How to liven up your wedding

I have been invited to a wedding on sunday, and I'm trying to think up excuses to not go.  On the one hand, I'm not especially close to the people getting married and I'm not sure why I've been invited to attend at all.  But mostly I don't want to go because I don't believe in marriage at all.  I think it's an outdated, oppressive, superstitious institution based on antiquated patriarchal social norms.  Also I think it's a black emotional abyss that nine times out of ten leads to A) Divorce or B) A state of livable hatred(that'd be my parents).  I realize some people make it work, and my hats off to them.  But I think they are a very small minority.

That said, I got to thinking about something else I dislike about marriage: the ceremony itself.  I mean, it's just so damn boring, you know?  So, without further ado, here are some suggestions of mine to make the commencement of your life's worst decision at least entertaining for your guests.

1.  The Giving Away: It's that part at the beginning where the bride's father walks her down the aisle and "gives her away" to be married to the groom.  This part kind of pisses me off because it carries with it the implication of the bride is a piece of property that was her dad's to give to someone.  However, if this is going to be in the ceremony, let's make it interesting.  You know how stereotypically, the bride's father never really likes the guy marrying his daughter?  Well, if that's true, then presumably he's not thrilled about the whole thing.  He probably resents that the groom is stealing his little girl.  Now let me ask you something; when someone tries to steal something from you, do you just let them?  The answer: The groom should have to fight the father of the bride for his daughter.  That's right, the groom and the father of the bride have a no-holds-barred brawl right there in the church in front of everybody at the start of the ceremony.  I like this one a lot because it calls to mind an image of my maternal grandfather beating the shit out of my dad, which would have been hilarious.

2.  The Vows:  There might not be a part of the contemporary wedding ceremony that's as sickening as the vows.  I got to respect religious traditions that don't let couples write their own vows, because at least that spares the rest of us having to listen to the kind of greeting card bullshit the couple came up with and having to suppress the urge to vomit.  It kind of illustrates one of the things I dislike about marriage and weddings, namely the way they set up a flowery facade around what basically amounts to a permanent sex contract(play semantics all you want, that is in essence what marriage is).
The Answer:  Don't dress it up at all.  You're basically entering into an agreement to be this person's sexual partner in a public ceremony, so let your vows reflect that.  Describe in graphic detail in front of the entire church exactly how much you vow to satisfy eachother in bed, in as lurid terms as possible.  What, you're ashamed of it?  I thought you loved eachother.  Your love is a dirty secret that you have to never speak of?  Tsk tsk.  You made us all show up to this stupid ceremony, at least be up front about what it's really about.
Also, marriage is a legal contract, and no contract is complete without consequences of violating it.  So the bride's vows should include something along the lines of "If you ever cheat on me I swear I'll chop it off while you sleep."

3.  The Ring.  Actually, wedding rings are one of the more oddly practical parts of the traditional wedding ceremony.  It serves the purpose of communicating to people that a person is officially spoken for, which is handy.  But the custom as is has kind of stopped serving it's purpose.  If someone wants to hit clubs for some extramarital action, all they have to do is slip off the ring.  And beside, a lot of single people wear rings that aren't immdeiately distinguishable from wedding rings, so it doesn't really perform its intended purpose anymore.
The Answer:  Brand a damn symbol on their forehead.  Literally, like with a branding iron and everything.  Now that's a sign of a lifelong commitment.  And lik your fidelity is supposed to be, it's unremovable.  Also, the pain will represent your willingness for self-sacrifice for the good of the marriage.

Now, I don't plan on ever getting married, so I sadly won't be able to try any of these myself.  But I encourage you to on your ill advised special day.  If you do, by all means email me with an invite.  If I am at all within reasonable geographic distance I will totally come.

Better ways to decide an election.

Face it, the U.S. political system is broken.  We haven't had a good president in forever, and it's always the same old stream of shit no matter which party is in power.  They say insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  Well, clearly if we want a different result, we have to do something different, so I say we scrap the election system that has failed us and look for another way to decide who gets to kick it in the white house for the next four years.  Here are some ideas:

1)Judo Fight with Vladimir Putin:  For those of you that don't know, Russian Boss man Vladimir Putin(who, like most Russian things, is infinitely badass) is a judo expert.  I propose that Obama and Romney should both be put in a one on one Judo match with Putin.  Obviously neither one will win, but the big job goes to whoever gets their ass kicked the least.

Probable winner: Hard to say, they'd both get banged up pretty bad.  This one is kind of on Putin, since he would have the option of going easy on which ever one he wanted to be in charge of America.

2) Staring Contest.  Self-explanatory.  Obama and Romney have a staring contest.  Brilliant in its simplicity.

Probable winner: Romney.  Everyone knows mormons don't blink.

3)  Hunger Games:  Obama and Romney are turned loose in a stretch of forest, only one can come out alive.  Not only is this one far more entertaining than the traditional election, but in it's way its actually a better judge of real worthiness as a leader.  With this one, we KNOW that the successful candidate has resourcefulness, determination, and intelligence.  Really all an election proves is who has the best PR people.

Probably Winner:  Also difficult to call.  Since both are spoiled little rich kids, there is every chance that they'd both end up curling up in the fetal position and crying until we called it a draw.

4) Have No President.  That's right, because we don't need no fucking president.  We're America, dammit, and we're too awesome to have a leader.   Leadership is for weak, incompetent nations that need to be told what to do.  Not us.  We're stronger than leadership, stronger than elections.  Strong enough to break this damn table in half if we've a mind to.  Wanna see?  Maybe in France or whatever they need some pansy-ass president, but American can totally bite a bald eagle's head clean the fuck off and run its own damn life.  Get me?

The Agamemnon at Linn Benton Community College

This is a trailer for a play you absolutely must go see in order to get to heaven/paradise/valhalla/nirvana whatever the good section of the afterlife is for you.  Performances begin tonight at the Russell Tripp Performance Center in Albany Oregon.  It's going to be the most badassely awesome Greek Tragedy ever and will rock your sh*t so hard live owls will fly out of your eyes.  Watch the video, then go see the play.  Link for tickets in below post.

The Agamemnon at LBCC

Behold, the poster for the show I'm in that opens in a week and a half.  Greek Tragedy in a post-apocalyptic setting, compiled of excerpts from Iphiginia in Aulis, Hecuba, The Trojan women, Agamemnon and Electra.  It's going to be totally badass, so if you're anywhere near Albany, Oregon you should definitely go see it when we open on May 10.  Anybody that doesn't go is lousy in bed, is probably a Nazi, and will get one of the shitty tables when they get to hell.  Even the angry face of Zeus in the picture is ordering you to buy tickets Tickets can and info can be had here

This is a f**king jellyfish.  It is the most evil life form in the universe.  If you see one, kill it on sight.  Good luck in doing so, you shall likely need it.

No loving god would create jellyfish.
They say eyes are the windows to the soul.  Jellyfish have no eyes.  This is not because they have no soul, but because their souls are so evil that one glance through a window into them would drive you into the furthest depths of madness for all time.
Jellyfish are not allowed in hell.  That would be too awful for the residents.
Many jellyfish are small and appear harmless.  This is only a ruse to fool you, for all the small Jellyfish take their orders from the larger ones, such as the one above, which is ten feet in diameter.
Jellyfish are damn near impossible to kill.  Only removing them from the water actually works.  On their territory, you are at their mercy, of which they have none.  Science has no word on the effects of crucifixes or holy water when doing battle with jellyfish, so don't bank on it.
Fact: Jellyfish do kill people.

This is a Giant Red Jellyfish.  It lives the deepest down in the ocean and is the most evil of all jellyfish.  It is the ruler of the vast empire of damnation that is the Jellyfish race, psychically transmitting its evil commands to the other jellyfish higher up.  It takes its own orders straight from the old ones, who have sent jellyfish to destroy humanity.  Just look at that bastard, doesn't it just scream "feeds on the souls of the forsaken"?

Remember the story of Pandora's box?  Yep, there were jellyfish in there.

This isn't me just making stuff up, either.  Jellyfish actually are sort of a menace.  They're currently destroying fish harvests in Japan, and are generally a bad, invasive species in any ecosystem they come in contact with.

Oh, and did I mention they actually are immortal?  Well, not all of them.  There's one species called the immortal jellyfish that does this weird thing where when it starts to get old it can somehow revert itself back into baby form, or "polyp" and start its life all over again.  And again.  Forever.  Science has said it is so.  The first ever of these guys from however many millions of years ago is still alive and out in the ocean somewhere.

I'm no scientist, but a combination of immortality and "devouring all our fish supplies" can only be some sort of apocalyptic survival movie waiting to happen(what world would be worth living in without tasty fish).  Unless we act now.  I'm not going to let a bunch of lovecraftian water horrors get in between me and my next plate of delicious tilapia.  And what of all the parts of the world where fish is the main diet staple that people depend upon?  Think of the children there.  Are you saying you want CHILDREN TO STARVE TO DEATH so that these f**kers can be protected?  Our choice is clear: The Jellyfish must be exterminated.

I move that the nations of the world join together against this common aquatic nightmare enemy.  As I said, the only way to kill them is to drag them up out of the water(if you try to kill one in the water, they release millions of offspring before they die, true story)  So, what we'll need is something like a fleet of fishing trollers to net as many of these bastards as possible and yank them out of the water.  It's our only hope.  And when we finally dry out the last of the abyssal terrors and humanity has one, we can come up with some awesome catchphrase for the film's hero played by Gary Oldman(why the hell not?) to say like, "Lookes like Earth will be having peanut butter, hold the jelly" okay so that was terrible, but you get the idea.  Fuck, If you people don't do something, I'll take down the floating doom balloons myself in a stolen legitimately purchased craft.  DEATH TO THE JELLYFISH!!!!!!!!!

Hey kids, you know what time it is?  That's right, it's your favorite time of the evening.  It's time for "Miss Rookwood Looks at the News." (cue disgustingly cheery theme music).

According to recent data, it looks like a lot more soldiers in Afghanistan are doing heroin than used to.  As your parents might have told you kids, heroin is the drug that all the really cool celebrities get addicted to, as opposed to that sissy marijuana, the drug of posers.
Apparently the fact that soldiers in Afghanistan are shooting up heroin is surprising enough to warrant news.  Hmm, lets see, taken away from their families, paid slightly better than retail clerks to die for a cause that only appears to matter to some fat old men in Washington, and they're in a country famous as a hub for the international heroin trade, wow, I would have never guessed that soldiers would have started using heroin, yeah, I really couldn't have seen that one coming.

Protesters are demanding the cancellation of a huge car race in the troubled nation of Bahrain.  This is truly earth shattering news, in that it has succeeded in performing the near impossible feat of making someone other than trashy rednecks care about a car race in any way.  Also, if there are any nascar fans reading this(don't be silly, nascar fans can't read), you know what's hilarious?  Dale Earnhardt's death!  Ha ha ha, I can't stop laughing thinking about Earnhardt in hell!  Ha ha ha.

In other news, Sara Palin was quoted as, wait, what the hell?  Whoa, back up, it's April of 2012, and the main page of CNN's website links to something that mentions Sara Palin at all?  She's still in the news?  I didn't know she was still alive.

The Marine Corps has initiated a new program to allow women into certain training programs previously only open to males.  One expert was baffled at this decision, and was quoted as saying, "Really?  I honestly thought that only men were stupid enough to want to join the marines."  The unnamed expert also expressed doubt as to how well this new plan will work, pointing out that it has always been a central requirement for success in the marines that members have extreme insecurity about their penises, so it seemed impossible for women to be further integrated into the corps, and a miracle that they could get in at all.

That's it for now, kids, go to CNN.com to see the full stories and plenty more that will leave  you with zero faith in humanity.  And remember, it's an election year this year, so we'll have plenty of hilarious shenanigans to come!

At the moment, I'm in rehearsal for my college theater department's production of Agamemmnon(off to rehearsal in just a few, actually).  You ever notice how in most Greek tragedy and mythology, everything seems to exist in a universe where absolutely everyone on earth was both insane and a royal asshole?

Trojan war: My wife cheated on me, I shall kill an entire city!  This makes sense!

King Agamemmnon: I need to win my war.  Rather than spend time planning a strategy, I shall murder my daughter!  That'll be the last thing the enemy will expect.

The Gods: Boy, are we assholes.  Seriously, we need to destroy someone's life before we can feel like, any arousal at all.  We start our day by shitting on blind orphans.

Zeus: I will fuck absolutely anything.  I have my dick in so much stuff that I have to change myself into animals and beams of light to keep it fresh.

Prometheus and Atlas: We're the only sane, morally sound ones here, so naturally we get imprisoned for all eternity.

Odin: Greek gods are posers.

Odysseus:  Oh, yeah, I definitely didn't want to stay on an island as a goddess's sex slave for twenty years.  She, uh, forced me, yeah...

Jesus: Wow, no wonder people flock to me a couple centuries from now.  If this is my competition for worshippers.