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My Book.   I have had the worst time trying to keep up with this page. Part of the problem is that I have been unable to find a reason to write. While it is fun to get things out of my system, it seems almost pointless to write these things for no other reason than to write them. I have had no concrete goal in mind when putting things together for this page. I have no real advertisers, I have no product, and I have no way to explain to the wife and kids that there is a good reason to do this.   Enter Publish America. While I haven't gotten the entire story on this site yet, I am pretty sure that they will publish my book if I choose to finish it.   Sooo....   I will be putting up installments from my future book on the site. Unlike other things that I have written, these items will not be archived. People visiting the site will get one shot to read the book before publication, that's it.   The working title is Way Past Pissed: Bring it on...   Here we go....   Bring it on...   Introduction   This is the age of enlightenment, the day of understanding and tolerance. This is a time of the harmony and beauty that comes from looking into one's own heart and seeing that all things have their place in the world, that everything and everyone has their role to play in this Grand Place Called Life. As I look around I see that I, too, have my place in the scheme of existence and see that my role is to make others aware of Things The Way I See Them and to do so without reserve. In this age of omnitolerance, I find that I am obligated to point out that there are many, many things that are in the the Design of Life that need to be explored and explained.   My job is to place those items in life that seem to have no functional use in reality into their proper perspective.   Many claim to be able to see the sense in the senseless. I, however, have trouble seeing that these blessed individuals truly understand the role that some people must play in order to round out the Experience of Life. The Ones Who Understand seem to be missing the critical element that helps make sense of things that seem to have no point.   This missing key to understanding?   Anger.   While hoardes rush to understand the heart-wrenching reasons that a woman would drown her five children in a bathtub, I seek solace in the idea of therapy that revolves around repeated drowning and resuscitation of the convicted mother.   While others seek answers to why three thousand people died needlessly at the hands of insane religious followers, I focus on the insanity of television news anchors in a near masturbatory ecstacy of rebroadcasts of the hideous event.   While others try to make their way calmly through the maze of events that repeatedly leave them dumfounded, I devise new and unique metaphors that help bring human shortcomings into a new light.   While the rest of the world attempts to empathize and understand the inner workings of the likes of John Waye Gacy, Charles Manson, Jeffery Dahmer, and N Sync, I prepare a large vat filled with acid and broken glass to be used for those Terribly Misunderstood.   This addressing of the myriad of ridiculously insane events is My Ultimate Destiny. (Of course, this Ultimate Destiny comes second only to creating The Never-Ending Catalog of Random Capitalizations.)   In any case, this book is geared toward those that would like to get past the need to make "sense" of the senseless and get to the heart of the issues at hand and get Seriously Pissed Off.   On we go...   STFs   I like Star Trek.   Christ knows that I, like millions of other closet Star Trek fans, do everything possible to avoid admitting this in public. Why is this? Simple. The last thing that any closet Star Trek fans wants is to hear some life-less social reject go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about the intricate details of a Vulcan's penchant for squeezing rodentia between their gluteals prior to their 7.958305834649 year mating cycle.   I call these people Star Trek Fucks (STFs)   Ask any STF and they can tell you how often a Tribble sheds its hair during the Malglavian Lunar cycle. STFs can tell you why the Arbitronians insist that their grogcakes must be splashed with dragar urine every third revolution of the Holy Quarternatic Sol. STFs sit up at night analyzing the sperm counts of all actors that have worn chartreuse headwear during odd-numbered episodes of the third season of Deep Space Nine. STFs make one wish that he or she could travel back in time, jam a Twirling Romulan Cyto-Bargatronic-What-The-Fuck-Ever up Gene Roddenberry's ass repeatedly until he either dies or agrees to pursuing a career in the promising field of ball-hair toupees.   If you haven't noticed yet, I harbor a somewhat mild dislike for STFs. Anyway...   I find it unsettling that I should have to keep such a harmless interest to myself as if I were a drug rehab counselor trying to hide the fact that he or she is a fifteen-plus-line-a-day cokehead. It is depressing that I have to sock my interests away for fear that one of these losers will corner me and talk to me before I get a chance to charge the plate glass window and dive thirty nine stories to my blissful demise.   While there are many examples of how STFs have negatively impacted the lives of all of those that surround them, one positive thing has come from the STF phenomenon.   ------------------------   Boxes.   Boxes are useful.   I spend much of my time making boxes. I enjoy putting things in boxes and having them stay there. I make boxes for food, boxes for music, boxes for stray stuff and, of course, boxes for people.   Yes, believe it or not, all of the people in my life live in a mental box that I have constructed for them and their "type."   Don't get me wrong, I know that it seems cynical that I go around categorizing people and forcing them into boxes but all of my boxes are open and the contents can jump out any time they want to. In fact, I enjoy it when people surprise me and insist on either moving to another box or even having a box all to themselves.   Unfortunately, most of the people in my life jump into their little container early on and are happy to stay there.   Rude? maybe, but don't lie to yourself, everyone does it. Everyone has a metaphorical cardboard container for things like "Jerks, suck-Ups, and Backstabbers." It is almost always good to know that certain people are handily and safely categorized so as to know how to deal with them ahead of time. For instance, one would never tell someone in the "Jerks, suck-Ups, and Backstabbers" box that he is about to make vastly profitable improvements to the company's sales systems because those in the "Jerks, suck-Ups, and Backstabbers" box will make you pay for your mistake. They will steal or squash your idea and then eventually claim it as their own.   One nice thing about my filing system is that people can occupy two, three, or more categories without a problem. A person in the "Can't Spell Three Syllable Words" box can simultaneously live in the "Funny When Drunk" and "Kills Small Animals" boxes without a problem. And while I claim I like it when people defy definition and cross over to a new category, the truth is that this event is always unsettling and sometimes even dangerous. Some crossover examples that have startled me...   I once had someone in the "Good Friends" box jump over into the "Claims to Have Been a Hit-Man" box. Not pretty. Honestly I had to make a new box for this category. Anyone who already has this box pre-labeled has some serious issues.   Another time I had "Good Friend Who is a Guy" admit that he belonged in the "People Terminally In Love With Frank" container. An uneasy situation, to say the least. He now lives in the "Good Friend Who is a Guy That Needs to Find Himself a Boyfriend" box.   There is the inevitable "Girlfriend" that insists on migrating over to "Girlfriend That Porks Everyone on the Planet Except Frank" box. The "Girlfriend That Porks Everyone on the Planet Except Frank" box has more occupants in it than I care to admit.   I think that I am, in relative terms, fairly open minded and I allow everyone the opportunity to meander around wherever they want to. Well almost everyone.   As with all systems, there are exceptions to the rules and my major exception is this: everyone but Star Trek Fucks get the chance to move to other categories. Once an STF, always an STF.   ------------------------   The nice thing about the "STFs" box is that this handy little label is open to my own interpretation. While most people would only put the standard line of people into this box, I find it a handy little container for all sorts of obsessive habits. Each occupant of this box is an STF regardless of his or her obsession. For each of these STFs I have slapped on a name tag that tells me what activity it is that they insist on STF-ing to death.   I do this because Other Fucks exhibit the same idiotic obsession for their hobbies and interests that STFs do with the green leg hairs of the South Seven Wotombajombees. Find a Humphrey Bogart lunatic that can name the contents of the all of the lunches eaten by the extras on the set of Key Largo during the fifteenth day of shooting and, boom, you've got yourself a Bogart Star Trek Fuck.   The sad thing about this is that I needed to create a place to put all of the obsessive retards that insist on forcing me to keep even the smallest of my enjoyments to myself. Over the years, I have found myself the victim of any number of STF activities. It has gotten so that I don't even talk about television shows or movies or music around people because I might run into the one STF that has an interest in such things. Simply put, STFs ruin everything they touch and, as you can see, things they haven't touched. It is a sad day when obsessed losers can stop conversations cold by their simple existence.   I fear the day that I will be obligated to kill myself just because some STF has gone on and on about the fact that they, too, enjoy inhaling air...   "Have you ever noticed breathing? I like breathing. Breathing makes it so easy to, well, you know, breathe! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Have you ever stopped breathing? Lots of famous people have stopped breathing. Most of them are dead now. Too bad, I liked a lot of them. Did you know that Tom Cruise will probably stop breathing some day? I saw him in a movie once. Did you know that movies don't breathe? I once wrote a paper on movies that don't breathe and the professor said..."   Here is an extrememly brief list of some of the STF things that I have seen...   Star Trek Fuck Bowling Star Trek Fuck Roller Skating Star Trek Fuck Video Gaming Star Trek Fuck Sports Card Collecting Star Trek Fuck Ayn Rand Fans Star Trek Fuck MST3Kers   And...   Star Trek Fuck Perot Voters   STFs are the intellectual equivalent of the ebola virus, they ruin everything that they touch and infect at near light speed. Thanks to Gene Roddenberry, we now have a phenomenon that promises to annoy generations and generations of people for centuries to come.   Thanks, Gene...   Then again, it may have been the Perot Voters that started all of this crap...     Television Abortion: American Candidate I have always been fascinated by what it takes to make a television show. When I see things like "Three's Company," "The Dukes of Hazzard," and "60 Minutes," I am, to say the least, puzzled by the standards by which shows and potential shows are judged.   While any show that I enjoy watching is canceled within minutes of its first airing, others go on to MacGiver-like fame and fortune and are revered for generations to come. It's gotten so that if I actually like watching a show and the show hasn't been canceled halfway through the first episode, there must be something wrong with it... And I stop watching it anyway.   Recently, I had the pleasure of seeing a show canceled before it was turned into a pilot. For once, I agreed. Here's the story...   I found a weird web site promoting a potential show for television. The show was to be called "American Candidate."   I went to the site to see what all the hubbub was about. Here's the gist of it...   A number of potential candidates would be on a show and compete to get money and sponsorship to run for president of the United States. Each week a member of the show would be cast into the abyss as the remaining members pursue their "campaigns" and eventually wind up running for president.   Not much was explained about the format of the show. From what I could tell, almost anything could have wound up as the premise of the show. The things that ran through my head made for some interesting setups...   1. Fear Factor President - Constestants would eat bugs and compete in weird hair-raising events to see who had what it took to be president. This format would obviously not work as it too closely resembles the way our current method of electing presidents.   2. Survivor President - Contestants would live on an island would eat bugs, compete in weird hair-raising events, and backstab each other to see who had what it took to be president. This format would also have the same problems that Fear Factor President does, only more so.   3. American Idol President - Contestants would sing and play for to the audience to see who had what it took to be president. This format would open a Pandora's Box of copyright litigation as it was already used by Bill Clinton and his saxaphone.   When I looked at the bulletin boards, I was amazed at the insanity of the participants. I believe that the bulletin boards were initially set up to get viewer input on what they, the viewers, would liked to have seen on the program. The show promoters instead got every one-toothed, inbred, backwoods mongotard on the planet posting as if they were already running for president.   From what I could gather, the average participant had, on a good day, an IQ somewhere in the low teens and was probably reprimanded for using the group-home computers for things other than official business. Most of the participants believed that all it took to be president was to promise shitloads of money to people that couldn't earn their way into a soup kitchen.   There were, of course, a few exceptions to the above rule. Some of the participants were people that followed the Ayn Rand principles of business blindly into the ground. These pro-capitalistic participants were fools as well. Any time someone would oppose these piss-poor-excuses-for-organ-donors views, the screech of "HERESY, HERRREESSY, HEEERRREEESSSYYY!!!!" could be heard for miles around. They, too, were likely sentenced to one week of no dessert for improper use of group-home computers.   Many things were blamed for the premature demise of the program.   Accusations were:   Real politicians can not stand up against True Americans, politicians are genuinely afraid of running against a grassroots State Home Residents campaign.   Groups like the Masons and the Illuminati brought the idea to its knees. These groups run the world and they all hate the intellectually challenged residents of the planet.   The voters might have actually elected one of these individuals to the presidency. Big Interest groups would have no leverage in and enviroment of hillbillies and retards.   All of these are somewhat plausable explanations if one were to have had sustained head injuries after bungee jumping from a five hundred foot tower without the use of a bungee cord. Anyone else would have been able to tell that the downfall of the show was due to one thing...   The bulletin board entries made the show promoters realize what a terribly huge mistake American Candidate was.   After reading a few of the posts, I decided to get into the fray and start promoting my own ideas for running for president. My ideas made most of the participants uneasy...   To prevent war, I proposed a worldwide death penalty. To prevent pollution, I suggested mandatory limits on human fecal output. To end poverty, I said that the poor should be sent to Mars. To end campaign corruption, I advised replacing the dollar bill with 30-ton lead ingots.   Many of the "potential" candidates were worried that I was running off the writers and ruining their, the candidates, opportunity to run for president. Not one to disappoint, I capped off my series of posts with a resolution to the problem of social security benefits.   Here's the post...   The problem of Social Security is a touchy one. I believe I have the answer.   The problem is one of social mores and our inability to overcome certain prejudices when it comes to issues of sustenance and healthcare.   Point One: It is considered to be, if you excuse the pun, in poor taste to eat cows in India. This ridiculous notion was overcome by the west and we now enjoy consuming mass amounts of beef on a daily basis.   Point Two: Medicine in the dark ages was considered to be adequate as those of the age were unable to grasp the idea of CAT scans and antibiotics. People lived as if there were no "health care crisis" in their time. Getting sick was simply a problem of a person getting a cold, developing unsightly blisters, and then passing on due to causes of unknown origin.   Point Three: Vitamins are cheap to produce and provide adequate amounts of minerals and life giving supplements to those taking them.   Point Four: People don't need vegetables.   Point Five: Horse meat contains protein.   Point Six: Leeches are cheap.   The cure to our social security system combines the overcoming of our distaste for equine based canine sustenance and excessive expectations of modern medicine.   This is what I like to refer to as the Alpo And Retroactive Pharmaceuticals plan or "AARP" for short.   The "AARP" plan would consist of a four part implementation scenario...   1. Senior citizens would be exposed to subliminal advertising equating sexual ecstasy with the consumption of equine based protein.   2. Senior citizens will be fed copious amounts of Alpo (along with vitamins) in order to give them a sense of sexual fulfillment.   3. Experimental electro-convulsive-therapy (ECT) would be used on all people past the age of sixty five to make them forget about modern medicine.   4. Leeches for everyone!   Besides the obvious fiscal benefits, a number of not so obvious benefits would accrue: - The equine racing industry would be able to write off their donations of future senior citizen sustenance as a non-taxable donation.   - Electric futures will go up in anticipation of mass use of ECT treatments for the elderly.   - In order to stave off the consumption of equine based foods and the receiving of painful electric shock, the elderly will attempt to push up the retirement age for those collecting "AARP" benefits. This will defer future payments of "AARP" benefits for many years thus reducing the overall cost of retirement.   - Leech farmers will have a high demand for their product and this will in turn create more jobs and wealth for everyone by way of a trickle-down effect.   Yep, I should be president in no time...   The board shut down and promotion of the show was canceled only a few weeks after this post.   Life is good.   Well, it was good. Showtime just picked up the option.     Now what?   This is the worst part of writing: Getting up off of my butt and actually writing something when I don't feel like it. It is hard because I have about a dozen half baked ideas that I want to write about but none of them have any sort of conclusion.   Note: I used to collect what I called unfinished knock, knock jokes. The only one that I can remember goes like this...   Knock, knock. Who's there? Jamaica. Jamaica who? I dunno...   The problem is that it seems to have a pretty good set-up but I'm either too stupid or too lazy to come up with a punchline. I think the worst part is that any punch line will wind up being a letdown, that a "Jamaica decent knock, knock joke without a punchline and people will be pretty pissed off." kind of ending just doesn't work. It's almost funnier to leave people hanging with "I don't know. Doesn't it seem like it would be a good knock, knock joke?"   So now I'm at a point where I need some way to finish one of these incomplete themes and have no idea how to go about doing it. I guess I'll just pick some of the things at random and see where they want to go. So here are two of the ideas.   Movie Review: Mission to Mars   I just saw the movie Mission to Mars and spent the last half hour of the movie screaming at the television. It has been a long time since I've seen a movie that has pissed me off this bad. I've talked to others about the movie and they seemed to think it was OK. This only makes the problem worse.   Mission to Mars Synopsis:   Guys go to Mars.   They probe a Martian hill with a radar and the hill opens up and swallows all of the crew except one person. The hill disintegrates and leaves a huge, pristine white face that looks towards the sky. The EMP destroys all of the computer equipment and leaves the lone survivor with no way to get home.   The survivor goes on to grow plants and survive in a tent. The plants provide oxygen and food for him while another crew is sent to rescue him.   The other crew loses their ship, Timothy Robbins dies, but they make it to the surface with everything they need to repair the EMP blown computers.   The crew figures out that the face thingie reacted to the radar as it did because it was looking for specific input, namely, the completed sequence of the partial DNA code that it emits on a regular basis. In other words, the face thingie killed the crew because it gave the wrong answer to the question that the face thingie was asking.   They find the right answer, find out that aliens used to live on the planet, that the aliens left due to a meteor strike, that the aliens went somewhere else, and that the aliens "seeded" earth with DNA and we are their offspring of sorts.   Gary Sinise gets into an alien ship and departs to places unknown, the rest of the crew leave the planet and life is beautiful.   God, did I hate this movie.   Some points...   1. The idea that the Face on Mars thing is real is nothing but insane. The JPL fool that promoted this lunacy is a crackpot beyond all belief. Being an Art Bell listener of days gone by, I've heard this kook go absolutely insane on this and any number of other topics. When he finally brings around all the collaborative evidence to the point of the face on mars, he has managed to tie it in with every possible conspiracy theory known to man. And for Hollywood to build a movie around this retardation is insaner than the original Face on Mars premise itself.   2. On a really good day, the high temperature on Mars is something like 25 degrees and at night it drops to 800 million bajillion degrees below zero. The atmospheric pressure on Mars is nearly nil and any oxygen generated by plants would immediately dissipate. And the lone survivor lives in a friggin' TENT?!?!?! Did fucking MacGyver write this script? While I cannot explain the oxygen thing, I do have a theory about the temperature problem. If this guy was shacking up with my mother-in-law prior to his departure to Mars, he would truly enjoy the balmy temperatures of Mars. Whatever....   3. Timothy Robbins Chows Down the Screaming Greenies. I played the Tim Robbins Gets the Air Sucked Out of Him Scene over and over and over until I felt that he had paid the price for his mistakes. Ever since he made a movie that made all Republicans look like hypocritical scuzwads, I've absolutely hated him. While I can handle most political stuff in movies, this one crossed the line. Robbins had an axe to grind with the political right and wrote himself a movie to do so. What a scumbag. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, point number four...   4. The All Benevolent Martian Race NUKES a crew for doing experiments because doing experiments is THE WRONG ANSWER!!!! WTF? How in the hell did this race ever evolve into a "friendly" species with a grading system like this?!?! Can you imagine going to friggin' SCHOOL on Mars? Can you imagine the PRESSURE??? This insanely Spartan approach to knowledge would make the students GRATEFUL for a Columbine Day every once in a while.   5. In finding the right answer, they learn that we are nothing but a sheet stain left behind by the departing Martians. Great, just what I needed to know, that I'm Space Splooge. Thanks, man.   6. Why in Hell did Gary Sinise get into the ship? With the kind of grading curve they use in their testing, don't you think that you may wind up zorched for getting your favorite color wrong? Hell, after another five billion years of evolution, they probably kill people that ask the wrong QUESTIONS much less get the answers wrong. When he stepped into a hollow tube, he was apparently being preserved in a vat of fluid before he left on the ship but he was still able to breathe, I was hoping he would drown in a tube filled with formaldehyde. It would have been funny to watch him die an extremely painful death before lifting off. I am consoled by the idea that he is being preserved in a vat of Martian barbecue sauce and that he may be eaten as soon as he lands on the Martian's new home world.   I think what bothers me most about this movie is that audiences watched it and didn't question shit. They left the theater thinking about how lovely the Martian race must've been and went to sleep dreaming of wonderful Martian scenes.   This movie sucked.   Speaking of Mars....   I've been a fan of space stuff and enjoy reading about what we are doing to send our trailer loving comrades to new and unseen parts of the universe. I remember when Viking landed on Mars and thought the pictures were cool. Well, kind of cool. Actually, I thought we landed in Arizona. So, I guess I liked the idea of launching a gadget two trillion miles to a place on earth that kind of LOOKS like mars.   Anyway...   I've been following the Mars Rover sites since they landed and I've been, to say the least, a bit puzzled by what I have seen. I understand that this is probably due my own ignorance of what needs to happen when one lands a remote control car on another universe. Here is apparently the vital sequence of events that need to occur.   1. The rover needs to transmit back a picture of cheese just before it lands. Actually, three pictures of cheese. I've looked at the pre-landing pictures and I assume that these are pictures of cheese that the rover took with it just to make sure it sent back the proper photography. Why cheese? I don't know. It obviously isn't Mars. Somehow, cheese pics are important to JPL.   2. The rovers need to sit in one place for a week and analyze the molecules of its airbags before it does anything significant. JPL was apparently concerned that moving the rovers off of their perch prematurely would cause too much excitement for those of us out here in Non-NASA-Land. Lord knows we already think it's an out of control episode of Dukes of Hazzard with all of the jumping of ravines and stuff that we saw on the LAST mission to Mars.   3. JPL must have spent years of research developing the point and shoot software that is now being used on Mars. The next step is to use the ultra-high-tech TYOWAC software to photograph all elements of the rovers' new environment. TYOWAC is the acronym for the artificial intelligence program that is currently being utilized by both rovers. The Three Year Old With A Camera software mimics exactly the actions of, yes, a three year old with a camera. It repeatedly takes pictures of its own appendages, track marks in the dirt, the sun, and an occasional rock or two. This has seriously reduced the cost of the mission as it would be fairly expensive to send an actual three year old with a camera to Mars.   4. The news of the rovers' achievements must be farmed out to every conceivable publication before being placed on the actual JPL Rover web page. The last time I looked, according to the JPL page, they were about to decide where the rovers should land. I think they were still torn between Mars and Arizona.   5. People on earth must watch Mission to Mars in order to have insane expectations of the Mars Rover Missions. This also gives NASA an opportunity to answer questions from the general public like: Where's the face? Did you use a Radar yet? What's DNA? And where is Tim Robbins? Oh, wait, he got the air sucked out of him, that's right. I take back the last question.   Yeah, I really like that space stuff...     Copyright 2004 by Frank Emsley