Hey ladies- sad and lonely? Nobody wants to play grab-ass? NO WORRIES!!!

Now you can purchase 1/4 of a man, filled with stuffing & designed specifically to grope you through the night as you sleep.

For added WTFness, just spray the pillow with some cologne your Ex left in your medicine cabinet, or place a wedding ring on it and play the “other woman.”

What kinds of pillows do they make with the other 3/4s?

Thank you, Overstock.com. Until now I thought I had lost the ability to be creeped out.

I just got one of these messages when looking for orange jumpsuits (don’t ask). Anyone else seen one of these “hey, you search like a spammer!” messages?

Once you learn the real history of Valentine’s, no party can measure up.

I really don’t do holidays well. I’ve never enjoyed having the timing of my romantic actions dictated by the calendar, nor my gift-giving or my fondness for trees (damn you, Arbor Day!) Warren Ellis, in wishing everyone a happy “Horny Werewolf day,” reminded me that today isn’t JUST another reminder that our every actions are dictated by consumerism pressures from above – it hearkens back to our more primal days. Days that I think are in order of returning.

February wasn’t always all chocolates and apologizing for not buying flowers. No, in the good old days, the holiday we celebrate as Valentine’s used to be reserved for a dude named Lupercus. According to this article about the holiday that started it all (pilfered from Fatemag), “The god Lupercus, represented by a wolf, would next inspire and command men to behave as wolves, to act as werewolves during [His] festival.”

The holiday, Lupercialia, was celebrated by the wolf-god’s followers, the Luperci, and was quite the rage. As seen on Wikipedia,

The festival began with the sacrifice by the Luperci of two male goats and a dog. Next two patrician young Luperci were led to the altar, to be anointed on their foreheads with the sacrificial blood, which was wiped off the bloody knife with wool soaked in milk, after which they were expected to smile and laugh; the smearing of the forehead with blood probably refers to human sacrifice originally practiced at the festival.

The sacrificial feast followed, after which the Luperci cut thongs from the skins of the victims, which were called Februa, dressed themselves in the skins of the sacrificed goats, in imitation of Lupercus, and ran round the walls of the old Palatine city, the line of which was marked with stones, with the thongs in their hands in two bands, striking the people who crowded near. Girls and young women would line up on their route to receive lashes from these whips.

So the first thing we learn is that in order to celebrate Valentine’s old-school style, all the dudes need to become werewolves. I’m already sold.

“But Ed, what about the romance?” I’m glad you asked. Or at least I’m glad that through the power of my rich imagination I can lie to myself that you did. According to Fatemag, the romance, (as if there isn’t enough already!) came as the wolfmen ran through town whipping the women who gladly lined up for it (ahh the gold old days).

…Once a wolfman had ensnared a woman with his whip or thong, he would lead her away to be his wife or lover for as long as the “romance” lasted.

Yes! Finally, a holiday that makes sense. No lameass heart candies. No flying babies. You don’t even have to waste money on some crappy card that’ll just end up in the trash anyway. No, you just grab your whip, strap on your shaggy goat-skin and go run through the streets “romancing” the parade of women.

Next year I’m totally planning an appropriate Valentines party.

You are amazing. At three years old, you’re already showing every sign that you’re becoming exactly the kind of person that I feel grateful knowing- The kind of person who makes you feel like your life means something because they’re around and you got to witness them.

Everything you do, you do it memorably. When you’re excited you sing songs, dance around and get everyone involved. When you’re not, you pretty much do the same thing but much louder and more forcefully. You spend most of your time in a princess dress. You speak dramatically, and you’re so goddamed cute I frequently think I’m going to pass out because I can’t handle it. But as great as those things are, I want you to always hold on to two characteristics. You keep those, and it’s all I really want for you.

I don’t care much about you making mistakes- you’re going to refuse to listen. You’re going to think many of my ideas and suggestions are crap, and most of the time you’ll have to get yourself into trouble in order to figure out the right ways of doing things. That’s natural. You are doubtlessly going to party – and party hard when you grow up. Even with only half of my genes, you’re destined to push a lot of things to the limit and then keep cranking the dial ’till it breaks off in your hand. You’ll be fine.

What I care about is this: I want you to feel good about your decisions and I want you to remain empathetic.

As your Dad, I’ll probably say things like this a lot, but while I’ve made a shit-ton of mistakes, I regret almost none. I could honestly say that I’d make nearly all of them over again, gladly. The reason for this is simple- while I’ve made many decisions that had negative results, I made them based on the limited info I had and I made them for what I still believe to be the right reasons. You can’t always know what is right to do, you just act based on how informed you are and what you believe is right. Never go against that- Don’t betray your morals (you’ll get those from your Mother). For example,

• Don’t change your personality to fit in – but feel free to change things in your character in order to get along with people.
• Don’t pick on people who are weak – but fee free to pick on people who aren’t.
• Don’t ignore someone who needs your help – You’ll find that your best memories will come from times you gave up comfort to give it to someone else.
• Don’t fool around with someone so they’ll like you – Do it because it’s fun.
• Don’t ever, ever, ever let someone drive a car who’s been drinking too much – Make other, way cooler mistakes.

Secondly, I want you to remain Empathetic. People are really, really stupid. They’re mean, they rarely consider opposing viewpoints and most of them will gladly join in on either picking on people or just plain ignoring them. Remaining concerned about people’s well being is one of the most difficult things you will exercise in life. There are so many opportunities and good reasons to hate; don’t let it erode your responsibility to care about people.

In the three years I’ve know you, I’ve constantly been amazed by how deeply you care about people. If you get the slightest sense that someone is hurt- either physically or emotionally- you rush to help. You could be in the middle of throwing a colossal fit, crying and stomping and employing every fiber of your body with the expressed purpose of infuriating your mother- but if for a moment she seems to be hurt by your actions you will stop immediately and console her. That’s powerful empathy. You care about everyone. There’s a cut on my hand that you’ve taken the time to inspect almost daily since it happened. I love you, and that’s part of why.

Happy Birthday, Paige. Raising you has been the hardest and most rewarding thing I’ve ever done and I wish it would last forever. Always strive for those two main things and it’ll cover most everything I hope for in your life.

*OK, that “wish it would last forever” thing is bullshit- when you’re 18, if you’re not in college you’re out on your ass. You can visit though- because I love you.

Thursday night Doug Stanhope hit Reno, But he didn’t play at in some posh casino showroom, he played at the Zephyr Lounge – exactly where I’d want to see him.

I’ve only gone there a few times, but the Zephyr is the seedy kind of bar that I really feel at home at. It’s cramped, there’s old dirty couches at the bar that you really don’t want to examine. They only take cash, but you can hit up the ATM next door by the nudie bookstore. It’s a classy joint.

We all got there about an hour before everything started and pretty much everyone there couldn’t believe we were seeing Stanhope in such a small venue for only $10. That and the full flask of whiskey in my back pocket guaranteed a fantastic evening.

Stanhope hit the stage slurring, looking truly drunk, notes in hand because he started out the set with a few bits he’s still working on. Pretty much immediately he simultaneously won the crowd and totally humiliated a group sitting in the balcony. They ended up leaving. A few times he’d stop and apologize for not being familiar with some of his material or just being off, saying something like “don’t worry, you can always buy a DVD where I tried harder.”

I dislike when comics say things like “[insert current venue, city, college] is my personal favorite” because you know they’re full of shit, but I really wanted to believe him when he said “Reno is my favorite city in the country – ’cause I’ve got so many vices, and only two hands!”

One thing I noticed- he mentions Myspace a lot. Originally, I heard about the show from a friend who saw it on Myspace. Her husband had sent a bulliten announcing the show to his friends, and Stanhope had sent him a message thanking him. More and more as I asked people in the bar how they found out, it was the same story, so I was a little intrigued.

After the show I asked him about it- he said he chose the Zephyr and another bar right off Myspace, and he ended up there because the other bar never responded. “No shit,” I said “that’s pretty cool.” Here’s a great example of control an artist has that wasn’t possible 5 years ago. He chose the exact dive bar he wanted to play, promoted it basically through word of mouth and packed the place. Pretty cool indeed. I wonder how many other comics are using Myspace to book their shows in the same way.

I know I basically lost all my subscribers by, um, not posting for 2 years, but if you happen to still subscribe to EADC, please update the feed address to http://feeds.feedburner.com/edadkins

Thanks!

I’m going to fix that, but for now check out this dude- fucking rocks it explaining why he’s for Obama. The reason I usually shake my head all election year is that you rarely see people basing their allegiance to a candidate or party on actual policy. We all need to be this informed.

(link for feedreaders)

I’m totally catching up on what I know about the potential candidates. Seen on tony pierce’s Busblog.

So, today I’m doing the closest thing I can to the walk of shame.

You know the walk. Back in the dorms in college, at about 7AM on the weekends you’d see a mass exodus of what appeared to be really pretty zombies: chicks with messy hair, a collection of their purse and belongings balled up in their arms, one high heeled shoe still on, limping back to their place while desperately avoiding eye-contact with anyone, lest they explode into a flaming ball of disgrace.

The walk of shame. Now, since I have almost no sense of what one might call “self-respect” or “dignity,” I’m mostly immune to things like that. Think of me as the Darkman of shame- I just don’t have the ability to sense those things.

This is why many times in my life I’ve been “that guy.” That guy who offends all your friends. That guy who tried so hard to make the night legendary that no one had fun. Lucky for me, it’s rare that I’m the “no-belt guy,” and it’ll be years before I’m “the comb-over guy,” but you get it.

But I’ve been trying really hard to quell that reputation in recent years. No, serious. If you know me and think I say offensive or inappropriate things, know this: at least 90% of every thought in my mind would get me beaten senseless if spoken out loud. By an angry mob. And no one would go to jail. The mere fact that I have any friends testifies to my incredible powers of restraint.

Of course, alcohol can sometimes weaken my ability to maintain restraint.

Saturday night was one of those times. For reasons completely out of my control I spent 3 nights in a row indulging in the firewater. Again, it wasn’t my fault: there was the party at @michellereno’s, the taping of the pirate video which required heavy drinking and then on Saturday a Burning Man themed party that required the wearing of a tutu. Now, I like to have fun, but I need to be pretty tanked to don a tutu.

Now, I don’t remember every thing I drank, but one of those had to be a shot of “Go piss everyone off.” There’s the bartender I was snotty to, the convenience store clerk who just wanted to run my purchase- not hear my unfunny jokes, the doorman who repeatedly had to tell me not to try and enter through the back side (it’s ok to laugh at how that sounds).

Well, it seems that at some point I lost my wallet. Luckily all it had was our ID’s and no credit cards, but funny thing- everyone who may have it is someone “that guy” probably annoyed. Now it’s Thursday and I’m having to backtrack through the week, running into people I may or may not have offended and asking them if they’ve seen my wallet – and if I’m lucky it may be sitting right next to my self-respect I lost in highschool.

So if you see me while I’m doing the walk of shame today, please don’t look me in the eye- I may be rendered to a pile of ashes.

When they came for the Scientologists, I was silent- but now it’s serious. If they’ll attack established religions like the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster no one is safe!

If you don’t know what this video is referencing, you’ll want to watch the following:

This is the result of the camera-wielding talents of Mike Henderson, and a lot of beer/whiskey.

I was going to try and make this post seem somewhat serious, but that quickly became a task I wasn’t up to, given the amount of whiskey I’ve consumed and the time.

Originally, it was twice as long and devolved into even goofier drunken sadness. The gold tooth I have in the beginning ended up getting swallowed later on with a shot of maker’s, making Pastafarians also the authorities on intoxication. If for some ungodly reason there’s ever interest in the directors cut, it might show itself.

If you don’t know what this is referencing, watch this video:

I’m actually blogging again. Yes, this time I’m serious. There’s just too much I want to comment on and such.

For right now I like this minimalist template. I’ve got a similar one I’m working on but I didn’t want to wait. I’ve missed you all so much.