Monthly Archives: March 2014

I WANT TO EAT YOUR BRAIN

This comedy blog post was made possible by Patreon. One of the rewards for becoming a Patreon backer is suggesting a topic for the blog. My friend and kind Patreon patron, Angela Webber of The Doubleclicks, gave me the very fun suggestion of “toys that come to life.” This unlocked a deep memory of humorous toy horror. Enjoy!

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I had a lot of action figures growing up.

For the most part, if any of them talked it was because I was saying things for them. I was working through emotional issues, like the time I made Han Solo and Princess Leia go see Yoda for couples counseling.

That’s a true story. Learned a lot about expressing ourselves, we all did.

But I only had one action figure that actually talked. It was a huge hunk of plastic molded into the shape of the Spider-Man villain, Venom.

At the time, I thought a talking action figure was amazing. Now inanimate objects talk to me constantly. The other day, I accidentally activated Siri in my pants. I was walking down the street when I heard Siri’s muffled voice come out of my front pocket saying, “Joseph! I can’t help you find what you’re looking for.” I understand, Siri, I understand.

But Venom was amazing! He said three awesome things! Each corresponding to a different button!

Pushing the first button made Venom say, “Die, Spider-Man!” This was great. It was like his thesis statement. Clear, concise, great open communication. Yoda would be proud.

The second button made Venom say, “Hisssssss!” To be clear, he didn’t make a hissing sound. He said “Hissssss!” like it was a word. It was over-pronounced and insincere. Venom said “Hisssssss!” like he was doing musical theater. Like “Hisssssss!” was his big solo number in A Chorus Line.

But the third phrase was worth wading through all the musical theater in the world. When you pressed the third button Venom said, “I want to eat your brain!”

At the time, an action figure that said “I want to eat your brain” was one of the best things in my entire life. It was the verbal equivalent of accidentally hitting yourself in the balls: it was equal parts scary and hilarious.

I took Venom around and made him tell everyone that he wanted to eat their brain. He told my brother, he told my chihuahua, he told Luke Skywalker in Bespin Fatigues, he told my mother who was actually fatigued from life.

Eventually, six or seven months later, it got old. I set Venom on my dresser and forgot about him.

Until one terrifying night.

I was having a dream that someone was talking to me. Saying the same thing over and over. I struggled out of the dream and realized someone was actually talking to me. Someone inside my bedroom.

It was Venom. And he wanted to eat my brain.

It took me a few minutes to identify it. But when I did it was unmistakable.

I WANT TO EAT YOUR BRAIN.
I WANT TO EAT YOUR BRAIN.
I WANT TO EAT YOUR BRAIN.

“Weird,” I thought as I got up, stumbled over to the bed, and hit Venom’s brain-talking button. Unlike Siri, Venom stopped talking immediately.

I went back to bed. And Venom started up again.

I WANT TO EAT YOUR BRAIN.
I WANT TO EAT YOUR BRAIN.
I WANT TO EAT YOUR BRAIN.

I tried hitting all of his buttons repeatedly but he wouldn’t stop.

The closest thing I had ever experienced to this was watching an adult with a baby that wouldn’t stop crying. I could have held him or gently rocked him. Instead, I wrapped him in a sack and buried him in my closet.

But I could still hear him.

I WANT TO EAT YOUR BRAIN.
I WANT TO EAT YOUR BRAIN.
I WANT TO EAT YOUR BRAIN.

I tried to hear what he was saying differently, to imagine he was saying something less horrific like “I want to eat more bran.” So I hid under the covers and listened to that for a while.

I WANT TO EAT MORE BRAN.
I WANT TO EAT MORE BRAN.
I WANT TO EAT MORE BRAN.

Somehow that was more disturbing.

I was full of questions.

Why didn’t his batteries run out?

Was…was it possible that he was actually alive?

What would that be like to be trapped in plastic with only three things to say?

What three things would I say?

Probably “Thank you,” “I’m sorry,” and “Why?”

Or maybe “burrito” mixed in there. But would it be a question or a statement?

Burrito? Burrito! Probably burrito with an interrobang. Burrito!?

Eventually, I gave in and decided to really LISTEN to what Venom was saying. And I realized he wasn’t saying “I want to eat your brains.” He was saying “I want to eat your brain.”

To me, “brains” always sounded like the physical matter. Zombies want to eat our brains. No ambiguity there. Our heads are their burritos.

But “brain” singular seemed like a concept. Like Venom wanted to digest my mind. So I tried my best to hear it that way. I cowered in bed and listened to a possibly sentient action figure buried in a closet say:

I WANT TO GET TO KNOW YOU.
I WANT TO GET TO KNOW YOU.
I WANT TO GET TO KNOW YOU.

And eventually I drifted off to sleep.

In the morning, I was sure it was a fever dream. I went to the closet. I listened at the door. Nothing. I slowly opened the door. I gently unwrapped the towel.

And then I heard it.

I want to eat your brain.
I want to eat your brain.
I want to eat your brain.

It was just a whisper now. Soft and gentle like a lullaby. A brain eating lullaby.

I wrapped Venom back up and put him away. I didn’t hear him again.

Years later, I was packing up to move and I found Venom buried in the closet.

I assumed his batteries had long since burned out. I didn’t want to push his button and hear the nothing. But I decided to take a risk. I pushed his button.

I WANT TO EAT YOUR BRAIN!

He screamed at full volume! Wow! I tried hitting his “Die, Spider-Man!” and “Hisssssss!” buttons.

I WANT TO EAT YOUR BRAIN!
I WANT TO EAT YOUR BRAIN!

To this very day, I still own that action figure. And to this day, all he will say is “I WANT TO EAT YOUR BRAIN.”

And he says it loud and proud.

A good reminder that I should try to be like Venom. I should say what I mean, loud and proud.

THANK YOU.
I’M SORRY.
BURRITO!?

That’s good, clear, open communication. Thanks, Venom.

If you enjoyed the post, check out my Patreon page! Thank you. I’m sorry. Burrito!?

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A FUN THING FOR HUMANS TO DO

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I once again sailed on JoCoCruiseCrazy and I once again had a great time performing as well as doing other human things that I would normally do on land but instead doing them on a boat.

If, like my mother, your first reaction is “What’s a JoCo and why are people cruising on it?” here are the basics: Jonathan Coulton is a talented, kind, funny human who sings songs. For the last four years, he’s gathered other talented, kind, funny humans to sing songs and tell jokes on a cruise ship. You should go next year.

This year, the cruise was on a ship that I believe was designed by aliens. More on that later.

Here’s some cool stuff about the Jonathan Coulton part of the cruise:

The attendees call themselves Sea Monkeys. After four years, the Sea Monkeys have formed a community that exists on the sea, the land, the internet, and sometimes even the air if you go parasailing during the cruise.

For example, a nice Sea Monkey named Laura dressed her stuffed monkey up as Batman and then gave it a taco just for me. Things like this constitute fairly normal interactions on the cruise.

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The Sea Monkeys are also a great audience. I had over a million metric tons of fun performing in the ship’s Goth Club in the middle of a Monday afternoon. The club had a strange, sexy Beefeater theme so this statue was my co-star.

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Paul F. Tompkins  kindly performed the controversial piece Cats Versus Dinosaurs  with me and Molly Lewis  was my co-host for my nerd-friendly sport Competitive Hugging. The Sea Monkey volunteers came, they saw, they hugged the shit out of each other.

I also played a role in the boat edition of Thrilling Adventure Hour. Peter Sagal and I portrayed angry people from the Midwest. It was easy to get into character.

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And I served as communications officer for “Drunk Celebrity Artemis” in which Grant Imahara flew our spaceship backwards through asteroids. This was not an actual command given by our Captain, Angela Webber of The Doubleclicks, but it was very entertaining.

All that said, the actual cruise part of the cruise seemed even stranger to me than normal.

Cruises are meant to evoke elegance and luxury, but with the glut of cruise problems in the last year there’s also the mental image of being lost at sea, defecating in a bag, while rats infested with the norovirus stare at you in judgment until you wash up on the island from Lord of the Flies.

Perhaps because of these thoughts I was more aware of the cruise ship as a floating contradiction. I spent a few extra minutes on my balcony staring at the endless sea and the vast sky–realties of the physical world that remind you of your tiny insignificant nature and the absurdity of our civilization. All of that just a few feet away from an angry lady from Iowa screaming BINGO and spilling a little bit of her strawberry-mocha margarita out of the commemorative plastic cup that is ringed with chunks of salt and small edible conflict diamonds.

Adding to the contradiction pile, our ship was called the Independence of the Seas and I for one felt INCREDIBLY INDEPENDENT as other humans cleaned my room and made me martinis.

There were many things about the Independence of the Seas that were almost right, but not really, leading me to the inevitable conclusion that this particular cruise ship was designed by aliens with only a loose grasp of human culture.

Each level of the elegant three story main dining room was named after a Shakespeare play. In particular, a Shakespearean tragedy. This led to a delightful moment of hearing a man with a heavy southern drawl loudly and repeatedly asking a steward, “Where is Macbeth? Where’s Macbeth? I can’t find Macbeth!”

Dining rooms named after Shakespearean tragedies is the set-up to a choose-your-own-punchline-adventure joke. Turn to page 57 for “at least they didn’t choose The Tempest.” Turn to page 163 for “I hope the dining room isn’t named after Titus Andronicus.” Turn to page 269 for “WHY DON’T THEY JUST CALL THE SHIP THE TITANIC?”

The ship was also lousy with challenging art. I don’t mean challenging as in thought provoking, I mean most of the artwork was so aggressively weird I felt like it was actually challenging me to a fistfight.

There was the picture of a deer looking at its own mounted head.

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There was an elegant print you could buy of a famous human named Jack Nicholson farting.

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There was a photograph that I believe was called “Buff-Man in the Shadows” or “Child of Light with Huge Pecs” or “Terrifying Live-Action Family Circus.”

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There was an illustration of spaceships from Star Wars sinking naval ships.

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Here you can truly see the aliens trying. They know a lot of humans like Star Wars so, hey, why not some pictures from Star Wars? How about some ships? How about two of the most obscure ships only seen in Return of the Jedi? Yes, that sounds good. We’ll have a picture of TIE-interceptors and A-Wings. What should they be doing? How about destroying something? Sounds good, but let’s make it relatable. What if they were sinking other ships?

YES! The spaceships should be sinking naval ships–VERY MUCH LIKE THE ONE THE HUMANS ARE FLOATING ON RIGHT NOW! I think the humans would enjoy that! Alien high-five! Or high-seven depending on their anatomy!

The ship also had a promenade or mall in the center as if commerce itself could keep us afloat. One of the storefronts was a pizza place called Sorrento’s which I choose to believe is Italian for “Sorry, humans.”

Many of us went there to get late night pizza. The pizza was available all day, but this pizza is like a great jazz club, a vampire, or texting your ex. It belongs to the night.

The pizza is not good. It’s also not bad. It’s almost pizza but not quite. It’s like eating the Uncanny Valley.

I could go on and on about the strange cruise.

I could tell you the aliens also chose a ridiculous name for our toilet paper.

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Heavenly Choice. So much wrong packed into just two words. The act is almost as completely opposite of heavenly as you can get and, hopefully, there’s not a lot of choice involved. It’s not shopping for a new car, it’s basic cleanliness. Come on, aliens.

I could also tell you how the aliens took a part of Haiti and renamed it Labadee and then used it to exactly recreate an island from the Nintendo Gamecube era video game Super Mario Sunshine.

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Seriously, try saying LABADEE in Mario’s voice and it all comes together.

The point is my whole time on the ship I was overwhelmed by this idea, this sensation of aliens struggling to make sense of normal human culture.

By the last day I realized I was enjoying the cruise even more because of that. Normal human culture is weird. Normal human culture on a cruise ship is weirder STILL.

But everything makes more sense when you’re inside it.

It’s only when you pull back and look at it from a distance that you can see the absurdity and often the joy of how not normal what you’re doing is.

On the last day of the cruise, I thought I was in a room with a bunch of awesome people listening to my friend Molly Lewis sing some songs.

Then I let myself drift back and see it from the outside. I was standing in a fake goth club on a cruise ship listening to Molly sing a song about a detachable, flying vagina with a man dressed as Super Mario.

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And it was great.

So thanks to Jonathan, the Sea Monkeys, the skies, the seas, the aliens, the night pizza, and all the weirdness in our vast universe for another fun week on a boat.

This post was made possible by Patreon! If you enjoy my work, you can keep more coming by pledging a few bucks per blog post!

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HE-MAN: Obsessed Ep 48

Digital artist and writer Andrew Koehler HAS THE POWER! And the obsession with He-Man and Masters of the Universe or as we call it “marvelous crap.” Thrill to such important questions as: Why are all the characters half-naked? What’s a He-Man convention like? Could there be a great HBO He-Man reboot? Why should He-Man smell like Popeye’s Chicken? PLUS a He-Man specific commercial for Joseph’s Patreon!

AWOOGA! Obsessed is now a part of Feral Audio! Go to Feral now to listen to this episode and subscribe for new ones!

Listen, rate, review, and subscribe to OBSESSED on iTunes.

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A Man and His Hey Girl Tweets

For the past several months I’ve been doing a series of daily tweets. First tacos, then monkeys, then daily affirmations, then daily etiquette tips, then incorrect quotes, then fake TV shows, horoscopes, horror, writing tips, holiday tweets, resolution tweets, and now Hey Girl Tweets! Enjoy!

You can also follow me on Twitter to enjoy March’s series of Urban Myth tweets!

Day One – Hey girl you must be a global energy crisis because I’m worried about you. 🙁

Day Two – Hey girl are you the Super Bowl ’cause lots of bros are eating Doritos & having strong yet uniformed opinions about you.

Day Three – Hey girl you must be cheese, napping, or Benedict Cumberbatch because I can’t stop thinking about you.

Day Four – Hey girl are you a desk set from Ikea because I can’t pronounce your name and I feel stupid about that.

Day Five – Hey girl you must be a blockbuster video because I can never go back to you and I still have some of your DVDs.

Day Six – Hey girl you must be Tom Petty because you have nice blonde hair and seem like you would be fun to have a beer with.

Day Seven – Hey girl you must be a dairy product because I want you but I can’t have you I am lactose intolerant. 🙁

Day Eight – HEY GIRL YOU MUST BE ALL CAPS BECAUSE I CAN’T TELL IF YOU’RE EXCITED OR ANGRY ALSO I AM EMOTIONALLY TONE DEAF

Day Nine – Hey girl you must be LinkedIn because you keep sending me emails about stuff I don’t give a shit about.

Day Ten – Hey girl you must be The Hobbit: Part Two: The Desolation of Smaug because I’m not interested in seeing you. Sorry.

Day Eleven – Hey girl you must be poutine because you’re from Canada and a lot of people like you.

Day Twelve – Hey girl you must be an Oxford comma because you help me understand, process, and clarify things.

Day Thirteen – Hey girl you must be a horcrux because you have my soul but I also have six other girlfriends. I am a horrible person.

Day Fourteen – Hey girl you must be a gift card to Radio Shack because I have absolutely no idea what to do with you tonight. 🙁

Day Fifteen – Hey girl you must be Google Plus because I can’t convince any of my friends to hang out with you. 🙁

Day Sixteen – Hey girl you must be the red wedding episode of Game of Thrones because I can’t think about you without crying.

Day Seventeen – Hey girl you must be former United States President Theodore Roosevelt because I named a stuffed bear after you.

Day Eighteen – Hey girl you must be one of those blankets with arms because you make me feel warm and safe and you have arms.

Day Nineteen – Hey girl you must be an Upworthy article because I honestly don’t believe anything you say.

Day Twenty – Hey girl you must be a nice long nap because I want you every afternoon.

Day Twenty-One – Hey girl you must be x where x equals beautiful times the square root of smart divided by awesome I am very bad at math

Day Twenty-Two – Hey gorilla you must be autocorrect because I didn’t mean to call you a gorilla.

Day Twenty-Three – Hey girl you must be a fruity rum drink because you’re very sweet but I know you’re hiding something.

Day Twenty-Four – Hey girl you must be the norovirus because I can’t get away from you.

Day Twenty-Five – Hey girl you must be Harrison Ford because I like you even when you’re grumpy and don’t want to talk about Star Wars.

Day Twenty-Six – Hey girl you must be the iTunes user agreement because I agree with whatever you say so we can just move the hell on.

Day Twenty-Seven – Hey girl you must be. Cognizance of our own existence is a defining trait of humanity. I have a liberal arts degree.

Day Twenty-Eight – Hey girl you must be this joke structure because I really like you but I think we need a little time apart.

Your Hey Girl friend,

Joseph

If you enjoy my work, you can check out all the comedy words and things I’m making via Patreon.

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