Fucking Black Holes

I called my friend Carolyn a non-entity today, in so far as my penis treats her the same as, say, a lovely white painted bathroom wall. It's very nice, but completely unrelated to boner-inducements.

She somehow took offense to that, I guess?

So of course I backtracked and told her I would totally fuck an entity, but then I thought, No. No I really wouldn't.

You see, I imagine an entity being a non-corporeal ball of swirly colors and goodness or maybe badness. I imagine sticking one's genitals into that would be quite awful an experience, but just logistically it would be weird.

Does it's shape now inward with the gravity of my turgid member? Or is its shell merely an event horizon beyond which my penis simply collapses into itself, lost to me for all time, though—theoretically—possibly bequeathed to some alternate universe?

However it plays out, I'm expecting to get a few extra hits this week for blog searches related to "black + girl + hole + asses."

Actually, that's my bread and butter, right there.

Of Hopes and Dreams

Driving into work yesterday, I had a marvelous thought:

What if, when the apocalypse comes, zombies are Nerf-susceptible?

What a glorious fuckin' day that could be. I'm sure bullets would still do their damage, but nailing a walking corpse in the head with a suction cup just feels like you earned it. No long-range sharpshooting there, not past 75' at least. Or can you arc the shot?? Are you The One, Neo  Johnny Mnemonic  Ted "Theodore" Logan  Constantine  Clean Shaven 20 Year Old Parkour Expert Nerf Commercial Actor?

If I may be allowed to mix genres here and quote Christopher Lloyd in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, "My god, it'll be beautiful." The arsenal that is my closet would be more useful to me than the police station across the street. Armor that is light, yet somehow defends me; reusable ammunition you merely have to pluck from the noggin of a downed hellspawn. It is possible, given these obviously magical circumstances, that a SuperSoaker full of holy water could act as a flame thrower. Since I have both in the trunk of my car, I should remember this as a possible eventuality.

What I'm saying is, ladies, if you love shooting foam arrows at strange adults to energetic music and pretending you are some kind of action hero, I'm the guy you want to spend your apocalypse with. [Said my Craigslist Personals ad.]

All the plaid makes me look Canadian, which is hilarious, but only insofar as I imagine
Mounties are equipped about the same.

How to Be Baller | Sports Lessons from Jay-Z

"So wait, do I own black people now?"
"Yes, dear, but you own some white guys also."
"Oh, thank God. I was worried for a minute."

While this is certainly old news to anyone who watches basketball, this year the New Jersey Nets moved back to New York, becoming the Brooklyn Nets. I thought it was kind of rude to steal yet another thing Jersey was trying to do on its own, but then again I don't care in the slightest.


Until I heard this: they moved because Jay-Z said to.

Yes, he bought stake in the team and said, "Come to Brooklyn," so they did.

That is the very definition of "baller," when you can buy your favorite ball team, tell them to play in your town, and build them an arena for them to do it in. Baller.

Now, some simple research shows me Jay-Z in fact only owns about 0.67% of the team, and is really more of a mouthpiece for the managing group's desire to move the team as part of a neighborhood rehabilitation and rejuvenation project, but that doesn't sound nearly as good as, "he bought his favorite team for fun."

Double Standards In Magazine Covers

 Women are fun to look at naked.


A no-brainer, I know, but something I notice every time I look at a magazine these days. Which is a bit odd, since you'd imagine there would be a fair number of naked men on magazine covers too, if we lived in a society as progressive as we claim to be.

Not so. Women are mostly-naked on the covers of "Men's Interest" magazines (obvious), tattoo magazines (alright, tattoos are sexy), car magazines (we covered this), both women's and asexual fitness magazines (muscles, losing weight, fine. We need to see those results, sure), even weed magazines and generic, theoretically non-sexual Women's Interest stuff. Keira Knightly, I get it, you ended up being more high-fashion than Natalie Portman. That's cool. You don't have to wear a denim jacket without undershirt on the cover of In Style. That's not in style. There is no cover story about losing weight even. Who are you trying to impress with your small chest and flat stomach? I'm not going to buy this magazine. I can see you actually naked on the internet for free. What are you doing?

Amusingly, it seems the only interest group that seems to put predominantly-naked men on their covers are Hardcore Body Building magazines.

You know, those guys at the gym in tiny shorts, shaving their chests and admiring the only oiled-up men.

Them, and PlayGirl, I guess. But I've never seen a copy of PlayGirl get any closer to selling than making it as far as being opened and unceremoniously wadded up behind a toilet in the men's room stall.

On Mixing Patterns

A friend of mine is a pretty classy broad. She loves Les Miserables, and The Velvet Underground, and New York City. However, I have it on good authority that she has hideous Christmas dishtowels.

Now, I should take time for a disclaimer here: I have fairly generic, mostly blue and white dishtowels. They are more functional than fashionable, acquiring permanent stains well before their usefulness gives out. Also, my mom is Italian so we call them mapinas. (This has been a problem only once, when in college I spilled a beer on my computer keyboard tray and all the Irish kids stood dumbfounded as the little Jewish kid, panicked, could not fin the English word "dishrag." Luckily, I have a heavily Italian roommate that year who saved the day.)

Now, that all said, these towels are supposedly a travesty. Zebra print Christmas trees. On a leopard background. Shudder.

Mixing animal prints? Really?

Only three kinds of people are allowed to mix animal furs like that: hunter-gatherer tribesfolk, prostitutes, and Fran Drescher.

While I am quite fond of this girl, she frankly just does not have the hair to pull off the Queens look.

I Just Wanna Be A Toys-Я-Us Kid

When did I become the man who was excited about unwrapping a staple gun on Christmas morning?

Worse, when did playing with my first pick of the haul involve using that staple gun to run power and coaxial cables under my bedroom door, with glee and abandon?

Ah well, hopefully the Jedi robe and Nerf tactical vest make up for my aging ways.

Merry War on Christmas | Zero Day

I think the real joke today is every time a Jewish kid makes a joke about how "Today, we rule the world. Every economy, every government, every media outlet, all are now under our control," and that moment right after when all the Christians' gazes zoom out into space for quiet contemplation, their faces grow serious a moment, and a small shiver of acknowledgement runs up there spines.

On the Noble Hemi

I am precisely the type of person you want to run into about a week into the zombie apocalypse.


I'm a MacGuyver. I can make any couple of things do a third thing. I can reverse engineer simple mechanisms, maintain household fixtures…basically keep working things running and make minor repairs. I can not, however repair, say, a car.

Oh, sure, I can change a fuse or a tire, jump start a dead battery, but real engine care? Oil changes? Knowing which parts other than a belt move or get hot or might chop my hand off? Not so much.

But I know one thing: I know how an internal combustion engine functions.

A small amount of gas "primes" the chamber, and is ignited by the spark plug, which explodes the gas and causes it to expand with force, creating mechanical energy via the piston while simultaneously priming the next stroke of the engine. Repeat a whole lot really fast and boom: car. Certain pistons are made with a hemispherical head, rather than a flat one, as the sphere is the shape with maximum surface area for minimum volume. A "hemi" allows for more chemical reaction per square inch, and thus better fuel and energy efficiency.

So why the hell do I see coffee table books for hemi muscle cars? I flipped through; there weren't any photos of engines. No exploded views of steel parts, no apparati. They might as well call it "Pictures of Pretty Chassis."

Technically, it'd be bodies, not chassis, but the point is I shouldn't be able to have a correct opinion about automotive anything.

Jesus Came for YOU

Some gung-ho Christian left this button at our store last night. As far as proselytizing goes, it's pretty passive-aggressive. Now I'm all about pieces of flair, even being Jewish, but I don't think I can wear this one.

"JESUS"

"He came for you."




… in the middle of the night? Did he wait outside my window, hush-hushing me to keep me from waking my parents, lest we never make it to Neverland?

Or perhaps it is more lurid than that. I mean sure, Jesus was known to hang around lepers and a prostitute or two, and he was probably married to a smart young woman called the Magdalena who the Church libeled, and there's a whole branch of French royalty who claim descendance from those two, but Jesus was a family show.

And I'm pretty sure there's something about not "spilling your seed" on the open Earth. Plus that's a baby Jesus on the button. That raises some serious pedophilia issues even a Protestant wouldn't want to touch.

Maybe he caught it in his hand?

What It's Like Working Retail At Christmas

Awful Gift Combinations

Someone came into the bookstore today and bought a copy of Digest Diet, the Reader's Digest oficial fat-burning diet book, and a dark chocolate and peppermint truffle bar.

What a dick.

I can promise you this unibomber-looking dude was not buying for himself. And if he wasn't completely oblivious, he was one of the most passive-aggressive men in America.


Other Terrible Gift Combinations:

• Windshield fuzzy dice, a Gas & Go prepaid card, and a bottle of scotch

• A smoke detector and a dime bag

• A Ku Klux Klan membership and a DVD copy of Friday After Next

• A hit of acid and a sensory deprivation chamber

• A tank of laughing gas and a David Spade movie

• Tickets to Cirque du Soleil and a seeing eye dog

• Ben Afleck's Daredevil, Jersey Girl, and Gigli, and the number for your local suicide prevention hotline

Expecto Presents-um

An addendum to the post "War on Christmas | Day 7: Dark Wizards Attack Muggle Homes."

Additionally: "Expecto patron …um."

Some Thoughts on Tragedy, Gun Control, and Actionable Culture

I have not posted anything about recent events in Connecticut or the ensuing debates that have raged on in media outlets as they debate things everyone seems to have a firm grasp of, despite not agreeing.

Partly, because this is a humor publication and I didn't see anything funny for a couple days there. The other reason is that I felt rather conflicted as well. Do I believe horrible events like these can be prevented–at least in such quantity–by tighter restrictions on the availability and severity of firearms? Obviously. There would also be fewer cars if we limited the sale of gas. This is not an argument against doing so, just an obvious course of action to ameliorate the situation.

Do I believe the federal government should mandate who can own a gun? Not solely, because that legitimately could be abused if a legitimate dictatorship were established in some insane future dystopia–which I might add has in no cinematic portrayal ever used a young white guy as evil dictator, only old white men. However, as a society, we all seem to agree that the status quo of the legal and health care systems seem inadequate. So why not remove the slippery slope argument entirely?

Do it by referendum.

Hold a popular vote in every state, every county. Let the poeple of those counties, now, when their gut reactions favor the side of self-restraint and decency, decide how stringent regulations on purchasing weapons should be.

Don't make it an outright ban. Don't even let that be an option. Choose what kind of process must be gone through to acquire one. Make them pass written and safety tests. Make the innitial license conditional.

Make it harder to buy a firearm than get a driver's license.

Require a goddam psych screening for anyone looking to buy high-powered, semi-auto, or anything else used more to kill people than fauna. I really don't care. Crazed, gun-toting counties with secessionist leanings can still have all the AKs they want. I'm not worried about them blowing up their own shopping malls. The important thing is that people who want to change our society engage in that society. No one is forcing you to throw away your defenses. We're asking you to evaluate what you actually need and join the discussion.

Today I found this image on Facebook:

This is an example of being a worthless human being. "Support the troops" is a meaningless phrase invented by idiots who felt threatened in some noncorporeal way. It does nothing. Withdrawing troops supports them, but sending them to defend you is more important? Why not enlist yourself. That's certainly supporting the troop next to you. If you're not going to join their effort, act to help them.

This image? It's a "fuck you" to anyone who dissents from your opinion, yet it contributes nothing. It is less useful than spending the time it would take to read the text talking about how to help your local VFW barbecue.

And for the record, here's the original image associated with that story:

Yup, it's 100% bullshit stolen from an episode of M*A*S*H. There's your joke. So next time you 'Like' a photo on Facebook and feel like a patriot, slap yourself across the face and then donate $5 to whatever charity the nearest Vet wants.

GI Joes: Reassassination

G.I. Joe: Retaliation is set to come out soon. Again. It was about to come out this past year, but they delayed it by months at the last moment, ostensibly to convert the entire fricking thing to 3D. Early test audiences, though, suggested it might have been because the movie was at that point a huge steaming pile.

Originally, Marlon Wayans and Channing Tatum, protagonists Ripcord and Duke from The Rise of Cobra, were killed in the first 20 minutes of the movie along with 98% of the Joe team, thus instigating the Retaliation part of the movie.

Channing Tatum since became a huge success late this year, after releasing 21 Jump Street (a guys' comedy) and Magic Mike (a chick-flick schlick-fest). In between he also starred in a wildly successful Nicholas Sparks adaptation and the equally unrealistic–yet in this case based-on-truth–The Vow. Unsurprisingly, Tatum is now featured prominently on the new poster and in the new trailer for Retaliation, very much alive, and has reportedly filmed a few "updated" scenes. You know, like a whole new plot.

The funny thing is, this isn't the first time Duke has been saved from the cutting room floor.

In 1987, G.I. Joe: The Movie was released by Hasbro, following the original animated Transformers movie, in which Optimus Prime drove off to that great big parking lot in the sky. Duke, it was decided, was going to bite the big one as well. However, after getting shot and "dying," fans were pretty violently outraged.

So when Duke got shot, the script was quickly rewritten to include dialogue about Duke being "in a coma" and–I shit you not–at the very end of the film, as the Joes defeat the forces of Cobra-La and cheer, a character reporting they have heard through off-camera radio transmission that "Duke's awake!"

"Scarlet, I need you to know … that I've always … loved … Bob's Big Boy."
"And … GO NAVY!…" *Dies*

You know, you think one Lazarus act should be enough to convince a studio not to kill a character, but they had to unkill Duke twice. At least Optimus came back within the same movie this time. Sheesh.

What's Up With Kyrie Irving's Mask?

A buddy put on the Nicks game last night. Believe me, I had nothing to do with this decision.

Then I saw this guy Kyrie Irving. He apparently broke his jaw and was playing with protective gear over it. Here's a picture of his apparatus:

I don't buy it.

The story is too convenient. "Broke his jaw" indeed. I have some competing theories though:

• He was horribly burned as a child

• He does not want Batman to know his secret identity

• He is the rightful heir to the French monarchy

• Having been left for dead by the deadly Cavendish gang, Texas Ranger Kyrie Irving is nursed back to health by Native American medicine man Tonto, but chooses to remain among the lost in order to better mete out justice to dastardly men across the American West.

Fifty Shades of Balderdash

They have a Fifty Shades board game now.

The funny thing is, it's effectively Balderdash; a single player reads a descriptor, and all other players write in who they think in the group best suits that adjective phrase, and if you pick the same person as the player who pulled the turn card, you win a point of some such thing.

That's a pared-down version of Balderdash. Which, really, is a G-rated synonym for "bullshit."

Hmm. Fitting.




Still, I don't think Balderdash comes with an X-rated "Red Room Expansion Pack."

Fifty Shades of Statutory

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

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A blog will be up some time tomorrow. I cannot say when. Child murder has made me sad and nothing is going to be funny tonight.

Please donate $5 to a charity or something instead of putting a political opinion on facebook. Act.

On Ways to Go Out

Found this at work. Kid's gonna get mauled in about 5 seconds, but for the next few moments the kid's getting a high five from a motherfucking bear. Awesome.

Dance with a bear, you're gonna take one to the face.

Classic Literature I Never Read for My English Degree

Just to infuriate those of you who actually worked for your goals, also note that on every single one of these titles I either presented, or wrote lengthy papers, resulting in my graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

• Emma by Jane Austen

• The Collected works of William Shakespeare

• Virgil's Aeneid

• Anything written in Olde English

• The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu

• 40% on Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 

This is nothing to be proud of. I am less well-read than I was required to be for my certification for a degree.

Except I'm not. The requirements were the papers and orations, the regurgitation of designated information and depiction of my understanding for the original authors' proof of concept in each piece. Call it a sad state of our educational system, call it my own brilliance in understanding meaning without the original context, call it a worthless cop-out that cheats myself as well as my college and my parent.

Absorb the materials that will make you better at what you do. That's the lesson. 

Got Game? A Mathematical Analysis

I declare a ceasefire in my War on Christmas–unlike General Washington–to share the following story with you.

 

I've never understood the concept of having "Game." I get the concept, but I have to take it on faith that I or anyone else has Game. I'm told other people have Game, and I generally believe it. I'm told I have Game, and that's probably the biggest cause of my doubts that Game is a thing in the first place. Perhaps it's all been a ruse this whole time.

It seems unquantifiable. Qualitatively, I can say that Game may in fact be present within an individual. You have it or you don't. Yet you could have Good Game or Bad Game, or Sick Game, or even Mad Game, which in some contents might actually imply a plural of Games, but a single large value might be more reasonable.

But can you have 1.67 times better Game than Bob down the street? Couldst we construct a gameometer?

What is the measure of a man if not his game?

My best guess:




That's one-half the average radius of his testicle, multiplied by (n+1) where n equals his number of popped collars.

Currently, sitting alone in bed with a space heater, watching Tosh.0, my measure is about .75.

That seems about right.

Chuck Norris' man rating is an imaginary number
only Chuck Norris has ever successfully imagined.

War on Christmas | Day 8: Lascivious Crooners

Duets are typically not worth the time it takes to hit the skip button. Neither old standards suitable for AM radio, nor generally any music by Zooey Deschanel, much as I love looking at her when she doesn't have bangs.



However, I have a soft spot in my head heart for "Baby, It's Cold Outside." It's cute, it's boppy but not poppy, it's got snow and drinking and sexy music, disobeying parental and societal regulations … it's basically the Footloose of Christmas season songs.

However, if the woman singing the "Mouse" lines can't manage to be flirtatious enough to work with the "Wolf" singer, she just comes off kind of earnestly fearful of being trapped in a snowstorm and romantically assaulted. This is not something we should be okay with in an oft-covered easy listening hit.

I can't find any mention of it, so my ear is obviously off on this one, but I would swear at work I have been hearing a Frank Sinatra version of this song. It's definitely not, maybe another Rat Packer or emulator, but it doesn't particularly matter to this discussion because the important issue is that–best I can tell–this version was sung as a solo.

And not "guy sings the main part, chorus/random voice quietly peeps out the back line," no. This "Frank" sings the Wolf lines only, and unless the treble has been completely stripped from the track, there is no Mouse singer. Yes, it's just some guy monologuing to some woman who cannot voice her opinions, cajoling and berating her, rapaciously grasping at her presence.

Christmas should never be associated with an adjective like "date-rape-y."

War on Christmas | Day 7: Dark Wizards Attack Muggle Homes

Pardon my Grinchery on this, the second night of Chanukah. Chalk it up to an overdose of latkes if you will.

Does any one else recall a Patronus being present at the birth of Christ?


Actually, what's up with religion in Harry Potter? There certainly seems to be Christmas-type celebrations, but everything seems pretty secular. I guess performing miracles and resurrecting seem less impressive when any dick kid or his parents can do it just because they love enough.

War On Christmas | Day 6: Life Day

The evil Galactic Empire waged war on the originally triennial Wookie celebration of Life Day long before the War on Christmas was cool. Held around the 31st of Welona by the Tepani Standard Calendar, Life Day was a pivotal holiday for the Wookie race, and later the Rebellion, despite it being A) an amalgam of both Thanksgiving and Christmas, and B) just incredibly awful on all counts except for the Boba Fett cartoon, Life Day has much to teach us in terms of tradition.

Holiday Traditions I Learned From Wookie Life Day:

• Even if you spend the rest of the year naked, you dress up for special occasions. It shows respect for the day and those around you, and it's a chance to show off how fancy you can be.

"Itchy" Atichuk: the original Grumpy Cat.

• Everyone has a creepy old grandpa being dirty when he thinks no one is looking. Or even when they are and he just doesn't care. And as racist as he is, he's watching some decidedly off-species porn dancing videos.

• Getting so blitzed with your family you all end up singing together. In space.

• Carrie Fisher getting high on pain killers.

"Did nobody else bother to read their contracts?"

• Your one uncle who smartly doesn't show up…

• … but then phones it in and gets lectured for the next 30 years until someone worse pops up.

• Chefs on T.V. always make dinner preparation seem way easier than it is

War on Christmas | Davy 5: The War on Chanukkah

If you want to disprove the war on Christmas as a legitimate worry, you need only ask where the atheists are who should be fighting against every other even remotely pagan religious ceremony within the month of December.

The war on Chanukah? That was called the story of Chanukah. Jews beat the crap out of a superior military force and were miraculously un-obliterated. Then, oil lamps burned with 800% fuel efficiency. There's your miracle.

The war on Kwanza? Try 500 years of racial oppression of the black man in Western culture.

Where's the battle to keep latkes out of our schools? Or the Solstice from being a nationally recognized day of "oh god oh god let's all party and fuck in case we die?

The answer is no one is attacking these holidays, because there is nothing to be feared from them. Frankly, the only thing antagonistic to these holidays, in this age, is Christmas in the first.

War on Christmas | Day 4: Crossing the Delaware

George Washington was a dick.

In World War I, French and Prussians sang carols from opposing trenches and played soccer in No Mans Land.

In WWII, Allied and German troops broke bread and refrained from battle for a single day.

For centuries in Europe, it remained custom to cease hostilities on the celebration of Christ's birth. In 1776, as celebrations wrapped up among Hessian troops in Trenton, NJ, General Washington snuck his force across the frozen river and attacked his enemy in deference to the spirit of delaying all military operations until the next morning.

It went well, but it was still a dick move, Georgie.

War on Christmas - Day 3: Curious George Chiam

I came across a copy of Happy Hanukkah, Curious George today. It's a board book, meaning it's pages are made of stiff cardboard to stand up to tiny child hands. It's about 14 pages long and involves the Poacher Slaver Man in the Yellow hat (though frightfully referred to not by name, but only as "a friend") taking George to a Hanukkah dinner.


George helps wrap some presents, eats sweets, plays driedel and "monkey see, monkey do" with the kids, knocks over some purple applesauce, then makes the children help clean it up. Later the Man lights the menorah, and George wraps some latkes up for a sick friend after doing all the dishes with his disgusting, feces-tossing monkey paws.

That's the entire book. The most religious element is that the menorah exists without explanation, and the mitzvah or good deed is supposedly important. No mention of Macabees, or miracles, or Judaism or religion of any kind. Just being a good person as a general idea.

And that's pretty fantastic.

Honestly, I'm probably going to miss Hanukkah this year because my non-practising aunt and shiksa mother decided to hold the get together at one in the afternoon. Last year, we ate pork chops and picked our presents (read: "checks") off of a Christmas tree. We are not what you would call "observant." Frankly, my grandma forcing me to say the candle prayer is about as religious as we get, since I'm the only bar-mitzvahed male in the house. My dad could do it, but no one wants to invite him.

Why not Christmas?

Fake-Hanukkah is so much better than the awkward, tongue-biting I remember from the Real Hanukkahs of my childhood. Mostly because of all the drinking now. It's great. So how come even with Santa Claus and mistletoe and reindeer, and all the gifts and cheer and good will that has nothing to do with Jesus, JESUS STILL GETS ALL THE HYPE.

I mean, I get it, he's the "messiah." The "Son of God" is an important business title. Fine. "Macabee" isn't as glorious as being a Mason these days. Whatever.

But come on, all the best things about Christmas have nothing to do with Christianity, they're Pagan and generally just about being a good dude to the other dudes in your life.

Be a dude.

"Be excellent to each other." - Abraham Lincoln

War on Christmas - Day 2: The Elf on the Shelf

This is by far the most terrifying Christmas "tradition" to which I have ever been privy, barring only perhaps my equally as recent education on the "Krumpus," Santa's devilish, puckish companion who would beat naughty children and pluck the worst of the bunch from their homes to carry off in his sac to sell into slavery, whilst the benevolent Santa left treats for the goodly of the group.

No, this is by far worse. At lease the old Germanic folks knew the point of religion was to scare you into submission through idle threats. Sometimes they would even dress up and rattle through the streets on Christmas Eve to make a point of it. It was open hostility. It was real and visceral, and you could fight the demon but you would lose because his mission was sanctioned. The Krumpus was a foe you could wrap your mind around, a boogieman.

The Elf on the Shelf is the James fucking Bond of Christmas espionage. He's a mindfuck, wrapped in a Rambo, wrapped up in red felt and plastic.

The "tradition" of the Elf was started in 2005, and flows as thus:

1. You buy the Elf and give him a name. Ignore whatever life he may previously have had. This is slavery. You are his life now, and he will know it.

2. The Elf receives his magic. Once named, the Elf is endowed with the power to fly back the North Pole every night to report a family's good and bad deeds to Santa for auditing. He is like a magical IRS agent.

3. When he returns just before the family wakes up, he hides in a different location about the house. Ostensibly, parents move the doll. Children are then to search the house for their maniacal foe. He is a terror, an unholy practitioner and agent of the dark arts, tasked by his True Master with reporting the misdeeds of others. He is a professional stoolie.

4. Children shit their pants in fear.

5. The Elf cannot be touched. This is the kicker: his magic is said to vanish if you ever touch the Elf. His mission cannot be foiled. Should his real loyalties to that fat Turk Khris Kringle be revealed, one cannot eliminate him for fear of reprisal. Santa will know that his double-oh has been compromised. The only compensation is that the Elf will be compelled to report on the good actions he witnesses and any special requests made to him by the children as a "Christmas Wish."

6. He watches you all month, then disappears until he is pressed into servitude next year. Dobby doesn't get a freakin sock when this is all done, oh no. After December 25th, your little Elf "flies back to Santa" until he's needed next year. That means the "farm upstate" if a family of raccoons makes it into your attic some time in the next year.

This is terrifying. It's all psychological torment, without any of the fun of beating children or preparing to sneak-attack the Krumpus with your friends, only to end of putting Papa in the hospital with minor lacerations and a weak concussion. This Elf has diplomatic immunity and you can't touch him, even though he's a treacherous little shit your parents brought home.

Oh, and until they introduced arying skin colors and put lipstick on some last year, the way you made one a girl was by slapping an extra $14.95 skirt on the boy version. I'm as progressive as a lesbian in a Dutch bakery full of biracial libertarian atheists, but explaining transsexualism to a 5 year old is not the kind of thing I want slapped on my arrest history.

In Which I Declare War on Christmas

Well, it's December 4th, and that means two things:


1. If my copy of the Dark Knight Trilogy doesn't arrive today, I'm going to be pissed at Amazon. And

2. I've already heard about the "War" on Christmas enough since before Thanksgiving that I feel compelled to put down my Christmas playlist and beloved Santa hat to say something moderate but eloquent enough that it tempers detraction.


Well fuck that. I'm tired and it's old hat and it's the cool thing to do at this point. Call me a hipster, but I'm done pretending like I'm defending moderation for any reason other than showing off how smart I am in front of stupid, pretentious assholes on the internet (a futile endeavor).

I hereby declare, even ironically, even if it's the next-level hipster thing to do, war against Christmas. I swear to Satan and un-God and whoever to hereby perpetuate a wonderful, happy celebration of love and good will completely devoid of non-secular symbolism and meaning, owing in large part to the glorified Valentine's Day that is Japanese Christmas, or the toys and Krumpus of the Dutch and Germanic lands.

I also declare war on Switzerland, because they've gotten away with this neutrality thing for far too long.

I declare war on Poland, because why the fuck not.

I declare jihad against any mention of the word "Hobbit" between now and whenever Peter Jackson decides his next halfling needs to be a Jawa.

And why the hell not, let's declare war on Bill O'Reilly. Maybe it'll give him something to talk about.

And lets not forget to declare war on James T. Kirk and the Federation of Planets,
as Gretchen Carlson is apparently also Kahn Noonien Singh.

IMPEACH THE O-EMPEROR | I do not think that word means what you think it means

As I was driving to the train station today through the area locally known as Mahopac Falls and Carmel, but more widely referred to as "East Bumblefuck," I passed a sign scrawled haphazardly in what appeared to be bootblack, across a large piece of plywood and nailed to a tree at the edge of the property on which was set back an adorably rustic redneck cabin, overlooking the road.

The sign read, "Impeach the O-Emperor."

Actually, it said "Impeach O- the emperor," but based on the font size, I'm going to assume that graphic design and layout night classes at the local community college were not available to this particular budding Banksy before he–women have far more legible handwriting–dropped out to fulfill a rewarding career as a comparatively cheaper substitute for a forklift.

Now, I get the impression that your intent was the removal of President Obama from office. As such, I find myself compelled to explain that to "impeach" means to level charges against.

Likely, you learned this term during the Clinton trials, when you discovered it was possible to oust a sitting president from office before the expiration of his term for the simple reason that you disagreed with his party affiliation, and found this knowledge more sexually arousing than your browser history's strange and mysterious fixation on Thai ladybois.

Now, to actually remove the president, Obama would have had to do something illegal. And not your Bill O'Reilly talking-box classroom understanding of illegal, mind you, actually illegal. After being charged, he would then have to be tried, and then convicted of those charges. Even then, I am not entirely sure that a prisoner could not also remain President of the United States, though there are certainly measures by which the legislature could remove him once convicted.

Than said, no U.S. president has ever been run out of office through impeachment. Johnson and Clinton, the only two presidents ever impeached despite demands to do so dating all the way back to Washington, were both acquitted in Senate hearings. Worst case scenario, a doomed Commander in Chief could simply resign prior to charges being formally filed, as Nixon did, after appointing Gerald Ford to replace his disgraced Vice President, thus bargaining a pardon upon Ford's own ascension.

Secondly, an "Emperor" isn't an elected office you could impeach, you moron.

On Jesus Christ

I used "Jesus Christ" as an epithet today, which I fins a bit strange and yet carries very little weight for me, as I was raised Jewish in a New Age protestant household.

I imagine Jesus does not have a problem with this. Truthfully, I feel like the exchange would flow as thus:

"Jesus Christ!"

"Yes?"

"Oh, sorry, I was just saying the epithet."

Jesus sighs. "You know how long it took me to get used to responding to that? That's not my name. My name's Iesu. No one ever calls for Iesu."

"…"

"It's like a bad nickname you get in college. You don't even like it, but people keep calling you it, and you don't know how but one day you just realize you've been responding to it more than your real name and half your friends don't even know what it is."

"Wow, Jesus, I'm sorry.… Do you- do you want me to call you Iesu? Would that feel better?"

"…No; no, man, it's not that big a deal. I mean it's not like everybody else is going to stop calling me that. I just- y'know, don't say it as much, alright?"

"Yeah. Yeah, man, no problem."

Come on, now, Jesus. I get it. This is why you don't want people taking your name in vain. We hereby apologize.

Moore's Law of Genitalia

Moore's Law states, depending on how exactly one quotes it, that the number of transistors which can be fit on a single microchip—and therefor it's storage capacity—effectively double in less than a year.

This is fantastic for device refresh cycles, because it means that every year a device had to get either better or cheaper to be worth buying. It's also great for businesses, as consuming one new device every year is even faster than the old model of planned obsolescence, and conveniently hides any glaring problems with the life expectancy of technology.

The drawback to all this is that every time Moore's Law kicks in and we have a new device, we have to come up with a cooler sounding name for the newly doubled device.

That all said, I am now referring to my dick as Dick HD 9".

How To Make A Million Dollars, Pt. 2

As with all great genius, most of my best ideas come whilst taking a shower.

However, since I do not have enough hot water to work out all the logisitcs of many of these brilliant plans, I leave that to you, with the understanding that you will rightfully give me the credit once you've completed the workload.

• Bathmats with a cutout in the center of one side for the drain. Seriously, how many times have you stepped off the mat onto cold, slippery fiberglass because if you pulled the bathmat back far enough it would cover the drain? We design area rugs for the toilet like this, why not bathmats? You probably wouldn't order this off a "There's got to be a better way!" infomercial, but if it were sitting next to regular, lame, rectangular bathmats, you'd pay the equal amount for the added feature, wouldn't you?

One Direction: Obscurity

I saw this in a checkout line today and just smiled.

So begins the media frenzy waiting for yet another tween celebrity/group to make the mistake of growing up and being real people. Now, MILFs, beer, and sexting are all apart of being a teenager—especially British teens, if the show Skins was any indication—so I'm glad to see these wholesome little shits get smeared for the first time. It's a right of passage. Like when Britney married her possibly gay childhood friend in Vegas, or how Miley smoked salvia, got tattooed, and is trying to turn into Pink.

Good luck, kids. Go get some.

Uncanny Resemblances

I'm not saying we all look alike, but my eye just lazily scurried over an image of Captain Morgan as it perused my Facebook feed, and I immediately mistook it for a picture of my father.

Once my brain almost immediately rejected this possibility (to this day, my father has never apologized for saying, "Fuck you," after I told him I'd unfriended him), my next question was why didn't I recognize this photo of myself.

All my life I had been tol I looked like my mom, but once I grew that goatee I became Fred 2.0.

Hopefully, the Devs managed to work out a few of the bugs from the last version.

I just don't want to go bald.

Celebrity Names and How I Imagine They Are In Bed Based on That

• Blake Lively - Passive and taciturn. You do all the work.
  

• Bruce Springsteen A.K.A. "The Boss" - Actually rather gentle. Enjoys cuddling.
  

• Jane Lynch - Involves asphyxia. Or black men. Since she's gay, I'm going with the former.
  

• Lisa Lampanelli - Fucks lamps.

On Drug Dealers

Part of my job is going around to local school districts and selling them on the magic that is our proprietary tablet computers.

I feel like a pusher.

"Hey, kids, you wanna buy some eReaders??"

Scary stuff.

Which is probably why it feels like I'm really cool. Cool guys do drugs. Rock stars do drugs. It's not cool to sell to little kids, yeah, but I'm not, man. I'm selling to the teachers. It's fantastic.

Get the teachers and soon the students are hooked anyway. I'm building my own market from the top down. They're middlemen and I'm Tony Fuckin Montana up in here, shoving my face in a pile of circuit boards on my desk, inhaling the acrid fumes of heated silicate and wiring, ready to face the day as a king on my own little corner of the tech world.

Say hello to my little friend. He has an 800x600 Pearl eInk display and a frontlight.

An Open Letter to Heroes

Dear Heroes,


I know we don't appreciate you enough, but this time of year, I feel compelled to, if only due to my great experience as one of you.

Black Friday was hell, but we all know it's only going to be a slight dip between now and Valentine's Day. Fellow Retail Workers, it's not your fault. You didn't ask for this burden, I know, but you took the responsibility in return for only minimal salary and the right to bitch about any customer as soon as they are out of earshot.

It's already Holiday Season now, which will lead straight into the Holiday Return Period, and then maybe we'll have a modest few weeks before Valentine's. After that we can relax a little before Mother's Day and Father's Day start up, but right now we're in fiscal hell quarter.

I wish you all luck, my sisters and brothers.

May your sleep schedules remain modest, and may your friends not call panicked and wondering if you've legitimately been killed or otherwise detained from life.

Ever since his sobriety and the cancellation of JACKASS,
Steve-O has been searching for something to fill the hole in his life.
It turns out that thing was vests.

On Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson basically went for the Reverse George Lucas, dropping the weight and the plaid, and if we're all being optimistic: dropped his ego to work with other's.

I'm getting pretty sick of hearing about The Hobbit and there's still going to be two more parts to the damned thing after this year's grand epic.

Still, Peter Jackson is the only director I would trust with the epic world-building necessary for new Star Wars movies, but I just can't shell out the cash for another three trilogies.

The man has become incapable of either original work or translating another's with less than 98% faithfulness and inclusion of the source material.

Even Peter Jackson's tweets are 300 characters long.

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings Edition "RISK" is the only game that takes longer to play than a normal game of risk.

Peter Jackson's LotR Tic-Tac-Toe: the first person to play an O wins, then goes mad with power and dooms his descendants to redemption through a might quest.

Peter Jackson thought 'Crime and Punishment' was a great short story.

Lord of the Ring "Chutes and Ladders: where you realize on your last turn you could've taken a giant eagle the entire time.

Peter Jackson's Star Wars
would take place "A long, long time ago," all the way up through just a regularly long time ago.

Black Friday

I have no interest in any of the things I just wrote. I have deleted them. The best thing was a joke about trampling old people for $3 off a copy of [multiple adjective clauses] Sister Sister Season 4. That's really the best I came up with. A whole bunch of ranting about wanting shit I don't need, and agonizing over whether it's smarter to buy something I kind of need down the road now for cheaper, or wait until I desperately need it and hope I find a decent price then.


Seriously? The biggest thing I need right now is a new power chord for my printer. $20 online. And I'm sitting here contemplating if I can get out of work at 4 to walk around the corner and see if Walmart's got the newer model printer for less than the regular $100, because OOO IT HAS WIFI.

Really? I'll pay $80 extra to get a new printer because I threw away the cable by accident when I moved my old one? Listen, I'll support the poultry-industrial complex, I'll tacitly gloss over the rape and execution of indigenous lands and peoples, but waiting four days while some asshole mails me a power chord? That's just unacceptable.

Thanksgiving Weekend Movie Round-Up

I saw Skyfall a couple days ago, which was pretty cool. Short version: it was fun, but much smaller in scope, essentially a Bond film to further reset Bond continuity in favor of more Daniel Craig era stuff.

More importantly, I checked out what movies were playing and on the near horizon, and once again I'm massively disappointed in Hollywood's lack of original ideas.

Life of Pi

Based on a book by Yan Martel I read in college.

Skyfall

Based on the long-running property that came out of Iam Flemming novels.

 

Red Dawn

Remake of a 1984 movie about the exact same thing, except it was Russians.
The Chinese are just the only 'communist' nation with financing nowadays.

Argo

Based (at times loosely) on actual events from 1979-1981, including a fake
Hollywood movie.

 

Lincoln

Based on the book "Team of Rivals," itself a biography.

Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Pt. 2

Based on a bound collection of pages I still refuse to acknowledge as a "book."

Flight

An original film by Robert Zemeckis.

Weck-It Ralph

Adorable, and an original story, though it relies heavily on

nostalgia and references/appearances by classic video game franchises.

Rise of the Guardians

Original plot, utilizing folk characters.

So yeah, one film that can stand on its own without calling out to previous works for its foundational elements. Great job.