That might have had something to do with my front page. For those that did enjoy my work enough to browse around a bit, they were immediately and repeatedly confronted with the image of a beef missile on the top of the front page, firmly emplaced there by my lack of updates. Which is half embarrassing, and half really fitting, because if any one sentence could be used to describe this blog, it’d probably have to be “Infrequently Updated Near-Gay Porn.”

As for the lunatic My Little Pony comments, it would appear the vast majority were either congratulating me for ruining some poor guy’s forum, or angry with me for posting something so blatantly photoshopped. Why the world is so delighted to see someone ruin someone’s else’s website is a bit of a mystery to me, although I suspect it has something to do with that Ashton Kutcher punk.

I’ve also recently learned another lesson in audience expectations, thanks to a surge in popularity for my Japanese Die Hard Posters piece. I originally made those things almost three years ago while hanging out on a forum in a thread entitled “Photoshop Up some Foreign Movie Posters” or similar. Everyone there seemed to think these Die Hard posters were cute and clever, and applauded the gusto and élan with which I poked fun at the Japanese, again.

So when I started the blog, I slapped those online, and they sat there, basically ignored until this weekend. Someone else on the Internet has evidently linked the piece, and also titled it “Authentic Japanese Die Hard Posters! These are very real!” I’m guessing. Which resulted in a small army of people visiting the piece, then shitting all over it for being photoshopped. Again, just for the record, basically nothing on this site is real, except for that trip to IKEA, which was truthfully for more harrowing than I’ve related so far.

One last thing: to the commenter jesus, and his request that I update my blog to remove the bulge so prominently displayed on the front page…

“This isn’t one of those movies where there’s characters that have issues, but then after much discussion they eventually come to terms with them, is it?” I asked. “I hate it when characters come to terms with things.”

“Just look at it,” she prods.

I eyeball the case suspiciously, then flip it over and read the back. “It says here that this movie is charming and delightful. I can’t tell you how wary I am of a movie that is purportedly both charming and delightful. It’s like they’re trying to do too much.”

“It’s about fiddling!” she says excitedly, ignoring my well reasoned arguments. “And probably dancing!” On a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is how much I like dancing movies, and 10 is how much she likes dancing movies, she ranks a 10.

I continue reading the case, “They fought, they fiddled, they fell in love? Jesus Christ.”

“I bet it’s really good.” She smiles from ear to ear. I attempt to frown from ear to ear in response, and hurt my neck a little.

My eyes continued scanning the case, looking for more things to object to. “It stars one of the Corrs!?” Other video store patrons smirk and cast side-long glances in my direction. “There is no way on earth I can watch this movie. My balls will fall off and run from the room.”

“You always pick the movie!” she protested.

“No… I’m sure you picked the last one.”

“Oh, and what was that?”

“Uh…”

“It was Batman Begins.”

“Right. Didn’t you pick that?”

“I did not.”

“I’m sure it must have been you.”

“I had already seen it, but I was willing to watch it again to accommodate you.”

“Accommodation is great when you’re doing it.” I earned a punch in the ribs for that quip, probably deservedly.

“What about this one?” I turned and picked up The Warriors, which was conveniently handy. “This is about a street gang. You like movies about street gangs right?”

“No.”

“You’ll like this one. It’s about a gang that has to make their way home across the city. But there’s these other gangs out trying to stop them.” She looks unconvinced. I continue, “But all the gangs have themes! There’s the baseball gang, and a roller skating gang, and the lesbian gang.”

“Is there a dancing gang?”

“Err, yes. There’s one gang that’s had training in jazz and tap.”

“You’re just making that up.”

“There’s only one way to find out.” I waggled The Warriors DVD suggestively.

__

Anyways, to make a short story shorter, we rented the stupid fiddle movie and watched it. It was terrible. Surprisingly, it turned out to be a fiddling version of Bring it On only without the subtext and nuanced characterization that made that film so compelling.

Do not under any circumstances watch The Boys and girl from County Clare.

You might also be wondering just what the hell happened here. Did I get kicked off of Cracked? Is it because I was too funny? Or not funny enough? Is it because I seduced and bedded the bosses teenage daughter? Or because I didn’t seduce and bed her hard enough?

As it turns out it was none of those thing (I think.) Here’s what happened. Cracked is going through a bit of a redesign, and part of that redesign was a phasing out of the current iteration of Cracked blogs. This certainly doesn’t mean an end to my relationship with Cracked. I’ll still be writing feature articles for them, and will likely be involved with other interesting projects there as they turn up as well. It just means an end to the faithful old robotman.cracked.com domain.

In place, I’ve got my own brand new domain set up. Aside from looking a bit more professional, robotmantheblog.com should be a lot easier for you to remember, and shorter for you to doodle on random surfaces around your campus or place of work. Also, I’ve finally ditched the old html I stole off a cat lovers web site, in favor of a slick pre-made template. I think it looks pretty sharp, and hope – nay, command – you to agree.

I’ve spent a couple days getting this new site into shape, but there’s bound to still be some busted links, or missing images, or things that don’t line up quite right, so if you see any, please, please, please let me know about it, so I can fix it. Email any problems to me at chrisbucholz@yahoo.com and I’ll be eternally grateful.

Honestly, I haven’t laughed that hard at something on the Internet in a long time. It’s a little humbling knowing that for all the effort I go to writing sharp, insightful, unnecessarily scatological comedy, that at any given second I could be blown out of the water by a 5 second video of a chipmunk turning around suddenly.

C’est la vie.

Anyways, along those lines, and in the interest of padding this post out a bit, I’ll share a few other things that have amused the holy bejeezus out of me lately:

___

Achewood

Chris Onstad writes the best comic on the Internet, bar none. Brilliant dialog, hilarious gags and some of the most memorable characters you’ll ever find in fiction anywhere. I actually almost displayed real human emotions when reading a strip a few weeks ago where a couple of the characters got engaged. It really is that good.

The one thing about Achewood that everyone I know has mentioned is that it can be pretty hard to get in to. A person will have it recommended to them, so they’ll go check out a couple comics, and not get any of the jokes. Meanwhile a long time fan will read the same comics and think they’re brilliant. There’s something about the dialog and humour that doesn’t pay off if the characters are new to you. Everyone has this issue when they’re new to Achewood.

The only way I know of to really appreciate it is to go into the archive, and start reading it from the very beginning. It’s a little slow at first – some of the key characters aren’t introduced for a few months – but it seriously pays off.

So set aside a couple days of your time and check it out. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

__

Brad Neely

Brad Neely makes incredible videos. I first found out about him thanks to his legendary Washington piece. Watch this right now. It is awesome.

He’s also got a bunch of similarly themed videos up on superdeluxe.com. The Professor Brothers ones are particularly hilarious.

Neely was also the guy that did the “Wizard People, Dear Reader” alternate soundtrack to the first Harry Potter movie. It’s this really cool lo-fi concept where you put on the Harry Potter DVD, mute it, and play this alternate soundtrack in the background. On it Neely narrates his own version of the events occurring on the screen:

___
Quote:

But Harry, Harry has gained control and is after that Snitch like a fucking rocket. Ziff! The Slytherin seeker has been after it for a while but I feel bad for him, ‘cause he is stupid, and Harry is a rocketized animal who will stop at nothing. Yes, they crash each other as the Snitch leads them down, straight down into certain doom. Yes they’re going to crash but Harry loves death, he says “Bring it on.” Harry is like a demon long dead with nothing else to lose. The weak-ass Slytherin turns away, but Harry pulls up just in time. He is standing on his broom like it’s an extension of his body. He reaches out, almost having the Snitch, and falls.

Oh my God! Is Harry going to vomit? Of course not! Like a leopard, Harry used his voracious mouth as his catcher. He’s got the snitch in his animal belly, and pop! It’s out! They’ve won! One hundred thousand points for fucking Gryffindor!

The crowd goes absolutely bezonkers! The champions in red and yellow are the victors. Harry is spent. The crowd is destroying its throats, calling Harry’s name. Harry feels right with himself. He’s down there, a new god who has found his calling.

He holds up the Snitch and bellows: “I am a beautiful animal! I am a destroyer of worlds! I am Harry Fucking Potter!” And dear reader, at last, the world was quiet.

____

The man’s a comedy genius. If you’re already familiar with the first Harry Potter story, you can enjoy listening to it on it’s own. I like to listen to it on the bus. You can download that here.

So there you have it folks. Some of the funniest and most original comedy you’ll find on the Internet, and a chipmunk that trumps it all.

It would appear that the Japanese have managed to build an advanced new robot called the CM2. Representing a new peak in the field of robotics, and a new nadir in the field of common sense, the CM2 has all the physical capabilities of a toddler, combined with the warm approachability of an enema bag.

Aside from proving once again why we should never, ever leave the Japanese unattended, this robot raises an interesting intellectual question. Why is it so unsettling? It turns out there’s already a name for what’s going on here – and inevitably, a Wikipedia entry. It’s called the ‘Uncanny Valley theorem,’ and basically states that people will tend to think robots are cute and attractive until they start to look too much like humans, at which point we’ll be repulsed by them. It’s called a valley because eventually, given enough time and technological development, the robots will look so similar to humans that we’ll find them tolerable again.

Seeing as deeply unsettling images are what this blog is all about, I’ve decided to make little CM2 here the official mascot of robotman.cracked.com. That should be a much more enjoyable task for him than his intended purpose: teaching children how to not fall into the toilet. What do you think about that CM2?

Hey wow thanks! And can you believe he only wants to be paid in human skin? I’d have to be stupid not to do this.

UPDATE: Here’s some video of my new mascot in action:

VERY RARE! One (1) 1988 TOYOTA CELICA GT-4. THIS IS THE CAR THAT OTHER, LESSER CARS DREAM ABOUT! 2dr, Hatchback, White. Manual transmission, slightly rubbery – downshifts to 2nd are problematic. Engine: turbocharged 4 Cylinder – 190HP theoretically! In current state, we’ll call it an even 130. Leaks oil when in motion, stationary. Tape Deck. Radio works, as does heater, although not at the same time, and neither while traveling uphill. Minor gas leak when accelerating or turning right. Needs new passenger side floor mat, power steering motor. Passenger side power window goes down but not up. Sunroof exists, but if opened, there is a strong possibility it will never close again. Has not been opened in 6 years.

Price: Have invested over $150 in maintenance over last 3 years (mostly oil and power steering fluid. Also 1 windshield wiper), hope to get that back.

SERIOUS BUYERS ONLY. Contact chrisbucholz@yahoo.com with offers.

My thing is that I’ve never been to IKEA. It’s not because I dislike the furniture they make, although I do. I’ve just never needed to buy furniture before. Seriously. In all the apartments that I’ve lived in everything’s either belonged to my roommates, or been hand-me-down items from various relatives. My parents used to have a shed stuffed to the rafters with spare furniture specifically to be used by me when I moved off to college. A pretty sweet deal for me, although perhaps less so for our cat. When I moved out and took the couch, he lost his favorite padded toilet.

The reason I bring this up is to relate a recent episode where I learned (again) why I should keep my mouth shut pretty much constantly. When my girlfriend was relating to me the details of one of her recent trips to IKEA, I remarked, stupidly, that I’d never been.

—

Girlfriend: “You’ve never been! You have to go!”

Me: “But I don’t need any furniture.”

Girlfriend: “They have more than furniture. They have shelves, and plates, and lamps and lots of amazing things. We should go this weekend!”

Me: “I don’t need shelves or plates or lamps. I’m not going.”

Girlfriend: “They have more than that! And you don’t have to buy anything! It’s the experience!”

Me: “The experience of going to a furniture store to not buy furniture? This sounds pretty stupid. I don’t buy furniture all the time, often from the comfort of my own home. Hey, how about instead we go to an adult video store and not buy an adult video? Or, check this, we do buy an adult video.”

Girlfriend: (ignoring me) “There’s these big shopping carts, and arrows on the floor to show which way to go, and there’s these little rooms.”

Me: “I’ve seen rooms before. I used to work in a room once.”

Girlfriend: “They’re not just rooms! They’re little vignettes!”

Me: “Vignettes! Why didn’t you say so!”

Girlfriend: “So you’ll come?”

Me: “No earthly force can keep me from IKEA now!”

—

And so we went to IKEA. As promised, there were vignettes. Imagine full scale shoe-box dioramas illustrating the lifestyle one might live if one had to furnish a room using only Swedish flat-pack furniture. There were unattractive couches, and unattractive desks, and flatware of undetermined attractiveness (I’m not properly equipped to judge the attractiveness of flatware.) It was fascinating, in that ‘not in any way fascinating’ sort of way.

To keep myself busy, I conducted a series of experiments to find out what IKEA products I could balance on my head. This is one of my favorite things to do when I’m bored and want everyone to know about it. I am happy to report that there are at least six separate things in IKEA that I can balance on my head, one of which could serve as a functional, if unattractive, hat. Below I’ve included pictures of all the known IKEA products I can balance on my head. Hopefully this will serve as a valuable resource for you, my readers. Perhaps it can be used to settle wagers.

So to ease myself back into the blogging grind, I’ll start by updating you on a previous post from December. You’ll recall a few weeks back how I discussed an episode where I had to dig my car out of the snow. At the time I off-handedly mentioned that due to our mild climate, everyone else in Vancouver has a real hell of a time dealing with snow as well. Well we got another dusting of snow Thursday night. It was only an inch or so, so the odds of me breaking off parts of my car to get inside it were slim. Indeed I managed to do several things that day without looking like an ass. But how did the rest of Vancouver fare?

Well, the roof of our stadium collapsed. No shit.

Ok, to be fair, it didn’t collapse so much as develop a tear and deflate. Which doesn’t sound as bad, until you say the phrase “inflatable stadium,” and collapse in a heap of giggles.

Anyways, that’s all I have to say about that. Going skiing this week, but regular updates should show up again after that.

The flip side to this is that people in Vancouver simply can not deal with winter when it does arrive. For example: an umbrella is worse than useless in case of a polar bear attack. More mundanely, we can’t drive in the snow, walk in the snow, shovel the snow, or do pretty much anything of value in the snow.

At this point, most Vancouverites telling this story would qualify it with an “except for me” disclaimer, and go on to mention how they’re actually very good at driving in snow, or shoveling snow, or growing marijuana in the snow, or whatever. Not me though. I’m an idiot in the snow. By way of illustrating just how much of an seasonally-adjusted-idiot I am, allow me to explain how I ended up digging my car out of the snow last week using nothing but stupidity and a semi frozen bottle of brake fluid.

The story begins with me standing on the sidewalk looking at my car, making some mental calculations. I had agreed to meet some friends at a bar to watch a hockey game. The bar in question was maybe 10 minutes away by bus. Driving there would take about 5 minutes, plus however long it took to dig my car out of 4 inches of snow. “That can’t take more than 5 minutes” I calculated. “By digging this car out and driving there, I’ll save valuable seconds. This is a smart idea. In fact, this might very well become the archetype for all future smart ideas.”

Because snow is rarely on the ground for more than twenty minutes in Vancouver, I don’t actually have a snow brush or ice chipper in my car. Initially I thought I might be able to utterly destroy the ice with my bare fists, but after some painfully unsuccessful experiments, I decided I might need something a little harder to chip the ice off.

I popped the hatchback, and after a bit of straining, managed to heave it open, only to have it come crashing back down on my head. It turns out that the 60 pounds of ice and snow sitting on top of it weighed it down by approximately 60 pounds, which seems obvious now that I type it. Opening the trunk again, and bracing it against my head a little more delicately, I searched around looking for something solid I could use to chip the ice off. I examined my tire iron, but seeing visions of a tire iron shaped hole in my windshield, decided against it.

Instead I settled on a reassuringly solid-feeling bottle of brake fluid I had tucked away. The sturdy plastic bottle would probably hold up to the task of chipping ice better than my delicate, bird like hands. At no point did I consider the possibility of the brake fluid bottle cracking open and dumping its contents on my car. (It never did, incidentally. Which makes me happy to announce this blogs first ever endorsement of a brake fluid: Motomaster Brake Fluid.)

Progress was slow, not helped by the haphazard approach with which I set about my work. After about five minutes of toiling away on the back window I had managed to clear off basically none of it. Frustrated, I declared on the spot that “rearward visibility is for girls” and moved around to the front of the car to try my luck there.

I began clearing off the front windshield, using my now marginally effective “jabbing a semi-frozen bottle of brake fluid like a drunken chimp” technique. I was making decent progress, and managed to clean maybe a third of the windshield before a clumsy jab accidentally destroyed half of my car’s compliment of working windshield wipers.

“Well Shit” I said, capitalizing the expletive for effect. “This is just stupidly, stupidly difficult.” My five minute estimate for the chore was looking increasingly unrealistic. “Without a proper ice chipper, or some fucking napalm, I will never get this car out.” But I was reluctant to admit defeat so easily, and paused to reevaluate my plans.

“Snow. Ice. Water. Cold. Hot? Hmm…… perhaps…” I wondered aloud, “this would be easier if I turned the engine on, and turned on the defroster. I bet that’s what a scientist would do.”

Which is how I found out my doors had frozen shut. Incredibly enough the locks hadn’t, but once I had unlocked the door, it wouldn’t budge. With the violent death of one windshield wiper still fresh in my memory, I was a little reluctant to yank too heavily on my door handle, which was feeling mighty flimsy beneath my tiny girlish hands. The passenger side door was similarly stuck.

This changed my priorities completely. Unless I was able to get into the car, having a clean windshield would be about as useful as having a hat for your asshole. “And barring a spell of genius outside-the-box thinking, there is no way I am going to get into this car,” I surmised, before getting absolutely nailed by a wave of genius outside-the-box thinking.

“I can just go in through the trunk,” I eureka-d, “because I’m agile like some kind of fucking jungle cat.”

Mentally patting myself on the back, I heaved the trunk open, let it fall on my head again, winced, then reached inside to flip down the rear seats. A clear path to the front of the car now in sight, I clambered into the trunk as the hatchback came down heavily on my upturned ass. I’ll spare you the details of how I got from face-down, ass-up in the back seat to sitting in the drivers seat, except to say that I will never attempt to have sex in my car ever, and that the handbrake in modern automobiles is in a poorly designed place.

A bit of brute force earned me progressively: foot prints on the door, door prints on my shoulder, then finally, an open door. It had taken me 15 minutes to get from standing on the curb to getting the door open, but this small victory still tasted sweet. I celebrated by pumping my fist.

The engine turned over without a hiccup, and I turned on the defroster. Then, being extremely careful to not lock my keys in the car, I set back to cleaning off the windshield. From that point on, the rest of the job was pretty straight forward. My hands had numbed up to the point where they didn’t mind the abuse I was putting them through, and I soon discovered that a shattered windshield wiper makes a much better ice chipper than a semi frozen bottle of brake fluid. Again, not surprising when you think about it in the light of day, but it felt like a big discovery at the time.

All tolled, it ended up taking about half an hour to clean the whole car off (rear windshield included), although I probably could have done it faster if I had a larger bottle of brake fluid.

The next day I went to Canadian Tire to pick up a replacement windshield wiper and some napalm.

Mmmmmmm, that’s a good sandwich. Excuse me for a second as I do some thinking aloud.

Let’s just say that, hypothetically, some sort of landmark Biblical loophole was discovered, and a marriage between man and sandwich was permissible (here I’m assuming that the sandwiches family is Catholic.) Well then I wonder what that marriage would look like?

Would it look like this?

Well that ends that strange and haunting vision of the future. I briefly considered photoshopping up a picture of the cast of Law and Order : Special Victims Unit and a sandwich with a black eye, but I decided that that would be in poor taste.

Unlike the sandwich. Go eat one now.

Now that’s what I call bringing an article full circle.