Central Snark

King Arthur: …We have ridden the length and breadth of the land in search of knights who will join me in my court at Camelot.
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: What? Ridden on a horse?
King Arthur: Yes!
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: You’re using coconuts!
King Arthur: What?
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: You’ve got two empty halves of coconut and you’re bangin’ ‘em together.

AS you might imagine, we were beyond happy and/or amused to find out the record for the World’s Largest Coconut Playing Orchestra was broken 2 days ago, in London. That’s right, the old record of 1,789 coconut playing fools folks, set last year in New York, was virtually shredded, when over 5,000 limey fools folks gathered together in Trafalgar Square for the sole purpose of watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail on a big screen AND play along with Python’s famous “Always Look for the Bright Side of Life” with over 10,000 halved coconuts. Whoa. And wow. Not to mention WTF? Because, really, are we to believe 5,567 people had nothing better to do Monday, than watch a movie — albeit one of our all-time favorites — for an hour and a half, and then clip-clop on a set of coconuts for 5 or 6 minutes to a happy little tune? Would you have participated, had you been anywhere near Trafalgar Square* day before yesterday at around 7 pm?? Yeah? Well, by golly, now that we think about it, so would we.

BET you think that means we’re planning to show you THE VIDEO from that momentous “performance”, but you’d be wrong. Oh we thought about it, all right, until we realized that 6 minutes of clip-clopping — while interesting and/or moderately amusing — was less than riveting, even by our own low standards. But, because we’re nothing, if not lazy and/or uninspired on Wednesdays (if you had to write a post the day after DIESEL — and you weren’t a certain charming/clever PENGUIN — wouldn’t you be, too? Yeah? Well, by gum, now that we mention it, so are we) …uh, where were we before we so rudely and/or ridiculously interrupted ourselves? Oh yeah… we’re nothing blah blah blah lazy blah blah blah uninspired blah blah blah especially on Wednesdays, so we do feel the need to show something, if for no other reason than to avoid more writing. But what? A clip of the song, as performed by Eric Idle in “The Life of Brian”? HAH! Too easy… guess again. A clop of the coconut, as performed by Michael Palin in a Monty Python sketch? WHA…? How the hell did you know that? Did you peek? Man, we have got to get better locks for this blog… no telling what else you kids are getting into when we’re not around (one shudders to think).

WE have no excuse for showing that to you, aside from our hope you’d all appreciate watching an aging Python demonstrate the proper preparation of the aforementioned coconut, as well as what to do, once it has been, er, properly prepared. It cracked us up, but then we’re easily given to fits of the giggles. Besides, don’t you burst into uncontrollable and/or maniacal laughter once you’ve managed to pluck another half-assed post out of your butt? Yeah? Well, by gosh and by golly, now that we’re nearly finished, we will, too.

*This links to a live webcam overlooking Trafalgar Square — which might have been fun to know about, oh we don’t know, maybe TWO DAYS AGO? Wonder if there’s a webcam on Humor-Blogs.com…man, that would be hilarious.

PS: you WON’T find a webcam and/or a record breaking Coconut Orchestra, but you will find a bunch of nutty captions in Diesel’s contest this week — which happens to feature two (count ‘em TWO) of your favorite Snarksters’ offerings. Wouldn’t you like to go vote for one of ‘em rightthisminute? Yeah? Well, now that we’re linking to IT, by gosh, by gum, and/or by golly, you’d better.

~snuppy

BELIEVE it or not, we’re still smiling (okay, we were laughing like there’s no tomorrow, but since there is a tomorrow — which is now today — and we’re trying to type AND drink our coffee — we’re smiling. deal with it) over that hilariously brillaint-yet-thought-provoking post DIESEL did here yesterday, even as we scratch our heads over our inability to follow-up with something clever of our own. That Diesel, he does stuff like that to us all the time — which, we suppose, is why we love him so much (well, that, and the fact that we don’t have to write anything on the days he does). Unfortunately, with all the noise we’re making NOT laughing, we can’t hear ourselves think. Fortunately, we don’t have to, since we’d already decided to do a less funny/more thought provoking post for today, in hopes you might do less laughing/more thinking with and/or for us. Hahahahaha. That is such a crock of shit. Not that we don’t like this following video, but we don’t care if you don’t laugh. Or if you do laugh. OR if you think. Just as long as we don’t have to. Think. (keep up, we’re almost through)

WHAT’S all this have to do with humps? Glad you asked. You see, on April 1st, Alanis Morissette released a cover/video (we prefer to think of it as a parody, but what do we know) of The Black Eyed Peas‘ hit My Humps, about her own bumps, lumps, and…humps. A concept that’s pretty damn brilliant, funny, and/or thought provoking, if we do say so ourselves, which we do.

SPEAKING of humps, we’ll fall short of doing that to you if you’ll do us a teensie-tiny favor and vote for the hilarious caption one of us (me) did for DIESEL’S CAPTION CONTEST. Okay, so we would never actually hump you, but we’ll be your friend, and isn’t that almost as good? You want humps, go to humor-blogs.com. Wait… did we say “humps”? We meant laughs.

~snuppy

YOWIE. Imagine our surprise when we got in today and discovered that, while we were away, DIESEL had turned his happy little corner of the Snark Park into a veritable comment cachepot. Honestly, that guy garnered so many glowing/flowery responses to his post-tips (like a post-it, only not as sticky and/or yellow), we couldn’t find a place to park for the better part of an hour (about 7 minutes, because we’re nothing, if not impatient). Knowing Diesel has an abundance of hilarious things to write about, we considered sifting through his SOCK DRAWER, in hopes of finding some darn inspiration for ourselves, until it occured to us we didn’t need his stinking socks and/or his drawer.

Okay, so maybe we do need those things, but we asked ourselves how we’d feel if A) we failed to knit together a post even 1/67th as amusing as our favorite Mattress Cop does on a regular basis, in which case B) not only would no one leave 28 comments for us, but C) the number of “hits” would go down from 492 to 14. Then we wondered D) why we keep asking ourselves stupid questions, and E) where did we put our medication, as well as F) will those white coat guys show up before we’re through writing because G) we’d love to get a few comments, maybe even 28, before the end of the day, but H) hell if that’s gonna happen if I) we can’t finish writing. Of course, maybe J) someone will get worried and K) call our mom, who will surely panic (Shirley) because she never knows where we are, let alone L) what we’ve been up to since M) 1974. That’s when N) we got that apartment with O) our sister in P) Fresno so we could Q) go to college, and R) be close to our boyfriend, who was really cute, but such a S) slacker. Glad we finally T) dumped his sorry ass and joined the U) band. Ah good times, but not as good as the time we had reading V) Diesel’s hilarious post and/or W) all those comments. That is, of course, until we X) remembered we had to add all those new folks to the side-bar, and Y) realized that doing so would involve actual work, which we hate.

THEN we found out KEITH RICHARDS snorted his dad’s ashes, our minds were blown and Z) we had to lay down. Don’t mind us, we’re not bitter about Diesel’s post and/OR all those comments, but we plan to play it that way for the balance of the day, in hopes a few of you will feel sorry for us and overlook the fact that — once again — we failed to meet our daily requirements for actual blog content.

YOU want content? We’re guessing you’ll find it at HUMOR-BLOGS.COM — just try to get there before Keith Richards does, otherwise the whole thing might go up in one giant and/or hilarious puff of smoke.

~snuppy

WE know what we said on Monday. We said we’d tell you about our fun/fabulous week with teh PENGUIN – now doing her best to spread smiles across the West coast, in spite of the fact she’s been hanging out with a certain CURMUDGEON, who’d prefer to do anything but (smile).  And we plan to do that, eventually — although we doubt we’ll be able to improve on the account offered by LAMPSHA (who most certainly does not suck), but that’s beside the point. The point, for we think we had one when we got here, is that following the hilarious/insightful post DIESEL did yesterday, we believe we’d be remiss if we didn’t offer up a few helpful tips for proper responses to any and/or all “funny posts” you’ll surely encounter as you meander along the yellow brick road through our Blog, Shirley. And don’t ask us to explain what the hell that means. Most of the time we just write the first thing that pops in to our head, we can’t be bothered to explore why it’s there in the first place.  

Now, where were we? Oh yeah. In the year or so since we took it upon ourselves to set up our humble little blog, we’ve noticed something about ourselves: We like comments. We need comments. Without comments we feel like our time has been wasted and we honestly wonder why we’re here. With comments, we realize we’ve wasted our time, but that someone appreciates it, so it’s okay that we’re here. By now you must be wondering to yourselves (maybe even to each other): “How can we help you feel even better than you already do about yourselves, your blog, and/or our comments?” Glad you asked. Below we’ve attempted to outline our “7-Step” Program, which we affectionately refer to (in the privacy of our own blog) as CRAPPER:

1. Comment. Make it a good one. Use a few well chosen words.

2. Respond in a way that indicates you’ve actually read something remotely related to the post for which you’re leaving a comment. In other words, “Hey, great tip, I tried something like that on my couch once, but it left a stain.” probably won’t convince us that you studied our carefully crafted words about how Stephen Colbert pwn3d Bill O’Reilly a few weeks ago. Unless, of course, something did get pwn3d on your couch — in which case we want you to explain, in graphic detail. Especially the part about what the hell “pwn3d” is, because we really don’t know. That said, if you’re just blowing comment smoke up our asses, pwn on your wn time, and use a towel. 

3. Avoid trickery. Don’t you dare try to drag us over to your tawdry website with promises of larger penises, Howard Stern’s discontinued fragrances (really), and/or opportunities to watch mothers bake cookies while their daughters have sex with with mutant goldfish. We fell for those things once upon a time – but that was then and this is now. Oh, and we don’t need any more “designer” handbags, either. We might be interested in your “get rich quick” plan, but only if it involves a dying Princess and/or dead philanthropist who wanted to “do good works” with her/his funds, rather than give them to family members who haven’t “paid their dues”. Our dues are not only paid, we have reciepts (somewhere at the bottom of our designer bag).

4. Print. It’s hard enough for us to read our own handwriting, don’t force us to decipher yours.

5. Praise us. Tell us we’re pretty. Or pretty funny. Or funny pretty much most of the time. Or pretty much anything you like, because, did we mention we like comments? Tell us we’re pretty, throw in a “winky” face, and we’ll be yours forever, or until we check out your blog and decide we like it and/or you. Speaking of “winky faces”…

6. Emote.   and  are charming devices for saying “Golly, not only did I read this post, i sort of enjoyed it and/or at least it didn’t make me throw up in my mouth a little, so thanks for that.”

7. Resist the urge to say “Wow! This post is just like the one I wrote today! Come check it out! Hurry! Follow me!” As far as we’re concerned, you may as well write “Come read my blog, because I’m a far better writer than you are, dumbshit. Neener neener neener.” Guess what? Stuff like that will get us over to your blog. That’s where we will slap you. Oh, and we won’t leave happy/winky faces, X’s, O’s, or ((hugs)) — not that we’re likely to do that last thing, anyway, because, really, (((hugs)))? Seems so… tentative. Like, well, it’s a hug, but it’s wrapped inside parentheses, so, like, it’s an afterthought. Or an injection. An injected afterthought. In parentheses. With X’s and O’s. What is this, Tic-Tac-Toe? No, it’s a blog. What? Why did we just say that? Hell if we know. If you’re so freaking curious, re-read the last sentence of the first paragraph, then tell us. We’ll be waiting for you in the back corner of the comment section, wrapped inside a parenthetical cage of our own emotion.

Note: Don’t mention this post to the folks over at HUMOR-BLOGS.COM. No telling what might happen if it’s discovered we’re not only NOT funny, but pathetic in our whorish attempts to get attention by leaping on to DIESEL’S cleve/brillaint blog-tails when he wasn’t looking.

~snuppy

UH-OH. Due to circumstances happily within our control, we find ourselves unintentionally undone by an unbelieveably exhilarating-yet-exhausting week. Unfortunately, as a result of our recent flurry of heretofore undisclosed activities, we are woefully unable to write. Stop looking at us like that — see DIESEL’S post below and get off our unattractive case, rubber face. We realize how utterly unimpressive we are. We know our behavior is unacceptable. We recognize our uninteresting prose may render us unpopular. Needless to say, we are unthrilled with our current condition and thisclose to becoming unglued, but we think and/or hope that will be unnecessary, since under the Laws of Blogging we are of the understanding that everyone is allowed — at the very least — one or two uncreative, uninspired, and, um, ungood posts. This is un of ‘em.

No worries, unless something unforeseen occurs between now and then, we’ll do our very best to ensure tomorrow’s post is anything but… forgettable.

Until then, you’re on your own.

~snuppy

PS: We considered sharing our thoughts about last night’s performances on AMERICAN IDOL, but we fell asleep on the couch as soon as Paula and Simon started to bitch slap each other around over the varying degrees of suck they were being subjected to (minds out of your crotches, kids). That said, Paula is either high on crack, or she really can’t tell the difference between a good performance, and that bag we wish she’d put over her head.

Unload those laughs you expected to use here over at HUMOR-BLOGS.COM.

HAHAHA. Sometimes we crack ourselves up. Oh sure, we know we’re the only ones laughing here, but we don’t care. Yesterday that clever lad, DIESEL, shared a few fine and funny thoughts about TV shows that have “Jumped the Shark” and/or “bit the broadcast dust”, and well, for this “hump” day we decided to skip past the bandwagon (or boat, as the case may be) and into the snark by pointing out some of our favorite-now-cancelled programs that most definitely did NOT attempt to ski over anything remotely resembling a shark. Heck, as far as we can tell, there wasn’t so much as a freaking tadpole in the pool when these shows went under, much to our chagrin and/or viewing dismay. Bear with us, because this might… ***

WE interrupt this post with another post that isn’t really a post, but more of a public service. Well, it is if you count our sister as part of the “public”, which we do. Last year, one of us spent way too much time watching/writing about AMERICAN IDOL, and because one person asked us to do it again, we’ve decided we will. That said, we’ll be brief, because, well, we’re afraid you’ll go away if this turns into a long/boring dissertation about something you care as much about as a rat’s ass. Also, after ONE viewing, it seems pretty clear we won’t have to watch again until sometime in May, because there are only 2 “real” contestants and 10 kids who probably sound okay in the shower.

IDOL OBSERVATIONS: Over the last few years, AI producers have deemed it “good TV” to provide the contestants with “mentoring” from some of the finest musicians in the world. Unfortunately, none of those folks were available for this first “big” night, so the honor was given to Diana Ross. Oh, not that she’s not a big deal (have you seen her hair?) but, um, armed with 4 decades of experience, the most helpful tips the diva gave included: “Pronounce-iate and project“, “use a mic stand“, “people in the audience are really real“, and “try to sing the melody, because this is a song“. No wonder she’s remained on top of the recording heap all these years, because that advice was solid gold.

~THE FINAL 12~

Brandon, Chris, Phil, Blake, Chris: Buh-bye, boys. Don’t let the stage door hit ya on your way out. (By the way, Blake? Justin Timberlake called, he wants his “look” back. Tell Chris).

Sanjaya: Bless your heart, behind that penis lies a very pretty girl. But we don’t think you could sing your way out of a pair of panty hose. Ciao.

Gina: Gina Gina Gina…

Haley: Roses are red, Violets are blue, Your singing sucked, And that was the ugliest dress we’ve ever seen in our lives, and it looked terrible on you.

Stephanie: You seem nice.

Melinda & LaKisha: Wow. And, WOWIE.

Jordin: When the judges review last night’s show, they’ll realize they told you a lie from the pits of hell, because you were not good, missy. Not. Good.

That’s it. As we said before, we’ll be back in May to tell you if we think Melinda or LaKisha will win. (Right now, our money’s on LaKisha)  ***

WE now return you to our regularly scheduled post — already in progress…

…never our intention to burden anyone with such a long post, let alone another pesky video*. That said, we do have a tiny one we’d like to share, which we believe nicely supports our contention that, along with a handful of fine programs no longer on the air due to some ratings “technicality” (no viewers? what are we, chopped liver?), ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT didn’t deserve the broadcast boot after such a short run. With its great writing, great cast, and, above all else, hilarious interpretations of of the chicken dance, this was, in our humble opinion, one of the best shows, ever:

*Not to worry, now that Viacom is suing YouTube for a kajillion dollars, it won’t be long before we’ll be unable to show you anything more exciting than home movies of our latest trip to Bed, Bath, Infinity, and Beyond. Stay tuned.

Despite the absence of chicken dancers, we have it on (fairly) good authority you’ll find laughs-a-plenty on HUMOR-BLOGS.COM.

~snuppy

DID somebody say “boop”? Why yes, we believe someone — who’s name, for all intents (his) and purposes (ours) shall remain DIESEL — did. Or was his phrase “boop boop“? Eh, it doesn’t really matter. Our turn, our post, our boop oop a doop reference and/or hook (please keep yours away from us).

ACTUALLY, we had a lot of grand ideas for this post, all of which involved clever references to BETTY BOOP, that animated minx who first boop oop a dooped her way onto the screen in 1932 (or somewhere there ’bouts — if you’re so damn interested, read the article, that’s what it’s there for). Anyway, our plan was to get an excellent night’s sleep, get up early, then whip up a tasty mélange of facts, fiction, and funny for your reading pleasure. Hahahahaha. Too bad we forgot to mention our plan to one of our (my) wayward sons, who decided it would be a good idea to spend the evening drinking/getting high playing video games with a few morons old friends, who were not willing to A) drive him home at 2 AM, and B) let him stay inside their house after they went to bed (at least long enough for his pissed extremely annoyed/exhausted mother to pick him up), forcing him to C) stand outside in sub-zero temperatures while aforementioned bleary-eyed mom struggled to find the goddamn goshdarn street, located in an area of town she had never been. Kids. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t get ‘em to move out, can’t chain ‘em to the radiator. (we can’t emphasize this enough)

SO, blah blah blah, this was supposed to be a hilarious — possibly award-winning post (or, at the very least, a contender for a coveted spot in the side-bar on HUMOR-BLOGS.COM), but now, it’s not. Oh well, life’s a bitch, and we plan to be one, too, the moment our son gets up (which will be soon, because why let him sleep in when we can’t). Yada yada yada, more words that might have had you all in stitches. Humor us, and laugh anyway.

ORIGINALLY, we cued up a swell little short featuring La Boop at an Invention Convention — a sweet tie-in (by our way of thinking) to Diesel’s TiVo-related offering yesterday. Instead, we’ve decided to share one a bit more bizarre — a sweet tie-in (by our way of thinking) to our current state of weariness and/or need of something stronger than a triple-grande-soy-no-whip-mocha.

DOES Betty’s voice sound familiar? Assuming one or five of you are fans of the same cartoons/music/films we are, it should.

~snuppy

FOR a nano-second, we considered offering up something witty, warm, wise, whimsical and/or winsome (winsome? whatev) for this, the last post for the last day of February. But, in the end (as in “the end of our efforts/ability to figure out what kind of note to wrap up the month with”) we figured “What the Hell”, let’s go with something fun/fabulous and maybe (just maybe) mildly freaky. Next thing we knew, RUPAUL popped into our heads and/or onto this post. Literally, ON to this post. Now, we don’t know about you, but when someone wants to work it that hard (even if it’s only in our heads), we tend to stand back and let ‘em do their thang. Shantay, Shantae, Shantee, Shantey, Shantaaay*.

WHAT, not a fan of RuPaul? Tough titty, said the kitty. Or did she? Hell if we know. More to the point, hell if we care. Consider yourselves lucky to be entertained at all (assuming more than one of you are). Originally we were going to call this “Who/What/Where Wednesday”, and let you all play a simple game of TWENTY QUESTIONS while we slept in, but only because A) we’re tired, and B) that 20 Questions site is friggin’ awesome and wa-a-y more fun than it should be, much as it pains/embarrasses us to admit.

*Not only do we NOT know how to spell that, we’re too lazy to look it up. Oh, and don’t think Miss Daisy isn’t more than a little “dismahyed” (as she’s come to pronounce it) by the fact that we’ve featured a picture of a RuPaul Doll instead of something more “Miss Daisy, Supermodel Extrordinaire” (as she wants to be known, at least for today) focused at the top of this post, because she is. Not only is she upset, she’s beside herself with angst — and we quote(ish) — “in fayact, the vaypors ahr po’in’ ovah me, evan as ah spayk.” We fear it’s gonna take the better part of the day and/or evening to coax her out of that potted plant and into a relaxing bubble bath, in order to calm her fragile-yet-frayed-and-very unfocused nerves. Poor thang.

~snuppy

THIS post-haste little post is destined to be unpostworthy of the tasty post-it posted here yesterday by that damned delightful reeler-inner-of-all-things-related-to-film, DIESEL. Nor is it likely to hold a drippy candle to the postastic post posted over the weekend by that daringly delicious spinner-outter-of-super-good-songs-she-spots, DJ LAMPSHA. Sometimes, posting is very suck, because we simply have no clue what to say, let alone write, let alone post — especially when we’re forced to follow the aforementioned delightful and/or delicious postabulous duo (damned, daring, and/or otherwise) we just, er… mentioned. Call it post-partum depression — that’s what we do, in our deepest, darkest moments of non-posting-post-what-post?-we-ain’t-got-no-post posting-without-inspiration despair.

SO, um, this post is about not posting, because we simply have nothing to say. Zip. Zero. Nada. That said (or not said, as the case may be), this post is NOT about being a WORDLESS WEDNESDAY post, because, if we’ve said it once, we’ve said it once: we like words, and plan to use as many as we can as often as we can, whether we have the ability to string them together in coherent sentences, or not. Today would be an excellent example of that, we suppose. Suppose? Heh, you can take that statement to the bank. ‘Course ya can’t cash it, because the check it’s written on is post-dated for sometime down the road, when we will have something to say in a post that is a post.

HAVE we ever mentioned how much We Love Lucy? We have? Well, it bears repeating, especially since we just found a clip from one of her most famous skits that puts our inability to properly express ourselves into perspective. Tomorrow we plan to drink a bottle or two of VITAMETAVEGEMIN*, in hopes of loosening our own sorry brain cells/tongues and/or fingers, and then let’s see who’s posting a post worth posting and/or reading, shall we? We shall.

(Don’t bother adjusting your computers, the audio isn’t quite synced up to the video — not unlike the way our brains fail to sync up with our tongues and/or fingers, and we wind up wroyomh smv/pt sfkting kujw lusp. Swi?)

*Those of us who have been sober for decades will surely not be doing this, Shirley. Though, in fits of posting despair, we often find ourselves tempted to throw ourselves not just off the wagon, but under it.

~snuppy

YOU know what we thought might be fun today? We thought it might be fun to offer up something completely opposite to those WORDLESS WEDNESDAY posts we see all over the Blogosphere. Why? Well, because thinking in terms of “opposites” is kind of what we do, and posting in terms of “wordless” is basically something we don’t.

ANYWAY, we like words, and we try to use them as often as we can. That said, we do know we could use them more effectively. Actually, we don’t know that, but we suspect it’s true. Never more so than after watching this helpful film, which beautifully and dramatically explores the means for tongue-tied folks like us to further enhance our skills as grand and persuasive orators. We can’t wait to try out some of the techniques we learned, and plan to do so the first chance we get. Oh, we know what you’re thinking: what a shame some of us (me) can’t express ourselves (myself) as beautifully as DIESEL. We agree. Guess it’s because we’ve yet to discover a helpful film to aid in our pursuit of grand and persuasive writing skills. Not to worry, though, ‘cuz if it’s out there, by golly we’ll find it, or our names aren’t… uh… “Good Finders of Helpful, Grand and Persuasive Stuff” (which is what we call ourselves in the privacy of our own blog — until we can come up with something more succinct).

ALL this to say, what could be better/more entertaining/more hilarious-tho’-mildly-pathetic than watching a 50-something man/dad/boss, who is woefully lacking in verbal skills, struggle to be more “explicit”? A word he learned from his son, by the way, who, despite being in high school, looks to be around 28.

DID we mention anything about knowing and/or appreciating the fact that a lot of our Very Good Friends participate in Wordless Wednesdays? No? Well, we do know and/or we do appreciate. Believe us when we say we think those of you doing all that “not writing” should keep it up. After all kids, there are only so many words to go around on any given day, and, bloghogs that we are, we’d like to keep as many of ‘em for ourselves as possible.

UM… thanks to DIESEL, we have a lovely screen shot from this film that begs to be, er, ah, explored in more, um… detail (poor poor Mrs. Willis).

~snuppy