meet Banditcar, lightsaber sensei

Ah, I love the internets. Getting big online is like starting a religious cult: if something doesn’t exist in the real world, just make it up. Once enough people believe in your premise, Bob‘s your uncle.

Before eBay, did anybody think Six Million Dollar Man crap was really worth THAT much? Suppose I can’t be too smug, though: I actually HAD that t-shirt. And no, I didn’t get it at the time.

As I write this, I am pimping out my Second Life avatar in preparation for leading online blogging classes. So we’re all about the meta, the virtual, and the zeta today.
For an example of the kind of ephemeral (and temporary {hello Mahir! I kiss you!}) career which the intertubes have brought down the i-chute, may I present Bandicar, the Lightsaber Sensei.

With no fewer than 26 different saber spinning styles, each with its own YouTube video, a presumably economically-rewarding relationship with the manufacturer of regulation lightsabers, and a DVD release last year, Banditcar here has clearly maximized the metaverse’s potential for self-promotion.

Hmm, are lightsabers futuristic or retro?

I have to ask these things.

Whether he’d truly be any good in a real lightsaber fight is a question which is the quintessence of irrelevance, given that there is actually no such thing as a lightsaber and thus, no such thing as a real lightsaber fight. So, it’s not a real object or a real activity, but it is a real career. Got that? Hey, money’s just a mutually agreed upon delusion anyway. It makes TOTAL sense to me.

Now, to think of crossover opportunities. Oh, ComicCon, sure, but let’s get creative here. Lightsaber-wielding bodyguard? Hey, we’ve endured the Cooterflash Wars, the Duelling DUI‘s: since lengthy prison stints do tend to take one off TMZ‘s radar, perhaps Pimp My Bodyguard is the way to go, and in the darkness of most nightclubs I can’t think of a more impressive way to stand out in Teddy‘s than to be guarded by a ring of lightsaber stormtroopers. Oh, scuse me, I’ve got a call…

Vin Diesel on Line One.

Vin Diesel, nerd

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dear Subway…

This is the kind of thing I think about ALL THE TIME. Oh, goody: a soul mate!

via Defamer

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Doing the gene pool a favour

Sex for dummiesYou know those books…the For Dummies books. They’re pretty good books, all in all, but every now and again they come out with one that makes you think at least some of their target audience works at their headquarters.

Sex for Dummies.

Think about it. Look around you. I’m not sure where you live, but around these parts the dummies are breeding like rabbits. Even Britney‘s managed to drop a couple of spawn, and she’s just a puppy herself. At this rate by 2020 most of Southern California will be descended from Britney Spears, God help them.

But here’s a fellow who knows his station; ya gotta luv him. Me hearts dumb people who know they’re dumb and who know that’s a bad thing. Don’t give me any of this “Dumb Pride” stuff: that shit is whack. It was Camus, the wise, who said that it was the moral responsibility of the intelligent to oppress the stupid, otherwise the stupid would take over the world. I see some of us have been slacking a bit, and just look how that’s turned out!

But Shiv Charan Yadav knows his place and his duty to the gene pool. He’s sworn not to marry until he’s passed his high school exams. He is now 73 and has just failed his 38th attempt. It’s like poor, sweet, decorative John-John, only more like John-John-John-John-John-John-John-John-John-John-John-John-John- times – 38. Without the looks, money, family, or fame. Or, on the plus side, the pilot’s license.

Shiv Charan Yadav has been taking the exams – normally given to schoolchildren at the age of 15 -every year since 1969, without success. He was in his 30s when he first decided to better himself through education.

This year, he failed everything except Sanskrit, scoring only 103 out of a possible 600 points.

Also, he wants to marry a girl under thirty. Yeah, do you wonder if the papers would happen to be graded by twentysomething local females…it would explain alot.

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zombie attack: emergency preparedness poster

Because hey, it happens. From MaxRadical.

zombie warning poster

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Hey, you got your thetan in my cult! Well you got your cult all up in my thetan!

Xenu is my homeboyHow to drive Scientologists crazy for fun and profit. And that’s AFTER L.Ron and his minions have already warmed them up for you; they’re halfway there already!

“Your problem is that you are easily led.”

I thought about this for a moment. I didn’t actually feel particularly easy to lead, I decided, but perhaps she would have something to tell me I didn’t know.

Having allowed her point to sink in, she continued, “Do you want to be activator or activated?”

This was a bit cryptic, and I quite honestly didn’t get her drift, so I asked her politely to explain exactly what she meant.

“Do you want people to activate you, or do you want to activate them?”

“Well.” I hesitated, considering this rather either-or view of things. “Does one have to go around activating people to avoid being activated by them?”

“Yes.” She was very decisive about this. I had to admit that she had in fact just told me something I had never known before.

“I’m not certain that I agree. As far as I know I activate myself and other people do the same for themselves.”

“It isn’t that simple!” Again she was extremely decisive. This was interesting since it had always seemed that way to me.

“Do I have the right to activate people? Isn’t it their job and their right to activate themselves? You’d be taking a hell of a responsibility if you went around activating people, wouldn’t you?”

“Only for their own good!”

Now she was really beginning to interest me. Her logic was fascinating: To avoid being activated by people, which would be bad for me, I had to activate them, which would be good for them. (Quite apart from the fact that statements like “for their own good” have a tendency to stimulate my anti-authority neurosis and trigger off the little alarm bells.) This was becoming interestinger and interestinger, and I was becoming curiouser and curiouser about exactly who these people were. I was just about to find out.

“Now.” She fixed me with her gaze. “What you need is this book!” She held it up.

I leant forward and examined it. Large, cheerfully coloured letters on the front identified it: DIANETICS, by L. RON HUBBARD…

This continues for some time, escalating entertainingly, after which…

I leant back and waited expectantly.

She blinked, looked at me somewhat blankly, then blinked again. I waited expectantly.

She looked at her desktop and blinked at that. This didn’t look partcularly encouraging, but I waited expectantly.

Her next move was to place her elbows on the desktop, fold her hands together and start rocking her body backwards and forwards. She finally stopped rocking and started staring at me intensely. What she hoped to achieve by this was unclear.

I felt it was time to give her som encouragement and guidance.

“Dear Lady.” My tone was extremely patient and sympathetic. “You have to give me a sales pitch, you know. You aren’t going to sell me anything by just looking at me and clamming up.”

She frowned, and kept frowning for a while. Then, to my astonishment, she blew herself up like a frog, pointed at the door and screamed hysterically, “UD FOR FAEN!!! UD!!!” (This translates roughly as “Get the fuck out of here! Get out!”)

I rose politely while she glared at me balefully, quivering and looking very apoplectic. Having opened the door preparatory to leaving, I addressed her again.

“But Dear Lady.” My tone was full of fatherly concern. “You aren’t going to activate me into buying anything by throwing me out of your office. Have you paid money for these courses? Are you sure you haven’t been ripped off?”

That really did it! She shot to her feet like a champagne cork, hunched her shoulders, withdrew her head like a turtle, stamped on the floor and, gesticulating hysterically in the direction of the door with her index finger, her whole arm and her whole body, emitted an even more ear-splitting “UD FOR FAEN!!! UD!!! U-U-U-D!!!”

Out of concern for her observably imminent heart attack I withdrew.

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