Author: Robert Brockway

Categories
LEARNING DAY

WikiHow: How To Avoid Attention 🌭

WikiHow is a resource site for people so utterly lost in life that they don’t even know how to ask for directions anymore. It’s full of wildly unhelpful guides for basic things like ‘how to speak without vomiting on your own shirt’ and ‘how to park a bicycle.’ It is a site that tells people the wrong way to do tasks that nobody needed instructions for in the first place, but it mostly operates under the guise of being useful. Even if it’s aimed solely at people so anxious they have become a panicking gelatinous cube and somehow forgot how to work a fork, WikiHow at least pretends to help. But How to Avoid Attention knows that you are beyond assistance, and all you want in life is to disappear. Since the mods keep deleting How To Do A Shy Suicide, this is closest thing they’re legally allowed to publish:

It makes me intensely sad to think of the person so emotionally shattered that they turn to WikiHow, the site that fails to explain how to use a ball, to help them recede from society like a meek tide. Look at this wildly useless word collage:

This fucking article is introducing the idea of conformity like it’s a unique concept that has never occurred to you, the reader. Like you’re out there on the streets wearing nothing but tap shoes and a bearskin rug, begging passersby to explain why you’re not allowed on the bus. The author takes a whole paragraph out to carefully define what ‘medium’ is — anxiety isn’t tied to lexical amnesia, you Buck-Fifty-An-Hour Freelancer, why are you pausing to explain basic words in an article already made of basic words?

Also why is there a section advising you to change colors like a chameleon? I’m starting to think I’ve misunderstood the intention of this article but
 no, no that’s too crazy. I’m being paranoid again. Let’s carry on.

I’m sure that sounded perfectly reasonable in whatever Theoretical Lab of the Mild Sciences paper you’re referencing, but I guarantee that advising some poor jittery bouillon of a boy to wander into Baltimore and impersonate the way people talk there is going to end with you guys liable for Murder By Endorsement. 

Man, something is up with this guide. Look at this:

Who is this for?

I’m clearly approaching this whole thing from the wrong angle. Usually the ‘Recommended Reading’ section at the bottom tells you far more about the intended demographic than you are comfortable knowing, so let’s just scroll down to…

Oh, holy shit. 

I have indeed been wrong: This is an introductory textbook for incel murderers. It’s supplemental material for Remedial Manhunting 95. I assumed that, like every single other WikiHow guide I have ever read, this one was meant for shy teens raised in a closet with only an affable pillowcase for a companion. There is something much more sinister going on here. But if it’s just for psychopaths then…

Why are we shown a deliberately median human gazing with confusion at a fork? This isn’t advice for a person trying not to be bullied by unfiltered eye contact… but it’s also not for a lunatic hunting prey at an opera. Even a lunatic would understand these basic human cues by now, if only by exposure.

Yep. Okay. I get it now.

I have somehow accessed Alien WikiHow — the guide for dipshit extraterrestrials who are clueless about their first Earthbound hunting safari. You just had to go and include a section about ‘throttling your own superhuman powers to avoid notice’ didn’t you? You gave away the game, Zapzar, you 0.65-Loobars-An-Hour Space-Freelancer.

Clearly, I am no longer qualified to comment on the quality of this advice. I only have one inhuman acquaintance who enjoys hunting humans, so I’ll hand this over to Vexxox, PoxCo’s Head HR ManTis.

Well shit, WikiHow. Thanks a lot. Now you’ve got me being hunted by the worst enemy our species has ever known: An HR representative. 

At least now I understand what the fuck Sophia was talking about.

…
This article was brought to you by our fine patron and Hot Dog Supreme, Pauli Poisuo: who is called “Baba Yaga” by his enemies and “Double P” by Baba Yagas.

Categories
REFLECTING DAY

Reflecting Day: Become the ManLoaf

Welcome all to this, our monthly day of reflection. It is the only day where contemplation of the self is allowed, and also absolutely mandatory. Please begin having personal epiphanies immediately or you will be registered, detained, branded, shipped away for reeducation and processed into reeducated meat byproduct for use in PoxCoℱ branded loaf products. 

Now that you have had at least one (1) Manager Approved Realization and/or been shunted away by the Meditation Chute, let us continue. The state of the Hot Dog is strong. We’ve just passed 1000 patrons, which is astonishing! I never imagined that would happen. I didn’t even think it could happen. I figured once we hit 999 it would just tick over to 000 and we’d get the Patreon killscreen. Instead Seanbaby and I have to sit here like chumps, humbled and amazed by all of your support. You really showed us. 

With your help, we’ve been able to start running guest columns and that is hilarious. We’re employers! Hahaha we created jobs! Nobody stopped us! 

So far we’ve had excellent pieces from Jason “David” Pargin “Wong” and Auralnauts Zak, Dashing Explorer of Sound. Coming up we’ve got more exciting guest stars who will meander onscreen, mug uncomfortably at the camera, and promptly exit to applause. Chris Bucholz is already on the calendar, and here’s a fun fact: We actually learned how to pronounce his name! He’s going to let us tell you! Right now! It’s pronounced… 

I know, right?! You literally would never have guessed it. My god.

In other news, we’ve finally got our external site up and running at 1900hotdog.com, and it is truly a stunning piece of technology. It has images, text, the occasional link! And unlike Patreon’s site, it actually works! Most of the time! If you’re tired of Patreon’s crushed and warped images, awkward archives and non-supported links, step into the distant futuristic year of 2007 with our new external site. It even has a color!

We’ve also launched our very first PoxCo Regional Wrestling’s Pretend Wrestling League (Now With More Wrestling!). The response has been strong, enough for us to do a full tournament. And let me tell you, these wrestlers are beautiful… in a savage, hideous way. Each of them is like a rampaging hippo with its skin removed so that you can better view the mechanical motions of its muscles as it tramples everything you love, have loved, or will ever love in the future. Yes, they’re Hellraiser Hippos of the Heart, ladies and gentleman, and I cannot wait to show you the horrors they have in store. 

To keep things fresh, we’ll go back to our normal teamworking pieces for a few months before the first qualifying round of the PRL tournament, and we’ll periodically check in for the semi-final, and championship rounds after that. I hope you liquified some of your comedy portfolio before this, because most of your laughs are now invested in this year-long bit and there will be severe penalties for early withdrawal.

If you’re a Hot Dog Supreme, well then first of all I want to congratulate you on being intrinsically better than everybody else. It was a long, hard road to giving us a stupid amount of money every month, and they didn’t believe you could do it
 but we did. We always knew you could give us $50 a month, and we are so proud of you for achieving this dream. You can find our new batch of Supreme dedications on the About page, or you could just find them right here, right now:

Jeff Atwood: the star of the story choosing from 39 possible endings!

toasty god: duly elected mayor of uncooked bread.

Pauli Poisuo: who is called “Baba Yaga” by his enemies and “Double P” by Baba Yagas.

Ethan Rangel: half wolf, half cop, half cyborg, and all wolf again twice, for a total of 2.5 wolves.

Yannis Ioannidis: is the first person based on the film 3 Ninjas Kick Back.

John McCammon: who left fighting behind him, at least until Baron Arena took his daughter.

Hawk: and that’s pronounced with eight additional seconds of silent eye contact.

Armando Nava: whose name is an anagram of how they were conceived: a rad van moan.

Lyman: a magnificent youth who brandishes the magical broadsword, Lycheaper! 

Micah Phillips: joins together with four other pure-hearted warriors to form Zorklon, Protector of the Cosmos! He pilots the left leg — the invaluable left leg!

Seems way easier this way, but you do you.

Supremes, your first round of cursed artifacts from the Wrong Dimension are shipping in just about a week, so make sure we have your current address and a brief list of private shames. It helps PoxCo Delivery find your residence. Don’t ask how: the answer will invert your human lungs and you’ll inhale your own ribcage. It’s better to just write down the secret ways you failed yourself on a little piece of paper, roll it up tightly, and leave it in the gap between your wall and floor. The space where roaches get in. They’ll take it from here. Trust me: it’s better than coughing up a rib. Marginally.

Let’s close this out with a little behind the scenes peek:

Seanbaby and I work opposite schedules, so theoretically we have 24 hour coverage of the site. This is not to guard it against any possible attacks, though that is a welcome fringe benefit. It’s because I live in the desert and, as such, must rise at dawn if I’m going to step outside without being shriveled into a husk by the angry, angry sun. While Seanbaby has a young child in his home — hopefully his own, I’ve been too afraid to ask — and so can only work at night, when the kid is exhausted from screaming all the words that rhyme with ‘thumb’ right into his sleep-deprived face. 

We have just two brief moments of contact per day: when he clocks on and I clock off, and vice versa. We refer to this as Ladyhawking. There was a big argument over which one of us is Rutger Hauer and which is Michelle Pfeiffer, but then we realized it was our analogy, and we didn’t have to choose. We are both Michelle Pfeiffer. Neither of us are Rutger Hauer. Why? Because you are, my friends. You are our Rutger Hauer. 

Congratulations! Happy Rutger to you, Hauer!

Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Eliminator

Malibu Comics was a slipshod comic imprint from the ‘90s held together by duct tape and a stubborn unwillingness to recognize failure. Their greatest lasting impact on society was teaching Child Brockway to hate. Malibu’s entire business model was based on tricking confused grandmothers into buying the wrong comic book for their sick grandchild. It was a whole publishing line built on the cynical exploitation of dementia, and the only reason its president, Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, is not in jail today is because he has never missed a single payment of unwanted babies to Balphas, the demon who presides over Backwards Wishes.

Eliminator ran for four issues, which is what we call a ‘Malibu success.’ He was a mash-up of Iron Fist and Deathlok, which you might recognize as “the dude from the shitty Netflix show” and “I don’t.” Malibu was so low-confidence they couldn’t even steal the good characters. Buying a Malibu title was like buying storebrand ramen – don’t lie to yourself that you’re saving pennies here; you’re doing this because you hate yourself somewhere between Face Tattoo and No Note Suicide.

Eliminator’s powers were “Robot Arm” and “Maybe Karate.” His costume was a leotard, a blouse, and his secretary’s makeup but you’ll have to wait six more images for that joke to pay off. Eliminator was a mercenary, just like every generic comic book character in the ‘90s, but he was an especially shitty one who only went after Zumba instructors that stole Quickbooks passwords.

Eliminator had a motorcycle that changed into whatever was convenient at the time, so long as he techno-fingerblasted it a little first.

It was not the only finger-blasting going on in the transmogrocycle. 

Eliminator was a mash-up of things the ‘90s were all about, but didn’t age well: transformers, mercenaries, cyborgs, white guys doing karate, and banging your assistant. 

Either Eliminator sarcastically called her Laquita, which would make him very racist, or the author named her Laquita, which would make him very racist, or Laquita was a common and entirely accepted name in ‘90s black culture, which would make me very racist. Let’s check: A quick google first asks me if I meant La Quinta:

The ‘baby names’ robot tried to ask me if I was fucking with it, but was not programmed with the proper words to accuse:

And Urban Dictionary, as always, makes me regret looking at Urban Dictionary:

So let’s drop this whole debate and just agree on one thing: It is never acceptable to call a woman “queet.”

The whole series, all four of it, is chock full of racial stereotypes. There are two latino characters in this book: one of them is in a gang and one of them used to be in a gang. They are brothers. 

Here’s one of them stumbling across a beached shark and thinking 1. “My gang would love this shark,” and 2. “We could sell sharks, that could be our gang thing.”

The central villain for the entire series was:

Malibu combed through the great bible of comic book names and couldn’t believe their crap luck: Cyborg was taken, Metalman was taken, ManBot was taken – wait for real, fucking manbot was taken??? They flipped the page in frustration and noticed one conspicuous absence: Mannequin. “Oh well” is the official Malibu slogan. It’s on their business cards. All four of them.

Thus ends the compelling origin story of Mannequin, the half-man half-robot named for an inanimate bust whose only purpose is to wear clothes. He does not wear clothes. 

So yes, there’s a lot wrong with Eliminator, but nothing touches the dialogue:

Every quip was pulled from a rejected Friends spec script, “The One Where Chandler Is Maimed in a Sweater Accident and Has to Be Rebuilt With Robot Parts.”

This is what passes for wit in a Malibu title:

You traveled so far for something so lackluster and it didn’t even land. You’re like a plane crash in Auckland. That’s one of our latino characters spending yet another of his action scenes running from and fighting the police, who are only in this comic to arrest the other latino character but can’t tell the two apart. So at least Malibu did their research on real police procedure. Here’s how Former Gang Member deals with the intense fear that his brother, Gang Member, might already be dead:

I’m telling you, that’s a Chandler line. Not a good one, but that is definitely pulled from somebody’s đŸ’–đŸ”F●R●I●E●N●D●S F●O●R●E●V●E●RđŸ”đŸ’– GeoCities fansite. Try it, read every joke in Chandler’s voice and then pretend Matthew Perry frowns and adds “we can beat that one, surely?”

“Genie’s Weenie” is not a canonical reference to something in this comic. That is a standalone line. That is an actual thing that Eliminator yelled while jumpkicking a cruise ship samba coach. It’s not a callback you don’t get, it’s just the product of a tired and overworked brain that probably shouldn’t have been doing this in the first place, much less have been doing it nonstop for eighteen hours. That brain wanted to go back and give this a second pass, but it already wrote ten issues that day and it still needed to help brainstorm 700 new titles for Malibu before it could earn a bathroom break. “A…a magic mom?” That brain oozed. “How about like a little kid who turns into a superhero oh fuck that’s Shazam, fuck I am getting so fired and I need this Work Experience credit if I’m ever gonna graduate from DeVry’s Program for the Comical Book Arts.”

But they did publish that brain’s exhaustion-farting idea sludge, and that brain did get its credits, and it did graduate with Extra Stickers from DeVry. And that brain? Why, that brain was a little someone named Roland Mann.


You haven’t heard of him. This was the best thing he ever did.

…

This article was brought to you by our fine patron and Hot Dog Supreme, toasty god: duly elected mayor of uncooked bread.

Categories
UPSETTING DAY

iCub

Robots fulfill a legitimate need in our society: We have too many jobs and not enough hunter/killers, and those two birds can be killed with one flamethrower. Yes, I am absolutely saying all robots are evil and all humans who build them are traitors to their species — but most of these cyber-Judases at least pretend at respectability. There’s something very refreshing about an engineer who openly admits to prototyping a nightmare because they felt the world had wronged them, and it simply made better economic sense to automate their revenge.

Take, for example, the lunatic who built the iCub:

This was not the result of a terrible series of increasingly high-stakes errors — somebody built this monstrosity on purpose. Nobody started off with the best of intentions here. They didn’t design the smooth plastic skull faceplate and say “yes, this will comfort my children as they die.” iCub is not the result of a focus panel that accidentally recruited only maniacs who suggested the addition of ever-shifting pink blobs for the eyebrows and mouth. Look how disproportionately long those fingers are. Is there
 is there an extra joint on those? Fuck you. Zero meetings were had where actual human beings got together and decided that robots would be more approachable if only they had grasping raccoon hands. 

iCub is a calculated attack on the abstract concept of safety: It is a pale erasure of a child, its features carefully distorted to best resemble a consortium of ghosts temporarily coalescing together into one body to explain the nature of a curse.

The Demon That Lives Beneath the Apple Store was first developed in 2004, but the iCub team has been working on perfecting the thing’s precise unease ever since. It was conceived of by the RobotCub Consortium of the European Commission’s Cognitive Systems and Robotics program, in case you wanted to jot down the acronym that ends mankind. And it was built at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, which I mention so that the remnants of humanity can pinpoint where to send their time-travelling soldiers. 

The IIT says that “CUB” stands for Cognitive Universal Body, but you might recognize that as horseshit which means less than nothing. They’re just hastily backfilling an acronym with the first three vaguely robot related words that came to mind. Because if they explained it actually stands for “Cruel and Unyielding Bloodshed,” that would give away the game. They might as well just rip off the human mask and reveal the Snakeoid’s ultimate plan to everyone. And if you think Queen Hissteria enjoys having her timetables fucked with, Dr. SlitheRick, why don’t you ask your predecessor, Dr. VenoMichael, why his last thought was “is this what a disintegrator ray tastes like?!”

Here, shake hands with a robot possessed by a baby’s ghost, you idiot:

Woops, you just lost a hand:

They’re only just now teaching iCub to monitor its horrible, crushing strength. You know that every warning on a product is only there because some poor jackass actually did it once. We have to print ‘DO NOT EAT’ on silica packets because a dipshit in Oklahoma thought every bag of beef jerky came with a mint. So if these scientists are just now figuring out they have to teach their toddler robot not to strangle, it’s because their toddler robot started strangling.

They knew. They knew this would happen. Look how coy they were about the tiny text hidden in the bottom left of this image:

You can and should try to hide from iCub — not because it will help you survive, but because it’s pretty tough to give a robot an erection and iCub likes foreplay. This machine has a very thorough array of sensors with which to find you:

Oh sweet, it has whatever capacitive tactile sensors are in its ‘upper body skin.’ Guess I’ll take that information to my fucking grave. 

Hey, here’s what it looks like when you first walk into a suspiciously empty lab and ask, “iCub, is that
 is that you?”

I’d like to point out that I didn’t manipulate that GIF in any way. I pulled that straight from the creator’s own hype video. If iCub was a valid scientific experiment and not a twisted revenge scheme on the god who took your child, why did you make its bootup sequence look like somebody pissed off Vegeta? Why does the extremely ominous word ‘AWAKENING’ crawl across the bottom, if not to warn you of the terrible mistake you’ve already made? This is not a “mission to explore the impact of robotics” unless you’re being very sarcastic about some of those words.

Oh hey, I just realized you guys haven’t seen it move around yet. Did you guess that the IIT gave it an unholy, stuttering crawl? 

That looks like something you’d slowly look up to find on the ceiling in a movie whose tagline is “IT CRIES, YOU DIE.”

But if you found the ‘unstuck from time’ crawl to be a disconcerting method of locomotion, boy are you fucking fucked:

Yes, they’re giving this dead-eyed skullfaced stranglebot baby some Iron Man-style jet blasters for reasons that could only be medically diagnosed as ‘Aggressively Suicidal Hyper-Mania.’

Keep your eyes on the skies, Hot Doggers!

Because that’s where death lives now.

…


This article was brought to you by our fine patron and Hot Dog Supreme, Neil Schafer: Who was voted ‘Most Likely to Fuck a Whole Mountain Range’ Senior Year, and while he hasn’t succeeded yet, you have to admire the way he tries.

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Space Precinct 2040

Space Precinct 2040 was a short-lived British TV show that explored what would happen if you replaced the cast of Law and Order with animatronic frog puppets and all references to ‘crime’ with ‘space crime.’ It was made by the guy that did Thunderbirds, so you’d expect some kid-friendly camp, but no — apparently the dude most famous for prancing marionette action always wanted to do a serious adult police procedural. But one where the role of ‘Scarred Pimp’ was played by the kind of background creature that Star Wars hoped you wouldn’t look at too closely. 

Listen, I make fun because you pay me to — but these wonky epileptic pondcops could have been charming if not for the tone of the show. It’s somewhere between Full House and CSI Miami, but with the sets, costume designs, and budget of a 1970s Doctor Who season finale. And god damn, every time I try to make fun of it I just wind up selling myself on the premise.

Truly, it is a show that should not be. It’s like somebody pitched a mash-up of Step by Step, Fraggle Rock, and NYPD Blue and shit — I just did it again. 

Normally, this is where I’d do an episode-by-episode breakdown to really bring you into the world of Space Precinct 2040, but I’m dead serious when I say they just slapped a Boglin head on Sipowicz. It plays like every other utterly indistinguishable hour-long cop drama on the major networks. We follow family man and straight-laced cop Lt. Patrick Brogan…

As he generally disapproves of crime. Occasionally he leaves the police procedural behind to shenanigan with his sitcom family, which legally must consist of Buzzkill Wife, Sassy Daughter, and Shitty Son. Brogan’s partner is Officer Jack Haldane, cocky dipshit. And the most interesting thing about Haldane is that the actor playing him is seriously named Rob Youngblood, which is what I tried to get my 5th grade bullies to call me, and also incidentally why they bullied me.

Bobby the Bloody’s only characterization is that he desperately wants to get with Buzzkill Lady Cop — which you really should’ve expected, because the only roles for women on ‘90s TV were “Dead Prostitute #63” and “Buzzkill Woman (But She’s Kinda Hot).” Their relationship is a thrilling love triangle between an exhausting man, an exhausted woman, and the wipe screen that ends the scene.

That’s your cast, and I believe it’s against SEC rules to invest in their character arcs. Here’s a sample of the kind of cutting dialogue you can expect: 

The only interesting thing about this show is the hilarious character design which, let’s be honest, is all I really wanted to talk about here anyway. 

This is Zil, Lt. Brogan’s pet and registered offender against all that lives:

Zil should not be, and Zil burns 100% of its caloric energy trying to communicate that fact. It’s a furry mermaid parrot with nonfunctioning monkey hands and its face is forever moving, trying to beg somebody to return it to the ocean. Not because it lives in the ocean, but because death by drowning is the only dream Zil has ever had.

Here’s Tooky, Buzzkill Lady Cop’s partner, who looks like Rule 34 Yoda and exclusively uses her psychic powers to barely lift hats.

It is a struggle every single time:

Slomo the robot is the closest thing you’ll find to endearing in this awkwardly blinking nightmare world, so treasure your time with him.

He’s treated as the comic relief, but his monotone voice and sad, hesitant stutter just come across as a general reluctance to be in this show, which makes him the most relatable character on Space Precinct 2040.

Although if I’m being honest, my personal spirit animal is Overdosing Blobfish.

Surprise Idris Elba break!!!

Four episodes in and entirely without sufficient warning for proper panty security, Idris Elba appears in a motel painting wearing a spray-painted motorcycle helmet to shout “SUBLIGHT PIZZA TIME!” D-did this ancient British TV show somehow come unstuck from time just to slip into your skull and film your most confusing recurrent wetmare? Not quite: Because you do not get to hear Idris Elba’s voice, both the 1st and 4th sexiest thing about him, in this scene. The director dubbed him over with a nerd doing a weird cowboy accent. Idris Elba is then immediately dismissed in annoyance, which may be the least believable thing about this space puppet show. Once again, here’s Sexiest Man Alive Idris Elba doing what he does best(?): Saying something embarassing in an annoying voice and then being told to get the fuck out of the shot. 

Speaking of, there are a few weirdly high-profile cast members in Space Precinct 2040. Respected character actor Jerome Willis is behind this eye-baffling monstrosity:

While episode 19 sees an uncostumed Steven Seagal make an appearance as Morgo:

The ‘unlikable guy in witness protection’ episode plays out exactly like it does in every other cop show ever filmed, except instead of Joe Pantoliano, you get a pug covered in Gak.

Here’s the alien nerd from the obligatory hacker episode, who comes from a galaxy far, far away, but still wears wire-rim glasses and an argyle sweatervest.

Unfuckable, Glorbax. Take a space shower.

It’s not crazy to me that British TV made a show with these freaky face-puppets. British TV likes their creature design like they like their comedians: cheap, ruddy, and with eyes pointing in opposite directions. But it is crazy to me that it’s the same guy who gave us Thunderbirds. It all feels like the cynical result of several unrelated oversights: “The network can’t believe we don’t have a cop show in the lineup, we’re contractually obligated to do one more project with the puppet guy, and I desperately need a way to write off a warehouse full of full-mouth-articulation frog masks as a business expense. No wrong ideas, people.”

Let’s go ahead and end the article the same way Space Precinct 2040 ends every episode:

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Space Port Arcade Training Program 🌭