Archive for the ‘Skippy is a huge nerd’ Category

Longtime readers may remember when I mentioned that here was a movie called Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.
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So I happened to catch a rather interesting news development. It seems that Nick Simmons, son of famous musician Gene Simmons has his own comic book, called Incarnate.

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I have taken to playing tabletop wargames again.  It’s my one night out away from the kids each week, and I love my wife for letting me do this.

As anybody familiar with the particular brand of nerdom can tell you, you wind up bringing a lot of stuff with you when you play these sorts of games.  I myself have taken to packing my gaming accessories into a pampers box.  It’s just the right size, is fairly durable, and has handles.

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As I mentioned earlier, I got to go to Gen Con a little over a week ago, and stuff went pretty well.

First of all, I got to meet one of my favorite authors and artists, Howard Taylor.  We have spoken to each other online, and I was very shocked to learn he was a fan of my list.

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1. “Wow, your pants smell fascinating today.”

- My wife, as her cat dug his claws into me and wedged his nose into my pants leg.  It was like he was trying to do a line of catnip off of my calf.

2. “Aw, lookit how cute she is. Isn’t she just adorable? Look at how AAAAAAAAUUUUGH! Get it out of my pants! Get it out of my pants!”

- Me, approximately ten minutes after bringing my first ferret home.

3. “Hey! It’s been years since I forgot to put on pants before I left the house.”

- Again my wife, who once accidentally went out to smoke wearing a trenchcoat and a long shirt, but no pants. (My wife insists that I point out that we don’t smoke any more, because evidently that is the part of that story that could make her look bad.)

4. “Those are rather unfortunate pants.”

-A friend of mine while watching “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things”.  If you watch this movie you will understand.

5. “Okay, I suppose that it makes perfect sense for you to have a pair of Spongebob pants to match your wife’s Spongebob lingerie. Now why does your wife have Spongebob lingerie?”

- My brother-in-law, to me and my wife.  We were visiting and discovered that we had forgotten to bring anything to sleep in.  Since we were bedding down on an air mattress, in the living room we went to Wal-mart to purchase sleepwear, so that we would not traumatize our niece.  We decided to go with a Spongebob theme on the assumption that it would freak our hosts out.  Also I was amused to discover the existence of Spongebob lingerie.

6. “Now that you mention it, yes. The talking pickle has been in his pants.”

- On a camping trip I had in my possession an awesome pair of pirate pants, and a talking Larry the Cucumber doll.

I combined them to so that I appeared to have a gargantuan wang, that spouted ham-fisted Christian propaganda when it was smacked. Alcohol may have been involved.

Please note: Creating a situation where funny things happen when people punch you int he junk is probably not the best idea in the world.

7. “Are we going to label the things that have been in his pants?”
“No we are going to label the things that have not been in his pants. It’s faster.”

After the Larry incident my friends were understandably cautious about handling things in the vicinity of my tent.  A labeling system was created.

8. “I have to tell you something that might disturb you. Two lesbians have just had sex in your pants.”

If you have a set of awsome pirate pants, be cautious of camping drama majors.  They will steal your pants, and then do stuff in them.

These are all quotes, involving pants, that have been actually said in my presence.

1. “Wow, your pants smell fascinating today.”

2. “Aw, lookit how cute she is. Isn’t she just adorable? Look at how AAAAAAAAUUUUGH! Get it out of my pants! Get it out of my pants!”

3. “Hey! It’s been years since I forgot to put on pants before I left the house.”

4. “Those are rather unfortunate pants.”

5. “Okay, I suppose that it makes perfect sense for you to have a pair of Spongebob pants to match your wife’s Spongebob lingerie. Now why does your wife have Spongebob lingerie?”

6. “Now that you mention it, yes. The talking pickle has been in his pants.”

7. “Are we going to label the things that have been in his pants?”
“No we are going to label the things that have not been in his pants. It’s faster.”

8. “I have to tell you something that might disturb you. Two lesbians have just had sex in your pants.”

Now many of you may be wondering why I have put up a list of strange quotes with no explanation. (Others have probably given up wondering just what the hell I’m up to.)

Well obviously this is a way of leading in to my new Pants Contest.

I mean duh, what else could it be.

I currently still have a small pile of Squid Pie t-shirts left.  And so whoever posts the best pants related quote in the comments section will get a free one sent to them. Contest ends whenever I say it does, and like all things of importance, final judgment rests with Skippy.

Furthermore I’m sure that several of you want to know what the hell happened that caused these quotes to be um… be-quoted at me in the first place.  Well I will reveal provided that I receive some reader submissions to post up on here.  The holidays are coming up and everybody is very selfishly spending them doing charity work, or spending time with their family instead of sending in content for my site.  Picking up the slack would eat into my Left4Dead time, which means you might as well just hand Riverside over to those undead flesh-hungry bastards.

I will not try to take over the whole world.  That is just greedy, not to mention impractical.  I mean, have you ever tried to run a church group or a PTA meeting?  Well neither have I, because it looks like more work than I want to do.  Imagine how much more work trying to manage the affairs of an entire planet would be.

I will take over a modest-sized third world nation.  Most people living in developed countries won’t be able to find me on a map, let alone make any serious attempt to thwart me.

I will not pick a country with significant oil reserves.  This way no developed countries will see the need for any sort of military intervention for humanitarian reasons.

Nutrition is very important, and after all, you are what you eat.  Which is why I will eat nothing but clones of myself.  I’ll probably make a batch of them fight to the death first, and then eat the winner, making sure I only get the strongest one.  I will eat them toasted to seal in the awesome.

I will construct and wear a set of power armor that is covered by a layer of ablative orphans, thus preventing any heroes from trying to kill me.

I will not execute any minions for failing me.  Execution has been vastly overrated as an educational tool by villains throughout history.  Execution isn’t a punishment.  Execution is what happens when you are finished punishing someone.  I might make incorporate that last line into the badge of my secret police force.

I will have a giant harem made up of the most beautiful women from around the world.  No clever idea behind this one, I just figure if I’m going to be a super villain I might as well get a harem out of it.

Every super villain needs an albino cat to stroke while gloating over prisoners.  But I have noticed that the heroes frequently escape during the gloating and make an attempt at thwarting.  So my albino cat will be rigged with a tiny dynamite vest so I can fling at any inconvenient heroes as my last line of defense.  Because I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t see that one coming.

I’ll make up a fake weakness to a common non-toxic substance, and allow rumors of it to spread.  I’ll say things like, “If Captain Freedom learns that I can be melted using only silly putty, my reign of terror will surely  come to an end!”  And then when Captain Freedom shows up with some silly putty I’ll be all like, “You dipshit!  No one has a weakness to silly putty.  NOW EAT EXPLODING CAT!”

So the other day I managed to find a new story that I just had to share with all of my regular readers.

Australia has a problem.  And a serious one at that.

Lesbian Koalas.

Because I know that your brain is probably choking on that idea I will repeat it.

Lesbian.

Koalas.

Before I go any further, take a moment to reflect on how unlikely you were to hear that particular phrase today.

Also, lesbian koala is really fun to say.

But it gets better.  It seems to that the lesbian behavior is triggered by being caged.  Sort of like a women behind bars flick on Cinemax.  Except with koalas.

And when they go sapphic, they don’t mess around.  They form big piles, sometimes up to five at a time.  While hanging from poles.  Which come to think of it, is still just like a Cinemax movie.

But the best part of the article is the scientists trying to figure out why they do it.

“One theory put forward by the researchers is that the females do it to attract males”

Basically a koala is just like coeds on spring break.  Except without the near toxic levels of alcohol, crippling daddy-issues, or constant threat of fraternity rape.  And they are slightly less likely to be exploited by Joe Francis.

And from an evolutionary standpoint it would explain the ears.  They’re basically furry pistol grips to stop the eater from escaping before the eatee is finished.  To understand why this might be a concern you simply need to look up the definition of koala in the dictionary.

Koala:  Noun. A tree dwelling Australian marsupial that eats bush and leaves.

Bonus points: If Joe Franics was to make a lesbian koala movie or website what would it be called?  So far I’ve come up with Hot Eucalyptus Bitches, Rug-Munching Marsupials, and Abbey Winters.

Originally I was planning to follow up LT Ronald’s post on the election with one offering up my thoughts on how it turned out.

I was going to exaggerate the issues to make the other side look foolish.    Blindly repeat sound bites no matter how ludicrous or discredited.  Question both the intelligence and loyalty of any folks who dared to display a different set of political beliefs than me.

You know, all the stuff that passes for civilized political discourse in our country nowadays.

But instead I’ll post this video, that I ironically became aware of when one of my readers made a comment that annoyed me, and I went to look at his site. (Thanks to Phelps for the video.)

So you know what?  It’s time to put the paddle down, no matter how naughty you think the dead horse has been.  If you are happy with the outcome of the election, be magnanimous in your victory.  Remember how it felt the last time your side lost, and try not to rub it in the other guy’s face.  If you are unhappy with the outcome, rest assured that our country can survive the next four years; try to graciously accept that this time the majority disagreed with you this time around.

Also I’m very disappointed that more of you didn’t vote for me as a write in candidate.

So a few weeks ago me and my wife went out to Gen Con. I got to meet a bunch of people who worked in the table-top game industry, and I spent way too much money on new toys.  I even got a few leads on getting a publisher for that North Pole Zombie game I made.

All-in-all it was a pretty decent trip.

But during the trip there, things went horribly awry.

First we were late getting on the road.  No big deal in and of itself, stuff came up at work, and I stayed for a few extra hours to help out, because I like to be helpful. (Stop sniggering.)

So I was late in getting home, which meant I was late in getting on the road. Not a problem, as I was letting my wife drive. She likes to drive fast. Which is fortunate because we were taking I-90 through Chicago.

If you’ve never driven on I-90 around Chicago the most important thing to remember is that people there like to drive fast. If you try driving the speed limit, you will probably cause an accident. Plus old ladies will pass you and call you names.

So my wife is driving and we had just gotten through Chicago, pretty much keeping up with the traffic around us when we see blue and red lights in the rear view mirror. Great, we were being pulled over.

No big deal. I was thinking, it’ll just be a traffic ticket. In fact it would be my wife’s first traffic ticket so I was really not too worried. We’ll just mail the fine in once we get home.

Well it turns out that they have a funny law in Illinois. If you get pulled over for speeding they take your license.

I don’t mean that they cancel it. My wife can still legally drive. I mean that they take the driver’s license card with them once they leave. Once you pay the fine or go to court they give it back. And most of the time the police officer won’t take your license, so they’ll just have you sign for the ticket. But it is an option if they so choose.

Of course, if you don’t want to lose your license on the spot because, for instance, you are leaving the state and need to use it as ID, well they have a few solutions for that too. One is that you can get a bond card from your insurance company. Basically it’s like a mini-credit card, that you give over to the cop instead of your license. We had never heard of such a thing, so naturally we didn’t have one.

The other option was that we hand the police officer cash on the spot.

I learned that these were the options, because the police officer explained this to my wife and I. Repeatedly.

“I’m going to take your license as a bond, until you pay the fine or go to court.”
“But I need my license for ID.”
“Well then you need to pay the 95 dollar fine in full right now, cash only, exact change please.”
And then the officer gave us pretty much the same look that my ferrets give us when we’re eating ice cream.
The look that says, “Hey I want that. Gimmie. Plus I plan to poop in your shoe later.”

The officer, by repeating key parts of the previous conversation made it plain that we were either going to hand over a big wad of cash or my wife’s license.

So basically a cop from a small town outside of Chicago kept us on the side of the road, and shook us down. I had no idea that stuff like this was even legal in America any more. And it turns out that we didn’t have exact change, so we offered to pay 100 dollars, and let them keep the change. It turns out it’s not legal to overpay. I’m sure that this is someone’s idea of keeping the police honest. Which is laughable when they are allowed to demand cash on the spot. Since we couldn’t pay the exact way that they wanted, they took my wife’s license and sent us on our way.

And because we had to get back onto the highway from the shoulder we missed our exit, which was even more unfortunate that it sounds, because we did not notice it.

By the time we realized that that we must have missed our turn, we had wound up in what the movie Deliverance has taught me to be “Banjo Country”.

“Maybe we should pull over and ask if we missed our turn.” My wife suggested.

“Are you crazy? What if the guy we ask thinks I have a pretty mouth? I’ll get gang-raped to death, and you’ll be dragged off into the woods to be some hill-billy’s mistress. Let’s just keep driving until we run out of gas.”

Side note: this is also why I will never own a canoe.

Eventually we did find our way back to the highway we wanted. But we missed the next turn too.

And the next one.

And the next one as well.

So what should have been a three hour trip tops, turned into a six hour extravaganza.

Once we arrived in Indianapolis the fun didn’t stop however. You see we had a hotel room fairly far away from the convention. This way, we could get a nicer room, fairly cheap. It did mean that we would need to find parking closer to the site the next morning.

The next morning, we discovered something interesting about Indianapolis. They don’t seem to like the idea of people parking their cars. There were a few parking garages, but they were all full. After about 45 minutes of driving around downtown we tried the local sports stadium. I figured that had a great big empty parking lot, and would probably have some sort of paid parking available if there wasn’t a game going on. So I drove up found a spot and went into the gift shop/ticket to ask if I was allowed to stay there for the day.

The only employee present was a little dottering old man. Imagine if Joe Lieberman and Droopy Dog had an illegitimate child together. He appeared to be sorting through some paperwork, while waiting to see if he could collect the “Hellfish Bonanza”.

“Excuse me sir,” I began, “do you know if I am allowed to park in the lot out there?”
“What are you here for?”
“I’m here for the convention two blocks over.”

His eyes narrowed. His fists clenched. His jowls shook with tiny old-guy rage.

“NO! YOU CAN’T!”

“Alright, thanks anyways, do you know any places nearby where I could?”

“YOU CAN’T PARK HERE!”

“I got it. I’ll leave. But do you know-”

“I TOLD THEM THEY COULDN’T PARK HERE!”

“Right so I-”

“NO PARKING FOR THE CONVENTION!”

He then waggled his finger at me in an authoritative and dismissing way.

“Okay! I’m leaving. Calm down.”

He cocked his head, and gave me a puzzled look, as if he was working through a very difficult word problem.

After a few seconds of intense concentration, his eyes lit up, as if after a taxing mental journey he had arrived at the perfect solution to our problem.

“YOU CAN’T PARK HERE!”

And with that, we left.

We did eventually find a parking garage, quite a distance away, that had room for us. And only charged twelve dollars for all day parking.

And so we went to the convention, hung out, had fun, and later that night went back to the parking garage.

It was locked up.

There weren’t any signs listing hours or anything. No reasonable way to notify customers that there was a deadline to pick their car back up. But there was a giant metal gate keeping us out.

“No problem,” I thought, “We’ll just catch a cab back to our room, and then pick our car up tomorrow. We might have to pay extra or something, but this won’t be a big deal.”

And so we take a cab, and come back the next morning. It’s still locked up. And now we’re standing next to a parking garage with all of our stuff, and no way to get to our car. And I came to a realization. A parking garage that is closed on Saturday, is probably not going to be open on Sunday either. Which means that I will not be able to get my car back until Monday. Which is when I am supposed to be back at work.

Fortunately there was a number on the garage that we could call if we had an issue. Turns out that people who don’t open their parking garage on Saturday aren’t big on answering the phone either. But the helpful answering machine message did let me know that they would be back on Monday.

Eventually, I discovered that the smaller, human-scaled doors on the garage where still unlocked, even though the larger automotive scaled doors weren’t. So at the very least, I could head upstairs and put our baggage into the trunk, so that we didn’t have to carry it around all weekend.

While I was in there heading for my vehicle I ran into another driver.

“Is that your wife outside with a suitcase?” He asked.

I thought about how all things car-related had been going for me this weekend. And then I thought about my wife. Specifically, I thought about how good she is at keeping her temper when she has been under a lot of stress and frustration. I thought again about how things had been going this weekend.

“Maybe.” I answered, preparing to throw my backpack at him and run away.

“She said you were stuck in here. I have a pass card that will open the gate. I can meet you down there and let you out.”

Next year I’m going to fly.