WHO KNEW LAST NAMES COULD REVEAL SO MUCH

Maybe I'll just have to make this a Friday thing until Lore takes it down, if he ever does.

- Hurrigan & Yuill: Vampire hunters who just aren't good at it. Hurrigan's beer belly slows him down considerably, and Yuill's mountain-man beard makes him too conspicuous. The only reason they're still alive is because the vampires need them around to practice their "slower" vampire children on.

- Mormile & Hampe: An undertaker odd couple: Mormile is an alien who took human shape and is using the cadavers to study our anatomy in depth. Hampe's a good-natured foreigner who's not quite bright enough to realize what Mormile is; he just thinks all Americans are like that.

- Northup & Finkley: Alaskan wilderness guides who have a weird preoccupation with weasels. Sure, they'll show you how to make camp and navigate by the stars, but they'll also spend inordinate amounts of time trying to make you an expert at tracking "the noble and elusive snow ferret."

- Montilla & Shepardson: You know what? I just see two women in business suits. One's a realtor, and the other's a property lawyer. They can't all be weirdos, it seems.

THIS MIGHT BE GOOD INFORMATION TO KNOW

I'm apparently a ruthless savage in dreams. Case in point: a dream I had two nights ago. Here's what you need to know:*

- I was in Hyrule
- Orcs were threatening my village**
- I was at the door of the orc fortress
- The orc leader came out to taunt me
- I was armed with a green crayon and a yellow crayon

Here's how that went down:

- I jammed the crayons into his ears
- I slammed them into his brain with a brisk clapping motion
- As he lay convulsing on the ground, I kicked him in the balls, specifically so that the last thing he would feel before death took him was blinding agony

My dream-self is clearly a man who is not to be fucked with.

* As an aside: I think the main reason why most people hate hearing about the dreams of others is that there are very few individuals who can retell a dream well. It's usually something like "I was at my old house, but it was also my grandma's house, like just the living room, but also my basketball coach was there? Except he had red hair? And then suddenly I was at work, but none of my coworkers knew who I was..."

** I know there aren't really any orcs in the Zelda games. It was a dream. The fuck do you want from me.

THE FOURSCORE CAMPAIGN

Here's something that's been taking up braincycles, off and on, for a while:

The military has medals and ribbons. The various Scouts have merit badges. Wouldn't it be nice if there were a group somewhere in charge of handing out medals just for life itself?

From my cursory examination of various sources,* medals, ribbons, and badges seem to fall into two categories: "I am exceptionally good at X" and "I was at Y/I am in organization Z." Let's work with this.

How about medals for things like

- Being a parent
- Being a single parent
- Being a dog owner
- Having knowledge of more than 5 public transit lines

Or for

- Having your cooking complimented (unprompted) over X times (broken down by type of cuisine)
- Parallel parking consistently on the first try
- Making over X successful modifications to your house / bike / car / other thing
- Having been told by X people that you're a good kisser

Medals are handed out by an independent board of accreditation, and you wear them on a special sash or jacket that everyone is required to put on for certain formal occasions, or for one day every season. It would give people something to talk about, at the very least, and maybe reason to respect each other more? Man, I told you this idea was only about 2/3 baked.

Incidentally, I updated the Dogblog.

* aka "trying to avoid the wikihole"

IT MAY NEVER END

It's time for more of these because WHY NOT

- Bidstrup & Berkebile: Norwegian Action Accountants. That's what's on their business card. They've got blond buzzcuts and pencils tucked behind their ears, shortsleeve shirts with ties, and messenger bags packed with papers slung over one shoulder. Also, swords. They're carrying swords.

- Cipriani & Buist: I see an Italian supermodel and her agent. But she doesn't talk, ever, and all communication is handled by Buist, who is never seen without an impeccable black suit on. No one knows how old either of them are, and no one knows if "Buist" is the guy's first name or last name. He's never said.

- Ingersol & Rorrer: Who hired these two consultants and why are they always underfoot? What's that smell? Where do those power cables go?

- Felts & Christinsen: They're detectives from a long-running book series for kids about a living stuffed animal and his folklore-obsessed best friend who keep solving mysteries around town.

DUBIOUS PUNCH LINES TO QUESTIONABLE JOKES

I leave the imagining of the jokes themselves as an exercise for the reader.

"I told you seven times seven is forty-nine!"

"... but that was the hot sauce."

"I thought you said 'biodegradable'!"

"Don't worry, we're in Louisiana."

"Everyone knows full-grown elephants don't have natural predators!"

"It's a picture of you!"

IDLE CURIOSITY, REALLY

Does there exist a point at which the American people will throw something at the TV in disgust whenever a Republican appears on TV mouthing inanities about "protecting the sanctity of marriage," given what they seem to be doing with it? I mean, I do this (metaphorically at least), but I am not everybody. I'm just wondering out loud if there's a critical mass of these high-profile assholes being publicly outed as hypocritical liars that will cause everyone to suddenly say "You know what, this is bullshit, and you are bullshit. Fuck all of this, and fuck you; we no longer care." It's not like this guy's an isolated case.

Honestly, what we need is a website that displays a picture of every state governor and member of the Senate and House. Every time one of them does something that directly contradicts messaging they've promulgated, their picture should gain a feature: clown nose, wig, makeup, etc. This would make it really easy to identify at a glance what our government's actual walk/talk ratio is.

NOT AT ALL, REALLY

No, actually, I'm not looking forward to the Transformers sequel. The first one was terrible, possibly the worst movie to come out this decade. Rather than go through all the reasons why it was awful, I'll give you just one, and ask an earnest question.

Why does anyone go see a movie about Transformers? Maybe to see robots fight each other? Why, then, were these robots so fucking complicated-looking? Put two of them next to each other and it's just a visual tangle. Adding motion makes it immeasurably worse. I didn't see fighting; I saw whirling clouds of blurred metal while hearing disconnected clanking noises. This was not awesome. It was, in fact, the diametric opposite of awesome. Joy died the day that movie came out, and now it's going to die again.

I ask you: who is to blame for this bullshit? The director, or the art guy? (I assume that the person who designed the robots wasn't Michael Bay) Why did nobody stop them? Is it possible we somehow failed ourselves.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY CROGNALE & THATE

Lore Sjoberg has created a monster. Ostensibly, it's a generator for a comedy duo act that simply pulls random last names from a database of about 88,000. What it really is, is a thing that will spark the imagination in tiny, weird ways. Endlessly.

- Duenwald & Helbert: The paunchiest, most boring attorneys imaginable. Duenwald in particular probably wears Dwight Schrute glasses and has a terrible combover.

- Buyak & Daskam: They're crime lords from Eastern Europe who are never seen apart and cannot be wounded by conventional weaponry.

- Elcock & Cirino: Holy shit! An unstoppable Mexican wrestling act! One of them wears a rooster mask, and the other is an Italian stereotype with the biggest, Mario-est mustache in the whole damn world!

- Haefele & Ditsch: A couple of German realtors whose parents were pals. They specialize in Tudor homes your aunts and uncles probably saw in a magazine somewhere.

I could do this literally all damn day.

NEW LANGUAGE TOOLS

Here are some phrases you can add to the ends of your sentences to give your life some extra pep. A little swerve. That certain je ne sais quoi.

- "... in accordance with prophecy."

- "... what does this mean for America?"

- "... and that's my courageous story."

- "... belee dat."

- "... moreover, I believe Carthage must be destroyed."

In unrelated news, I made a few more postcards (they're at the end of the set). I just realized I should probably have told you when they went up!

DAMN YOU JOSH

For the past couple of years, I've gotten a call from my buddy Josh in New York around April or May, wishing me a happy sundress season. The bastard. San Francisco just doesn't have one of these. Or -- more accurately -- we do, but it only comes one day at a time, completely at random, nonconsecutively.

Which doesn't explain why, looking at the forecast for this week, which has a 20% chance of rain on it, I'm bizarrely cheerful. Maybe it's because we actually need rain, or because I just know that, like it does every year, this city will start to get amazing around July-ish.

Also: I updated the Dogblog for last month a week ago, and forgot to tell you. This was my bad.