An open letter to Tom Foss

I originally left this as a comment in Tom Foss' blog during his still-unfinished Transformers Week. (Still waiting on that movie review, Tom!) I present it now as a challenge to him in the hopes that he'll put down that Harry Potter novel and answer my burning, serious questions.

The fact that this is an easy way of generating content has nothing to do with it, I assure you.

Hey Tom,

Despite how it may appear, I have a serious question for you regarding the Transformers. To whit: why do the Autobots and Decepticons hate each other?

Being a child of the Cold War, I completely understand why GI Joe are the good guys and why Cobra are the bad. Heck, I even understand why He-Man and Skeletor hate each other. But I don't get why two very scientifically advanced races of sentient robots want to destroy each other.

Now I freely confess that my knowledge of Transfandom is lacking. As a girl, I watched the cartoons on weekday afternoons, but I never saw the movie, and so when the series "jumped" from present day with Optimus to the future with a bunch of retards I'd never heard of, well... I stopped watching, and never really had the urge to get back into the fandom after that.

My initial inclination is to assume that "Autobot" and "Decepticon" are basically militant ideologies; give the Republicans and the Democrats energy weapons and they're almost as likely to start shooting at each other during a session of congress.

But then I realized, there seems to be no political drive to either of these groups. The Decepticons, when they aren't fighting the Autobots for no real tactical gain, seem to engage in what amounts to piracy: stealing energy and other natural resources to either construct new 'cons or escape Earth. The 'bots, on the other hand, tend to just sit around chillaxin' in the Ark, until and unless there is some Decepticon plot that needs thwarting.

So is it a subtle satire? Are the Decepticons slash-and-burn developers intent on raping the land? Are the Autobots eco-friendly stoners?

And if they are, why for Eris' sake are we being taught a lesson in ecology and Gaia reverence by ROBOTS?

As I said, I am perplexed. I would appreciate you addressing this at some point during your Transformers week.

Thank you.

In fact, if ANYONE would like to answer this question, I'd appreciate it. I mean, I get the whole "good vs evil" thing, of course, but there has to be SOME kind of flimsy rationalization for the Autobot-Decepticon conflict. Right? They were at war on Cybertron before they ended up on Earth, yes?

I don't care how patently absurd the answer is, I just want to know their motivations. Ridiculously in-depth socio-political analyses that go far beyond the scope of the original series are more than welcome.

An open letter to everyone bitching about Transformers

Dear choads who are bitching about the Transformers movie,

Would it have killed you to put a "Spoilers" tag on your posts? Apparently so, because after reading just TWO blogs, the movie has been totally ruined for me. I know who dies (and thus, who lives) and I know pretty much the entire structure of the third act. And I didn't sit there and read the whole entry, either; I stopped reading the moment I found out something I didn't want to know.

Now I can't watch the movie, because I'll be unable to shut my brain up. I don't know how it is for you assholes, but when I go to a movie and I know someone is gonna die, there's a continuous loop of dialog that runs through my head: "Is this where he dies? Is this where he dies? Is this where he dies?" And I cannot shut it up until that person actually dies.

If you think I'm going to sit through a third act where, its surprises being lost to me, I am constantly analyzing each scene to see if it fits what I know is going to happen... you can go fuck yourselves.

So yeah. I can't watch it now. Are you proud of yourselves, shitheads? You've completely ruined the experience for me. I have to wait until I've forgotten what was spoiled (which, knowing my capacity for useless factoids, will be about a decade) and of course the movie will be out of theaters by then. How would you have liked it if, right before you watched The Empire Strikes Back, someone had told you that [SPOILERS] Vader was Luke's father ?[/SPOILERS]
Wouldn't that have completely and utterly ruined the whole movie for you? Wouldn't it have completely destroyed the mystery and tension of the "Force Cave" sequence on Dagobah?

God, you're all such whiny fucking little fanboys, aren't you? The movie isn't a perfect wankfest of your childhood memories. DUH! This is the Hollywood machine, people; its entire purpose in life is to take a giant stinking shit on beloved memories in an attempt to wring cash from your pockets. Hell, even the original Transformers movie was a betrayal, in that [SPOILERS] they killed almost the entire first generation of Autobots in, what, the first 15 minutes? [/SPOILERS]
What ever made you think that this was going to anything else? Was the name "Michael Bay" not a giant FUCKING clue that the movie just might not be faithful to the source material?

I hate you all. Please fuck off and die.

Kisses,
Erin Palette

Batman, as written by Chuck Palahniuk

It's raining buckets in Gotham, like God left the water running in the cold bath where he slit his wrists, and his death throes are making the rain come down in blue-black sheets, drenching the buildings that are his tub's marble-clawed feet.

Stabbing into the sky like a mile-long phosphorescent penis is the Bat-Signal, my emblem embossed across the clouds like a serial killer's trophy mark. "Fetishistic" isn't the right word, but it's the closest that comes to mind.

I am Bruce's rampaging ego.

The Batmobile rips through Gotham's steel canyons, belching smoke as thick as my rage and and black as my mood, my foot permanently against the firewall. More speed, more power, more penetration of the murky streets. I have an erection as hard as iron and I can't satisfy it, so my Batmobile becomes my penis, plowing through moist and cloying alleys like a turbine-powered dildo.

It's always "a" dildo, though. Never "my" dildo. Have to watch how I think, or that mind-reading freak J'onn will narc me out to Clark, and then he'll have to spend several hours talking about "feelings" and "rage" and "psycho-sexual impulses" while I fantasize about bending Diana over that giant penny in the Batcave and taking her roughly from behind.

See also: Amazonian Bondage Fetish.

See also: Diana's recurring rape fantasy.

To get semen stains out, I have to soak my cape in cold salt water, then wash as usual. Same with blood. Anything organic, really.

I arrive at Police Headquarters, propelled to the roof by rage and a Batline. I expect to see Commissioner Gordon there, in a rumpled overcoat, but instead it's Renee Montoya. I appear behind her, my breath on the back of her neck her only clue to my arrival. She whips around, latino eyes blazing a mixture of fear and lust.

I am Bruce's psychological warfare.

She gives me some story about some scum somewhere that need cleaning in a non-police sanctioned way. But I'm not listening. I know where all the scum in this town live. I have a model of Gotham in the Batcave. Some days, when it all gets too much, I take off my shoes and stomp on Crime Alley.

I stomp and I stomp and I stomp until the headless miniature of Joe Chill is firmly embedded in the flesh of my heel.

To get bloodstains out of a fur coat, use cornmeal and brush the coat the wrong way.

To get crime out of Gotham, use Batman.

She tries to show me a file. I don't need it, I say.

How will you know who to bring in, she says.

I'll know them by my hate, I say.

You have to know who you hate, she says.

I know who I hate, and it's myself. But I love my hate, and I love to spread it. I spread it all over the faces of criminals.

"Bukkake" isn't the right word, but it's the first that comes to mind.

I am Bruce's Bukkake of Justice.

An Open Letter to Bikers

Dear Daytona Beach Bike Week 2007 Participants:

I hate you all. Please die immediately.

Um... wow, Palette. Isn't that incredibly harsh?

Not really. Barring a short 5 year stint up in Washington DC, I have lived in Florida since 1987. I wasn't born here -- I grew up in a military family, so as a child I got used to moving to a new continent every 3-5 years -- but I am a fully naturalized Floridian. I graduated from high school here. I went to college here. I am a Florida girl. This is my home, and I love it, hurricane season and all. I'm like a goth Superman, sent to the Sunshine State aboard a speeding U-Haul. Call me Fla-El.

(Did you know Florida natives are an endangered species? It's true. There are more New Yorkers and New Jerseyites than Floridians in Florida. Of course, I think the Italians are about to be supplanted by the Russians, who are busy carving a New Moscow out of Flagler County with the help of the Organizatskaia.)

Daytona is indisputably a tourist town: Bike Week, Spring Break, Black College Reunion, Speed Weeks, Biketoberfest, plus all the summer vacationers who come to see The World's Most Famous Beach. And let's not forget the snowbirds, those @#%^%! Yankees who come down here for 6 months out of the year to escape the punishing winters of their Great White Northern Abodes.

AND WE HATE YOU ALL.

I am completely goddamn serious about this. A common bumper sticker around these parts is, "When I retire, I'm going to go Up North and DRIVE SLOWLY."

Every year, you people come down here. And every year, you act like complete asses, like this is Las Fucking Vegas and we are here to cater to your every whim. And every year, dozens of you die horribly. I always laugh whenever I see the death toll after an event, because it reaffirms my faith in Natural Selection. Because, you see, you people are stupid, and stupid people shouldn't ever breathe my air.

How are you stupid? Let me count the ways:

1. Florida is not temperate. Florida is sub-tropical. That means it rains a fucking lot here. Rainy roads and motorcycles do not mix.
   
2. We are a hunting state. That means we have access to large-caliber weapons like rifles and shotguns in addition to the ubiquitous handgun. Starting shit with us will get your ass shot.
3. We are an undeveloped state. That, combined with #2 above, means we have access to multi-ton vehicles called Pickup Trucks. Now I'm sure you never took physics, or else you could wrap your puny brains around the concept of "A 2.5 ton truck cannot stop as quickly as a motorcycle." Cut us off and your ass gets run over. Ironically, with our off-road suspensions, we'll easily traverse your wreckage.
   
4. We live on a beach. We know what attractive is. Don't think you're sexy just because you drive a Harley. And please put your shirt back on.
   
5. We have 80-degree winters. You wear lots of black and drink beer, then pass out due to dehydration.
   

But really, what pisses me off most is that you think we love you. We don't. Oh, our businesses love you to death, but that's because you spend money like a shopper during Black Friday. But we who live and work here -- the store clerks, to continue the metaphor -- despise your asses, because you make more work for us.

You reduce traffic to a crawl. You divert precious police resources. And when you DO finally die, you do it in as dramatic a way as possible, frequently prompting lawsuits. As if it was the fault of the State of Florida that you decided to drive down I-95 at top speed without a helmet.

The worst of it is that you have spread, cancer-like, to outlying regions. Back in the 90s, I could just avoid going into Daytona and all would be well. Now, you've metastatized into the suburban areas of Ormond, New Smyrna, Holly Hill. I can't even get onto the interstate without sitting at a traffic light for 15 minutes. I think you won't be happy until you've taken over all of Volusia County, and then you'll probably set your sights on Flagler.

Enough, I say. Tomorrow, I'm buying a Humvee, mounting a cowcatcher to the front, and I'm going for a leisurely drive.

Please get in my way.