The Purest Form of Writing

The single most pure, awesome type of written word is undoubtedly the rant. I will employ this ancient writing technique to explain its sheer awesomeness, because it really is just that awesome.

Normally, a structured essay would begin with a clear definition explaining clearly and exactly what a rant is, but that’s the beauty part of a rant. It has no structure. You just write whatever the hell you feel like! Peanut butter! Sounds good, doesn’t it?

It doesn’t stop there. A rant is the most pure form of writing because it perfectly captures the stream of thought that we go through. It’s an emotional photograph. It’s like you took all your feelings and bottled them up together, but then they started fighting until one ate the others. Then, as punishment, you threw the winner in a high-priced blender and shredded that little ho (figure 23). Yes. That’s what a rant is like.


Figure 23: An expensive blender, just 'cause. In a rant, the visuals should be unsurpassed in terms of irrelevance, except by the metaphors.

A rant should never take more than five minutes per page. That’s ridiculous. It defeats the whole purpose. My rants take me about 10 minutes max, and if I don’t like them I just go back and add some cool stuff about cactuses and blenders. Don’t worry about staying on topic. A true rant doesn’t really have a topic. One minute it could be a “how to,” and the next it could be a biography. This is the idea; in fact, if you can confuse the reader by quickly diverging from one central theme to the next, that’s 40 bonus points.

My whole blog is themed around the idea of a rant. Before we came to high school, we just wrote whatever we felt like — and some of us were damned good at it. Yeah, our eighth grade teacher told us to make outlines, but we just wrote our papers and threw some stupid sentences together next to some roman numerals and scribbled “outline” on it. Why? Because screw her! Outlines suck! Rants are where it’s at.

There’s nothing like the type of writing that doesn’t correspond from paragraph to paragraph; the pleasure derived from stringing together random sentences with no significance is unmatched; there’s simply no greater feeling for a writer than creating a conclusion with no pertinence to the rest of the essay.

That’s what I think I’ll do.

In conclusion, manila folders are more valuable than gold, and copy editing pens are the most valuable things on the planet. All problems could easily be solved with a duel with meter sticks. Cactuses are cool, and that’s my blog post, so suck it.

The Importance of Cynicism

I’ve decided to open this blog entry with a list of synonyms for “cynical,” in the adjective form, going from short and simple to long and then to unnecessarily, annoyingly long.

Cynical. Caustic. Ironic. Sarcastic. Sardonic. Critical. Satirical. Dark-humored. Sharp-witted. Lightly acerbic. Mean in a funny way. Funny at others’ expenses. Comical in a way that causes only one person in the room to laugh and draws glares from everyone else.

As a copy editor, I realize the importance of being cynical.

It might seem like a strange topic, but think about it. How many copy editors do you know who are cute and cuddly? None? OF COURSE NONE! If — by some cataclysmic error — there is a copy editor out there who can form a smile that stretches to both corners of the mouth out of any thoughts other than those of pure scorn, it won’t be long before they, too, are reduced to beings of poor posture and comical malcontent. It is one of the fundamental laws of nature that all copy editors should be offensive and disgusting people, and today — purely because I feel like it — I’m going to tell you why.

The first reason is because no one gets our jokes. We spend our whole day correcting grammatical errors that most people either wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care to notice because of the insignificance of said errors. Occasionally, we are driven to make a snide comment about a writer’s stupid mistakes. Sadly, if there are no other copy editors in the room (which is likely because none of us likes the others), no one else will see the irony of our comments, and we will have to laugh out loud just to convince ourselves that what we said was actually funny (which it probably was not). After a while, we have to laugh louder and louder to truly convince ourselves of our comic own ability; and the result is one person laughing maniacally in a room while everyone else shoots them the kind of look normally reserved for insane people.

Another reason is probably the fact that reading and rereading articles long into the night is kind of like standing in line all day. You have to talk yourself into thinking it’s worth it, and eventually you forget why you’re standing there anyway. Then your editor comes up and reminds you and cuts you in line, taunting you while she does it. Some people really love copy editing and/or waiting in line, but generally no one wants to be around those people because they’re offensive and disgusting.

The next reason is because it’s just fun to be mean. You might see a copy editor laugh when you look at him or her, and then you might think, “Did that copy editor just laugh at me?” and you’ll continue to ask yourself that same question all day. The only time, in fact, you won’t be worried that the copy editor might be making fun behind your back is when you turn around and they flat out tell you, “Yes. I am making fun of you.” See how fun it is? If you answered, “Yes,” congratulations — you’re a copy editor (or probably just a jerk).

I actually don’t really know the reason copy editors are so sardonic. It’s probably the same reason the sky is blue — something science-y like that. I’ll just tell you this, blog-reader: if you had to read and correct your writing, then write a headline for it, then take the fall if there was something wrong with it after its publication, you’d be a sarcastic jerk too.

I hate you.

Errors Haunt Me Night and Day

In my "Twilight" blog, I misspelled Stephenie Meyer's name twice.

I later repented and looked up "forgiveness" in the dictionary.

Asymmetrical Style (and Why It Rocks)

A short while ago, I was looking for the matching sock to a splendidly un-fouled one I found on the floor of my room. It was white — pure white — Downy white. Mr. Clean would have worn that sock underneath his lumberjack boots (I assume he wears lumberjack boots, which are rubber but steel-toed (in case a lumberjack needs to kick a robot’s ass)).

Anyway, I was looking. On and on I looked, never finding a match. Once I came close, but that sock was not pure and white. It was old and crusty and occasionally it coughed and wheezed, like a foul, miserable, little sock (because that’s what it was). After three years of searching to no avail, I had nearly resolved to clean my filthily cozy quarters (hoping that a good vacuuming/purging would make clean socks easier to find).

I had almost uncorked the holy water when a violent epiphany struck me (violently). I didn’t need to clean my room. That was pointless (it would only get dirty again, as it did every time some ignorant fool tried to clean it). This cleaning was, in fact, almost as pointless as the symmetry of socks. People can’t even see socks. They go underneath shoes, then underneath pants. I grabbed a differently colored, longer, dirtier sock (one that Mr. Clean would probably not have worn, which is senseless because no one has ever seen Mr. Clean’s lower half (and because no one can see socks, which are worn beneath pants and shoes).

I wore the two mismatched socks all day, and whenever someone got in my face (which was never (because you can’t see socks (because they go under pants and shoes))), I kicked them with the foot that had the dirty sock on it (the left one). Then I went home and wrote a kickass blog entry about why it’s pointless to spend three years searching for a matching sock.

(I later found the other clean sock and didn’t care.)

The Twilight Epidemic

I address this distress call to any remaining men, because all of the nation’s women are infected with this unstoppable vampiric craze. Take up your torches, raise your idols and prepare to beat back countless slaves to the “Twilight” curse! The time has come and gone for action, and now, severely disadvantaged, we must face a disease that multiplies every second, and hope that whatever entity is good and pure in the universe will join our side. Though this terrible curse has drawn to it many great minds, there are forces left in the world that will never fall, demigods of masculinity like Chuck Norris and Mr. Clean.

Before we face any enemy, it’s important to understand what compels her. It’s important to understand how this curse works. Before trusting anyone, carefully observe them to be certain that they are indeed still uncontaminated.

The blighted make a habit of constantly withdrawing for hours or even days at a time to perform their unholy rituals in whatever private locales they tend to dwell. A darkness sweeps over them in their pestilent privacy, and they sit, in silence, poring over their captors: medium-sized books of the “Twilight” series. These fallen comrades are forever Stephanie Meyer’s unholy minions, and their numbers are bolstered every time one of our own falls. These lost souls are mostly teenage girls, who are the most susceptible to the “Twilight” curse, primarily because of their faintness of heart and weakness toward pale men who aren’t attractive enough in the real world and have to create an alternate reality where they are and where they can trick others into feeling accepted because of their hatred of worldly monotony and internal desire for outlandish and strange “undead” characteristics which don’t even conform to traditional vampire lore. Edward Cullen has taken these poor souls’ imaginations and twisted them with false romance. Beware, once under the “Twilight” curse’s influence, the pestilent ones can never be restored. We have all lost someone to this terrible epidemic. I have lost my little sister, who was only 16 when she was handed helplessly to the ranks of the damned.

Brothers, do not allow yourselves to be fooled. Reading “Twilight” is most certainly gay. Watching the movies will brand you as homosexual, and there’s no taking it back. False pretexts like, “I’m using it to get into this girl’s pants” or, “I didn’t really enjoy it, my girlfriend made me” or, “I thought I was immune because I wrestled alligators for 10 years” will not earn your soul back. Once a man’s eyes have gazed upon this pansy horror, they will never regain their masculinity, and will be ushered headlong into Stephanie Meyer’s slave army.

The creature responsible for transforming our beloved women, and rather effeminate men, is the sordid book we have all seen. The monster dominates bookstores, festering in its own toxic black aura. Even so, the threat ends not with mere leaflet pages, which are so easily purged with a deep, cleansing flame; the beast comes in many forms, and its most terrible shape yet has stretched across wide screens to poison our minds via motion picture presentations. It was a terrible day when the first “Twilight” movie came out. No one could have predicted that an entity as pure as cinema could fall to a lowly beast of the night, but, alas, it has, and look what fate it has wrought upon us!

The curse is set apart from regular diseases in that the hosts are not simply destroyed, but reanimated and given new drive to infect others, causing the curse to spread through its own unholy minions. As more and more become infected, they begin to resent their loneliness and maliciously draw other innocent minds into the terrible affliction, causing the number of infected souls to increase exponentially with time. Those few remaining braves who are not infected must be wary. We have all seen the compelling force of this foe, whose tainted lyrics have poisoned the minds of our race’s best. One gaze upon a blighted screen or an unholy tome will surely seal a stalwart rebel’s fate.

Do not give up all hope yet, though. Their bodies may be wasted, but the souls of the damned can still be saved, for every force in this universe has a weakness, every foe an Achilles’ heel, and this frightening epidemic is no better. We must strike at the source of our bane, the very pinnacle of unholiness. We must strike down the evil Robert Pattinson before his next rampage. My brothers, rip out this miscreant’s fake plastic fangs and wring his scrawny pale neck before he can bring anymore damage to the ones whom we love — or loved. Once the monarch of this curse is cast aside, his mindless acolytes will abandon his side, and, like all fads, the “Twilight” curse will fade into the fringes of acceptability, whence it came and whence it should have remained.

The Savior

Webster be praised!
The holy prophets Strunk & White have not forsaken us! Our Savior, Reno Sorensen, has come; the God of Style has descended from the Great Beyond to save us from a life of unholy sin! My children, renounce the your stylistic sins and join in praise of the One True Lord, the Almighty Webster, who has sent his only Son back to absolve of us our world of elegant variation and severed adverbs!
Pass on the word, that the Monday following the year's final paste-up shall henceforth be known as Linguistica!
Rejoice, my brothers and sisters, for our Savior has come, and His wisdom is great!

With travesty,
Pope Loren Johnson II

Supersexism

It’s gotten to the point where I can’t even go outside anymore. Everywhere I go, I can feel their cold prejudice looming over me, like a raincloud dampening my spirit. I bow my head and look at my feet as I walk down the city street, with thousands of burning, glaring feminist eyes boring into my back, all seeming to hiss, “QUIT OBJECTIFYING ME!”

Supersexism, the most crippling form of bigotry today, is the preconceived notion all women possess that all men are sexist. No matter what I do, no matter how courteous and respectful I am, no matter how many times I compliment their makeup, I cannot for one second escape the label with which women have branded me: the label of a sexist.

Despite workplace anti-sexism laws, female employers deny me jobs time and time again simply based on the fear that I possess a higher mental and physical capacity than they do and that I will earn one dollar for every 75 cents they make. Supersexism, therefore, has cost me jobs and distorted my life.

Thanks to ridiculous sexual harassment regulations, I’m afraid to make eye contact with girls at school for fear of being exiled to Antarctica for sexual harassment (figure 1). This is unfair. If women don’t want to be eyeballed they should dress in uglier clothes, or perhaps put on a little weight. All women are always watching to see if a man’s eyes ever, for even a microsecond, pass over their breasts. When most women talk to me nowadays, I simply close my eyes to show that I am taking extra steps to avoid ogling them. That’s why most men hate push-up bras.



Figure 1: There are no anti-sexism laws in Antarctica, largely due to the fact that there are no women in Antarctica.

Push-up bras are the most evil invention ever (figure 2). If you don’t know, they’re a type of underwear designed to lift a woman’s breasts and cause them to protrude even further than they normally do. This creates a weight imbalance in thinner women, and often causes them to stumble forward slightly when walking in high heels. A man who has closed his eyes to avoid accidental eye-rape, hearing the staggering girl coming, will often make the mistake of extending his arms to catch the falling female lest she fall and hurt herself; yet it’s so hard for most women to see how these circumstances could accidentally lead to a man catching two giant handfuls of cleavage, especially in the more breastically endowed females, whose naughty parts cover a wider surface area (the entire front of the torso).

Men, here’s some serious advice if you want to avoid this kind of inadvertent groping: let the bitch drop.

Figure 2: Just look at the evil. Disgusting!

These days, I can’t state my opinion in public anymore (except on blogs where women can’t slap me), for fear of accidentally “objectifying” nearby women. In recent weeks I have been apprehended for “offensive sexist remarks” so many times that I have simply resolved not to talk anymore in the presence of the opposite gender. Here’s an example of how a common remark could be labeled as sexist:

“Anne, make me a sandwich.”

Most women would first look at that sentence and feel that Anne is being domesticated and objectified. They would feel as though the speaker views Anne as a kitchen tool more than a person, yet notice the sentence’s structure: Anne is clearly the subject of the sentence, not the object. "Me," the guy, is actually one of the objects, despite what any feminist would tell you. (The other object is "sandwich." I will talk about sandwich objectification in future blog posts.) If the lesser gender would simply realize that a humble request for a sandwich is nothing more than a compliment about a girl’s culinary skills, the world would be a happier place for men.

Luckily, supersexism rehabilitation is simple: just embrace your inner ancient Greek and turn to homosexuality when your woman pisses you off. For men with too much dignity for that, it might help to become a sadomasochist, because there are many, many facial slappings along the path you have chosen.

Men, hold your heads high through this storm. Though women everywhere will persecute you solely for your sex for the rest of your life, help is on the way. In my next column, I will show you how to make yourself deaf to higher pitched noises (like a whiny woman’s voice) by blasting hardcore rock music in your ears until they bleed.

By the way, women or sensitive men who disagree with anything in this article are supersexists.