Because Everybody Loves Haikus

We know they're not that Surreal, but we figured "Hey, everybody loves Haikus!" So enjoy.

Why'd you turn around
Girl with amazing body?
Why were you a dude?

Angsty. Sullen. Bored.
Kid who lives in our building,
You should join a band

Poop poop poop poop poop.
Call it art art art art art.
It's the next big trend.

Our heating is off
And it's goddamn cold in here.
Why don't you love us?

Hey, Marcel Duchamp
History won't forgive you
For that damn toilet.

Extremely Purposeful Surrealist Prose

Today we're announcing the beginning of the First Ever Dan and Vince and the Whole World's Surrealist Magnum Opus...Print Edition. Here's how it works. I give you the first line of what will become an epic work of Surrealist fiction, and you add the next line. Just one line at a time, please. If you have lots to contribute, please wait for the next person to post before you add to what you've already posted. Don't worry. It'll still make sense.

In the spirit of true Surrealism, since we're inviting the entire world to participate, we're telling no one. We're not promoting this blog through our normal channels, nor will we bring it up in conversation, or even obliquely hint at it in the coded messages we routinely slip into the New York Times.

I'm not even telling Dan.

So here you go. Let the work begin...

Vince out.

First line:
"A fish popsicle, trying to breathe, trying to prove to a Zambian expat that, if you put your mind to it, anything is possible."

Unintentional Surrealism Awards

Time once again for Dan and Vince's Unintentional Surrealism Awards. This year's recipients are:

Best Digital Cable Listing:
Turner Classic Movies, "Here Comes Trouble" - "A cub reporter helps solve the murder of a stripper. (1948), (Comedy)."

Best Overheard Conversation Fragment:
That guy who walked past at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf - "And then you stand up from the chair and suddenly you've got an assful of chlamydia."

Best Random Action of a Public Official:
The Parking Enforcement officer who drove past a line of parked cars with a wet sponge tied to the end of a metal stick, rubbing the sponge on the wheels of the cars.

Best Election-Year Election Results:
From CNN.com - Muskogee, Oklahoma Elects 19-Year-Old Mayor — A 19-year-old freshman at the University of Oklahoma was elected mayor Tuesday of Muskogee, a city of 38,000 in the northeastern part of the state.

Best Surreptitious Way to Ensure Your Shareholders Fire You:
Speed Racer.

To all the nominees who didn't take home the coveted Dan and Vince Tube O' Ground Beef Trophy this year, try harder. Or, alternately, try less hard and hope the universe favors irony.

Vince Out.

Confirmed! John McCain, Don Rickles Actually Same Person

You heard it here first, folks. DNA evidence confirms it.

So when "John McCain" announces his running mate will be George Carlin, don't say we didn't warn you.

And a note to everybody at the FCC: with Vice President Carlin to look forward to, just start packing up your offices now.

30 Days Underneath the Ground

As it happens, not everyone agrees on certain definitions. For instance, what a pair of practicing Surrealists consider "public art," other people might call "vandalism." The people who run the LA County Jail, it turns out, call it that. See, they think that urinating on the Los Angeles Times building...well, let's just say we weren't able to convince them that our ambitions were pure, lofty, and gallery-worthy. Live and learn.

So we've been away for a while.

You know what's objectively funny, though, no matter who you are or what personal distress you might be in at the moment? A grown man being lifted in the air by two uniformed policemen, while he's still urinating yelling "Warhol did it first! Warhol did it first!" at the top of his voice.

Thanks for waiting. Here's some surreal:

In the Liquid Paper room where there should have been no shadows,
Shadows began to pool, and took the form of a man.
Invisible to all but he, skeletons crouched in the corners
Bowing musical saws with their own femurs
Or attacking washboards with borrowed ribs.
A hummingbird the color of smoke hovered
Above the figure in the bed. Eyes closed.
All eyes were closed.
The shadows crept to the form, the woman
Shrinkwrapped in white linen, and knelt.
"Poetry" he whispered, "is a bead of sweat
Tracing your perfect spine down...down...down..."
And, at long last, she opened her eyes.

R.I.P. Alain Robbe-Grillet

We are saddened by the loss of French filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet, who wrote the screenplay for one of our favorite films Last Year at Marienbad. Funeral services will be held last month and will be preceded by a memorial viewing sometime next year. Or they'll all occur at the same time in a linear fashion... To be honest, I've always been a little confused by the whole thing.

Dan.

LA Times - Probably the Final Chapter...of Shame!!

Ok, so we heard back from XXX XXXX at the LA Times about the blatant re-use of our Surrealism for their Entertainment fodder. As you can probably infer from the tone of our opening sentence, here, things did not go as we'd planned. This is XXX XXXX's new statement after his "investigation" (notice the use of sarcastic quotation marks):

"Dear Dan & Vince,

Just to follow up: I've discussed this with Patrick Day and his editors and they are unfamiliar with your blog. They came up with this premise together, while brainstorming. So maybe great minds are thinking alike?

For what it's worth: What I'm also getting on this is that such a juxtaposition between movies and reality is not a totally brand-new one, though, and variations on it have been done in years past.

Thank you again for writing with this matter of concern to you.

XXX XXXX"

So they're taking the easy way out by claiming total ignorance of our blog, and probably even our existence. But notice their use of flattery. If they're so "ignorant" of us, how can they possibly comprehend the greatness of our minds?!?! People pleaded ignorance about this mortgage crisis thing, too, but that didn't mean it wasn't real.

That's right. We said it. We're real.

I know we put on this big show that we're actually Sur-real, but we're just as tangible as the day we were born. Maybe even more so, since we're now far more massive, and it's just possible that mass equates to degree of reality.

And, LA Times, you really hurt our feelings. Sniff. All we wanted was a little picture of Rene Magritte somewhere in the Entertainment section. But no.

Ok. Now we're really mad. We thought we'd try to barrage Patrick Day with all kinds of slanderous rumors, but it turns out he was too clever for us by having a name that's almost exactly the same as a holiday where everybody drinks too much. So whatever we said about him would get lost in the annals of Google and if anybody did find it, they'd assume it was some type of liquor hallucination and forget all about it.

So now, it appears, the only thing left to do is to take this to the people who have been affected most by this scandal -- the candidates. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.