Believe or else

Unlike my esteemed colleague Sam, I know next to nothing about anything pop-culture related. I live in the basement of the library cut off from humanity's crowning cultural achievements. But I did come across this gem:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOitIzUGJqk&NR=1

It's a short video about how religion automatically divides people and makes them hate each other. The footage of 9/11 and the south Asian Tsunami compliment the standard bit about why God let's such horrible things happen on earth. The video also teaches you that if you just quit believing in God your mind will becoming a radiant orb of brilliance, literally dripping with truth. You, in all your mid to late-twenties angst, will walk out of your middle management job on to the street and rejoicingly hold your hands up as the cool and refreshing rain drops of freedom kiss your face. You'll feel just like Andy Dufresne after he got out of Shawshank. And then the video ever so kindly leaves you with "Atheism. Free Your Mind".

I guess videos like this are good at showing the absolute worst extremes of religion. But it's kind of hard to get over the fact that the video is telling you how you should go about thinking freely. Whoever made this is peddling dogma no differently than any other evangelical who wishes to impose his or her ultimate truth on someone else.

Ghoulie and Ghoulia

I'm watching Julie and Julia because I'm a woman with boobies and everything. It's all about blogging, which is what I do. It's really portraying blogging as a life affirming activity. Amy Adams is all about this shit, and it's inspirational. Using this movie's message as a springboard, I'm going to write a cookbook filled with swear words and bawdy pictures of penises.

But let's be serious for a second: Amy Adams is frumpy as heck and awful in this movie. If you're reading, Amy Adams, you were good in Sunshine Cleaning and little girls and emotionally stunted women seem to like Enchanted, so you get a pass this time.

Finally, everyone kept saying "I have to bone a duck," throughout the movie and it tickled me.

Things I hate:

Max - Seriously, where are you?

Avatar - Bad movie, sorry dudes

Things I like:

Video games - my only real friend

Fever Ray with her melting face - so cool

PS: If anyone reading this knows anything about Chicago, tell me what I need to see when I go there on Sunday.

Sam did it!

I dig the new banner. The exclmation point ever so subtly drawn on to the spider is a nice touch. Actually, instead of being shirtless in Haiti, I am well-clothed in the Ivory Towers of Liberal Academia, sitting at my cushy job being overpaid for doing not too much. I'm a fraud. Calvin probably really is eating a cosmic brownie, though. He is genuine and that's why we keep him around. I aspire to spend my life doing manual labor so as to assuage my ever-crushing guilt while Calvin hopes to make millions by packing random numbers and letters into spread sheets and then pawning his contrived product off to a hapless public. But Sam is a visionary and the only one of us who actually creates anything. He wins.

I did it!

I made a new banner. I was going for a minimalist, faux-infantile, not-very-good kind of look. Actually, I tried a bunch of times to make a decent banner, but they were all awful and made me mad. I had to turn my brain off and go in to scribble mode to make one someone could at least look at without puking.

It's pretty tragic that Calvin and Max have continued to not do anything. Knowing Max, he's probably in Haiti, shirtless and glistening as he lifts orphans from the wreckage and weeps. Calvin is probably eating a Cosmic Brownie.

Max is a show off

They have kind of a Goofus and Gallant thing going on, except for in this version Gallant goes out of his way to make everyone else look bad and Goofus is a way cool dude.

PS I don't think Haiti is funny so don't yell at me, mom.

Trying to pay attention

I thought Sam had some pretty wise words about distracting yourself from just how bad the world is. I think distraction is the biggest luxury there is. This cat distracted me, but he has to spend his entire life hunting things in the snow so he doesn't starve. I know this blog entry is completely insufficient in so far that it says nothing of substance. Just trying to redeem myself for ignoring the blog for so long. I was 'distracted'.

On Being Right, Magical Thinking, and Hating Your Friends

I was right about Calvin and Max. They've proven to be more worthless than I could have guessed. They're in school and stuff, but I know Calvin and Calvin is not spending so much time studying that he can't post even one thing.

my friends calvin and max

You two are on thin ice.

So this guy I know gets unreasonably perturbed whenever he sees commercials for Benico Del Toro's newest screen classic, The Wolfman.

He cites America's fascination with the occult as one of the leading factors in the decay of America's moral, cultural, and intellectual fibre. It's not a religiously motivated thing, it's exactly the opposite. He calls it "magical thinking" and I guess it's making us in to soft-brained morons. To him, Twilight and True Blood and Vampire Diaries and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Being Human and Blood Ties and Dark Shadows are undermining our ability to think realistically.

i guess this is what girls like????????????

While the best I can say about those things I just mentioned is that they are nigh-unbearable pap, unfit for consumption by any but the most base of minds, I don't think they're doing any real harm. I suspect that I think this because I'm the biggest magical thinker I know. I'm a total rube, obsessed with television and comic books. However, I can muster up enough brain power to fart out a few sentences that make a little bit of sense, which is more than can be said for almost anyone on the planet. Some people never watch tv (I can't imagine why they wouldn't, though. Maybe they can't afford it????) and are still very dumb and terrible. The smartest people I know crave lowest-common-denominator reality television on the rare occasion that they have a few minutes to watch TV. Those people are still smart and no amount of Jersey Shore will change that.

Life is seriously pretty bad most the time, and it's even worse for people who are smart. Smart people need to watch cartoons or MTV every now and then so they don't have to think about starving children, social injustice, the stock market, and whatever else smart people usually think about.

This is good, click on it please.

New banner on the way.

Calvin and Max are bad.

New Contributor

This is Calvin:

He's going to write on our blog now, I guess. His own blog only has like three posts in the last year, so I'm a little skeptical.

Brain Drain

I now find myself smack in the middle of New York state on the illustrious campus of Colgate University. This place has a tendency to dampen my mind and spirit, blunting my creative potential. If I had any to being with.

As I sat here trying to write on this blog, my mind could only produce blanks. In order to remedy this situation, I used the handy-dandy 'stumble' button to come across some inspiration. And just like that, I came upon a treasure trove of thoughts in the form of this muse:

http://theplaceswelive.com/

It's an interactive photo-journal type thing which details some of the world's biggest slums. The main thing this exhibition makes me think about is how intensely people in these places live their lives. It's a pretty simple thought. Nothing profound about it. I would be scared to have an intense life.

Inconsequential

I'm slurping up this late night talk show feud like I would a delicious soup. I have a deep seated hatred of Jay Leno and seeing Conan and Dave rip him to shreds is therapeutic as heck. Big crises like this and the writers strike bring out the rawest and best material in late night shows.

Here's a link with some good clips if you're in to that sort of thing. But you're probably not.

By the end of the week I'll be back where I can start doing some god damn work, at which time I'll start on the imaginary friend project that none of you are helping me with at all. I'll also make a schmanzy banner for the GSS.

Now look at this:

Finally, Max is going back to New York tomorrow, where he will promptly forget all about me and this blog. So :(

K bye

Max is the worst Blogger

As I sit here, faced with the fact that I'm running out of reasons not to go back to my job and return to a place that makes me borderline miserable, I can take a little solace in the Whitman quote Max just posted. If I concentrate my dislike of my current situation enough, maybe I can will myself in to something that I love or at least like a little.

I can also take solace in the following:

1. This unaired Plastic Man pilot

2. Technology allows me to post from the bathroom

3. I will never be worse at Bomberman than Max is

4. This picture:

What can you take solace in? Also, why the fuck aren't there more imaginary friend posts? I need this, guys.

"re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul" says Walt Whitman. Wilbur rejected his imaginary friends because they got too heavy in to drugs. His family was very proud. Here's a short list of what I find insulting to my soul and subsequently wish to dismiss:

1) The game bomber-man. I cannot win and I always get exploded.

Actually, that's all I can think of at the moment.

Lincoln

Here is a picture of Sam's Christmas tree. Hopefully this photo will make the previous post slightly more intelligible.

Reality and the Happiness of Childhood

In my inaugural post, I wished that this blog would contribute to the obscuring of reality and/or the childhood happiness of all. A forum in which the intricacies of imaginary friends could be openly discussed, debated, hated, appreciated, and loved is an ideal means by which the founding ideals of this blog can be made manifest.

On a slightly related note, I would like to formally acknowledge in writing the awesomeness (although this word is hardly adequate) of Sam's christmas tree. I would specifically like to draw attention to the fact that this tree is not adorned with the customary star or angel on the top but indeed a exquisite combination of these two things. For it is indeed Abraham Lincoln's head (with blue and red lights protruding from the eye-balls) which sits atop this tree, gazing ever so kindly upon those reposing in the living room. Christmas was almost two weeks ago, but this tree, I propose should be left standing indefinitely so that Mr. Lincoln's benevolence may continually stream from his plastic-evergreen post.

If I may be so bold

I'm not sure that our visitor base is large enough for me to do this, but I wanted to get it out there. Max and I often discuss his imaginary friend (whose name and details I won't yet divulge on account of I have plans for him here at the GSS) and my lack of an imaginary friend.

pictured: Sam and Max share a quiet moment of repose

Kids have fevered, insane, and underdeveloped minds, and their imaginary friends toe the line between too retarded for words and sublimely, beautifully perfect in concept. I think it's probably because kids don't give a shit about pretty much anything.

I don't know why I didn't have an imaginary friend. Maybe I was too stoic. Maybe I was clinically depressed. Maybe my life was pretty good and I didn't have to invent my own father figure or best friend to cover up for all the empty feelings.

Anyway, I didn't have an imaginary friend and now I want yours. If you're okay with me putting together a little series based on the delusions of your youth, tell me as much as you are comfortable telling about an imaginary friend you REALLY had. It has to be real. If it's not I'll probably know, but if you fool me then you'll just feel bad about yourself and maybe kill yourself.

More details when you assholes contribute something please help us out here we're trying

I can't let Max beat me at this

As the person responsible for giving Max the pep-talk he needed to get behind the blog idea, I can't just write on it once and then flake out on him. I also need to assert my dominance over Max by never allowing him to have more posts than me. I started this shit. Don't forget that, Max.

Pictured: Sam and Max consumate their relationship

Assignment: Watch The Thief and The Cobbler. This film was in production from 1964 until 1995 and was never completed and presented in the form intended by its creator, Richard Williams. The link will take you to the fairly new "Recobbled Cut," a fan edit that seeks to present the movie as close to its creator's vision as possible.

Finally, I'd like to welcome my dog as the first follower of our blog.

Keeping the Spirit Alive

In what I'm sure will be seen as a completely unexpected move, I am going to post on our blog for the second (2nd) consecutive day. Today a friend and I, whilst in a bar, discussed whether or not one could discuss the Anti-Christ, whilst in a bar. The jury is still out. I think the moral of the story is that there will never be a consensus on whether or not one can (or should) discuss the Anti-Christ in a bar.

In other bar news, and contrary to the ambiguity regarding the Anti-Christ, we have firmly established the fact that one cannot order dessert whilst in (most) bars. Bar desserts might, however, be a cause worth championing by some enterprising soul.

Hi, this is our blog pt.2

We were in the woods the other day and a wise man of sorts said something along the lines of, "Never let reality get in the way of a good story. It's never too late to have a happy childhood." And so hopefully any and everything we post on this blog will in some way obscure reality and/or contribute to the childhood happiness of all.

Here is a reality obscuring statue in Madrid:

Hi, this is our blog

This is my blog. It is also Max's blog. We think we both have a lot to say. Luckily, we live in a world where there's a forum for everyone to say an infinite number of things to everyone else.

The Giant Spider Society is our place to show you everything we think is important. We'll post things as close to daily as we possibly can. Once we start, please let us know what you think.