schemes of apocalyptic world domination have been thwarted again and again by the vigilante android known only as “Mega Man,”¹ the seemingly endless robot-manufacturing resources and old-fashioned “never give up no matter how many times the good guys foil your evil plan” attitude of this incredible man ensure that the world may never breathe easy as long as we fail to fully understand his motives and mental inner workings.
    At the end of the day, what goes on in this man’s head? Just what is it that makes Wily tick?

    There seems to be a fundamental dichotomy in the way Wily’s mind works. His mad genius reputation is, of course, beyond dispute, but keep in mind that Dr. Wily also created some of the most adorable evil robots known to man. Just try to imagine his psyche, where treacherous plots of world domination coexist alongside images of pink bunnies and playful tabby cats. With his nefarious deeds being carried out by giant frogs, hippos and chickens, you have to admit that Wily’s visions of malevolence seem to be a bit off. Honestly, his most foul and evil creation ever is still the pudgiest, most huggable headless Cyclops that I have ever seen.

    A couple of games later, he even designed a version with boobs. I don’t know why.

    So, honestly, who is this man, and what fucked-up thing happened in his childhood to leave him with such obvious emotional scars? Was there a tragic accident involving a Teddy Ruxpin toy? Was he an unwitting part of the focus groups for the never-released The Berenstain Bears’ Family Massacre?
    Or maybe we should blame the parents. It’s entirely possible that young Wily’s father was an overbearing hardass who constantly forced the unfortunate boy to watch children’s programming day in and day out until, eventually, the concepts of cute and evil became inextricably intertwined in his head. Contrarily, perhaps his parents were nice enough people who never let him watch Sesame Street no matter how much he begged. As he grew older, then, teenage rebellion would become hopelessly associated with adorableness, a connection that would progress unabated until his current deranged state.
    But perhaps, we’ll never understand Dr. Wily fully, and his past will remain shrouded in mystery. We’ll probably never know why he chooses to carry out his diabolical schemes through the likes of Plant Man. Plant Man! He’s even environmentally-conscious!
    It seems the intricacies of Dr. Wily’s twisted mind go far beyond our meager comprehension.

¹Known only as Mega Man, that is, unless you live in Japan, in which case you know him by the name Rockman, despite the fact that he carries no rocks on his person. Nice one, Japan.

    House leader Dennis Hastert, R-IL, laments the unfortunate American citizenship of the pages involved in the recent Mark Foley scandal.
    ”If these kids had only been foreign nationals,” the annoyed Hastert stated, “we’d have been spared this whole stupid fiasco. Mark Foley chose to engage his sick fantasies with a US citizen enjoying full Habeas Corpus rights, and that was the real crime here.”
    A memo was sent out yesterday afternoon which advises all congressmen that only aliens who might later be spirited away to Guantanimo under the new Military Commission Act may be sexually abused from now on.
    House leadership has set up a “persons of interest” hotline for the convenience of house and senate members. At the first sign of impending disclosure of an embarrassing incident, the hot young page–who was asking for it, really¹–can be gifted with an all-expences paid trip to the Guantanimo Bay re-education camp, where they will have no legal right to talk to anyone about anything ever again².
    As the porcine Hastert said in conclusion, “before you peel the forbidden banana, check its country of origin. We can’t afford to bruise our domestic produce….not in an election year, anyway.”

1 – I mean, just look at that kid! He had an actual penis in his underwear. You can HARDLY blame Foley for succumbing to that level of seduction
2 – Unless the damn liberals successsfully challenge the ligislation in court
3 – Next: Bush staffers drafting a revocation of Magna Carta and the Code of Hammurabi

Meet Universal Mall.

While this squat mass of half-dead shopping opportunities rots in a gangrenous lump literally right across the street from my office building, I have successfully resisted writing about it until now because… well… it was just a mall.     I decided to document the place after seeing its recent run of TV commercials. Only airing on local cable television, the low-budget commercials present an ad campaign comprised of the following low-key sales pitch:     Universal Mall! Get More than you Expected!     They’re so far gone that their greatest ambition is to convince consumers that the place might not be quite as bad as they originally thought. Really quite pathetic, although I must admit I tried a similar ad campaign on my wife:     SafeTinspector Onion Farts! Get Less Stench than you Expected!1     Well, I’m still not allowed to eat cooked onions and Universal Mall, anchored by no less than two abandoned department stores (oh, and one barely operational “Value City”) is actually quite a bit worse than I expected.

• Need a store that sells nothing but sarongs? Universal Mall!
• Need a shoe store that doesn’t appear to have any shoes for sale? Universal Mall!
• Want a food court populated by one felafel stand, a Chinese-run Thai restaurant and one dilapidated snack machine? Universal Mall!
• Want a store that sells nothing but “Cruisin’ Woodward” memorabilia? Universal Mall!
• How about a chess supply warehouse? UNIVERSAL MALL! -wait, that one closed.
• How about a haunted house? Oh yeah, UNIVERSAL MALL!

Yes, I said haunted house. “Dr Phobia’s Haunted House” is open every Friday and Saturday night all year long and is located within a portion of the abandoned Montgomery Ward department store.     You know your mall is probably not at all well when establishments that aren’t normally associated with commerce take up residence. Like haunted houses.     I’m waiting for the abandoned Mervyn’s department store to become a hostel, and the abandoned car dealership to turn into a dumping ground for old construction equipment. Oh, wait, that already happened.

I wonder who owns this stuff?

I’ve speculated that the haunted house is actually staffed by local homeless people, who could in turn be housed in the Mervyns, thereby fulfilling my fantasy of a Mervyns Flop-House. This makes me happy, as I’m all about efficiency and impromptu hostels.     See, with the right sort of homeless folk there’d be fewer costumes required by Dr. Phobia, as employees need merely refrain from showering and stay off their meds long enough to work up that creamy creep factor patrons value so highly. And the dead Mervyn’s, a store so boring that it induced slumber in most people anyway, should make for the PERFECT place to crash.

    Hey, anyone want to Le Se this sign? I’m pretty sure that’s French, and I’m pretty sure its disgusting. And on a public sign, no less!

    Note that they didn’t have enough money to actually buy a 5, opting instead for an upside-down 2. Now THAT’S thrifty!

    Here’s a mystery for you! Atop the mall is a glassed-in area which can not be accessed nor seen from inside the place. What do you suppose it is?
    I’m voting for alien observation post or black helicopter air base.

    Oh, wait! It might be the ballroom from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.
Tale as Old as Time / Song as old as Rhyme / Beauty and the Beast!
Man, I loved that song. Angela Lansbury is frickin’ hot as an anthropomorphic singin’ teapot. A british chick who encourages strange women to drink from her underage son’s head²? How hot is that?

    Do you suppose it still works? Street sweepers are the opposite of zamboni. Instead of laying ice, they rearrange street dirt and make your dog bark. Remember that for later, peeps!

1 – Did you really think we’d get through this without a poot joke? Oh, and exactly how stinky are my onion farts? Lets just say that SafeTinspector’s bowels are very sensitive to onions. Yet another fact you didn’t really want to know.

2 – In her defence, her child was an anthropomorphic tea-cup at the time. But still!

    Ore Ida, famous for “Tater Tots” and various other potato-related products, manufactures something called “Easy Fries.” These are French fries (or “Freedom fries” as some of the more jingoistic amongst us would have had them called a couple of years ago) that are kept in the freezer until ready for preparation, at which point they are microwaved “to crispy perfection in just 4 minutes.” That’s right. Bachelor food.
    Now, the operable point, here, is easy preparation. This is the selling point of a product like this. The box might as well read, “Get food without cooking.” This is the whole concept, as it were. Okay, sure, you put your “Easy Fries” in the microwave and a couple of minutes later, yes, you do have a reasonable facsimile of a French fry. But, of course, you could always get a better facsimile of a French fry by firing up your fryer and cooking some goddamned French fries. You aren’t buying “Easy Fries” for the fries, though. You’re buying them for the “Easy.” Because you’re lazy bastard.
    Now, generally speaking, the instructions on the back of the Easy Fry box are straightforward enough and not particularly difficult to follow. However, I do have one point I feel should be reiterated to the Ore Ida people: I’m eating microwavable French fries. This clearly indicates that I am a lazy slob. As a lazy slob, I therefore resent the fact that I’m asked to line up my French fries like an anal retentive bastard:

    What obsessive-compulsive asshole came up with that step? Is Martha Stewart writing instructions for microwavable foods, now?