Porocrom’s Crappaper

A recent critical look at the child’s prayer (you know, the really morbid bedtime prayer that comes from the days when the plague could kill you overnight) sparked my thoughts about what other things we are teaching our children. Is it any wonder they are so messed up when we teach them such BIZARRE shit from an early age? For your consideration…

A Porocrom Look at Nursery Rhymes

The old woman and the shoe

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.
She gave them some broth without any bread,
Whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed.

While I am all for teaching our children the realities of the world in which we live, is it really necessary to expose them to the brutality of single motherhood, child abuse and neglect at such a tender age? This woman needs a social worker or something. Getting past the deplorable state of her children, let’s ask a practical question, shall we? Why the heck does she live in a shoe? Are we to believe that this woman and all her children live in an ordinary sneaker (or perhaps a disarded loafer, M. Goose is not specific)? Or perhaps it is, as many fanciful illustrations would have us think, they live together in a humongous boot? If that is the case, where on Earth would one find such a dwelling? Are we to then conclude that a moster shoe is available for a more moderate price than an ordinary house? I want to meet the Real Estate Agent who managed to trick this dumb bitch into putting a down payment on a place like this (“Aluminum siding? That’s so passe! This place has STEEL TOES!”) Also, here’s some advice for you lady. Keep your damn legs closed.

Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Classical illustration depicts Mr. Dumpty as an egg. I am confused by this, as nowhere in the rhyme does it specify what manner of person/thing this Humpty character is (For those of you who are going to be parents, please don’t give your kids rhyming names. It isn’t cute, it’s frightening). As far as we know, Humpty could have been a 500-piece puzzle, some furniture from Ikea, or a delicious 7-bean casserole. Here’s the second head-scratcher. Why would you ask the king’s horses to put him back together? Horses, as my research indicates, do not have thumbs. It is, therefore, very difficult for them to manipulate broken pieces of anything in such a way as to reconstruct them. They should have called in all the king’s chickens, since they are the egg experts. Also, why not give the women a go? Women are often quite skilled at putting things back together! At least they could have brought sewing kits or something. While I am not a blind optimist, is it really necessary to introduce children to a suicidal egg? I think not…

Peter Pumpkin Eater

Peter Peter, pumpkin eater
Had a wife and couldn’t keep her.
He put her in a pumpkin shell,
And there he kept her, very well.

How sad that we make light of battered wife syndrome. This woman is clearly not able to flee her husband, who is so poor that he must eat pumpkins and nothing else. Then again, maybe Mrs. Peter was a constant source of nagging: “Why can’t our relationship be more like the Spratts? They are always doing things betwixt the both of them!” Clearly he is concerned with her welfare, since he keeps her “very well”. This rhyme is probably designed to desensitize children to the way their parents like to beat the fuck out of each other all the time.

Jack and Jill

Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down, and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.

This one is so messed up that it doesn’t even rhyme. What are we saying to our children? “It’s okay to be lazy if you can’t find a rhyme for water.” Anyway, no mention of what they need the water for, nor is there any mention of why anyone in their right mind would construct a well on top of a hill, since water is below the ground. It seems that this rhyme is designed to put women in their place, since Jill dutifully “tumbles after” Jack, despite the fact that she could have just stayed at the top of the hill and maybe called an ambulance for Jack… or at least scooped his brains back into his head.

Jack be Nimble

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick.
Jack jumped over the candlestick.

This rhyme is clearly written by a pirate, since it employs the infinitive form of the verb ‘to be’ (as pirates are wont to do: “Yarr, I be a pirate!”). There’s only one question to be asked about this very short rhyme: Why? Why not just walk around it? We will never know, as Jack went on to die falling down that hill. I guess he wasn’t quite as nimble as this verse would have us believe.

So, Mother Goose, we can only assume that in between penning rhymes you were grooming parasites from underneath your feathers and taking wicked bong hits. As a society, it is encumbant upon us to analyze carefully what message we are sending to our children, lest they grow up to produce unoriginal and unfunny websites…

I just returned from the Iron Maiden concert here in Athens, soaked in sweat, most of which wasn’t even mine. I shall now recount to thee the details of my aforementioned journey to

THE IRON MAIDEN CONCERT

First of all, I would like to tell you of the terms of the concert, which were written in the back of the ticket. They were these:

• If you take any pictures or videos of the concert, they belong to Iron Maiden.
• Pictures or videos of the concert are not allowed.
• If Iron Maiden takes pictures or videos of you, they belong to Iron Maiden.
• If you step in the concert area, or in a radius of 15 km thereof, or within earshot, you and your firstborn belong to Iron Maiden.

Consequently, the following pictures were not taken at the aforementioned concert. Which is sad, because the exquisite pictures range from “Random people standing at random places” to “Generic lighted stage picture #943”. I decided not to take my digital camera with me, because I paid like, a gazillion bucks for it, and like hell was I going to risk breaking it for you guys.

Also, a few tips before you go to any rock concert:

• Take as little with you as you can, but OMG DON’T OMIT CLOTHING. Unless you are a woman. But not ugly.
• Always keep your t-shirt on. Unless you are a woman. But not with saggy boobs. Guys, WTF was up with removing your shirts, you are sweaty and smelly and filthy and you stink, fucking pigs. Also, when you touch other people without your shirt on, that shit sticks to the other person’s skin and I got half my skin flayed off me in this manner.
• For god’s sake, wear your old shoes.
• Men go in the front, hot women go with me.
• Chicks with big boobs should bounce more.
• That’s it.

So, we went there, and after a lot of waiting and “One two three, one two three, hey hey hey testing”, Dragonforce came on the scene and started singing. Sadly, they were not able to stir up a lot of enthusiasm among the crowd, but that was mostly because they weren’t who we went there to see. They did rock though. After a while, they finished their gig and it was IRON MAIDEN time.

We had to wait a bit more for it to get dark, to MAXIMIZE THE EFFECT. They started with Remember Tomorrow or something like that, which I hadn’t heard of before. Apparently though, everyone else knew it, but they were all virgins anyway. Hell, I didn’t know half the songs, but they were from the first four albums they released and I doubt I had been born back then, so I am excused.

After a few more unknown songs, we started DEMANDING Alexander the Great, the greatest great historical song ever, and Bruce was like “Every time I come to Greece, you ask me to sing that song”. Well duh, genius. Didn’t you learn from the previous 12 times that we were probably going to ask for it again, and that you should probably have practiced it? Anyway, he made a deal with us, we were going to sing a couple of verses and next time they came they would play it themselves. We concurred, and he began singing a cappella:

Alexander the Great,
His name struck fear into hearts of men.
Alexander the Great,
Blar glar glar meeen.

This verifies the theory of the ingrate and the dimwit, who said that they don’t know the lyrics to that song. Damnit. Anyway, better luck with that next time. But seriously, he could have told me to go up on the stage and I would tell him the fucking lyrics, it’s not that hard, everyone knows them.

They played a few more songs, including “The Number of the Beast”, “Hallowed Be Thy Name” and “Run to the Hills”. They told us from the beginning that they were going to play songs from their first four albums, but everyone knew this meant “our first four albums and Fear of the Dark”, so naturally we were waiting for it.

Alas, it never came. They played and played and played, but no “Fear of the Dark” in sight. After a while, and when Bruce had introduced the band members, we began chanting “FEAR! OF! THE! DARK!”, but our cries went unanswered. They said their goodbyes and left, and we were all like “OMFG WTF”!

Seriously, I know that you played all those other cool songs which you probably had never played before, since I have all your live albums and they are nowhere to be found, but going to an Iron Maiden concert and not hearing Fear of the Dark is like having sex and the phone ringing when you are about to come. Only instead of sex it’s a concert. And instead of coming it’s Fear of the Dark. And instead of a telephone it is your momma.

I can’t help but feel cheated. It was the first concert I went to, and damnit, I wanted to hear Fear of the Dark. Still though, it was worth every cent (Eurocent, which is like 1.3 dollar cents, so it was worth like 1.3 cents more than your American ones, muhaha). Overall, it was a great show, and we had lots of fun. BUT SERIOUSLY, YOU MADE LIKE $1M TODAY, WOULD IT FUCKING KILL YOU TO PLAY FEAR OF THE DARK? Jeez…

Also, as a side note, there was this hot chick next to me that had this boyfriend, who also looked like a chick, but not that hot. Wtf was up with that couple? I do have reason to hope though, because she spent the largest part of the concert behind me, and I was wearing my Poromenos t-shirt, so all she has to do now is google me and find this site, where she will promptly notice the email address she must use to email me. Hot chick, EMAIL ME HERE: HotChickFromIronMaidenConcert@poromenos.org.

Update: Alas, tonight I was unable to sleep. Bruce Dickinson’s treachery kept echoing in my mind and all I could hear in my head was a voice saying “Revenge! Revenge!”. I pondered long and hard, and I finally came with a foolproof plan that will lead to Iron Maiden’s undoing. It is a plan of utter magnificence and unspeakable horror, the likes of which only a criminal mastermind such as myself could spawn. I will exact my revenge upon Iron Maiden, starting now. You have undoubtedly heard that whenever someone downloads a song, that artist loses millions of dollars. I will, therefore, as of now, download all of Iron Maiden’s albums again and again, costing them trillions of dollars in lost revenues! This will perforce cause the band to disband, as they will be unable to pay all that money. Goodbye, Iron Maiden! Mwahahahahaha!

You do it every day. You get up, stumble into the kitchen, make yourself a cup of coffee, get dressed and washed up, put on your shoes and you’re off to work. Yet, in this simple succession of events, it is easy to forget the most important of all: Tying your shoelaces.

Indeed, where would you be without tying your shoelaces? Probably lying in a puddle of mud somewhere, that’s where. The secret art of shoelace tying has been passed from father to son for centuries, yet noone really knows where it all began. Until now! Striving to provide you with groundbreaking information, our team of highly specialised archaeologists, anthropologists and carpenters has uncovered a surprisingly detailed history of shoelace tying.

It appears that the notion of shoelace tying first appeared on March 13th, 1848 when Johannes Speicherstufler, a well known Dutch slaver, after having had his breakfast which his numerous slaves brought to him, got out of bed and exclaimed, “Tie my shoelaces!”. Unfortunately, at that time, shoelaces did not exist, and shoes were one-size-fits-all. Therefore, nobody knew how to tie them, resulting in the untimely death of 3,198 slaves in Speicherstufler’s possession. Speicherstufler, after realising that he had eliminated his only source of revenue in a moment (or rather, a day) of anger, sold all his assets to ensure that he could go on living in the same way as before. Immediately after the sale, he bought everything back, because how was he going to live same as before if he didn’t live same as before, duh.

This incident was promptly forgotten after the dogs ate all the slaves, and the notion of tying one’s shoelaces was also, forgotten, until an Italian man, Tonino Camirtoni, spilled pasta on his shoes while eating, but instead of picking it up and eating it, as he usually would, he sat and stared in wonder at the new form of his shoes. He immediately proceeded to decorate his shoes with string, which made them infinitely prettier and, admittedly, a bit gay. After years and years of decoration, Camirtoni’s son, John Smith (he wasn’t really Camirtoni’s son, his wife had made the beast with two backs with an English sailor, but Camirtoni was not aware of that) had the notion of actually implementing the string in the shoe, thus enabling fastening and unfastening.

It is not hard to imagine that soon after that shoelace tying would finally be implemented, but John Smith was not the brightest bulb in the shed. Indeed, he just left the shoelaces untied, which caused him to fall all over the place all day, but fascinated with his invention as he was, he did not mind. It was not until Smith got married, that his wife, Patricia Provolone, had the idea to tie John’s shoelaces so that he would stop falling around and actually get some work done around the house.

Patricia’s knot was crude and weak at first, requiring days to be untied by the wearer but coming apart only minutes after tying (you might have seen this knot design nowadays in prank stores), but she eventually perfected the technique, reaching what was known as the “Single-feathered papillon”, the ancestor of today’s “Normal papillon”.

The person who perfected Patricia’s original design was, coincidentally. her great-great-great grandson, Angus McAdams (yes, I know that’s a Scottish name, this is a blog, what did you expect, continuity?). McAdams was frustrated by the “Single-feathered papillon”, which he could never tie, so he reckoned he would double his odds and go with the “Normal papillon”. His exhilaration was great when he found that he could easily tie the new knot, and he allegedly screamed to his wife “Eh, Annie, get yer stinken arse over ‘ere”, to which she affectionately replied “Go ta ‘ell, ya lazy bum”. McAdams spread the design far and wide, and this is how it came to pass that everyone in the world now ties their shoelaces the same way.

Well my Christmas vacation was over, so I decided to pick up some food supplies for school. I wasn’t 100% sure what I wanted so I went to a local store (can’t say the name, let’s just say they don’t have a lot of frills) to purchase some of these items. I have discovered something that may shock or baffle you, unless you are not a total moron in which case it will be old-hat.

People are stupid animals.

I was in the produce aisle looking for some items for a soup I was planning to make that night. I saw a mom take her 7-year old kid out of the cart because he was whining and screaming. As she turned her back on him, he dashed off because he is a little ADD fucker. As she proceeded to squeeze EVERY SINGLE TOMATO in the display, the kid went to the cereal aisle and started opening boxes like an allergic person searching for his epi-pen. So, as I go over to get some cereal, I see this result of a bottle of cheap whiskey and a broken prophylactic run back to his mother who is calling for him. It is not until I realize that the only cereal he could get at is the stuff on the bottom shelf (a.k.a. the ones I want) and I have to rummage around for undamaged boxes.

So I shrug it off.

Then, as I am heading to the frozen food section, I am held up by a family of 7 with three shopping carts walking along like they are on holiday in an art gallery. I have seen groceries before, and I have to tell you, they’re not that interesting. Apparently these people came from a country without Rice-A-Roni because they found it to be the most fascinating thing since 15 year-old boys found the internet. Now, ordinarily I would just manoeuvre around these slow-moving people, but because of their sheer numbers they managed to block the entire aisle. So I, in my most polite voice said ‘excuse me please’. After they got over the initial shock (the look on the dad’s face was priceless, like I had just appeared out of the sky from a space ship) they attempted to move to allow me and my cart past. Unfortunately, since they had a collective IQ lower than my height in Astronomic Units (1 AU is roughly the distance between the Earth and the Sun), it took about 5 minutes of shuffling and coaching to get 7 people and 3 shopping carts out of the way. I don’t know what they were buying with all those carts, but I can only hope that it was a clue.

So I take a deep breath and try to calm myself.

As I am finishing up my shopping experience, I notice this girl who has been making a very similar trip to me. Everywhere I have been in the store, she was there on her cell phone, undoubtedly to her boyfriend or somesuch. The reason I noticed her at this point is because she is giving me a look so dirty I feel like the second-to-last guy participating in the Houston 500 (where Houston the porn star has sex with 500 consecutive guys – I am not making this up). Evidently she thinks that I am following her around with sexual thoughts in my mind. If you are reading this, blonde girl with the white and black Nike jacket, YOU ARE NOT THAT GOOD-LOOKING. I am glad you have such high self-esteem, but I am not going to follow you around in the store. If you were to look at my shopping cart, you would notice that it is full of groceries. Apparently I am the kind of perv who stalks anonymous women in grocery stores and buys food at the same time (it’s the age of multitasking)

So I count backwards from 10, unclench my fists, and move on.

There was a really short grocery line, so I hopped in it. I realized that the reason it was so short is because the cashier is new. Now when I say new, I don’t mean that it was just her first day on the job. She must have been new at LIFE because I am pretty sure I could have scanned myself through faster than she did. Not to malign the rocket-science level thinking that is required to operate a cash register, but can we speed up the process a bit please? The machine does the adding for you, all you have to do is hit the PLU button at the end. How do I know this? I was a register jockey way back when. I KNOW how easy it is. She didn’t even have to handle change or anything, I paid with debit!

So I close my eyes, take a second to put things in perspective, then I slug her really hard in the face.

The court order says someone else needs to buy my groceries for me now.

    Ebeneezer Scrooge was woken by a strange noise in the middle of the night. Ebeneezer was in his thirties, still handsome, and an incorrigible womanizer, but that night he felt more lonely than ever. It was probably because he was alone, he thought, quite correctly. It was already Christmas of 1843 and he hadn’t found a single woman to keep him company on this cold night. He felt that something was missing from his life, but he didn’t know exactly what it was. He had probably forgotten to buy milk again.
    The noise continued. It sounded like someone was knocking on the door downstairs. Ebeneezer slowly wore his gown and walked down the stairs. Opening the door, he saw a woman he thought looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite remember where he knew her from.
“Mom?” he said.
“What? No, I’m the chick of Christmas Past!”.
Ebeneezer remembered where he knew her from. It was the woman he was with last Christmas. A few hundred women later, it was obviously hard for Ebeneezer to remember her, let alone her name. Suddenly, all the good times he had spent with her came to his mind. One, namely, because he had only spent one night with her. It was quite good though, because she had a bountiful booty. Ebeneezer wondered what she wanted.
“What do you want?” he wondered.
“Ebeneezer, I am two months pregnant!” she exclaimed.
“Oh, that is great…” he mumbled.
“Ebeneezer, THE CHILD IS YOURS!” she said, passionately.
“IS NOT!”
“IS TOO!”
“Wtf ho, dontcha be startin shit on my porch, you know I haven’t tapped yo ass in a year.”
“Oh… I hadn’t thought of that… I guess you’re right. I better go find out who the father is, then. Bye!” she said, and left.
    Ebeneezer went back to his bedroom to try and get some sleep, but he couldn’t. The thought of that woman kept tormenting him, and reminding him how good his life used to be, and how sad it had become. He got that empty feeling again. “I have to buy milk first thing tomorrow morning,” he thought.
    Just as he started to fall asleep, another noise woke him up. Someone was knocking on the door again. Ebeneezer wore his gown again, noticing for the first time that gowns were a bit gay, went down the stairs and opened the door, only to find a beautiful woman staring at him. He immediately found himself wondering who she was and what she wanted at that time of the night.
“Who are you and what do you want at this time of the night?” he asked.
“I am the chick of Christmas Present,” she replied. “My name is Maya and I want to have the sex with you, you handsome man.”
Ebeneezer felt all happy down there in his pee-pee. He found Maya very hot.
“I find you very hot.” he said, not too surprisingly.
“Well then, let’s go to your bedroom.”
“Let’s.”
They went to his bedroom and had the greatest sex ever. For me, anyway. I am a bit jealous of him. After mating, Ebeneezer lit a joint and stared at the ceiling mirror, still feeling that same, familiar, haunting, empty feeling he always felt. He spread some cocaine on Maya’s ass and snorted it, and he felt a bit better. He fell into a deep, dreamless sleep only to wake an hour later and find her gone, together with all his cocaine stash and like a few thousand quid cash. He felt quite devastated. “I feel quite devastated,” he thought. That Christmas was not going to be any better than all the previous ones, it seemed.
    Suddenly, there was another knock on the door. Ebeneezer wondered whether his house was mistaken for a brothel. “What the hell, this is not a whorehouse, fuck,” he thought. Nevertheless, he slowly proceeded down the stairs and to the door, to find Christmas Carol outside. Christmas Carol was the local tramp, every night with another man. “We are quite alike, in that respect,” Ebeneezer thought. He had had her at least thirty times that year already, and although she looked great, with perky breasts and an ass that wouldn’t quit, he was starting to get tired of sex.
“Ebeneezer, I am in love with you.” she said.
“Oh Carol, that is very unexpected!” he exclaimed. He suddenly realised that that empty feeling was not caused by the lack of milk, but the lack of a wife. He was not getting any younger, and he needed to settle down. Plus, Carol was like eighteen and muchly hot. He was in a quandary, though, because it might not be very nice to get married to a tramp. He wondered if she would stop sleeping with other men if he married her.
“Will you stop sleeping with other men if I marry you?”
-“Oh yes, Ebeneezer! I will do anything to be with you!” Her promise looked candid, and Ebeneezer decided he would turn his life around, forget his old ways, and forever commit hisself to this chick of Christmas Future.
We would like to wish everyone merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, krazy Kwanzaa, or whatever. And if a hot 18-year old chick comes to your doorstep and wants to marry you, I’d accept. It’s not like you’re going to get married with that face, anyway.