Continued from last time:
6. Do you think Marijuana should be legalized?
I lived in San Francisco for two years, where it is legal (pretty much). I think it smells like sweaty dirt, so I was opposed. However, I did not know it was a proper noun. This new knowledge will cause me to reevaluate my position. I believe all nouns should be respected, but proper nouns have fundamental rights. But Marijuana? I guess this will take more pondering. It’s a pretty sticky pickle.
7. Are you for or against premarital sex?
War is terrible thing. Everyone agrees on that. Even the Martians (IRONY ALERT!). Some people say war is hell. I don’t know if this is theologically accurate, but I think the sentiment is clear. Listen, life would be simpler if everyone knew karate (or even taekwondo), but they don’t. Only the majority of people do. So, war is going to happen. It just is. And what if the government takes over? Martial sex, logistically, is much too difficult, so I think as a community we need to come together and support pre-martial sex. See question 9.
8. Do you believe in God?
Well, I don’t know. I think it’s pretty clear that Beckett never planned for him to show up (despite the good faith of Estragon and Vladimir). But that raises an interesting literary question: Is a character really a character if he never “physically” appears (and may in fact not exist at all in the play’s fictional universe), yet remains a vital presence
—so much so that there would not be a story without him? This in turn raises existential questions (which is perhaps what Beckett intended): What makes a person a person? If a deaf person falls in the forest, does he get hurt? It’s this type of thing—where literature and philosophy intersect in a complex web without easy answers—that allows Dane Cook to be as popular as he is.
9. Do you think same sex marriage should be legalized?
No way, not at all. You have to spice things up. I think married couples should be required (by law) to do it in at least three different positions, on a rotating basis.
10. Do you think it’s wrong that so many Hispanics are illegally moving to the USA?
This is an interesting question because it contains variables of algebraic complexity. Let’s see if we can dissect it.
Do you think
a. it’s wrong - What is “wrong”? Is it a question of morality or legality? See point ‘d’.
b. that so many - How many? Is there a certain number above which it would be wrong, but below which it would be OK?
c. Hispanics - Hispwhatsits?
d. are illegally - If “illegality” is wrong, see point ‘a’. If it is not, why do we have laws?
e. moving to the USA? - Are any of them illegally moving to other places, like Canada? Would this be wrong? At what quantity would it be wrong?
Gee whiz, I wish people would put more thought into the rhetorical structure of their bullshit MySpace survey questions.
Stand by for Part 3…
Briefly: I will not go into detail here because I remain bitter over losing the “Best Costume” award to a STORE-BOUGHT atrocity, simply because it was transgenderified.
The theme was Movies. Here I am:
The green patches are trees. The white is the snowcapped peak.The orange thing is a crack.
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
Naturally.
Update 11/11/08: I forgot to give mad props to my lovely Aunt Karen who spent hours helping me construct this masterpiece. And by “helping”, I mean my contribution was basically buying the cloth and tubing, and cutting out and gluing on the trees; she did everything else.
Welcome… to a Very Special Edition of… Ask Conlan. (Sweeps week.) In this episode, the first in a four-part series, I address controversial topics from a MySpace bulletin I saw one time. You know, serious shtuff like youth in Asia and the growing economic obesity epitome. You won’t want to miss a second of this action-packed series of blogs in my brand new, patent-pending 3-D question/answer format!
Programming note: I’m counting the TIME it takes to read this as the third dimension, along with the height (first) and width (second) of the screen. This is instead of the traditional third dimension: depth. If this annoys you, and you prefer the “traditional definition” of the third dimension, you are undoubtedly a bigot and probably want all 12-year-old girls to have babies with assault rifles (see question 11). But I want equality for all dimensions! And too bad for you, grandpa! Obama’s gonna be president now and he’s gonna give everyone all the dimensions they want; spread the space-time around. I heard Stephen Hawking is going to be the new Secretary of Health and Human Services!
But I digress. Let’s get on with the controversy.
1. Do you have the guts to answer these questions and re-post this as The Controversial Survey?
No.
2. Would you do meth if it was legalized?
Maybe, but not very much. Sometimes I like to figure out my gas mileage by dividing the miles driven by the number of gallons it takes to fill up. And one time I needed figure out how much money I needed to pay my bills. But really, it’s rare. And I don’t even remember anything from calculus.
3. Abortion: for or against it?
Listen, I’m no astronaut (nor have I ever pretended to be—although one time I did wear adult diapers and drove a really long way). In fact, I hate astronauts. I learned this from the UCB. But I’m tolerant. Don’t get me wrong, I wish they’d all just blast off (if you know what I mean). Effin’ astronauts, I hate them so much.
4. Do you think the world would fail with a female president?
I and most geologists agree, were a woman to be elected president of some country, the Earth’s core (comprised of a mixture of iron, nickel, and robots) would become unstable. The robots, deprived of their iron-nickel fuel would not be able to compute the complex brain teasers sent weekly from Jupiter, King of the Planets. Thus, the Earth’s scores would drop significantly (and we’re only at a C- average as it is!), and the world would indeed fail. The physical process of this is too scientific to go into here, but it has to do with estrogen and lava and read between the lines.
5. Do you believe in the death penalty?
It can be appropriate sometimes, but personally I think it’s one of the most overused calls in the NFL.
Stand by for MORE…
See, that’s how you find the sum.
In any case, I’ve received some really great feedback on the new ads I’ve been trying out. My friend James said, “What the hell” in an encouraging way. Some other guy I know expressed utter disgust, but he grew up on a dairy farm so he was probably just traumatized from that. That is all the feedback I received. On the practical side of things, I have already earned upwards of one dollar, so I’m going to leave them up for now. And by “for now”, I mean at least for a little while longer. I might take them down tomorrow.
This week, Odin-willing, I will have some interesting blogsperiments for you to hypothesize, test, result, and conclude.
By the power of Thor: Stay tubed.
I am experimenting on the blog with some—as they say on AMC’s Golden Globe-winning series Mad Men—ads. Please do not be alarmed. I welcome your feedback. Personally, I suspect the products Google chooses to display based on my posts will be entertainment in themselves. Feel free to click on them, get a feel for it. Just try it out. Who knows, right? In any case: Rebuttals? Rejoinders? Reifications?
