Turn that sucker, and make your friends feel like one

I think I'm on to something here.

I think I've perfected the procedure to prominently let a person know your pessimism about p-something.

Let's use an example here. A friend of yours is particularly proud - alright, alright I'll stop with the p-ing - of an object that they made sitting on their couch one lazy sunday afternoon, while reliving all those seasons of Ally McBeal. Some sort of invention, let's say a double straw, where one end allows you to take in milk, and the other which allows cocoa puffs to freely travel up towards ingestion. Brilliant, I know. (At this point for those of you concerned, no I did not successfully make this magical creation, but that doesn't mean I'll stop trying).

At any rate, unfortunately for your friend, you happen to be very mad at them for something they did last night - it just isn't cool to ask out someone's mom, unless she's particularly attractive and promises to pay for popcorn and even gets you Buncha Crunch at the movies. So you look at them, and internally you are aware that the double straw is the greatest innovation in the history of cereal technology (take that Cereal Straws!), but you can not, under any circumstances let your friend know that you approve, and more importantly let them think that all is forgiven, seriously... she's your mom.

So what do you do?

Well my spiteful friends, you've come to the right place for advice on how to make others feel bad.

Here is the secret to acting disgusted towards any hand held object. First, you make the face, the nose scrunching, eyebrows down-turned, half frown face. Then, you grab the object in a very specific way. Only pick up the object by your index finger and thumb. This is key because it makes any item appear worthless. And now, the piece de resistance. Holding the item in the manner that you are, stare at it, and then slowly turn your wrist.

Boom.

Turning your wrist will make your friend think you hate the object so much that not only will they apologize for their actions, but go on to shower you with love, and more importantly, money.

Try it out if you don't believe me. Just pick up anything close by your computers or web enabled mobile devices in the exact indicated manner and finish it off with the wrist turn. You'll freak.

To those of you who have plans to do this today, happy hatings, and if you would be so kind, share your experience with the amazing success of my method.

Take it easy you crazy B's,
Tapan Jones

The Decline and Fall

It's been nearly ten years since our favorite television show, The Simpsons, put out anything that didn't make us want to vomit with rage. A recent conversation between the co-authors bore an idea: we could write a better Simpsons episode than anything since Season 11.

Consider this: In an episode from December, Mr. Burns won a basketball team in a poker game. Okay, not a horrible start, but not great. Then he sees Mark Cuban's antics and tries to copy them for some reason. Mark Cuban. Now you tell me, in a world of Krusty the Clown, Sideshow Bob, Ned Flanders, Chief Wiggum, and Dr. Nick Riviera, what place does Mark fucking Cuban have? The plot would've worked just as well with The Rich Texan or Artie Ziff, even though they've exploited the hell out of that little nerd.

You see, that's where The Simpsons has gone wrong. It used to be that the writers would come up with intensely witty lines and references that were socially or historically relevant, but in a subtle way that wasn't THE ENTIRE PLOT OF THE EPISODE. Celebrity cameos were brief (on the occasions that they were longer, the celebrity normally played a new character, not him or herself), no contemporary music was used, and there was much less of a "cheese factor", if you will. Now, they do just the opposite: unfunny, ridiculous plots, no wit, contemporary issues/people/music are used and are the focus of entire episodes, et cetera, et cetera. The whole thing reeks of a sell-out, and it's a damn shame.

It's as if Matt Groening pictures his target demographic as the guy that sits in front of his TV on his Jeff Gordon recliner with a bag full of Cheetos and an orange-stained Pikachu shirt like "DURRRR... MARK CUBAN YELLS A LOT!!!1!1" His now-elderly mother creaks up from her rocking chair and dabs the drool and Cheeto flecks off of her son's chins with a handkerchief. Tears well up in her eyes as she wonders where it all went wrong. "One of these days," she mutters under her breath. "One of these days."

Anyways, here's our idea for an episode:

Alarmed by a sharp decrease in productivity, Mr. Burns decides that in order to motivate the workers at the nuclear plant, he'll offer beer as an incentive. This plan works beautifully for a time and Mr. Burns reaps the benefits, but productivity soon falls even lower than it was originally because everyone's showing up to work drunk. Meanwhile, Milhouse sees an unexpected rise in popularity at school due to his dad's seedy new job.

See? It's that simple. With simplicity in mind, we'd like to hear some of your ideas for a new (but classic-style) Simpsons episode.

Comment away!

<3,
Mike + Tapan

...but can you walk the walk?

The bus is right there. It's directly across the street from where you're standing. There's a calm and overwhelming feeling of punctuality coming over you.

"Finally," you think, "this is going to be my day."

Then, shifting your eyes upward, the situation becomes clear. You have a do-not-walk signal, and the cars - they are a-flying. Most people will feel an impulse, it's out of their control. They're going to pick up their knees, haul ass across the street, catch the bus, and once again relish in that mighty calm.

I urge all of you not to do this.

Why? It's simple. You look like an idiot when you run.

It's hard not to leave your face drenched in nervous sweat, and to hide ridiculous breathing patterns under a strong exterior. It's hard to convince your fellow man that your spastic and, quite frankly, seizure-like movements actually qualify as running.

But far be it for me to sit here and criticize all day. Instead, I make the following proclamation standing up: People of Earth, I have devised the greatest solution to all of your hurry-up problems. Are you ready?

Run with your feet, walk with your arms.

Let that one pull a Drain-O and sink in real quick. Go on. Bask in its knowledgeable glow.

This solution has been tried and tested in many experimental situations: getting milk at the grocery store, saving a cat from a burning building, grabbing your important mail in front of the drive way (yes, you are in fact eligible for Publisher's Clearing House this year, and no, Snuggies does not advertise using fliers).

The key to life is never actually getting from point A to poi ...actually, I don't like getting to and from places named after letters. Let's try it again. The key to life is never actually getting from Tapan street to Jones avenue - it's to look cool as fuck in the process, so people don't think you're as desperate as Ricki Lake is to be famous again (it's never going to happen Ricki, move on).

The only way to accomplish this is outlined in the following steps:

1) Achieve a speed with your legs directly on the border of walking and running
2) Swing your arms as if you're strolling past the Victoria's Secret window, wanting the display to last as long as Marisa Miller's gorgeous legs, which she can use to play footsie with me any day. We'd probably end up running off together to get married and consequently have a divorce. But I had a plan. "Baby, we don't need a pre-nup. Come on, you know you're my everything." Then the second the money train stops I bail and get half of her Sports Illustrated cash, which leads to a meeting with Chris Paul and we can hang out or something. But I digress.

So you got it? Run with your legs, walk with your arms. The next time you have to be anywhere in a hurry, try it out, and then come back and thank me for all the "Is that James Bond?" and the "OMG it's the girl from Perfect Dark" compliments you're getting.

These and more life tips in coming weeks.

Happy Birthday Lincoln,
Tapan Jones

P.S. The word for friend in Hindi is yar. Before I knew that, I just assumed India was filled with pirates.

We Are Spartacus

A while back, I wrote a poem called "We Are Spartacus". It wasn't much at the time, just a little ditty I cooked up over tea and toast, but for millions of idiots it came to mean so much more than mere ink on parchment. It was sort of like how 1's and 0's can combine to make a game like Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties, except the binary was letters, and the game was life.

If you've never seen Spartacus, it stars Kirk Douglas, Michael Keaton's dad (Michael Keaton played Jack Frost in "Jack Frost", FYI), as Spartacus, a rebel slave without a cause. Except here's the thing - he did have a cause. Spartacus wants to be a professional gladiator so bad, but his coaches all say he's too small. That doesn't stop Spartacus. He tries out for his college gladiatorial team but Vince Vaughn is on it and he's a jerk I think. Or maybe he's the nice one. Anyways, it turns out that Spartacus really is too small and he might have kind of a thing for Frodo, so they don't let him on the team. In his rage, he rampages across Italy with a band of rejects, stealing from the poor and keeping it all for himself. Spartacus becomes drunk with power, but Crassus has even more money than Spartacus does balls. Pretty soon, Spartacus is backed into a corner. But that's exactly where you don't want him to be, because he's like a lion, and lions don't like that.

With the sea at his back and Crassus' team before him, Spartacus looks up into the crowd and sees his dad and his brother there. They're chanting something, but he can't quite make it out. He cups his hand to his ear in order to hear better, and he discerns a faint, "Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!" The fact that his own family doesn't even cheer for him at his final battle demoralizes Spartacus so much that he decides to surrender. Crassus comes over and asks "Which of you is Spartacus?" so that he knows which one to crucify. Spartacus stands up and he says, "I'm Spartacus," but then, to the utter amazement of everyone in the classroom I saw it in, all of his friends stand up and say that they're Spartacus, too!

In the end, Crassus decides to crucify everyone and put them along the Via Appia, the road back to Rome. Giant wooden crosses with bloodied, beaten bodies stretched out over them expand as far as the eye can see. This causes me to pause, and I think there's a lesson here that Spartacus wanted us to learn.

That lesson is: if you're too small, give up. You'll just end up getting all your friends tortured to death.

Yours in Christ,
Mike

My Co-Conspirator... the Jerk

You know that idea that tomorrow brings great promise? That concept that one should prepare for the future and all the challenges that come with it?

Mike Bogart does not.

The man that lives in a perpetual state of aggravating carelessness is co-author of this blog. Anyone that has ever met him will tell you that his personality does not stem from being eloquent, or having the right thing to say - ever. In fact quite the opposite. His "humor" is dissolved in meaningless one-liners, and not the hilarious Mitch Hedberg kind. He's been quoted as saying "By the way, i just raped some guy's ass off in a fantasy basketball trade."

While the comment would not garner my personal respect or even invoke a giggle, I've personally seen it send shockwaves of laughter through a room.

Thus, I'm selling out my personal beliefs in agreeing to co-write this blog with him for cheap laughs from some (hopefully) faithful, potential readers.

However my conscience will not permit me to post this without one last plea. People of the world, stop laughing at this rambling idiot. He is the real-life embodiment of Cosmo Kramer to my Jerry Seinfeld. Feel free to read the following quote using Mike's name instead.

As George Costanza once described "Kramer goes to a fantasy camp. His whole life is a fantasy camp. People should plunk down two thousand dollars to live like him for a week. Do nothing, fall ass-backwards into money, mooch food off your neighbors, and have sex without dating. That's a fantasy camp."

Happy reading guys,

Tapan Jones

He's kind of a Douche

"Depraved" is a funny word. It tends to be used where a simple "lewd" or "crude" would suffice. You see, that's the thing about depravity - it's not simply lewd, nor merely crude; it is the state of being which allows for lewdness and crudeness to even exist. Depravity is not a mode of moral corruption, it is moral corruption. Depraved people are Satan embodied; they are iconoclasts; they are the soldiers at Iwo Jima stabbing flags with pictures of boobs on them into the lurching, bubbling, pink, fatty stomach of an ever-strengthening movement to universalize "the moral." You don't use a word like "depraved" lightly. Tapan Jones is depraved.

I've been asked to introduce Tapan to the readers. Honestly, on the following pages, you'll probably find yourself enraged by his posts - enraged to the point that you want to stop reading. But I urge you, put down your mouse. He can't help it, he's just a bad guy. Do what I've done and accept him for who he is, in order to form a more perfect union between douches and us normal people. We the people, in fact. If Thomas Jefferson didn't want douches to be included, he would have said so. You know what? He was a pretty big douche himself. See? As I've just proven, even Thomas fuckin' Jefferson was a douche. If our great nation is going to survive these tough economic times, we must unite, man and douche, under the very confusing words of one of the Founding Fathers of metrosexualism:

"I guess I shoulda closed my eyes when you drove me to the place where your horses run free. 'Cause I felt a little ill when I saw all the pictures of the jockeys that were there before me. Believe it or not, I started to worry, I wondered if I had enough class. But it was Saturday night, I guess that makes it alright, and you say 'Baby, have you got enough gas?' OH YEAH. Little red Corvette, baby, you're much too fast. Little red Corvette, you need a love that's gonna last."

And with that, Tapan has already taught us a lesson. In the best of times, and in the worst of times, red Corvettes are like fuckin' cop magnets, so maybe you should consider buying a horse - those speeding tickets pile up quick.

You can expect... well, more shit like this to come from Tapan Jones and Mike in The Chicago Sometimes.

Yours in Christ,
Mike

The Chicago Sometimes - First Print

Welcome to The Chicago Sometimes. This is not your ordinary newspaper. In fact, it's not a newspaper at all.

What we do here at TCS is based entirely on the opinions of two people who, quite honestly, speak in such hyperbole, that each post will seem more important than the last - and it will be, because each post is the greatest one ever made.

With that, a brief introduction to the bloggers is in order. The writing duo of Tapan Jones and Mike first came to power in the closed off computer lab of a high school business class. They formed "The Pr0nics," a site that still garners acclaim nearly a half a decade after its inception.

The work was not classy, informative, or in any way thought provoking - something that we can not promise to change this time around. But it was still work, damnit!

Once more, welcome to The Chicago Sometimes. Enjoy your stay, and come back often. Think of us as a whorehouse of sorts - but without any of the glitz and glamour.

Have a good one,
Tapan Jones