Category: Take it from Snee

| Posted in Take it from Snee

Take it from Snee: Why do we still go to the movies?

"He's this way, on the way to the movie theater."
“He’s this way, on the way to the movie theater.”

It’s summer. If you’re a kid, that means it’s time to go look at a dead guy your buddy found. If you’re a farmer, that means carrots. And if you’re a movie producer, that means pouring millions into loud, dumb-as-a-bucket-of-whey-protein blockbusters. (Or a remake of that movie where kids go look at a dead guy.)

Why do blockbusters coincide with summer? Because, historically, movie attendance has always been up in the summer because theaters were the first buildings in town with air conditioning.

But it’s not like anyone doesn’t have air conditioning these days, or that there aren’t other air-conditioned options. So why do we still go to the movies instead of, say, the local dialysis center or Ruritan clubhouse?

Good question. I’m starting to wonder myself. Maybe it’s time we stopped, and here’s why … Continue reading →

| Posted in Putting the 'Wood' in 'Hollywood', Take it from Snee

Take it from Snee: Michael Jackson is safe again

Technically, we always preferred to think of him this way.
Technically, we always preferred to think of him this way.

Most people aren’t willing to enumerate the positives to people dying. They’re even less willing to do it in writing and publish it on the world’s most preeminent web sites because of how likely you will offend someone who knows someone who just died. I mean, the odds aren’t good: according to some random ass Internet search, 1.8 people die from death every second, so at least one of their relatives will likely stumble upon this article when Googling “inverted nipples” or “how to kill your parents.”

Fortunately, as the author of both those articles, I am not most people.

And that’s why I’m also willing to raise the stakes to explain why it’s good that the world’s most beloved/reviled song-singer is dead. And really, why it’s OK to like Michael Jackson again because he’s dead. Continue reading →

| Posted in Take it from Snee

Take it from Snee: Some atheists *still* need religion

As fellow Guy, Bryan McBournie, brought to our attention on Friday, the new pope kind of forgot to send atheists to Hell last week. During a recent sermon, Pope Francis said that everybody can go to heaven through good works, even atheists.

Wait, even atheists, Father?

"Even the atheists. Everyone!”
“Even the atheists. Everyone!”

Wow. That’s pretty exciting news. Sort of like how the Boy Scouts of America also decided last week that gay kids can join their club that is intentionally devoid of any positive adult gay role models.

In both cases, two very conservative organizations that do good work when they’re not actively discriminating against people they dislike, attempted to reach out to communities in the most tone-deaf ways possible. Continue reading →

| Posted in A Word from Our Sponsors, Take it from Snee

Take it from Snee: We all kind of suck

Oh great. Now I can't wear that tank top anymore because you got freckle sweat all over it.
Dove thinks you’re pretty. Pretty ashy! (Buy Dove skin moisturizing lotion and lube up those ugly spots.)

A recent campaign by Dove, a soap company, told us that women have low self-esteem and are all much more beautiful than they think. (Also: just because you’re pretty doesn’t mean you don’t stink, so buy some body wash.)

In a video that was shared by everyone with more estrogen than R. Lee Ermey, Dove cast an actor to play a sketch artist (the police kind, not your friend who’s really into improv) who draws Holywood-ugly — normal-looking — women based first on descriptions of themselves, and then based on how another actor was scripted to see them.

In the end, it turned out that, when women described themselves, the sketch turned out awful. (Way to go, something else that’s your fault, uggo.) When a complete stranger was very polite in case the man was married to the woman he’s asking about, the sketch turned out a-iight. Certainly not as great as when you mail your photo into that SkyMall artist who turns it into a sketch.

And, of course, women decided they were wrong about how they looked and opted for the prettier picture that could have been influenced by just about anything in the room at the time of the interview. (“She, uh … she looked like a chair.”)

Does that sound cynical? There’s a good reason for that: science! Continue reading →

| Posted in Take it from Snee

Take it from Snee: Your ‘Game of Thrones’ recap sucks

Thrones made of swords? How do they even work?
Thrones made of swords? How do they even work?

When the Insane Clown Posse reemerged a couple of years ago back into relevance with their music video, “Miracles,” they pondered everyday miracles like “Magnets/how do they even work?” Everyone, of course, laughed, because the answer to how magnets work is documented in books or, if your bookshelves are doused in Faygo, a Wikipedia search away.

What a pair of illiterate morons, right? I mean, who treats something that has been documented in written word for some time now like it’s an unsolvable, unknowable mystery?

That would be pretty much everyone writing Game of Thrones recaps.

Does that seem harsh? Hit the jump to find out exactly why your Monday morning link bait is terrible, and you’re terrible (with notable exceptions) for writing it.

Continue reading →

| Posted in Scurry (Politics), Take it from Snee

Take it from Snee: Razing Hope

Oh, hello there. I didn’t see you come to this Web site since that’s not really a thing you can see … or even hear since the dial-up days. Also, because I’m busy at work in my lair.

So my lair may be a little unfinished right now. But, it will only take a couple of miles of jackhammering before it's a volcano lair.
So my lair may be a little unfinished right now. But, it will only take a couple of miles of jack-hammering before it’s a volcano lair.

Why do I have a lair? Well, when I’m not writing fart jokes or pretending to be a doctor, I have a day job. And when I’m not at that day job, I put on a cowl and practice arch-evil. I guess you could say I’m a part-time villain.

I’d like to say that I’m pretty good at villainy — for an amateur, that is. But, no matter how many shrink rays I invent or monologues I write, I’ll never be able to quit my day and blogging jobs because I’m hopelessly outmatched by the Republican party.

Yes, I mean that the Republican party (or GOP) are twice the villains I could ever hope to be. And I don’t mean that because I’m a registered Democrat. On the contrary, as a practicing villain who aspires to one day destroy the world, I consider it my duty to vote Republican as often as possible. Here’s why: Continue reading →

| Posted in Take it from Snee

Take it from Snee: Looking away from addiction

Playstation, you are my home school.
Playstation, you are my home school.

White people, especially white men, love us some history. (I phrased it that way so I won’t get sued by Stuff White People Like, which is nearly 50 years old now in Internet time.)

Why do we love history so much? Mostly because it’s about us, and holy crap were we the victors. Reviewing our history is figuratively like watching our very own sports highlight reel, which is literally something we haven’t been able to do since Jackie Robinson. Even when the history involved white people doing bad things, it was usually another white person that set it right.

This is why the History channel cut to the chase years ago and started serving up a hodgepodge of

  • World War II, when white people stopped the whitest people from killing what were considered at the time less whiter people.
  • Aliens. Specifically white (or very pale gray) aliens abducting white people.
  • The Bible, as presented in Monocolor. (Not that New World Edition with Black Jesus, mind you.)
  • Alaska, pawn shops and swamps because, dammit, you go where the white people are, OK?

There’s only one historical topic that white people love more than any other, and that is the U.S. Civil War. It’s a fact: non-white students are allowed to cite any white person in the bibliography of their Civil War papers up to their Master’s program, and it counts for full credit!

So, where does this zeal come from? It’s not like it’s particularly complimentary to white history, what with slavery and all. Yet, we can’t stop flying the Confederate flag even in 2013.  Continue reading →

| Posted in Ask Dr. Snee, Sex Sells, Take it from Snee

Ask Dr. Snee: Overcoming your shortcomings

"It was tiny, and it looked like this!"
“It was tiny, and it looked like this!”

I always wondered if women really cared about, you know, size, and it turns out that they totally do! I’m not exactly the biggest guy around, so what do I do now?
Paul, but Fierce

Whether it’s a big penis or big set of “projecting lateral tubercles,” the ladies are all about size, Paul. It’s what put the “selective” in “selective breeding,” like picking out the least warty cucumber that can also feed a family of four.

But that doesn’t mean your smaller penis pulls you out of the running.

Continue reading →

| Posted in Cleaning Out the Language Gutters, Take it from Snee

Take it from Snee: Cleaning out the language gutters 2013

Just like a picture of mouths, these words don't say a damn thing.
Just like a picture of mouths, these words don’t say a damn thing.

According to a count performed by Google and Harvard in 2010, there were 1,022,000 words in the English language with an estimated 8,500 words added each year. The average speaker, however, only knows anywhere from 12,000 to 21,000 words. And though that still seems like a lot, we manage to mangle, twist and abuse certain words until they not only lose their original meaning, but appear to have lost all meaning whatsoever.

If these words were leaves, they would have directly bypassed being dried out and brittle, lying on the ground for any old user to pick up and twirl around. Instead, they were deposited into the gutter and, through overuse, become a moldy, muddy, indecipherable goop that prevents the language from moving forward.

They are the words people resort to when they actually have nothing to say, usually when “you’re having just too much fun” or when it’s time to define insanity for everyone all over again. (This phrase, that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” is both the definition and cause of my own insanity.)

That is why, every couple of years, I contract myself out to the English language, cleaning out this meaningless morass in hopes that those who resort to them will find new words. (Or say nothing at all.) Here’s what I found in the gutters for 2013.  Continue reading →

| Posted in Take it from Snee

Take it from Snee: Marriage is older than the Earth

downright-normalIt seems like that in 2013 — when gay men and lesbians can serve openly, vote Republican, and shame the president into supporting same-sex marriage after his vice president does so on television — that the argument over California’s Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act would be long over.

But, in both laws’ cases, conservative Christians can’t let the old arguments go. They’re so dogged to prove that they wrote the book on marriage that, when the governments responsible for defending each bigoted law in court refused to do so, they had to hire their own lawyers.*

So, for the fourth time (counting when Prop 8 was originally on the ballot in 2008), we get to hear the same old, tired arguments from people who believe that God tolerates child soldiers but hates it when two men or two women register at Bed Bath & Beyond.

For instance: did you know that God created marriage? There are only three problems with this idea: Continue reading →