But I do expect a fairly close number of chocolate chips, and for the layer of frosting not to be so thinly layered as to be transparent!

I do suspect photoshoppery at work. Thumbnail leads to full size image!

“He was even still breastfed by his mother until he was finally weaned off.”

Other suggested pieces of information:

My keys were lost until I finally found them.

I was hungry until I finally ate.

I was a fetus until I was finally born.

The Ed Show, Hardball, Countdown, Maddow, same time for everybody. This is how most news channels work, really, with repeats later on in the night. And that seems to work fine.

But the Olympics get a tape delay.

On a live network.

The Olympics that are happening right now in Vancouver will not be seen by west coast residents until 3 hours after the events are over on the network that runs everything else live.

What the fuck? Is this a secret plan to keep The Ed Show off of the west coast? Does LA not deserve Dylan Ratigan? The only effect of this delay is that shows which wouldn’t be pre-empted suddenly are, but only for half the country. If they kept to one feed, they’d be able to break in for news and events as needed, and they’d certainly not have to worry about repeating coverage to make up for the separation.

But to hell with that. Tape delay it. Show it live on the east coast, delayed on the west, they decided, for a reason absolutely nobody can figure out.

I’m starting to think NBC just wants to go bankrupt and get it over with, I really am. They’ve got a decent Thursday block, Chuck, Heroes, and Saturday Night Live. The rest of the time is a big festival of “No thanks.” Unless you’re the one person excited for The Marriage Ref or Who Do You Think You Are, then I guess NBC’s doing well.

Maybe NBC is just trying the Bush theory of promotion. You know, Michael Brown fucks up FEMA, gets a Medal of Freedom. Harriet Miers fires US attorneys out of political motivation and calls Bush “the most brilliant man she has ever met”, she gets sent up for a Supreme Court nomination. Jay Leno bombs on primetime but says how great NBC’s programming and sponsors are, gets sent to the Tonight Show.

Nobody actually likes the day. People in relationships hate the pressure it adds. Single people hate the reminders of being anywhere from an extra wheel to a second class citizen. Valentine’s is when you remember you are very much alone, that you were passed over for a promotion because you weren’t married and the other guy had a wife to pay for (true story for me and several friends), and that one chick decided instead of spending the day with you as planned she’d go spend the weekend with a guy she met the night before. Or that the woman you went on that fantastic date with will talk about how she doesn’t want a relationship with anyone.

It’s a crappy day for everyone who isn’t selling flowers. Although to be fair, more and more companies get in on the act. Even Sony is offering Valentine’s promotions on the Playstation Network, and NHL 10 has gotten Valentine’s related in-game ads. Really, I find the in-game ads most puzzling, the demographic least likely to celebrate Valentine’s gets the most intrusive ads.

But nobody ACTUALLY celebrates Valentine’s. People just get depressed on it over never living up to expectations. Even Christmas manages to come out as a better day for most people, even Thanksgiving which has two fights built in. There’s no real romance to the day, it’s “Hey, look what I’ve got and you don’t” at most. It’s a damn near objectivist holiday. A purer form of consumerism than Christmas has become, and how better to celebrate the martyrdoms of two Saints named Valentine? Buy some crap you nor your partner will like. A cheap paper sentiment, chalk flavored candy with illiterate scrawling, some bad chocolate, and according to the commercials, sit in adjacent tubs while your resurrected erection goes to waste after popping a pill.

I say to hell with it, it’s time to recognize this day as the blight of a social obligation it is, wherein you’re forced to spend exorbitant amounts of money on shit, or be reminded that nobody will ever love you.That if you buy less than the next guy (and let’s be fair, it’s usually men who have to buy all this), you don’t love your partner as much. But you can ask a Walgreens gift advisor for help fixing that! Buy more mylar balloons! Buy more bags of fattening candy that’s somehow worse than candy corn, but is purchased anyway because of the heart shapes! Enjoy the continued ad blitz wherein every break is composed of Vermont Teddy Bear, Cialis, Pajamagram, Cialis, Vermont Teddy Bear.

It’s my belief that we must immediately begin calling Valentine’s VD. Clearly it IS a disease, leading to poverty, depression, and self-injury, so the moniker is appropriate. Beyond that, given time, it should acquire RAS (redundant acronym syndrome) syndrome, as with PIN number and ATM machine.. Soon everyone will call it VD Day, and perhaps, given the unpleasant connotation forget about it entirely. Nobody’s going to buy a Vermont Teddy Bear or Pajamagram (which, by the way, are part of the same company) for VD Day.

$20 or less gets you a great game AND does something important with the money. Go on. Buy something.

I had someone point out the old “Could a lightsaber cut through Superman” debate to me. A lightsaber is a focused, concentrated plasma beam. Superman has flown through plasma with no issues at all in the past, and despite what some think, the color of a lightsaber has no effect on a blade’s energy. A red saber doesn’t have anything to do with a red sun. In fact, if anything would hurt him, it would likely be a purple lightsaber which uses Hurrikain, a crystal used by Mace Windu that negates armor, or light blue for use of Opilia, which cuts through resistant materials. Superman’s skin could be considered either.

That aside, he’s been hit with all kinds of plasma, and since that’s shown to be a non-issue, the answer becomes “No, no it could not, with a remainder of Batman.” This is because Batman is a technical wizard and damn close to supernatural from raw determination and talent alone. He has the ability to modify a saber most likely, and is known to keep Kryptonite with him just in case Superman starts to get a little too dickish. Kryptonite has a habit of being crystalline, and even when not, Batman would recognize the need for a crystalline form. If he needed to use a lightsaber against Superman, he would simply add a Kryptonian crystal of some sort to the blade, rendering it effective against Superman as the beam itself would carry that Kryptonian electromagnetic radiation (whether that’s an artifact of Krypton or the process that created Kryptonite isn’t something I’m aware of).

So while the lightsaber, normally, wouldn’t be effective, when Batman is involved, it’s going to be. This applies to all arguments, and I shall present more examples later.

For the extra nerdy here-Mr. Terrific would, of course, be able to install the crystal, but his knowledge of the need for it, how to produce it, or to get the resources for it would be the barrier in this case. However, where a Batman modifier fails, a Mr. Terrific one should apply.

Why are we betrayed by our subconscious? Why does the conscience completely wither in some, yet others are driven to self-destruction to save others?

It seems to happen backwards from what you’d think, in fact. People born into a functional, normal family tend to be content to live and let die, to cut their losses when things turn to bullshit. Those who should learn “I’m on my own, and so are they” thanks to drunken stepfathers and molesting grandmothers don’t, instead they often end up martyrs rather than sociopaths. Drawn to the very chaos they consciously seek to escape, recreating the childhoods they don’t want back, yet find a sort of familiar comfort in.

Expert psychologists have described the human psyche as “totally fucked up, dude.” We’re supposed to learn from bad experiences. If you get burned as a kid, you stay away from fire. If your dad is an alcoholic, you find a man just like him. What separates things we learn from from things we recreate?

What makes us decide just who to help, anyway? There’s a strange thing within the US especially with this regarding health care. On the left, you have people who are pro-choice and pro-universal healthcare. On the right, pro-life and anti-universal healthcare. On either side, once you’re born, your status is flipped. And both sides do tend to claim religious doctrine in their favor from the same book, though the right seems to be much more apt to claim said doctrine and ignore the parts within that are pretty clear on Jesus helping the poor and insisting his followers be among them.

Of course, in the interest of full disclosure I might be a little to the left of Castro, somewhere around the Huey Freeman political doctrine, so my opinion here is biased.

That said, it all ties into the great inconsistencies with who we feel for. The same people who will cheer someone on Oprah who overcame an addiction won’t spare a dollar for the man on the street currently fighting it. That same person who doesn’t tip at a restaurant will show up at an ex-girlfriend’s home at 3 AM because she had a fight with her boyfriend. Again. And her husband got involved in it too.

But recognition for having not had three illegitimate children and a crack problem? Doesn’t seem to be much. Come back after you hit the pipe a few times and forget to use a condom, says Oprah! Or at least fake it in a book before coming on the show.

We swear up and down to avoid becoming or dating our parents, then we do anyway. If you’re raised by a heroin addict who humps bears when he’s coming down after running to a bathhouse (uh, do I need to clarify I mean the ursine type, not the gay man type?), against all odds that’s who you’ll end up dating, swearing never to do it again, then thinking about how great that person was to you, when they were awful.

Everyone seems to have that little voice that leads them into trouble, into emotional trauma and repetition, and nobody wants to admit it. That little voice is certain it’s always right, does no wrong, and makes every decision in the span of seconds. It’s like we all have a teeny tiny George W. Bush in our minds, telling us that it’s totally cool to invade Iraq (Visit your ex) because even though we were attacked by people in Afghanistan (a history of molestation), Iraq is way more important than the economy or local issues (this metaphor is stretching horribly but let’s say “your self esteem”). Except for the gays. Those are more important than anything (The metaphor just snapped in the middle, like the broken condom it represents now and the morning after pill you wished you took, except the economy was broken so you thought it might fix it?).

I think I’ve just proven my George theory with that awful series of broken metaphors, and I apologize. I also invite you to replace George W. Bush with Sarah Palin as your inner voice’s gender prescribes.

I’m just going to chalk it all up to the greed of that little voice, that it’s convinced no matter how bad it’s gone before, it’ll totally be awesome this time. You’ll get laid and this time she’ll totally realize the mistake she made by not staying with you (and going to Iraq instead)! Who cares if she freaks out when a relationship gets stable (too much success in Afghanistan?), and goes and cheats on you (uh…here’s that Iraq metaphor again, shit).

And if your boyfriend gets drunk and beat you, it’s just because you didn’t fix dinner right (find WMDs). But you can SAVE HIM (Distract everyone with Iran).

Okay, okay, I’ll stop with the tortured (waterboarded metaphors). Ha, did it again! Just like your ex!

And on that note of bad relationships and metaphors, I think I’m starting to understand why Twilight is so popular.