Due to my ongoing sweep of plagiarism and copyright violations, the following topics are now empty. Have at em.

and a bunch of musicals:

More empty topics can be found on my scratchpad.

http://www.avclub.com/content/node/47756

A while ago I read this Onion AV Club article entitled "Simpsons Quotes for Everyday Use". And I wondered if anyone's response was similar to mine, being: Are you fucking kidding me? That's the best you can do? I mean, I realize mileage varies, since some people have seen certain episodes a zillion times while others have seen them only twice, but come on.

"Worst. Episode. Ever." is a given. Of course. Here are four I've either said, or my friends have said: "Everything's comin' up Milhouse!", "Lousy Smarch weather", "Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others" (although much more frequently I go with "We must move forward, not backward, upward, not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom", from the same scene), and "You shot who in the what now?" (which I always thought was "WHO shot who...", and indeed, a googling of the latter returns three times the results, so it seems to have morphed.)

The rest of those? I barely even recognize. Well, Boo-urns and Senor Spielbergo, those are very funny, yes, but they're not applicable to anything. They're not useful. The ANY key? That's not even a Simpsons joke! That gag's got whiskers on it!

Every day in America we see catastrophic lapses of journalism, but very few of them I can personally correct. I paged through the comments, and the relevant Wikipedia page, and a lot of my conspicions were susfirmed. I saw several specific phrases already on my list. WE CAN DO BETTER, PEOPLE.

So we'll start with the big, thunderingly obvious ones, and then drift towards things which I'm guessing are personal obsessions. What we are going for here, remember, is UTILITY OUT OF CONTEXT. A phrase that just reminds you of something funny doesn't count.

1. "But I don't even believe in Jebus!"

Homer, "Missionary: Impossible" (2/20/00)

Context: Homer, abducted to spread the gospel in South America, reveals he no longer knows how to pronounce his own deity. One of the Onion editors admitted this quote made the initial list but did not survive revision. How? EVERYONE knows about Jebus. This quote was out and about immediately, and long after it was popular to claim the shark had been jumped.

Real-life uses: Anytime Christians act as though everyone believes what they do. Gay marriage, evolution, holy wars. Essentially limitless.

2. "It's a perfectly cromulent word."

Miss Hoover, "Lisa the Iconoclast" (2/18/96)

Context: The non-word "embiggen", and by extension the myth surrounding Jebediah Springfield, is defended in the classroom.

Real-life uses: Anytime someone uses a word which is not a "real" word, but is formed according to the rules of English and has a clear and serviceable meaning. Given the abundance of synonymous prefixes and suffixes we have, this is incredibly common. Alternately, some like to use this to point out the meaninglessness of buzzwords and rhetoric.

3. "Me fail English? That's unpossible!"

Ralph Wiggum, "Lisa On Ice" (11/13/94)

Context: None needed.

Real-life uses: Relatedly to cromulence, this expression covers any other potential grammatical or syntactial gaffes.

4. "Ooh, they have the internet on computers now!"

Homer, "Das Bus" (2/15/98)

Context: Homer conducts research for his home business enterprise, CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet.

Real-life uses: Anytime someone inadvertently reveals a massive lack of comprehension regarding basic fundamental computer concepts. Likely suspects include your parents, your tech support clients and your president.

I would also like to point out here that although I am limiting myself to one quote per episode, "Das Bus" is a virtual quote FARM, containing all of the following, somewhat less useful candidates:

"Go banana!"

"Maude, eh?"

"I'm so hungry I could eat at Arby's!"

"...monkey butler..."

"We'll live like kings! Damn hell ass kings!"

5. "No TV no beer make Homer something something."

Homer, "Treehouse of Horror V" (10/30/94)

Context: Deprived of stimulus at a mountain hotel resort much like Jack Torrance in The Shining, Homer covers the walls with graffiti. Marge fills in the missing words, which are "Go crazy?" to which Homer responds "Don't mind if I do!" and begins chasing her with an axe.

Real-life uses: Anytime you're unfairly deprived of TV (especially The Simpsons), or unfairly deprived of alcohol, or just feel like freaking out about something.

6. "Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter."

Homer, "Mountain of Madness" (2/2/97)

Context: Homer requests weekly updates on Bart's strong ideas about the uselessness of teamwork, sharing and tolerance.

Real-life uses: Anytime someone expresses a controversial opinion that you personally agree with.

7. "I'm disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?"

-Mr. Sparkle, "In Marge We Trust" (4/27/97)

Context: A Japanese dishwashing detergent with Homer's face as its logo sends him a commercial with ludicrously inept subtitling.

Real-life uses: Anytime you wish to point out the psychotic overenthusiasm of Japanese pop culture. Our judges also would have accepted "Join me or die! Can you do any less?", "Misuta Supakura", or "AWESOME-AH POWAH!!!"

8. "There's a-doin's a-transpiring!"

Homer2, "Lemon of Troy" (5/14/95)

Context: Homer's Shelbyville doppleganger exhorts his son to witness the shocking theft of the lemon tree.

Real-life uses: Anytime ANYTHING AT ALL IS OCCURRING that you want someone else to come check out.

Do you see how these phrases are handier and thus FAR MORE PERVASIVE than most of what's in that article? Are you grasping the woeful inadequacy? Am I wrong, Dude? AM I WRONG!

Next time we will move on to ten more which might not be as familiar, but which have certainly stood the test of time for me and which I highly recommend.

The Word E2 Feed

I Hate It Here

It might be too much to expect that the various rumblings of discontent that have begun to stir down below the City's towers are the harbingers of real and actual change. In fact, it probably is too much to expect; of such grand and cheery forecasts are that bitch hope made, and of her presence and then passing is the full squalor of life made plain. Still. Still. There are times when you can stand on the balcony high above the fust and fuckery and pull it all into your nose - at least, you can if, like me, you have a genetically-engineered politics titration shitfilter inside your left nostril with the upgraded CrapReader option(tm) - and blink in pleased surprise.

Today might have been one of those days.

We have an organ of our government somewhere just abaft the beam of the anus known as the Supreme Court. It squats like a boil on the butt of the Executive Branch, to hear King George tell it despite his best efforts to pack it with his own favorite brand of pus. It sneers at the best efforts of the Congress to scratch the itch that it represents. Sometimes it disrupts a good long day of absolutely nothing with a furious itching; sometimes it spends whole months quiescent.

Today it snorted, belched, scratched itself, and vomited forth An Opinion In Twenty-SevenTeen Parts. An opinion on the matter of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld - to wit, on the legality of the current administration's plans for and handling of those people held in Guantanamo Bay's 'Camp X-Ray', somewhat uncomfortably known as 'detainees.'

The SCOTUS has decided that King George does not have the dizzying powers of making up a legal system out of whole cloth because We Is At War after all, and that in fact Congress (and the legal code they wrote) and the treaties the U.S. has signed do in fact apply to the treatment of those interned there. Huzzah! What, Spider, does this fucking mean and why should I raise my nose above my powdered Swedish baby doused in Elk milk to listen to your brazen rantings?

Hush then and allow Spider to explain.

Yes, you like it when told what to do.

See, this is a chance, no more, but a chance nonetheless for the beginning of rollback of all manner of anti-American fuckery that the current administration has been foisting on the populace in a stream of Executive Washroom Sewage for the past five years. Public opinion of Congress (both sides) and the President are stalled somewhere south of a worm's gelid asshole, and while that would in fact be an aesthetic improvement for many of them up there in D.C., the very innocence of such an orifice would provide them with an unacceptable 'do-over' mien.

Couple this with the it-is-a-surprise-to-no-one fact that not only does Mr. Limbaugh dabble in illegal pharmaceuticals but that said pills are for his misbehaving weewee, and perhaps the night air does not smell quite as foul as usual.

Still, Mister President, still. We have bowel disruptors. And you are just completely full of shit.

I'm Spider Jerusalem, and I Hate It Here.

Hello, my children. Gather round and let me tell you a tale.

First, let me explain myself to you a little. I, children, am an egomaniac. A first-order, top of the line, rare as diamond, dyed in the wool megalomaniac. It's all so much easier once you admit to yourself that you ARE the center of your own universe. Why is that important?

Well, in my years of self absorption, I have grown to know myself rather well. One thing I am very particular about is neatness. I'd walk a mile over broken glass to set a tea cup on a saucer. Know that about me, and the rest will become clear.

Now, for the story. Once upon a time, I found E2. What a wonderful vibrant place! Full of stories, but, FAR more importantly, full of an AUDIENCE. Oh, how wonderful it was, to know that hungry eyes where eating up my words! I felt ever so smart to find the patterns, to play the crowd, to feed everyone what it was they wanted. Up and up went my XP, and I felt that rush, that addiction trickling in my veins. I've been around the shadier parts, I know how that rush can take over. Either way, I rode the wave. I'd like to think that I was popular on the merits of my own self-worth, but I am not naive enough to discount an appreciation of my theatrics.

I admit, that at times, I was an ass. I did assy things, said assy words, acted in assy ways. But, hey, all in good fun. One of my dearest endevours was expressing an alien hate for all of mankind, and blindly questing for power within E2. Super Villainish! I created, occupied and elevated the fictional offices of Space Pope, God-Emperor of Mars, and of course, The Triumverate. I rallied against the supposed unfairness of the regime, knowing full well that it is just a group of people, just like me, muddling along on their love of writing, not some evil cabal.

In essence, I stirred shit for the fun of it.

Finally, my monkeyshines have gotten me into trouble. I rallied and railed for an editorship, content in the knowledge that nobody in their right mind would let me in. Boy, was I wrong. They accepted me at face value, and TRUSTED me. Don't get me wrong, it was very flattering, but in truth, I feel like a fraud in the job.

I tried to get really worked up over the issues that editors discuss, and all the internacine warfare that goes on. Editors, god bless them, keep an avalanche of shit from washing the site into oblivion EVERY FUCKING DAY. It is a job. And there are some over the top, dedicated workaholics, people who audit YEARS worth of content that most people would never trip on in a million clicks, to make sure it is up to snuff. These editors, they work. Like I said, I feel like a fraud in the position. I just don't have the grit it takes to judge, jury and execute. My God, is it hard to destroy a node. I just don't have the heart.

I suppose I am bit bent to the dem bonesian era of vengeful gods and rash punishments. I'm a dinosaur who doesn't have the empathy this new breed of editor has, the patience and dedication it requires to work in the kinder, gentler E2. I have a fiery heart, not a gentle hand. It comes back to neatness. I can't make E2 the smooth stack of papers I always dreamed it was. It never could be, because it isn't meant to be. This is a scrapbook, unlike, say, Wikipedia's infinitely revised, soulless encyclopedia.

So, thats my problem, my children, my glorious sheep whom I catbox shepard toward the unknown. I haven't the heart to edit, and I think I should give it up, in the name of my Space Popery.

Space God and Cowboy Jesus Bless you All,
ASE.

Today was a monumental day in Artmanland (patent pending).

Today, for the first time ever since joining this company, I won at Nerfball. Yes, we have a little Nerf hoop set up in the conference room (before we moved the office back in March it was at the end of a hallway hung on the door to the server closet). We play PIG.

Anyway, the bossman was out first (a rare thing); but even rarer still: in the end it came down to just me and one of the best players here. We both had a "PI." He started using what's usually my secret weapon: the underhanded shot. But he could not turn my own secret weapon against me. No, no! I defended, and then went on the attack! I got one before him and he missed and for the first time ever I was VICTORIOUS! I WON, baby! I fucking WON! Yeah!

OK you may downvote me now.

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