Flavian Fridays

I'm starting a new regular feature on this blog called "Flavian Fridays." This will feature raw, unedited, unfiltered and yes, sometimes XXX rated conversations with Flavian. Flavian, for those of you not in the wankershanks know, is either played by Brian (Guy Incognito) or Ryan (RCWanker). Sometimes, I can't really tell them apart, so I figure the rest of you shouldn't be able to either.

Naturally, when I say "regular feature" I mean I'll post this stuff sporadically, if at all. It's very possible that I'll forget all about this tomorrow.

Without further delay, I give you tonight's installment of "Flavian Fridays!"

Me: dude. costco has *everything!*

Me: s/h included, my friend! You won't have to go broke grieving with wholesale prices!
Tha Flav: Sweet!
Me: I know, right?
Tha Flav: Can you ship a corpse in it?
Me: ha!
Me: who the hell says "well, mom died. Time to break out the ol' discount warehouse membership card."
Tha Flav: I would
Me:

Q: Can you order a casket for preplanning purposes?

Yes, as long as the casket is being shipped to a member's home or storage facility of choice.

Me: sweet.
Me:

We have selected the most popular styles and colors, with the highest quality linings.
THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC OR OTHER EVIDENCE THAT ANY CASKET WITH A SEALING DEVICE WILL PRESERVE HUMAN REMAINS

Me: ew.
Tha Flav: You know, sealing devices actually do the exact opposite.
Tha Flav: None of the gasses from your decomposing body can escape, so your body (and the coffin) eventually explode.
Me: oh, that is so sweet. Seal me up tight, baby!
Me: I rememeber when I was really young and my hampster died. I didn't want ants to get to it. So I made my mom secure it in TWO carboard boxes instead of just one. I hope costco is just as cautious.
Me:

Caskets cannot be returned to Costco warehouses.

Me: (particularly with dead people inside.)
Tha Flav: I'd do it
Me: I know you would.
Tha Flav: Pack the body up, "Oh, hey, I changed my mind."
Tha Flav: Easy corpse disposal.
Tha Flav: They should make a Netflix-esq service. You buy a coffin, they send it to you, you put the body in and put it right back in the mail! No postage necessary!
Me: hahaha. and this is why rules were created, brian.
Tha Flav: It's a goldmine, Candice!
Me: except instead of gold...... corpses.
Tha Flav: A corpsemine!
Me: what part of this is a good idea again?
Tha Flav: Volume. You make the profit up with volume.
Tha Flav: Look, I have a really simple four-step plan here:
Tha Flav: 1. Buy coffins on the cheap
Tha Flav: 2. Mail them out to people
Tha Flav: 3. ...
Tha Flav: 4. Profit
Me: with a rock-solid plan like that, how can we fail?
Tha Flav: Exactly
Me:

Enter the following information for the "Shipping Address" at checkout:
First and last name: name of the deceased

Me: how exactly does the corpse order it themselves?
Tha Flav: They have highspeed internet in most graveyards for a nominal fee
Me: hahaha- this is great:
Me:

For the "Billing Address," enter the following information at checkout about the person or organization that is paying for the casket:

First and last name: name of bill-to customer

Me: I like how they call them the "bill-to" person instead of the "hasn't bought the farm" person
Tha Flav: You're so insensitive, Candice
Me: you're the one trying to bank on this. I'm just trying to deal with an uncomfortable life phase in the only way I know how.
Me: plus, I'm insensitive.
Tha Flav: Right

A night out with Flavian...

So, Flavian and I have few things in common. Very few things. He sleeps with a blanket that says "binary" in binary. I do not. He wears shirts that have some freaky waterproof teflon-style coating on them. I do not. He drives a clown car cleverly marketed as an urban hipster-mobile. I do not.

But we do have one thing in common that brings us together over and over again: the burning desire to act like pretentious, accent pillow-owning flakes. And to be believed in that role, if only for a short time.

You see, he's been feverishly redecorating his apartment. We're talking fresh paint in warm, soothing colors. We're talking sake sets that will never see any sake. We're talking placemats that will probably never see an actual plate on them unless the chinese take-out people start getting mighty fancy. And tea kettles, people. TWO of them.

So you can see what it is I'm dealing with here. Now I would expell my secret yuppie longings safely in the secrecy of my own apartment, where no one but my closest friends (and those who read their blogs) would ever know about it, too. Except I'm kinda messy. A little bit. Just a hint. And if I *did* buy a sake set, I'd be trying to figure out how to eat cereal from it before the week's end so that I could avoid washing a bowl.

What's a girl to do? Well, I get my yuppie needs out at restaurants. You know the people who frantically scan the wine list for something they can both pronounce and afford (without it being the cheapest wine on the menu, oh heavens!) because they'd rather die than have a less-than-minimum-wage waiter hear them pronounce "sangiovese" wrong? Yeah. that's me.

So I got my moderately priced glass of pinot noir and settled in for a nice evening. Until the waiter came back and smeared his wine-god knowledge all over my pride.

"The cranberry from the wine really goes nicely with the shrimp, doesn't it?"

Goddamn it! I didn't know that there would be a wine pairing test too! I wasn't ready yet! I need at least 4 more episodes of Simply Wine with Andrea Immer on the Fine Living Channel before I can face this!

But face it I did, with the less than acceptable "huuhhh? ohhhhhh yah. yummy."

Meanwhile, Flavian's asking "What did he say has cranberries in it? I didn't get any cranberries in my shrimp!"

Damnit, Flavian. The waiter heard you and you blew our cover. Okay, my 'yummy' comment didn't help. I couldn't go down like that. The only thing worse than being seen as a yuppie was being seen as the person who wanted to be seen as a yuppie. Those people are the lowest life forms of all. They're somewhere below 40 year olds who still eat the paste and people who wear fanny packs in a way that isn't ironically hip.

You can see that the stakes had been raised. It was time to break out all the stops. It was time to pretend to like overpriced desserts. This is an area where I really shine as a yuppie.

We ordered Creme Brulee and Cognac. Okay, *I* mostly ordered the creme brulee. And I'm pretty certain that I also ordered the cognac. I'm a little fuzzy on the details. It turns out that they both taste like shit and I spent dessert trying to chase one bad taste away with the other bad taste in a cruel downward spiral of alcohol and fluffy egg-product.

It was a lesson well learned. Some of us (me) just don't belong in the world of "sophisticated" people. Some of us (again, me) can't handle the pressure of the high stakes rat-race that exists in the world of slightly-above-family-style restaurants. Frankly, some of us shouldn't really be allowed to leave the house. But I escape on ocassion anyway. Next time I plan to escape to someplace a little more down to earth.

Especially since it'll be my turn to buy.

You know you're too tired to be vertical when...

You accidentally walk into the men's bathroom at school.

Oh, but it doesn't stop there.

I should continue with "you accidentally walk into the men's bathroom at school... and your first thought isn't 'AHHHH! Wrong bathroom!' it's "huh. urinals. That seems like an ineffective way to use the space in a women's bathro... AHHH! Wrong bathroom!"

If I was like, a firefighter, instead of just a confused bathroom user, that extra 10 seconds could have cost little Billy his life.

With friends like these...

I know it's hard to believe, but it turns out that not *everyone* is a fan of this blog. In fact, I got a rather nasty IM earlier today from someone calling it a "crazy feminist blog." Now, hate-mail is nothing new. It happens when you're as widely read as I am. But this hate-mail was unique in that it came from one of this blog's contributing authors.

Thanks, Flavian/Brian/Guy Incognito. You're a flaming jackass.

So, I think I might just have to change the focus of my blog. It seems I'm turning off the readers (all 2 of em) with my rants on abortion and birth control. But that's cool. I roll with the punches. I've noticed that my blog gets the highest read-times when I post about Brian himself. Or Ryan. Admittedly, this is most likely because they have nothing better to do than sit around, eagerly awaiting my next post to see if they're key players in it. But still, I give the people what they want.

So from now on, expect more "Adventures With Flavian" and less republican-related cursing. I've cursed so much the past 4 years, that the term "fucking goddamn bullshit son-of-a-bob-dole" just doesn't even have the same punch that it used to anyway.

It's a new era for Wankershanks. All of that energy I've wasted on republican-hating will now be directed toward flavian-hating. And scatalogical humor too. I mean, come on.

Can Porn Save the Planet?

Oh boy- Andrea Dworkin is going to be rolling over in her grave and flicking me off today.

I was over at wonkette!when I saw a link to an article about two earnest environmentalists who were trying to make a difference in the world.

What happens when some naked hippies get ahold of a camera? Apparently, it's called Eco Porn!


Normally, this kind of thing annoys me, but really- how can you be anything but fascinated with someone who thinks carrots are an appropriate replacement for "adult toys?" While I was personally too scared to visit the actual site (this suggestive leek picture had me wishing I had gouged my eyes out 5 minutes ago), I did enjoy the article immensly.

Apparently, they have so far collected about $100,000 for environmental causes. There have been a few snafoos along the way... But when they were charged with staging a public sex show, did it stop them in their righteous crusade, or did they simply drop trou in the courtroom before leaving the country? I'll bet you'll never guess the answer to that one.

So you're thinking to yourself, "self, I want to help out these crusaders for hot man-on-vegetable-on-woman-on-treestump action. But I have no money to donate. If only there was something I could do."

Oh but there is. In the true spirit of grassroots activism, they also accept donations of your time- specifically, your time on video as you get down with a couple leather-clad germans in the produce section of your local Whole Foods. Apparently, this is surprisingly easy to translate into money, which is then used for one kick-ass arbor day party. Or something.

So for all you naysayers, chew on this tidbit for a while: "we wouldn't have nature without sex." Ummmm, just wait til you've eaten a lot of vegan pot brownies first.

Rest In Peace, Andrea Dworkin

I've been trying for days to think of what to post about the death of Andrea Dworkin. Clearly, I've thought about it for too long, because good ol' Flea at One Good Thing
(scroll to 4/12) has already posted everything that was in my head.

Well, almost everything.

I started rereading my favorite Dworkin speech. "I Want a 24-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape" was delivered in 1983 to a group of 500 pro-feminist men. To end this speech, she says:

... I want one day of respite, one day off, one day in which no new bodies are piled up, one day in which no new agony is added to the old, and I am asking you to give it to me. And how could I ask you for less--it is so little. And how could you offer me less: it is so little. Even in wars, there are days of truce. Go and organize a truce. Stop your side for one day. I want a twenty-four-hour truce during which there is no rape.

I dare you to try it. I demand that you try it. I don't mind begging you to try it. What else could you possibly be here to do? What else could this movement possibly mean? What else could matter so much?

And on that day, that day of truce, that day when not one woman is raped, we will begin the real practice of equality, because we can't begin it before that day. Before that day it means nothing because it is nothing: it is not real; it is not true. But on that day it becomes real. And then, instead of rape we will for the first time in our lives--both men and women--begin to experience freedom. If you have a conception of freedom that includes the existence of rape, you are wrong. You cannot change what you say you want to change. For myself, I want to experience just one day of real freedom before I die. I leave you here to do that for me and for the women whom you say you love.

I think I love this speech so much because this is a woman who is constantly and unfairly drug around as the ultimate stereotype of the feminist man-hater and yet her optimism is so obvious... A single day where no one is raped. She makes it sound so attainable. I'm sorry she never got to see it happen.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Reuters) - A bunch of computer-generated gibberish masquerading as an academic paper has been accepted at a scientific conference in a victory for pranksters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

To their surprise, one of the papers -- "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy" -- was accepted for presentation.

"Rooter" features such mind-bending gems as: "the model for our heuristic consists of four independent components: simulated annealing, active networks, flexible modalities, and the study of reinforcement learning" and "We implemented our scatter/gather I/O server in Simula-67, augmented with opportunistically pipelined extensions."

After some of the classes I've taken, I'd have fallen for it too.

He's a "Sometimes Cookie" monster now

Sesame Street's beloved Cookie Monster is officially on the wagon.on the wagon. http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/04/07/tv.cookie.lessmonster.ap/index.html

That's right, folks. According to a an urgent CNN report, the cookie monster is

... now advocating eating healthy. There's even a new song -- "A Cookie Is a Sometimes Food," where Cookie Monster learns there are "anytime" foods and "sometimes" foods.

It's a sad day for pastries and deserts everywhere when their biggest supporter has become a health-obsessed turncoat.

Success!

How do you measure success? For me, it's when your blog is listed as the FIRST TWO LINKS for a google search on "scawwy jesus."

Oh yeah. Ohhhhhh yeaaaaah.

my url! my website! my choice!

ohhhh, prolifers. You slay me.

A new website: www.prochoice.com, alleges to "empower women to make informed choices!"

And how do they do that? With the vibrating fetus graphic! Wave to the camera, little fetus!

Oh, but it's not all movin-pictures. It's also a much-needed source for women who are faced with the prospect of an unwanted pregnancy. There are so many questions to be answered. It's high time that we had unbiased answers to questions like:

Q: "How much does an abortion cost?"
A: "The ultimate price, your baby's life, your self esteem and maybe your life."

Q: "Abortion... When is it safe?"
A: "No medical procedure is 100% safe so the answer is never Completely, and less safe than many procedures. To be 100% safe don't have one."

Q: "Did you have a monkey type that last answer?"
A: "Shut up, heathen."

Q: "What about RU-486?"
A: "this drug was approved for use buy women based on it's profit potential for the abortion industry and political pressure from their cult like followers."

Q: "<--- cult-like follower"
A: "[insert garbled sentence here]"

Q: "What is RU-486?"
A: "Think of a pill that you take and that's all there is to it. If you believe that I'm sure you would like to buy some swamp land in Florida too."

Q: "You got beef with my stomping grounds?

From there, the conversation pretty much degenerated into 'yer-mama' cracks. But really, check out the site. And compare it to those abortion-industry cultists over at, say, www.plannedparenthood.org. It looks like they even had the nerve to use some of their baby-killin' profits on a spell checker. Just rub it in our faces, sinners.

Votes for Women!

I've given up on ever being president. I just don't think that we'll see a woman president in my life time. There are more realistic goals and power grabs for me to aspire to.

That's why I'm running for "pope."

Being that I'm not catholic, I have no idea who decides this. That's why I'm just putting it out here, for word to spread through the wonder of the internet. So if someone could let god or... I dunno, the 'pope squad' know that I'm in the running, I'd totally appreciate it.

Candice for Pope in '05!

Mad props to the Gov of Illinois

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Gov. Rod Blagojevich approved an emergency rule Friday requiring pharmacies to fill birth control prescriptions quickly after a Chicago pharmacist refused to fill an order because of moral opposition to the drug.

My favorite part:

"No delays. No hassles. No lectures."

and the Planned Parenthood rep naturally had some quality input:

"When medical professionals write prescriptions for their patients, they are acting in their patients' best interests," Trombley said. "A pharmacist's personal views cannot intrude on the relationship between a woman and her doctor."

THIS is what I'm talkin' about, people!

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/04/01/birth.control.governor.ap/index.html

Should this really have to be such a big deal these days? Telling a pharmacist to fill a prescription should not require it's own emergency bill. I mean really.

4parents.gov

So the government has a new website called 4parents.gov. It's about the sex. Specifically the teens having the sex. Hilarious? You bet.

They offer helpful tips for parents who are trying to discuss the possible consequences of sex with their teenage children. "But how would a parent bring up such a conversation?" you ask yourself. Fear not! The feds have provided this little gem for you to break the ice:

Some guys go out for a good time over the weekend, and end up with thousands of dollars taken out of their paychecks for the next 18 years. Do you know how that could happen?

Now THAT is a good way to start a productive dialog with your child if I've ever heard one. For my money though, the following is the way to go. See if you can spot the entirely-unsubliminal message here. (hint- it has nothing to do with sex!)

I was at the store yesterday and ran into Kendrick, Mrs. Jakes' son. He joined the military after high school. What do you think you want to do when you graduate from high school?

Far be it from me to suggest that this administration might use an "informational" website to up their military ranks but... that's pretty much what I'm suggesting.

The glossary is fun for all as well. I thought they were actually going to do okay with the abortion thing for a second:

An abortion is a way of ending a pregnancy before a live birth occurs by removing the fetus or unborn baby from the uterus.

They just couldn't leave the 'unborn baby' schtick out. Still, I'm impressed that terms like "baby killer," "child-hating feminist" and "bomb an abortion clinic- for fun and profit!" were left out. That shows a lot of restraint.

I looked everywhere for mention of "the gay" and found only one small section... which referred to homosexuality as an "alternative lifestyle" and then encourages parents to send their kids to a shrink that "shares [their] values." Other than that, the gays don't seem to exist. I suppose they were all in therapy when this website was created.

Denied.

Ugh... I just finished watching the movie Garden State. It's almost as bad as Lost In Translation, but at least this time I wasn't deluded into thinking that ghostbusting might occur.

"Deep" romantic comedies make me want to gouge my eyes out. I can't stop watching them because I keep thinking that they have to get better. That's why I need to just gouge my eyes out, you see? I don't want to have to actively decide to turn it off. Because what if it does get better?

It never does.

And what's with the whole 'quirky girl saves the too-serious dude and convinces him to open up' plots? They suck. They've always sucked. From Along Came Polly to Lost In Translation to this crapalicious flick.

And honestly, eye candy for the straight girls. Please people. Work with me on this one. Look, I'm not saying that Zach Braff is an outright eyesore or anything, but between him and his grave-digging friends, I wasn't exactly stunned, visually speaking. Between the "barely-legal" waifs in their skivvies by the pool and the topless prostitute in the hotel, you'd think they could squeeze in *one hot guy* without his shirt. Or something.

Denied.