This Week in Nelson, volume 3, number 31

I’m on time this week! Good on me. This week we’ve got even more birthdays, a return to quoting, a quest for truth, the British hatred of brevity and another film recommendation. Have you people watched She yet? I’m telling you, it is the way and the truth. Anyway, here we go:

Birthdays! Birthday shout-outs, some belatedly, others not as much, to Cote, Ceri, Laura Rose Clawson, Obama and Buckley! Happy birthday!

Books read this week:
-Still reading Fates Worse Than Death by, Kurt Vonnegut

To quote the great Clay Davis, “Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.”

Random out-of-context quotes of the week:
--“The raphé to the taint is like the source of the Nile.”
--“Quick, Google Lewis Carroll and habby flabby babby.”
--“Please, let’s have no more talk of bestial orgasms.”
--“That gorilla is extremely violent, but extremely polite.”

My Emails to Bill O’Reilly this week:
-“Dear Mr. O’Reilly,
There’s a lot of crazy rumors swirling around out there these days. And since you’re the one I go to for all my information, I was wondering if you could prove or disprove the validity of the following claims:
1) The moon landing was fake, and all NASA funding at the time was used to pay for the secret war against the Martians.
2) There is a robot with Hitler’s brain at the head of the Starbucks corporation.
3) The Hitler-bot started Starbucks after the defeat of his Martian allies in the battle of Olympus Mons, a day where the red dust of Mars ran redder. With blood!
4) Thomas Edison invented AIDS when trying to make his own horny goat weed.
5) Thomas Edison had sex with a slave woman.
6) Thomas Edison owned slaves well into the 1920's.
7) The child of Thomas Edison and his slave lover was Neil Armstrong, the hero of the battle of Olympus Mons.
8) The child of Neil Armstrong is destined to defeat Hitler-bot in laser sword combat sometime in the next 20 years, and take the Starbucks corporation as spoils of war.
9) The child of Neil Armstrong will use the financial might of Starbucks and the arcane secrets he discovers in Hitler-bot’s dungeons to take over the world and rule with an iron, caffeinated fist.
10) You once had sexual relations with Loni Anderson while she was married to Burt Reynolds.
Those are the main ones. Just let me know which ones are fact and which ones are fiction, please.
Sincerely,
Roboman
5 August 2009"

Interesting news articles of the week:
-“Transportation officials in China’s Heilongjiang province began outfitting buses with large orange bricks with a string attached to them. ‘Passengers caught in an emergency situation can use the bricks to escape by smashing a window,’ an official explains.”
-“A camp for kids with Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes uncontrollable noises and tics, opened in Winder, Georgia this week. It’s called Camp Twitch and Shout.”
-“The British government issued guidelines for civil servants using Twitter. To explain the service, which transmits messages of no more than 140 characters, the government published a 20-page document.”

Something(s) I’m tired of/ mad at:
-9th Street! Still! They closed it down at Sunset again today! Fucking hate you 9th street!
-The flies on the porch at the Pig! They’ve been going bat shit insane these last couple days.
-It was nice out today, but yesterday got pretty hot. I’m afraid we’re in for some late summer heat. Though, on the plus side, I won’t have to fight wolves.

Something(s) I’m delighted by:
-Pulling even with Saira in Trivial Pursuit. 2-2. That next game is gonna be epic! And, the fact that every game so far has been a nail-biter. Love her, love Trivial Pursuit, love it all.

Something(s) I found really kind of odd:
-The fact that I want to watch the G.I. Joe movie, even though I know it’s gonna be fucking awful. But it does look like it might also be hilarious. I think with the proper amount of chemicals in my body it may be a lot of fun. We shall see.

This Week in Answers to Your This Week in Questions This Week!
No questions this week, ergo no answers.

Saw a crazy ass movie called The Ruling Class this week. It’s got Peter O’Toole in it as a British noble who thinks he’s Jesus. If you can find it, check it out. Fucking insane, and a whole lot of fun. And the best use of a gorilla ever in a movie.

Gonna go see Funny People tonight. I’ll let you know how it is.

Being a big Ron Livingston fan, I checked out that new show, Defying Gravity. I don’t know what to think about all that. It’s okay, but logistically, there’s some weird shit going on. First of all, it’s about a huge space mission in the “present,” and flashbacks to the training for the mission over the previous few years. It’s supposed to be the year 2040-something, but aside from the fancy-ass spaceship they’ve got and some other nice space travel technology (clothes that simulate gravity for the wearer?), it all still looks pretty 2009-ish. Think about what things were like 30 years ago. Technology-wise, clothes-wise, socially, etc. Now think about what they might be like 30 years from now. Could you not use a little imagination to try and future-ize that shit up a bit more? Then there’s the mission itself. In the world of the show, they’ve done a Mars mission before, which was apparently successful, but two astronauts died on it. Now, for the follow up, they’re going on this huge 6 planet mission. It seems kind of needlessly complicated and dangerous, and over-reaching. And only supposed to take 6 years. And then there’s some mystery thing in one of the pods with fucked up supernatural powers that’s supposed to be the key to the mission, but it keeps fucking with people’s heads and giving people heart murmurs and hallucinations, and it’s fucking weird. Weird. The whole thing seems like a cross between Grey’s Anatomy and Event Horizon. I don’t know what to think. I figure I’ll watch a couple more, this being summer and light on TV, and for Ron’s sake, but I just don’t know.

Anyway, that’s it for now. See you next week.

–> N.