Inspirational Bloggers: Robert Hamburger, Author of The Official Ninja Webpage – Real Ultimate Power

Posted on April 8, 2013 | 11 Comments
Image courtesy of realultimatepower.net

Image courtesy of realultimatepower.net

The Top Humor Bloggers Who Inspired Me to Start my Own Blog, Part 2:

Robert Hamburger, Author of The Official Ninja Webpage – Real Ultimate Power

I found this site back in 2002, a year after I graduated from college. Listing various reasons why ninjas are the coolest and greatest beings on the planet, Robert Hamburger made me laugh out loud by listing ‘facts’ as seen through the adopted persona of a 13 year-old teenager. Through the characterization of this pseudonym, Hamburger wielded a very raw form of satire, which perfectly spotlighted the fan pages and internet homages celebrating all things awesome back in the early 2000s.

I loved the astronomical level of confidence with which he wrote. Without the slightest hint of doubt, the author would make a statement running on nothing but raw enthusiasm, throw a hundred exclamation points at it and then dare you to disagree. There was such power in his adolescent fury. He made me want to play along immediately, not only because of the boldness of his tone, but also because he reminded me of myself at age 13. I adored ninjas, monsters and super heroes of all kinds. I drew pictures of them, made up stories and played games — all with that same blind worship Hamburger imitated so effortlessly.

Image courtesy of realultimatepower.net

Image courtesy of realultimatepower.net

Robert Hamburger’s site taught me about the art of internet satire. It showed me how to form a fictional personality — to wear it like a mask — and generate boundless humor by writing about the way that personality views the world. Additionally, it taught me how to mock something by exaggerating it; to join in the chorus surrounding a certain subject and sing so loudly, so absurdly, one cannot be ignored. The Colbert Report is a great example of satire in which a fictional personality is adopted for the sake of exaggeration.

I read and reread The Official Ninja Webpage dozens of times. I had it bookmarked on my computer at work so I could read it every Monday morning, when the great machine of post-collegiate employment was just beginning to crush the life from my soul. I bought a Real Ultimate Power t-shirt — as did several of my friends — and wore it proudly for years. It was my absolute favorite article of clothing, and I wore it until the day I fell asleep too close to a campfire at the base of Mt. Hood and an ember exploded, showering me with sparks and riddling my ninja shirt with burn holes.

Image courtesy of cafepress.com and realultimatepower.net

Image courtesy of cafepress.com and realultimatepower.net

The Official Ninja Webpage received millions of hits and prompted interviews by Brown University, Citynet Magazine and Public Radio International. The site gained the attention of the New York Times, evoked countless internet memes and imitation sites, and spawned Real Ultimate Power, The Official Ninja Book, which became a cult hit, selling 35,000 copies in just 2 years. Robert Hamburger earned all of this attention and blazed the trail for other internet authors, like Tucker Max and Maddox, because he sat down one day and decided to spout off about the sweetness of ninjas.

Here is a quote pulled from the site’s introduction:

“Hi, this site is all about ninjas, REAL NINJAS. This site is awesome. My name is Robert and I can’t stop thinking about ninjas. These guys are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet.”

Here is another quote. This one is from the Testimonial section:

“Ninjas are sooooooooooo sweet that I want to crap my pants. I can’t believe it sometimes, but I feel it inside my heart. These guys are totally awesome and that’s a fact. Ninjas are fast, smooth, cool, strong, powerful, and sweet. I can’t wait to start yoga next year. I love ninjas with all of my body (including my pee pee).”

And finally, here is a quote from the Q and A section:

Q: I heard that ninjas are always cruel or mean. What’s their problem?
A: Whoever told you that is a total liar. Just like other mammals, ninjas can be mean OR totally awesome.

Much like The Reverand (sic) Nathan Runkel of Cartoon Girls I Wanna Nail, Robert Hamburger does not update his site regularly. He does add to his news page from time to time, but not nearly often enough for diehard fans like me who started their own blogs with a massive dose of inspiration from The Official Ninja Webpage.

You can follow Robert Hamburger on Twitter at @RobertHamburger and on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/RealUltimatePowerVid.

official-ninja-webpage-real-ultimate-power-link

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Denglish 81: German Woman Totally Destroys Yet Another Innocent Nickname

Posted on April 1, 2013 | 48 Comments
Funny peacock picture

“Hey chuckle-nuggets, you ever seen talent like this before?” — Image courtesy of animaldoor.blogspot.de

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you already know I come up with a lot of nicknames for my friends. And by nicknames, I mean random word combinations of an insulting or overtly distasteful nature. It’s a habit, and I couldn’t stop doing it if I wanted to; my brain pulls together a few unrelated words out of nowhere, then commands my mouth to spout them off at the people I love most.

By far, my wife bears the brunt of these nicknames, though in her case they tend to masquerade as adorable pet names. Over the course of an average day, I will call her between 10 and 15 different pet names, each one worse than the last. Here are just a few examples:

7:00 am, as I walk her to the door:
“Have a good day at work, my little donkey slap!”

10:00 am, in a text message:
“Hey fruit-jockey, where do we keep the regular size envelopes?”

12:00 pm, another text message:
“Yo yo thunder-bone, when you comin’ home tonight?”

5:00 pm, as I greet her at the door:
“How was your day, my little rotten apple core?”

7:00 pm, as I change into my pajamas:
“Hey broccoli brain, do these undies make my junk look good?”

10:00 pm, after I finish brushing my teeth:
“See you on the flip side, my little banana basket!” *swat on the ass*

11:00 pm, as I am turning out my reading light:
“Mother of God, your feet are so cold, you little refrigerator magnet!”

2:00 am, as I suffer from insomnia:
“I can’t sleep. Are you still awake, my little cotton ball?”

Being exposed to such a verbal barrage on a daily basis takes its toll upon my wife. Her scrambled German brain cannot help but adopt this pet naming habit of mine, so these days she fires them right back at me. Of course, some of them come out a tad warped from her internal translation process, making for quotes like this little gem:

THE WIFE: “How are you doing, my little peach-cock feather?”

Click here to learn more about the term “Denglish.”

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Video: American Man Grudgingly Jogs Around the Hannover Maschsee in Germany

Posted on March 25, 2013 | 50 Comments
Funny naked jogger

“I can see your peaches!” — Image courtesy of dakzoekje.nl

Jogging sucks. You know it, and I know it. Even professional athletes and marathon runners know it; they just won’t admit it.

Every stride is a test. Every thundering heartbeat, every burning lungful of air, every aching muscle and swollen joint is a lesson in willpower. Your mind whispers conspiratorially, “You know, we could make this end right now. We could stop this pain if we wanted to. We can run for real tomorrow; let’s just walk today. Walking is good enough, right?” And then some ancient German granny in spandex totally dusts you, and you think, “Not today, Raisin Wrinkles. I’m not losing this race to the old witch from Hansel and Gretel.”

And if you’re me, you pull out your iPhone and start filming things while you jog. Here is a video of me jogging around the Maschsee in Hannover, Germany. The circumference of the Maschsee is 6.3 km, or 3.9 miles. Pretty hard, for a terrible jogger like me. It’s even harder when I’m holding my iPhone out in front of me and talking at the same time. I got a lot of funny looks from the Germans I passed, but I ignored them all because I was too busy trying not to hurl.

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Culture Shock 9: American Man Refuses to Operate Bathroom Turnstile in Germany

Posted on March 18, 2013 | 26 Comments
German Tripod Turnstile

“Your only job is to hinder my relief.” — Image courtesy of alibaba.com

I would like to begin this post by saying bathroom turnstiles are bullshit. Installing a coin-operated barrier between a urinal and a dozen full bladders is just asking for trouble.

So back on December 8th of 2012, The Wife and I went to Oldenburg in northern Germany to visit her friend. We shall call this friend Killjoy McBittertits. Killjoy wasn’t in a particularly festive mood that night, but she did manage to show us around the Oldenburg Christmas market. We strolled around, checked out the booths and drank copious amounts of Glühwein and Feuerzangenbowle. (I also had a flask of whiskey in my jacket pocket, and I was in no way shy about using it to spike the sweet holy Jesus out of our drinks.)

For reasons I still do not understand, Killjoy McBittertits wanted to leave the Christmas market and go inside a shopping mall. (Apparently this mall is a pretty big deal in Oldenburg because it has three floors. I know, right? Three whole floors… that’s insane.) Anyway, after wandering around for what seemed like forever, we stopped at a bento place and ate expensive noodles. Now, I was pretty drunk by this point — I’d say I was operating at a steady Level 7 on a scale of 1-to-Ted Kennedy — and I had to piss.

I excused myself from the table and walk/ran to the nearest escalator. It took me much longer than it rightfully should have, but I finally saw a sign for the restroom. My bladder was about to rupture, so I was basically sprinting toward the men’s room when I was stopped by a coin-operated turnstile. And guess who had no Euro coins in his pocket whatsoever? This guy.*

I stopped and considered my options for a moment: There was a family of four immediately to my left. An elderly woman to my right. Two teenage girls behind me and a dude who looked exactly like one of those pasty fruitcakes from Chariots of Fire across from of me. There was one security camera pointed at me and one security guard pacing around inside the men’s room. Obviously the camera was powerless to stop me, and the guard kept walking in a circular loop, causing him to pass behind a wall and lose his line of sight on the turnstile. I thought to myself, This is all about timing. It’s just a video game. Wait for the rope swing, grab it and jump over the lava pit. You can do this. You have to do this, because if you don’t, you’re going to make puddles in your pants.

Picture of James Bond

He’s running because he has to drop a deuce. — Image courtesy of screenrant.com

I took two strides forward and planted my foot on the joint of the turnstile, right where the rotating bars met the metal wall, and tried to James Bond my way over the top. (I vividly recall one of the teenage girls gasping in surprise.) This operation should have gone smoothly. It should have been glorious. Instead, my giant snow boot crashed into the bar like a piston — like I was angry at it — and all of the bars started to rotate away from me. My leg straightened out and slid over the top bar — bunching up my jeans mid-calf and exposing the white sock underneath — and brought my genitals right up against the metal.

Abort! Abort! cried my entire body. Abort mission; we were given false intel. This is a suicide mission. I retracted my leg and, in a flash of brilliance, decided to duck under the bar instead. I slid beneath the turnstile, nodded to the oblivious security guard and stepped up to the nearest urinal. Half of my brain was thinking, God damn you James Bond, while the other half was thinking, That would have been hilarious if I’d hit my head on the way under.

*In retrospect, I suppose I could have asked one of the innocent German bystanders for change.

Click here to learn more about the term “Culture Shock.”

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Inspirational Bloggers: The Reverand Nathan Runkel, Author of Cartoon Girls I Wanna Nail

Posted on March 11, 2013 | 16 Comments
Cartoon Girls I Wanna Nail Original Logo

Image courtesy of geocities.ws/CaptNish/

The Top Humor Bloggers Who Inspired Me to Start my Own Blog, Part 1:

The Reverand Nathan Runkel, Author of Cartoon Girls I Wanna Nail

I found this site back in 1997, when I was a freshman in college. Moving through scenes of graphic sexual fantasies with cartoon characters, The Reverand (sic) Nathan Runkel made me laugh by using a series of one-liners and unique idioms driven by a desperately oversexed writing style. I was shocked by his audacity — his chutzpah — and the sheer balls it must have taken to put this kind of humor out there on the internet for everyone to see. And this was back in the 1990s, mind you, when people were still learning to “surf the web.”

I immediately understood Runkel’s website was a joke; he didn’t need to tell me his site was just a gag — I got it, and I loved it. The posts were written with this kind of free-form, turbo-powered, adolescent sexuality, and they were totally unapologetic for their content. I thought to myself, here’s a guy who just went for it. He didn’t care about offending anyone or worry about people taking his writing seriously; he just sat down in front of his computer and started writing ridiculous things he thought were funny.

X-Men Female Characters

Image courtesy of oocities.org/televisioncity/1356/x-chicks.htm

Runkel’s site taught me a valuable lesson about resisting the urge to play it safe. It helped me understand that if I really wanted to write the kind of humor I found funny — laugh out loud funny — I was going to have to take risks. I would need to be open and honest, because the greatest jokes always have a lining of truth beneath them. I also knew I would inevitably meet with some amount of disapproval, maybe even resistance, because the most potent humor always offends a few people. If it doesn’t, it’s probably not very funny. My own blog, Oh God, My Wife Is German, isn’t terribly risqué, and yet I’ve lost a few followers because they were offended by my content. Sites like Cartoon Girls I Wanna Nail, with its unflinching dedication to shock humor, help remind me those people probably shouldn’t have been reading my blog in the first place.

Cartoon Girls I Wanna Nail received well over one million hits in its early days. The author received numerous awards and accolades, and was invited to do interviews from people all over the globe. He received national attention in the Washington Post and Complex Magazine, and was featured in Maureen Dowd’s book Are Men Necessary?: When Sexes Collide. He even landed a job writing jokes for a TV show. All of this recognition occurred in spite of the fact that the site was rife with swear words and graphic sexual situations. (You’ve been warned.)

Velma from Scooby Doo

Image courtesy of oocities.org/televisioncity/1356/scoob.htm

Here is a quote pulled from the page titled “Scooby’s Bitches,” dedicated to the women of Scooby Doo. This portion was written specifically about the character Velma:

“Another thing. She’s always wearing that huge sweater thing. I bet you underneath, she’s got these big juicy titties that I could just fall in love with. I remember as a child how I always wanted to sneak up behind her and run my hands up her sweater and just find out once and for all how huge those tits were. And while I did that, I’d slip a lil’ sumpin’ up her skirt. Yub yub.”

And here’s another quote. This one is from the page titled “The Vicious Lips of the Baroness,” dedicated to The Baroness character from the G.I. Joe cartoon series.

Image of The Baroness from G.I.Joe

Image courtesy of goosaba.blogspot.de/

“Ever check out her mouth? Look at it. I would violate her vicious little mouth like there’s no tomorrow. Could you imagine what it would be like to have that mouth rinsing your meat bongo up in a frenzy until you send your love goo straight down the back of her throat? You wouldn’t be able to stop me from doing such fantastic things to that ass. I’d have to quit my job, ’cause I would never leave my bed if I was with her. I would fuck her paralyzed. That’s a promise.”

I wish Reverand Runkel would refresh his site and continue writing. I would be his most dedicated follower. Alas, the original CGIWN site is long gone, but it has been resurrected through this mirror site under the author’s new handle, The Rev. Nate Dawg.

You can follow Nathan Runkel on Twitter at @natethreepoint0

Image courtesy of geocities.ws/CaptNish/main.html

Image courtesy of geocities.ws/CaptNish/main.html

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Denglish 80: My German Wife Hilariously Reinvents the Rocking Chair

Posted on March 4, 2013 | 27 Comments
Swaying rocking chair couple

“Honey, I gotta get off this thing. I think I’m gonna hurl.” — Image courtesy of jeanniejeannie.com

During that same drive home in early November of 2012, after my wife belched so loudly my ears rang, we started talking about ways to improve our house. These improvements will never happen unless one of us wins the German lottery, or I finally launch my career as an internationally renowned foot model. (Seriously, for a dude, my feet are beautiful.) But home improvements are still fun to talk about, so we discussed the idea of adding a second story, building a privacy fence around our yard, or perhaps even adding a front porch.

ME: “I like front porches. You’re still on your own property, but you can see everything and just sit there and relax…”

THE WIFE: “And have a rocket chair!”

Click here to learn more about the term “Denglish.”

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Video: Expat Couple Mocks Wild Pigs at the Tiergarten in Hannover, Germany

Posted on February 25, 2013 | 37 Comments
Animal Garden Bosch

“I think… yes, I definitely want to go home now.” — Image courtesy of mypicasso.com

On February 2nd, 2013, The Wife and I took a trip to the Hannover Tiergarten. The word “Tiergarten” translates literally to “Animal Garden,” which always makes me think of snarling lions springing from cabbage crops and giraffes falling from fruit trees — splattering on the ground beside pink afterbirths of overripe fruit pulp. Can you imagine? Fur-covered limbs sprouting from roots and blossoms. Yellowed fangs stabbing outward from bramble thickets. Green vegetable juice spraying into the eyes of stunned onlookers. Children pawing at their parent’s coat sleeves, trying to hide their eyes and escape a lifetime of emotional scarring. The crowd turning to run — a moment too late — for Spring has arrived at… The Animal Garden.

Anyway, we came across these disgusting pigs called “Wildschweine,” and I decided to film them slogging through their own filth. These videos made me want to stop eating pork forever. Seriously, I was done. No more swine for me. Then I snapped out of it, glanced at my calendar and realized it was time for my monthly Bacon Bath!

“Honey, call the butcher and fire up Charlotte’s Web; I’ve got my ham goggles on and I’m diving into a bathtub full of porkbellies!”

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