Hold On A Sec

Wait … did you just say ‘war’?  War?  What war?  Where?  No, man, that happened already, like—wow, must have been almost seventeen years ago now.  Hm?  No, jeez, yeah, I know it’s confusing in that region, what a fucking hellhole, but trust me, we got out of Iraq like almost two decades ago, so no need to—you really believe what you’re saying, don’t you.  Buddy, there was no reason to go to—okay, so you agree there was no cause to start a war with them, so how would—Huh?  They knew that and they declared war anyway? No, who would be that retarded?  Hah!  Okay, now I know for sure you’re talking about 1991—Bush hasn’t been president for a long time, you know.  Yeah, yeah, Saddam and all that.  I think you’re just a little mixed up, because lately Saddam hasn’t been doing anything, really.  You know that for a fact, do you?  How’s that? Dead?  Hm, first I’ve heard of it.  Ah, those dictators, always dying comfortably on their beds of old age. Hanged?  What the fuck, seriously?  When did that happen?  It’s on fucking YouTube?  That’s not funny, dude.  The troops are in Afghanistan, where the Taliban were based—hello, we’re trying to get the scumbags responsible for 9/11.  America thinks what?  Nobody is that stupid.  Well, maybe some people, but—god, put the pie charts away, I can’t look at those numbers.  You are goddamned sick.  This isn’t possible.  It would have been on the TV news.  President Clinton would have been impeached.  What?  He was??  For WHAT??  And he’s not even president anymore??!  What do you mean we live in a mostly benevolent but deeply fascist state???!! CAN A GOOSE GO OUT DRINKING FOR A COUPLE OF YEARS WITHOUT THE WORLD CRUMBLING DOWN AROUND HIM I MEAN FUCK

—Nero

Chief Scientist

Caligula has a theory: that Internet readership spikes with even an offhanded mention of LOLcat pictures.

Let’s see how pathetically predictable you peasants are, shall we?

Snowflake injects her psychotic brand of conspiracy-mongering into an entry on 9/11

Bandit is so racist he won’t even accept Sacajawea dollar coins

Unfortunately this infamous image is doctored:

it’s just Jackie Chan and Jet Li dog and cat outfits, respectively

—Caligula

The Labyrinth 2.0

What brutal sprawls of twisted deathmaze encroach on our precious isle of Manhattan!  What beast-infested nooks and crannies where taxis dare not roam!  What great food-trapping beards that outgristle and outgrease any post-coital Minotaur!  What cheap and chokesome wat’ry beers!  What uninspired zombie throngs that barely conceal contempt for opening bands that aren’t half bad!  What bony, unwashed sternums unearthed by plunging V-neck collars!     

Sign marking the condemned’s entrance to their existential Inferno

To think, that even I, Caligula, could find myself in that phantom world of non-dreams and overshopping at Trader Joe’s, merely by falling asleep on the B train en route to Urban Outfitters, is too hellish an ordeal to dwell on. The human disease, thy name is Brooklyn. I shall have to put the episode behind me if I stand any chance of recovery. But the memories of clove-breath and misappropriations of irony, the gnarled syntax and pizza parlor stabbings, will haunt me for a lifetime, nay, into the afterlife.  

To say nothing of the short stories that hold together about as well as a fistful of diarrhea.  

—Caligula

Obsessively, Compulsively Wrong

HEY! WAIT A SECOND! You know this hurculean piece of junk that Howard Hughes built back in the day?

The fact that this nightmare of “ingenuity” is even in the air

suggests the use of some old-timey photoshop software

I just realized that the name “Spruce Goose,” which I always thought was a rare instance of goose-flattery, is actually kind of an insult! This airplane is a big fat failure! A joke! And you know what the worst part is? It wasn’t even made of spruce! That’s, right: it was a BIRCH goose. Which means they had already settled on the “goose” stamp as a way to insult the aircraft and needed a rhyming kind of wood for their retarded, fact-trampling, species-insensitive bon mot! Well, fuck Howard Hughes, and fuck the trees that gave their life for him. It should have been called a birch…lurch. Furch. There’s bound to be a bird name that rhymes with “birch,” just fucking look it up yourselves. I hate you all so much.

—Nero

What Have You Done For Me Lately?

As a flight academy grad used to people trying to shoot me out of the sky, I’m glad General Wesley Clark had the cajones to take a huge steaming dump on John McCain’s military experience malarkey.  Basically, he said, crashing your plane into a lake in Vietnam doesn’t qualify you for the presidency. *ZING* 

After I cackled over that envelope-pushing takedown, though, I got to thinking maybe Clarky didn’t go far enough.  Remember that McCain crashed his plane twice before the war even started.  Oh, don’t worry about avoiding those power lines, John, the taxpayers will be happy to shell out a few million to buy you another A-1 Skyraider.  

Also, if McCain was such a war hero, why did he get caught by the bad guys?  

McCain didn’t even use his shattered limbs to fend off Charlie

Why, when McCain could have been released early due to his father’s position as a top U.S. admiral, did he choose to hang around for five years in the Hanoi Hilton?  Hiltons are posh, swanky, luxurious places—Christ, I’ve never even been allowed near one.  If he’s such a super soldier, why didn’t he opt out of POW status and hop back in a new bomber and lay waste to Cambodia and Marlon Brando and turn the tide of the whole feckin’ war?

Speaking of which, if McCain’s such a military genius, how come we lost in Vietnam?  In fact, John McCain’s war record is 0-1.  Every war he’s fought in, we suffered a humiliating defeat, which he unequivocally accepted.  Not inspiring a lot of confidence there, buddy.  

No, John, if you want to be commander-in-chief, you’re gonna need Rambo as VP.  Hell, you might even learn something …quitter.

—Nero

 

Designated Flyer

Um: hello?  It’s chilling enough that goose-torturers as infamous as the French could take a break from force-feeding their future pâté de foie gras to slap an image of their victims on a brand of vodka that only became popular because it’s overpriced.  But that’s neither here nor there.  Now, do you see anything wrong with this picture?  Hint: it’s fucking obvious.

It could have to do with their use of the respected color “grey” (elitist slang for “gray”)—a color that all we Canadian geese wear with pride—in conjunction with illustrations of no geese of color.  I mean, this is as bad as casting Tom Cruise as Genghis Kahn! Out of the six geese portrayed here, five are the classic WASP-white shitheads, I suppose to match that eyesore bimbotini glass, and the sixth is an improbably large transparent monster.

I’m on to you, France.  If you ask me, Remy from Ratatouille looked suspiciously like a mouse in ratface…  

—Nero

The Gay Aughties

Caligula, for one, could not be happier with how the gay marriage situation is unfolding in California.  Of course in principal I’m against the extension of human rights to any oppressed minority—still hoping someone has the courage and malice aforethought to overturn Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka one of these days—but when such disgraceful civility advances my own sick ends, it’s hardly worth resisting, is it?

Ha!  No, this is not a Caligula-coming-out-of-the-boudoir confession, no matter what my Uncle Gaius says.  Those slave boys are mere sex toys, nothing that could sustain the hellfire of my matrimonal devotion, nor indeed survive it.  Rather, gay marriage, as our prudish GOP friends will remind you, heralds the decent down a long and slippery slope, the base of which must be reached at all costs if I have any say in the matter.

IT BEGINS

First, you see, is the establishment of boring heterosexual marriage.  Then little cracks begin to appear in the institution’s sanctity—polygamy is the next logical step, followed by same-sex couplings, with all attendant tax breaks.  By now quite a few leaks have sprung in marriage’s fortified dykes (ha!), and all manner of minor deviants trickle through.  Soon people can be wed to mundane inanimate objects, chairs, toasters, unicycles.  Then the big one: bestiality sweeps the nation!  It’s not uncommon for a man to take a harem of squirrels at this point.  The bar is raised for object-marriage as well: people wed hydrogen bombs, oil slicks, Ikea, the Sahara desert.  Eventually the door is opened for hostile marriage—yes, you can marry people and things against their will, and it’s all 100% legal!  From there it’s a hop, skip and a jump to blood rites and accidental marriage via fleeting eye contact.  

And just as the fabric of space-time is starting to tear from all this immoral stress, my fantasy achieves fruition: interdimensional marriage.  Yes, if I can’t fuck beings in other universes, I can damn well be symbolically bound to them.  Till death do us part, hive-minded sentient gas-clouds!

It’s a long and twisted road ahead, but even the journey of a thousand perversities begins with a single unholy union.    

—Caligula

Happenstance

Moviegoers!  Caligula begs you to cease your pop-culture assassination of M. Night Shyamalan.  True, he is no Hitchcock, as he is unable to chill the nether-regions of the loins and soul, but being bludgeoned by his stilted messages and cring-inducing cameos provides the sick thrill of blunter abuse, a heady mix of mockery and condescension.  He’s like a boyfriend that beats you until you cry and laugh with gratitude and acknowledge that he has every right to assume he’s the Messiah.  And “The Happening” will be his greatest triumph of audience flagellation yet.  SPOILER ALERT: a description of the film’s ending follows below this delicious custom Mark Wahlberg desktop.

Buzz about “The Happening” would have you believe that the twist is: there IS NO TWIST.  But the false prophets of Hollywood do not have the augury training of your favorite Roman sadomasochist.  I have read the signs (ha! get it?) of sparrows and bluejays in the sky, and I have learned what torture Shyamalan has in store for us.  The twist is that there IS a twist when everyone thought there was NO twist.  That glorious, swarthy bastard!  

The climax unfolds thusly: Just as Mark Wahlberg and his terrified family are about to be devoured by the King of Trees (it will make even less sense when you watch it), all will go black.  Slowly, Marky Mark wakes up out of a fog and finds himself on a couch in a room strewn with gauche costumes and hair products. The New Kids on the Block stand around him, and his brother Donnie leans down to speak: “Marky, buddy, wake up!  You were having some kind of terrible nightmare!  Now let’s go out there and ROCK!”

“Go out there?” Marky asks.  ”But I quit the New Kids.  It’s over.”

“Yeah,” says Donnie.  ”But this is our 2008 Reunion Tour!”

Marky looks at the camera with pure horror in his eyes: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

And his wail crossfades into the sounds of a sold-out arena show by the New Kids on the Block. The last half hour of the movie is basically a low-quality concert DVD, and one of the most brilliant cross-promotional hackjobs you’ll ever see.

 

The New Kids on the Block need be neither New nor Kids to strike fear into your heart

Yes, Shyamalan could have really outdone himself this time.  Viewers would have found a new nadir for cinema.  The critics’ faces may have melted off when this ending rolls into focus.  

Unfortunately, even they will have vacated the theater in disgust by then.  

—Caligula

 

Caligula’s Dreamlog #4: Ein Dieb Von Art Und Weise

I always knew Hitler was a genocidal monster—one that gave raving lunatics and tyrants a bad name, I might add, with none of the amusing anecdotes my reign trailed in its wake—but a copycat?

THE DREAM:

I’ve awoken in some Peruvian farmhouse, on a mattress that is certainly not the tempurpedic I’ve cultivated an addiction to, under blankets.  Some sort of convalescence, it seems, though what illness I’m suffering is unclear, even when I cough up some blah-gray slime.  Then I realize someone is watching over me, in a rocker. Why, it’s Der Fürher himself, a little older after years of paranoia in South America.  Is he presiding over my recuperation?  Strange, but in a way humbling, humanizing.  Almost an honor, to have a mass murderer as your nurse.  Suspiciously, though, he’s still wearing a Nazi uniform—not the most discreet disguise, eh, old chap?  Probably want to lose the trademark mustache too: I’d recognized him almost instantly.  How had he been keeping his cover up?  

Then, what to my eyes should appear peeking out from his unbuttoned olive green army-issue shirt but a out-of-place, gorgeous, familiar blue paisley.  My favorite nightclub shirt!  The very one I pilfered from the bathroom at Rawhide in Chelsea not a year ago—he had stolen it and was wearing it under his fatigues!  I don’t know which bothered me more, the brazen theft (which I was myself guilty of, to be fair), or the horrible fashion choice: It didn’t match his un-Aryan brown eyes at all.

I can appreciate the desire to blow out this limited wardrobe, but still

ANALYSIS: If you find yourself starting to turn a hazily sympathetic eye towards a total abortion of a human being, wait and ask yourself if he might need to be on “E! Fashion Emergency” more.  

 

With Enemies Like These

Who needs friends?  I can barely keep my enemies list updated, what with all the backstabbing and douchebaggery and constantly revised revenge plots. Here’s who’s currently getting my dander up—and consequently making innocent dander-allergic third parties suffer.  HOW MANY NASAL PASSAGES MUST YOU INFLAME

Nero’s Enemies List

(in order of who I would punch hardest if I had fists)

—————————————————

1. Edith Wharton (lingering English class antipathy)

2. Maxie (does not deserve to live or, barring that, be more popular than me)

3. Willie Randolph (he knows why)

4. Google Inc. (for reporting my gosling pornography searches)

5. Exterminators (bedbugs didn’t ask to be born, buddy!)

6. Richard M. Nixon

7. The Kingdom of Denmark (enough visa rejections will drive you to violence)

Also, how bout you learn to spell in American

8. Hank the Bullying Hawk (“sharpens” his talons on my back)

9. Fortune cookie fortunes (is it me, or have they gotten more threatening?)

10. The Honorable Judge Winston Busby of the Delaware Court of Chancery (whose title is long and boring)