The Uninspired Idiot's Guide to Misanthropy

Misanthropy isn't very hard. Anyone can be a misanthrope. Even you. Let me show how easy it can be. Step one: open your eyes to the world around you. That's it. Just one sweeping gaze across the endless horizon of humanity should suffice in your efforts towards becoming a misanthrope. If the vast sea of humanity is too much for you to hate as a whole, here are a few subsets you can narrow your focus upon.

1. The Abusers: the kind of people who drive a lifted truck to Walmart, park in a handicap spot, pop a blue placard onto the rearview mirror, hop out, and speedwalk into the store.
2. The Better-Thans: these people drive luxury automobiles, merge into any lane regardless of current occupancy, drive on closed shoulders on the highway (obviously their own personal luxury lanes), and take up two parking spots just for the hell of it. I mean after all, they payed WAY more for their rolling heap of steel than you did, so fuck you.
3. The Chest-Beaters: always making it a point to show that they are in charge, no matter how small the chunk of Earth they are in charge of. 
4. The Fabricators: they always feel the need to look you dead in the eyes and fabricate the wildest stories. Always. 
5. The Loiterers: the seat fillers of Earth. Forever just there, never doing anything. Just standing, gawking at nothing, leaning on poles, holding down the concrete.
6. The Try-Too-Hardsters: always looking for the next hip thing to wear out ad nauseum. They always have to be part of the latest scene, buying their way to cool, and generally leeching off of anything that could be considered a subculture. They are ruining the world one bad sweater and copypasta lifestyle at a time.
7. The Scoot-Abouts: riding scooters everywhere, oblivious to everything. Clogging up traffic on a motorized vehicle that can't even exceed 30mph. No insurance. No licence. No registration. No problem.

You see? Now that's just a start. The tip of the iceberg. You can get as fancy as you want with your misanthropy. Give it a whirl. See what kind of things take the wind out the the sails of S.S. Faith in Humanity. 

Don't Miss This Investment Opportunity

Run to Target, grab all the Pope John Paul candles you can get your mitts on, and wait. Yeah, just kick back and wait for the value to appreciate tenfold. Maybe even twenty or thirtyfold. At less than two dollars a share, these candles are the only stock you should be investing in. What could possibly go wrong with a stockpile of Pope candles? Nothing. But, these are limited edition, you have to act now. I mean, I know the idea of stockpiling candles sounds stupid, but what if some dude in a magical DeLorean rolled up to you in 1987 and told you to stockpile Michael Jordan rookie cards because they would be worth thousands of dollars apiece in the future? You would probably say "Yeah right, spaceman. A piece of cardboard bearing the likeness of a relative nobody in the NBA is going to be worth thousands? Nice try. Go drive your wire covered DeLorean down the block and harass some other jackass.". But that is because it was too soon to appreciate the future value. I am the spaceman (sans DeLorean). I am telling you that once this new Pope gets settled in and all the JP candles have been burned, you and your stockpile are going to be worth a friggin' mint. Seriously, we are talking about Pope before the Pope candles, two Popes back status. Value should start to climb any day now. So I'll see you at the Antiques Roadshow in fifty years, suckas. I'll be the dude with the Radio Flyer full of OG John Paul candles wearing a gold dookie chain and a jacket made out of Benjamin Frankies. I'm gonna be rich!

Have You Ever Seen An Otter Poop?

Well, if you haven't, you are missing out on one of the greatest things ever. Once seen, it can never be unseen. I know that this seems like a strange notion, to be so fascinated by the excremental habits of a water rat creature, but if you have witnessed the phenomenon you know exactly what I'm talking about. I am convinced (keep in mind that I am no biologist) that otters have no means of natural, biological means of waste excretion. They can only poop with the aid of gravity and some good old fashioned shit shaking. It's crazy, they literally have to shake and dance the poop out of their bodies. For real. Wait, hold on. Lemme see if I can pull up some YouTubery so you can stop judging me and my otter crap obsession. Ok, here we go:

See what I'm talking about? Awesome, right? I DARE you to have a conversation about otters without bringing up how they poop. You won't be able to do it, guaranteed, because this factoid is now permanently burned into the trivia cortex of your brain.  Now stop what you are doing and do the otter poopy dance. It will change your life.

Side note: you can see the otter poopy dance in person at the Virginia Aquarium (I'm trying to get free admission with a shameless plug. Shhhhhhh.)

The Uninspired Idiot's Guide to Bargain Bunkers

You know, you don't have to spend heaps of cash to be a well prepared wing nut with a ballin'-ass doomsday bunker. All these people you see on TV with these super reinforced, custom made, tricked out bunkers are just dummies with too much bloody money. You can do this thing on a budget, you just have to be creative with cheaply available resources. Besides, if you are aiming for discretion, having a full construction crew delivering a giant steel reinforced bunker to your property via crane just isn't going to cut it. Solution? Craigslist boats. Yes, Craigslist boats. Think about it. A modern fiberglass hull of suitable size is a water tight enclosure that will already be set up for daily life below the deck planks. A galley, bunks, a manually operated toilet system, fresh water holding tanks, lights, storage, communication systems, it's all right there in an old-ass boat that you can buy from Craigslist any day of the week for peanuts. Fuck, people are GIVING AWAY old boats that no longer run. See where I am going with this? 

First step is acquiring a suitable vessel. I would personally choose a trailerable sailboat somewhere in the 30ft range (this seems to be the size break at which the living quarters really opens up). Most boats this size will feature an inboard engine that most owners do not find to be economically reasonable to replace when they blow up. For this reason, boats with bum engines seem to go for a great price point. Now, once we have us a nice little junk vessel, I would go ahead and fiberglass over any hatches and deck fittings. Since the boat will be buried, they won't be needed and sealing them off is just a good precautionary measure. While we have the glass out, go ahead and build a hatchway tube that will rise to the surface and glass the whole assembly to the hull. In a perfect world, I would have the whole finished hull Line-X coated. That shit is bomb-proof and having the hull sprayed top to bottom would likely run somewhere between one and two thousand dollars (this is a mere luxury and added source of water resistance and hull structure). Now we are ready to bury this sucker.

I don't find it wholly unreasonable to think that one could rent a back-hoe and discreetly dig a 30x10 hole without rousing the suspicions of the neighbors. Remember, good fences make good neighbors. Once the digging task is done, drop the boat in the hole. Plumb a PVC vent tube to the surface, pipe the boat to a well water source, and run a waste tube out to an improvised septic tank, then back fill. Boom, instant doomsday bunker. The finishing touch is to place a fake tree stump over the entrance, and fly a flag from the exposed mast. No one questions the motives of a patriot. No one.  

Bobs vs Toms: Choose Your Alliance

There is a battle going on. Canvas vs canvas. Philanthrope vs Philanthrope. Make no mistakes readers, it's ugly out there. The fact of the matter is, you better choose your alliance wisely. These muh-fuggers ain't messing around, they are out for blood. But who should you side with? Let's just see if we can't hash that out.

First, we have Toms, the OG on the block. Dating back to 2006, Toms was the first big player in the philanthropic shoe game. This OG status may appeal to the Hipster crowd, seeing as they can claim to have been a part of the BOGOTANCSE (buy-one-give-one-to-a-needy-child-somewhere-else) movement before it went mainstream. Although, now that they are mainstream, this may cause a polar shift away from Toms, unless they start making Civil War brogans.

Next, we have Bobs. The new kid on the block. They hit the streets running in 2010, a long four years after Toms. One could argue that Bobs just came along and ripped the whole look of Toms, but in reality Toms ripped the look of the traditional Espadrille (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espadrille) anyways, so fuck 'em. I imagine that to Hipsters, Bobs have all the tongue in cheek appeal of four-striped Adidas knock-offs or Pro-wings. "Oh yeah, I'm aware that these are a rip of Toms and shouldn't be cool, but that's what makes them ironic and cool". So, Bobs have that going for them. Plus, yuppies love supporting big corporations and being as Bobs are manufactured by Sketchers, yuppies can just pick up a pair of Bobs the next time they are out buying a pair of ass-sculpting Shape-Ups. Shit, I bet even the Cubes is rocking out Bobs, because it's all about comfort for that dude.

Toms:

-OG in the shoe game

-Helps the needy

-Mainstream now

-Don't make civil war brogans yet

Bobs:

-Ripoff of a ripoff

-Helps the needy

-Ironic in the sense that it's cool not to be cool

-Cubes may be rockin' em

-Made by the same peeps that make them Shape Ups

Choose. Now.

The Scrap Metal Subculture

If you ever have an afternoon to see the sights, meet new people, and learn new things about the city in which you live, just breeze on down to the local scrapyard. Yes, kiddos, the scrapyard. Oh, this bustling hub of meltable money is the perfect place to people watch. Just sit back and watch as the shadiest of characters pack in with pick-ups piled sky-high with carefully laced towers of dubiously acquired metal. It seems to take a certain breed of people to take on this career path. Something about the ubiquitous nature of being a scrap metal collector means that to ply this particular trade, you must dedicate every waking hour to finding metal. It is nothing for a man in a tattered pair of coveralls, hands covered in filth, cigarette precariously balanced in the corner of his mouth to swoop down like a vulture upon a ferrous treasure no sooner than it can be rolled out to the curb. They are the ninjas of metal collection, they can smell the rusty iron permeate the air, they always know where to pounce. Now, I can say that I have never personally seen any attempt at an organized, professional, polished curbside scrap metal collection company, and I can't even imagine that they exist. You are not going to see men in matching uniforms in vinyl wrapped vans touting the name, address, and licence number of the collection agency roaming the streets, no sir. It is always pairs of scrappers, riding slowly down the streets in patched jalopies, dented and scarred, head on a swivel, peering out of truck cabs with yellow jaundiced eyes, aware of every opportunity for collecting a few more pounds of instant cash. But the scrap yard is where these men of metallurgical science congregate. Like ants carrying loads that seem way to big for one small insect to ever handle, the trucks roll in heaving with seemingly impossible stacks to dump their payload into giant mounds of metal, hives of iron waiting to be shredded, crushed, banded, crated, and sent forth on the slow boat to China. They wait outside in meandering lines, speculating on today's prices, trading stories, and speaking in the coded language of scrap. However, the best people to watch at the scrap yard are the wide-eyed and frightened yuppies who were talked into trying to squeeze a buck out of their own discarded water heaters rather than sacrificing it to the gods of metal. Mixed into these lines, shoulders hunched in as if they could possibly draw themselves inward far enough to hide from the professional scrappers, they stare longingly at their $50,000 leather upholstered chariots of safety and separation. Haha. Suckers. Was it worth the $8 to stand shoulder to shoulder with the common man? But seriously, go to the scrapyard, check out the situation as a whole. If the people don't strike your fancy, you can always watch the magnetic claw crane thing do work.

Man, the Z-Poc Be Scary

I'm not really sure why people automatically assume that a trove of guns is the best commodity to own during a zombie apocalypse. Seems like carrying a ton of guns and ammunition would be more cumbersome than useful, and if I am to believe everything I know from television, comics, and movies, firing guns just attracts mobs of the undead almost instantly. A .22, maybe. It's light, quiet, and a thousand rounds of .22 will fit into a single cargo pocket and weighs nothing. Who is really gonna lug around a shotty and all those huge shells? That won't fit in a bug-out fanny pack. You know what will? Claw hammer. You know what's cheaper and more available than any gun? Claw hammer. Care to speculate on what is a perfectly lethal, yet stealthily silent weapon? If you guessed claw hammer you are a friggin' genius. Yep, when the Z-poc hits, I'm kicking it old school: pointy sticks and claw hammers. I might even acquire a katana or two, who knows? No guns for me though, they don't fit my post apocalyptic utopian agenda. Nope, just me, my stick and bindle, the bug-out fanny pack, a claw hammer, and a chain-mail shark-bite suit. That's all I need. Matter of fact, I think I have some Harbor Freight coupons laying around. I might grab a few more claw hammers for my hammer caches. You can never hide too many hammers strategically about your metropolis. That's a fact that you can take all the way to the bank. (Don't bother looking for them. Even if you wander upon my maps, they are all written in modified Nostradamus code, translated into ubbi-dubbi, and transcribed backwards and upside down. Good luck deciphering that shit, even I can't do it.)

A beautiful hammer in classic hickory, does it get any better?

The Golden Treasury of Knowledge

Before Wikipedia, before Microsoft Encarta, and way before Google, my scientific, historical, and trivial queries had to be answered by my sole source of reference material, a set of texts that were recovered from a yard sale by my mother. It was a sixteen volume set of books collectively titled The Golden Treasury of Knowledge. And what a treasury it was. From the history of the firearm to Genghis Khan, almost anything you wanted to know was covered in an abbreviated fashion somewhere in these sixteen volumes. Emphasis on almost. You see, these books were published in 1961 so some things like space travel were mere speculations according to the Golden Treasury. This only presented a problem with roughly 25% of subjects I had to write reports on during my formative years of education, but by glossing over some of the finer details, chucking in some info gleaned from general knowledge, movies, and television, I could usually bullshit my way to victory. Last minute reports researched entirely with woefully outdated reference books aren't as hard as you would think. Official educational use was really not the forte of these books, I will admit that. However, they were perfect for recreational forms of education. The abbreviated nature of the articles and the wonderfully expressive illustrations were perfect for short bursts of information consumption. In other words, they were perfect crapper books. I can attribute roughly 90% of my trivia inventory to these books. In most cases, the information is still accurate. In cases where it is not, I can usually pepper some outdated info with some good old fashioned bullshit and fight my way out of a trivia pickle. I still have possession of four volumes, I have no idea what happened to the rest. I would love to piece a set back together for the sake of nostalgia, but I don't know if the cost to nostalgic entertainment ratio warrants the purchase. Oh well. There will always be the fond memories.

Kali Ma, the Xiphoid Process, and Batman's Fabled One Touch Insta-kill

Nothing strikes fear in the heart of a young child like the threat of instantaneous death. In my case, this fear was embodied in three recurring concepts or ideas: Kali Ma, the xiphoid process, and Batman's fabled one touch insta-kill. There was no better way to reduce me to a blubbering pile of tears than to even mention in passing that you were capable of inflicting any of these upon me. My brothers knew this well and used this knowledge as the ultimate tool in the big brother arsenal. Let's take a look at the origin of these fears, shall we?

First, we have Kali Ma. If you watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on BetaMax religiously as a child like I did, then you know full well the power of the phrase "Kali Ma". It's what those creepy skull-hat  wearing fuckers in the Temple of Doom chanted as they pulled the still-beating hearts from the chest cavities of hapless victims of ritual human sacrifice. For some reason, I reckoned that the phrase "Kali Ma" was the source of the power it took to plunge one's hand into a chest. It was simply uttered and some spell was cast upon the flesh of the recipient so that the fingers of a heart snatcher just melted right past ribs and skin, right to the cardiological jackpot. Still, to this day, you are not gonna press fingers to my chest and utter the phrase Kali Ma. I will bludgeon you to death with a tube sock full of tangerines before that goes down. I am a man of science, but I don't fuck with that Kali Ma business.

I don't fox with that Kali Ma business

Number two on the list, which is actually a direct result of number three on the list, is the xiphoid process. This, my readers, if you are unaware, is a small triangle of cartilage that dangles ever so precariously from the base of the sternum. I will admit to you now that I am somewhat of a dunce when it comes to physiology. What I know is very basic. Food in, poop out. Oxygen in, carbon dioxide out. There are some humors that must be balanced, Chi is lingering somewhere about the aura, and diseases are cured by blood-letting. This is my very basic understanding of the human body and it's processes. So, with that in mind, when I was told that a direct poke to the xiphoid process would cause it to dislodge, rupture your heart, and cause instant and excruciating death, I believed it wholeheartedly. I tried to confirm this fact, but my queries led me to multiple Kung-Fu forums which left me with more questions than answers. For the time being, just to be safe, avoid my xiphoid process or you risk the same tangerine sock bludgeoning described in the previous paragraph.

Why is it so goddamned sharp?

Lastly, the basis of my belief in the xiphoid poke, was the Death Touch described in an episode of Batman the Animated Series. In this episode, some ninja dude with mad ninja training is going around Death Touching people (drawing strictly from memory here so don't hit me with crazy accurate Batman hate mail) before Batman intervenes. If I'm not mistaken, there is some wicked sweet scroll with Death Touch instructions, like a papyrus death wikipedia or something, that Batman intercepts in order to fashion a piece of armor that protects the vulnerable chunk of flesh affected by the Death Touch. But, as a child, one needed only to use two fingers and jab about my ribs and torso to instill the fear of instant death in me. Again, crippling tears result. Although, as an adult, I don't really fear the Death Touch of the Batman variety. So, no death by sock borne fruit if you attempt it on me. I mean after all, that is fiction. Batman isn't historically accurate like Indiana Jones. I don't believe any of that Batman hype.

That's the Shit I Don't Like

Let's all agree to stop doing/participating in the following things, m'kay?

1: Irregardless. No explanation needed, just stop it.
2: "Euro" or "Altezza" style taillights on American pickup trucks. If the vehicle was never manufactured or distributed in Europe, it doesn't need euro taillights. Roger that?
3: Stealing shopping carts and ditching them in neighborhoods. Lazy. This is just lazy. If you steal it, just keep it and reuse it the next time you shop. Stop stealing a new cart every time, it's just stupid.
4: Admission fees at junkyards. Why is this a thing? $2 to peruse junk? Stop! Fair warning, if I pay $2 to get in, $2 worth of shit is coming out of there (in my cargo pockets).
5: ATTEMPTING TO HOT PATCH THE ENTIRETY OF I-264 IN ONE WEEKEND. It can't be done. Reducing the highway to two lanes with little or no warning is not so cool and seems kinda dangerous. Maybe we just fill potholes as they happen and we won't have to fill 1,000 of them in two days.
6: Looking at me like an idiot when I reference Vigo the Carpathian. You know who he is. You get the reference. Stare into his eyes and tell me again that you do not know Vigo the Carpathian.

Image credit goes to crocco.net (thanks google images)

You know what? We might have to call this That's the Shit I Don't Like vol. 1. Let's earmark this idea and come back to it when I can piece my brain back together. Thinking about all the 264 nonsense just made by mind implode. There is more shit we need to collectively stop doing. Tell me what you think we should stop doing! If you say blogging, you are wasting your time. Idiots never quit.

The Surprisingly Non-Universal Nature of Onomatopoeias

If you are like me, you have gone your whole life assuming that animals make the same noises in every country. Oh, how wrong we were. Believe it or not, this phenomenon has a name. And a Wikipedia article. What we are dealing with is cross-linguistic onomatopoeia. What that really means is that whereas our ducks might quack-quack, a Danish duck be all like "rap-rap". Ya heard? I know, what a trippy idea. Being that onomatopoeias are based upon the written equivalent of the sounds things make, you would think that they would be a fairly universal thing. Let's take a look at some notable examples of cross-linguistic onomatopoeia.

Albanian babies exclaim: "ua-ua"

A German cartoon in which someone bites into something would have a sound expressive bubble that says "mampf"

Dutch cows "boe" rather than "moo"

Norwegian dogs "voff voff" when the mailman approaches

Hungarian frogs serenade from the lilly pads with "brekeke"

Filipino roosters sound a proud "tiktilaok" at the rise of the sun

Read more about cross-linguistic onomatopoeia here.

Calculate Your Way to Survival

Seems to me like we are inundated daily with all kinds of shows about survival. Survive with a buddy, survive by yourself, survive the desert, survive the jungle, survive anything. If it has to do with survival, there is a show about it. One thing I have taken from these shows is the immediate and very real need for cordage in emergency situations. Enter the para-cord bracelet. It is a bracelet that is made from roughly eight feet of 550 mil spec parachute cord. The cool thing about the bracelet is that it can be worn everyday, and if needed, can be unraveled easily so that the cord can be utilized for any number of things. You can even separate the inner stranding within the cord to create even more smaller cordage. Cool right? Well, I thought so. So imagine my child-like excitement when I saw para-cord, buckles, and instructions on how to make para-cord bracelets at the store. IMPULSE BUY, MOFOS! I rushed home and tackled this project while enjoying some Full House. Once I had completed my own handmade piece of survival gear, I looked online to see what other people were up to with their para-cord. That's when an Instructables article about para-cord watchbands caught my eye. Me likey. Double utility is always a good thing. A watch and some emergency cordage, could it get any better? With my brain power at the wheelhouse, you know it can. Introducing the para-cord calculator watch!

Oh, yeah. I'm gonna calculate my way to survival with this thing. As far as I know, this is the very first para-corded calculator watch. Numerous spirited Google searches for similar products turned up nothing. Most people are para-cording Swiss Army watches or Casio G-Shocks with barometers and thermometers and altimeters, all forms of utilitarian watches, but no one had the foresight to para-cord a calculator watch. Do you expect me to draw out long division in the sand with a stick under great duress? I don't think so. When roving bands of mad-men put a wooden shank to your throat and demand that you calculate the height of a tree using basic trigonometry, you better be prepared. I know I will be. Then when I'm done calculating, I strike while they are in awe of my post apocalyptic mathematical prowess by unraveling my watch band and choking them all to death with mil spec para-cord. Jackie Chan style. Byaaaah! This is the best idea I have had since Bug-Out Fanny-Packs (tm). "Don't let your back-pack make you a target, conceal your goods in a conveniently located Bug-Out Fanny-Pack!". I'm still fleshing that idea out. 

Lookin' good in the 'hood. calc watch+para cord=WIN

All credit for the original idea and instructions go to Stormdrane over at Instructables. Here is the article I used to learn how to make a paracord watchband.