And if so, what sport are you interested in?
Bookshelf Battle
The only site where new bestsellers are forced to do battle for space on a nerd's bookshelf.
Monthly Archives: August 2016
Will Suicide Squad Be Good?
Should we judge it by Batman vs. Superman, that horrible stink burger of a film, or will it break out and be awesome on its own?
What say you, 3.5 readers?
Bob, Louis and Gordon Canned from Sesame Street
Have you heard this one, 3.5 readers?
Honestly, I’m surprised those dudes are still alive. They seemed like they were 100 years old when I watched the show 100 years ago.
But it seems so lame they got fired. Reeks of Hollywood suits deciding they were too old.
I’ve read some articles that they might come back occasionally (in light of people being mad they were canned) but still, totally lame.
What say you 3.5 readers?
Things that Really Frost My Ass – Uncle Hardass for President
By: Uncle Hardass, Official Bookshelf Battle Blog Grumpy Old Man Correspondent
In Hardass We Trust
Hello degenerate 3.5 readers.
Still working on your writing careers, I see. Insert joke about how you’re all lazy bastards who need to quit writing and get jobs at the salt mines here.
So the presidential election is in full swing and for awhile I thought I might dip a toe into the old wading pool of muck that this contest has become.
Then I said to myself, “No Hardassimo. You’re no spring chicken anymore. The kids want to see fresh faces with new ideas, not some wrinkled up old has been who has lost all hope after year after year of being put down by the man.”
But then I saw who you people are interested in. Donald Trump? Hillary Clinton? Bernie Sanders?
Holy shit. Is this an election or a cocktail party at the Golden Girls condo?
Somebody hit the music. “Thank you for being a friend. Travel round the road and back again….”
Oh sorry. My incompetent nephew Bookshelf Q. Battler informs me that if I sing any more of that song I’ll owe Betty White a hundo.
Anyway, seeing as how Methuselah-esque politicians are in style this year, allow me to announce my candidacy right here on a blog with 3.5 readers, which might make you laugh, but keep in mind that most news website proprietors would sell their kidneys to black market organ traffickers just to get 2.5 readers.
The following is a brief synopsis of my platform. You can like it or leave it, I really don’t give a crap. In fact, you should leave it because you won’t understand any of it because you’re all so stupid.
EDUCATION
That’s right. I said it. You’re all incredibly stupid.
Don’t blame yourselves. The public school system has failed you.
You know the Japanese kids get up at 3 a.m., go for a 50 mile jog, practice martial arts and break boards in half with their fists, feet and faces, study math, science, languages, quantum physics and so on and so forth until 2 a.m. the next day. Then they sleep for one hour and do it all over again.
Enough with the “high school is the best time of our lives” bullshit. Listen, if high school was the best time of your life, then you’re a loser.
No one likes high school. High school memories only become moderately interesting when you’re seventy-five years old and suddenly you’d gladly give your entire nut sack away just to be that young kid getting pelted in the back of the head with spitballs all day instead of a decrepit old bastard who has to get up five thousand times a night to pee.
In short, my education system is simple. Beat the Japanese.
Oh, and get a job between 2 and 3 a.m. you lazy bastards. You can sleep when you die.
WORLD PEACE
My plan here is two-fold.
First, all of the poor, shitty countries need a one-hundred percent increase in pornographic access.
Look, I’m sorry, but all of these people are blowing themselves up out of frustration.
Get them some Internet. Get them set up with some movies of some broads with gigantic knockers and you’ll see a 9,000 percent decrease in people being violent because they’ll all be too busy pounding the old flounder.
Why no one else has thought of this I don’t know but few will ever be as smart as I am.
Second, everyone needs to get jobs. When you have jobs, you have money coming in and therefore you don’t want to do shit that will stop the money from coming in (like blow yourself up for example.)
Moreover, when you have a job, you just don’t have enough time to worry about petty bullshit that makes you hate people enough to want to blow them up. “That guy doesn’t believe in the same god as I do. That guy doesn’t read the same holy book as I do…who gives a shit? I have to go to work tomorrow so I can get my ass paid, son.”
Porn. Jobs. Spread both around the world and pretty soon everyone will be joining their sticky hands together to sing a chorus of “kumbaya.”
THE ECONOMY
You. Right there. The dumb ass reading this.
My plan for you is simple.
Get a job!
What? You can’t find a job?
Get any job!
What? You can’t find anything?
Really? Have you tried:
- Volunteering and/or developing the skills necessary to turn yourself from a useless sack of crap into a productive member of society? As President, I will be opening a “Useless Sack of Crap Reeducation Center” in every state where you can go to learn how to not be a useless sack of crap.
- Have you sold your hair, teeth, and superfluous body parts? All will be considered currency under my regime.
- Have you sold your bodily orifices to complete strangers for pennies on the dollar? Prostitution will be legalized under my administration. Our criminal justice system is much too clogged as it is without having to worry about prosecuting women just for trying to make you holla for a dolla.
- Finally, and here’s the most important part. Get a job…AND…feel like a total dumbass until you secure the aforementioned job. Once you do have a job, you will join the ranks of the self-righteous and enjoy the tremendous feeling of chewing out useless layabouts who do not have jobs.
TRADE
When engaging in business deals with other nations, the two most important questions are, “Do you want this shit?” and “How much you got?”
The key, you see, is to find the countries that will a) want our shit and b) pay as much as or as close to the amount they got as possible.
By the way, I recently heard some news about child labor that is very disturbing.
We don’t have it here in America and I am very disturbed by that.
Seriously. You park your kids’ dumb asses in front of the TV for 18 years then wonder why they grow up to become self-absorbed douchebags who start shooting up the joint the first time someone tells them “no?”
I had my first job thirty seconds out of the womb and the only thing I am ashamed of is that it took me that long.
Put the kids to work assembling smart phones for ten cents an hour while some schmuck beats a drum to make sure they go at a steady pace. I’m telling you, they will grow up to become very productive, high performing, well adjusted adults like yours truly.
CRIME
Stop stealing shit and get a job. Professional stealer of shit is one of few jobs that will be deemed unacceptable.
CONCLUSIONS
These are the broad strokes of my platform thus far and I’ll be revising as the campaign moves forward.
If you forget this column, at least remember:
- I’m running for president so vote for me, dumb ass.
- Get a job.
- Seriously, quit your futile attempts at becoming a writer and get jobs, preferably at the salt mines, so that your parents can be proud of you for once.
Paid for by the Committee to Elect Uncle Hardass
Movie Controversy – The Great Wall
Hey nerds.
BQB here.
Soo…OscarsSoWhite. That whole issue has led to people really paying attention to casting decisions lately.
A trailer is out for a moving coming out next year. Sort of an action horror fantasy movie. “The Great Wall” the idea being that the Great Wall of China was built to keep monsters from invading China.
So the hero’s an Asian guy, right?
Wrong. It’s Matt Damon.
I guess he had some time between filming the last Jason Bourne movie and the next Jason Bourne movie.
Hmmm…ok. So I assume the story explains how a white guy ended up as the hero but…maybe just maybe Good Ole Matt has a good run in Tinsel Town. Maybe just maybe there was an Asian guy who could have been the lead…in a movie…about China.
By the way – I’m not sure I blame Matt Damon. I mean, if Hollywood’s passing out big bucks to pretend to be a warrior in China, I’d take it. But, it is up to Hollywood to say, “Huh. Maybe a movie in Asia needs an Asian lead.”
What say you, 3.5 readers?
Undead Man’s Hand – Chapter 28
Buck Mulligan stood in front of a horse pen and waved a fat wad of cash in the air. The horses had been cleared out and replaced with two gargantuan, shirtless men.
“Place your bets! Place your bets! In today’s bout, Earl “Feelin’ Fine” Klein squares off against Otto “the Ox” Ziegler. Ladies and gentlemen, this is truly a clash of the titans. Hold onto your hats because these champions are bringing enough thunder to make Zeus himself nervous. Who wants in on the action?”
Buck twirled the end of his waxed mustache between his thumb and forefinger, then adjusted the bowler hat he was wearing. Before his very eyes emerged more cash stuffed fists than his eyes could count.
And then came the barked orders.
“Put it all on the Ox!”
“A sawbuck on Klein!”
As Buck counted up the loot, he felt a finger tap his shoulder. He turned to his right.
“Shit on a shingle, McCall, you’re a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?”
“I want a fight,” Jack replied.
“Look kid,” Mulligan said. “I love an easy mark but you’re too easy. So easy that you make my moral compass point north. Beat your feet down the street.”
“Come on Buck,” Jack said. “I need this.”
“Kid,” Buck said. “You’re 99 and 0. If I threw a slab of beef in there it would do better than you.”
“If I lose, I’ll never come back,” Jack said.
Mulligan collected the last bet and tucked the giant cash wad into his pocket. He turned his attention to the fight.
Otto was giving Klein’s face what for.
“Fine,” Mulligan said. “Make it an even hundred then. When you lose…”
Jack corrected Mulligan. “If I lose…”
“When you lose,” Mulligan said. “That’s it. You’ll never get another fight from me ever again. I got standards, kid. Not many, but I got some.”
The crowd gasped. Then shouted various guttural noises. Then came the cheers as Otto delivered one last crushing blow to Klein’s face.
Klein dropped to the ground. Otto, his muscles glistening with a mixture of his opponent’s blood and his own, raised his bare fists high in the air as the crowd cheered.
“Time to doesy doe, kid,” Mulligan said. “Your dance partner awaits.”
Most men would have fled in at the sight of the giant beast in the middle of the ring. Jack smiled and was on his way when he spotted a young brunette beauty in the crowd.
He walked over to her.
“Hi Ginny.”
Virginia Pierce, the town butcher’s daughter, rolled her eyes and belted out an exaggerated sigh.
“Hello Jack.”
“I’m up next,” Jack said.
“Good luck,” Ginny said.
Jack blushed and looked down at his shoe. He stalled for a moment then looked back at the girl.
“You know they say a kiss brings good luck.”
“It’s over, Jack,” Ginny said.
“I know,” Jack replied. “Just, you know…if I die…”
“Uggh,” Ginny said. “Fine.” She leaned up on her tip toes and pecked Jack a fast one on his cheek.”
Jack grinned. “I’ll never wash my face again.”
“What else is new?” Ginny asked.
Undead Man’s Hand – Chapter 27
“Jack you lazy son of a bitch!”
What a way to start the day. Twenty year old Jack McCall couldn’t remember a morning that hadn’t begun without his perpetually angry father screaming at him through the door over something.
The door rattled as Pa McCall pounded on it. “Open this door!”
“Crooked Nose Jack” was the young man’s nickname about town. He fancied himself a prizefighter but his rearranged beak said otherwise. In his short career, he’d taken more punches than he’d landed, and with the beating his father was giving the door, it was starting to look like he was about to take another one, or two, or twelve.
The rattling stopped. “You didn’t muck out the pig pen. You didn’t milk the cow. You are the most worthless sack of shit I’ve ever seen in all of my days, boy! Get out of bed and get to work or so help me…”
Jack brushed his black hair out of his face and hopped out of bed. He picked up the button down shirt he’d worn the day before up off the floor and put it back on. He was still wearing the previous day’s trousers.
Inside Jack’s mind there was a vision of his fist connecting to his old father’s face, shutting up his tirade instantly and sending him to the ground in a heap.
He’d yet to do that to an opponent in the ring, but he was certain he could do it to a mouthy old timer.
But he didn’t want to. Yet he knew that it was only a matter of time before he lost control. So, he slipped on his shoes and opened a window.
His father had good ears. “Boy, don’t you think about leaving without your chores done! You give up that scrapping and you get to work, you hear me?”
Jack grabbed a book off his night stand, then slipped out the window and landed in the road. His father bellowed even louder.
“Damn it, Jack!” Pa McCall screamed. “You’ll never amount to anything! Twenty Goddamn years old, no fucking job, no wife, you’re a loser! You hear me?! A loser! Don’t you ever come back here!”
“Loser.” The word had such a sting to it. It was odd that the word retained such power as Jack had the word hurled at him by so many people in his life.
Pa McCall had told Jack to get lost plenty of times before and always let him come back, though not without a profanity laced lecture of course. Still, Jack always felt like he was eating shit whenever he did come back.
Rude as his father’s summation of Jack’s life was, the lad knew the old man wasn’t wrong. Twenty. Jobless. Broke. No wife. There was a girl but she changed her mind about Jack as often as the seasons changed the weather.
As Jack strolled down the road, he felt as if he might as well have had a letter “L” carved into his forehead.
He was in need of inspiration. He parked himself on a bench in front of one of the town’s many saloons and looked at the cover of his book.
“The Life and Times of James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok – a Biography by Elliot P. Forysthe.”
The book was worn and its pages dog eared from multiple readings. Jack licked his finger and turned to the first chapter. It was his favorite part.
“Chapter the First – Given the fact that the name ‘Wild Bill Hickok’ is well known in every household from New York to San Francisco, it may come as a tremendous surprise to the reader to learn that Mr. Hickok came from very humble beginnings, thus proving that the American dream is achievable by all willing to struggle for it.
‘I know what it’s like to be dirt poor, dead broke, and written off like a bump on a rented mule’s behind,’ Mr. Hickok told this writer. ‘But the hard times we all fight through make the victory that much sweeter. Every day a nobody becomes a somebody. It can be done.”
“It can be done,” Jack mumbled to himself.
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