people in darkrooms: a new webcomic

Hey everyone. Sorry that it's been so long since I've posted on Life of a Pastry, but it's all been for a good reason: I've created a new webcomic! The comic is called "people in dark rooms: a webcomic with the lights off," and it updates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm not going to go into details, but you can read the comic yourself at www.peopleindarkrooms.com. Needless to say, I'm going to be really busy with the comic, so unfortunately Life of a Pastry posts are going to be pretty rare from now on. With that in mind I'd like t0 end by thanking you all for reading my little blog, and I hope you guys like "people in dark rooms."

--Pastry

Post the Thirty-Second

Hey everyone. It's summer and I'm jobless, which means LIFE OF A PASTRY IS BACK! I'm back to writing poems, because I got tired of pretending I write for Cracked. Anyway, today's poem is dedicated to anyone who's taken a philosophy class.

A Variation on an Old Story

A professor sits down in his classroom,
ready to give his students their philosophy final.
The final consists of one essay question,
in which the students have to prove
that the professor's chair does not exist.

Most of the students write for the full two hours,
some writing as many as thirty pages
trying to prove that that chair does not exist.
Billy, however, being the most clever student in class,
simply wrote on the exam, "What chair?"
and turned it in to the professor.

The students got all of their exams back,
and Billy noticed he got an F on his,
because a two word essay is clearly too short
for a college-level philosophy exam.
That's what Billy gets for being a smug douche.

--Pastry

You Care Too Much About: Nickelback

Welcome back to Life of a Pastry. Today on You Care Too Much: Nickelback.

------------

Let me make myself clear from the start: I don't much care for Nickelback. Their music is bad, their lyrics are uncreative, and their name confuses me.

Oh.

And that's pretty much all I have to say about Nickelback. This may come as a surprise, but I don't particularly enjoy talking about bands I don't like.

But you know who does? James Fell. According to James' blog, he has "a flair for humor and sarcasm," which must be true because he just said so.

James Fell

Therefore, as a fellow humor-and-sarcasm flair-haver, I have decided to treat myself to some of James' characteristic humor and sarcasm in the form of his modern classic, "Nickelback Sucks Donkey Balls."

Notice, by the way, his website's domain name: BodyForWife.com. While that may sound like a porn site (a trick that was apparently clever enough to draw in at least one visitor), it's actually a website devoted to helping busy husbands get into shape. Some of you may now be worried about James' qualifications as a music reviewer, but have no fear: James "can actually write," and has "first-rate research skills."

Fell starts his article with the following: "And on the eighth day it was Monday again, and God was hung over, and he took a gigantic, steaming dump, and he called that dump Nickelback."

I'm not going to critique Fell's Biblical accuracy; I've never read the Bible, so for all I know it may very well be the case that God shat out an ancient, immortal band that was not to be discovered for thousands of years. But if that's true, is it really an insult? After all, a lot of people would kill to have been spawned directly from the belly of God himself, even if it's in the form of a holy crap.

In fact, I think James has given the guys a hell of a compliment. Apparently, God took a look at the Garden of Eden after seven days and decided that his perfect world was not complete without the existence of Nickelback.

While we're on the subject of confusion, I wanted to give James another piece of advice: using the words "geez" and "fucking" in the same sentence sends mixed messages. Reading that sentence was like seeing Fred Flintstone tell Wilma to suck his dick.

Hey, you. Suck my dick.

But what bugged me most is the story behind why Fell is writing such a tirade against this "pile of pulsating penile puss" in the first place: he was riding in his car one day, and Nickelback came on the radio. He switched stations, but Nickelback was on that station too. Same with the third station he tried. This made him so mad that what he said could not be posted on the internet. (Apparently it was worse than "pile of pulsating penile puss.")

James, I cannot say I know what type of car you drive, nor am I aware of what brand of radio said car is equipped with. However, I can guarantee you that whatever radio you were using at the time had an "off" button of some kind, or at least a volume knob. At no point was anybody forcing you to continue listening to Nickelback.

Sorry officer, but my radio just WOULD NOT SHUT UP.

And this brings me to my main point. The way I see it, James is acting like a preschooler who shoves pretty girls into the sand. He's afraid of what he likes and makes exaggerated gestures showing how much he "hates" it, but in the end those gestures just come off as pathetic. Hell, I bet James is more obsessed with Nickelback than most of their fans.

Besides, this is all your fault to begin with, James: you're the one that chose to live in their hometown. If Nickelback is really a God-turd, that makes Calgary the Asshole of Our Lord, and you should fucking move.

--Pastry

You Care Too Much About: The Dvorak Keyboard

Hey everybody. So I've decided to start a new series on Life of a Pastry, called You Care Too Much. Every week (or several times a week, depending on how much free time I have), I'll write about a website whose author is clearly far more passionate about something than they ought to be. Today on You Care Too Much: the Dvorak Keyboard.

--------------

Dvorak-Keyboard.com starts off promisingly with this quote about its author from PC Magazine:

"Randy Cassingham, a Dvorak keyboard nutball...."

...that's it. That's the quote. Since I don't know how that sentence ends, I have decided to compile an incomplete list of possibilities:

"Randy Cassingham, a Dvorak keyboard nutball..."
...smells like a shit bird wearing an ass hat.
...would hump his computer if it could give consent.
...is holding a gun to my head. Help.

Now that that's done, let's move on to the actual bulk of his page. But first, we need to know what a Dvorak keyboard is.

Look at your keyboard right now. Do it. Now look back up at the screen because this article's not over and you're being disrespectful if I may say so myself. Did you notice how fucking inconveniently your keys are arranged? No? Well Dr. August Dvorak did. Also, as Cassingham makes sure to stress, Dvorak's name is not pronounced like that of 19th century Czech composer Antonin Dvorak, a very important fact because so help me God if it was then this whole thing would be fucking bullshit.

Fuck you.

Anyway, Dvorak spent some time (twelve God-damn years, to be precise) studying the way our hands work and how placing keys on certain parts of the keyboard makes typing that key easier, blah blah blah. Long story short, he invented a keyboard that is, according to many people, more efficient. How much more efficient? Whereas a good typist's fingers will move 20 miles in a day when using a QWERTY keyboard, they will only move one mile a day when using the Dvorak layout, meaning you can search for twenty times as much porn with the same amount of finger effort.

.00003 miles

Now, far be it from me to question "finger-miles" as a valid unit of measurement, but what does that actually mean? If you assume a hand stroke of six inches up and six inches down, four strokes per second, and five fingers per stroke, then congratulations, your jack-off finger-mile time is less than four and a half minutes! So does this mean people are going to start doing finger marathons?

Not what I meant...

No, it doesn't. Because finger-miles are bullshit.

Anyway, now that you know what a Dvorak keyboard is, we can get back to talking about Cassingham's beautiful website. I could spend all day making fun of Randy's "looks like a Word document" web design style, or his childish fear of the word Hell, or the fact that he refers to himself in the third person in an article he himself wrote for his own web page. But the fact is, there's something much more important to talk about.

Scroll down and look at what Cassingham has to say about why Dvorak keyboards are not in popular use. He says that there are members of the General Services Administration (GSA) who have personal "vendettas" against the Dvorak system.

Fucking vendettas.

Listen, Randy. The Corleones and Tattaglias had a vendetta, and bitches died because of it. Same with the Montagues and the Capulets. Same with God and fucking Satan. My point is that having a vendetta requires more bad-assery than anything the GSA could ever muster, so calm down and leave that fucking word alone.

The GSA has decided to stick with QWERTY.

--Pastry

Post the Thirty-First

Hey everybody. Today on Life of a Pastry, I talk about some seriously fucked up shit.

This is Fucked Up

You know how a lot of TV ads
show a family with an 8-year-old son?
Well, a bunch of boys had to have auditioned
to play the son in that commercial.

Seeing as most TV actors are evaluated, in part,
on their physical attractiveness,
for each of those commercials,
there had to have been someone sifting through a pile
of photographs of 8-year-old boys,
judging how hot they are.

--Pastry

Post the Thirtieth

Hey everyone. My laptop is sincerely fucked, so I now have to update Life of a Pastry from the computers at the library until it gets fixed. This unfortunately means no Comics/Image Day (hence why there was no post yesterday), but it shall be replaced with beautiful poetry. And today on Life of a Pastry, I honor this whole incident in haiku form.

Two Haiku for Steve Jobs

Fuck your stupid face.
I'm as fucked as your whore mom.
"I'm a Mac." Fuck off.

Fuck fuck, fuck fuck fuck.
Fuck fuck. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck, fuck. Fuck.

--Pastry

P.S.: Where else but on Life of a Pastry can you get a haiku composed entirely of the word "fuck?" (Probably plenty of places, who knows.)

Post the Twenty-Ninth

Today on Life of a Pastry, I prove that some logicians are assholes.

A Proof that Some Logicians Are Assholes

PREMISE 1:
My friend Dan is a logician.

PREMISE 2:
When I asked Dan
what time the sun would rise tomorrow,
he said, "Dawn."
Ipso facto, Dan is an asshole.

Based on PREMISES 1 and 2,
we can conclude that
∃x(x is a logician, x is an asshole).

--Pastry

P.S.: But I'll be damned if he isn't right every time.

Post the Twenty-Eighth

I've decided I want this site to be more philosophical in nature. (Bullshit.) So today on Life of a Pastry, I prove that you've been doing philosophy all this time, and you haven't even known it!

Rude Philosophy

How can I know that anything exists outside of my own mind?
When I'm having sex, how do I know I'm not just masturbating?

If there is no free will, am I still responsible for my actions?
How drunk do I have to be before I can fuck an uggo and it doesn't count?

Is there such a thing as evil thoughts?
It's cool if I fantasize about your mom, right?

How can a loving, all-powerful God create a world with evil in it?
Oh my God, why haven't you gone away?

Do we punish criminals because they deserve it, or because it benefits society?
Should I bang your girlfriend because you're an asshole, or because she'd love it?

--Pastry

Post the Twenty-Seventh

Hey everybody. Today on Life of a Pastry: a comic about yarmulkes.



--Pastry

Post the Twenty-Sixth

Well, another Thursday, another Haiku Day. Today on Life of a Pastry, I pretty much just throw in the towel. But there's a twist ending!

A Lazy Man's Haiku

one two three four five
six seven eight nine ten e-
-leven twelve NINETEEN

--Pastry

P.S.: Whoa.