"Teenagers are just going to have sex anyway"

Teenagers are just going to eat what they want anyway (like you can stop them from going to Burger King when you're not watching), so why even present carrots and fruits and stuff as an alternative? Shouldn't they be making up their own minds? So what if the foods they eat contribute to a slow and stinky death? TV preaches those foods at them all the time, in a non-judgmental fashion. All your food-pyramids and "diet plans" are just unrealistic moralizing.

You parents should be researching drugs and devices to make these fatty, sugary death foods less unsafe for teens. That sounds like a job for the government, actually. I think our tax dollars should go to programs that allow our teens to eat the foods they want (because, as I explained, they're going to anyway, the little immoral scamps) and still be healthy. That way, they will figure out for themselves that actions have no consequences whatsoever.

The government should also pass out cigarettes in school, you know, so kids can decide if they like 'em.

Netflix Diary: Gerry

Gerry
(Stupid People in the Desert)
(No, really, that's it. That's All There Is)
(Interpret This Blank Canvas)

Gerry is a movie that begs for creative interpretation, because the actual story barely exists. I will tell you that story now, to get it out of the way of the fun stuff (the style and purpose of the movie). And by "story" I mean what you see on the screen if you take it at face value. Of course, taking it at face value is probably a mistake, but that's where you gotta start with a movie like this.

The movie begins (after a momentary blue screen shot that makes you think the DVD is busted) with like 6 minutes of the 2 characters in the film, both named Gerry, riding in a dumpy car on a desert road. It seems like dusk, but later on you realize that 90% of the movie looks like it happens at dusk. The 2 Gerrys (played by Matt Damon and a random Affleck, Casey I think. How many Afflecks are there? If there are 4, we could set up a rumble with the Baldwin Brothers. There would have to be a larger Affleck than Ben or Casey, though, to go against Beefy Baldwin) then get out of the car and start walkin' along a supposed trail through some deserty brush. They go off the path and take another "trail"(and encounter 3 of the 5 people in the movie besides them), and they have their first conversation, where they decide to run down this other trail because "All trails must end at the same place, right?"

They walk. 5 movie (and real-life) minutes later they decide to walk back to the other trail, because they decide "F the trail end. What's at the trail end anyway?"

They walk. They slowly (slooooooooooooowly) realize they are lost, and don't know where they are. Night falls, and they build a fire.

They walk. It's the next day now, and they appear to have walked to a place that could not possibly be where their car was. It's gone from deserty brush to hilly rockland. Um, you're going the wrong way! They walk some more, and end up deciding to go to 2 different hills to see if they can see anything. They're trying to see their car or a road from the hills. It's not working. They decide to go to 2 bigger hills and meet by the "ravine" later, unless they find something, in which case they will just find the one that found something. They find nothing, and they get confused as to which ravine they were supposed to meet at (it appears to be Affleck's fault), and then later find each other in a white rocky area where Affleck has somehow gotten up on a rock that he can't get down from. He suggests Damon make him a "dirt mattress he can jump down into, and Damon obliges, mainly to make Affleck feel better. After like 10 movie minutes of dirt mattress talk, Affleck finally jumps and is fine. It looks painful, though.

They walk. Crunch, crunch, crunch over hills and valleys that look nothing like the nature trail they should be gravitating towards. It turns out they had a plan to "scoutabout" from the hills to see what they could see from a "crow's nest", but Affleck find animal tracks and wants to follow them to water, which leads to the best conversation in the movie and leads you to believe that these 2 friends are dumb as dirt, as they think that the only places animals would go is water or a "mating corner". They decide to follow the tracks.

They walk. The tracks lead nowhere.

They walk back. Every time I write "they walk", it's at least 5 minutes of movie time of just them walking, sad music plunking in the background. This accounts for at least 70 of the 103 minutes in this film. I brings new meaning to the term "Motion Picture". It is a picture of 2 dudes and their motion. They finally stop and Damon tells Affleck to stop crying like a ninny. I think night falls again.

The next day, they walk. Then, they have another interesting bit where you see their faces as they try to figure out what direction they've been going. It's at this point you realize that the 2 use "Gerry" not only for their names, but also as a verb, meaning "To screw up". There hasn't been a word with this many meanings since "smurf". They decide to head straight north, because that's where the highway is. Good idea. So...

They walk, get tired, and stop. There's a long shot of Damon looking at Affleck through the burka he has fashioned around his head. There's an even longer shot that spins slowly (sloooooooowly) 360 degrees around Afflecks head. It looks like there's a road in the distance, but that can't be true. Next, you see a shot of Affleck and Damon talking on the ground, with what looks like Damon walking in the distance. Turns out Affleck is hallucinating, because he tells Damon he knows where the car is. Real Damon show up, and snaps Affleck out of it, at which time Affleck makes the bizarre statement "I wanted you to tell me my hair wasn't falling out."

They walk. Night falls, they walk some more. In the ultimate scene of the movie, one 7-minute take is used -- the 2 Gerrys limp through the desert, Damon on the right, way in front of Affleck on the left, weird music that involves piano, clanging, and space sounds playing in the background, the sun slowly (sloooooooowly) coming up on them as they trudge on what is the most bizarre terrain yet, a relentless white crust. This is really a great shot, it seems like they have walked to a whole different planet. The alien sounds coming from the soundtrack add to that feeling as well. When I think back on this movie, I try to think of this scene, rather than shots of 2 dudes' heads as they crunch through rocks for 10 minutes. In the featurette on the DVD, they showed how they made the shot in one take -- they had to build a mile-long camera track. Fun!

Anyway, after the good scene, Affleck stops, and Damon goes back to meet him, and they lie down. Affleck says "I'm leaving now." or somesuch, and reaches out to Damon, who gets on his knees and goes over to Affleck. The camera goes to the other side of them as Affleck stops moving, and it appears the Damon has his hands around Affleck's neck. Damon lies back down and has a dream that cars are whizzing on the desert road, and they meet him. A premonition? Damon gets up, walks, and within no time sees cars speeding towards him on the white crust ground.

The movie ends with Damon in the back seat of a car, a kid on his left and a dude driving in front. Damon's looking straight ahead. Then, blue screen of death.

But what does it all mean? Most of the movie consists of beautifuly filmed shots of two dudes walking aimlessly in the desert. Gosh, it's boring. Your mind wanders, you start thinking of other things. It's really an audacious experiment here by Gus Van Sant...the pace is too slow to even sustain a narrative. You start thinking there's gotta be something extra-narrative going on. Van Sant fuels these thoughts with several bizarre (but low-key bizarre, not like Eraserhead-bizarre, so you might miss them, especially if you've dozed off) things:

1. Gerry is the name of both characters, or at least what they call each other. It is also used as a verb -- "We really gerry'd that one." Interesting note -- The original title of the film was The Actual Gerry, to differentiate the person from other instances of the word. All this could suggest that the 2 characters are just facets of the same person. Some on this very internet have suggested that Damon is the rational/masculine side and Affleck the emotional/feminine side.
2. A couple of times in the film, Affleck's voice appears to be coming out of Damon's mouth. It may only appear that way, it's not totally clear. My wife actually had to ask me "who said that?" once because of this phenomenon. Does this mean they are the same person?
3. As the movie goes on, you realize that Damon is clearly the smart one, but he's constantly deferring to Affleck. When he stops deferring is when they decide to go straight north (they had been going northeast because of the influence of Affleck). It is this decision that leads to the rescue.
   
4. The mirage scene, where Affleck is having the mirage of being able to tell Damon that he knows where the car is. It's weird, because you expect Damon to be having the mirage of Affleck knowing where the car is.
   
5. The scene preceding the mirage where Damon is watching Affleck, with eyes that could mean, "If we're going to get out of here, I'm going to have to do it." And then the camera spins all the way around Affleck's head, and we don't see Damon anywhere. Is this when the mirage was happening, after Damon had walked away? Or is there only one Gerry?
6. The final death scene of Affleck is weird, from Affleck saying "I'm leaving now" to Affleck reaching out to Damon, who pushes his hand away and finally appears to strangle him. Killing his emotional side? The inspiration for the movie is the now-well-known story of the man who got lost in the wilderness with another man, killed the other man because he begged him to, and was rescued less than 24 hours later and tried for the other man's murder. Do we just take it at face value? After the strangulation, Damon falls back down and then a car starts speeding around desert roads. Is this a dream? The car comes up to him, finds him. Once again, a premonition? Isn't that part of an emotional side? Or is it a dream? Or is that the real part? Who knows.
7. Earlier, when they're deciding to go north, they do the same POV shot of the speeding car, as if to determine what way is north. Does the car symbolize them? Does is symbolize the rescuers? Is that the route they were driving on before this whole mess started?
8. How did Affleck get on that rock anyway?
   

The problem is, all these weird things beg for a second watching, and that is one thing I just cannot do. I'm sorry, Gus. I don't care if I missed anything. The thought of sitting through even the "important" parts of the movie, the parts with dialogue, makes mind mind curl up into a fetal ball and say "please don't beat me with that movie again". Maybe after another 75 Netflix movies. It was daring to make a film so intent to show what it must be like to be trapped in the desert (even if its the desert of our own mind). But much like people who have been actually trapped in the desert, I have no intention of reliving the experience.

My wife liked it, though. All in all, I give it 2 overpriced popcorns out of 5, because it's excruciatingly dull, but interesting enough to be a valid movie. It affects you.

A Word About Netflix Diaries

Hey reading human,

I want you to know that the "Netflix Diary" series, like much of this blog, is just an unpolished version of the real product. The most important difference between unpolished and polished is the footnotes. There are none on this blog, there are plenty in the finished work. And hoo boy do you want the footnotes. They often tell a whole other story than the main text, and it's usually much funnier. Also, bulky phrases are replaced with smoove ones. I will be setting up a website soon that offers the finished products. It'll be great, check out the lack thereof (where it's going to be) here.

--MDP

Netflix diary: Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Aguirre: The Wrath of God
(MArk Aguirre: The Wrath of Laimbeer)
(Aguirre: Jim Zorn des Gottes)
(Aguirre: The Wrath of Some Insane Guy)

I just joined Netflix. It's terribly exciting, as all these movies I've wanted to see but never could find in a Blockbuster were there, waiting for me to put them in my queue. That's a funny word, queue. Kind of an overproper, Victorian way of saying "q". Anyway, one of these movies is Aguirre: The Wrath of God, by the "Master of German Expressionism", Werner Herzog. I had seen one other Herzog film (the one best known to Americans -- his 1979 remake of "Nosferatu") and found it to be interesting and weird. I like interesting and weird. So, I had high hopes for this movie. Was it interesting? Yes, I suppose. Was it weird? Slightly, but 95% of the weirdness had to do with either Klaus Kinski's eyes or a buttload of monkeys. Now, those 2 things are great, but they can't carry a movie all by themselves.

The film begins with a message telling us that Pizarro and his men had just conquered the Incas, who got their revenge by convincing him of the existence of a "Lost City of Gold" named El Dorado somwhere in the South American jungle. It then goes on to say that Pizarro went on an expedition to find El Dorado, and the only record we have of it is the diary of a monk, Brother Carvajal. The first shot of the actual film is a great one, a really great one. The expedition (containing not only soldiers but also slaves, noblemen, and a couple of chicks) is traveling through a treacherous winding path along a hill through the wilderness. The camera zoom in from above. Everybody looks pretty happy, even though a some have fallen of the path presumably to their deaths. Eventually, they set up camp and Pizarro has a conversation with the wild-eyed Aguirre, played by Kinski. Pizarro says they'll never find El Dorado, and Aguirre disagrees, all crazy-like. Seriously, there aren't words to describe the guy's screen presence. He chews scenery like a rabid rottweiler chews a steak.

(A trivial side note: according to the several sources, Kinski was a raving lunatic throughtout production, and threatened to quit midway through the film, because he in real life is actually borderline insane. However, Herzog is also kind of nuts, and he told Kinski that if Kinski walked off the set, he would shoot him and then turn the gun on himself. You might think it just a story, but Herzog has confirmed it went down pretty much like that (although Kinski said Herzog actually brandished a gun, a charge Herzog denies), and even says he was prepared to actually go through with it. I bring this up to underscore the fact that without Kinski, there's probably no movie. I mean, nobody short of Marty Feldman would have had eyes like that. And I don't think you want him playing this role. Herzog dealt with the insane Kinski in a Goethe-like "deal with the devil". Appropriate for the "Master of German Expressionism", no?)

This sets up the real meat of the movie, which sends 40 or so men and 2 women ahead of Pizarro's expedition as kind of a "scout team", to scope out what's ahead and come back within a week. One look at Aguirre and you know that' s not happening, though. Main players in the scout team:

Ursua, the leader (for the first day, anyway); his hot wife; Aguirre, his supposed second-in-command; Aguirre's poor young daughter who looks just like the girl from the remake of "Planet of the Apes" -- Estella Warren; Ursua's loyal man, Armando; Aguirre's creepy enabling friend, Perucho; A black slave with a Ben Wallace 'fro, who will be known as Ben Wallace for purposes of this recap; the aforementioned Brother Carbajal, who voice-over narrates much of the goings-on; and a bunch of other men we'll call "Indian Food".

The first day is them rafting down a treacherous river, surrounded by jungle, a growing sense of hopelessness in the air. One of the three rafts gets stuck in an "eddy", because they suck, and the other two land on the jungle shore and send some dudes to go over and save them. Herzog gives us multiple shots of the stuck raft, all from the prespective of the other rafts (far away), and the pathetic struggles of the Indian Food onboard. There's 2 South American slaves rowing, and 7 Spanish guys ordering them around. Night falls, and gunfire and explosions are heard over by the stuck raft. What will become of the Indian Food?

Now would be a good time to tell you about the pace of the film, which is extremely leisurely. It's truly an art film -- a modern audience would surely call it boring. I mentioned the shots of the soldiers on the stuck raft -- he keeps going back to them, staying on them. It's always the same shot, too. There's probably 5 minutes total of the people struggling on the raft. And many other shots are like that as well. Keep that in mind as I go through the narrative -- all of these things take a lot of time to happen. The good thing about this pace is it allows you to take in the whole scene, including the jungle around them. The sense of dread is heightened by this. It is in fact a horror movie in the "Blair Witch Project" vein, where the characters are doomed from the start by their own lunacy and the smothering nature around them.

Well, the saving party gets over there the next morning and finds 6 dead soldiers on the raft, with the 2 slave/rowers and one piece of Indian Food missing. This starts a disturbing trend in the movie, where people just literally escape from the film and we never hear from them again. The total number of ecapees at this point is three. Ursua decides the men need a Christian burial, but in his first act of defiance, Aguirre tells creepy Perucho to "make sure the cannon doesn't get rusty". Perucho (humming the whole time -- you later realize he hums when he's thinking of doing something malevolent.) blows up the raft with the men on it. Ursua doesn't punish anybody, and you realize it's only a matter of time before Aguirre takes over, forshadowing that other great and insane Aguirre, Mark, in the '89 NBA finals. But I digress.

The next night the tide rolls in and the other 2 rafts float away, and Ursua is all about going back to Pizarro on foot so they can make it back within a week. But the men are cutting down trees to make another raft, strangely without consulting him. They have a meeting, and Aguirre's treachery (as opposed to his insanity -- that comes later) is revealed. Aguirre wants to continue the scout team and find El Dorado, and Ursua wants to go back. Ursua is shot, out of the blue, by someone out of frame. Presumably, it's Aguirre or Perucho. Armando rushes Aguirre and is also shot. Aguirre gives a look like, "Does anybody else want some of this?", and nobody takes him up on it. Under Aguirre's direction, they elect as their new leader a fat nobleman we'll call the Load. The Load is understandably apprehensive, having just seen what happened to the last leader. But he accepts because he has no choice, and they build huge raft with like a house and an outhouse and a horseport on it, and set out down the river for El Dorado.

(Before they do, they have a trial with Carvajal as judge, and Ursua is sentenced to death for treason on trumped-up charges. The Load grants him clemency, which causes Aguirre (who suggested Ursua be killed in the first place) to do a double take at him, and we then know the Load is ultimately doomed. Other notable things that happen are: Perucho hums while looking up and down Ursua's hot wife, and Armando kills a guard and escapes (Death toll now 8 (including one of the saving party who is trapped by indians), escapees now total 4).)

And a word on the blood in this movie: fake. Looks like they mixed tomato soup with milk -- it's practically pink. Evertime someone bleeds, I think they just spilled lunch on themselves, or hurled. It's embarassing.

So the remaining scout party members set off on the houseraft, and it spirits are up. These people want to follow Aguirre and the Load because of promises of wealth. The float by some South Americans, and Aguirre asks the token South American translator (who earlier told Hot Wife "I used to be somebody...now I'm just a slave") what they are whooping and hollering at the raft. He says "Food floating by" or somesuch. Aguirre is not deterred, and gradually you learn that he plans on taking not only El Dorado but the whole continent for himself, and challenging things like, I don't know, Spain for world supremecy. It's a good plan, a solid plan. But the South Americans won't give up their continent that easy...

They drift to an abandoned village, and in the greatest moment of the movie, strip Ben Wallace down to his underwear and have him run ahead of the Spanish army to scare the South Americans. Hey, it worked for the Pistons. That would scare me, too. He's like trying to stay behind the guys with the guns, but they prod him on. War in the 16th century was so silly. So, they find the village is indeed abandoned, and also find remnants of cannabalism (dun-dun-dun!). So, the morale of the group is going down. Later, the Load is eating like the King he is and the others are doling out corn kernel-by-kernel to each other (a kernel for you...a kernel for you...), and the Load gets mad at the horse and orders the group to leave it on the riverbank, away from him. This causes Brother Carvajal to realize the craziness of the whole thing, as he says, "Dude, I've seen entire tribes of South Americans run from one horse. Plus, we could have at least eaten it!" Aguirre says (in his own mind) "that's it!" and the Load is found strangled. He died the way he lived -- overweight.

So, Aguirre does what he's wanted to do since the movie began and he has Ursua hung by an ever-humming Perucho. This causes hot wife to put on a fancy dress and walk into the jungle, never to be seen again. I don't know why she put on the fancy dress. For those of you keeping score, that's escape #5. Better than Mambo #5, but not by much.

As she leaves, one can feel the movie unraveling and devolving at a rapid rate. Aguirre starts referrng himself as "The Wrath of God", though it feels more like "The bad Seatlle Seahawks QB". In the second best bit in the movie, Aguirre walks up behind a dude counting to ten: 1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...(Aguirre cuts his head off, it rolls downhill and ends up facing towards the sky, at which point the disembodied head says, and I quote)10. People start to get hit by arrows from unseen asailants. They run into a tree that takes the roof off the houseraft. Finally, Aguirre's poor daughter who looks like Estalla Warren gets hit by an arrow, and everyone starts to hallucinate. Ben Wallace gets hit by an arrow, and does the New Age trick of creating his own reality when he says, "That arrow isn't there...the raft isn't there". So does Carvajal. Aguirre feeds off all this crap, and goes into full delusion mode where he thinks he's going to marry his daughter and conquer South America and challenge Spain. And then the monkeys show up.

That's right, monkeys.

They're covering the boat, and Aguirre is trying in vain to chase them away while he goes on his insane rant. They're cute, but probably diseased. Not that it matters now. Everyone is dead or dying except Aguirre, and the raft drifts on. The final shot goes around and around the raft, showing the dead and dying on every corner,with Aguirre chasing monkeys. It's the best mass use of a random animal at the end of a movie I've seen since Magnolia. Cue the credits.

Gosh, what a bleak movie. The message seems to be, "If you're out in the jungle and you have to follow somebody, don't pick the dude with the craziest eyes." Good advice for those of you on safari, or who live in Butler, WI. Also, "Don't trust the people you just conquered because they probably don't like you very much." Good advice for those who are occupying a just-conquered county like say, Iraq for example. Also, "Don't make the fat guy King", "Don't abandon your only horses just because the fat guy says so", and finally, "If you're in South America, keep watch because armies of monkey can get all up on ya just like THAT."

3 out of 5 overpriced popcorns, for the weird eyes and monkeys, and the opening and closing shots. But not higher because it's kinda boring.

Monkey Monkey. Another funny word. Queue the monkeys.


--MDP

Politcal post of the day, part II

How much more evidence do we need that the RIAA are a bunch of a-holes?

(on the JSonline web site, registration may be required. I'm really sorry. It only takes a second.)

--MDP

Del gato means "Of the cat" in Puerto Rico

"What are they going to do, kick me out of the game? Take away my endorsements?"
--Carlos Delgado, Toronto Blue Jays Baseball Human, when asked about if he feared reprisals for a politcal ad he took out in the Washington Post, which slammed the Navy for testing some dangerous crap on a crap island near Puerto Rico and then never cleaning it up.

At New York Yankees games since 9/11/01, the song "God Bless America" has been presented in the 7th inning a la the National Anthem. People stand, a singer sings, and said people either sing along or just stand there. But not everyone has been playing their assigned part in this scenario. As reported in the Toronto Star (Star? Post? Random Newspaper Name?), Carlos Delgado has been quietly sitting in the dugout during the song because he doesn't agree with the Iraq war. Now, when an athlete does this, the reaction generally boils down to 2 schools:

1) Our military fights wars so that he will have the right to do this, so yay!
2) Our military fights wars so that he will have the right to do this, so him doing this makes him an ingrate, so boo!

And it never gets any further than this. But I want to boil it down, reduce it. What is he exactly doing? He is personally protesting our war in Iraq by refusing to stand for "God Bless America." I say personally because he did it quietly, so that nobody would notice. He didn't call attention to himself, and he didn't wear the Bush + Crap = 2 Craps T-shirt or whatever on the field. The vast majority of fans didn't even know it was going on. He's just anti-Iraq-war, and this is his way of showing it. In his (newspaper-quoted) words:

"But I think it's the stupidest war ever. Who are you fighting against? You're just getting ambushed now. We have more people dead now after the war than during the war. You've been looking for weapons of mass destruction. Where are they at? You've been looking for over a year. Can't find them. I don't support that. I don't support what they do. It's just stupid."

Putting aside for a second the 20/20 hindsight issue (in fact, putting aside the whole issue of whether or not his points on the stupidity of the war are valid), is refusing to stand during "God Bless America" really the right way to go about protesting this? Does it send the right message? And I bring this up only as an issue that Carlos himself can address, because it is a personal protest, with meaning solely to him, right? So what is he saying? That America should not be blessed? That's what I'm hearing. I don't know what Carlos is hearing.

Do you see the problem here? What he means to say is "I don't agree with the war in Iraq", which he had better amend with, "even though I love America for a) the opportunities and liberties it has given me and b) the willingness to protect those liberties with the lives of its citizens." What he actually is saying is "America should not be blessed...at all. F the mountains, F the valleys, F the blah blah white with snow." There's no mention of the war in Iraq or WMD finding or even Puerto Rico in the song. Why is he dissing the song?

This would be my message to Carlos: Be more thoughtful about the particulars of your protest, or people will misunderstand. They will think the thing you are saying with your actions (in this case, screw America) is what you actually believe, and they will whip a battery at your head.

And no matter what the "People Have the Right to Protest" crowd says, it will be your fault.

Intro, Part II: This Time For Real

Hey everybody, this is how this is going to work. The posts here are my way of keeping the world up-to-date with the things going through my head. While this may seem tedious and redundant (or at the very least unoriginal, considering the millions of other people attempting to do the same thing), I assure you it will be something you want to see. Because my head is not the average head. It is different.

The postings will conform to a few different categories: Predictions and Rants from Sports Ignorant, Pop Culture "Observations" (although that seems lame, I once again assure you it isn't), The World Famous "F" Series, A Random Story Here or There, and Job Updates. These categories may change, so keep on your toes.

Here's a link so this post isn't completely worthless

What is Epth Nation?

1) Epth Nation is not an organization.

2) (Which means, it's not a league, rock band, team, co-op, church, vehicle, troupe, commune, cult, gun club, glee club, association, lobby, thinktank, prison, business, fellowship, or any other place where 2 or more people have become joined to something for some purpose. And did I mention it's not a cult?)

3) Epth Nation is not a Nation.

4) Epth Nation is not a place in time or space.

5) Epth Nation is not another name for Wink Martendale, though the idea is open for negotiation.

6) Epth Nation is not a euphemism for "ice fishing", or "playing soccer".

7) Epth Nation is not an alcoholic beverage, nor a dispenser of such beverages, nor the town drunk, nor the village idiot.

8) Epth Nation is not a front for gun-running, or any sort front for any sort of running.

9) Epth Nation is not not cool.

10) Epth Nation is not your hamster, but it has taken over your hamster's free will. It is the hamster starter, twisted hamster starter.

11) Epth Nation is not weak and nerdy, as some have suggested.

12) Epth Nation is not God, god, a part of god, the "essense" of god, or any other concept that involves godhood.

13) Epth Nation is not boneless chuck roast.

14) Epth Nation is not misspelled.

15) Epth Nation is not "from the mind of Minolta"

16) Epth Nation is not a vague reference to J.R.R. Tolkein.

17) Epth Nation is not a restaurant that serves great Viking food.

The things we hold to be true.

We here at Epth Nation hold these facts to be undeniably true, and better than you are:

1) The Dallas Cowboys are evil.

2) So are the Los Angeles Lakers.

3) So are the New York Yankees.

4) The "Good Humor" man is watching you, right now, and he's not amused.

5) We have altogether too many boxes in our culture.

6) Contrary to popular belief, "wheat germ" is not 1/2 wheat, 1/2 germs.

7) There is nothing more annoying than feet -- they look stupid, they stink, they hurt.

8) The Best Man at a wedding should instead be called, "The Best Man the Groom Knows", for purposes of extreme accuracy.

9) Animals are born to be consumed by me.

10) Professional wrestling is not real, but it's gotta hurt.

11) People who wear suits to work did something wrong somewhere down the line.

12) There is no Santa Claus.

13) Aliens are on earth and are living in Appalachia. Oh, yeah, and they're really, really stupid.

14) If eveyone talked like they were from Brooklyn, there'd be a whole lot more fights in this world.

Well, there you have it. You now know absolutely nothing more about Epth Nation than before you read this initial post.That's the way we like it. We will say this, though: the best way to get to know us is by reading the things on this blog. At times, it may be unclear whether we are being sarcastic and when we are being serious. That's understandable. We're sure you'll get the hang of it, though.

THANK YOU FOR CARING.

Copyright 1993, 2004 Michael Pape -- don't you steal this, foo!