We've moved!

Don't worry, we haven't gone soft! We remain as crappy as ever, but this time our crappiness is faster, better and more full-featured! We have moved to a (hopefully) better host with tons of new features, so update your bookmarks now, and tell all your friends to visit it or DIE!
The new URL is http://porocrom.poromenos.org. Thank you for bearing with us.

Update: Thank you to all the people that were concerned. No, I don't cut myself (well, I did once, but I just wanted to see if the pocketknife was still sharp). We will continue to be cut-free and, hopefully, funnier. Stay tuned.

Educational Songs.

I was listening to the new hit by the popular Rhythm and Blues artist Jennifer Lopez, and it is apparently featuring a mister "Fabolous"(sic?). Now, this mister Fabolous appears to be very good at math because he is constantly raising variables to various powers, for example "J to the lo" and "F to the a b".

Now, I am no mathematician, so I can only assume that these are various complex numbers, but I would like to applaud mr. Fabolous's idea of introducing mathematics in songs and commend ms. Lopez for teaching our kids proper values with her songs. If only more songwriters chose this road and educated people while entertaining them, the world would be a much better place.

Another band I would like to congratulate are Iron Maiden (whom, incidentally, I am going to see live at their concert next week) for their contribution to the teaching of history the world over. Such legendary tracks as "Quest for Fire", "Powerslave" and, more importantly, "Alexander the Great" (to name a few) retrace with vividity and, above all, historical accuracy the steps of man throughout the ages. Who, today, would remember Alexander the Great, arguably the biggest conqueror of all time (and certainly the biggest Greek conqueror) were it not for Iron Maiden? One thing saddens me though, and that is that Iron Maiden refuse to play this song in their concerts. An ingrate and a dimwit might even think they don't know the lyrics, but they would both be wrong.

Of course, I would be lacking if I left the great Rammstein out of this list. With their amazing album "Reise, Reise" they teach both young and old how much fun geography can be. Each track in the magnificence that is "Reise, Reise" travels us to a different country of the world and introduces us to its culture and customs. An interesting listen, to say the least.

This concludes today's update. More on the Iron Maiden concert as soon as I actually go to it.

Date me, Kate!

Today, as I was journeying deep in the vast jungle that is the Intarweb, I came upon a site called Date me, Natalie!. It is about a guy who attempts to get Natalie Portman to date him through word-of-mouth and clever internet marketing. Seeing as how this blog already has reached fifteen billion people (don't believe the counter on the side over there, it's lying) in the known universe, I decided to make my plea to Kate Beckinsale public. Date me, Kate!

Much like the Natalie Portman guy, I also have seen you and I think we are compatible. It is not anything romantic or anything, because I know you are married and have a daughter, but I wouldn't object to hot, sweaty sex either. I just know that we have much in common, because I know you very well from all those parts you played, which are totally how you are in reality, and not at all the imagination of the screenwriters. For example, do you remember how in that movie, Laurel Canyon, your boyfriend didn't respect you or treat you right or nothing and you decided to fuck his mother? I would never do that to you, Kate. Also from your movie Shooting Fish I know that you like clever, handsome guys, because you can learn all about an actress from the parts she plays, and I am totally clever and handsome and have a million pounds stashed in my basement.

I am friends with many women, many of which are prettier than you, but you are the one I would like to date, because from all your movies I think you are my soul mate. You are strong and resourceful (as seen in Van Helsing) and also romantic and very cute (Serendipity). You are all I am looking for in a woman, and also I know you like to party (The Last Days of Disco). I totally like that too!

You are so different and special from any woman I have ever met (or not met, for that matter). Even though I have never met you I know I am the man you have been looking for all your life. Other women are too snobbish, immature, shallow and/or ugly, whereas you are none of those things (as far as I know, which, admittedly, is not very far at all). I have singled you out of all the women in the world because I saw some pictures and I think you are the only woman in the world worthy of someone posting on a website about.

If you don't want to date me, Kate, that's fine. I know that you will always love me in your heart and that your husband is the only thing preventing you from marrying me. Some day, mr. Wiseman will meet with an unfortunate accident, and then we can be forever together, my love!

Your own cult: A HOWTO.

Cults. They are everywhere. People follow greasy, smelly individuals and worship them as Gods. How can this be? We at Porocrom have prepared a special guide for you, the amateur cult founder. Following these simple guidelines, you too can have your very own cult in only a few days*.

First and foremost, you need to find a Catchy Concept for your cult. This is the basis upon all else will be built. The power of the self? A supreme being? Aliens? You? What will be the factor that sets your cult apart from others? We at Porocrom suggest you use something ubiquitous, but very hard to understand (Good example: The theory of relativity. Bad example: Women. You could lose half your customers if you based it on women).

Next, the mandatory Promise of Well-being. Nobody will join a cult that promises to make them slaves, they all want happiness/lots of sex. This is as important to your success as the first point. The Promise will make people want to join you, and the Catchy Concept will make them want to stay. This will attract many many desperate people. If you want to attract rich, influential people, the Promise should be one of power and profit. It's all about choices. Do you want to become rich and influential, or have an army of people who will obey your every whim? It's up to you. By the way, if you choose the former, make sure you charge A LOT for admission, and make sure you have prepared fancy rituals in manors (think Eyes Wide Shut).

In our experience, the more successful cults are the ones who have the most loyal following (i.e. who brainwash people enough to make them obey blindly). Make sure the spiritual aspects of your cult are airtight. Add some safeguards such as "I am omniscient and I have a plan you can't know" whenever you can't explain something, or "Trust me, I know what I'm doing" whenever you are about to make them do something very stupid. Also, make it impossible to refute any of your principal truths by adding circular logic in it, for example "Whatever I say is true, because I always speak the truth" (i.e. "Whatever I say is true because whatever I say is true") or "I am the Supreme Being and you must worship me, and you know this is true because the Supreme Being does not lie". Jumble things enough so that the less intelligent of your followers won't be able to make sense, and the more intelligent will be to ashamed to challenge you. If all your followers are clever (for example if you chose Cult Type 2), you should abandon the spiritual aspect of your cult altogether (or make it vague and thinly veiled) and focus on the power, riches and amusement you will give them instead. Also, with Type 2, you must make it a secret cult, because what good is a cult of rich people when everyone knows who they are? Make sure you add initiation ceremonies and lifetime membership. Also, if someone tries to leave, make sure they meet with an "unfortunate accident" a few weeks later. This way you will keep your followers both satisfied and afraid.

If all goes according to plan, you should be well on your way to having a faithful following by now. You must also beware of the caveats though. For example, if you tell your people that you are the representative of your Supreme Being on earth, don't forget to invent a Supreme Being, or some people might not believe it. Consequently, if you tell them you are the Supreme Being, make sure you have some superpowers to show them (card tricks work well). Also, if you chose the el-cheapo cult type, make sure you provide for your people, because they sure as hell ain't gonna have enough money to do it themselves. You could raise enough money to do that by asking them to give you everything they have and then cutting down on costs by making them wear white unisex cotton robes and live on bread, water and vitamins. Be creative. If you choose the lavish cult type you must provide your members with enough amusement that they don't get bored, say "fuck this cult" and leave. The upside, though, is that you will have more than enough money to do it. If you lack imagination you'd better go with the el-cheapo cult.

One of the most important questions after you have gathered a following of a few thousand people is "What do I do with them?". There are plenty of choices there. Some people choose to commit mass suicide, but this has several disadvantages, the main of which is that you, well, die. By the way, if you have promised your members post-mortem well-being, make sure you also tell them that they won't achieve it by committing suicide, otherwise you will see their numbers decrease very quickly. Appropriate excuses for this are "The more you serve me, the more chances you will have of a promotion in the afterlife" and "Don't cheat by killing yourself, or you won't go to the <insert favorite pasture here>". If you are careful to follow these guidelines, your cult will live a long and happy life.

To answer my previous question, you could have your followers work in their day jobs and give you all their money (which will probably all go towards their food/shelter), and have the most useless of them work in the house/field/cave you have set up as your domain. You could also have a harem of the most attractive members of the opposite sex (or, hey, even same sex, whatever flies your flag, we're not judging). If your clientele is the influential type, you could have them make you president of a small country or introduce you to all the hot actresses/singers/what have you. The possibilities are endless.

This concludes today's Howto, we wish you good luck with your endeavour. Of course, when you make it big, you will remember your old friends here at Porocrom, won't you?

* Results may vary

My Nobel prize.

The Nobel prizes. The Oscars of the intellectual world. The most illustrious ceremony since Moses parted the seas. The ultimate prize someone can get. The biggest fallacy since the female orgasm.

Yes, that's right. The Nobel prizes are FAKE. Big, fat fakers, all of them. We at Porocrom bring you another startling discovery, with concrete proof which we shall show you momentarily (and by momentarily I don't mean in a moment, I mean for a moment, because actually I made them up). The Nobel peace prizes are actually a fictitious scheme instigated by Alfred Nobel to deceive everyone apart from a few important people and to make those people feel better about themselves.

Think about it. When have you ever seen a Nobel prize ceremony take place, or heard of anyone actually receive one? Sure, you have heard about people being Nobel prize winners, but it is not clear when they received it. Whereas the Oscars, while much inferior, attract everyone's attention and are accompanied by media frenzy each year. One would think that the Nobel peace prize ceremony would cause the scientific/literary/whatever community to foam at the mouth and babble incomprehensible words, but no. Nothing! Therefore, I am forced to believe that it is fictitious.

In light of this new discovery, and since it logically follows that the Nobel prize winners have not actually ever won any prizes, I proclaim myself a Nobel physics prize winner for my discovery of the amazing power of shit, and my good friend Crommunist a Nobel literature prize winner for this amazing piece. I shall now stop writing because A) A Nobel physics prize winner can't just write whatever crap he thinks of and 2) I must shit. Also, some people have complained that my posts end too abruptly. No they don't.

Tying your shoelaces.

You do it every day. You get up, stumble into the kitchen, make yourself a cup of coffee, get dressed and washed up, put on your shoes and you're off to work. Yet, in this simple succession of events, it is easy to forget the most important of all: Tying your shoelaces.

Indeed, where would you be without tying your shoelaces? Probably lying in a puddle of mud somewhere, that's where. The secret art of shoelace tying has been passed from father to son for centuries, yet noone really knows where it all began. Until now! Striving to provide you with groundbreaking information, our team of highly specialised archaeologists, anthropologists and carpenters has uncovered a surprisingly detailed history of shoelace tying.

It appears that the notion of shoelace tying first appeared on March 13th, 1848 when Johannes Speicherstufler, a well known Dutch slaver, after having had his breakfast which his numerous slaves brought to him, got out of bed and exclaimed, "Tie my shoelaces!". Unfortunately, at that time, shoelaces did not exist, and shoes were one-size-fits-all. Therefore, nobody knew how to tie them, resulting in the untimely death of 3,198 slaves in Speicherstufler's possession. Speicherstufler, after realising that he had eliminated his only source of revenue in a moment (or rather, a day) of anger, sold all his assets to ensure that he could go on living in the same way as before. Immediately after the sale, he bought everything back, because how was he going to live same as before if he didn't live same as before, duh.

This incident was promptly forgotten after the dogs ate all the slaves, and the notion of tying one's shoelaces was also, forgotten, until an Italian man, Tonino Camirtoni, spilled pasta on his shoes while eating, but instead of picking it up and eating it, as he usually would, he sat and stared in wonder at the new form of his shoes. He immediately proceeded to decorate his shoes with string, which made them infinitely prettier and, admittedly, a bit gay. After years and years of decoration, Camirtoni's son, John Smith (he wasn't really Camirtoni's son, his wife had made the beast with two backs with an English sailor, but Camirtoni was not aware of that) had the notion of actually implementing the string in the shoe, thus enabling fastening and unfastening.

It is not hard to imagine that soon after that shoelace tying would finally be implemented, but John Smith was not the brightest bulb in the shed. Indeed, he just left the shoelaces untied, which caused him to fall all over the place all day, but fascinated with his invention as he was, he did not mind. It was not until Smith got married, that his wife, Patricia Provolone, had the idea to tie John's shoelaces so that he would stop falling around and actually get some work done around the house.

Patricia's knot was crude and weak at first, requiring days to be untied by the wearer but coming apart only minutes after tying (you might have seen this knot design nowadays in prank stores), but she eventually perfected the technique, reaching what was known as the "Single-feathered papillon", the ancestor of today's "Normal papillon".

The person who perfected Patricia's original design was, coincidentally. her great-great-great grandson, Angus McAdams (yes, I know that's a Scottish name, this is a blog, what did you expect, continuity?). McAdams was frustrated by the "Single-feathered papillon", which he could never tie, so he reckoned he would double his odds and go with the "Normal papillon". His exhilaration was great when he found that he could easily tie the new knot, and he allegedly screamed to his wife "Eh, Annie, get yer stinken arse over 'ere", to which she affectionately replied "Go ta 'ell, ya lazy bum". McAdams spread the design far and wide, and this is how it came to pass that everyone in the world now ties their shoelaces the same way.

Dreams.

Fellow men. I would like to alert you to a clear and present danger that threatens to destroy our very free will. I am talking about the insidious tactic of women invading our dreams and causing us to fall in love with them.

When I was younger I heard somewhere the notion that a girl prayed to God to make her get into the dream of the man she loved and make him love her back. At the time, I was like "Wtf you dumb broad, how the hell is that shit going to work?", until I have had the very same thing happen to me. Yes, gentlemen, yesterday I dreamt of a girl and now I am in love with her. It is a most unfortunate incident.

I am sure you or a friend of yours has, at some point, fallen in love with a girl he dreamt about. I know this because two of my friends admitted it after I informed them of my predicament. At least I was lucky enough to fall in love with the hottest girl in our school (if you're reading this, Kiki, that's you), and not some random dog. A friend of mine, though, had the misfortune to fall in love with a girl he didn't even like, and for a few months nonetheless! You can imagine the dismay such an incident might bring upon the subject, especially if his affections are not well-received.

It is not like us at Porocrom, though, to merely reiterate facts and stand idly by watching other people fall in the same trap. Caveat, dormitor, for your life is at stake. Our proposals are summarised here:

Legislation: You can always pressure your local congressman (I fear this only works in the U.S.) to enact a law that would prevent unauthorised access to people's dreams by treacherous spinsters who would do anything to make a man fall in love with them. This law would not really prevent you from falling in love with women, but it would give you firm legal ground for suing the shit out of every woman who dared do it.

Stop sleeping: This is the most successful strategy. If you don't sleep, they can't haunt you. The catch is, though, that after a few days you will start to hallucinate, and you might fall in love with someone then. This is, however, highly unlikely. Another downside is that, generally, sleepless people tend not to perform as well in various tasks, such as knitting and sniping, so, if your line of work includes either or both, this technique might not suit you.

Get a girlfriend: This is nigh impossible to perform, for the simple reason that, hey, you're a guy falling in love with women he dreamt of, does that sound like the kind of guy who could get a girlfriend to you? I am obviously the exception in this rule, because I do. Rule, that is. If you could do this, though, all your problems would be over, because hopefully your girlfriend would make you forget about the other woman with the ancient technique of fellatio.

Unfortunately, some of you might already be in the situation I so vividly describe. Fear not, gentle reader, for there might still be a chance for you. We have thought long and hard and we would like to propose the following:

Stalk her: The tried-and-true technique of stalking is one of the easiest and most effective techniques a man can employ. Equipped with a pair of nightvision goggles, a parabolic microphone and a hacker friend, no part of your loved one's privacy will be left unexposed to your vigilant eye. You can optionally get a nightvision camera, if you want to savour the moments you spend together with your bride-to-be.

Confess your feelings: This one, I wouldn't recommend. You could talk to her and tell her how you feel, but, no matter how cute this may be (in a somewhat disturbing way), it is ill-advised for two reasons. Firstly, would you want to be involved with a freak that fell in love with you in her sleep? I didn't think so. Secondly, if you had any chance with her, you wouldn't be wasting your life reading the putrid crap I spew, or perhaps the other way around.

Guile: If her IQ is in the single digits, you could try telling her that she is pregnant with your child, and that you would like to marry her to restore her honour. I have actually had this trick work on two occasions, but one was a vegetable and the other one was in a coma, so neither was very enthusiastic about marrying me. Or not marrying me, for that matter. Come to think of it, they were quite indifferent. I never got married to either, at any rate.

I hope this survival guide has helped you out of another difficult situation. Our next installment will feature ducks, because, as CNN.com mentions, jokes with ducks are considered particularly funny.