freak up your day

Give me stuffing
or give me nuffing.



(i like stuffing.)

There is no post today. There was going to be a post, but I was operating under the false pretense that I had something to say. Once that pretense was shattered by an accidental swipe of my surgical hatchet while attempting to remove an abcessed inhibition or two, my thoughts of posting were borne away on the rampant winds of writer's block. By the time I reached the window to fasten it closed, there was nary a decent metaphor to be found. And that's my excuse for this paragraph.

There might be a post tomorrow, if I'm not overcome by the yardwork.

Ok, so last week i joined the improv comedy group on campus, and i went to another rehearsal today, and if i sat around trying to think of an extracurricular club that would be more fun to go to than this, i don't think i could do it. These rehearsals are basically just a bunch of people trying to make each other laugh by way of little skits that they make up. It's so great... and there are so many talented, hilarious people in it. I get a laugh once in a while too, which is awesome, but the thing is, how many extracurriculars are there where you can have so much fun at a rehearsal? A rehearsal! I feel almost like i'm cheating somebody out of something here. Man, if you ever have a chance to be in something like that, you should do it. For real. Sorry about posting another non-humorous post ("What? When have you posted a humorous post?" Yeah, good one.) but it's so rare that i actually go and do something that i thought this time i should write about it. End scene.

"Outrageous" is a great word because you can say it so outrageously. Out-RAAAA-geous! A haughty British accent lends a nice effect as well. The other thing is, everyone should go to spamusement.com. I was almost in tears last night, partly because my roommate was asleep and it took all the energy i had to keep myself from laughing out loud. So funny, i don't even know what to do. Okay, have a freaky day, everyone.

Freak of the Devil

Ah, examination time. Today the head honchos of Bensaki Co. (the name misleads people into thinking i own it) visit my lonely desk for the annual checkup on their sole outlet of production. (The remainder of their year consists of meetings, golf, meetings about golf, golf meetings, golfing while eating meat, meetings on the Gulf, meeting some golfers, golfing for meat, meeting for golf, hunting for meat on the Gulf, and the particularly smelly pastime of meatgolfing.) They generally don't care whether or not I do my job, since all their income is derived from the highly experimental and, for now, competition-free business of desert island vending machines. However, once a year, they must file a report on the doings and undoings of the corporation's eponymous day-freaker, as decreed by the CEO, joint minister of sheep spit collection, and Holy Roman Emperor of Bensaki Co., Gordon the Singing Wheelchair. So as I sit and clip my toenails over a spicy kettle of goulash (whoa - ambiguous sentence), I must make an effort to look productive. You'd think, after all, that one day out of the year i'd be able to -- oh no, here they come!

(Gordon the Singing Wheelchair enters, accompanied by the Electric Disco Fencepost and a Fabio action figure. The rest of the post suddenly takes the form of a dramatic dialogue.)

bensaki (springing to his feet): Hello! Hello, sirs, um, objects, er, your majesties. Here, I made some brand new Corvettes for you. Take a couple.

Fabio: I'm afraid we have to talk business, Mr. Saki. The fact is, things aren't looking so good. These numbers... I have literally pages full of numbers here... and none of them look good. They look downright unappealing to the eye.

The Electric Disco Fencepost: We printed them in several different fonts, too, and it didn't help at all.

bensaki: Well, there must be something we can do. Maybe if you added a bunch of them together, or translated them into binary code, or like made a song out of them or something...

Gordon: A song made of numbers? Please, that only worked for Tommy Tutone, and where is he today?

Fabio: I don't think you realize how serious this is, Bob-Soccer. We have it on good authority from the class tattletale that these numbers are mostly your fault, that you don't plan on doing anything to change them, and that you're a nose-picker-booger-licker. What do you have to say about that?

bensaki: Hmm, crap, it's been so long since my playground days. Let's see... I know you are rubber and I'm glue, but what am I? Something like that.

Gordon: Watch your step, son. You're living on a prayer.

TEDF: We'll give you one last chance to prove to us that you belong here, or else you'd better start filing the necessary paperwork to legally change your official name to Hasbensaki.

bensaki: All right... I didn't want to have to do this, but it's okay, because I secretly wanted to have to do this, despite how I dreaded this inevitable event while anxiously awaiting it and praying it would never come while preparing excitedly for its arrival and cowering in fear from the sheer delight of the terror of the joy of the sorrow of the intense pleasure of the shattering pain of -

Fabio: Now you're stalling, Sockbreath. Freak us up or get the freak out.

bensaki: OK! Fine, here. I was saving this for a real emergency, but i guess i can blow it on the likes of you. How do you tell the difference between a singing wheelchair and a no-good washed-up has-been wanna-be compound-word?

TEDF: How?

bensaki: You ask if his name is Gordon. (runs away)

Gordon (in something of a huff): That's it! School's out for summer, but you, my friend, are out FOREVER! (makes threatening movements of his adjustable seat)

And that's how I was fired from a corporation that didn't need me anyway. The last laugh was on them, though. On my way out, I switched around the letters in "Bensaki, Co." to spell "i, soCk Bane." Yeah, they didn't get it either. Whatever.

once upon a time i fell in love. it was better than movies and pop songs said it would be.

Look away, look away, look away... freaksieland?
Yeah, so i guess the store of 'freak' puns is diminishing faster than the world's petroleum supply. Call me a fossil fool if you must.

This is day two of Finding a Reason to Blog (raison d'blôgre?). It seemed before like I was a faucet, pouring out a constant stream of fictional vignettes and dumb jokes, containing a higher mineral concentration of puns than any other known source in the region. That has turned out to be the case. (note: insert the word 'not' into the previous sentence at whichever point you prefer.) A more apt metaphor for the day-freaking process would be the beloved coffee percolator, in which I function as the filter, or maybe the grounds. Um, I'm gonna say the grounds. That's tastier and more exciting than some boring white paper. Wait, no, I think the filter after all - it would be kind of a stretch to say I was imported from South America. Although I understand that certain areas in... wait, no, this is all wrong. Where the crap did my metaphor go?

Okay, new paragraph. Sorry. What I was basically trying to say is that I could make some crazy puns about pretty much anything, but the water supply (by which i mean subjects to write about) has to come from elsewhere in order for me to transform it into tasty brown coffee-style morning refreakshment. (refreakshment, noun: an ill-conceived, half-cocked attempt to incorporate the title of the blog into the word "refreshment." typical bensaki mistake.)

Where was the water coming from before? Good question. Let's why don't we beat the dead horse some more and see if we can figure out a way to try and carry on the metaphor way longer than we need to or is necessary, like this sentence. A long time ago, before the invention of lands far away, all the earth's water was held in plastic bottles in a large warehouse, guarded by the dinosaurs. After a couple days of existence, mankind (also known as "humankind," "the human race," "homo sapiens" or "viewers like you") was so thirsty it could die, and so mad it could spit, were it not for the dehydration. So it decided it needed to get rid of the dinosaurs. The top scientists of the day constructed several different theories explaining the disappearance of the dinosaurs, such as collision with a meteor, a global ice age, the South Beach diet, and kids these days with their "rap" and their "hip-hop." While all these were plausible theories, it turned out that they were all just theories and the dinosaurs were actually still there. Humankind was gently reminded of this by getting its collective arm bit off by a fierce tyrranosaur.

There was only one thing left to do: Humankind got out its boombox and played all sorts of 90's alternative and grunge music. The dinosaurs quickly became dissolute and unmotivated, and they drifted around purposelessly and lived at home well into their thirties until their parents kicked them out of the house and into the real world, where they all died. Humanity then raided the refrigerated warehouse and released all the water from the bottles into the wild, a process that has only in recent years begun to be reversed.

So i guess that doesn't really explain where I got my ideas last year, but it does fill my quota for another day. I'll figure out this blogging thing eventually. 'Twill be a long journey, but one we shall all embark upon together. I call shotgun.

*sighs*

it's human to be imperfect, to disagree with people, to think and say things that could make you the target of revulsion, anger, ridicule, or a raise of the eyebrows and a disgusted look to the side. you don't do anyone any favors when you gloss over everything and pretend to agree and get along with everyone. pick a fight, i urge you, and make it a dirty one.

i don't apologize for the serious post, since that would negate the whole spirit of it. i do feel bad about not being very funny very often lately. i think i need more of a theme; the whole premise of writing about nothing but the crumbs scraped off the top of my head has sort of run its course. we'll see what happens, i guess. see ya tomorrow.

I need an extension on this title. Please?

I decided that whenever I'm late to class, I'm going to tell the prof that my dog ate my punctuality. They might get thrown off by my wit and charm and forget to mark me tardy. Or else they won't get thrown off, and they'll remember that at college nobody marks anyone tardy anyway. Ha, college rules.

oh, i suppose so.

Why always Mango Tango, never Mango Fandango?

So i'm really into the whole switching letters around thing lately. The natural place to go with this is the title of this blog, which i've already subjected to no end of twists and tweaks and unwarranted freaks. If you switch around the letters that you'd usually switch in a situation like this, you get "Deak up your Fray." The only problem is, the word "deak" doesn't exist outside of the movie "The Mighty Ducks," in a scene everyone in my generation remembers seeing several times throughout their childhood. This movie signified the peak of the genre of children's sports movie with a 20-minute-slow-motion-penalty-shot-scene as the climax (a genre largely ignored by critics and people with taste alike). Anyway, the scene everyone remembers. 1, 2, 3, triple deke. I guess that's the only option as far as definitions of my newly composed word.

Fray, on the other hand, very definitely exists and has attended several of my parties. Needless to say, it showed up just when things were getting out of hand. I never knew what to do about until now. But now, oh man, let me tell you. Now i can simply take the advice of my spoonerized blog title: calm the fray by busting out the ol' hockey equipment and faking out the goalie in slow motion. You, too, can use this technique the next time you get all up in some type of fray.

So, um... i guess that's it for today. Have a dunderful way.

Frequent Freaker Miles

I'm trying to save up frequent freaker miles for a trip to the Duchy of Stuff and the neighboring Grand Duchies of Things, Bric-a-Brac, Curios, and Important But Intangible Phenomena. I might even visit a few counties on my way. (As a side note, why don't counties have counts anymore? You never hear about all those people from Orange County having to pay tribute to the Orange Count or anything. It's weird.) Anyway, the way the program works, I actually have to freak up more than two days per week in order to be eligible for the miles and everything. I know, i know, i shouldn't overfreak myself here. But i really need to go on this trip. I haven't paid my feudal lord the Duke of Stuff any tribute for months. (The closest i came was paying for his Tribune subscription.) So here goes nothing. You'll probably see a sharp decline in the already embarrassingly low quality of my posts, but if you squint really hard, you might not even notice.

Bensaki is for Lovers

So it turns out the whole "my heart is a razor, I'm bleeding on the inside" thing is not just a colorful metaphor in love songs from decades gone by. It can really happen sometimes. I gave my heart to a thing called Gilette and it tore me up inside. In terms of near-death experiences, it was the closest shave i ever had.

In the aftermath, i salved the aftershock with aftershave.

They say that love is a curious thing. They say that George is a curious monkey. They say that the two of them often get into mischief together. Love hangs out with cats. Love asks strange, personal questions. Love stops by your room to ask what you're going to do tonight and then stops by five minutes later to see if your plans have changed. Love reads your email. And sometimes - though it will never admit it - love answers your phone when you're not there and pretends to be you. You can't blame love, really, it's just so darned curious.

In conclusion: If you can't love something nice to say, 'tis better than never to have loved anything at all.

note: the below post, as bloke so dutifully explained, was written yesterday, september 7, the designated Freaksday, but i was unable to publish it due to some emotional crisis Blogger.com was having. i apologize to everyone, but i want it known that i really did write a post on the day i promised to. thanks.


It's Freaksmas in Julember!?

Welcome to the auspicious return of Freak Up Your Day. (auspicious: Australian for suspicious) It's been a trying summer. You think it was hard for me to come up with all those things to write about last year? Forget about it! It was three times as hard to come up with all those things to not write about this summer. This is the easy part. Here, i'll prove it to you.

Start the writing process by clearing your brain of all the clutter that has accumulated there, like useless factoids, bad sitcom plots, and advertising slogans. To clear my brain of the clutter, i always use Swiffer. Stop cleaning, start Swiffering. The problem is, my brain becomes so clear after this that i forget the name of an old acquaintance that i will inevitably run into later in the episode, causing no end of awkwardness. I will try to squirm my way out of the situation by explaining that the average mind needs seven repetitions of a piece of information in order to remember it, whereas the acquaintance and i have only met five times, but this fact will prove useless. So then i write that all down in the preceding paragraph, and i am back at square one.

The next thing you do is look out your window. When i do this, i see intertwining regions of light and shade. I characterize them as such because i once took an introductory art class. I ponder for a moment, then begin to write about the different kinds of light i see. There is street light shining on the street. There is traffic light shining on the traffic. The neon light glows nobly, and the electrolyte burns refreshingly. On a front lawn down the road, several locals bask in the warm glow of the Coors light. After this, i write about the nuanced varieties of shade: the cool elm shade, the tacky lamp shade, the deadly nightshade, and the real slim shade. I wrap myself in a blanket which was crocheted.

And just like that, i have built a string of puns from nothing but a dusty wisp of thought which i swept from my brain and an enlightening glance from under my window shade. There's nothing to it.

I want to thank everyone who reads this and who expressed their happiness about my return. Your flattery has gone to my head, and my head is flatter for it. As a result, i have a handy new cup holder right atop my head, and for that i thank you.

p.s.: i have added a new link and updated a couple. "the grease is rising" is a blog belonging to the members of the former Appleton ska band Johnny Okay. I post on it occasionally, simply because i have spare handfuls of grease to add to the mix from running my hands through my hair several times a day. This blog will give you 750% of your recommended daily intake of polywanasaturated fat. Don't read it, for reals.

JAWS MUSIC

daaa-dun. daaa-dun. daaa-dun.

dadundadundadundadundadun....

*the sound of an aerobic potato hitting John Goodman in the stomach at the speed of light*

just when you thought it was safe to go back in the blogger...
three more days until freaksday.