• Never show them the knifes until it is a show (crowd watching) environment (IE: not when messing around, gathering, or killing time with the curious kids).
• When you make a big deal of something that will only happen once. Stress how it will only happen once (knives over somebody).
• If you show them (or let them see) something, be prepared to do it. IE: if they see the unicycle, and the juggling props, they will want to see you do both at the same time, and when they ask “can you do this” being able to say “yes!” is the best thing ever.
• I need to get a prop box to hide things/protect things/carry things/look official, and I need to have a clear routine with a beginning and end.
• I need an assistant or somebody that can get kids to behave, because my humor often comes from my reaction to misbehaving kids. Then they think:misbehave = funny. I don’t want to get rid of that bit about my performances, so somebody else has to be the authority.
• I need a length of rope I can set down to make an impromptu stage. (and maybe some chalk)
• I need to set up the kids to peer pressure the other kids into behaving. as opposed to them banding up against me. It’s tough if they already don’t respect you, but possible.
• Looking different/unique/some sort of outfit, or silly hat, or something like that, would be nice.

Tonight was fun, but none of the kids respected me. They stole and run around with my stuff, they crossed my chalk-line stage, they got in the way of things and tried to mess up my juggling or trip me on the uni. Also, juggling knives over the kids is huge. Danger adds a whole lot. I should get some torches and a water bucket and make a huge deal of things. Really I should get better at clubs.

In the end, they enjoyed the hell out of it, and that’s the point, right?

Google, what are you doing? My math teacher is Romanian, not Czech! It’s OK google, easy mistake to make.

Consumers do not take humor seriously.

Inside of the artist circle, ask a poet is he could try to be funny for a piece. You will get scoffs. Shel Shilverstein, Odgen Nash – even Alexander Pope. These guys are good. Really good. Pope is considered one of the best poets of all time. But they get scoffed off for being funny. Pope’s satirical piece on how to write poetry is considered one of his worst poems. Shel silverstein is for kids and kids only, and – lemme guess – you had to Google who Ogden Nash even is, right? Hell, if you are reading this blog you probably had to look up Alexander Pope too. (sorry). Poets do not think humor poetry is serious. It never has those obtuse and convoluted layers and extended metaphors that poets call ‘meaning’ and ‘emotion’. 1) that is a generalization and a wrong one. 2) Humor writers use a lot of poetic techniques to write. If something sounds funny, it is funny. I use Zeugma, Alliteration, Metaphors and Similies all the time. One of the greatest metaphors of all time, by Douglas Adams: “The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t”. My point is that to say that humor writing is shallow or inartistic is a hasty generalization.

Novelists poop on Humor writing too. Often humorists are forced to write pre-teen fiction, or (god forbid) children’s books. As a kid, I wanted to pick up a book and laugh. I remember Captain Underpants fondly. But how about for adults, David Sedaris, Steve Martin, and Tucker Max are the only adult-oriented humorists I can think of. (Tucker Max is very adult oriented).  Adults arn’t going to go pick up ‘Emails from an Asshole’ or ‘Ant Farm’. (By the way, I highly recommend reading Simon Rich’s Ant Farm and Free Range Chickens. OK, I can think of a few more adult-themed humorists (Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee, The New, New Rules). I am missing a lot, arn’t I. I am, but that’s not the point, the point is that humor is not respected by creators, consumers, or publishers. My point is that this is bad, and this conception needs to change. Harry Potter has moments of humor in it! Shakespeare? That man liked a good pun. (According to John Cleese the lowest form of comedy) Do not tell me humor cannot be art. I will hit you into the Thames with a large fish, then ride away on chariots made out of bacon and driven by strippers. Because fuck you, is why.

A friend of mine is going to give me $20 if I succeed. Challenge accepted!

Carpooling Freshman, a guide.
Carpooling is a great and environmentally friendly way to save money and make friends. By sharing a car in the mornings to and/or from school, carpooling allows less gas to be used, less money to be spent, and painless social interaction. If you have not ever carpooled somebody before, or been in a part of a carpool, I highly recommend that you do so.

Easy as it may seem, carpooling is not all fun and games. Situations may arise that can be difficult to handle, this is especially the case when carpooling freshman. Freshman, unlike other breeds of student, have an [sounds like air] of self-importance. They also have abnormally high levels of disrespect and ungratefulness in their genes. Not all freshmen carry these traits, but most do. Here are the ins and outs of carpooling freshman.

First off, install a freshman-cage. Any local pet store will carry one. These prevent the freshman from crawling around inside of the car, and also helps prevent scratching and tearing the seats.

Keep the window lock on. Freshman love sticking their heads outside the window, feeling the breeze of the wind brush across their pimpled face, letting their tongue slobber out freely. While this may seem like a good idea at first, the second a nearby branch swings too close to the car… – BAM! Lawsuit from the parents. As a general rule, unless one of the freshmen has possibly released some flatulent gases, do not let them roll down the windows. It gets slobber on the outside of the car, and their hair can fly around the inside – and freshman hair can be very difficult to clean.

If possible, attempt to block off any small openings or crevices; freshmen have a way of getting stuck in even the smallest of holes. Just stick some old boxes or books under the seats, and in other similar areas to prevent this needless hassle.

Next is the radio. If you have an mp3 player connection dock be sure to keep it secure, if you don’t, the freshmen’s greasy fingers may get on it, causing random song changes too songs such as “Party in the USA” or even “Boogey Wonderland.” It is recommended to remove these songs and CD s from the car before the freshman get in. If you are using a radio, ensure that you have the presets set to only what you, the driver, would like to listen to. You can prevent them from changing the station by hand, but presets are one-push-stops to the Radio Disney, and nobody wants that.

Shotgun can be an interesting situation. If driving more than one freshmen, be sure that strict rules have been laid out. While specific rules may change from person to person, ensure the freshmen know what you consider allowed and disallowed. Feel free to ‘bend’ the rules to allow more trustworthy freshmen to sit in the privileged passenger seat. It makes them feel special, and gives them a motive to behave better.
And as always, remember to let your freshmen go to the bathroom before leaving, feed them regularly, and, most of all, treat them with respect. They ARE humans after all. Smaller, less significant humans, but humans nonetheless.

Note: The word I was looking for in [sounds like air] [of self importance] is air. I was looking for the word AIR which sounds like AIR. . . I was a sophomore in HS, sue me!

Bloq

A strategy game for 2 players designed by Hunter Dyar

About

Bloq is a strategy game. The goal is to get one’s piece to the opposite corner before the other player does, and not get blocked out by the other player. Smart, adaptable play is the key.

Pieces

Bloq is played on a 7×7 space (49 spaces), There are two pawns (black and white), and there are 10 ‘bloq’s” (5 white, 5 black).

A checker board modified to be 7×7, checkers for the bloq’s, and chess pawns will work fine.

Setup

Place the two pawns on opposite corners of the board. Each player holds their 5 bloq’s to the side.

Goal

The goal of the game – winning- is to get to the opposite corner first. To get to where the opponent begins. The first player to do this wins.

Playing the Game

Traditionally, white goes first. One a turn, a player may do one of 2 things: Move the pawn or place a bloq. Players alternate turns, and the first one to get to the opposite corner (where the other player began) wins. No diagonal movement. A pawn must move as far in a horizontal or vertical (Manhattan) direction as it can. Pawns movement is stopped by the edge of the board, any color bloq’s, or the other pawn.

Additional Rules

• You may not completely block off the opponents path to the goal square.
• One a turn, you must be able to move your pawn – you can not play in such a way as to prevent the other player from moving their pawn in some direction.
• A player may be entirely locked out from getting to the goal, but there still must be a possible path. In other words, the player is blocked out because they do not have any bloq’s left to free themselves.

Showing possible moves for each player.

Strategy Basics

• It is important to save bloq’s when possible
• Try and work your pawn into an unblockable position to the goal
• Use your opponent’s bloq’s against them.
• Your pawn can be used to temporarily block your opponent

What Is it?

This Happens Today is a daily posting of fake headlines that are supposed to be funny. The idea was inspired by a few things: The Onion, John Hodgeman’s That Is All, True American Dog, and some other similar publications. Fake news is damn funny, the onion has taught us, but the original idea did not come from me trying to be them, it came from a scribble in my ntoebook: “Fake Humor Horiscope”, which slowly transformed into the fake headlines, which I am not really even doing. In fact, many of the posts are not headlines at all, just… things that happened. IE the title: This Happens Today.

Consider This Happens Today to be my daily prediction of the future. Remember, I have already finished writing every post, so let’s see how it turns out! I have high hopes for my Olympic game jokes.

Why?

I wrote every post this year, 366 of them, in 5 days. This just sort of happened, and when I realized I wrote 2 months in one day I thought to myself “I can write 366 posts before 2012″ and then “Challenge accepted”. This challenge comes down to one of the basic beliefs I try and live by: “Inspiration is for amateurs”. It would go right under “Que Sera Sera” and “Filter all input, escape all output” as things I try and live by. Full quote:

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”

Chuck Close

This project, as well as NaNoWriMo (btw I won again) and other “Jam” projects I do is a test of creativity and pertinacity, as well as just plain funniness. I am sure over the next few weeks I will be browsing the posts and editing, refining them to be funnier, since a lot of these posts are probably just absolute crap, but all things considered it is a lot of funny in a short amount of time. Awesome!

How?

Blogger.com fool. eventually I will move the thing (as well as this thing and that other thing) over to TopHat, which is a self-hosted blogging CMS I am working with Alec Gorge on.

Now, I mean, How did you get all the ideas?

I don’t really know the answer to this. I stared at a blank screen for a bit, and then my fingers move. Sometimes they hit some buttons in the right order and funny was created. Also post-it notes while I was sleeping. One thing I didn’t do was go to theonion.com or read any of the books I own, I didn’t want to corrupt myself with their ideas and accidentally steal something. I went to theonion.com after I finished and realized two things: 1) They are damn funny. 2) I need some shitty photoshop to accompany everything. (True American Dog agrees). The idea crossed my head to illustrate the headlines, and I would essentially be making comics. Having just finished reading every The Far Side cartoon ever, I am feeling inspired to cartoon, and just might start working on some things. Who knows.

What’s Next?

Probably go back to working on my humor book, and dabble in the field of cartooning. Also should work on my short sketch comedy film and short satirical humor play. Funny is the only thing I have, people.

I didn’t know what I would find when I walked into the room. I wasn’t thinking about the horrors that could exist on the other side of the door. I opened it innocently enough, entering the room, I knew I would be the only one inside. I was leaving the party, full of wine and fake laughs, the house-guests pretending to like each other the same way congressman do – with just enough of a veil to mask their true opinions. I own the house, I invited the guests, and damn was I tired of it. Walking into the private room, I sat down on the only chair, a throne really, and sighed deeply to myself. It was nice to get away from the massive quantity of bullshittery and ass-kissing that is escaping these peoples mouths. It was at around that moment when I noticed something was askew. Something was tragically, horrifically, indescribably wrong.

The toilet paper roll was backwards.

I always had the free end of the roll ‘over’ as opposed to ‘under’. It’s easier to grab and more sanitary. There isn’t any scraping against a wall. But this roll, this roll in my own damn bathroom is decidedly ‘under’. Somebody has changed it. Somebody has the audacity to change it.

but who?

My mind searched itself for some clues, but I couldn’t figure it out. It could have been anybody, really. who? The question etched it’s why into my brain, jumping on and not letting go.

What an asshole.

“Huh, boobs. Not to bad. More boobs, I’m fine with this. Most of these boobs are intact. That image looks like it is from a stock photo website. I wonder if th—OH MY GOD MY EYES OH MAN SWEET LORD GOD AHH AHHHH AHHHHHH FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS ALT F4! ALT F4!!!!!!!!”