Referral

Oddly, this site still gets hits every once in a while. It's dead, folks! But, in case you're interested, I do sometimes write letters to people and ask them for free stuff.

http://crapples-letters.blogspot.com

See you there.

Crapples Rock

Recently I recorded some music with a friend, which prompted me to search through my archives of previous recordings. I thought the following items would fit well on this blog, even if no one reads this blog anymore.

This is the theme song for a movie I made with some friends a few years ago. The movie is called "Video Games Of Love". It's now showing nowhere on earth.

The Crapples Singers: Video Games Of Love

This one was a proposed theme song for another movie that I made. This song was never used in the film, but I liked it anyway. The movie for which it was made is showing in exactly zero theaters worldwide!

The Crapples Singers: Factory Of Dreams

Lastly, this tune was just me messing around. I was thinking about using it for a closing credits song on a certain movie someday, but the movie never got made.

The Crapples Singers: Crying On The Inside

Remote Chicken Petter

I’ll admit that when I saw that the Mixed Reality Lab had produced technology that would allow office workers and world travelers to pet or stroke a live chicken from a thousand miles away, my first thought was one of skepticism.

I mean, for one thing, Chickens are pretty common. If I’m on a business trip in Atlanta and I really want to pet a chicken, I’m going to wager that I can find one locally.

But even more importantly, I don’t remember a single time in my whole life when I’ve ever wanted to pet a chicken. Oh sure, I’d love to train one to peck Ode To Joy on a tiny chicken piano like those trained birds you see in San Francisco:

“Listen, chicken, how many times do I have to tell you… the piano is that thing over there! No, not there! What are you doing? That’s just a tiny mirror! It’s right there! Just turn your head to the left… no no… your left…”

“Bok Bok … Bok.”

... Let’s see, what else would I want to do with a chicken if I had one? Oh yes, I remember: Eat it for dinner.

But, again, I never really thought about petting one from another city before seeing the page linked above.

The psychology of new technologies is interesting though, because once you know that a product is available, all of a sudden you can’t imagine living without it. Now, having seen the remote chicken petter, I honestly can’t wait for my next business trip just so I can pet a chicken from some far away city. It's going to be so sweet. My co-workers are going to be like, "Dude. You're seriously petting your pet chicken from more than 1000 miles away? Dang! I'd have to be within two or three feet of the animal to pull-off something like that."

So, although my first reaction was skeptical, my revised reaction to the Mixed Reality Lab’s remote chicken petting technology is, “Yeesh! It’s about time.”

Some Advice For You

I feel bad for most people I come in contact with. Most of them are content to live their lives taking orders from The Man, getting stuck in routines, and trying to keep pace with the neighbors. In fact, I don’t even refer to these people as “people”, I just call them “drones”. But, I’m different. I decided a long time ago that I would face life head-on, tirelessly, like a worker bee.

I know that one of the reasons people visit this blog is to get some direction in their life. I also know that when some of you saw the first paragraph of this post you thought to yourself, “Hey Crapples! You’ve lived up to your potential by leading your people, the blogging community, to Funnyland, but how can I live up to my potential?”

My response to this question is two-pronged: (1) Please stop talking to me in your brain. (2) What on earth are you talking about, anyway? And, where’s Funnyland? Is that even a place? You see, if you really want to live up to your potential, one of the first things you need to learn is to formulate precise questions. Right now, frankly, I don’t have a clue what you’re even asking, man.

Insight

I was watching TV with my kids last night when one of the characters on the show got a wedgie. All of the sudden I thought, "Hey wait a minute. Maybe those guys in High School were making fun me."

The Power Of Symbols

Symbols can communicate a thousand words with just one image. Think about some of the symbols that we see in our culture. The American Flag. The Red Cross. The Five Rings of The Olympics.

Personally, I can’t look at the five Olympic rings, for example, without reflecting on the five great pillars of international athletic competition:

1. Pride
2. Throwing stuff
3. I Jump good
4. Panting
5. and… I can never remember the fifth one, but if I'm not mistaken it's something about Powerbars.

But, the details aren't important. The point I’m trying to make is that symbols speak volumes. This is why I like to wear Hard Rock Café T-Shirts. My shirt can communicate the sentence, “Dude, I’ve so been to Toronto, or someone I know has been there, unless I bought this shirt at a thrift shop.”

That’s a long sentence, and I don’t want to have to repeat it to everyone I see on the street. So, "Thank you symbols!"

CrapMail

CrapMail
Where I Respond to Reader Email.

Last week SH expressed concern about my post titled Down With Evolution. Note: This response will probably make no sense to anyone who hasn't read that original article.

SH Wrote:

I know your joking, but do you really think it's funny for these guys to abuse animals like this? And I don't think animals are as "stupid" as you say. You should read this article. You'll find out that there is a lot more to "stupid" animals than you think.

Then he gave me a link to this story:

My response: This blog has always been about the science, folks. We let the data do the talking here. In that spirit, I'll never forget what Darwin said about artificially augmented animals; namely that they are the only creatures who would survive a nuclear holocaust. Think about that. So, if all of you will shut your mouths for just one freakin'...

... Wait... Actually, maybe they were the only ones who would die in a nuclear holocaust. I can't remember.

Actually, I got a C- in biology, and I probably would have gotten an F except that I think my teacher, Old Man Weatherby, had the hots for me. That's a different story for a different post.

Either way, to make the point more practical for the non-science minded, imagine this: With or without a nuclear holocaust, if you're a female hawk looking for someone to mate with, and when you check out the available males you notice that one of them is wearing a tiny Superman cape; baby, your choice just became very simple.

Similarly, if you're the male hawk, the one with the cape, you'll be thanking Crapples ten minutes later as you fly away into the horizon, abandoning your wife and unborn children to wolves and poisonous snakes.

Check and mate.



As for whether or not I really think butterflies are stupid like I said in my original post: Yes. Yes, I do. If anyone doubts my word, try doing any one of the following activities with a butterfly:

• Play chess
• Build a bridge
• Identify a banana
• Fix a disposal
• Make a noise of any kind
  

I believe you'll find that your butterfly friend, while quite attractive, is actually no help at all with any of these tasks.

So, to summarize the three points that I hope I've made: (1) Darwin was right again, as always. Or wrong. As I said, I'm not really sure on that one. (2) The very mention of Old Man Weatherby's name still totally creeps me out even after 20 years. (3) Butterflies really are just hilariously dumb.

See you next time on, CrapMail.

Sweet Jobs

It's important for men to have a job that sounds impressive. Many men don’t realize, when they’re choosing a career, that they will be talking about it for the rest of their lives with strangers, friends, and relatives; thus they underestimate the social costs associated with having a job, even a great job, that sounds lame.

For example, I had a friend who worked in Dallas as a corporate manager for Piggly Wiggly grocery stores. He was rich, good looking, and nice. He would have been a great catch for any woman. He told me about a time when he was on a bus in Salt Lake City and an attractive woman sat down next to him. She flirted with him for a few minutes, then finally asked him where he worked. He swallowed hard, looked meekly at her, then quietly said, “The Piggly Wiggly”.

She paused. Her face soured. Then out of the blue she started to pretend that she didn’t speak English. This was especially awkward for my friend since they had been talking with one another for the previous ten minutes.

“But, I don’t understand, we’ve been talking in English for like…”

“So sowwy. Me no speeky.”

“But… Please... I’m at corporate headquarters so it’s really not what it…”

“Este es un autobus bonita.”

He realized at that moment that he either had to get a better sounding job or resign himself to life as an apartment dwelling bachelor who eats Raman Noodles three times a week and wears velour sweat pants on the weekends.

A lot of people think that the careers that sound best in social situations are doctor, lawyer, and banker. I disagree. Any young men reading this, take note: If I could live my life over, I’d follow any career path that would allow me to say things like: “I make robot arms that are controlled by monkey thoughts.”

Oh, baby! Take it from Crapples, if you say something like that to a woman on a bus, she’ll be ringing the little bell at your stop before you know it.

How Time Flies

So, the other day I was at Walmart buying new batteries for my ear-hair clipper when I had the thought, “Is it possible that I’m not as cool as I think I am?”

One thing I'm sure of is that the pace at which I'm aging seems to be accelerating at an alarming rate. A year feels like 3 months felt when I was a kid, which brings me to the subject of this post: Psychologists believe that our subjective experience of the passage of time is a function of its proportional relationship to the amount of time that we’ve been alive. That’s why time seems to speed up as we get older.

For example, one year constitutes one-fifth of the life of a five year old, but only one-twentieth of the life of a twenty-year old. So the twenty-year old will feel four years the same way that the five year old feels one year. The proportions are the same, so the experience of time is the same.

Get it?

Now, according to Ray Kurzweil's Spiritual Machines Time Line, humans will be immortal by 2099. This means, if I understand the proportional theory of time correctly, that our experience of time's passage will speed up infinitely from that moment on.

To an infinitely old being, a billion years will feel exactly like no time passing at all.

I’m actually very concerned about this because I really don’t like to be late for stuff. You could even say that tardiness is one of my hang-ups. I'm afraid the infinite acceleration of my subjective exeperience of time is going to cause all sorts of problems for me at work and elsewhere. For example, I can imagine deciding to lay in bed for a while after my alarm goes off in the morning, then finally getting up to find that I'm a trillion years late for our morning meeting and that the land where my office once stood is now under a billion year old ocean.

That's going to really stink and, frankly, I don't think the boss is going to like it.

Down With Evolution

Sometimes people will come up to me and say, “Hey Crapples! Why don’t you step on that butterfly just for fun or because it will make you popular, cool, or maybe rich.” But, I always respond by saying, “I won’t do it because I know that fundamentally butterflies are just small, really, really incredibly stupid people.”

This is just who I am.

It's my sensitivity to the needs of animals that has lead me to the conclusion that the normal processes of evolution are just not efficient enough to meet their needs.

Listen and learn: Evolution takes hundreds of thousands of years to accomplish even the most boring of animal transformations. It took the giraffe something like 10 million years to get its long neck, for example, and let's not fool ourselves -- it’s not even all that cool looking!

Any really awesome adaptations (e.g., laser eyes, invisibility, stretch arms, freeze rays) would take mother nature a good trillion years to come up with.

Even if you wanted a few features that were only moderately awesome, like glow-in-the-dark fists for example, you’re still looking at a hundred billion years, minimum.

Well, our animal brothers and sisters simply don’t have that kind of time.

That’s why I so appreciate the work of Auger & Loizeau. They are giving mother nature the boost that she needs so that our animal friends can have the advantages that they deserve; advantages like arial attack protection for mice and an acorn positioning system for squirrels. To see more augmentations, click here, then use the little black arrow to scroll through the pictures and descriptions.

Side note: It’s just an idea, but in my opinion Auger & Loizeau should consider adding a few strictly cosmetic animal augmentations to their product line. I’m thinking of things like tiny Superman capes for hawks or maybe pig mustaches. Let's not underestimate the survival benefits of looking good.

Sparkle Moments

I’m not like most guys you probably know. When I get home from a long day at work I don’t go out with "the boys", or “talk” to my "kids". On the contrary, the thing that brings me the most joy is to spend special time with my special lady. That’s why I’ve always been a strong advocate for what I like to call “sparkle moments”. Sparkle moments are just those special times when you and your lady experience the full depth of your love for one another.

In my experience, creativity is the key to producing more sparkle moments in your relationship. That's why I've decided to publish a few ideas I've had for creative dates (you might even call them sparkle dates) that I think some of my male readers might be interested in. These dates will set you apart from the crowd. Trust me, women love them. I’ll just list a few.

• If you’re feeling silly, try watching MTV together and playing along with all of the songs on kazoos. If you don’t know the tune, just make it up! Sometimes your mistakes will be the highlight of the whole evening!
• If you’re feeling romantic, try spending the whole evening winking at each other. Don’t be afraid to mix things up a little either. Try the slow wink, the fast wink, or the double wink (also known as the “blink”).
• Go outside and watch the skies for Haley’s comet. This activity is especially fun because it only flies by our planet once every 75 years. You just never know when you’re going to get lucky!
• Put airline tickets to a romantic destination in a helium filled mylar balloon, then let it float away. You never know what adventures wait for you and your lady as you try to track it down.
• Wake her up at 12AM on a normal weeknight and insist on singing every verse of Auld Lang Syne together. You’ll find that every day is New Years... when you’re in love.

Of course, I have other ideas that I might share at another time. But, for now feel free to try any one of those listed above. All I ask is that when you’re basking in the warm embrace of your sweetheart, you take a moment to whisper these words in her ear: “Thank you Crapples”. That’s all the payment I need.

Prom Days

Das Slug’s recent post about deciding whether or not to go to prom got me thinking about my own prom days. I didn't go to mine. The thing about me is, I was so attractive in high school that no girl ever dared to pay any attention to me at all in any context -- or so I reasoned.

But, I think the main thing that kept me from going was that I was too far ahead of my time for most of the girls at my school.

For example, I remember walking up to one girl to ask her to prom. I was wearing my sleeveless DEVO turtleneck at the time (click to enlarge). I handed her a hand made card that said:

Written Communication From Star Captain to Foxy Life Form

Nanoo Nanoo!

Join me for a prom night that will be out of this world! I'll show you the galaxy, but you can still assure your Dad that I won't try to be a Space Invader at the end of the night! So, unless you have a case of Asteroids, consider it a date!

Note: You must respond to Star Captain before Tuesday or offer expires.

PS: Just to make sure we understand each other - Star Captain = Me, Crapples

She didn't get back to me in time... or, well... ever.

... Anyhoo ... what was my point again?

Oh, I remember. My advice to Slug is: Don't worry too much about going to the prom. Whether you go or not, you can still grow up to have as many great memories of high school as I have.

New Feature: CrapMail

This is where I respond to reader email.

Asian Queen asks:

Hey Crapples, where are you politically? I can’t tell from your blogroll.

Thanks for the question AQ. Crapples isn’t into politics, he’s into The People. Afterall, it’s People who put the “peop” in “politics”, so it will be over my dead body that those fat-cats in Washing...

... Wait, there is no “peop” in “politics”. … Maybe they just put the “P” in there. I swear, I was just reading about this the other day.

Back to my point: I’m pro wide-eyed baby deer. Note, however, that I don’t give a crap about adult deer. Also, I hate Sean Connery. I honestly do. I can’t even watch a movie with that guy in it. I’m not kidding at all.

But as for real politics, this really isn’t a political blog. The truth is, I wouldn’t have even responded to your email publicly except that I wanted to make that joke about “the people” (and I'm going to argue that it was worth it). I also wanted to find a way to mention my hatred for Sean Connery. I'm not joking at all about that part.

Stephen (last name omitted) asks:

Crap: What does “like a bee who gathered too much honey” mean?

Good question, Stephen. The “bee” quote is from the first chapter of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which is the namesake of this blog, by Friedrich Nietzsche. The book is about Zarathustra, who lived in the mountains for years but eventually decided to descend into the village to share his wisdom with the people. The main difference between Zarathustra and me is that he taught the people about the death of God and the rise of the Perfect Man, while I mostly talk about aliens and… well, you know – Brainball and stuff.

If I continue to get mail, I'll think about making this a semi-regular feature. But, only if I want to. Send all mail to crapples.smith@gmail.com, or click on the link in my profile.

I Could Have Been A Contender

The problem with High School P.E., as I saw it, was that all of the educational activities were physical in nature.

Well, thanks to the presumably uncoordinated fat guys at SmartStudio, it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. Let me introduce you to Brainball. Brainball takes both of my favorite things (1: Sweet technology, 2: Sitting around doing nothing) and combines them into the ultimate sport of the future.

The object of Brainball is to defeat your opponent by using your brain to relax more quickly than he does. The more relaxed you become, the closer the ball gets to your opponent’s goal until finally, SCORE! You win! You can take that to the bank, you stressed out LOSER!

Oh man! Why couldn't they have had Brainball back when I was in school? I could have been the biggest jock on the whole campus! I can see it now: Cheerleaders on each of my soft, pasty she-arms; varsity letters all over my bath robe (the official Brainball uniform); stressed, atheletic nerds carrying my books for me; drool dripping from the side of my ultra-relaxed mouth as I accept my full-ride Brainball scholarship to UCLA. I so could have taken my school to the Brainball Nationals.

I swear, if I cared about anything at all, this development might really upset me.

Modern Valentines

I know it's late to talk about Valentine's Day, but I just had a conversation with one of my kids last night that sparked these thoughts:

When I was a kid we would buy Valentine cards with hilarious puns on them and give them to the people we liked, admired, or were trying to kiss-up to. This exercise was a crude, but probably very accurate, popularity rating tool. The more cards you received, the more kids liked you.

In fifth grade, for example, I bought one for my pal Armen because he introduced me to KISS, and we used to discuss The Six Million Dollar Man together at recess. I also bought one for Jana Anderson. I didn't understand why at the time. We weren't friends, I just knew that when I looked at her I forgot my own name.

I never worried much about the losers in the class because there was always a future Homeless Shelter Volunteer, usually a girl, who would provide Welfare Valentines for them. This was a win-win situation because the do-gooder gained a sense of satisfaction from helping one of the unfortunates, and the loser got someone to stalk for the next six months before the restraining order could be put into effect.

I never minded at all that I only got 4-5 cards because I knew they came from real friends. Once I even got one from Jana. I'm not kidding. It was a banner moment for me. I like to tell myself that it wasn't a welfare card either, but that she had Crapples Fever and was giving me the card hoping to find the cure.

Fast Foward to the present day: Those of you without kids may not know this, but now the whole system has changed. My kids were sent home with a class list and instructed to fill out Valentines for each person on the list regardless of their status as babes, trolls, studs, losers, stoners, wannabes, jocks or geeks. So in a class of 23 students, every kid gets exactly 22 cards.

This system stinks for obvious reasons. With the new system no one really gets to express Valentine wishes to anyone, and losers have to wait until 7th grade P.E. to find out that no one likes them.

Anyway, I'm a proud father because I found out last night that this year my kid signed crappy Walmart Valentines for every person in her class, but she gave nice cards and chocolate to the kids she actually likes. So, the system is back in place (at least in the Crapples home).

Stick it to The Man, kids!