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Ego Worship at its worst

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Jon’s Report Card circa… A Long Time Ago

I found an old report card from elementary school. And JUST FOR YOU I spent all afternoon transcribing Mrs. Eggelston’s old-school-marm-script comments from the margins. I aim to please.

— Jon is reading well, but his fascination with mucus and, please forgive the term, “mondo-boogers” [his term] has gotten out of hand. Please ask him not to touch the other children’s nostrils.

— He needs to stop playing the blues harmonica during recess for tips. He is not a 1920s black sharecropper.

— His Math skills are formidable, but I’m worried that he is spending far too much time trying to “telnet” into First National Bank from the Library’s computer.

— While we strive to be as tolerant as possible, we do not understand why he occasionally dresses as a “ninja-pirate-warrior-prince.” He’s very creative with his costumes, but we have a hard time understanding his “pirate talk.” And when he goes into “ninja-stealth-death-mode” and creeps against the wall; he makes the entire class pretend they can’t see him. This is very distracting to the learning environment and I’ve had to warn him about this conduct.

— I’m thrilled with his interest in Civics, but he must stop burning Richard Nixon in effigy. It’s against the fire code to have an open flame in the classroom. Although he does know quite a bit about the Watergate scandal and seems to be able talk forever about President Ford’s pardon of Nixon. Does he watch a lot of news shows?

— His vocabulary is impressive, but what he has suggested in numerous essays is both anatomically impossible and seems like it would be quite painful. Is someone in your family currently a sailor or used to be in the Navy?

— It’s true that February is Black History Month and we should be more sensitive as a culture, but we have to refer to the children by “their slave names” (Jon, Mary, Billy, etc.); it’s very confusing to call him “Shabazz X” just for one month.

— During the Biology section he became physically disturbed during the frog and worm dissections. After grabbing as many samples as he could hold in his little hands, he ran out of the classroom, screaming “You may NOT hurt my pretties! Stay away from them, you visigoths!”

I am very happy to have in in the classroom as he is certainly a lively little fellow. We will have to work on some of these more “disturbing” behaviors as the year progresses.

Thank you.
Linda Egglston

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Dear Gratuitously Naked Conversationalist at the Gym:

Hey! How are you?

Wait, I already know how you are! You were sick last week. Bad cold that turned into the flu. Which, I can totally understand must have sucked as bad as you described it. How many times did you “blow chunks?” Oh right, four or five times! You lost count. Ughs-ville.

You carried on that conversation with your friend, “I Shave My Head at the Gym Guy” for a while. You guys also seem to know A LOT about mutual funds and option calls. Bravo. I was not aware of that whole Triple Witching Hour phenomenon. Very interesting.

Anyhoo.

Here’s a thought, maybe you could wait and have those conversations, heck any conversation at all, until you are clothed? Or barring that, if you simply must speak while you are standing there with all the stuff God gave you hanging out for the rest of us to try and avoid glancing at, go right ahead and use that towel you are holding in your hand and wrap it around yourself. Super easy process, the towel wrap.

Forgive me if I’m pointing out the obvious, but have you noticed how deathly quiet the men’s locker room is, until you start gabbing? Again, I’m sorry if this is something you already know, but I kind of think it’s worth repeating: There is a code in the men’s room which also applies in the locker room: you don’t talk. You can make little head bob gestures in lieu of verbalization that mean “Hey man, what’s up?” but no words are exchanged. You do what you came for and then leave. Talking happens in other places. This isn’t rocket science and most of us learned this a long time ago. It’s just one of those ancient cultural and anthropological things.

Please know this as well, this isn’t so much about “good naked” and “bad naked” as it is about nudity in general. Again, from the rapid and discreet glances I made, and with the understanding that I am a flaming heterosexual, I have to say that though you do fall in the “good naked” class of people, which might make you think you can just stand there, glisten and chit-chat for an extended period of time, but really? Not so much. Granted, I fall squarely in the “not so great naked” category, so of course I’m totally green with envy, but I think all the other guys around me, even the “look pretty decent naked” committee in the back corner would agree that having you stand there and talk about no-load mutual funds while your junk is out there on display isn’t really why we are here at the gym.

So let me offer up this one small piece of advice. Next time you come to the gym, take a moment and observe the behavior of your fellow male cohorts. Heck, you can even stare at me next time, I’m cool with that. See, when I change from my street clothes to my shorts and tee-shirt, notice that the transition from clothed to naked to clothed again is almost instantaneous . Ten seconds tops. There is no delay between when I whip off my pants to when I pull up the running shorts. I even set the shorts and tee-shirt out on the bench next to me so I don’t have to root around in my gym bag to re-clothe myself. Plus, no one wants to see me bend over and try and find something in my gym bag while pants-less. That’s not a pretty picture, trust me. Also, note that I am as quiet as a proverbial church mouse while performing all disrobing and re-dressing activities. They require no speech.

Now, please understand, I think it’s great that you aren’t ashamed of your body and feel completely comfortable in your skin. That must be super for you. It’s just that the rest of us don’t feel all that comfortable with your skin, that’s all.

Thanks, bro (you seem to be a “bro” kind of fellow),
jon

P.S. Do you know “Grunts While He Does Squats Man?” I think we need to have a talk with him as well about all the noise he makes while lifting. I’m worried he’s going to hurt himself.

jd

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

A Peek Inside the Writer’s Guild and Producers’ Negotiations

Before the big meeting over the weekend, Ransom Note Typography minions managed to plant a couple high tech microphones on key members of the negotiating teams during the marathon sessions between the Writer’s Guild of America (representing the writers, duh) and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (representing the blood sucking, money grubbing studios and producers).

We are not biased in the slightest here at RNT World Headquarters.

The following is a transcript of the tapes we got via FedEx late this afternoon.

Chairs rustling as people begin to sit

Voice 1 (Studio Boss, we presume): Everybody OK? Anyone need a Pellegrino? Latte? Diet Coke?

Voice 2 (writer, we guessed): Yeah, can I get a half-decaf mochachino venti, low foam and extra hot? Really hot. Hotter than the heat of a thousand suns hot, please. Thanks.

Voice 1: Sure thing, Bob. MARCI! Hey, Marci, listen, will you run to the Starbucks down the street and get Alan a cup of jo, with a shot of half and half or something.

Bob: Um, I really wanted half-decaf—

Alan: Bob, I am never going to remember all that crap. Marci, get him a cup of coffee and some of those creamers, will ya? And get me a boysenberry danish, the crumbly kind, three napkins, a fork and two plates, while you’re at it. And get my Blackberry out of my bag and call Jiilian and tell her to cancel the swim class tonight, my psoriasis is acting up this week and the chlorine really does a number on my skin.

Woman’s voice (presumably Marci): You want a coffee with that?

Alan: Oh, Lord, no, I’m already going to be up all night. And the acid just kills my stomach. But pop open one of those Pellegrinos and let it go flat for me. And throw some ice in a glass when you get back. Thanks, hon.

Much throat clearing

Alan: OK, look. We have a problem. You word guys are way too bent out of shape. Seems to us over at AMPTP like you fellows with the typewriters are being a little greedy, don’t you think?.

Bob: Alan, I think we are being more than fair and quite reasonable. Right now we only earn FOUR cents per DVD sold. Less than a nickel per $24.99 DVD! And zilch on internet stuff. We have to be fairly compensated, Alan. And, you also need to recognize that new media falls under our jurisdiction. We have to protect these young kids out there writing on the Internet and all this new media stuff.

Alan: Look, Bob, I understand your position, and I feel for you, but really, you gotta understand, we don’t need you guys as much anymore. You aren’t really in a position of strength here, my friend. Plus, no one is making any money off the Internet. Zippo. Bupkis. Bunch of smelly hippies, stealing our intellectual property is what the Internet is. Trust me, Bob, you don’t want any part of the Internet stuff. We can’t even get that fruity company, what’s their name, again? Marci!

Young woman’s voice: Marci left to get the danish, sir.

Alan (huge sigh): Fine. What’s your name, hon?

Young woman: Riva, sir.

Alan (rolls eyes): Whatever. What’s the name of the fruit company that sells those little pod-pud things? [sound of fingers snapping] We bought my niece one in pink, remember?

Bob: Apple. Alan, Apple sells the iPod and sells your shows on iTunes. Over the Internet.

Alan: Again. Whatever. Those fruity folks got all huffy and hot and bothered the other day. They don’t like our ideas about pricing. It’s nuts! All I’m saying is that the Internet is full of bandits, Bob. You don’t want any part of that. We don’t even want a part of that, but we have to do something, you know? Holy pants on a bamboo pole, look at the music business, poor bastards. The Internet stole EVERYTHING from them. We aren’t making a plug nickel off the Internet, Bob. You gotta believe me! So I don’t understand why you are making such a fuss about it. Look at this contract proposal of yours, you got a whole section in here called: “Revenue from Internet streaming.” What revenue?! Are you kidding me? I’m dying here with this Internet revenue stuff! Plus, there are thousands of people out there at home in their underwear in the day, writing, just like you clowns from the WGA. I just heard about this blagging stuff the other day. It’s crazy stuff! I had Marci start a blag thing for me. Livepress.com? Wordjournal? Anyway. A zillion and a half monkeys out there, I bet if we put it all in a hopper, some kind of Shakespeare will sift out. So what if it isn’t really the next Hamlet, people don’t really care about quality anymore. You know that! Hell, we just put Harold and Kumar 4 into pre-production. No, let’s stay away from an Internet talk, my friend, that’s rough and felonious territory. A veritable den of thieves.

Bob: Well, we are going to have to address revenue sharing for Internet downloads and streaming at some point. But I’d really like to discuss the criminally low residuals we receive from DVD sales. Now your public statements about the health of your business, combined with the latest 10-K from the SEC, in DVD sales alone, your company made over—

Alan: Bob, I’m going to stop you right there. We can’t really say exactly what we sold. We make a lot of plastic discs, sure, but how much money do we really make off ‘em? Who can say? We send trucks out to Wal-Mart, but it gets really complicated after that. Who knows how many those guys sell! And the financial statements! Come on! Think about it, Bob, you know how mushy and shady those financial statements are. Like Mick Jagger said, “I see a red door, and I want to paint it gray.” Hell, you write fiction for a living, we should get you to take a poke at those statements once in a while.

General laughter around the room.

Alan: Anyway, Bob, we are getting eaten alive by piracy. You’ve seen the news. Right here on our own channel they say it: Billions and billions of dollars of our property flying around the Internet right now and we aren’t seeing any of that action. Trillions, even! Hell, you walk down the street in Manchuria or over there in China and you trip over a stack of bad copies of Rush Hour 3 when you walk out the door. Though really, they were just there to keep the door propped open. What a stinker that was! Who wrote that again, Bob?

Bob (obviously annoyed and testy): I don’t think we are here to discuss the merits of any one movie or show in particular. The industry as a whole is the problem we are trying to address. We need to talk about revenue sharing and residuals and what we, the writers are rightfully owed.

Alan: I’m just asking. No need to get defensive, my boy. I’m sure it was all Ratner’s fault anyway.

Bob (very angry and his voice is squeaky and shaking): Yeah, sure. Fine. Whatever. You know for a fact that the script I delivered to him years ago was better than the drivel they filmed. My name isn’t even anywhere on that script anymore. And you know that.

Silence for a few moments. A couple of throats clear uncomfortably.

Bob: Anyway. We need to come to some conclusion on the matter of DVD sales. The WGA thinks a doubling of the compensatory fees for DVDs with over $1 million in gross sales is more than reasonable.

Alan: Your comedy skills have never been better, Bob. Very sharp! That’s a funny, isn’t it? We should put you on staff for this new Bob Saget vehicle we are throwing together.

Bob: We are totally serious. You are making a mint from DVD sales. We helped create that product. We have the numbers to back that up. We must be remunerated.

Alan: I don’t think you really understand the weak position you are in, Bob.

Bob: What are you talking about, Alan? I think our position has never been stronger. We create. You film and sell. We should get some of that money. Seems pretty simple and strong to me.

Alan: But I don’t think you understand. We don’t need you anymore! Look at what happened last time you keyboard jockeys got your panties in a wad. Remember that, back in the 80s? You were out for days! Weeks! Who missed you? No one, really. Sure, Letterman was annoyed, but he’s always pissed about something. Dave is Dave, nothing you can do about that. And what did we do while you guys were out there parading around L.A. with your signs and tinny megaphones, Bob? I’ll tell you what we did. We got smart. We went out and made reality shows. Reality! Non-fiction. No writers, baby! No made up stories, just real folks, eating worms and setting fire to their cousins on TV. Sure it’s crap, but it’s dirt cheap to make. Hire a couple snot-nosed camera crews, hell, Union people even. Hire a couple kids to follow that blonde bimbo, what her name? Annie Nicky Smith? The plump one, you know who I mean. Died a couple years ago. Marci! What was the blond’s name? Anyway, hire a few college kids to follow her around with a microphone and a Canon or put a bunch of cameras in Ozzy Milbourne’s house and you know what you have? A hit! H-I-T, hit, baby! You think we can’t keep doing that? The public eats that stuff for breakfast, Bob. Sure, we’ll throw you and the critics a bone once in a while and make The Wire and 24 and The Office and what not, but the future is Reality, Reality, Reality! Plus, the internet! It’s gonna be great! You ever see those YouTurn videos? Like that one with the dog and the skateboard? Stupid as hell, but people love to watch that crap. Marci! What’s the name of that one thing? That thing with the girl? HornyGirl12? LonelyChicken44? Whatever. That one thing with the girl. We bought that for a song. Marci! Where is she? That stuff doesn’t even need writers, my friend. It writes itself. MARCI!

Marci (running and panting): Sorry, sir, the boysenberry danishes weren’t very crumbly, so they are making a new batch. I got you a strawberry cruller. Here’s your cocoa, Mr. Johnson.

Bob: Cocoa? But I asked for coffee?

Marci: They were out. Sorry.

At that point in the tapes, the sound faded and we don’t really know what happened in the meeting. But we do know that the writers are probably getting screwed with their pants on.

Fight the Power.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

We Regret the Error

I have been publishing on the web for a number of years. Ransom Note Typography is merely the latest incarnation. Over the course of the past few years of this site I have made a number of small factual, grammatical and typographical errors. In the tradition of the very best journalists and media outlets, I shall now endeavor to correct these errors in the record, before they begin to fester.


I was never arrested for hiding in Jennifer Aniston’s shrubbery outside her bedroom window. I was up in a tree.

When I called my youngest daughter “Devil Spawn,” I obviously misspoke. She is, in fact, “Demon Spawn.”

Due to an error in editing in my review of Windows Vista, the sentence that read “And then I booted into Windows Vista; my face caught on fire, my head exploded in a torturous rage of pain, and pus began to flow from every pore of my body” was incorrect. I could have easily omitted the comma after the word “pain.”

My boss is the Creative Director, not the Creative Detractor, as I once published.

A mis-configured server allowed this error to slip into the feed for the site: “George Bush (40) is the worst thing to happen to the United States since they canceled Firefly and he will go down in history as the worst president to ever lead this nation; I can’t believe we still put up with his crap day after day; does anyone really believe even one word that comes out of his mouth? ‘The Surge is working,’ my big fat, hairy tookus.” [President Bush is the 43rd president, not the 40th.]

The picture of me posing nude with Carmen Electra was obviously fake and a bad Photoshop job.

Due to the lateness of the hour, the overarching pain and the side effects of certain opiates I had taken; I made a small error when I stated that I ran the St. George Marathon in under 2 hours. I have not, as of yet crossed the finish line and am posting this from mile marker 19.

I accidentally left out the word “not” in the sentence that read: “I was high when I asked Reha to marry me.”

Had I done even a perfunctory Google search I would have known that calling one of my new co-workers a “spic” was very bad form. That was very wrong of me. Also I should not have pointed out in her first staff meeting that she had “bodacious ta-ta’s.” Again, very bad form on my part and I apologize.

As of this writing, Abe Vigoda is still not dead, no matter what I said in 2005.

Though I spell-check every entry before hitting “publish,” I somehow misspelled “right-wing nutjobs who seem intent on destroying all our civil liberties” as “ass-wipe morons who can’t seem to understand that we still have a Bill of Rights in this country.” I have since re-installed my word processing software and hope the error doesn’t pop up again.


Thank you for being one of my readers and I hope that these errors, oversights and misstatements do not detract from your viewing pleasure here at Ransom Note Typography. I cherish all of you.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

What I Did There

I made a joke. It’s wasn’t particularly funny. That isn’t really the point. But I did what I do:

Me: You see what I did there?

Reha: What did you do there?

Me: I made a little joke.

Reha (incredibly non-committal-ly): Mhm.

Time passes.

I make essentially the SAME little joke. (That’s a “call-back” in the comedy biz, kids)

Me: You see what I did there?

Reha: A useless change in the carbon-dioxide/oxygen ratio in the room?

Me: You could just say it wasn’t a funny joke, you know.

Favorite Entries

If you are new around here, the following entries have been reasonably well received. You might want to peruse these.

• Jon’s Report Card circa… A Long Time Ago
• Dear Gratuitously Naked Conversationalist at the Gym:
• A Peek Inside the Writer’s Guild and Producers’ Negotiations
• We Regret the Error
• What I Did There
• Hermaphrodite Administrative Assistants and Receptionists Need Not Apply
• Giving Me an IM Account Was Obviously a Huge Mistake
• Official Ransom Note Typography Vista vs. Mac OS X Shootout
• I Need a Real Hobby
• Beat Down
• Big Fat Lies
• True Love
• Now MY Ovaries Hurt
• Don’t Get Her Started
• Disturbing Trend
• Had to do it
• Mooshy stuff
• Ransom Note Typography End User License Agreement “EULA”
• Diva-licious!
• Just so we’re clear
• PETA may have a point

Holy Crap! Look at all this STUFF down here. It's awesome!

 

Really, I'm glad you made it down here. Almost no one ever comes down here. I'm like in a freaking dungeon down here. I get lonely. But not you. YOU made it all the way to the end of the page. For this I think I've a little crush on you. I don't know, is "love" to strong a word to use in this situation? Well, if it's not "love," then it's very strong "like." I'm totally in like with you for coming down here. You are awesome. Please love me back! I know, I know, I shouldn't be all needy, it's not attractive at all, but you don't know how it is to be stuck down here. Who scrolls all the way to the end of a page anymore these days? Anyway, thanks for shedding some light down here in the depths. I appreciate it. Shoot me an email and I'll send you a dollar, OK?

©2005-2008 Jon B. Deal All Rights Reserved. I'm not kidding around here, I know people who know other people who would be willing to beat you up or similarly infringe on your rights, should you happen to infringe on my rights.