Supour Heroues

First: I’m the bloody Batgent, guv’na!

Then: Spider-Lad, Spider-Lad, does what ever is not unbecoming of a Spider-Lad to do!

Lord Clark, of Kent.

And now…

Look, up in the air, it’s a parrot! It’s a sky lorry! No, it’s – Superbloke!

What in the name of god’s three color butt hole is going on here!?

Batman, Superman, Spider-Man. Three fictional AMERICAN super heroes and champions of Gotham City, Metropolis and New York, three fictional AMERICAN cities! So why then I ask you, true believers, are they all now being portrayed in our cineplexes and flicker show houses by a bunch of freedom hating, beef boiling, soggy english twats!?

Just announced yesterday, old world imperialist actor Henry Cavill has been cast to play Superman in the franchise re-boot “Man of Steel” set to debut December 2012. This pasty muncher, best known for his roles in “The Tudors” and the upcoming Greed god epic “Immortals”, meaning unknown to most right thinking Americans, apparently specializes in the portrayal of fictionalized European demigods. And now HE is who will be standing up for all to see as a beacon of “Truth, Justice and the AMERICAN way”?! It is for SHAME!

Now, I realize that I am the only one who is going to be brave enough to stand up to this injustice (league) and call it out for what it is. But I’m used to taking unpopular stands for those who are afraid to speak up against the (masters of) evil of this world. And I say to you, here and now, that this, British actors, with their extra vowels and distracting distortion of god’s American English language, playing the roles of iconic American folk heroes, is nothing short of socially acceptable, twenty-first century black face! That’s right! I said it, and no, I do not believe that I am at all over stating the severity of this slight in even the tiniest little bit. It’s like seeing Spider-Man played in black face! (Not to be confused with black Spider-Man which was played by a white man, but an AMERICAN white man.)

Pip, pip. There's a good lad.

So today, we have boat loads of swarthy British actors, washing up on our shores, carrying with them all of their filth and disease and acting trophies. They smear on a little American accent and toss about “y’all”s and “ain’t”s with the insensitivity of a watermelon grin. These despicable opportunists pause but for only a moment from their usual dabbing of their cheeks with fine cream filled puffed pastry or the swatting away at the unwashed peasantry just long enough to dirty their fine porcelain hands in the art of stealing money from starving American actors like George Clooney, Tobey Maguire and Brandon Routh! They put on the old soft shoe and play act as “Americans” and it’s all forgiven, their grotesque little minstrel show is all accepted as good-natured and all in good fun, when in reality it is a direct insult to all Americans and our very ancient and proud way of life!

If this is all just payback for Robert Downey Jr.’s terrible British accent in the new Sherlock Holmes, fine, we get it, fair is fair, but enough is enough!

And all of this comes, not co-incidentally, as America faces harrowing economic hardship. Unemployment is at a staggering 114% and one in seven American actors is forcibly fed to the other six to ensure the very survival of the species! Yet now in our most dire of need, elitist, effeminate, atheist Hollywood directors and producers, rather than make a stand and support the fine country that has given them every opportunity in the world to destroy the very moral fabric of our society, instead take the liberty to yank down the emaciated Uncle Sam’s be-striped trousers and point and laugh at his once strong and turgid, but now limp and flaccid economy. They are shipping away the last of our entertainment industry jobs to their art house, mayo dipped fry chomping, tea swilling British bastard co-conspirators!

I for one will not stand idly by as the greatest of our uniquely American heroes are swallowed up, one by one, by the gaping maw of the so called ”mother land”. I will be protesting each and every one of these abominations until the roles are relinquished from the squishy pale hands of these usurpers and returned to the squishy artificially tanned hands of America’s finest acting forces.

Unless of course they turn out to be really good. Then what can I do?

Terrorific!

The Department of Homeland Security, the guys responsible for you having to mail yourself your own deoderant and the reason you have an entire hall closet dedicated to your plastic sheeting and duct tape storage, announced this week that they will begin phasing out their color coded terror alert system, and doing away with it completely by April of this year.

Safety rainbow.

This proud, noble system, that has for so long kept us safe and sound, secure in the knowledge that we must remain ever elevated or risk some flag hating desert bastard blowing up our freedom! Because never in it’s long history did this advisory ever dip into the guarded blue or low green. If we were to perform our duty as fear abiding Americans we needed to know at all times that there was at best always the significant risk of an attack any where, at any time. Boo! Mother fucker! BOO! So simplistic in design that even the most American of us could understand it, the color coded advisory system became the very symbol of our global war on terrorism and it’s resounding success.

So, with our total and unquestioned victory over terror and the agents thereof it is time now to retire this glorious symbol of American fear. But what then will fill the fear void? Where will we look to next to know exactly how affraid we should be and what color, shape or symbol will most accurately encapsulate that ever present low level hum of fear in the back of our heads that we couldn’t possibly live without?

Well, Van Full of Candy is proud to announce that we have been contracted by the Unites States Government to devise a new replacement system of terrorfying you, the general public.

We take this contract very seriously. We thought what better way to get the word out than with daytime television and the stay at home moms, retired ladies, and the unfortunately unemployed women who watch them. With the vast amount of play dates, and the networking of moms everywhere, this was the only rational solution we could come up with based on the few hours of scientific research and blindfolded dart throwing we did at our facilities. VFoC presents the Kitchen Utensil Daytime TV Advisory System with Commercials:

Terror Threat 5: Slightly annoyed to be interrupted (Very Low Threat)

This threat will be shown to housewives who are watching the PBS hit-show “Quilt In a Day”. The threat will be verified by flashing a wire wisk in the lower right hand corner for 20 seconds and playing “Happy Days are Here Again” by Barbra Streisand.

Terror Threat 4: A bit agitated, enough to sigh out loud (Just a Regular Everyday Risk of Threat)

If a stay at home mom is at home for the afternoon enjoying Cindy Crawford’s “Meaningful Beauty” infomercial and a KitchenAid Mixer appears in the top left hand corner, then she is to understand that the everyday normal schmormal terror risk is in effect. Nothing to do, just be aware and possibly call her mother in law to inform her.

Terror Threat 3: Really starting to get irked, standing with hands on hips (Terror is starting to get serious now)

When a soccer mom gets interrupted from her show “She’s Crafty”, you know things are getting serious. A turkey baster spins in the center of the screen and Savage Garden’s “Truly Madly Deeply” begins to play at a louder volume than in Terror Threat 5.

Terror Threat 2: Full Blown Pissed Off Now (Terror is right down the street)

When unemployed haus frau’s get interrupted from their Judge Joe Brown show, you know that shit is starting to go down. Corn cob holders quickly fly across the screen, Judge Brown hides under his desk, “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gainer blasts as loudly as a commercial’s volume, and car’s alarm systems begin to blare. This is when things start to get ugly.

Terror Threat 1: Mad as hell and rolling her neck (Terrorists are calling your phone from inside the house)

Oh lawrd Jesus, mama just got severed from her Days of Our Lives show and the image of a bottle of wine appears on the screen. No music, no flashing, no nothing. All hell has broke loose and she’s fittin’ to rip somebody’s neck out. Everyone will be alerted of the terror by her screaming out the open window “OH NO THEY DIH’INT!!”  God speed terrorists, God speed!

Then, with this new threat level system in place, we decided to tackle what we thought the previous system was dangerously lacking. You see, when the inevitable does happens (and it will, don’t you forget it, oh, and Boo!) and we are powerless to stop the very fear we’ve been conditioning you to wet yourselves at the thought of, you need to be informed, and at the same time, calmed. Fear is alright when there’s really nothing to actually be afraid of, but when something scary does finally happen, you need to be soothed and distracted or in your panic you might finally realize that we have only successfully kept you on edge and afraid while having no real ability or desire to actually prevent that which we were frightening you with.

To that end, Van Full of Candy presents:

Cat-astrophe Pals!

Cuddly, adorable, easy to recognize and understand, these furry little indicators will help you instantly recognize exactly which apocalyptic event has struck our shores. Who’ll have time to worry about the billion strong, red Chinese army that’s marching through the streets of downtown when these precious little things break the news?

A long forcasted, slow moving storm has come ashore, destroying much of a beloved national treasure. Steps that could have been easily taken to avoid this tragedy were ignored and the potential for this level of devastation was scoffed at by all who could have done something. The city is now populated exclusively by the drowned and the drowning. Help may or may not arrive in approximately 12-16 business days.

Kitteh Says: I don’t doggy paddle, I KITTY paddle!

A commercial jet has been detonated in the sky over a major metropolitan city by the explosives rigged religious garment of a passenger who, while having been placed on the no fly list eight years ago was not subjected to an invasive pat down for fear of the appearance of and subsequent lawsuit for racial profiling. All of the passengers and crew have been immediately lost, with the flaming debris raining down on the city below likely to claim countless others.

Kitteh Says: It’s okay, let’s snuggle!

During a hugely attended celebration, a mid sized passenger van explodes. The vehicle is packed with highly sophisticated home made explosives, nuclear waste material and a highly virulent biological agent. Those within the immediate blast radius are killed instantly and will later be referred to as “the luckiest people ever”. Over the next several months as the radiation and virus are carried through the atmosphere the death toll will be comically astronomical with each infected man woman and child begging for death to finally take them.

Kitteh Says: We heart you!

Racial tensions have finally come to a head with the wholesale slaughter of minority children by the “Soldiers of Purity”. The natural, understandable retaliation has sent the nation into an unending spiral of race warfare that after centuries of silent seething, now has no intention of being sated by anything short of the final drop of mongrel blood. Only when the land is pure, when none but the single victor race remains, then and only then, will there be momentary peace before we immediately find something else to hate about each other.

Kitteh Says: Good thing we’re both dolphins, huh?

The skies have opened and He has return to His Earth, and the followers whom He Himself promised He would someday deliver to their final reward, simply for accepting Him as their one true Lord, rejoice. Unfortunately some of the translations from the original scripture seem to have been less than entirely accurate as the Lord of Lords commands all of those that believed to rise from their graves, unleashing his undead army on the unclean non-believers. The Lamb’s grisly legion are impossibly fast and strong, easily tearing through the living flesh of those who have turned their eye from Him. The horrors cover the globe, with the pleas of the victims only being drowned out by the mirthless cackling of those believers slowly rising into the heavens in a softly glowing beam of light.

Kitteh Says: I have not forsaken you oh Lord! I am your staff of light! The heads of the heathens shall be cleaved from their wretched bodies!

And there you have it, fear is saved, you’re welcome. We at Van Full of Candy look forward to keeping you updated on exactly what you should fear next, as soon as we can make it up. Keep watching the skies!

You call THAT parenting? “F-”

Wake up sleepy head, time to crush your soul.

You wake up every morning at 4:30 am. Creeping quietly through your small, leaky two bedroom apartment, you put together lunches for your two children, girl child, age six and male boy kid, age 8, both students at the same central Florida elementary school. Packing them into the family hand me down station wagon which now runs solely on your prayers that today isn’t the day it breaks down, you hurry them to Humid Elder Gator Elementary (Go Fighting Sweat!) just in time for them to participate in the free breakfast program for low-income families (assuming those even exist any more) and rush off to your first job of the day.

After putting in your eight hours washing dishes at Admiral Tasty’s Sea Food Eatery (where Admiral Tasty likes his fish like he likes his women, battered!) you rush back to Humid Elder Gator (Sweat it out! Sweat it out! WAAAY OUT!) to be just in time for your kids to have only had to wait a little over a half hour after their last class in the principal’s office for your arrival. Absorbing a disdainful look of contempt you then hurry your family to your second job, a four hour shift at the snack bar in Splitz Lanes Bowling Center (home of the “Splitz Coup”: convert any split and you get a 25 cents off coupon for a Junior Banana Split at Lickity Splitz, the ice creamery attached to the arcade) which sits conveniently only two counties away. The kids keep themselves entertained and maybe do some homework in the daycare center next to the pro shop while you try not to suffocate on the shoe spray fumes from the up wind front desk.

Sneaking a couple of hot dogs that’ve been spinning on the rollers since before you came in for your shift and a rubbery soft pretzel for dinner on the road you haul the kids back home just in time to put them to bed and collapse into yours, all ready to get right back to it again tomorrow morning, a sweet, luxurious six whole hours from now.

And if you’re lucky, your kids’ might bring home a “needs improvement” parent grade from their teacher on their next report card.

Right now, on it’s way through the Florida legislature is a bill that may require public school teachers to grade parents of Kindergarten through third grade students, adding a parent’s grade of “satisfactory”, “unsatisfactory” or “needs improvement” to the child’s report card. The criteria that these grossly negligent monsters will be graded on will be –

– “a child should be at school on time, prepared to learn after a good night’s sleep and have eaten a meal”

– “a child should have the homework done and prepared for examination”

– “there should be regular communication between the parent and teacher”

Again, as stated before I’m not yet a parent, (that any court in the world can prove!)  but I did do my time in the government minimum security juvenile detention system known as “public school” for the entirety of my schooling years. I’ve seen over stuffed classrooms, thirty plus kids to a class in temporary portable buildings that have since become permanent fixtures. Portables that you were so happy to find out you were going to be in for any time because they actually had working heat or air. And here’s a secret for you. Do you know why most children are in public schools? Because their parents can’t afford to send them to private schools.

"That's right, your mother doesn't love you enough."

And now Florida is planning to saddle public school teachers (a paradoxical profession that is simultaneously touted as one of the most important in our society, while at the same time being one of the more commonly acceptably shit upon and neglected professions), with the additional responsibility of telling parents, just shy of total collapse, that they just don’t want it enough? The only thing this will do is shame those who are struggling most to do their best.

Most of those who will be graded superbly will puff up their chests at what a spectacular parent they really are, momentarily hiding their disdain for the nanny that raises their child for them. While many of those graded poorly will either not see it because they don’t give a shit and even if they did are well beyond the point of being shamed by an afterthought addition to an elementary school report card. Or they will in still many other cases, take it as a welcome opportunity to indignantly question if you’re trying to tell them how to raise their child. It’s the working poor who bust their ass every day that will be the most effected and they really don’t need one more outlet telling them how they’re failing their children by making sure they’re not homeless.

Just to be clear, I completely agree that parents have some responsibility for their child’s education. And until we can have algebra and regionally stilted versions of history injected directly into our face by sexy robot school nurses, it’s up to parents to help children temporarily retain enough facts and figures for them to be let loose on the adult world whether or not they’ve actually learned anything applicable to said world or not. Public schools are less a place of education now a days than a holding pen to keep our wild off spring from running rough shot through our food courts and amusement centers for the day with the after effect of begrudgingly teaching them the basics grunts and clicks of their local language, you know, since they’re there any way.

I blame child labor laws.

But in the end, the only person benefitting in any way from something like this will be the legislator who introduced it in the first place. She gets to say that she’s an education candidate, a champion for the little children and that she cares more about you and your family and the future of the human race than her opponent. Ultimately, that’s exactly all that is going to come out of something as hollow and pointless as this idea is. Class dismissed.

It’s a LUSH Li(f)e

If you find wallet rape offensive, then please, change the channel right now!

My olfactory system was overcome with an overabundance of fruity jungle’ness, lemongrass, vanilla and hints of relaxation. One would think that by the thickness of the aroma that I was actually marinating in a bubbling tub of potpourri right here in the middle of the mall. I was actually three stores away, just passing a Build-a-Bear, when I noticed the foam green, chamomile/lavender stench-fog spewing from another retailer not less than 20 yards on my right.

Who's ready for their $13 bath?

Was this a reincarnation of the long defunct Illuminations candle store? I was confused. I kept watching as this stench-fog slowly came after me, enveloped me, and then gently carried me inside to what I can best describe as a caffeine induced fit of adult Candy Land slumber-partyness. I was greeted by smiles and dancing and the immediate attention of complete strangers wanting to wash me and anoint me with their biblical oils of healing and Zen. I had just entered … LUSH … and from what I can tell, I wasn’t getting away any time soon.

The products looked like yummy cookies and candies and cake frosting all for my very own enjoyment. Every color of the rainbow and every smell imaginable. It was the Willy Wonka of skincare and aromatherapy. Before I knew it, I had a Bath-Bomb contact high as a rolled around on the facial cleanser table like a dog who just found a certain smell in the grass. My arms were being exfoliated and my forehead was being moisturized while happy salespeople bounced around singing the latest happy-song being blasted over their Muzak system. Holy Lord, where have you been all my life LUSH? Why have I never been encapsulated in your peppermint love haze before when making a quick jaunt to the Apple store? I was in a butter cream, lemon fizz, mimosa blossom orgasmic state of mind when I was asked what I would like to purchase. “GIVE … ME … EVERYTHING!!” I exalted to the heavens like a gladiator who had just slain the lions. “EVERYTHING!! … I COMMAND YOU!!”. After the salespeople helped me down from the table in the display window, they guided me over to the table of reckoning where they asked me for my credit card.  Gladly I handed it over to them so that I could quickly get home with my bounty to recreate this dream again in the privacy of my own lavatory.

LUSH's new 12 step program for getting off their smack

What’s this? $76.44?!?! Dost mine ears deceive me? I quickly snapped out of my fool’s paradise and into the stark reality that my senses had been bamboozled into buying little plastic buckets of oatmeal mixed with tea for $50/lb. I was mortified. What do I do? They tricked me, these charlatans. Why would I pay so much for a quick shower when I could easily get a pound of Brie de Meaux for only $17.61/lb or even some Biellese Salumeria Lamb Prosciutto for $29.50/lb. Or even better, I could get a pound of both for $47.11 and eat my way into a gastronomic coma. How could they do this to me?

They say a sucker is born every minute, and, well, this sucker is soaking in a Dreamtime Bath Melt while enjoying another spread of Brie on a Carr’s whole wheat cracker. Cheers!

MTV Caught You Looking… Again.

Penis.

Ooooh, aren’t you outraged? Of course you are. You want to know why? Because I just said you were. And that’s all it takes. We’re off and running.

You’ve likely never seen my penis, the majority of you have never even had one of your own to never be spoken of. But I just said “penis” in public, and now you feel like you should be uncomfortable? Why? Because that’s what you’re told you’re supposed to feel, so why wouldn’t you?

America loves epidermis!

The Music Television channel, which hasn’t played music for probably almost as long as it HAD played music, knows how to play the free advertising game. Last week they debuted a new regurgitation of yet another British television series, “Skins”. “Skins”, in both incarnations, tells the story of high school kids and their genitalia. Also, that adults are stupid, young people rule the world with an endless string of “fucking” innuendo and the popular kids are doin’ it, right now, as we speak.

Parents hate this kind of shit.

Now, I had entertained the thought of reviewing “Skins” last week, expecting it would be exactly what it was, a horrible, horrible show. Instead I decided to skip it, choosing instead to get my soft core teen nudity and back arching where every other red-blooded American gets it: everywhere else. But then “controversy” and “outrage” began to spring up, so I thought I’d take a little peek, because I enjoy nothing more than what angers idiots.

But you see what you did, you ridiculous protesty busy bodies, you gave a show, that would have otherwise gone unnoticed and disappeared rather unceremoniously, a gigantic buzz that MTV couldn’t have afforded to buy on their own. And you know what? They were counting on it.

Music Television knows what they’re doing, they’ve been at the forefront of pissing you off to make you tell people that they shouldn’t watch something so that they’ll watch it technology for years. This time they just used scantily clad teens (again) and our natural but frowned upon want thereof. Now parents groups are stomping their feet and making fools of themselves, which causes the natural, knee jerk reaction of sponsors, who were COUNTING on people’s want to see scantily clad teens, but are now forced to pretend they had no idea that a show about drug fueled underage humping would somehow involve drug fueled under age humping. The list of sponsors who have now pulled their ads from the show includes Subway, Wrigley, Taco Bell, H & R Block and General Motors, all pretending they agree with you and that this smut they wanted their products to be seen associated with was only supposed to be associated with it as long as you didn’t notice it was associated with it. Of course, these sponsors pulling out (oh the punularity) aren’t going to hurt this show, because MTV has already budgeted for mock outrage, it’s standard on every MTV production ledger.

These teens totally want to bang you, adult viewer.

I’m not a parent myself, nor was I particularly promiscuous in high school, it would even be safe to say that I was very much your best description of the opposite of what ever that thing might be. But I was there and I, like many of you, spent upwards of seven years in my teens, and know that while our experiences may have varied, it was usually understood that at some point, many of us took our new parts for a test drive. The parents behind these groups that want you to believe that Jesus created the penis to be used only once and only to make another smaller version of you and then never be spoken of again. The Parents Television Council is made up almost entirely of former frustrated teens who were excluded from the genital exchange that went on at their schools.

The simple fact of the matter is teens want to put their parts in other teens, it’s biology, it’s what puberty was invented for. It was a way for our bodies to signal to our brains that we are done cooking and are now ready to begin procreation before three fifths of us freeze to death when the sun hides for many moon, or before we’re eaten by a sabre toothed ground squirrel. It’s “civilization” that’s told us that what our bodies know naturally is wrong. So now that we live eight times longer than when we were wearing the all natural fibers of yesterday’s lunch and someone told us an invisible man wags his finger at you when you don’t do it exactly like he likes, we’ve got people telling us we shouldn’t do what kept us alive long enough to have a past that we must now be ashamed of.

Teens want to frolic naked with others no more today than when the first teen was discovered, approximately twelve years after the birth of the first child. Adults have changed. Adults now spend all of their time telling other adults that they should be afraid of every damned thing that exists. You get told something long enough, no matter how stupid, and you’re forced to believe it. So now it’s universally accepted that kids today are having more sex than ever and that we should be protecting them or they might just die from fun. We live in a world where when you give birth to a child, all of your toilets are fitted with locks. It’s not that today’s babies enjoy toilets more than ever, it’s because we just have too damned much time on our hands.

Just know angry parents, that you’ve been played again. It’s not your fault. Well, yes it is, but it’s just so easy. It doesn’t take any creativity to get a small group of people to convince a larger group of people that something they’ve never even seen is super offensive and shouldn’t exist any more. This is just the latest example. And rest assured, it’ll happen again when a channel finds itself in need of quick and dirty publicity and doesn’t care how it gets it (lookin’ at you Spike), and we’ll all be right back here once again, yelling about how we must protect the children all while they’re at home, totally doin’ it in your bed and with your ground up pain killers caking their gums.

Good night perfect parents, where ever you are.

An Open Letter To My Downstairs Neighbor

Dear Downstairs Neighbor,

Good day. I’m your upstairs neighbor. We don’t really know each other except for the occasional passing by when we both leave our houses at the same time and the quick uncomfortable hand raise with a cordial “Hi”.  We’ve also crossed paths a couple of times over at the community mailbox area, and that was kind of awkward too since you recycle junk mail and I just toss it in the conveniently provided trash receptacle.

Well I just needed to ask you something. Was it intentional? The placement? The timing?

Come on down ... I dare you!

The other day when I was getting ready to go for a drive, I saw this … well … area rug I guess? I was really startled and didn’t know what to do. It seems as if you were airing it out, or letting it roar at the sun for a while. Either way, I was frozen in my steps. Perhaps by the pose of the magnificent white giant, or because maybe the tiger was lounging in a different universe as depicted by the planets in the background. How was I going to get past this monstrosity without being mauled? How could I sneak by without stepping on it and falling into a magical 3^rd-dimension in his magical esophagus? Coupled by the fact that the blue bathroom carpet was seemingly intentionally placed as a secondary blockage. Maybe I could use the blue carpet as a launching pad with a good run. I did take track & field in junior high, and did do pretty well in the triple jump, so possibly my form would carry me over the white death and safely to the concrete on the other side.  Perhaps I could repel straight down with sheets tied together or better yet, low-crawl through the shrubbery directly next to the large feline, even though that would put me at greater risk being in such a vulnerable position.

In my moment of feeling how we are just two different people on the spectrum of normalcy, something occurred to me. We’re not that different. Actually we are eerily similar. I ran back inside the house and found something that I had long forgot about, tucked away in a bottom drawer. I put it on. The magic was back, I felt as if nothing could get in my way. My glorious cloak of ROAAR! that would grant me, and only me, safe travel past the gatekeeper below. I calmly walked down the stairs and past the lovely tiger to my van with nary a scratch.

I fear not in my Cloak of ROAAR!

Who would have known that two separate people from two different places in this world would end up living right on top and below each other with the same love for white jungle cats? You are the Siegfried to my Roy.

Signed,

Not so scared anymore upstairs neighbor

What’s Haunting You?

As North America’s foremost certified amateur paranormal investigators (one of the litany of things you have to register for when you buy a windowless van), we at Van Full of Candy feel that it is our sacred responsibility to help safe guard you, our valued fans as best we can from the scourges of your own potentially haunted personal effects. As such, we are here to share some of our hard-earned supernatural knowledge of which of your household items are likely to be haunted by a spirit from the other side. We have devised an easy to understand formula based on the severity and frequency of post mortem activity which we have associated with a ranking on a 100 point scale, with one being least likely to 100, almost certain.

The irony, the house in the painting IS haunted.

Thomas Kinkaid Paintings
 
Thomas Kinkaid, the “Painter of Light” in all respects should have one of the higher haunt factors with his paintings. However, they do not expel any signs of haunty’ness or paranormal activity. The only real haunting these paintings do is disgrace one’s living room or formal dining area.  There are rumors however that people “see the light” in his paintings when they are having near death experiences or stare at them too long.
 
Haunt Probability: 2

 

Rustle, rustle.

Waffle Iron

Most common house hold waffle irons are relatively ghost free, in fact, most breakfast preparation specific small appliances are. Usually the only time a spirit chooses to inhabit a waffle iron for all of eternity is if they were a tree, perhaps hoping to damn all of those who would use their delicious blood to top their breakfasty goodness. But even in those rare occasions, trees are generally one of the quieter haunters, customarily identified by a gentle rustling sound.

Haunt Probability: 6

 

King Tutincoffeetable

Stolen Pharoah’s Sarcophagus

I know, most of us have thought about filching an ancient Egyptian king’s coffin at least once or twice in our lives, and the only thing that has deterred us up to this point has been the legends of the great Pharoah curses. Well, one of the other lesser known things that the Egyptians invented, was hype. Very few sarcophagi are in actuality, haunted. I “own” 14 personally, and the only time my walls have bled in the middle of the night was when I made them. So fret not, daring interior decorator, a shiny golden box in the middle of your living room makes a great conversation piece, and there isn’t a beverage known to man that will leave rings on it.

Haunt Probability:  11

 

Resting at peace.

Soft Toilet Seats
 
The comfort of a cushion beneath our hind quarters while taking a wiz or a nice healthy BM, can be both comfortable and somewhat unnerving.  What we’ve found in our extensive research in the haunting of this item, is that the seats which were any other color than white, had any sort of embroidery, or any kind of cracks in the cushion cover were, in most cases, slightly haunted. The regular white cushions were completely haunt free.
 
Haunt Probability: 30

 

Twenty minutes before running out and dragging it all back in.

Ex-girlfriend’s Shit

That dirty, cheating, cunt whore slut of a cunt! You’ve tried a dozen times to haul her boxes of shit out onto the lawn and burn it or toss it in a wood chipper or mail it back to her with a very delicately worded note, trying to make sure that she knows just how much she hurt you and that you know you can put it all behind you and move on. That we can make this better if you’d just give me one more chance! Please, just call me! I can’t sleep, I don’t eat. I haven’t showered in a month and a half! Why did you do this to me!? Fuck you! You know what? I’m gonna fucking burn this shit! I swear to fucking Christ Almighty I am going to burn this shit to cinders and dance around the pyre, a free man, moving on and taking my life back! … Is that the phone? Don’t hang up, don’t hang up, don’t hang up!

Haunt Probability: 42

 

Boo! Ha-ha, but seriously BOO!

Knick-Knack, Chachki, Brick-a-brack

These small glazed porcelain mantle bound figurines are one of the most haunted items in the suburban home. What exactly makes them such a welcome after life hang out is not entirely known. Is it the porous nature of the porcelain, the style or type of glossy glaze or simply the dead punishing the living for owning such creepy ass pieces of useless. Our best guess is that it’s the figurine’s perfect storm of material and form that create a natural phantom trap. That, combined with the inherent heirloom properties of the items leads to them invariably capturing soul after soul, generation after generation. As many observers have noted, any time a Hummel is shattered, it is accompanied by the sounds of the howling of the damned for no less than three business days. 

Haunt Probability: 94

 

Electric Horse Brain!

Animal Shaped Furniture
 
Any animal shaped furniture, whether it’s a side-table, lamp or footrest, these items are most definitely haunted. It is a different kind of haunting than we’re accustomed to in modern-day haunt fare.  Instead of the regular moaning or chains rattling, the animal furniture haunting consists of jungle sounds, drinking from toilets and a migration through ones hallway, ending in the kitchen.  During the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt is where we find our first furniture styled in the way of an animal.  It was the Egyptian Bed. The wooden framework stood on “animal shaped legs”. They used to come to life and walk away, and that’s where it all started.
 
Haunt Probability: 97

 

GET OUT!

The Doily
 
Doilies are ornamental mats from a 17th century London draper.  They are usually used as a buffer to place trinkets on (see Knick-Knack, Chachki, Brick-a-Brack above) without scratching wooden furniture and are also found on the backs of couches and Lazy-Boy’s.  The haunt factor readings for this completely unnecessary house product were off the charts, and by the looks alone, we weren’t surprised. Any doily in any house, completely haunted, period.
 
Haunt Probability: 110
When coupled with Knick-Knacks: 204

TV Review: “Retired at 35″

Like entertainment, only not!

There’s a reason the situation comedy is dead, and “Retired at 35” is it. That is not to say that this show is solely responsible for the death of an entire genre of television, though sure, I just made it sound like it is. In fact, “Retired at 35” is probably one of the better versions of this show that I’ve seen. But there’s a problem inherent in that statement.

So, I’ve discovered that TV Land, cable station channel 629 on your local dial, has started producing “original” programming. Those of you not familiar with TV Land, I’ll make it easy for you, if it was on 50 years ago, it’s on again on TV Land. As such the average median age of a TV Land viewer is approximately mummified, so these new sit-coms not surprisingly, center around the premise of old people being a creepy, bitter hoot. You see, old people are just like you and me, those that have something left to live for, except everything they do that we do is kind of gross and sad.

“Retired at 35” is the story of a wormy New York middle management execu-something of an anonymous company that comically produces food based stick items, your toothpicks and popsicle sticks and what have you. This hysterical eating accessory tycoon for some reason makes the trip all the way down to visit his parents in Florida, naturally, for his mother’s umpteenth birthday. It’s during this birthday celebration that our hero quits his job (not a formal declaration of retirement as the shows future promos seem to indicate that he will then be looking for a job, making the entire show based on a seemingly random lie) that somehow inspires his mother to leave his father and their loveless marriage that had somehow managed to only hold together as long as no one did anything pointless and impulsive in front of them.

The rest of the episode then centers around this quitter son trying to set up his nonsensically separated father with elder poon, hunting said wrinkly gash at the local bingo hall, naturally, and in a “comical” twist of fate, bedding said blotter bimbo himself.

And while somewhat amped up with “edgy”, “mature”, “humor”, if this all sounds terribly familiar, and terribly terrible, it should. Shows like these are what make it so easy to see when something interesting and original comes along because it looks nothing like this.

Me am on ABC Family next Fall!

Now, television is not an exact science, no one knows exactly how it’s supposed to be done. But the fact that this program will be gone next year, and all of the time and money that will have been wasted on this soon forgotten collection of cliché, just like the one before and the one before that, should be some kind of clue that this isn’t the best path to results. If television WERE a science, and someone was given a grant for an experiment that produced a form of life, so without the sustainable elements OF life that it would whither away within a couple months time after writhing in such agony that it’s very existence seemed to be meant as nothing more than an affront to every god that man has ever believed in. Then that scientist came back next year asking for another grotesque amount of money to recreate that exact experiment, only this time this abortion of television science would be a truck stop short order cook with a sassy Asian neighbor, that scientist would be asked to leave and to never be allowed to science again. For his safety and ours. But the folks that put together this program are the same that put together the last one and will be the same to put together the next one. It’s a creative gene pool so thin and diluted that it’s a wonder that any of their offspring survive at all.

But fear not gentle viewer, as the television landscape continues to stretch farther and farther, well beyond it’s breaking point, more of these shows will be forced to be made to fill the gasping void of programming hours and we’ll all get to relive this exact same tired, threadbare premise again and again… Wait, did I say fear not? I’m sorry, I meant, weep for the medium, because soon all that’ll be left is TV cameras following annoying people with pitiable lives that should never be shared with anyone. And won’t that be fun?

Rappers Still Makin’ That Cheddah

Sellin' headphones and still lookin' gangsta

So as the piracy of songs increases and the millions of dollars decrease for music artists, some of them have decided to fight back. Rappers in particular.

The new turf war is on, and this time instead of spittin’ lyrics, and dissin’ which coast you’re from, this war is all about what you put over your ears. Headphones. And from what we see, this could get straight up nasty.

Dr. Dre has created Beats by Dr. Dre. These are very high-end headphones so you “can hear the music the way the artists wanted you to hear it” for only $350. Ludacris has his Soul headphones, and recently announced, 50 Cent has his own headphones too, Sleek.

These prices ARE Ludacris

Not to be outdone however, LL Cool J is also joining this “merchandise thang”. Instead of joining the headphone war, LL has decided to do one better by tapping into a new market that, he says, has tons of potential, and he wants to do it before the other rappers decide to follow. LL has decided to go after the shoe market. Nurse’s shoes in particular.

Three Hundred and Fitty Dollars? Dammmm!

Cool J sees the unlimited cash cow with his new footwear, LL’s Nurse Kicks. “These shoes are dope, white and way comfy” (apparently the ONLY thing that is both dope and white). LL says that nurses are on their feet all day; they need something comfy, clean, and gives them some serious hospital swagga. Nurses these days are just walkin’ around all whack with their plain-Jane shoes. They ain’ t got no bounce, no deliciousness. That’s all about to change once these babies are introduced. Nurses will be straight pimpin’ up and down the hospital corridors now.

Ready for some badass hospital swagga?

Another bonus for LL’s Nurse Kicks is that they exercise the calves and give a firmer bootay. Not only will you look dope in these new shoes, you’ll also walk your way to havin’ an onion like J-Lo.

LL’s Nurse Kicks will sell for $49.99 and they will come in white, navy blue, and two shades of taupe.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Celebrity Treatment

Van Full of Candy has been going strong now for well over a week which basically means, I’m pretty much famous now, and as such I expect you to treat me as if I am constructed entirely of deli sliced porcelain egg shells.

Stop it! Stop looking at me!

I am a delicate artiste. I pull from my painful, tragic history to shape and texturalize my performance. I mine feelings and emotions from experiences, sometimes beautiful, most times horrific, to deliver unto you, my adoring public, the most personal and honest portrayal I can deliver. But don’t you ever talk about my past! Don’t you dare! How dare you!? DON’T YOU DARE!

I give and I give and I give, and all I ask for in return is that piles of money be left on my doorstep by an individual that I never see and whom must never see me, and that anything that I have done in the past, present or near future that might be embarrassing to me or could potentially impact the size and quality of my miraculously appearing cash stacks must never be brought back to light once I have courageously been forgiven of them by the easily distracted public.

Every day Van Full of Candy is viewed by tens of people, making it one of the most online web sites in the long storied history of the world-wide internet! I have a personal responsibility to these near score of people to never have any of my gross, childish, irresponsible misdeeds held against me as if I were to be somehow accountable for my actions and their repercussions. As a celebrity I understand that if I were to do something untoward like, say, karate chop an escort in the thorax for calling me by the assumed name that I forgot I told her to refer to me by, that I will have to face the consequence of prolonged television exposure and late night ridicule which will in today’s backward society somehow result in my being even more marketable and desirable, rather than the cautionary tale of unchecked ego and irresponsible enabling by those supposedly charged with protecting my best interests, that it should be. But once I have courageously triumphed over my brief period of ridicule I expect those past misdeeds to never be brought up again in any capacity because it might hurt my ‘iddle feelings. And I think I’ve earned the right to have everyone pretend that they don’t remember that they’ve seen my penis in places society says that it shouldn’t!

I deserve this, I REALLY deserve this!

So when I see my fellow celebrities, coming together for a free meal, to be given awards for pretending to have feelings, only to be ambushed by reminders of their selfish over indulgence, well, it just makes me want to vomit on a Thai prostitute who’s age I continue to refuse to be told! We go to these things (my celebrity brethren and sisthren) to receive trophies from one another for our portrayals of flawed human beings, not to be pointed at and laughed about for things that we have made very careful to erase from the memory of the ticket buying, or link clicking public. Many of us have been forced to do horrible, unspeakable things: family comedies, bullshit fantasy cgi nonsense, to make people forget how much we love hitchhiking lady dudes, or to pay back taxes that we just assumed stopped applying to us once we started being asked for autographs.

If I’d known that I was going to be so outraged by a globally televised stroke session, I would have prepared something. As it is I would just like to thank anyone who would in the future, like to present me with something shiny for something that I did, and to all of those that stood beside me and made this all possible, you will be forgotten and all credit scroungeable will be claimed as my own. Because the second I made it, you all became dead to me. And to the creator for without whom none of this is possible: BOO-YA-KA!