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Jan. 5th, 2007
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Jan. 5th, 2007 07:48 amFrom Girls are Pretty
Warn Elementary School Children About What’s In The Sewers Day!
You’ve spent the last few years giving “Scare Assemblies” at elementary schools. It’s a pretty good circuit. The pay is limited by school boards, but in the past decade it's been voted up to a pretty good sum since parents have been demanding that schools shell out more money to scare their kids away from more stuff. The key to making a living is to choose a topic that isn’t too overcrowded.
The sex scare racket is so crowded that there’s practically one act per school. Same with drugs. “Cult Awareness” is a pretty good one to get into, but you’re not going to be competitive unless you’ve actually spent a few years in a cult and managed to escape. Way too much of an investment.
“Bullies” will still get you some gigs in the Midwest. “Gangs Are Bad” will work most anywhere, but again, you have to have either been a gangmember or a cop. “Eating Disorders” is like a license to print money. But guess what, that one is usually run by ladies. When it came time to figure out what kind of lecture to give, you looked at your qualifications (you’re missing an arm, you know what’s in sewers), and you wrapped it all up in a bow.
“You think you know what’s in the sewers?” you start off. “Think it’s just a nice little stream of tadpoles? Well maybe you oughta just climb down there and see if you’re right. And if you see the thing that took THIS…!” That’s when you whip out your stump of an arm and all the kids gasp. “…Make sure and tell it hi from me.”
You lost your arm in a drunk driving accident in ’86 (your fault), but as far as your paycheck is concerned, it gotten eaten off by something that lives in the sewers.
“No matter how much you like to explore and pretend you’re one of the Goonies or whatever, don’t go down into the sewers kids,” you always tell them. Then you list what’s down there.
Giant rats
Giant snakes
Giant raccoons
Vengeful abandoned babies
Terrorists
Escaped convicts
The homeless
Bat-Tigers (blind tigers with giant bat wings)
The Queen of the Underthings and Her Bloodthirsty Minions
Needles
Pee
Germs
“There are also some baseballs down there. Stickballs. Hockey pucks. Every ball you ever last during a street game. Those balls cost you about 2 bucks at the sporting goods store. How much do you think THIS cost?!” You show them the stump again and all the kids gasp again. Then you say thank you.
At the end of today’s lecture, when they all start clapping, you’ll notice one kid who’s sitting still as a stone, staring straight ahead with a sneer on his face. Go to him.
“Nice show,” the kid will say.
“You been there,” say to him.
He’ll nod once.
“What’d you see?”
The kid will turn to you. “The question you ought’a ask is, what’d I take?”
Wait for him. He’ll make you wait a second. Then he’ll open up his bookbag and pull out a ball of cafeteria napkins. He’ll unwrap the ball and reveal a black furry chunk of a Bat-Tiger’s wing.
“No one’s ever returned from a battle with the Bat-Tiger with a tale to tell,” you’ll say to him.
“I don’t have any tale to tell just yet,” the kid will say. “The story ain’t over. You wanna be a part of it?”
Say to the boy, “We go down tonight. At midnight.”
Then get away from the boy before a school administrator is forced to add you to a pederast watch-list. Nothing can kill a scare lecture career faster.
Warn Elementary School Children About What’s In The Sewers Day!
You’ve spent the last few years giving “Scare Assemblies” at elementary schools. It’s a pretty good circuit. The pay is limited by school boards, but in the past decade it's been voted up to a pretty good sum since parents have been demanding that schools shell out more money to scare their kids away from more stuff. The key to making a living is to choose a topic that isn’t too overcrowded.
The sex scare racket is so crowded that there’s practically one act per school. Same with drugs. “Cult Awareness” is a pretty good one to get into, but you’re not going to be competitive unless you’ve actually spent a few years in a cult and managed to escape. Way too much of an investment.
“Bullies” will still get you some gigs in the Midwest. “Gangs Are Bad” will work most anywhere, but again, you have to have either been a gangmember or a cop. “Eating Disorders” is like a license to print money. But guess what, that one is usually run by ladies. When it came time to figure out what kind of lecture to give, you looked at your qualifications (you’re missing an arm, you know what’s in sewers), and you wrapped it all up in a bow.
“You think you know what’s in the sewers?” you start off. “Think it’s just a nice little stream of tadpoles? Well maybe you oughta just climb down there and see if you’re right. And if you see the thing that took THIS…!” That’s when you whip out your stump of an arm and all the kids gasp. “…Make sure and tell it hi from me.”
You lost your arm in a drunk driving accident in ’86 (your fault), but as far as your paycheck is concerned, it gotten eaten off by something that lives in the sewers.
“No matter how much you like to explore and pretend you’re one of the Goonies or whatever, don’t go down into the sewers kids,” you always tell them. Then you list what’s down there.
Giant rats
Giant snakes
Giant raccoons
Vengeful abandoned babies
Terrorists
Escaped convicts
The homeless
Bat-Tigers (blind tigers with giant bat wings)
The Queen of the Underthings and Her Bloodthirsty Minions
Needles
Pee
Germs
“There are also some baseballs down there. Stickballs. Hockey pucks. Every ball you ever last during a street game. Those balls cost you about 2 bucks at the sporting goods store. How much do you think THIS cost?!” You show them the stump again and all the kids gasp again. Then you say thank you.
At the end of today’s lecture, when they all start clapping, you’ll notice one kid who’s sitting still as a stone, staring straight ahead with a sneer on his face. Go to him.
“Nice show,” the kid will say.
“You been there,” say to him.
He’ll nod once.
“What’d you see?”
The kid will turn to you. “The question you ought’a ask is, what’d I take?”
Wait for him. He’ll make you wait a second. Then he’ll open up his bookbag and pull out a ball of cafeteria napkins. He’ll unwrap the ball and reveal a black furry chunk of a Bat-Tiger’s wing.
“No one’s ever returned from a battle with the Bat-Tiger with a tale to tell,” you’ll say to him.
“I don’t have any tale to tell just yet,” the kid will say. “The story ain’t over. You wanna be a part of it?”
Say to the boy, “We go down tonight. At midnight.”
Then get away from the boy before a school administrator is forced to add you to a pederast watch-list. Nothing can kill a scare lecture career faster.
The Truth?
Jan. 5th, 2007 05:54 pmI thought I was annoyed by The Truth's ad campaigns. Where they use biased imagery to push there Tobacco Companies Are The Evil manifesto. The ones that showed that food and cigarette manufactors had differing rules concerning listing ingrediants (Gee. Two seperate products controlled by two entirely seperate government agencies have to abide by different rules? How bizarre.) Or where they put a dog in a cage, poked it and then told people that if Big Tobbaccy weren't liars it would be safe to pet the dog. Poor dog. Or where they filmed people reacting to realistic body parts in trash cans. (I bet the local police LOVED that one.) But then I catch their most recent one...
Where they draw chalk outlines all over the place with little placards on them. Placards that say tobacco kills twenty times as many people as murder. Really? Twenty times. Twenty times the murder statistics of where? The US? The World? What are you counting as murder? If its self-defense is it murder? War? How about genocide? Does that not count as murder, since its a different word?
Rarely has a group that I basically agree with (that smoking is bad for you and the company that sells the addictive product are basically greedy and not very nice) made me want to beat them up, steal their wallets and use the money to buy a carton of Camels...
Where they draw chalk outlines all over the place with little placards on them. Placards that say tobacco kills twenty times as many people as murder. Really? Twenty times. Twenty times the murder statistics of where? The US? The World? What are you counting as murder? If its self-defense is it murder? War? How about genocide? Does that not count as murder, since its a different word?
Rarely has a group that I basically agree with (that smoking is bad for you and the company that sells the addictive product are basically greedy and not very nice) made me want to beat them up, steal their wallets and use the money to buy a carton of Camels...
Squadron Supreme
Jan. 5th, 2007 07:19 pmJust finished rereading Mark Gruenwald's original Squadron Supreme, something I haven't read in like a decade and a half. And its books like this and Watchmen that reinforce my disdain for the current trend towards "realism" in comics. Story lines like Identity Crisis (which I mostly liked) and Civil War (which I mostly hate) try to hype up how they are cutting edge and taking comics in new and better directions. And they're not. They're just pale imitations of actual ground-breaking stuff being done by giants like Moore or Gruenwald...
Plus they manage to tell good, cool stories based on mainstream characters without actually trashing the exsisting stuff. I'd rather go and track down old issues of What if? or Elseworlds stuff than deal with hateful corporate driven morasse that is mainstream Marvel and DC nowadays...
Plus they manage to tell good, cool stories based on mainstream characters without actually trashing the exsisting stuff. I'd rather go and track down old issues of What if? or Elseworlds stuff than deal with hateful corporate driven morasse that is mainstream Marvel and DC nowadays...