Of Irony

This past Friday I got into some heated debates about socialism and health care and laissez faire economics and Ayn Rand and other good stuff. The only trouble, really, was that this went on for the majority of a few solid hours. I love arguing, but, well, there were cute girls at this party.

About 4 a.m. Jay walks down the stairs after making himself a bowl of Kraft EasyMac to find me sitting down, my head in my hands, looking haggard, and a furrowed brown gently massaged by the temple. He chuckled as he neared me, soaking in the irony of the great Dave laid low by the drudgery of entrenched opinions held by young geniuses to mired in small lives to see the complexity of grander designs.

"The use of words for something other than their literal intention.
Now that is irony." Here it was the situation, but whatever.

On the up-side, he totally thought I was humbled enough by what all my friends must put up with around me to give me some EasyMac, and that was just glorious. I'm totally down for the Revolution if we all get EasyMac.

Jokes For the Clinically Depressed

…


Oh, what's the point?

Taking Memorial Day off (well, you still get the one-liner). Longer posts return tomorrow, likely with some story of drunken debauchery from today.

On Friends

Last night I met a bunch of new people. Some of them commented on my shirt being awesome. This felt good. I shook some hands, hugged a bunch of very attractive ladies, saw some old friends I'd lost track of, drank beers, played pong, and had conversations about American history, politics, philosophy, economics, religion, and Ayn Rand. (For the record, I ain't about Ayn.)

There was a pleasant time had, and I hope everyone else had such fun.

Except for this goddam nightingale outside my window that sings at the ass-crack of dawn. Seriously, it perches on my roof.

Oh, and excepting Rand too. Fuck that bitch. I prefer Margaret Atwood, anyway.

On Dreams XI: How Morpheus Got His Groove Back

I dreamt a collection of television actors at my grandma's house turned out to be brainwashed ninja assassins. They rode in a fleet of souped-up A-Team vans.

Only I knew they were secretly killing machines, so I had to warn my mother and extended family. I personally killed one D-lister in a stealth maneuver, then shallowly sliced the throat of the guy who plays Det. Munch on Law & Order: SVU, using that Japanese weapon that's like a small scythe on a chain. A naga-somthing. (Edit: It's called a 'kusarigama.')

 I made my way to the kitchen where I repeatedly plunged the blade deep into a maddened and violent Danny DeVito, but between his fat and the brainwashing, he was protected from excessive physical damage and the feeling of excruciating pain. Mom and grandma did not believe me, though I had just nearly slaughtered Louie from ABC/NBC's Taxi. They laughed at me.

I took a pair of sneakers and I ran, not even stopping to put them on until I was well down the block. I huddled in a crowd of parents and children just off a school bus and tried to walk home to relative safety. Along the way I found an area of grass outside apartment buildings just littered with dead squirrels and gerbils. You couldn't not step on them, and they slowed me down, at least enough to allow Diedrich Bader of The Drew Carey Show and Office Space fame to catch up to me. I had to evade him and a no-name henchman by climbing rooftops and flinging pebbles at their eyes to deter them or thwart attempts at grabbing my ankles.

I was once caught, but saved by the arrival of a hot lady cop who showed Honecker (Edit: what the hell did I mean to type here before the iPhone autocorrect got it? "Whoever?" "Deidrich?") getting possessed and made the whole local area trippy. Then I woke up.

My subconscious likes throwing me these curveballs. I'v been getting fewer of the zombie dreams and more of the "brainwashed"/living-infected mobs variety. I feel sad for the zombies, but these are living people and quite frequently by the time I determine that the use of deadly force is necessary, it's generally too late for me to make out very well in the dream.

Thoughts:

• Danny DeVito is much bigger in my head.
• I really need to get some cardio going.

On Bathroom Reading

I found this book in a bar bathroom. Granted, it was a rather fancy bar, with a very fancy, clean bathroom (for a bar), but a bar bathroom nonetheless.

I have since looked up this "The Oatmeal Dot Com." And you know what? In their list of 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth?

Nowhere does it mention that whole 'separate a female from the pod and starve/sleep-deprive her until she has sex with all of you' dolphin gang-rape thing.

I feel like that'd be a very good reason to punch a dolphin.

That and Roy Scheider's show SeaQuest DSV. I loved it, but God, that was pretty awful.

You Are What You Eat

Who the hell designed this toy? Is it a toy? Or is it a subtle encouragement to children to engage in either taxidermy and/or cannibalism?

Yes, that is a stuffed polar bear with a clear plastic belly, zippered shut to enclose the small, plastic animals the bear presumably ate.

You know, animals a bear might have eaten in the arctic. For example, a seal. Or (parts of) a whale.

Or, yeah, a smaller polar bear.

Obviously, such a vicious, and evidently enormous, creature must be dealt with and dealt with harshly. This explains his draconian retail position. Not since the Inquisition was the rack deemed an appropriate mode of punishment, not until the Mega Bear, that is.

Mega Bear: Totally Had It Coming.

…In 3D.

Further Pictures of Big Apple Comic Con

Here's some more proof I deserve to write off my con ticket as "blog research."

"Remember me in Harold Square." I sang that in grade school chorus.
I also worked at Old Navy. Total coincidence.

"Angel" and "Drucilla." One not as good as the other, but a respectable effort.

"Anakin" and "Padme." Actually amazing costumes.
She was actually really cute, and he completely looked like a tool.

Some Dr. Who comic pages I shot for a could Who friends.

And a big ol' Doc to top that off.

Not pictured: sushi, getting lost between some weird apartment building on Madison and Grand Central because we tried to find an Auntie Ann's Pretzels, and about 1500 living personifications of The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy.

Tempur-Pedic - Really, really expensive

My dad has a Tempur-Pedic bed. Admittedly, it's pretty comfy. Also, it's way overpriced. They start at $2,899. Check out their base-model selection:

Now I've got some little shitty knock-off pillow that's made of a seafoam green spongey material and that works just fine. For $12, it certainly replaced the more expensive knock-off I'd had for a few years already. Hell, even the official Tempur-pillows are as cheap as $80. Wait a minute…

= $80

x18 = $1,440

$2,899.00

-1,440.00

$1,459.00

You could totally lash together a series of Tempur-Pedic pillows for less than half the cost of a mattress of equal size. Even with a double layer.

So … looks like I'm getting a new mattress company with really low overhead.

Big Apple Comic Con: Not Your Big Daddy's Con

So Big Apple Comic Con. Actually, after the behemoth that was New York Comic Con this past year, BACC was much more what I would have expected from such an event. It reminded me of when I was a kid and would check out the permanent indoor flea market a couple downs over and talk to the one guy who exclusively sold Star Wars paraphernalia. It smelled of old toys and comic pages and a little bit of sweaty nerds. Here were my favorite moments:

Darth Vader and a few sandtroopers wandering around outside while the line to get in wrapped halfway down the avenue. THEY HAD THE VOICE CONTROLERS!

40-something Harry Dresden meandering about.

Fat black Ben Riley.

X-Men Noir: All your favorite characters, de-powered and stuck solving murder mysteries and whatnot. How had I not heard of this?

And I'm told that in some colleges, down South, according to my source, young women will wear a tampon soaked in vodka and absorb the alcohol directly into their bloodstream, so they can get hammered in class. I would recommend against using a red wine, but then again that may be the best camouflage of all.

If You Are Reading This You Did Not Get Raptured

It's okay, though. I probably didn't either.

Reasons I Did Not Get Raptured:

• It was not the Rapture
• I am Jewish
• I frequently engage in non-saintly behavior (like being Jewish) which a truly Christian Rapture would look down upon.
• God would have been more lenient but I spent the last 24 hours at a comic con, a gay bar, and possibly a "No-Pants" party.
• God is kind of a dick

If you were around to read this list, I suggest you consider which category best describes you and then start reevaluating your life. If we really just lost the 144,000 holiest people on Earth, you've only got seven years to fully accept Jesus Christ into your life as the one true savior. And let me tell you, if those Left Behind books are any indication, the last year or so is going to be a bitch so you might want to go ahead and get swipe those books from your library now before they get torched with all the other Holy Books.

Sound A Doggy Makes at Big Apple Comic Con!

Today The Sound A Doggy Makes will be at Big Apple Comic Con's Spring show at Penn Plaza Pavilion in NYC!

This means that if you want to meet me and have fun, you probably should have bought a ticket a while ago and come down! (They're still available at the gate, no worries.) It also means I'm going to be triple-fisting it as my awesome self, a subtly ravenous fanboy, and as an assistant to a junior casting agent friend-type lady. (I will be acting as pack mule for all our stuff.)

This means that I will have an amazing time and write about the crazy crap I see and do.

And that means I can write off my business and train tickets as business expenses. Nice.

I totally interned at Toyfare, a sister publication to Wizard for like two weeks.
I was the fourth person fired in 5 days.
Two years later every magazine published by Wizard was killed
and they rebranded as a web site. Glad I didn't stick around.

Viagra Causing Old Men to Go Deaf

If everyone who takes Viagra is old to begin with, how would you fucking tell?

Technoageism - Because we always need new ways to condemn other people

My father worked at IBM for 15 years. He says he has a degree in computer science (from 1979). He owned an Apple II on which he taught me the command line

a://keen.exe

I was DOSing Commander Keen before I could reliably read.


So for the love of God, why does my father turn and twist an iPad like a squirrel staring at a stubborn nut?

The Friend Zone: Scourge of Nice Guys Everywhere

Comment with contact info or email me directly at Dave @ soundadoogymakes dot com.
Yes, I'm really helping with this.

 The Friend Zone might be the second worst thing about dating. In fact, the only trouble I can consider even more scathing than hearing the phrase, "Aww, you're such a good friend! What would I do without you?" is The Great Lie.

The Great Lie is that terrible thing Hollywood did ages back when someone, probably a guy in the Friend Zone, turned a studio onto the notion of a man and a woman, friends, who then fall in love.

It's a crazy concept. At least is was back then. Now, it's pretty much the bane and meat of every high-school-age sitcom and over-35 rom-com ("Romantic Comedy," you geezer) to slither its way out from the editing room.

Boy meets girl, boy cannot express interest in girl, girl moves on if she ever had inklings of feelings for boy, boy gets torn up inside watch girl date assholes, boy and girl get in huge fight, boy's kind of an ass, eventually boy realizes he's being a pussy and mans-up to proclaim his love in a very Alpha display, boy and girl kiss. No mention is made of the rest of their relationship, or whether it ends happily ages later or a week from then due to someone's inability to continue out-of-character outrageous displays.

An entire generation of beta males were taught that it's totally cool to fall in love with the best friend you had since you were seven. In fact, it's preferable. So don't, you know, even bother dating around or gaining any life experience. Just sit back with your one female friend because eventually she will love you to.

Good god.

Rob Reiner fuck us all over. When Harry Met Sally is too much the perfect story. "Men and women can't be friends," is like a fucking mantra, now. That's not even the point of the quote! It's like saying "Luke, I am your father," when the real line is, "No, Luke. I am your father." (It finishes the exchange, "Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father."/"He told me enough. He told me you killed him!") There's more subtext there.

"Men and women cannot be friends," is followed by "because the sex part always gets in the way." "No man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her."
"So you're saying a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive."

"No, you pretty much wanna nail them too."
"What if they don't wanna have sex with you?"
"Doesn't matter, because the sex thing is out there so the friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story."

This is mostly true. The part about the unattractive girls not so much, and the finality of it all not so much, but it's there. There's always the thought, "Make good mate?" running the the back of your lizard-brain.

But the notion that this is the admirable way to be? The preferable way? That's just a terrible thing to teach kids. Do you know how old I was when I learned you weren't supposed to know a person inside and out before you started dating? Like twenty. Jesus.

Meanwhile all those popular jocks you personified as the bad-guys who get their comeuppance after high school? They spend high school dating girls and generally learn to be less obnoxious people in college. Meanwhile you sit around thinking you'll get rewarded for your chaste behavior a la "Weird Science."

Dudes.

You need to get out and get some life experience in. At least practice with more than your hand and high-res downloads of Miley Cyrus' side-boob. Fergodsake.

So yeah, apply to me to go on an MTV dating show for Friend-Zone'd people.

Be attractive and fit the descriptors above.

Maybe you'll get something out of it.

(Besides payment and fleeting fame, I mean.)

TLDR

Last night I was up until 5 in the morning because I didn't get an idea for a blog until about 3 and I spent two hours writing about why time travel in the best time travel movies ever was all horribly wrong from a logistical perspective. And I totally misdiagnosed which movies fit which categories, and barely touched at all on the Bill and Ted soon-to-be-trilogy.

Right before I fell asleep, I started an outline to turn this into a part of my perpetually upcoming book, and I realized everything I said could be explained in about half a page of loose leaf.

In case you were too lazy to lead yesterday's long, rambling tirade of nerdistry, this is that page of loose leaf:

Time Travel Without a DeLorean

I am a complete sucker for time travel/alternate reality plotlines. I'll watch damn-near anything if it's got those elements. It's how I ended up seeing pretty much every episode of a couple Star Trek shows over the years. It's just something about causality. I need to know that every event had its cause somewhere in the story. If it's not there, I'm pissed.

Which is why I end up avoiding a lot of time travel shows/movies. I find out how the time travel works and if it doesn't hold up, I bail. I save myself the mental acrobatics of trying to explain "science is magic."

When I first saw "Donnie Darko," I didn't read, watch, do, or really think of much of anything else for 18 hours. However, eventually I got a handle on it and it made sense. Even if the answer was "God said so," the logic worked.

I go back to other bits and I'm legitimately pissed, sometimes:

Terminator - perfect sense
Primer - perfect sense
Donnie Darko - insanely complex but deceptively simple and perfect
fucking Dragonball Z - almost makes sense
Star Trek - like 80% of the time, including the new movies

Back to the Future … internal logic error.

What? Back to the Future doesn't make sense? How is that even possible? They have Mr. Fusion. They have instant hydrating Pizza Hut. They have flux capacitors. Their time travel is so simple Christopher Lloyd drew it on a chalkboard with three intersecting lines. What has gone wrong here?

Here's my rant of nerd-logic:

There are only three types of functional cinematic time travel: Donnie Darko Time Travel, Terminator Time Travel and Dragonball Z Time Travel.

Everything you do to branch off from the
original timeline circles back to nullify
itself. Life continues as-is.

Donnie Darko Time Travel: Whatever it is you do that changes the timeline was always supposed to happen. Predetermination is the case, and the only times you can violate this is when "God" or something similar says you can. In fact, *SPOILERS* the way I understand the movie, the whole thing is God saying, "Man, I wish I could give this troubled boy some happiness before he dies." Then God gives him the ability to violate predetermination, creating a tangent universe in which he gets to be happy for about 3 weeks until this improper universe caves in on itself and the kid dies happy in bed, killed by the one thing to survive the tangent universe's brief existence and destruction.

Primer explained it much better: You decide to go back in time so you turn on the box (because it can only send you back as far as the box was turned on, since there wasn't working a time machine to exit from before that). You kill 3 hours doing whatever, researching how to change your world, perhaps. Then you get in the box and move backwards in time for 3 hours, exiting the box right after you turned it on. You go out in the world to change history, while your former self is sitting at home figuring out to do just that. After three hours, he goes back in time and becomes you from 3 hours ago and the box shuts off, closing a loop paradox-free.

Terminator Time Travel: You go back in time, you change something, but you don't really know until the thing you supposedly avoided doesn't happen. Terminator seems to indicate that some things have to happen, but that's likely more the "inevitable downfall of humanity do to the species' own hubris" than true predestination. You can totally alter the How and When of these things occurring. That doesn't preclude things in the future from causing events in the past via time-loop, but "No future but what we make," still can hold true at other times. There's one timeline, and you're in it, baby.

Interestingly, Terminator actually follows Donnie Darko logic, while T2-T4 and The Sarah Connor Chronicles follow Terminator logic proper. In T1 the very act of sending a robot back to kill John Connor's mom results in a future soldier being sent back to save Sarah Connor and (no *SPOILER* here unless you're maybe 14) father the future savior of humanity. In T2, they don't so much avert Judgement Day as they push it back. T3 keeps the timeline moving ahead without altering much history, however various support leaders to John's future resistance are killed as young adults, so the future is likely altered somewhat. T4 verifies this, as well as the idea that the future is drastically different from the one Kyle Reese originally came back from.

And Sarah Connor actually did a great job on the concept if they had only cycled back into the main continuity in the last 5 minutes of the last episode from season 2, but instead they borked everything by setting up a third season and getting canceled.

Star Trek follows the same rules. Something from the future can alter the past in such a way that it would never go back to alter the past, but that's okay because it's now in the "present" and untouchable by whatever temporal shitstorm rewrites history. Voyager ended with just such a 'paradox' and J.J. Abrams kicked off a whole rebooted franchise with that logic.

Dragonball Z Time Travel: Amusingly, Dragonball Z followed the same basic idea during one of the late-middle-ish story arcs, but with the twist that multiple timelines exist concurrently and there's not much you can really do about anything in yours. Here, time machines are also technically dimensional transports. Two of the characters' kid ("Trunks") comes back from a post-apocalyptic future to change history and does, however even after he theoretically fixes it, he returns to his timeline to find nothing has changed. This is actually a legitimate time travel theory: that you can do whatever you want in the past because you can only ever travel to an alternate reality past. Grandfather Paradox doesn't work if it's not technically your grandpa.

This is almost the same as Dr. Who, except the Doctor really doesn't give a shit about what he does to any particular timeline. Like Trunks's ship, the TARDIS keeps its occupants outside the timestream and thus immune to alteration.


Here's where Back to the Future pisses me off. Doc Brown clearly shows what's going on in Part II:

It's the alternate-concurrent-timeline again, except only from the perspective of someone from the original history. When they changed 1955, 1985 got tweaked and no one knew the difference because it was never any other way for them, except for Doc and Marty who only experienced the original timeline and were protected from being overwritten by being outside the rewritten era.

Except since he and Marty were not in the DeLorean when Old Biff went back to 1955 and changed history again, they shouldn't have been protected because they didn't time travel until after that. In fact, the entire universe should be written over, but it's not. Instead it's still in place because Marty and the Doc are going to reverse the changes in 1955, but they won't know to do it unless they try to go back to a time after 1955 first and see some changes.

So it's a predestination loop.

Except, in Part I Marty almost fades away because his parents don't get together, until they do and he doesn't. So clearly Marty can be erased, even if he was going to have fixed everything.

Add to that that the present is changed at the end of I and artifacts from the present and future erase in the past and present respectively when Marty changes events, and it looks like there isn't predetermined causality, even though there has to be for the rest of the story to work.

Basically, there's causality when they need special effects and plot twists, and there isn't when it would benefit the characters.

And if Marty tweaked 1985 so his family was better off and Biff was a tool, why would he befriend Doc and end up going back in time at all? Shouldn't there be an extra Marty? Did they just kill him to make sure? Unless Doc, guided by the fact that they did do all that, coerced that Marty into going back in that timeline as well, with the intent of preserving it exactly as it happened to him/in the movie. That would work, but then there would be an extra (third, really) Marty in 1955 who would arrive in the same place and time as Movie Marty, either merging with him or blowing up the universe in the exact paradox Doc always warned him about.If they merged, that'd alter the movie and screw with the timeline again in and infinitely recurring loop of subtle differences, or Original Marty takes precedence over all paradox Marties because he is "Original" and thus somehow more Universally valid than his accidental offshoots.If traveling outside your timestream makes you immune to all temporal anomalies save complete erasure, as long as you're not in your preferred chronological place, that's a pretty sweet superpower to have, especially since everybody ages while they're time traveling and then returning to the same day they left.

So yeah. "Magic."

On Plans Best Left in the Realm of Infinite Possibility

I have most of the pieces of a life-size mannequin in my closet.

Some squishy legs, no feet, though, similar arms which are poseable, though also devoid of hands, a smallish head made of styrofoam, and a female-shaped torso with matching, non-poseable arms which can magnetically clamp to the shoulders at a few different angles.

Why?

Because I saw A Clockwork Orange in high school and love milk, so I wanted to grow up to live in a house with a working lactating statue to dispense my favorite beverage.

Later I was jealous of carpool lanes.

Later I got really into Mythbusters and remembered that episode of The Simpsons where Homer fakes his death with a stuffed version of himself. And Bart too. And then South Park did the same to Butters with a pig carcass.

At this point, I refuse to do any of it, mostly because all those ideas sound terrible and I'd likely only get one shot before my faux-daver was ruined, but also because I can't pick just one.

Plus, I'm still missing a pelvis and it would be super weird to ask the woman in Macy's if I can buy the artificial butt they display panties on.

Screw you, BuyStoreShelving.com! I'm not paying $38 for a plastic vagina!
For $50 I can get a Fleshlite!

Friday 13th Explained

Some of you probably had some questions about yesterday. This endeavors to explain some of them.

1. Why "Friday the 13th" of all days?

• Friday has been considered unlucky for it's Norse goddess namesake Frigga's exile, and 13 is often considered unlucky for transgressing the "completeness" of 12, as well as being the total number of bodies seated at the Last Supper. "Friday the 13th" has been considered unlucky as a combination thereof since the 1900s, owing to the date of the Pope ordering the deaths of all remaining Knights Templar after the final crusade falling on a Friday 13.

2. What the hell is up with Jason Voorhees, anyway?

Okay. So … Jason Voorhees was a pathetic, sometimes deformed and/or developmentally challenged boy who once attended Camp Crystal lake, but drowned when some counselors decided to be inappropriate together instead of making sure the other boys didn't tease him during swim time.

10 years later the Camp was reopened by people who swore they wouldn't repeat the tragic mistakes that closed the camp in the first place, but all the counselors immediately being drinking and doing drugs and having sex, even before children attend camp. Something starts killing them with a large knife. It turns out it's really Jason's deranged, enraged mother, but they manage to kill her.

Except! Jason didn't actually die! He's been living in the woods this whole time without telling even his mom, but he's gigantic. Think Sloth from "The Goonies" on steroids. He just so happened to see her grisly impalement, so now he starts following kids back to town and murdering them for killing his mom. Finally, they manage to kill him in the fourth movie. Then someone adopts the crazy killing hockey mask deal for a fifth movie.

Then a misplaced lightning strike into his corpse reanimates Jason in a fifth movie. In six they trap him at the bottom of the lake. In eight a telekinetic girl accidentally lets him out, but she resurrects her dad whom she killed ten years earlier and he drags Jason back underwater.

In eight a boat chops an underwater power line in Crystal Lake and shocks Jason awake AGAIN, but this time he hitches a boat ride to New York City where he tears through town until he's killed by a flood of toxic waste in the sewers which melts his skin, fuses the mask to his face, and leaves only his child-self curled at the bottom of a grate.

Obviously still alive, Jason apparently recovered and then headed back to Camp Crystal Lake killing people along the way. The FBI gets pissed so they explode him. However he possesses several people until Jessica, his half-niece and only living, non-infant relative (the only people who can permanently kill him) kills him with the magic dagger from "The Evil Dead." Jason then gets dragged to Hell and Freddy Krueger takes his mask.

Then Freddy Krueger manipulates Jason into returning to Earth (since he has power in dreams and Jason's deaths are similar to sleep), but in ways reminiscent of Freddy's murders so those who remember him begin again to fear him, which gives him further power. The two eventually kill each other, but Jason brings Freddy's severed head into his death-y dream cabin, which gives Freddy back some power enough to wink menacingly.

Then in 2010 he was cryogenically frozen for 445 years, until he was accidentally revived by space-teens on a space-field-trip (to space-Earth). He kills them until they burn him up in the atmosphere, but of course he lands in Crystal Lake somehow.

Then They reboot him where he just saw a counselor behead his mom as a kid, then waited 30 years to murder anyone around the lake. They kill him and dump him in the lake, but he's not dead, so he grabs at them menacingly. AGAIN.


Man, at least Michael Meyers was just a vaguely incestuous demon-spawn pawn of a witches' coven.

Maxim's Top 100: "Let's randomly choose foreign supermodels, and young actresses until we get to the top 10."

So I just got my June issue of Maxim in the mail and it felt a little hefty. Saddened that it was not packed full of useful articles on how to be a classy gentleman, but rather strumpet pictorials, I endeavored to at least entertain myself with it long enough to tease some meaning from the hodgepodge of skin and lace.

Note to self: "strumpet pictorelis" is now the scientific term for "camwhore."

Firstly, let's just get this out of the way: the Hot 100 are basically the three-dozen-or-so girls to have modeled for Maxim's cover or semi-major spreads in the last year, a few sexy recording artists and for some reason Cameron Diaz every year. The 10 or 20 most popular choices are set aside to be argued about later, and the remaining 80-90 are just thrown together in a photo spread that would never have passed a single layout editor at my college paper. Though in Maxim's defense, we were an award winning student newspaper. They're just Maxim. Clearly they fought tooth and nail over the top ten. Many interns died to bring us this information. The bulk of these girls were arranged on the page slapdash with their two-sentence write-ups in the least comprehensible manner possible at 5 a.m., again, kind of like my college paper.

Now for some points of note:

• Miley Cyrus took spot #64, eking out both Elisha Cuthbert, Anna Paquin and Emma Watson, proving that there really is no telling where you'll land once you fall below that magic Top-X threshold.
  

  

  This is NOT the one with her nipple out. Jesus.

• The middle numbers included, along with Cyrus, former/shamed Disney stars Vanessa Hudgens, Christina Aguilera, Hilary Duff (with a nod to fellow covergirl sister Haily), and Lindsay Lohan. Nickelodeon's former starlets Amanda Bynes and Michehelle Trachtenberg came out far ahead, placing in the low 30s.

Suck it, Mike Eisner!

 The top ten include an actress I've never heard of and an Israeli supermodel I've likewise never heard of, but her derriere is somewhat familiar.

The other Tops are How I Met Your Mother's Cobie Smuthers (#9), Natalie Portman (#8), Anne Hathaway (#7), Mila Kunis (#5), Cameron fucking Diaz (#4), Katy Perry (#3), Olivia Munn (#2) [who kind of shamed her Attack of the Show replacement co-host Candace Bailey at #99], and the twiggish blonde Michael Bay replaced Megan Fox with in the third Transformers because Fox was too much of a vapid, self-entitled bitch even for Michael Bay to deal with.

So yeah, Shia Labeouf is probably porking Maxim's Top 1. He's got to be feeling even better than he did to get that first sweet non-Disney role in I, Robot.

"I traded up, right Spoon? More cushion for the pushin', right?"

Psych 101: Outgroup Homogeneity Bias

There are two things I remember from taking Psychology 101 in college. I forget what the first thing is, but the second one is "outgroup homogeneity bias."

In simplest, non-P.C. terms, "outgroup homogeneity bias" is the scientific term for when dudes of a culture different from yours all tend to look kind of similar to you.

I'm not saying it's true.

I am not Tim Meadows.

I'm not saying all Mexicans wear sombreros.

I'm not even saying all Chinese guys are pretty, slender, effeminate creatures.

All I'm saying is sometimes I can't tell the difference between a spade and a club.

Victoria's Secret: Unnaturally Unattainable Isn't Good Enough

That's right, ladies. It's time to upgrade to the newest model.

Your boobs, not the bra. What did you think I meant?

Yes, it's true. You need to go under the knife yet again. Do you see these women? They're disgusting. They've already had two boob jobs and they still need a push-up!

Honestly, it's just pathetic, and it doesn't even cover all their bills to personal trainers and nutritionists and drug dealers prescription dieticians. They should really try to get their money back.

The Gospel According to Lady Gaga

What the fook do ya need a dog-penis gun for?! Okay, Rambo.

I did a Second-By-Second Breakdown of "Bad Romance" about a year and a half ago and I'm not intending to go back to that any time soon. Nor do I plan on a long rant as I did when "Telephone" Was Blasted As Child Poison.

All I'm going to point out here is that Jesus is Rick Gonzalez, the dorky best friend from defunct sitcom "Reaper," while Judas is none other than Boondock Saint Murphy MacManus and The Walking Dead's most hold-me-back fan favorite Daryl, Norman Flipping Reedus.

NORMAN. REEDUS.

He's the Boondock Saint who isn't confused for Colin Ferrell. And Jesus is the Hispanic kid from Old School?

Yeah, I'd probably go with Gaga on this one. Judas is way more badass, though I suppose it must take a lot of courage and skull-breaking for a young Dominican boy to take over control of a predominantly white, redneck biker gang in what appears to be the American Southwest. He must get a lot of Mexican jokes.

But then again, I suppose he just turns the other cheek.

Hitler Cat Can Haz Final Solutionz

 

If I believed in a hell I'd- well, let's face it, I'd have not done a lot of really funny things by this point.

PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER!…itty-bitty living space

This is one of those times where I lament all the major news going on in the world for taking up the entire news cycle and preventing the world from hearing some of the truly weird stuff going on.

Don't get me wrong, I love hearing the government admit we've been using stealth drones and heavily modified, tactical stealth helicopters for years longer than we've admitted they exist, or that SEAL Team 6 has a German shepherd with tougher body armor than most state troopers.

Still, the rest of the world is kind of kerploding.

It was one thing to neglect mentioning that Egyptian former president Mubarak basically had a heart attack over getting called in by his country's supreme court for "questioning." There was the whole 'sudden conflagration of violence in Syria' thing, and it looked like that fight was going to be a lot messier, what with the insane dictator order cruise missile strikes against peaceful protestors.

Easy mistake.

And of course we only stopped mentioning that when a half-dozen other nations started imploding, but we maybe, maybe would have kept at it until oh gee, we found and killed Osama bin Laden after ten years. Alright, that's a pretty big deal. I mean, that's one for the books. Obama can pretty much write his own ticket after that one. I'm not sure what one does after being the leader of the free world–generally die–but he's a young guy, he can go places. I know Taft served as a supreme court justice afterward. Still, I think "one of the youngest presidents ever" and "first black president" would be enough for some people. Now adding "caught the most reviled American enemy since Hitler" and "personally ordered and watched the death live," it's almost like over achieving. What, you want to be the first president on Mars, too?

*Side note: I just read yesterday that Obama actually cracked a joke after a 6' tall SEAL

laid out next to the body of bin Laden to verify the body by height, quipping,

"We donated a $60 million helicopter to this operation. Could we not afford to buy a tape measure?"

Classic 'Bam.

Well here's the story-of-the-week you'll never hear on the nightly broadcasts:

Psychopath Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad has apparently gone so insane, that he has had increasing tensions with Shi'a Islamic cleric and official Supreme Leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yes, he's picking fights with his boss, who we used to support until his predecessors turned out to be even more violent and bad-for-business than the guy before them.


So now the Ayatollah's religious police have begun arresting Ahmadinejad's highest ranking supporters on charges of sorcery.


Let that sink in. Socery. They are formally being charged with summoning djinn to support Mahmud's crazed and counter-productive personal goals. One was described as "a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds."

Alright, that sounds pretty badass.

But sadly, there aren't any genies here, as far as can be told. It really just looks like the Ayatollah's getting worried that Ahmadinejad's Chief of Staff, this guy named Mashaei, is getting a lot more influence and might be groomed to be a successor. They're saying he's an evil sorceror and is possibly responsible for a documentary which claims the return of the Shi'a messiah figure is imminent, something the Ayatollah's group says cannot be predicted.

So, obviously, he's a witch.

The scariest thing is that as far as the rest of Western Society is concerned, it might actually be best if these guys get tossed from power by their own government, because for once the last craziest guys might be easier to work with than the new craziest guys. At least they don't deny that the holocaust ever happened. (They still hate Jews/Zionists, but hey, at least they admit it happened.)

"I tell ya, I don't get no respect."

Gastroenterology: Scam or Fraud?

I'm pretty sure gastroenterology as a whole is an elaborate ruse by doctors. Secretly, everything is still governed by the four humors: blood, phlegm and the black and yellow biles.

My reasoning is actually quite sound. No stomach problem can be overcome while still wearing pants.

Have a stomachache? Take your pants off. No, don't just grab a pair with a loose waist like it's Thanksgiving evening, take them off completely. Lock yourself in your bedroom if you have to, you're probably already planning on that part since you're obviously no fun anymore. Just take 'em off already.

Usually, that does the trick all on its own. Not cured by just a few hours of laying in bed without those pants? Fine. Go to the hospital. Do you know the first thing they're going to do?

Make you take your pants off and sit on a funny table.

And should they decide that you need your bile readjusted or some such manner of fluid adjustment? Do they give you antacid? Nah. They decide they need to cut you open and play with your insides. But do you really know what they're doing while you're asleep?

They just leave you lying on a gurney for a few hours wearing only your hospital gown.

Sure, they cut and stitch your stomach to make it look good, but that's all an illusive ploy to keep from you the simple truth:

No medical problem can be solved while you're still wearing pants.

Literary Porn Star Names

• William Shakes Spear
• Emanuel Kunt
• Flannery O'Cummer
• James Joys
• Jack-Off London (Call of the Wild, co-starring Oscar Wild)
• The Earl of Whorechester
• Mark E. DeSade (100 Days of Sodomy)
• W.E.B. Do-Boys
• Philip Kay Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Vibrators?)
• Isaac Assymove
• Chuck Polehook (like anyone can pronounce that anyway)
• Charlotte's Perky Gilman (The Yellow Wallpaper now sounds like a watersports video)
• Jorge Luis Engorges
• Albert Cockmus
• Shirley Jacks-On (Who will win The Ladyboy Lottery?)
• Jill Updyke
• Edgar Allen Poo
• Katherine Anne Porkher
• Zora Neale HurtsSon (Obviously another BDSM star)
• William Faulkher
• Maya & Jelu (twins)

Household Tips for the Swinging Bachelor/Supervillain

• Only bring single girls back to your place. You do not want their boyfriend getting all riled up and busting down the giant, titanium-alloy door to your fortress.
  
  
• Have one pair of underwear you absolutely hate wearing. That pair is now motivation for Laundry Day. Alternately, it can be used as your "Earth-2" costume.
  
  
• Wash any cutlery, cooking implements, tableware or torture chambers immediately after use so you don't have to later when you're tired and lazy.
  
  
• If your roommate leaves dirty crap in the sink, throw acid in his face.
  
  
• Eventually, the guy you really hate is going to show up uninvited. Best to be courteous until he leaves, then exact you intricate and frightening revenge.
  
  
• Kill as many hookers and crack-heads as you want, so long as they weren't at one time somehow related to someone powerful.
  
  
• Henchmen/sublets will have more respect for your things than your regular cohorts. Because they're worried you might kill them.
  
  
• It is inappropriate to have a Batman poster hanging over your couch.