Risk Management

As I am sure you are all aware, most of us will die from poisoned Halloween candy, West Nile virus, gunshot wounds incurred during home invasions, or in explosions on commercial aircraft.* There is a well-known scientific (or media, or something) correlation between how rare or frightening something is, and how likely it is to kill you.

The same logic obviously applies to the risks that our children face. While you waste your time worrying about your children bullying/getting bullied, rotting their brains with TV and Harry Potter books, and suffering from borderline malnutrition from eating only chicken nuggets and school cafeteria pizza, the real dangers are lurking, hidden from the public eye on the front page of the New York Times. Did you know, for example, that your son or daughter will almost certainly** be attending a "pharm party" this weekend, where he/she will randomly ingest large quantities of randomly selected pills stolen from other parents' medicine cabinets or purchased on the street from dangerous minorities? Yeah.

So what to do about this, you ask? The answer, while surprisingly simple, requires a very high level of commitment: avoid absolutely anything unfamiliar or unusual at all times. Thinking of riding your bike to work? Forget it. Leaving the safety of your car will expose you to the environment, which could potentially include escaped research monkeys infected with hepatitis C. Thinking of becoming a vegetarian? Well, my hippie friend, what happens when you're diagnosed with a rare form of cancer linked to underconsumption of pelican meat? Want to learn how to play the violin? We'll see how talented you are when a freak structural flaw causes your new instrument to explode on that A#, lodging a 9-inch splinter in your carotid artery.

The list goes on, but the point remains the same: keep your ass on the couch with a cold Budweiser in your hand and your favorite NBA team on the TV, or risk certain and spectacular death at the hands of something you're not creative enough to imagine.

*Or heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic lower respiratory disease, accidents, diabetes, Alzheimer's, influenza or pneumonia, in that order of probability (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/FASTATS/deaths.htm)
**Maybe

Unclogging the Tubes

It has recently come to my attention that the Internet contains an semi-infinite volume of indescribably offensive and disgusting material. Prior to this revelation, my homepage was set to www.foxnews.com, and the bulk of my internet browsing was done by simply clicking on links. Because I do not have a keyboard (as stated before, I post to this blog and read other websites mostly by using voice and text recognition software; written language is for the poor and/or French), I had never before run across a site called "Google," which I discovered in a totally incomprehensible story here. This web page seems innocuous enough, presenting you with only a box in which to type. When you type something and hit enter, this "Google" will give you a list of websites with content related to your "query."

However, upon further investigation, I discovered that Google will always return closely matched results, with no moral or ethical intervention, no matter how vile your search. For example, typing "anarchism" results in several "informational" pages, including one from something called "Wikipedia,"* as well as several collections of "essays" on anarchism. Nowhere on the results page is a warning about the evil, corrosive nature of the anarchist agenda, which seeks to destroy our God-given social order in favor of drug-crazed cannibalism and folk music.

Similar searches for things like "democrat" turn up predictably horrific results. Apparently, the United States government has lost control of one of our main media outlets, and can no longer prevent dangerous subversives, including communists and liberal community organizers, from spreading dangerous lies and propaganda. Feminists, homosexuals, vegetarians, and nudists can now sow their seeds of cultural destruction across the U.S. and the world, corrupting our children and leading our women astray.

As usual, the solution is simple and violent. We must appoint a council of morally upstanding citizens to form a Ministry of Truth, which will oversee and regulate all Internet traffic, including and especially Google results. This commission will have the power to define proper moral standards for all web pages, and it will be entrusted with a specialized branch of the U.S. military to aid in enforcement of whatever penalties it sees fit to institute. These "secret police" will swear allegiance only to the Ministry, the Bible, and Pat Robertson, and they will operate extrajudicially, as we cannot trust our Godless secular government to effectively regulate such an organization.

Once the Ministry of Truth has been established, we can begin the long process of unclogging the tangled mess of tubes which make up the Internet, and we can start imprisoning/executing the subversive deviants who wish to treat it as a socialist soapbox from which they can belch their disgusting pornographic leftism all over us. After we remove all of this offensive garbage, the Internet will contain only good, valuable, morally responsible content. Like Joel Osteen's blog.

*Wikipedia is apparently a site run by violent anarchists and established for the purposes of historical revisionism, slander, and the promotion of sexual deviance.

Soft, Cuddly Fuel*

I have advocated on more than one occasion** that killing and burning animals is an environmentally responsible way to produce energy. It appears that the city of Stockholm has recently begun enacting my plan to save the Earth. While it is upsetting to me that the Swedish beat us to the punch on this one, it is gratifying that my ideas are finally gaining the recognition that they deserve from the international community. Efforts like this demonstrate that there are simple, common sense ways for people to work toward a better world for our children. And terrify them.

*Sorry, Melissa.
**Exactly one occasion

Hook-Up Culture: The Rise of an Unspeakably Terrifying New Evil That Will Murder Your Children and Lead Us All to Complete Destruction

Do you remember the good old days? The way it used to be, when milk cost a nickel at the corner grocery store, knee socks were the at the height of fashion, and all the happy, white children crowded around the ice cream truck on hot summer afternoons? Well, my friend, those days are dead, and America is free falling in a cable-cut elevator into the fuming mouth of Lucifer. The reason, you ask? Barack Obama. But more importantly, teenage sex.

That's right, they laughed at Oprah* when she broke the news about rainbow parties, and they laughed when desperate parents tried to protect their daughters by making them attend purity balls (which are not, by the way, at all creepy, and do not have even the faintest oedipal overtones). But new studies** prove conclusively*** that teenage promiscuity is back in a big way, and it's hear to kill your children. Again.

If you don't believe me, just turn on your TV. Scantily clad women appear in every kind of advertisement, homosexual characters are increasingly common on sitcoms and reality shows, and celebrity party girls are the new role models for young girls. You don't need me to tell you, but it follows logically from your discomfort with our changing culture that all young women are in danger of becoming extremely dirty whores. The carefree days of "going steady" and "shotgun weddings" are gone, replaced by the new, so-called "hook-up culture." Dating is a thing of the past, and romance has been replaced by a depraved culture of partner switching, group sex, and drug-crazed experimentation with bestiality. "Sexual education" in schools teaches our children that using condoms will protect them from the emotional trauma of premarital sex, and that contracting sexually transmitted diseases is a hilarious bonding activity and rite of passage for all teenagers.

No one argues that these things are happening****. "But what can be done?" you ask. First, we must ban rap music, the satanic soundtrack to our new American horror movie. Then, we must pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to prevent Dan Savage and his army of sodomites from normalizing their deviant practices and influencing our youth. Accomplishing these things will buy us enough time to implement the permanent solution: building a time machine and transporting the entire United States back to 1952, before the erosion of our modesty and decency began. Once there, we can use our modern nuclear technology to destroy the Soviet Union and pass laws which will prevent the '60s from happening. Once we can rest assured that hook-up culture is just a distant memory from the future, we can finally start reliving our fond memories of the Andy Griffith Show childhood.


*After they believed every single titillating detail, took reactionary precautions at school and at home, and forced all of their children to read a best-selling book with an incredibly low Amazon customer review rating.
**Opinion pieces on Fox News.
***State with emphasis.
****Except communist haters of freedom, democracy, and God. And some statisticians and health care workers.

Dynamite TV

If you are male college student, then lately you might be saying to yourself, "Where is all the free beer? And what about the hilarious sexual adventures with 26-year-old freshman women with fake tans, fake boobs, and short skirts? My television promised me these things, and it really hurts to be lied to by the plastic object that raised me." Well, reader, some people would argue that your expectations are comically naive (and sexist), and that apparently you've been so successfully brainwashed by Van Wilder and Road Trip that you can no longer distinguish reality from the twisted fantasy world being used by rich people in Los Angeles used to sell you cologne and diet soda. These same people would probably also suggest to you that the zany, hilarious, alcohol-fueled hijinks that you remember from high school are actually figments of your underfunctioning imagination, and that your formative years probably looked a lot more like Napoleon Dynamite than American Pie.

But not me. No sir, you don't get the massive traffic I have on my blog by insulting your readership, and so I'm here to tell you that your expectations are totally legitimate, and that real problem is not you, but Reality. And I don't mean Reality like on Fox. I mean Reality like the one where people in high school are 16-18 year-old kids, where the underdog gets beat by 45 points, and where someone getting accidentally hit in the balls isn't funny.

Alright, so maybe that's still funny, but the point is that Reality sucks. In real life, everything is anticlimactic, drama is mostly imaginary (and devoid of tension-heightening music), and effective product placement is difficult because there aren't that many cameras. Your friends in Reality have uneventful relationships, they have boring jobs, and, unlike your other, cooler friends from the TV, very few of them have spray tans and surgically enhanced facial features.

Reality contains a lot of weird, ugly people with unflattering clothes and complicated, 3-dimensional personalities, most of whom are not particularly photogenic. In fact, many of these "real" people are only entertaining if you interact with them for extended periods of time. To make matters worse, most people outside of your television will become offended if you yell at them and attempt to switch channels whenever they say something that you disagree with or find boring, and so long-term interaction may actually become a requirement for dealing with them.

So what can be done about this, you ask? The simplest solution is to just live in your TV. But before you run out to Best Buy and purchase five plasma screens large enough to completely cover the walls and ceiling in your living room, you might want to check your bank account to make sure that you have the $50,000 required to complete this insanely awesome project that will permanently transform your life for the better.

Unfortunately, most of you (or the, at most, one person who reads this), do not have this kind of money, and so you will have to rely on the budget-friendly alternative: smash the glass on the front of your CRT monitor and climb inside.* This is probably going to hurt, so you're going to want to get good and wasted before you start, and you might want to turn the volume down so you don't hurt your ears. I'm not an electrical engineer,** so I can't be certain what happens when you drunkenly force your head into a television that is turned on, and I'm not lawyer,*** so I don't know if your next of kin should sue me or Panasonic. But there's one thing you can be sure of when you're jamming your face through a cracked piece of glass into a box full of cathode ray tubes and high voltage capacitors: it has to be better than Reality.

*Your TV might not be large enough to fit your entire body inside, but don't worry, your head is all you need.
**Probably.
***Definitely.

Self Confidence

Are you self-confident? Of course you are. As a reader of this blog, and a person who accepts my opinions as gospel, you can rest assured that, should you ever need a quick answer to one of the deep mysteries of life, you can simply reach into your gut and violently regurgitate a few mangled fragments of cultural criticism stolen from the Internet and drunkenly mashed into my keyboard to the sound of Pat Robertson waving his pitchfork and screaming for the head of Hugo Chavez on a plate. But I'm off topic.

What I was planning to say was that even the most self-confident of us sometimes find occasion to doubt ourselves. Strange questions about the relationship between large numbers of small chemical reactions and human consciousness, your bizarre failure to reach infinity despite counting continuously all weekend, and the popularity of Ryan Seacrest may continue to haunt you, and you may occasionally become lost while reading my overly long and convoluted sentences, rendering my advice confusing and leaving you up the creek.

In these times of need, you might turn to the television for guidance. This will usually work, but what if there's just a "Charmed" marathon and a bunch of Lifetime movies on? What then, you poor bastard? Do you just pound down a bunch of Jagerbombs, load up your Colt .45, and slog through 27 hours of 9/11 conspiracy videos on youtube until you finally collapse in the puddle of tears and vomit covering your desk and floor? Maybe.

Or maybe there's a better option. But probably not. Cheers.

Go Green

With our civilization's impending death from choking on its own waste looming, we all need to make a special effort to pitch in and reverse course. "But how can I do this?" a nonexistent but rhetorically useful reader asks. While regular readers (who, again, only exist for their rhetorical value) might expect me to offer a simple solution, I'm afraid that guns and whiskey can't solve this one, at least not entirely. On the contrary, there are many things that all of us can do to help out, but we need to act fast if we are going to save our planet. Feel free to mix and match from the following list:

1. Buy appliances. You should already know this from watching TV, but your inefficient washing machine, microwave, blender, curling iron, electric-powered back scratcher, coal-fired nose hair trimmer, etc. are killing the planet. If you care about the environment, you must immediately throw all your possessions in the trash (or local stream, pond, or bird sanctuary), and upgrade to the latest energy star models. But why stop there? You can save the planet even harder by purchasing efficient appliances that you don't own yet. It doesn't matter that you don't need them or don't even understand their functions. We all have to make sacrifices.
2. Wear earth tones. Nothing says "I love the environment" like a huge walk-in closet full of brown, beige, olive, green, charcoal, walnut, forest, slate, chocolate, harvest, sand, and tan colored fur coats.
3. Heat your house by burning old garbage. This may be dangerous, and is almost certainly illegal, but styrofoam burns very hot, and since I consume several metric tons annually, it makes sense to get everything I can out of my investment. You can use the fire to power your water heater, but I recommend venting the smoke directly into your living room to limit heat transfer losses and maximize efficiency.
   
4. Drive a hybrid gas/electric bicycle. It will get much better mileage than your standard 6-cylinder gas-powered bicycle.
5. Kill animals. I know that you've probably been brainwashed by the public school system, PBS, and the "conservationist" lobby, but it's simple math, people. Fewer mouths to feed means more food for the rest of us, and less land devoted to "natural habitats" means more space for shopping malls and firing ranges. Plus, burning the carcasses (see #3) can provide useful energy.

This list is incomplete, but I will be adding to it in a series of installments. Also, keep an eye out for my tips on what you can do to fix the economy. And remember, guns and whiskey may solve political problems, but only a worldwide orgy of vicious consumerism can save our planet.

Our Precious Bodily Fluids

Over the course of the last 200 years, many strange things have happened in America that the federal government has failed to explain adequately. While you may believe that the president, the FBI, congress, the CIA, the EPA, the IRS, etc. have not weighed in on these issues because they are incompetent, the conclusions are obvious, or these things simply fall beyond the scope of their respective duties, the reality is far more complex and sinister. The truth is that your government is concealing information, rewriting history, and secretly operating camps in Nevada where the mentally ill are brainwashed, trained as vicious killing machines, and used to systematically terrorize political dissidents.*

Everything you see on TV, read in the newspaper, hear around the water cooler at work, or think to yourself quietly while camping in rural Canada is part of an elaborate and carefully controlled alternate reality constructed by a secret cabal of powerful figures for their own nefarious purposes. What purposes, you ask? I think you're missing the point here.

Their plan is cleverly obscured by the nebulous mass of misinformation and giant piles of red herring strewn about our media and culture, and so freedom fighters like myself can only piece together clues about their ultimate, morally deviant goals. But I think we can safely speculate that it has something to do with Reform Judaism and/or homosexuality.

Think about it. Some dumb redneck with U.S. Marine Corp rifle training kills JFK for no particularly good reason? I know, its easy to believe the "simple" explanation and give in to the idea that Kennedy was killed by the man who obviously shot him. If you do some research, though, you can begin to uncover the truth, as explained by Kevin Costner's character. Likewise, you might be tempted to think that a group of emotionally disturbed young men from various Middle Eastern countries decided to fly planes into buildings and kill a bunch of innocent people on September 11, 2001. For most people, it is very difficult to understand why someone would do something so horrible (especially in the name of a religion which is suspiciously similar to Christianity), and so, again, we are left with only one possible conclusion: 9/11 was orchestrated by the powers that be, including the Bush administration**, to draw media attention away from their nefarious activities (including the previously mentioned training camps in Nevada). All the tragedy and chaos of those events was planned, to the last detail, in order keep the public in the dark about what is really going on.

And what is it that is really going on, you ask? I'm not sure yet, but the evidence is all around us. Every day there are new alien sightings and secret government coverups, and every day more flouride is added to the water supply. So build a Faraday cage around your house, put on your tin foil hat to keep them from reading your "paranoid" thoughts, and remember to drink only purified water and grain alcohol to protect your precious bodily fluids.

*At least I assume so.
**In conjunction with the Saucer People and under the supervision of the reverse vampires.

It's On

As probably none of you are aware, some pussy has contacted me to suggest creating a blog to contradict my brilliant wisdom, which he deems "cruel insanity." My first thought was to track him down by reverse IP lookup and wait outside his house to bear mace him, but I think that's just what he wanted me to do. Instead, I hired him on so that everyone can better appreciate my genius in contrast with his liberal ass-clownery. Let the culture war commence.

Gettin' Down with the Homies

Do you have something important to say that could benefit children and young adults? Perhaps you would like to encourage them to be more fiscally responsible? Or maybe you are concerned that they might not be aware of the dangers of not wearing their seat belts, premarital sex, cholesterol, or the reefer? Or maybe you just have a product to sell, and you realize that teenagers can persuade their parents to buy stuff more easily than TV commercials?

In any case, if you were born before 1980, then you probably have trouble talking to the kids (that's right, people born in the '70s are old now). But rest assured, there is hope. As one of the oldest representatives of today's troubled youth, I'm going to help you figure out how to relate to the childrens, and I'm going, yet again, to provide my advice free of charge in list format:

1. Always remember that kids have trouble understanding people who don't speak their language. Because rap music is their primary cultural influence, you need to familiarize yourself very thoroughly with the works of Vanilla Ice and Sir Mix-a-Lot in order to communicate with today's youth. Remember that you need to be "down" with the "homies," and take care not to "front." Wearing your baseball cap backwards will make you seem more accessible and increase your "street cred." And, in case you're concerned, this kind of behavior from a middle-aged suburban white person is not racist. Not even a little bit.
2. Teenagers lack the linguistic skills of adults. It's important to make sure that you don't use any big words or complicated sentences. If there's any doubt, try to confine yourself to words with less than two syllables and sentences under 7 or 8 words.
3. It's also important to swear a lot, but keep in mind that you might not be able to keep up with the incredible geysers of profanity spewing from underage mouths. Phrases like "b*ner biting b@$t@rd uncle f@*ker" are probably far beyond your skill level, and you don't want to compromise your moralizing authority anyway, so try to confine yourself to the general ballpark of "darn" and "heck."
   
4. Today's kids lack life experience and historical perspective. This means that they could benefit greatly from your recollection of the good old days, especially combined with your insightful criticism of text messaging and low rider jeans. But remember to always keep that hat on backwards.
5. What may seem like you like violent, cynical nihilism is in fact violent, cynical nihilism. But this is what the current generation has instead of patriotism and a can-do attitude, so you'd better learn to deal with it.

That should get you started. If you run into trouble, just ask yourself, "What would The Fonz do in this situation?" The correct answer is always the same: "Who the hell is The Fonz?"

Dirty Harry vs. Ben Kingsley

It has recently been brought to my attention that my last post was slightly inaccurate. As it turns out, Clint Eastwood has never (officially) killed anyone, and he is simply a Hollywood actor. This was confusing to me at first, but after further research, it seems that actors are people who are paid to pretend to do things while other people film them, usually for TV or movies.

Like many of you, I have never bothered too much about the subtle differences between "real" life and the light and sound waves emanating from the plastic box in my living room. I like to think of my TV as a window into a world full of magical places, where people live and die for my entertainment, and where I can change the channel if I get bored. Similarly, I like to think of my window as a protective piece of glass separating me from the horrors of the unscripted, "real" world; a place full of irritating responsibilities and weird, threatening people who are inexplicably unconcerned with my comfort level. In either case, the glass prevents me from interacting with things on the other side, so who am I to say that my boring neighbors that I don't see very often are more "real" than my witty, entertaining fantasy neighbors from "Friends", whose lives I follow religiously?

Back to the point, though. My last post exemplified Mr. Eastwood as a man of action who would humiliate Mohandas Ghandi in a fist fight, but it was pointed out in the comments that while Clint Eastwood pretends to kill people when cameras are pointed at him, the rest of the time he is a drama nerd who probably enjoys reading more than physical violence. Just like Ben Kingsley, who played Ghandi. And just like Ghandi himself. Except that apparently Clint Eastwood approves of the depicting physical violence for entertainment purposes, while Ben Kingsley only approves of other people depicting violence for historical and dramatic purposes. Or was that Ghandi?

Wait, are we talking about Dirty Harry or Clint Eastwood? And is it Ben Ghandi or Mohandas Kingsley? Either way, I don't really see the difference.

Eastwood vs. Ghandi

Usually, I use this blog to instruct anyone reading it on how they should think and feel, and, if there's space left over, how they should act. Today is different, though. Today we'll be focusing on how to act, without asking those pesky questions like "Why?" or "Won't a lot of innocent people be incinerated?" or "Good god, have you lost your f$^%ing mind?", because the answer to all of these questions is the same: questioning is for pussies, and action is for badasses. Clint Eastwood killed a lot of people without stopping to ask questions, while Ghandi did a lot of questioning without ever killing anyone, and I think we all know who we would take in a bar fight. So here, in convenient 6 step form, is how you should act, in order to be a badass:

1) Buy a gun and use it to kill something. Preferably a communist, but there's no reason to be picky.
2) Drink a large quantity of cheap whiskey, and repeat Step 1.
3) Develop knee-jerk political opinions on several issues. This sounds like you need to think, but you can just rip up the opinion sections from a couple of newspapers and pull random sentences out of a hat. Why, you ask? Stop being such a whiny bitch and wait for Step 4.
4) Find someone who disagrees with one or more of your newfound, deeply held convictions, and start a fight. If physical weakness or a low pain threshold prevents you from winning a fight, make sure you have a larger friend to hold you back while you yell loudly and gesture like a pissed off orangutan wearing a $75 polo shirt.
5) Join a political party, fraternity, charity, church, university, or any other social organization. Treat anyone who belongs to a different organization as if their opinions and goals are diametrically opposed to yours, and publicly announce that you will destroy them with God on your side. For example, if you attend San Diego State University, you should remember that Presbyterians, Pi Kappa Alpha, and the Green Party are a bunch of lying, pig-f%*&ing Nazis whose days are numbered.
6) Do the same thing with people from other countries.
7) Buy an even bigger gun and use it to carry out your threats from Part 5, then petition the government to carry out your threats from Part 6.

All this may seem incomprehensible, violent, and pointless, but can anything incomprehensible and violent really be pointless? Don't answer that. It was a rhetorical question, which is the only acceptable kind of question, assuming you answer it yourself like Donald Rumsfeld does, so allow me to do so. Wait, what was the question?

Censorship

I am beginning to get tired of being censored all the time. As an American, it is my God-given right to say whatever I want, whenever I want, without the fear of someone telling me, "Hey, buddy, shut the f&@k up," or "Your kind isn't welcome around here," or "Hey man, this is my apartment. You can't just barge in here and start yelling about some Jewish conspiracy. Who the hell are you anyway? And what are you doing waving that gun around in my house? Damn, I've gotta start locking my doors." Don't believe me, read the Constitution while you're really drunk.

But I'm not just talking about the freedom to wear blackface to the mall and yell political slogans at people while they eat dinner in their own house. I'm talking about a lesser known freedom, and one which is under attack at this very moment, all across America: the freedom to use other peoples' and organizations' web space to promote viewpoints that they consider offensive.

That's right, newspapers, political organizations, bloggers, and private citizens all over the country are being permitted to remove comments from their websites, simply because they disagree with the opinions of the people posting them. Comment "moderation" is simply the newest form of censorship, and one that is being used, very effectively, to stifle minority viewpoints. Especially those of white, Protestant men with anger management issues. This is clearly outlawed by the First Amendment. I'll spare you the long-winded details and just show you the relevant section:

"...no...prohibiting the free exercise...of speech, or...the...i..n..t..ern..e..t..."

It's all there, people, you just have to read carefully. Anyone with a website* that allows comments is obligated by law to use their server space to store and display any information that anyone else wants to put on it. No matter that you pay the server fees, and that the domain name is registered to you. The Constitution protects my right to put my soapbox on your blog (just like your lawn) and yell anything I want, no matter how "insane" or "bizarre", whether it's a simple swear word, or a direct death threat against your children.

So there you have it. Free speech is a universal right, except for illegal or recent immigrants. If you don't want people's off-topic or violently offensive writing on your website, you can always stop allowing comments, or you can change you URL once a week so that no one can find your site. But if you allow readers to post on your personal baking or fishing blog, then I claim my right as an American to anonymously call you a Nazi on your comment thread. So go ahead, you fascist, gingerbread-baking bastard. Prove me right and censor me.

*It has come to my attention that many people outside the United States believe that they are not subject to U.S. law. This sticky legal point is currently being settled with guns.

Vegetarian Fascists

As I have said before, the writing on this blog is very well researched. I spend an incredible amount of time watching cable television, surfing the internet, reading People Magazine, and drinking tequila, all of which provide me with a wealth of information and experience on which to build my arguments. For those of you who are still not convinced of the quality of my writing, I would like to remind you that many of the statements I make on this blog run counter to positions held by Adolf Hitler, and you might want to think about that before you question my opinions. To make sure that everyone is clear on this, I am not saying that disagreeing with me makes you a fascist, Nazi-loving, white supremacist maniac. Just that it makes you much more similar to one.

Offended? Perhaps you just need some education about American politics and media. In America, any positive statement, no matter how well-intentioned, leaves the speaker open to immediate political annihilation. Consider, for instance, the statement

"I believe that all people have a right to basic human dignity, and that it is wrong to force people convicted of minor traffic violations to parade through the streets wearing pink thong underwear while the public throws rotten sauerkraut at them. I hereby propose an amendment to protect the rights of people convicted of minor traffic violations."

Your opponent's response to such a statement might go something like this:

"I see that the gentleman from Milwaukee has taken the side of convicted criminals, and would rather spend the legislature's time protecting these criminals than defending law abiding citizens. In fact, his amendment reminds me of a proposal made by Hitler in 1945 to release incarcerated Germans to fight on the Soviet front **cough** fascist **cough** Excuse me."

This may seem unfair, but there is a simple solution. Simply rework the original statement like this:

"The practice of throwing sauerkraut at prisoners may have originated in German prisons under Hitler. I have therefore introduced an amendment banning it. Hitler."

This strategy is extremely important in politics, but it is also easily applicable to many everyday situations. Just remember that anything that you find personally offensive or unpleasant will most likely be related to Adolf Hitler in some way. For instance:

1. Dogs - Hitler owned a German shepherd.
2. Drugs - Hitler was a meth addict.
3. Vegetarianism - that's right, he was a vegetarian

Hitler was also extremely homophobic, and he was probably a closeted homosexual, so gays and homophobic rednecks are all just a bunch of fascist, xenophobic lunatics. He was short, white, ugly, and he had a mustache. He disliked cigarettes and alcohol, and I'm sure that he had many other personal characteristics that may be shared by some of your personal enemies. But why limit yourself to Hitler's actual characteristics, when you're pretty sure that Hitler would likely have approved/disapproved of the thing in question, if he had expressed an opinion (or if he had ever heard of it, or if it existed in the 1940s, depending on context). The important thing is that Hitler would side with your opponent, and that makes you right. But make sure you strike first, because once Hitler's on your side, you're always going to be wrong. Just like those dirty, fascist vegetarians.

Numbers

Recently, I was informed by a TV commercial of a new roadside study, which found that 80% of drivers who tested positive for drugs tested positive for marijuana. To help me interpret this statistic, it explained that marijuana wasn't as fun and safe as I thought it was, and then asked, rhetorically, whether or not I was willing to risk my life (and presumably also the lives of innocent children and puppies) for a little entertainment. I'm not a statistics expert, and so I was forced to conclude that 80% of all traffic accidents in the United States are caused by marijuana, killing many, many puppies. Needless to say, I now support all forms of mandatory penalties for marijuana use.

This isn't the first time that statistics have been used to enrich my life and inform my decisions. My cheesecake diet, for example, was inspired by another TV commercial. If I used regular cream cheese, I might be killing myself with bucketloads of saturated and trans fat, but my brand contains 35% less fat than regular cream cheese. Thanks to this statistic, I can sleep soundly with the knowledge that eating 8 pounds of cheesecake every day is perfectly safe, and in fact quite nutritious.

Statistics can also be represented graphically, in order to help you understand them more easily. For example, I have created the chart below to illustrate the extreme danger posed by auto-erotic asphyxiation. As shown in the chart, you are more than three times as likely to die from strangulation during some weird bedroom ritual than from corn dogs, wolverines, falling pianos, clam chowder, and unicycle accidents combined (disclaimer: specific statistics on this blog may have been made up, but they are at least as reliable as US Weekly survey data). Obviously, running out of air while naked with a plastic bag on your head is a hazard that needs to be taken much more seriously by the American Medical Association. I encourage you to write an obnoxious letter.

Thanks to statistics, I also smoke slim cigarettes to prevent cancer, park my car several blocks from my house to avoid the area around my home where accidents are most likely to occur, own 45 dogs to prolong my life by at least a decade, and only drink laboratory grade distilled water filtered by reverse osmosis. And the best part is that TV and magazine ads do all the math for me. All I have to do is sit back and read the numbers.

Thanks a Lot, TNT.

While watching television the other day, I witnessed probably the most appalling and offensive thing that has ever been aired outside of Portugal. I was casually viewing the movie "Casino", in which Joe Pesci's character and his brother are severely beaten with baseball bats, in full view of the camera, and then buried alive in a corn field. Needless to say, I was extremely entertained, as were my five year old son and eight year old daughter. But then came the offensive part.

During the commercial break, TNT had the audacity to run an advertisement for the "Durex Play Vibrations", which I discovered, after several days of intensive Internet research, is a vibrating "cock ring". This device's method of operation is too foul to mention in a publication as respectable as my blog, but suffice it to say that not only is it a "sex toy", but one that is designed to enhance the sexual experience of women.

As stated in other disclaimers on this blog, I am not a medical or health professional of any kind. I do feel, however, that I am qualified to make broad and emphatic statements regarding public health, cardiology, dentistry, epidemiology, and especially gynecology, based on inferences from The View and Bill O'Reilly. That said, I make the simple, noncontroversial statement that the female orgasm (like female sexuality in general) is a liberal myth, and that, as a simple corollary, the Durex Play Vibrations is a disgusting instrument of Satanism designed to help perverts commit sodomy.

Let me just say here that I consider myself fairly progressive when it comes to sex. People can do whatever they want, within the bounds of a heterosexual marriage, as long as both partners are fully clothed, in the missionary position, and in total darkness. And no anal. What I find offensive is that sexual perversions are put on full display, on primetime television, while my children and I are trying to entertain ourselves by watching a man shoot another man in the back of the head, causing blood to spray out of his mouth and nose.

My children can understand violence on a basic, visceral level, and they seem to be very entertained by it without any guidance from me. Sex, though, is a complicated subject beyond their current understanding. And now, thanks to the incompetent failure of TV networks to shield my children from content of the programs I allow them to watch, I might actually have to explain something about human sexuality to my children. And why the hell should I be expected to do that?

Satanic Cults and Cholesterol

Do you live in a state of constant fear? Do you sit up at night with a bottle of whiskey, sweating through your bulletproof vest, cradling your assault rifle, and staring at your front door while you wait to defend your home and family from the nameless death that waits outside for you to fall asleep? I think we all do.

But how can you expose this abstract terror that stalks you? Who is this invisible enemy that makes your reach into your shoulder holster and click off the safety every time you hear a noise behind you at the mall? What authority can unmask this fiend and name the source of your anxiety so that you can kill it? Obviously, the same authority that you turn to for everything else: your TV. But you're not watching TV right now, and the remote is all the way across the room, so you'll have to settle for the next best thing and get your absolute truth from this blog.

But first, the very few dangers which are purely fiction, and which you can stop worrying about:

• Global warming - Do your remember global cooling back in the '80s, when temperatures were plummeting, and the apocalypse would soon be upon us unless we drastically reduced carbon emissions? The fact that scientists said that, which I interpret as being contradictory to my oversimplification of what I hear from Fox News they are saying now, is hard proof that science is a myth, and that nothing could possibly be wrong. Which is convenient, because it's summer and my house is a comfortable 56 degrees.
• Car accidents - I don't wear my seatbelt to protest frivolous legislation, and that makes me an activist.
• Cholesterol - It will be a cold day in hell when I begin to suspect McDonald's of misrepresenting the truth for monetary gain.
  
• Waking up one day and realizing that your life is a terrible fraud, that you have wasted your precious time on Earth pursuing money to buy consumer electronics and friendship, that trying so hard to get to the top has only left you old, tired, and lonely, and that you have never really loved or been loved by another human being - Yeah, right. Like that could ever happen to anyone.
  

And now, the moment you've been waiting for. Here are the real threats facing you every day. These are the things that you should really fear, and that you should destroy with the weapons you've been stockpiling.

• Terrorism - Sure, living in rural Montana makes your death at the hands of a suicide bomber incredibly improbable, and the land mines you planted in your yard are statistically much more likely to kill you, but isn't your safety too important to be left up to statistics?
• Satanic cults - This is probably happening in your community, and it could involve someone you know, or even a family member. Seriously, it was on the five o'clock news.
  
• Rap music - Violence and misogyny (yes, it's a word; see definition here) were invented by minorities, and our children will soon be corrupted, drop out of school, and turn to lives of depraved, wanton violence unless all music is immediately banned (except Country and Classic Rock).
  
• Mexican people - Millions are flooding across the border to steal our jobs, sell drugs to our children, kill our pets for sport, and seduce our women with their sensual accents. God bless the Minute Men.
  
• Medical marijuana - If the radical anarchists suffering from terminal illness get their way, smoking pot will soon be mandatory for everyone. The fabric of American life will be burned away by hippies, and millions will fall through the gateway to hard drugs, turning to lives of prostitution and armed robbery to support their heroin and crack addictions.
• Last, and probably worst: people who are not you - Good lord, you're surrounded! Quick, barricade yourself in your bomb shelter with a five year supply of bottled water and ammunition. Don't worry though. It'll be safe to come out pretty soon, once they've all been killed off by marijuana poisoning and satanic cults.
  

Rush Limbaugh and the Power of Music

Do you listen to the words in any of the music that MTV, iTunes, and Clear Channel feed you, or do you just like "the beat" or think that "he/she has a great voice"? I agree, lyrics are overrated, as are words in general. I barely know how to read or write, but thanks to the miracle of voice recognition software, I can still successfully operate a blog that people can listen to using other software intended to help blind people access the Internet. Sometime, though, words can be dangerous, which is why God/America created music.

Take the song "Unfaithful" by Rihanna, for example. To be fair, this song was not written by said artist, but by a group of corporate hacks who's goal is to sell as much homogeneous garbage as possible (and who are apparently very, very good at their chosen profession). That said, every time I hear this song at the gym, I feel a strong urge to reach down my throat and rip my own spinal cord out through my mouth to stop the unbearable agony that this song causes me. This is because I have a rare medical condition that leaves me unable to ignore song lyrics, and so I am forced to actually think about what she is saying. In case you are morbidly curious, the song is about how painful it is for her to see her boyfriend destroyed by her ongoing affair. Right.

Back to my main point, though. If you actually read the lyrics to this song, or listened to someone read a transcript of it, you would probably not survive. Your mind simply could not handle the stress of such banality, and your brain would be ripped apart like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in a hurricane. This is why you simply listen to "the beat" and "her voice" every time you watch the video, play the song on your iPod, or request it for the fifth time today on the radio. If the music was not there to protect you from the words, there would be dire consequences.

Still don't believe me? Well, that's convenient, because I have created a demonstration to prove my point. What I have here is an excerpt from Rush Limbaugh's first radio broadcast after completing a drug treatment program (that's right, it happened). Normally, this would be impossible to listen to, and it might even be dangerous. The clip has been edited, however, and set to the intro from "None Shall Pass" by Aesop Rock (a great song available for free download here), rendering it magically tolerable. Just listen.

If you were to listen to this excerpt in its original form, you would need a week long drug and alcohol bender to erase it from your brain before you could function normally again. Thanks to Aesop, though, it's still not good, but at least you're distracted from the words. And that, my friends, is the power of music.

Note: This post violates multiple copyright laws, and uses a good song is a way that would almost certainly not be appreciated by the artist (my apologies to Aesop Rock and Definitive Jux Records). It does, however, mock Rush Limbaugh. And that, I think we can all agree, is what really matters.

Scripture Lesson

Do you fear homosexuals because God (read: "James Dobson and Pat Robertson") told you to? Or do you fear them because they are revolting, and because you personally can't stand the thought of those disgusting, sweaty, perverted things that you imagine them doing every time you see a man with tight pants, that you see in gory, graphic detail every time you close your eyes, and that haunt your dreams every single night when you sleep and distract you when you're trying to work or watch baseball? Or do you simply fear them because Bill O'Reilly does?

Regardless of your reason, rest assured that it is valid, and that your position is totally justified. In the unlikely event that you ever begin to doubt yourself and begin to think of homosexuals as "people", instead of Satan's army sent to murder your children, turn your wife into a crew-cut lesbian, and force you to listen to David Bowie, you can always fall back on the highest source of authority, as translated into American English (God's language).

That's right, I'm talking about the immortal wisdom of the book of Leviticus, which states unequivocally: Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable (Leviticus 18:22). Apparently, the godless, queer-sympathizing half of America just cannot understand this, but it could not possibly be more clear. Also, in case you've forgotten, here is a short refresher list of other moral reminders from Leviticus:

• Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material (19:19)
• Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard (19:27)
• ...anyone who blasphemes the name of the LORD must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him (24:16)
• Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves (25:44)

These are all very straightforward, simple instructions, which anyone should be able to understand. So put on your 100% cotton t-shirt, comb your beard, gather up your Canadian slaves, and get out there and stone you some blaspheming homosexuals. It's your responsibility as a Christian, and it's the only course of action. Because God said so, right here on this blog.
 

Skip Bayless Sucks

There's no punchline to this one. That guy's an asshole.