Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Kommentary Korner: A Critical Review of 2008

So it’s the end of the year, and that can only mean one thing: the ass-hats at The Kreation Korner want me to say a few retrospective words. I have resolved to do so, but only on my own terms, which is quite characteristic of my personality and temperament. Anyways, 2008 was just another year marked by high points and low points and occasional mid-elevation points. But who cares about the glass-half-full crap? Let’s focus on the negative.
The first major disappointment of the year came at the beginning of April when I was roped into attending a "spiritual journey" of sorts. Being my trademarked skeptical self, I considered the prospect of spending a month in the heart of America's rugged breadbasket to be of little-to-no educational value. After a borderline-irritating amount of coaxing from my friends and colleagues, I finally agreed—begrudgingly, mind you—to join them on their so-called "vision quest." At the risk of making an ass of myself and you, the reader, I assume that you have not had the distinguished opportunity to experience a vision quest such as the one I was "privileged" with. Therefore, I feel that I would be remiss in not warning you of their complete and utter worthlessness. I won't bore you with the details of what unfolded, but, suffice it to say, vision quests suck, so does nature, and so does Kansas. When the three collide—as they did most regrettably back in April—it’s a triumvirate of kreativity-draining, soul-crushing agony that must be avoided at all costs.
Another disappointment came in August when an audacious punk named Nash Stillwater brashly took issue with a kommentary of the film Back To The Future I wrote some months back. I was criticized for not retorting immediately to this saucy humanoid, but I had my reasons. Why didn’t I dignify his bold, unfounded claims with a response? Simple. They didn’t deserve to be dignified with a response. The only thing I have to tell to this Nash Stillwater character is that I was reviewing implausible time travel movies in Nam when he was extracting nourishment from his mama’s mammary glands.
Finally, the most compelling disappointment of 2008 began to surface in November. With the kreative energy of The Korner already hampered by economic woes, we began to see signs of the kontributors really losing their grip. For me, this was most evident in seeing them all cowering under a tarp that wouldn’t even be good shelter for firewood. I was ready to give up on The Korner. How could a group of once-great kreationists have gone off such a deep end? I myself had known hard times as a kid growing up with ten siblings on that domesticated wildebeest farm, but I never sacrificed my pride so far as to not keep a proper car to sleep in. But in light of all this verbal sturm und drang, I still have a shred of optimism in my bitter shell of a human body. Maybe 2009 will prove The Korner once again worthy of the qualifier “Kreation.”
All in all, 2008 was a pretty average series of 365 days. If you asked me how my year went, I’d say, “same shit, different year.” Catastrophic climate events and natural disasters, democratic election of political leaders, celebrity deaths and the births of those who will someday become celebrities, as if replacing those lost—we saw all this and more usual stuff that isn’t coming to mind at the moment. I can only hope 2009 will be so outrageously normal. --Peter Doe

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Fiction Korner

Marva said she’d always wanted to fly. I wasn’t about to stand in her way. After all, that would only interfere with the delicate takeoff procedure.
I’m not going to beat around the bush about all this. I’m not like that any more. The fact is, she flew that day. Right up into the clouds, don’t you know. She flew like the canary escaping the coal mine.
To be honest, I never thought she’d go airborne. Chasin' the wild blue yonder was easily the most ambitious of her various dreams. First it was regional croquet champion, then substitute parade marshal and now this.
I may not have a Master's degree in divine providence studies, but I know a miracle when one stimulates my sensory facilities. Seeing my Marvie soaring into the sky-colored firmament looming indifferently overhead with Icarus-avenging gusto made me believe in my own dreams again—dust off the old dream box, as it were. But night was falling, and my arms flap their best at 1:27pm. --Jawn Steighmeaus


Illustration by Chris Peebles

Friday, December 26, 2008

Back in the Day

The Korner brings you something new today, as we often do. We bring you a kautionary rant from K. Hume O'Henderbaum, a man far more advanced in years than any of our regular kontributors. This chronologically challenged being has a good message that we at the Korner have no qualms endorsing. Barring no holds, Mr. O'Henderbaum calls out the youth of our day and age and all the decadent excess they represent. All in all, we're pretty proud to bring his perspective to our forum. As the reader, we urge you to humor this geriatric as we have and discover that there is more to him than Werther's Originals and Matlock. He's actually pretty sharp for an old guy. Receive:

Those were honest times back in my day. Simple times. Honest and simple. That is, relative to the world these days. Certainly things weren’t entirely simple. It’s not like we were shamelessly running around naked, banging rocks together and painting rudimentary game herds on the walls of French caves. We had cars, clothes, cloths, curtains, coils of many kinds and other items beginning with other letters of the alphabet—which reminds me: we had the alphabet, too, to dispel a popular myth. We even had a song that made the alphabet easy to remember. We taught it to kids. It made them smart. The only exposure kids have to the alphabet these days is on their iPods or, to a lesser extent, Zunes.
But times change. Things become more complicated, less honest. But let me tell you: oh, how we had relative simplicity and honesty back then. You couldn’t walk ten feet without someone or something manifesting the simplicity and honesty of the times right before your eyes. Sure, we didn’t have all of today’s standard necessities like face transplants and devoted quesadilla appliances, but we had enough. We had each other. Folks had manners back then: we'd address elders as “sir” or “ma’am” depending on their gender. Men held doors for women expecting very little in return. So maybe our simple ways reinforced harmful stereotypes of women being feeble, incompetent, and needy, but at least we were honest about our chauvinism. Ask any man from back then, and he’ll use any or all three of those aforementioned adjectives to describe women as a whole.
Any more, it seems kids these days don’t care for wisdom unless it comes in the form of an Xbox coated in fast food eatery special sauce and bits of High School Musical memorabilia. They want to do things the way they want. They want to re-invent the wheel. But guess what, we had a wheel in my day and it wasn’t half bad. In fact, it was nearly round. Maybe we didn’t have the sophisticated twenty-first century technology and vocabulary to recognize what type of geometric shape our wheel was, but we were proud of it. We were proud of ourselves. We were all hardworking, upstanding, honorable citizens, scholars, and athletes back in those days. Hopefully the kids of today will wake up and start acknowledging the wisdom of the past before they fully succumb to the wiles of Soldier Boy promises and text message cunning.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Header Korner!

Holiday greetings! Just as the ugly duckling sheds its motley feathers to become the beautiful swan it was all along, so has the Kreation Korner header! While we at the Korner maintain a policy of staunch rejection of the status quo, we have been up to this point woefully ignorant of perhaps the first thing you readers view each time you visit this web log (or "blog", as some call it). Well, fret no more! Headed by the lovable blowhard known to all of you as Nash Stillwater, the Kreation Korner Header Committee have commissioned a series of works to be kreated in order to more fully realize the potential of the 600-pixel-wide top portion of this webpage. The first comes from maljohn, whose art and words have been known to cause a full-scale implosion of the mind, leaving behind a neat pile of rubble where the brain used to be. Good luck and view at your own risk.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Komedy Korner

Some jokes about church:

A man walked into a church and said, "ouch."

A man walked into a church and said, "I have an objection as to why this couple should not be interred."

A man walked into a church, knelt, and said, "Lord, I'm not usually a preying man, but if you give me a defenseless gazelle I'll devote my life to your service."

--Svetlana Mendoza

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Poet's Korner

Hey all you Kreationists and Kreationettes out there in Kreationland. Your friends here at The Korner have a special treat for you all: the one and only Cristobal D. Peebles II, aka Chris Peebles. Predictably, Dr. Peebles delivers his unique brand of unpredictable, subconscious-penetrating prose. Devour:

Sand is not nutritious
Nor is it delicious
Unless you have it
with BBQ sauce
My favorite is
Texas Chipotle Style
Damn near kept me alive
on that desert island it did

On the occasional day
when I was bored,
I'd call my insular prison
a "dessert island"
Kind of an inside joke between
Ol' Scott the Parrot and me.
We found it ironic because
there was no dessert to be found
on that gosh-forsaken isle
unless you consider seabird
feathers wrapped in palm fronds
an acceptable after dinner treat

On day 80 of my isolation a glass
beverage vessel washed ashore
It contained naught but a distress
document signed by some kind of
law enforcer named Sting
Despite the chart-topping syntax
I found the inscription pretentious
and dull

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Ask Peter

In order to stimulate some much needed kreative output during these times of economic shiftlessness and lethargy, the Korner board of directors recently hired the National Institute for Kreation Advancement--a for-profit think tank and konsulting firm. We admit that it is with much shame and brooding that we have resorted to soliciting outside help in these desperate times, but it takes a korner maturity and class to know when it's been beat. But let's not dwell on the past. The fact is, NIKA gave us some great pointers. During an appraisal of The Kreation Korner HQ, the konsultants stumbled across our massive pile of letters asking advice from our wisdom-monger at large Peter Doe. They suggested we parlay these inkwiries into an advice column of sorts so as to invigorate our increasingly stagnant web space. After hearing this, we all figuratively (and in a couple cases literally) kicked ourselves and, to paraphrase our overall kollective reaction, said, "why didn't we think of that?" After much koaxing and the promise of beaded seat covers for his LeSabre, our kaustic kommentator agreed--albeit reluctantly--to write a semi-regular advice column. Our hope is that Doe's unrelentingly spot-on kandor will help regain the Korner's past glory and, for the sake of full-disclosure, offset the massive debt incurred on the Korner by NIKA's exorbitant fees. But enough yackity-yack: here's the maiden voyage of "Ask Peter." Prepare to be imparted upon by sheer, unadulterated wisdom.

Dear Peter,
First of all, I want to say, I'm a big fan. Long time reader, first time writer. Any-hoo, I know that if I were talking to you in person you'd say, "cut to the freakin' chase already!" So I will do so presently. My problem goes back about three years when I thought it would be a good idea to buy nine lizards. Turns out, these exothermic reptiles are biologically incapable of maintaining homeostasis and require sunlight to regulate their internal body temperatures--thanks for excluding this little nugget of information, Keith from the pet store in the mall. Knowing what I know now, I probably would have purchased a pet more appropriate to my lifestyle as a cave dweller such as a bat or a mutant spelunker zombie. But now I'm stuck with these goddamn lizards that have grown weak from the conspicuous lack of light in my humble subterranean home. So here's my question: is it worth it to drastically change my lifestyle by moving to a well-lit above ground location or should I just let my lizards shrivel and die?
Sincerely,
Konflicted in Caveborough, UT

Dear Konflicted,
Great question. Well, it's not great, but it is pretty good. I mean, it's not the best question I've ever heard, but it's not the worst either. If I had to rank it amongst every question I've ever heard in my life, I'd say it's probably in the second or third tier, which, again, isn't the worst. But seriously, you don't honestly expect me to take everything I'm handed and say it's the best I've ever heard, do you? I mean, what does that do to my credibility? Christ, I've got a reputation to uphold. You expect me to fold like a tube top on laundry day just to stroke your precious ego? Well, think again, sir or madam. And another thing, where do you get off thinking I'd even care about your boring, stupid life? I've got a life of my own to take care of, you know. I don't have time to be bombarded by questions every minute of my waking life. All I want is a moment's peace. Is that so damn hard to ask?
Yours truly,
Peter Doe

-Please send all your inquiries to TKK's P.O. box. If you don't already know the exact address, then you don't deserve Mr. Doe's advice.-