Walt Disney World and Orlando For Dummies - Because it’s vitally important to know whether you should get on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride first or wait until you’ve already done Pirates of the Caribbean.

Entertaining for Dummies - This may not actually be the subject of the book. It may just be a description.

Bookselling for Dummies - I’d say if you describe your book as “Entertaining for Dummies,” you’re bound to sell a few copies here and there.

Customer Service For Dummies - Yeah … I’ve had this experience before.

Writing Children’s Books for Dummies - The main reason I tend to prefer the “Dummy” books over the “Idiot” ones is the slight vagueness of wording in the titles. In this case, for example … Are dummies writing books for children or does the term refer to the children who will be reading them? It’s like a deeply philosophical question for those who are neither deep nor philosophical.

Marketing for Dummies - Again, I don’t quite know if this is marketing by dummies or marketing to dummies, but either one sounds about right to me.

Selling for Dummies - See Marketing.

Bartending For Dummies - See Selling.

Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies - See Bartending.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Erotic Romance - Dummies write romance. Idiots write erotic romance. This is a key distinction.

Housetraining for Dummies - Good. ‘Cause I hate non-housetrained dummies.

Potty Training for Dummies - See housetraining.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Jokes - Jokes should only be constructed of the finest materials, including but not limited to creative puns, pop culture references, and social satire. But, if all else fails, just make a fart noise with your mouth. Thhhbbbttt!

posted by arthbard at 8:29 pm on Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Labels: Dumb Idiot Books, Humor

[ 0 comments ]

‘World’s Greatest Dad’ pleads guilty to sex crime - Says victim, “Greatest? Eh, I’ve had better.”

NZ police bring in Harry Potter star to solve burglary case - “Traditional investigation just not cutting it,” say police. “What we need are wands.”

Urine bottles: Another result of high fuel prices? - I’m sick and tired of everyone blaming everhthing on high gas prices. I mean … How else are we expected to store our urine?

JetBlue offers free trip to nowhere from JFK - At least you get what you pay for.

McCain slams Obama over drilling off coasts - Says McCain, “How dare you drill off coa … No wait … That’s what I support. Well, carry on.”

Texas executes immigrant after winning court fight - Says Texas, “That’ll teach him to seek out a better life in a foreign land.”

10-year-old bullfighter sparks debate in France - Angry French complain that 10-year-old fights bulls that are “not nearly big enough,” insist he tackle larger bulls out of fairness to other fighters.

Police raid Md. mayor’s home and kill his dogs - When inquired about the necessity of the raid, police officials respond, “Do you know a better way to kill dogs?”

American deaths in Afghanistan war reach 500 - Afghan deaths, meanwhile, reach 5,000, but, eh, whatever.

Waterboarding an attraction at amusement park - Because what could be more amusing than simulated drowning?

Giant smelly flower puts on sex show in Belgium - I swear to God this is a real headline.

posted by arthbard at 11:24 pm on Thursday, August 7, 2008

Labels: Humor, Out of Context Headlines

[ 3 comments ]

For everyone who’s been waiting in eager excitement–which, to be fair, is very few of you–Arthbard’s premiere novel-writing effort is totally available. For more information about how to order or–more likely–download the bugger completely for free, you should click the following link to learn more about … The Kanteron Chronicles

posted by arthbard at 8:46 pm on Friday, July 25, 2008

Labels: Behind the Scenes, Non-Humor

[ 4 comments ]

Yes. I’m very lazy. Hopefully, this announcement might make up for it to a certain degree.

Well, I’m kind of excited about it, anyway.

What you may not know about dear, old Arthbard is that before I was blogging, or even using the name Arthbard, I wrote a book. Approximately 60,000 words worth of book. Okay, it’s not War and Peace, but a lot of work went into those 60,000 words, and, while I did make some effort to have it traditionally published, that never happened, and it’s been more or less sitting there, taking up space on my hard drive ever since.

But, hey, wouldn’t you know it, print-on-demand technology (as employed by, say, CafePress and Lulu.com) has made self-publishing as affordable as masturbation–perhaps even more so, depending on your particular kinks. This, of course, means that every pathetic loser with more enthusiasm than talent now has the opportunity to see their poorly plotted, badly spelled, childishly written manuscript in print. Including me!

So, you will soon (very, very soon) have the opportunity, if you so choose, to own, like, a real, damn book written by me.

“But,” you may ask, “Arthbard, I’m extremely cheap, poor, and/or illiterate. What about me!”

Well, luckily for you, that’s no problem … Except maybe for the illiteracy. That I can’t help you with. As for the lack of money or unwillingness to spend of it, however, you’re pretty much covered. Turns out, I’m kind of inspired by the Jonathan Coulton business model. Because, see, while Coulton does sell his music through paid downloads–and even CD sales–he also publishes it under a Creative Commons license, allowing his fans to share his songs in all the ways more traditional music publishers have spent a lot of money to fail to keep people from doing. For those who’ve acquired music through alternative, non-paying means, Coulton offers the option for them to donate money if they so choose, with the caveat that, if they don’t so choose, it would at least be nice if they’d consider sharing some of that free music with their friends.

So, this is more or less my plan. The book will be available to order in print form. If you buy it, yay! Thanks! I hope you enjoy it! If you choose to download it, there will also be a link to donate an amount of cash of your own choosing. If you click that link, thanks, again, and I still hope you enjoy it! If you choose not to click that link, I hope you enjoy it, anyway! Thanks for even taking the trouble to read the damn thing in the first place! If you choose not to read it, then fuck you! … Nah, that’s okay, you don’t really have to read it if you don’t want to. But you’re still encouraged to tell everybody you know about this totally awesome book you were too lazy to read and let them know that they should really totally buy it, like, seriously now.

Anyway, the book will be available later this week. In the mean time, in the interest of drumming up whatever little bit of enthusiasm I can in the hearts of however few people care, here’s the first couple of chapters of

The Kanteron Chronicles

By J.N. White

(more…)

posted by arthbard at 4:51 pm on Sunday, July 20, 2008

Labels: Behind the Scenes, Non-Humor

[ 4 comments ]

I’ve seen this warning, or some variation of it, on every toothpaste container I’ve ever bothered to look for it on. “If more than used for brushing is accidentally swallowed, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away.”

Right. You shouldn’t swallow a whole mess of toothpaste. I get it. That makes sense. But here’s what I really want to know: How in the hell do you accidentally swallow more than used for brushing?

I mean, really … I just don’t understand how that’s even possible. Sure, I mean, I can see swallowing up to and including the amount used for brushing, but if you swallow any more than that, you can no longer reasonably be said to be doing so accidentally. You’re obviously making a concentrated effort at it.

I mean … What the shit do they think we’re doing with toothpaste?

Anyway, there’s a similar warning on bottles of Listerine … That is, similar both in content and in the degree of bafflement it causes in me.

Again, if you swallow more Listerine than you’d normally use for rinsing, the act has clearly been premeditated. Which, I guess, is technically okay, at least according to the label. It only warns against swallowing too much inadvertently. I guess if you’re going out of your way to swallow Listerine, they just assume you must know what you’re doing.

Of course, the irony here is that, typically speaking, I’d have absolutely no desire to swallow Listerine–I mean, it’s not exactly pleasant even just swishing it around in your mouth briefly. But after reading that warning … It really makes me wonder what would happen if one were to drink a whole bottle of Listerine. I have this strong, bizarre curiosity that wasn’t there before … An intense inquisitiveness, and it’s burning a hole in my … That is … Well, I’m really fucking curious, is all.

So, anyway, if you never hear from me again, please sue the Pfizer corporation in my memory.

Here’s their contact information:

Pfizer Inc
235 East 42nd Street
New York, NY 10017
USA

Phone: 1-212-733-2323

posted by arthbard at 6:49 pm on Sunday, June 29, 2008

Labels: Humor

[ 2 comments ]

I’ve actually had a Flickr account for a while, now, but I’ve never really used it for much. I just got a new digital camera, though, and had to take the opportunity to take pictures of some of the local nature. The good thing about this is that I didn’t even have to go anywhere. I can pretty much walk right out of my front door and, boom, trees. Pretty groovy.

Anyway, having taken some pictures, I was suddenly struck with the urge to do something with some of them. So, Flickr.

In taking these photos, I realized there were a few with a certain, shall we say, theme. One of the things I played with was my camera’s “macro” mode, the point of which being that you can stick it right up close to something to get a very close-up photo. Super. But it got me thinking …

If you want to take artsy-looking pictures, this is pretty much all you have to do. You just stick the camera right up close to something–it can even be something mundane and boring, doesn’t matter–and take an extreme close-up of it, preferably with the background behind said object all fuzzy and out-of-focus. Just keep doing this and … Tada! You’re an artist!

Here are some of my samples exploiting this technique.

This weird, knobby stick thing I found growing out of a tree is one of my favorites, because, if you look at the right-hand side, you can see something that vaguely resembles a creepy, upside-down skull face.

This is, of course, one of the major differences between myself and some other people. I look at this and see a creepy upside-down skull face. Because I’m more or less an atheist. A Christian would have just assumed any image growing in the side of a tree must be that of Jesus. They would have declared it a miracle, called all the local churches, contacted the media, and the stick would probably have been printed in a couple of tabloids. But, no. I just see an upside-down skull.

Anyway, this picture also illustrates another aspect of arty photos: Don’t frame the subject in the center. No. Framing things in the middle of the picture is for people taking crappy vacation snapshots. For artists, what you want to do is frame it off-center. Pretend you don’t even care that an interesting-looking stick is even there. Not caring makes you look cool. You want to give people the impression that you were just out to take a blurry picture of the backdrop, and, what do ya’ know, that stick just happened to be there, precisely positioned to just happen to be in perfect focus.

This is my other favorite. It’s also a stick, but it’s not even an interesting one. This is pretty much a perfect illustration of the whole theme of my post. It’s a twig. It just happened to be there, hanging down from a branch overhead. There’s nothing notable about it. In fact, there’s this great, big, interesting landscape right behind, but, no, I focused on the twig.

This makes people think. They ask themselves, “Why on Earth would this obviously gifted photographer take a picture of this twig? Why would he ignore the great scenery behind it?” Their minds then run wild, and they start inventing all sorts of theories. They ultimately decide that the picture of the twig is a brilliant metaphor for human life, as people become so caught up in the bad, the unpleasant, the everyday humdrummity of life–unduly focusing in on the twig, as it were–that they completely ignore the wonderful aspects of life and the beauty of the world around them–a la, the great, big, blurry background.

They would then probably give me some kind of award and offer me a lot of money for my picture. Which would be a little silly since I can print out as many of these fuckers as I want, so it’s not like they’d be getting a one-of-a-kind painting or anything. But, they’d pay that money anyway, buy a print, hang it on their wall, and explain to all visitors about the subtlety of the composition and the profundity of the underlying themes.

… But really, the twig was just getting in the way of my big, pretty landscape, so I took a picture of it, instead.

Since I’ve got this stuff on Flickr, I reckon you can always go there if you care to see more of my crappy photography. There may even be more of my crappy photography there in the future, depending on if I feel like it at the time.

posted by arthbard at 9:12 pm on Friday, June 20, 2008

Labels: Humor

[ 6 comments ]