The OdieNator Manifesto

Since everyone else is embroiled in the fine art of the Manifesto, I too shall throw my hat into the ring. But be warned: The Odienator Manifesto (the "OdieFesto" to its friends) discusses things one is told not to discuss in polite company: sex, religion, politics and race. Still reading? Herewith, the OdieFesto.

All About Eve, if Eve were played by the Odienator

The only one who could ever reach me was the son of a preacher man.

I am the son of a preacher man.

You can get me to do almost anything by giving me a foot massage.

I aspire to the level of creative profanity executed by my mother.

I am a genius, which means I am preternaturally good at one thing.

Unfortunately, that one thing isn't fucking.

Polly-Ticks

I will never vote for a Republican for President, even if Jesus were the candidate.

I voted Republican once. That candidate turned out to have a fondness for frisking innocent Black men in photo opportunities. I learned my lesson.

The Democratic Party can teach a master class on political implosion. They have practically been given Congress by a fed up American public, and they're still afraid of Fox News Network.

America is too big and too populous a country to have only two major political parties.

The one thing Republicans and Democrats have in common is that they will do or say anything to win.

Hillary Clinton's Southern accent sounds as Down South as Martha's Vineyard.

When a candidate evades a question, they believe the unpopular answer and don't want to tell us.

Americans says they are ready for a female or a Black president. America is lying.

Ted Kennedy has a deal with the Devil.

So does Dick Cheney.

Disagree with the president before W and you're a hero. Disagree with W and you're anti-American, anti-troops and should be tried for treason.

I disagree with the President.

I think the children of politicians, including a President, should be forced to serve in any war their parents declared.

Not every country wants democracy.

De Lawd and other Religious Stuff

I was raised Baptist, which means I'm supposed to care about your soul and try to help you live righteously.

I don't give a fuck about your soul. I want company in Hell.

God exists, but not the way all these religions tell us.

When we're born, we are given one gift from God. We are also given one gift from the Devil. The key is to figure out which one is which. Free will is the means to choose which gift you use.

God loves gay people. God hates hypocrites and people who use His name to further their agenda. He will put lightning in their assholes.

When Jesus comes back, the first place He's going is to the televangelists. "Where's all that money you raised for me?" He will ask.

Atheists try just as hard to convert Christians as Christians try to convert non-Christians. The atheists are just as snide and self-righteous as Christians when they try.

Hell is going to be crowded. Heaven will have six people in it.

Church never makes Heaven sound cool. The streets are paved with gold, but those in Heaven have no need for riches. You'll worship de Lawd all day and all night, and there's no sex. It sounds like the Bible Belt. Hell, on the other hand, is all fire and brimstone and burning, with a different torture every day. At least it's spontaneous.

God is too busy to tell George W. Bush what to do. God is too busy to tell anyone what to do. This is why He invented free will. It freed up His time for golf.

Religion is the lottery of the impoverished.

When the Virgin Mary appears on a grilled cheese sandwich, you know Heaven needs a better F/X budget. Things should get flashier when George Lucas drops dead. He'll bring ILM up there.

People always think miracles are these grandiose spectacles. While big miracles do happen, most miracles can be found in small gestures. So please look for little miracles, and be thankful for them. Remember, Heaven's F/X budget sucks ass.

The Telly

Fox News Network is a bed of hate speech, homophobia and dunderheaded commentators.

CNN isn't much better.

There are 24 hours in a day, but Black Entertainment Television (BET) can't find anything that is uplifting to Blacks, educational or of worth to put on.

I liked it better when there were just 3 networks.

Angela Lansbury was killing all those people on Murder, She Wrote.

Reality TV, in addition to proving Paddy Chayevsky right, is the first sign of the Apocalypse.

The Geico Gekko is the most annoying spokesperson in history.

Turner Classic Movies is the greatest channel ever created.

Most TV newscasts are made up of a male and a female anchor person who are fucking each other.

Men, Women, and Ess-E-Ex

Men don't know what women want.

Neither do women.

A woman will love you with her heart and soul, but if you turn that heart black, a woman will do her best to destroy you.

Everyone should know what it's like to kiss someone of their gender.

Every homophobe secretly wants to have gay sex. Their biggest fear is that they'll enjoy it.

Which they will.

A man will tell you any information you want if you ask him right before he ejaculates.

Bi-sexuals are greedy. Lucky, but greedy nonetheless.

Multiply by three the number of sex partners a woman claims she has had.

Divide by three the number of sex partners a man claims he has had.

Do the same with the number of inches he tells you his erection is.

My erection is 25.5 inches long.

Any sexual thing that is done between consenting adults is fair game. The operative words are CONSENTING ADULTS.

Pedophiles should be put to death.

If you have to call your child's father "my baby daddy," you're a slut.

The only difference between a slut and a stud is the double standard.

Waiting until marriage to have sex results in very unsatisfied wives.

I'll support banning abortion when the government stops pumping millions into bullshit abstinence only sex ed programs.

If gay people want to be as miserable as straight people, then they should be allowed to marry.

If they do pass gay marriage, any church has the right to refuse to perform the ceremony. I got married at City Hall. If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for gay people.

Physics tells us for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So, if religious therapy can turn gay people into straight people, there must be a therapy that does turns straight people gay. And no, it's not called "mothers."

A woman can be seduced by carefully selected words. Show a guy a tit or an elbow and he's ready to go.

Women, stop referring to men as dogs. Since you are the female of this species of dogs, you are implicitly calling yourselves bitches.

Every war, every fight, every stupid decision in this world stems from men worrying about whose dick is bigger.

It's OK to look to find out.

Race and Sounds of Blackness

"You speak so well" is not a compliment. It is a slight poorly disguised as a compliment.

The next person who tells me I speak so well is going to learn that I cuss even better.

Unless you're a minority, you have no clue what it is like to be one.

Any company in existence today that made money off slaves should pay reparations, starting with the cotton and tobacco industries.

Auctions scare the hell out of Black people.

So does the St. Patrick's Day Parade.

Being called the n-word feels much differently when a Black person does it to me than when a White person does.

I still don't like it either way.

I hate watermelon, and I sincerely believe the only reason I do is because it's a stereotype.

There is positivity in rap, but since it doesn't sell records, our faces are rubbed in the negativity.

Lou Reed and Johnny Cash are both great White rappers. Vanilla Ice and Rex Harrison are not.

Rap music's biggest consumer group is suburban White kids who believe all Black people are like Jay-Z, Biggie and 'Pac, and who secretly long to have dap in the ghetto. These kids wouldn't last five seconds in the neighborhood where I grew up.

I envy my parents' generation. They had such great Black leaders like Dr. King and Malcolm X.

The Black youth of today needs to be reminded that people died so they can have the freedoms they do.

A person of any race should be free to marry/screw/fall in love with a person of any other race, just as one should be allowed to have a preference for doing the same solely with one's own race.

Dope and other things that kill you

All drugs should be legal.

But if you're caught doing something illegal under the influence, they should jail you as if drugs were still illegal.

I should be allowed to destroy myself with trans fat.

Whoever convinced Frito Lay to start frying potato chips with sunflower oil should be shot.

Never trust a vegetarian.

It's OK for you to smoke in my presence only if it's OK for me to masturbate in yours. You gotta support your habit, I have to support mine.

....and all that Jazz

Bob Fosse is a genius.

I'm anti-fur. I'm also anti-PETA.

"Love Will Keep Us Together" by the Captain and Tenille is the catchiest bad song ever written.

Every manifesto should have a swipe at prior manifesti.

Kylie Minogue is an agent of Satan. She is super-hot because she is from Hell.

The use of an excessively learned vocabulary makes one look like a dork, and will guarantee he will not get any pussy.

Jeffrey should do a manifesto. We have shown him ours; we demand to see his.

Arts majors are evil and must be destroyed.

The only thing I learned in college is how to write programming code. This has made me a lot of money.

The only thing I learned in high school is that everyone thought I was gay. The guy they thought was Mr. Macho actually turned out to be the gay guy in my class.

Alcohol is a poor excuse for sleeping with anybody.

Yoko Ono music should only be used in torture situations. Same thing with Bjork.

Mel Gibson is crazy as shit. But I still love the first Lethal Weapon.

I always root for the bull at the rodeo. I even have a sign that says Bull 3:16 on it.

Shogun Assassin

by OdienatorThere's a major difference between the samurai features of Toshiro Mifune and Shogun Assassin, which I saw in 1980. Mifune's films had an elegance and a nobility that emanated from the stately presence of the man who inhabited them. Mifune's characters walked through his black-and-white features wearing the heavy burden of their lot in life; even in a comedic moment one could sense that he took the way of the samurai seriously. He was powerful, human and introspective.

Shogun Assassin is also about a samurai, but that's where the similarities end. The samurai at the center of Shogun is out for revenge, and he's far from elegant or introspective. He's a human Cuisinart who cuts through people with the ease of a Ginsu knife through a tin can. Shogun Assassin is also in color, or should I say it's "in red," because the entire film is one geyser of blood after another, flying in all directions. It's porn for vampires, with a money shot every time you inhale. Body parts litter the screen with reckless abandon. "Heads not only roll, but they are SPLIT OPEN," warned Kathleen Carroll in her one-star NY Daily News review. "Split open?!" I said out loud. I called my cousin. "We gotta see this movie," I pannted into the phone.

In the early 70's, a series of films about manga characters Lone Wolf and Cub were major hits in Japan. Audiences didn't go into them looking for Yojimbo. Shogun Assassin is really two Lone Wolf & Cub movies stitched together by Canadian director Robert Houston and distributed by Roger Corman. Houston and his writers dubbed the film with What's Up, Tiger Lily-style translations. ("Oh Mad One! We see your trap!") Ninja films were just becoming popular, and I suppose Corman and company wanted to cash in. I can only imagine how hard Corman got when he got his hands on perhaps the bloodiest exploitation movie he ever released.

Shogun Assassin's poster said the movie was too violent for anybody under 17, a warning the MPAA forced New World Pictures to include. But the State Theater let us pre-teens in anyway. This is the same theater that let us into Bolero as well as a 3-D porno movie that played at midnight when I was 14. We got some popcorn, some sodas and a seat near the front ot the theater. The movie came on, and about 90 minutes later, we stumbled out of the theater equally exhiliarated and nauseated. At the time, I'd just learned in Health class that the human body contained twelve pints of blood; every body slashed in Shogun Assassin proved it. I highly doubt I could sit through this movie today without barfing, but when you're a boy on the cusp of adolescence, a decapitation sequence is like being touched by an angel.

The Cub in Lone Wolf and Cub, a three year old boy in a cart, narrates the movie. I leave you with his descriptive words:

"Then, one night the Shogun sent his ninja spies to our house. They were supposed to kill my father, but they didn't. That was when my father left his samurai life and became a demon. He became an assassin, he walks the road of vengeance. And he took me with him. I don't remember most of this myself. I only remember the Shogun's ninja hunted us wherever we go. And the bodies falling. And the blood."

I guess that explains why there's no plot, only carnage. Told you boys like gore.