Aug 29, 2000 ROCKS ARE A LIE

Oh dear. We had to miss another day because we're starting to suspect that rocks are a lie.

Oh no, you'll say. That's not true. There are rocks everywhere. I can see rocks outside my window right now. But think about it. How many of those rocks have you touched? And don't run outside trying to touch all the rocks now, because that will give you Ebola. The government's thought of that already.

Yes, rocks are in fact a lie perpetrated by the government. They were created in the 1940's. Before the 1940's there were no rocks anywhere, only aliens. How do you think the pyramids were built? It's the only explanation that makes sense.

The next logical questions is why? We're not sure. But think about the Scientologists, for example. Now think about agriculture. Not much connection, is there? This only serves to demonstrate that our thinking is fundamentally flawed, because rocks are a lie. The real reason for them is that the government wants to take away your guns and send your daughters to sex farms in Wisconsin. Look at those rocks now. Not so innocent, are they?

The red goose flies at noon,

	Aug 27, 2000 LITTLE YIPPY DOGS

We've been thinking a lot about little yippy dogs lately. To be honest, they're starting to cause doubts in our abiding Bible-belt fundamentalist faith. Just a few of the questions they raise:

• God gives man dominion over all other animals (Genesis 1:26). But little yippy dogs don't obey men; they only obey old ladies. And this is before God created old ladies, so far as we can tell. What gives?
• Noah's ark contains seven pairs of all clean animals, and one pair of all unclean animals (Genesis 7:2). What category do little yippy dogs fall under? And if you spray then with flea powder, do they switch categories? How many cubits is that? And honestly, how could anyone stand 150 days on a boat with fourteen yippy dogs? Wouldn't Noah have tossed them overboard on like the second or third day, as soon as they pissed his sandals? If so, how did they survive? If people could live to 900 back then, does that mean yippy dogs had gills or something? What the fuck?
• It's a sin to eat "swarming things" because they are an "abomination" (Leviticus 11:41). Does that include yippy dogs? If you got enough of them together, could that be a swarm? Or is that just bees? What if they were like hybrid bee-dogs? The damn book just isn't clear here, and we have this yippy dog we'd like to eat, and we don't even know if we'll go to hell as a result. Hello? Little help?
• There's a big-ass sword sticking out of this guy's mouth (Revelation 1:16). Huh?
• And maybe we don't even want to eat the dog. There's probably more nutritional value in babies or something. It's been that sort of day. Only six shots before lunchtime, that's our new rule. We have to lie down.

	Aug 26, 2000 A FUNNY THING HAPPENED TO US ON THE WAY TO HELL

We'd love to say something comedic, perhaps inspiring, even, about Australia right about now. But we just rode camels which smelled so bad that we might as well have been floating aloft on a camel-shaped fart. Also, if we see another Aussie logo featuring a lithe kangaroo, cherubian koala, or those incomprehensibly irritating Olympic mascots, our snot will visibly thicken with expelled brain cells.

At any rate, we're on a 14.4 baud connection to an AOL server 400 miles away powered by tethered aboriginal children. Every few minutes one of them drops off the treadmill from heat exhaustion and we lose connection, so we're already nice and pissy. The one great thing about being in a bad mood in a foreign country and being American is that the world fears a pissed off Yankee. Check it: some years ago, Australia passed a law through their adorable little parliament that banned private ownership of guns. So Australian federal police came around and collected all the guns and bent their barrels and threw them in the ocean (no joke).

The Civilization 2 spy. Or as we like to call it, the 8-pixel hard-on.

The Aussies were okay with this. Contrast: two winners shoot up Columbine High and Charlton Heston spokes for the NRA citing the tragedy as a clear sign that we need more guns. Because, he "reasoned", if the teachers or faculty had guns, they could have fired back at the two children and halted the killing spree just that much faster. Disregarding that logic, Heston (pissed) goes on to randomly and erroneously cite the higher-than-us crime rate in Australia due to their general pussy-ness about owning heat. How did the Aussies react? They appologized. Heston fucked up his facts, took a swing at some completely random not-involved country, and he wins an appology from the offended party. Now, aside from everything about that little story that screams "Americans are dangerously dipshitted", this means we can always win a staring contest with the rest of the world, even if we have to do it down the barrel of a Winchester 12-gauge.

Now for some ../content. Gander at a collection of well-researched factoids sure to make you the toast of any party (barring Donner).

Back to the Doctor with you and the camels for us,

	Aug 25, 2000 PYTHONS IN THE MATERNITY WARD

No update yesterday, we know. The reason, quite simply, is that regular schedules sometimes unnerve us. Schedules are for boats and trains. And our mother was killed by a boat, and that boat was subsequently killed by a train, so pardon us if we tend to view the whole thing as a cycle of violence and are a little edgy about it.

Safari Ferret Virus. Left to right: Mr. Balls (guitar), Johnny Clap (drums), Mofo 4000 (vocals), Captain Smegma (bass), Alan Greenspan (keyboards).

But we've made up for it. Burning Circus is proud to announce an exclusive partnership with Safari Ferret Virus, the most exciting band to come out of the underground since that other band, the one that got hacked up on Celebrity Deathmatch the other day. They growl. They purr. They tickle those soft spots. Today's offering is I'm Not a Pedophile, the song that Marilyn Manson can only wish he'd written.

Also, there's a new Sympathy Barn. Go revisit all your old friends, then wonder why nobody likes you.

Whistle when you're down,

	Aug 23, 2000 THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN

X-Sender: drsunshine@burningcircus.com
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32)
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2000 19:04:41 -0700
To: webmaster@cartoonx.net
From: "Dr. Sunshine" [drsunshine@burningcircus.com]
Subject: First Burning Circus Art Award

Dear Webmaster,

Congratulations! Your piece "Untitled" came in first in our recent user poll on Web art; accordingly, we are proud to present you with the Burning Circus Art Award, which is an e-fruit basket.

The ASCII fruit is cleverly rendered as follows:

o a grape
c a grape that someone's bitten already
0 a big grape
( a big grape that someone's bitten already
@ a grape with a growth: don't eat those!!!
& a petunia

And here's that basket:

|(oco(0o(coo0c(0&oc0(o0o0(c0o|
|0&oo0c0o0(oc0oc0(@o0(((o0c0|
|o0((c0@o0o0oo |
---------------------------------------------

Have a super day!

	Aug 22, 2000 A SOBERING THOUGHT

If you think about it, JFK Junior really had a hard life. Because everyone knew his mom's maiden name was Bouvier, because people are all into the Kennedys like that. So whenever the bank or the phone company set up accounts for JFK Junior and used his mom's maiden name as the secret word, it wasn't secret at all. Any schmuck who knew anything about the Kennedys could go rifling through JFK Junior's bank account and make expensive calls to Tijuana on his calling card and so on without even having to say "thank you." This is horrible, and no human being should have to undergo it. So all things considered, it's probably a good thing he's dead.

In memoriam,

	Aug 21, 2000 WE CREATE BECAUSE WE CARE

Today we'd like to try a brief little consciousness-raising exercise concerning art on the Web. As we all know if we've been viewing our IBM ads like good monkeys, the Web will inevitably bring us all closer and closer together until one day we'll all be, like, the same organism. Like a big-ass amoeba or something.

Naturally, this will occur through information exchange. And just as naturally, art is information. It therefore follows that art on the Web is important because it brings us closer together. And from this it follows that we are important. See, we just justified everyone's existence in two paragraphs.

Below we have three representative pieces of Web art. We would like you, our dear two readers, to vote on your favorite. Burning Circus will send the winner a nice e-fruit basket or something, unless the two of you don't agree, in which case all three get flaming dog crap in their inboxes.

Piece 1: "Dance of an Angel" from this site.
Piece 2: "Turtle and Rainbow" from this site.
Piece 3: Untitled from this site.

	Aug 20, 2000 GUESS HOW MUCH WE LOVE YOU

Enough to put up a brand new piece of ../content for you. This, friends and neighbors, is The Domain Name Drinking Game. It's the logical end of life in this era, combining the growing power of instant information access with the growing need to get shitfaced as often and creatively as possible. So gather your friends around and start tanking up.

Heh, that last was a joke. (Cause we're a humor site!) We know you don't have any friends if you're reading this. So why don't you go ahead and get that bottle of isopropyl out of the medicine cabinet? You know you want to. Go on, soak your brain to hell, you pathetic lush.

That last was a joke too. (See, we're funny!) We know you're actually an active and dynamic person with attractive friends of both sexes, living in a hip neighborhood and eating at hip restaurants, the soundtrack to your life accented by tasteful numbers from today's hottest acts. Go on, meet your friends. Go out. Have fun.

Don't mind us. We'll just stay here in the basement with the computer. In the dark. We don't mind, honest. Have a good time. Really.


Don't feel guilty now,

	Aug 19, 2000 FLIPPANT FLIPPER BABIES

Yeah, so it's been a few days since we updated. The problem being that we were confused about the FTP password Ignatz gave us before he left for kangaroo kountry. We thought it was spelled the American way (baby_fucker) when in fact it's spelled the British way (baby_fuckre). But since we've resolved that problem and changed the password to hot_autistic_action to prevent any security breaches, we're good to go.

So first off: the Barn is back. We know there hasn't been any new Sympathy Barn in a while; as an excuse we point out that we've spent the last two weeks moving from the desert island of Arizona to the agricultural isthmus of Iowa. And here in Iowa, "the Web" usually refers to what the inbred farm girls have between their toes. Anyway, check out today's offering, in which we actually attempt to begin a plot arc. It will probe the most inflamed parts of the human condition, guaranteed.

Also, in Ignatz's absence, a few things are going to change around here. First, there will be no more gratuitous lewdness. Second, we will only use polite language. So don't get your panties in a bunch... fuck: we just broke the first rule. Double fuck: there goes the second one too.

	Aug 15, 2000 WE'RE GOING TO PRISON

We're heading to Australia on the 17th, so our less-apt-to-drop-Baby-Jesus other half will be taking over for two weeks. That's right: Dr. Sunshine is back from his exile to the desert island of Arizona. And no, desert puns don't come any shadier than that. Except for that one. Excuse us. If puns had a dick, we'd still suck.

Remember Baby Science? Or the latently unsympathetic Sympathy Barn? Dr. Sunshine can have our children any day. Hell, if he could remember their names or the cities they live in, he'd already be way ahead of us. For a couple weeks he'll do as the voices in his penis head tell him, and we'll just pipe up every few days to deliver some ../content or pass a note to the outside world from one of the 18.7 million convicts.

	Aug 14, 2000 GORE - BUSH = 0, GORE + BUSH = 0

We had a crazy weekend. On Saturday we threw a costume party for three dozen people, got in a car crash, and almost got a gigantic British kickboxer very very mad at us for doing naughty things with his girlfriend. We're already reminiscing and can't wait to do it all over again next year.

On an unrelated note, we want to share some advice given to us by a hippie art student about seven years ago that nevertheless is probably the most unscrutable and brilliant observation that we've ever heard. Not only that, but it's the one that has proven itself QED over and over. He wrote in our yearbook, and we quote, "Trust me. Chicks suck. Fuck it." And now, in the grand tradition of internet soap-boxing, we bequeath this golden rule unto thee, o fare readers. Consult it, abide by it, and it will never fail you. Trust me.

This needs no caption.

We got some ../content. At the request of his mother, we picked up Francis Chunk from elementary school and baby sat him for a few hours. When we say 'baby sat', we mean that we chained his hairless little legs to the radiator and gave him a box of crayons and a pint of Jack. Take a look at Francis Makes Drawings and understand that the three verbs Francis knows are "to be", "to fart" and "to go postal".

Courage,


Hey, as a post script if you like Burning Circus tell a friend, co-worker, or arch-nemesis about it. Or, think about the practical applications of such a site. Sticking your genitals in an electric pencil sharpener is about the only way to lower your sperm count any faster. And certainly you know people who have no business reproducing.

	Aug 10, 2000 SO MANY ONES AND ZEROS, SO LITTLE TIME

Wow, Flash animation takes some time! We're not finished with either Flash project yet, but boy did we have a good time goofing around with it. Actually, to be honest, we had a helluva time not with Flash itself, but with the novelty of having a microphone go through recording software on our computer and out through the stereo at several dozen decibles. It's great! We highly recommend it. We told the neighbors, con accento that we are harboring three families of illegal Mexican immigrants and secretely running an underground lettuce operation. Also, we faked a white-trash wife-beating incident, the sharp cries of small, pained animals, and some unfathomably bad impersonations of Dubya Bush. We did this for about 2 hours at 5 am.

We came across these great mug shots the other day. Note that Hugh Grant looks so adorably British-Actor-Hugh-Grant-ish that no judge would sentence him to anything but ice cream and clowns. On the other hand, Bill Gates lookes positively American-Tycoon-Soon-To-Buy-All'yalls-Dumb-Asses-Bill-Gates-ish. Another take on it is that Grant still feels a little squeemish about that body-cavity search, while Billy has a bit of an afterglow.

Okay, we have new ../content. It's mini-bite-sized ../content. Check out Telling Jokes to an Urban Chechen. Man, everytime we think about those Russians, we just gotta think "Those Russians!" and laugh. They're always doing dumb stuff like standing in bread lines and freezing to death on the frigid tundra planes of Siberia. Until later today,

On an unrelated note, this kid is our new hero.

	Aug 9, 2000 EAT A BOWL OF BIRTHDAY DICK

We are so excited. We accepted a client who wanted a Macromedia Flash site done a few days ago. We had no idea how to use Flash when we accepted, but now we do. It's great fun. In fact, we're so tickled that tomorrow we'll have a piece of ../content all in Flash. We were up all night working on it last night and we'll finish it today. We giggled the whole way through it too. But that was the nitrous.

Also, we just got Adobe Illustrator 9 yesterday and it's the best thing to come into existence since money. It's so great.

Oh, shit. This whole time we thought we were publishing a toaster.

We spent an unbelievable four solid hours registering Burning Circus with search engines yesterday too. It was like nirvana only the opposite. There are search engines out there that don't even pretend they're not going to sell your email address and vital stats to Iranian terrorists.

Wow, we had a productive internet day yesterday. We also found a site about Germans who get off on watching women crush Matchbox cars with their feet. What the fuck krauts? We're no expert on war history, but we're willing to bet that German fetishes are the sole reason we haven't all been speaking German since 1945. You can imagine what they wanted their ugly wives to do with Luger pistols or dildos shaped like V1 rockets. Look at this video.

Click to play movie.

We'll leave off with this picture from our recent trip to Las Vegas. Where went the lost art of subtext? The same place everything else goes to decrepify and die: Vegas, baby. But man, 16 ounces...that beats our steak by a good 2 ounces.



Over and out,

	Aug 8, 2000 IS IT A BAD THING TO SUBJUGATE MANKIND JUST BECAUSE ?

Alright, we spake of changes, we begin some today. For one thing, from now on, NO MATTER WHAT this site gets updated everyday. We're not crapping your faces. This site gets an update every day or we'll personally spend hours of penitent self-torture downloading horrible, horrible pictures of girls having sexual relations with OTHER GIRLS. We mean it! That's the kind of commitment we make here at the Circus. A commitment to humor, a commitment to you, and a commitment to only the best, most frequently updated asylum in the state.

Baby Billy Corgan Sez: Despite all my rage I am still just a baby in a crib.

Okay, we'll also try our hand at filtering out obnoxious puns that take a painstaking 2 sentences of set-up. The downside to updating every day is that, as much as we'd like to kid ourselves, we can't make up articles full of dirty words and bad thoughts every day. At least not funny ones. Therefore the second major change is that whilst the web-site will be updated every day, it will contain goodies and baubles on some days, and actual card-carrying ../content on other days. Expect a wide variety of stuff we want to inflict upon you, but can't do with ../content pieces alone. Trust us, though, you'll enjoy every bit of it, even as your own lifeforce slips away in equal parts horror and disgust.

The next big thing we have planned is going to be great, but requires some active part on behalf of you, mom, my one reader. We have been saving up a whole harem of fun surprises that we want to birth into the world, but lots and lots of them involve having a lot of readers. We're not going to fool you, mom, and pretend that we have lots of readers. We're a month old, and trust us: Nobody likes anything at all that is only a month old and screams and wails. Well, more acurately, nobody has heard of us. It's no surprise. Our proscribed PR regime thus far has consisted of inking a sandwich board with the words "Fuck All Y'all Mutherfuckers at burningcircus.com" and streaking grade-schools or else spamming AOL chat rooms with "YOUR GAY, FAGOT! Go to burningcircus.com to fix that nasty case of homo." Neither has produced the desired results, but if you ever thought you'd win by picking a fight with a dozen 6-year-olds, you're wrong.

Regrouping now. Ah yes, the next big thing we have planned involves lots more readers so do us a REALLY BIG FAVOR and we'll be so happy. If you know anyone who might enjoy the exact type of useless over-educated drivel and cock jokes that you'll find here at the circus, please tell a friend, co-worker, or mortal enemy.

News flash! For a limited time, our parent company (Jesus) will be hosting a tele-thon-style pledge-match! For every new reader we get, we'll sacrifice a fresh, young orphan to the ravenous maw of Intersate 80! Act now and you'll receive a tear-jerking photo of your sponsored orphan at the moment of impact absolutely FREE! Or, become a Seraph Guardian Angelic Sponsor and for the price of a cup of coffee a day, we'll donate the child's internal organs to the auction site of your choice! Hurry, while supplies last! Tell a friend NOW!

Early morning. An overpass.

The last major change is that we're just BEGGING to nix those awful ugly banners up top that were drawn by kindergardeners-without-fingers. (It's a rare disease aflicting primarily those who work in Indonesian Nike factories in the Oh Yeah Maybe You Want To Lose Another Finger Huh Brat department.) Seriously, most of them were crafted without the use of actual eyeballs at all. If we had a million dollars for every time an ad killed one of our brain cells, we'd be rich. We're promising ourselves that as soon as we hit 1000 hits a day, we're losing the banners entirely. 1000 hits in one day and those babies are gone, we promise or our name ain't "hey dickhead, you=fag".

Okay, that's enough soul-selling for now. See you tomorrow!

Love and ammo,