awesometalk

Hack3rs gonna hack, phr3ak3rs gonna phr3ak

In September of 1995, a movie was released that changed the cultural landscape forever. In it, a group of friends use their powers to fight an evil shadow organization, hell bent on destroying the world with a super virus. I’m of course talking about the cinematic masterpiece Hackers. Angelina Jolie, the guy from Trainspotting and Matthew Lillard face off against the guy with the racist Indian accent from Short Circuit and Penn Jillette with nothing but some zip disks and a vague sense of hacking. Cyberpunks all over the world were inspired by the titular hackers, and armed with their gigantic laptops and screaming, ear piercing modems, hacked the planet.

But what if you could hack your life? Hacking is a term that’s become synonymous with doing basically anything, so chances are you’re hacking something right now and you don’t even know it. Matthew Lillard would be so proud, screaming some goofy bullshit as he watches you frantically lifehack your mainframe. In 3, 2, 1… press enter and boom, we’re in. Lines of code run over my face and I’m like hey remember when I used coffee filters? Well I just lifehacked a new reality for myself where I use Taco Bell napkins instead. You just have to hack the Taco Bell by getting red in the face and crying in the drive thru line long enough. They think I’m drying my tears with these bad boys, but nope. I’m filtering my coffee for free, and laughing all the way to the bank, where my debit card is also being hacked as we speak.

Sleevehack

Sleevehack

Here’s a lifehack for the new year: gym memberships are just too darn expensive, I mean am I right, have you heard about this? Not to mention they’re filled with muscle boys that know what they’re doing with their intimidating clanging machinery and intimidating clanging pensises, glistening in the locker room like a corn field kissed with dew. Strap on your VR headset, bang out some Perl scripts and hack your basement into the gymnasium of your dreams. Why pay $20 a month to punch a bag when you can punch your boiler and get basically the same results. Want a workout that really turns up the heat? Hack your shower to run in “hot mode” and then go 25 rounds against the boiler. The bodyhack, it burns my delicate hacking fingers.

But what of the most formidable hack of all: Love. Could you hack the heart of a lover? I mean the guy from Trainspotting did it in Hackers. He even got to see Angelina Jolie’s breasts, but c’mon man. Look at you. You’re no guy from Trainspotting, and good luck getting through the Brad Pitt firewall. Maybe start smaller by preparing a foodhack for your potential mate. For example, did you know Raisin Brain is just corn flakes mixed with raisins? It’s true. Watch her eyes light up when you explain the cereal she’s eating for dinner out of a bowl you fashioned out of a rolled up newspaper was lovingly foodhacked, just for her.

So is calling everything a hack just a way to appeal to pasty nerds through verb usage, tricking them into making small life changes all in the name of standing up to the status quo? Yes. Yes that’s exactly what it is. I think this quote from the Hacker’s Manifesto sums it all up: “Hey bro, just hack it. Whatever it is, hack the living shit out of it. C’mon dude. Hack it.”

You can watch me scream and yell all of my recent posts on AwesomeTalk! It airs every other Tuesday on our YouTube channel, where you can also find past episodes and other psychotic vlog vids.

A Bit of the Old Ultra-Nuptuals

It’s engagement season. That time of year when young couples stare blissfully into each others eyes, proclaim their love for each other, and start planning their themed wedding. Because nothing says this is the most important decision that two grown adults will ever make than forcing your guests to take part in your weird fan fiction.

For example, one of the hottest wedding themes right now is The Great Gatsby. Martha Stewart offers up some wedding ideas to harken back to a time when sandals were strappy, music was made for dancing, and jewelry took a leap into the future. Glistening towers of champagne glasses, dapper men in tuxedos, cocktails and croquet. You know what else The Great Gatsby brings to mind? A guy cheating on his wife. His mistress getting struck and killed by a car. Gatsby’s dead corpse floating in a pool, blood slowly oozing from a gunshot wound to the head. Hey congratulations you crazy lovebirds, this wedding is delightful. What is this, prosciutto?

You want to get dressed up, sip on complicated cocktails and raise your hands to the sky as silver and gold confetti rains down on you in slow motion? That already exists, it’s called a wedding. You want a wedding themed wedding.

But if you’re sticking to a theme, it’s important to check the source material. Maybe you and your fiance love the color orange. That’s a great start! But you hastily sent out invitations for A Clockwork Orange themed wedding without reading the book or seeing the movie and now things are about to get weird. If I’m invited to this wedding, I better, at the very least, be able to drink milk from a busty mannequin’s nipple. The after-party better be fucking bananas: in-laws strapped to chairs, their eyes held open with forceps as they’re forced to watch holocaust newsreels spliced with children doing the chicken dance as they burn to death. Everyone’s drunk and calling each other droogies and somebody should call the police, I think a homeless man was just beaten to death in the parking lot.

You may kiss the bride.

You may kiss the bride.

You want to do this up right? Give your guests a wedding they’ll never forget? I have three words for you – Alien. Themed. Wedding. Ladies and gentlemen, we are the last remaining survivors of the SS Nostromo, please help yourself to a pack of cigarettes and a motion tracker. Cake will be served in a smoky air duct. Everyone will gather around when the bride throws a facehugger over her shoulder, and one lucky bridesmaid is gonna be a mommy when the thing rams its proboscis down her throat and lays eggs in her chest.

So, with that being said, if you’re looking for a themed wedding planner, I’d like to offer my services. Use the promo code AWESOMETALK for 20% off a personalized theme package, including Beetlejuice, Kill Bill volume 2, or your favorite bible passage.

You can watch me scream and yell all of my recent posts on AwesomeTalk! It airs every other Tuesday on our YouTube channel, where you can also find past episodes and other psychotic vlog vids.

The Year Has Come and Gone So Quickly I Mean Goddamn

For some families, it’s a holiday tradition to send a weird family newsletter with your Christmas card. Just a short 7,000 word note about your family’s doings that gives the reader a glimpse into your year. Social media has almost rendered these letters obsolete, as your friends and family can now watch you slowly dissolve into madness in real time, but there’s something quaint about getting an actual letter in the mail.

I found an article that offers Tips for Sparkling Christmas Letters, and the advice is sound. “Start off on a positive note” is number one with a bullet. It says not to start with the phrase, “I can’t believe the year has come and gone so quickly!” because it reminds the reader that death is imminent, and there’s nothing cheerful about walking hand in boney hand with the grim reaper as he whisks you away to the afterlife. Even if his sickle is a candy cane. Keep it positive! Something like, “2014 was a great year, the family and I whispered an ancient incantation that promises immortality in exchange for… something or other. To be honest we couldn’t read the fine print because the book of spells turned to dust when we regained consciousness. LOL it’s fun to be a god.”

I can't believe 1987 is almost over.

I can’t believe 1987 is almost over.

Next on the list of Christmas Letter tips is about resisting the urge to embellish. For example, it’s better to plainly state, “The weird smell in the basement is back” instead of “Plumbers, public service workers and a team of scientists were all baffled by the mysterious raw sewage stench blanketing our basement.” It’s not polite to brag that you had to live in a motel for three months while members of the clergy performed an exorcism on your basement to send the foul odor back to Hell.

The list of tips ends with “Make it personal,” which is pretty vague, so allow me clarify. A 9 paragraph, all-caps sermon about the time you lost your shit on the lady at Dunkin Donuts because she said happy holidays instead of Merry Christmas is personal, but is better served as a journal entry. Similarly, saying that sometimes you look at your family and dream of getting in the car and just driving far, far away until you run out of gas, or that the only time you feel alive is when you hold your head underwater until you’re on the cusp of drowning are deeply personal sentiments, but maybe turn it down a notch for the family Christmas letter. Something like, “My spouse is fine. The children are also fine. It’s Christmas and everything is fine.”

Some last minute tips that the list failed to mention: clippings from the newspaper announcing your child’s honor roll achievements – good! Clippings from the newspaper that contain hidden messages about the JFK assassination that only you can see – also good, but not Christmas letter good. Family recipe for olive loaf – good! Olive loaf jammed into the envelope – thoughtful, but not good. Wishing your friends and family a happy and safe new year – not good depending on the reader, some people like to have dangerous, miserable new years. So with that, my friends, have a new year, and have it however you want it.

You can watch me scream and yell all of my recent posts on AwesomeTalk! It airs every other Tuesday on our YouTube channel, where you can also find past episodes and other psychotic vlog vids.

Thesis statement: Yeah shopping is kinda dumb I guess I dunno

A neanderthal is crouched low in the underbrush. His keen, primitive man vision is fixated on the watering hole, which I think is just a weird way of saying small lake but kinda sounds like a bidet for beasts. Anyway, the neanderthal is watching the European ass faucet when suddenly every hair on his body stands on end, from the hair on the bottom of his feet to the hair jutting curiously out of his forehead – a bison approaches. Suddenly, primitive man charges the great creature with spear in hand. His tribe will sing songs about the kill, then they’ll eat it, scribble a few cave paintings and go to bed.

Fast forward 200,000 years. A dad is crouched low in the paper towel aisle at Costco. His dull, modern man vision is fixated on a palette of $49 Blu Ray players. He checks his phone, pulls up the Black Friday app – bingo. Suddenly, modern dad charges the great palette, cargo sweatpants billowing in the breeze. He scales the tower, punching wildly, howling and swinging a garden trowel at the other Black Friday shoppers. Blood sprays across the white Costco floor as another shopper is knocked unconscious, his head bouncing off a display of car batteries with a sickening thud. Now atop mount Blu Ray, modern dad holds a player over his head, fluorescent lighting accentuates his #1 DAD sweatshirt as he squeals to the heavens. On Christmas day his family will watch Despicable Me in HD, and during the hour and a half runtime, he will be king.

Black Friday has come and gone, officially kicking off the 2014 holiday shopping season. And every year it’s the same thing – families eating their leftovers, shaking their heads in disgust at the footage of people trampling each other on Black Friday. “Just look at these deal hungry maniacs besmirching the good-natured pilgrims that made this country what it is today. What if the pilgrims left halfway through their meal with the natives to buy discounted hat buckle polish from the general store? That’s not what the holidays are all about!”

O Come All Ye Deadful

O Come All Ye Deadful

But for some, it’s all part of the holiday experience. Maybe there’s nothing like watching the life drain from someone’s eyes as you rip a 32″ Westinghouse TV from their mitts, breathing in their dying breath as your realize, wait a second, this thing only has one HDMI input, then tossing it aside for the full screen version of Silver Linings Playbook on DVD for $3. Who are we to judge?

The holier than thou bitching about holiday commercialism is becoming more annoying than the holiday commercialism itself. People turn into Linus in that scene from the Charlie Brown Christmas special where he’s rattling on and on about the bible and the true meaning of Christmas, and all they’re really saying is “How dare people buy things like that! They should be buying things like this – online, from the safety of their own homes! All liquored up and nude.” I think if Jesus was here right now, he’d say something about casting stones… and sinning… or like skipping stones across a watering hole of sin… I dunno. Something like that. Then he’d give all of us a piece of cake. Happy birthday Jesus, ya ol’ so and so, and to a lesser extent, Merry Christmas.

You can watch me scream and yell all of my recent posts on AwesomeTalk! It airs every other Tuesday on our YouTube channel, where you can also find past episodes and other psychotic vlog vids.

A Man on Fire, Pringles, and Liquor: My First Memory

According to a poll conducted by Scientific American, 25% of people recall a troubling event as their first memory, just barely beating out “childhood antics” and “war.” And just as an aside, clearly the Scientific American poll-takers are sadistic fuckers, as they don’t find war to be a “troubling event.” Like, oh your first memory was your brother coming home from Iraq with his legs torn to shreds by a roadside bomb? That’s hilarious, let’s mark that under “light-hearted family capers.”

Nevertheless, I am part of the 25% of troubling first memory havers. When I was around 3 years old, the gas station two doors down from my house exploded. I guess that happens sometimes? So we all run outside to watch the carnage unfold, and everyone on the block is just standing around, like, yup. That bad boy’s on fire all right, flames are gettin’ real hot. But it was probably the sight of the gas station owner on fire, rolling around on the ground, screaming, attempting to pull his melting flesh back onto himself like some kind of skin cardigan that made me think, hmm here’s an image I’m wildly unprepared for. Oh, it’s just the nice gas station man pleading OH GOD HELP ME as the flames spread to his giant flammable beard, his face seconds away from pooling into a chunky puddle in front of some barely concerned neighborhood onlookers. The fire department showed up, and there was nothing on TV, so we all watched them put him out instead. I shook uncontrollably as the grand marshal of the block party from hell was extinguished.

To this day, certain experiences trigger my first memory. Getting gas – there’s the man on fire checking my tire pressure. Going to Burning Man – there’s the man on fire, wearing steampunk goggles and tripping his fiery balls off. Netflix recommends that I watch Backdraft, Heat, and Man on Fire – there’s the man on fire, who somehow guessed my Netflix password and is filling my queue with the hottest films cinema has to offer.

That night, after all the fire trucks and ambulances left, we went over to our neighbor’s house. The adults were all trading stories; undoubtedly my father was calling everyone and everything involved in the evening’s events an asshole – the guy on fire, the firefighters that put him out, the cop that asked everyone to take a step back, the gas station, fire itself. All of them ASSHOLES. I sat quietly on the sofa, staring at nothing, my very small brain processing how to categorize this first memory for a Scientific American poll-taker in the future.

But what’s the old saying? Every story about a man nearly burning to death has a silver lining? At some point my kindly old neighbor Mr. Girardi sat down next to me and handed me two things:  a shot of booze and a can of Pringles. “Here, drink this, it will calm you down. Here, eat these, they come in a weird can.” Because this was the roaring 80’s, when an adult could offer a 3-year-old a stiff drink and some chips and it was fine as long as their parents were present. Back when things made goddamn sense. So, thank you Mr. Girardi for teaching me that when it comes to processing a troubling event, alcohol is top notch. It’s second only to burying the event deep down inside and screaming yourself to sleep every night.


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