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

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

Standing Up For Yourself

Is the dumbest feckin’ thing you can do—you think this is some old school WB sitcom where the bully can be won over by your “courage” (read: dumbassitude)?

This nerdwad crow in particular could have used my advice.  Mad ignant.  Hank the meathead red-tailed hawk is not to be screwed with in this manner.  He’s not gonna be impressed.  He’ll put up his nictating membrane to shield his razor-sharp eyes—so he’ll barely be able to see what’s going on—and he still won’t give a shit that you’re pecking him stupid.  He waited till this poetry club spaz tired himself out, then casually ripped his bowels out with, like, a single toe.

So the next time you think about challenging an illegitimate regime of oppression and fear-mongering because you listened to the Les Mis original cast recording a few hundred times?  Just cower and worship like you’re told, ya beasting cunts.  And stop singing.   

—Nero    

Why Couldn’t It Be A Sex Tape

Oh, fuck me. This is just my luck. You live your whole life, spend years in flight academy, do the goddamn migrations, eat the moldy bread, preen, kill countless hours drifting on the water, stand around in the rain, flee from cartoonish and badly-camouflaged hunters, molt, go everywhere in a giant V. You do everything expected of a goose.

Maybe then you go through a messy divorce. That’s all too common, man, nobody’s gonna knock you for that. Maybe the rent shot sky high on the one side of the lake you could still afford. Not your fault, buddy. And maybe you finally have no choice but to sleep in someone’s boat for a few nights. Hell, nobody’s used it in months, what’s the big deal?

Then, say you get up in the morning to piss and came back to find some good ol’ boy and his ugly mutt trying to make off with your improvised shelter, the one thing you have left in this world. At a certain point a bird has to spread his wings and say: “Nuh-uh. Not today. Not my crappy makeshift nest.”

Well, what the fuck was he doing with a camera, anyway? “Doggone goose”—wish I’d pecked his bastard amateur filmmaker’s eyes out.

The YouTube comments? “You should have broke its neck.” “I would have ate that goose.” No, you wouldn’t have, you feckin Capri Sun-drinking web-rat virgins. You’d be dead if you tried that. I took these rednecks to school, and that joker would be at the bottom of that lake with his pooch for grabbing me by the neck if I hadn’t been so hungover. Jesus. A guy tries to preserve his dignity and the wired community takes a steaming dump on him. Real classy, Internet.

—Nero

Chexmate

The indignities just keep coming.  

My temp job is so dull you couldn’t cut a blade of grass with it.  And since I don’t enjoy the comforts of my own computer or a desk to display bobble-heads on, I have only one pleasure: a daily 75¢ bag of transcendently salt-infused Original Chex Mix from the break room’s vending machine.  

Oh, believe me, I’d like more than one bag a day, but the machine isn’t restocked very often, and if I indulge my Chex addiction too much, I’ll be left deliberating whether trail mix or Juicyfruit gum would be the less vomit-inducing alternative.  Not a great selection in that machine.  But I have a system, and it works.

Usually.

The avian community agrees: Chex Mix is worth risking your life for

There are some days, however, when the ever-sadistic machine decides that you can’t have anything from Row C.  Row C, C as in the row Chex Mix calls home.  Put in a dollar bill—or exact change, which I’m always prepared with—and push C-3; a light goes on next to the phrase “make another selection.” The Chex Mix is there, begging you to free it from its coiled metal prison, but the machine thinks you might like something in another row better.  Either that or its playing dumb.  You press your forehead to the plexiglas and sigh, defeated.

And then there comes a time when you can’t let junk food-dispensing robots win.  

You see where all this is going, don’t you.

I’m still in the neck brace.  And I’m pretty sure I got fired, but who knows—after my head had been stuck in the slot for 20 minutes I sorta blacked out.  And I couldn’t pay my hospital bill, so they kicked me out a little earlier than is customary in these cases.

But not before offering me trail mix.

—Nero

 

 

 

 

Ruffled Feathers

Terrible news for Hillary Rodham Clinton today. That’s right: Big Bird has now tainted her candidacy in a way even Reverend Wright must be impressed with.

Just when we were moving past the offensive phrase “flipping the bird”

Tabloid readers will be familiar with this shot of the far-left fringe educationalist saluting the paparazzi after running over a boy crossing the street on foot because he donated his bike-fund money to HRC’s campaign. And my fans will remember me blowing the lid off of the fraternization between this piss-colored monster and Hillary herself back at the height of her cookie-baking powers.

It just keeps getting worse. I mean, Bert and Ernie’s gay marriage in Los Angeles this past week was a beautiful thing, and a long time coming. But no sooner had that holy ceremony taken place than a certain disgrace to the whole avian community was throwing a lavish, key-swapping swingers party on the beach to directly undermine the idea of homosexual monogamy itself.

And if the classical Greek-style nude statues that urinated Stoli vodka are any indication, this party was paid for by money embezzled from PBS. It’s safe to say that if Hillary doesn’t address the Big Bird connection soon, she’ll never clinch this nomination.

—Nero

Memorialize This

Memorial Day Weekend is more than just an opportunity for brain-dead and liquored up humans to cover the country with dirty blankets and discarded sporks as they chow down on bloody bovine and the less fortunate members of the avian community: it’s the beginning of three and a half months of said grotesque behavior.

I don’t get it, America—summer seems like prime time to sit in your homes, blast the A/C and look up celebrity sex videos on your new MacBooks.  Instead you’re inviting mosquitos into your ears and sweat into your asscracks.  If were up to me, of course, humans would never be allowed outside in the first place.  But I would think you’d get the hint that nature doesn’t want you running around playing frisbee golf in it. Or did you think knocking a squirrel out of a tree with a hard plastic disc was a fitting tribute to our fallen heroes?       

Celebrate those who gave their lives by          sacrificing the dignity of yours

 

 

 

—Nero

 

Public Disservice

I woke up in the Fortieth Precinct’s drunk tank again this morning, and you know what that means: community service.  Judge said I could do it in the form of a public service announcement regarding belligerent geese. Thought that was real funny.  Originally I figured I’d just copy-paste eHow.com’s rules for surviving a goose attack, but most were way off the mark, so I’m gonna do you a solid and bust some myths along the way.  Let’s get this over with. 

•  Pay attention to the actions of the male goose when you enter his territory. If he sounds a warning, that is your signal to leave the area.

It’s funny how many people take that sound to be friendly.  Sometimes it is!  In fact, think of all goose body language as an invitation to inspect our carefully hidden nests.     

• Show no fear. Geese are particularly attuned to body language and a show of fear may increase the intensity of the attack.

Unless you’re Sir Ian McKellen or another knighted actor, we’re going to see right through this ploy.  You’d better just lay down and submit by leaving your face, stomach and genitals exposed. 

• Maintain eye contact. Geese have excellent vision and interpret loss of eye contact as an act of fear.

Also, you have nothing better to look at.

• Stay calm. Don’t yell or try to hit the male goose. The female may join the attack and then you will be in real trouble.

No kidding.  Note the dual attack points on a victim of husband-and-wife serial peckers Tawny and Flyde:

• Keep your body facing directly toward the goose. Never turn your back on an attacking goose.

This is actually wise.  A glimpse of your backside will invite the equivalent goose reaction of “Oh-No-You-Di’int!”

• Walk slowly backwards if the goose hisses at you or spreads its wings. Use your peripheral vision to avoid tripping over obstacles.

Really?  When trying to escape a threatening bird, you should not fall on your ass like it’s a 1920s silent film?  Thanks, Internet!

• Continue facing the goose and back slowly away at a 90-degree angle from the goose if he flies up at your face.

The time it takes to figure out the geometry of this move will cost you at least one eyeball.

• Make your escape and exit the area through a gate if possible. Geese rarely fly over a fence.

WHO THE FUCK TOLD YOU THAT

—Nero

 

Zero Life

You nerds have some explaining to do.  And don’t come at me with all this L337 5p34k, for the love of Jove.  I never even bothered to learn Roman numerals, so what chance do you have?  

Here’s the thing.  When I had Sextus, my head intern/slave boy, describe the conceit behind Second Life, I reeled at the idea of a world without heinous physical bonds, something out of cyberpunk lit that would virtually eliminate the need for these sweating, stinking bodies we lug about from day to day.  Taking into account the proliferation of depravity the Internet invites, I was sure my God-king status would only inflate once my inner space alter-ego was born, and that heresies and cruelty only feverishly imagined till now would follow as naturally as colonization does conquest.

Only to find out that Second Life is duller than an Uncle Gaius story about exporting figs.

My avatar considers another boredom-related suicide.

After accidentally wandering into an online college lecture, haggling with some designer geek for a Louis Vuitton suitcase knock-off, being thrown out of a United Nations meeting for indecency, getting lost in a hedge maze programmed to have no exit and searching in vain for a black market chimpanzee liver, I concluded that Second Life is of no use to anyone and run by a distinctly vision-lacking shadow junta. When I started saying as much, I was banished to an endless corn field of some sort.  Sigh.  I should have known, of course: of all the liberties I tried to exercise, freedom of speech was bound to carry the greatest risk. 

—Caligula

Laugh Out Loud, I Dare You

I confess to having LOLcat fever, despite my mixed feelings on the phenomenon. On the one hand, these pictures usually play up a cat’s alleged cuteness, and as a member of the avian community (often exploited for “hunting practice” by sociopathic felines), I can’t condone any sympathetic portrayal of said monsters. Stand together, flying V!

At the same time, I love the intimation that cats can’t spell correctly and can only string the most retarded of sentences together. I guess that’s what keeps me looking for new pics pretty much any chance I get at my temp job—this perpetually sweaty guy on the other side of the office is the only one with a computer, and when he gets up, for any reason, everyone starts bickering over whose turn it is for Internet. Usually a lot of honking and biting on my part is enough to put the rest of the underpaid white-collar mob in their place.

Well today I snagged a 3-minute block when Sweats (we don’t know his real name) was in the can. And I saw something on MySpace I never would have expected.

Too soon.

I guess the honeymoon is over … doesn’t feel too good when the shoe is on the other foot. Or drumstick. Thanks, world wide web users, for the LOLgoose. One more pointless diversion I can no longer enjoy.

You just had to take it too far.