You know, recently I’ve been mulling over a scenario that would probably work out better for me than the rest of you. That’s not to say that it would be entirely bad, well… depending of course as to what kind of person you are. The scenario is, what would happen if I became, either through fortune or conquest, the next great dictator of the world? So before I get a bit too dreamy eyed and start envisioning myself gloriously riding on tanks through the burning cities of those who dared, dared I say, to oppose my glorious vision for the future. Before I start to get a twinkle in my eye at the thought of standing before kings and politicians who my soldiers are forcing to bow at my feet. Before I get a raging boner thinking of the bountiful bosoms of the liberated womenfolk massaging my face like soft doughy sacks of warm chest fruit. I decided to put myself into a degree of perspective and run through my whole rein from glorious rise to inevitable fall, with advice I have received through the reading of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Robert Greene (Author of the recent book, The 48 Laws of Power). Bearing in mind of course, that I won’t be following their advice at all. So please, allow me to describe to you a majestic and gut wrenching (especially for enemy sympathizers and spies, but slightly more literal if you catch my drift) journey into a world where the next great dictator liberates you, The People, and brings an age of untold prosperity and atrocities unto all mankind.
Phase One: The Planning
(Codename: Operation Chili Con Queso)
The codename is based on the fact that, due to budget constraints during the planning process, I will be forced to assemble my dark council at the local Taco Bell.
Fans of Japanese culture frequently refer to things like J-Rock, J-Pop, etc. with much twinkling in their eyes. These subjects of their affection are like our own Rock and Pop music, but … Japanese. I bet you didn’t see that coming. Some of it is pretty good, some is crap; again, just like the non-Japanese versions of the same. However, some things should not be Japanified because the odds of them turning out less than retarded are not good, and these include classic American cartoon heroes. I mean, when has this ever worked? In this case, it was the once mega-popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that suffered the weirdness of the land of the rising sun.
You know them. The four lovable green mutants born to popular culture in the 80′s, enjoying a vast empire of toys, t-shirts and other junk. The funny thing is, the cartoon was actually good. Not to criticize the Japanese in particular here as well, but the closest “big hit” I can think of to compare TMNT to would be the Japanese-created Dragonball Z. It was crap. The plots were formulaic and dull, and the dialog was a crime.
In contrast, the TMNT’s had none of the super duper world demolishing powers of the DBZ cast, but the scripts were exceedingly well done and the show was actually funny and clever… and they also didn’t spend two thirds of one half hour episode doing internal monologues about how they were about to fight, even as their enemy just stood there. DBZ was so ridiculous I think it made its target generation’s fans dumber than hell.
At one time, I would have thought that if a Japanese company borrowed the turtles and put them into new situations with the style of animation I come to enjoy as a teenager when anime was becoming a sensation in the west, that the result would be pure awesomeness. I would have thought wrong.
But sometimes, and by sometimes I mean most of the time, we overestimate our cognitive capabilities and end up bruised and broken (hence, the Darwin awards). The following are a few of the things that should be properly labeled so we don’t hurt our stupid selves quite so much:
1.) Likable People: This is a no-brainer, specifically in reference to romantic attraction, or as some of you would refer to it, “getting a lil’ sumthin’ sumthin’”; clear labels should be applied to all people who are above a certain level of likability so if you know yourself to be an emotional suction cup, they will provide a stark reminder of how you’re just risking another potentially devastating relationship failure that will tear you up inside for possibly many years and make you question everything about yourself in a fruitless effort to find out exactly what it is that people find so repulsive about you that they don’t want to include you in their future.
The labels would be color-coded according to base likability, like so -
Grey: People in the grey range are not very likable. These are the kinds of people who tell you spreadsheet jokes at the office followed by their own hollow laughter, and own at least 3 coffee mugs with Star Trek characters on them. In actuality, there may as well not even be a label for these harmless amoebae, but in the event one is accidentally killed in a freak printer accident, the officers on duty will be able to take one look at their color, quickly file them under “No big loss” and get back to investigating serious matters.
Yellow: A step up from grey, yellow people can be likable under certain circumstances, but are otherwise intolerable. If they stick to their area of expertise then they provoke little irritation from peers, but if they step out of bounds, they must be reminded that simply because they’re yellow does not mean they’re intelligent or good at ping pong. You could take a yellow label to the prom just so you have someone to go with, but pay them 10 dollars in advance not to speak.
I have a kind of knack for coming up with delicious concoctions in the kitchen, well at least most of the time. One thing I’ve discovered over the years is that sometimes, if you’re just good enough at something, at times you can be extraordinarily bad at it. So I was making wings one night, mostly because it was the only thing left in the damn freezer, and wouldn’t you know… it was the frozen kind that don’t come pre-coated in a layer of delicious and heart-attack enduing sauce. So I was left with one alternative, I had to make some damn sauce. Now, an old friend of mine could do wonders with a couple of cans of this stuff called Nazi sauce and a stick or two of butter. I know it sounds gross, but it was oh-so delicious. So I decided to sort of replicate that recipe with some butter, some sweet bbq sauce, and a splash of hot chili sauce…
So as I was setting up the pot on the stove to mix all this stuff up in, began to feel this may not be a good idea; however, when put in a situation where I should probably not be doing something like this I present myself with two options that make me either question my manliness or embrace it.
OPTION ONE, PUSSY OUT: A decidedly unmanly option if there ever was one, if I decided to back down now not only would my wings go sauceless but I would have failed at my attempt to craft a new and delicious wing sauce recipe. Granted, there was a chance I’d fail anyway, but it never looks good to pussy out without even trying.
OPTION TWO, GO BALLS DEEP: Hell yeah! That sounds way more macho (stupid) and manly (extra stupid with a hint of crazy)! Don’t think about things, if you’ve already started doing them go balls deep and just pray whatever you end up doing doesn’t destroy you. Going balls deep has been a key factor in determining American Foreign policy since the 50s and nothing about that shit has gone wrong. In a way, with that in mind, there was no way I could fail!
Once again, I have nothing good to say about anyone. This is because I was born with curly red hair and didn’t get enough hugs. Plus, I haven’t been laid in like, 6 months. Well I threw a dart at the list on my wall, and it fell comically to the floor, so I guess the target today is … everyone. That suits me just fine.
I give you, the Top 10 most annoying sorts of people. Note: While I understand that there are far more varieties of obnoxious, foul-smelling peons in the world, I had to keep this somewhat reasonably sized because we’re pressed for space until we find a way to deal with the tag monster problem. Apparently fire doesn’t get rid of everything.
10. Australians
G’die, Mite! Aussies managed to come in as the least annoying of the 10 that came to mind, because while nearly every Australian I’ve met is an easily angered, argumentative twatdangle, this happens to work in their favor as well; they like to pick fights, I like to pick fights. The only differences here are, I don’t live in a cat box and my accent is typically not the subject of ridicule. Australians sound like retarded British people, and the fact is, if you tell them this, they probably won’t laugh it off. They’ll just adjust their ‘wit’ accordingly, then call you what amounts to ‘stupid asshole’ anyway, only it will sound far more idiotic and is quite likely to simply cause laughter and requests of more funny Aussie slang. The sad thing is, if you look up Aussie slang, the primary Google result as of this writing is a page that remarks:
Well, when you think of Australia, chances are you think of Desert, Kangaroos and Paul Hogan. And when you think of the way we speak, you probably think of “g’day”, “mate”, and the phrase popularised by Paul Hogan, “Throw another shrimp on the barbie!”
It’s not all I think of. I also think of the huge flies that buzz around you constantly no matter where the fuck you are, the ungodly heat, and this one Jackie Chan movie that took place in Australia because American actors were too expensive to hire.
If all of this sounds a little ethnocentric, bear it in mind that I happen to think my own country is full of clueless, shallow fuckheads obsessed with war (in fact, Americans rank higher up in the list). At least Aussies don’t have that. They just like to call you names you have to look up when you get home.
This site, well, doesn’t get many comments. Page views seem fairly high though, and I suppose that tells me that at least someone is reading this nonsense, and that’s really good enough for me. As Huxley states every now and then in the rotating quotes on the right, obscurity can only be cultivated in the dark. Or at least something to that effect.
When I first created this site, it was much like… say, a rebound relationship. My last website broke my heart, cut me to the bone, and made me want to pick up an acoustic guitar and write the world’s billionth love song. So this was the first thing I made. At first I wanted to name it Platitudes.com, for the precise reason that, unless I’m being extremely lazy in my writing, I sort of go out of my way to avoid platitudes. You could even say that it was intended to be ironic which would have been sure to tickle the funny bones of any Gen-Xer that happened to be reading this. As a side note to that, I once cracked wise that the best way to get money out of those idiots is to just call things what they are, they seem to think saying something is what it is in a really droll voice makes it cutting and clever. Ironic. My brilliant idea was to make Gen-X clothing. Hats that said, in small text ‘hat.’ Shoes that were in fact labeled ‘Shoe Brand Shoes.’ Expensive t-shirts that said ‘T-Shirt.’ You get the idea. Of course, I couldn’t get the website name I wanted which sort of irritated me, so I got the Warden on Ventrilo along with another friend of mine in an attempt to coax a new name out of them since my first choice was taken.
Being the super useful Co-Admin he is the Warden cracked wise that Platitudes sounded a lot like, Platypuses. You know, the ugly poisonous duckbeasts from that wasteland of humanity known as Australia, where everything is poisonous and will kill your ass. Especially the music, Jet sucks. So, the suggestion was to name the site, I shit you not… PlatitudePlatypus.com. While not only is this a stupid suggestion, against my better judgment I said, ‘dude, who would think of something like that?’ Little did I realize that this is the damn internet. It’s not a matter of who would think of something like that, it’s a matter of when. So I did a google search for ‘platitude.’ This lead me to an article on uncyclopedia. What’s that you see in the right hand corner upon viewing the page? A FUCKING PLATYPUS SPEAKING PLATITUDES!
In my last article I mentioned a very near and very dear old high school friend of mine. Sam the American Ninja. Somehow, if you could combine the utter awesomeness of all the American Ninja movies (somehow the count got to four, which goes to show artists who cannot get their scripts accepted must really suck), and sort of mashed it into the corporeal form of one human being, you would end up with a walking avatar of 1980′s film making wizardry. What you probably wouldn’t end up with is Sam, because nothing about Sam was cool… even in a cheesy 80s action flick way. What I mean is this… the American Ninja films are a million times less painful to you in the long run than a ten-minute conversation with this man was. Let me give you Sam’s back story according to him, and before you ask… yes this is based on actual things he told me. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, well at least if that truth is in fact, fiction itself.
* * *
On a dark and stormy night an American Solider, stationed in Japan was killed by a clan of evil Ninjas. His widow, fearful for her life knew that she had to protect her son, so she gave up her child and left him at a stranger’s doorstep and disappeared into the night. The child was raised by the kind stranger… a wise old man who actually turned out with his dog ‘Interceptor’ to be … Ninja Master Shadow. One day young Sam caught his master training in a forest clearing while he was fetching water from the well. Shadow was standing there and all around him pots were dangling from ropes in the trees. Then suddenly, there was a great rush of wind and all the pots exploded! But, and this must be stressed while I say this, in order to get the full effect you have to imagine someone whispering this to you, Shadow never moved. Also, this was totally not ripped off of those god awful Three Ninjas movies about the 2 skinny kids and 1 fat kid who defeated entire clans of ninjas with corny jokes and nerf guns. Then, Shadow turned to Sam.
“Sam, today is the day that you must decide if you wish to learn the ways of the Ninja, for you have seen me practicing and now you know the truth and cannot stay if you do not take a vow of secrecy and swear under the ninja code that you will not reveal this truth to any outsiders. Wahtaaaaaaaaaaa!”
“You told me that Ninjas killed my family! How can I trust you now you stupid old man! I will get my revenge and avenge my family by getting revenge and defeating you thereby getting vengeance! Eat my American fists of justice!”
Along with pirated programs, free music, and more porn than you could ever watch in your lifetime, the internet even gives you access to real people. Unfortunately, it takes more than hitting “Download” to get the full benefit out of the latter, but if you’re savvy with the written word and don’t resemble a dump truck, you can pull in all kinds of action. How?
Dating sites.
That’s right, they’re like personals on your personal computer. Far out! But like anything good, there’s a downside.
These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people’s money to settle the quarrel. — Abraham Lincoln, speech to Illinois legislature, Jan. 1837.
