Palin/Holtz ‘12: In your heart, you know it’d be hilarious.

What kind of a representative/VP would Sweet Lou be? Well, we already know he’d be a big fat no on the Kyoto Protocols. If his continuing close relationship with Notre Dame is any indication, we can also assume he’d swing solidly to the right on all the hot-button social issues — abortion, euthanasia, the right of Michigan and Ohio State fans to intermarry, that sort of thing. As far as clues from his actual coaching career, we can assume he’d be dedicated to building a strong national defense, but that he’d also follow a fairly strict non-interventionist policy (unless you can find any evidence that his South Carolina teams mounted any offense whatsoever). As far as we’re concerned, the wild card here is health care: If he’s going to run as a Republican, the obvious assumption is that he’s against Obama’s health-care proposal, but you have take into account his unclear stance on drug benefits and his casual distribution of advice (as a “Doctor” on ESPN) that was, at best, quasi-solicited — there’s a possibility he’d be down for a lot more government involvement there than the GOP would like. (All together now: MAVERICK!)

As for potential appointments or staff members, it’s probably early to be speculating on those as well, but one name seems like a pretty safe bet: Beano Cook as assistant for national security affairs, the Scooter Libby to Lou’s Dick Cheney? Yeah, you laugh now. Just see if he doesn’t.

I’m Richie Cunningham, and this is my lovely wife Oprah. Allow myself to introduce . . . myself: I’m Doug Gillett, proprietor of Hey Jenny Slater, occasional contributor to Dr. Saturday, and jet-setting international jewel thief; along with the lovely Holly — fellow Doc Saturday contributor, EDSBS associate editor, and L.A. Times Kitten With A Whip Award winner three years running — I’ll be gingerly manning the controls of this blog for the next week and trying like hell not to wrap it around the very first tree I come across. As a gesture of goodwill, I hereby promise to be at least 70-75% as funny as Orson at all times; if you’d like to send me tips, love/hate mail, or grainy boob shots, shoot them to heyjennyslater.blog at gmail.

You call it a “low bar”; we call it “reasonable goals.” UCLA linebacker Reggie Carter is happy with the play of redshirt-freshman QB Kevin Prince in spring practice, as evidenced by this glowing praise:

“He doesn’t move around a lot and he doesn’t flinch,” Carter said. “He stays in the pocket and he makes the right decision. If it’s there, he throws it, if it’s not, he keeps it. That’s all I need. I don’t want him to throw the ball to other people. As long as somebody on our team has the ball, I’m happy.”

Even the venerable Los Angeles Times can’t resist snarking off a bit at this comment, but there’s a marketing opportunity here for UCLA if they want it: Give out “STOP FLINCHIN’” T-shirts at games and make that the theme of the 2009 season. It’ll become the must-have wannabe-gangsta accessory in SoCal within days.

“Is this heaven?” “No. It’s Waco.” The buzz is slightly, uh, buzzier in central Texas, where Baylor fans are being treated not only to non-backhanded, genuinely optimistic projections for their football team this year but also to the delicious catnip no true CFB fan can resist: NEW UNIFORMS! Oh, to be in Waco, now that new unis and realistic bowl expectations are here!

He’s so laid-back, it’s intense, man. Things are equally sunny in Ames, Iowa, where first-year head coach Paul Rhoads “has transformed the button-down, strait-laced approach favored by Chizik and embraced a more relaxed, high-energy style.” That seems like a bit of a tightrope walk there, and we have no idea how Rhoads is managing it, but either way he already seems to be more invested in the Cyclone program than Chizik, who, to hear his former players tell it, was frequently “relaxed” to the point of complete apathy. In other news, Rhoads says that teaching his “single-wing pro-style spread offense” has been a challenge, but that he’s still trying to maintain an “intensely involved, hands-off” relationship with his players.

The University of Arizona: Slightly less desirable than a nut house. Accusations of having an “inferiority complex” get lobbed at places like Auburn and Michigan State and Georgia Tech all the time, but take heart, kids — at least your alma maters weren’t literally a consolation prize. According to the U of A’s student paper:

“The University of Arizona didn’t start out in a traditional fashion,” said Theodore Gatchell, an aerospace engineering junior and campus ambassador.

Gatchell explained that the UA was born in Tucson in 1885 only because the Tucson representative of the Arizona Territorial legislature showed up late to a meeting.

“The city of Tucson had hoped to receive the appropriation for the state’s mental hospital, which ended up going to Phoenix,” Gatchell said.

The town was so mad that it got stuck with the university, that the Tucson representative to the Arizona Legislature was greeted with a barrage of rotten fruit on his return home.

Ouch! Tucsonians, take a lesson from the city of Tempe, which was faced with similar disappointment. They were chosen as the home of Arizona State University even though what they really wanted was Arizona’s first legal brothel, but they managed to make it work for them, and in the end they got both.

I’M A MAN! I’M 220!!! Okie State QB Zac Robinson is bigger, more muscular, and more option-y heading into the 2009 season, says coach Mike Gundy. Other than kicking a puppy, Bobby Reid had no comment on these developments.

No, dammit, we want CONFLICT! Colt McCoy and Sam Bradford are friends. Yeah, that’s real great for them and everything, but kinda anticlimactic, no? When one of them is caught banging the other’s girlfriend, call us. ]]> http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2009/08/03/curious-index-832009/feed/ 15 http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2009/02/19/ot-down-kitty/ http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2009/02/19/ot-down-kitty/#comments Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:46:44 +0000 Holly http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/?p=9165 Way off topic, from the It’s The Offseason And We Are So Bored We Will Post Pretty Much Anything RCR Sends Us Department: Louisiana man finds African wildcat in backyard.

He took it water, then slices of American cheese, then pieces of turkey wing.

[...]

He guessed that the cat’s relatively calm demeanor meant it was someone’s pet: “If it had been aggressive, it would have had my butt.”

[...]

“They told me to go back inside because the cat, you know, might have other options,” he said.

Area residents were, of course, unfazed:

Proving once again that Louisiana lives larger than anywhere else in God’s green America, and that we are all poorer for it.

_

We have the technology.

Your 2009 national champions: Florida, Iowa, Ole Miss, Texas, West Virginia, and/or Virginia Tech. So sayeth Rivals, anyway. Grab your pitchforks and torches and head on over; they’ll love to hear from all of you.

Headlines that are not about what we thought they would be about: “Spiller’s a walking time bomb”. They mean that in a good way, sadly.

At this point, it can’t hurt. Much. Syracuse practice sessions, available for your judgment: “Marrone likes opening spring practice because it places greater scrutiny on the players to perform at a higher level.”

BEHOLD THE MUSTACHE WEDNESDAY CURSE! Right around the time we were touting Noel Mazzone yesterday, this clown was being introduced as the new Pitt OC.

Yeah, we don’t like him. Can’t put a finger on it…[surreptitiously rubs upper lip]

Uh, it was weed. Matt Simms lands at Some College, California.

There is a nagging question about a suspension last season over which Kragthorpe put a cloak of secrecy.”He’s a young kid,” Phil said without hesitation. “I don’t expect him to be perfect. I do expect him to live with his experiences. He’s a good person. I’m not ashamed of Matt. He learned from his experience in Louisville.”

International All-Name All-Stars. Why should you care about Tongan rugby players testing poitive for drugs in Japan?� For answers, peruse this article, notable solely for the presence of teams named Sungoliath and Brave Lupus. ]]> http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2009/02/19/curious-index-2192009/feed/ 30 http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2009/02/18/ot-tell-that-wildcat-behind-the-wheel-not-to-slow-down/ http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2009/02/18/ot-tell-that-wildcat-behind-the-wheel-not-to-slow-down/#comments Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:45:04 +0000 Holly http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/?p=9105 Off-topic, but not far: The Arizona student paper has an arrest report in it that puts any Fulmer Cup contestant to shame. Some choice excerpts:

When police arrived, they saw a stopped, running car at a green light, facing eastbound on Speedway.When the officer approached the car, he saw the woman was asleep, with her dress pulled up to her stomach and her underwear pulled down to her mid-thighs.

[...]

Upon opening the door, he saw a three-quarters-empty bottle of Sailor Jerry Navy Rum on the floorboard of the passenger side.

[...]

After about two minutes of trying to wake her up, she awoke, saying, “No, Clint, not right now.”

Innumerable thanks to EDSBS lead counsel Ragin’ Cajun Rebel for passing this along.

Still, it shouldn’t ever be below freezing in Atlanta. That’s not part of the contract, which specifies all the other bad shit about living here. Which, specifically, is only one thing, really:

Tardbillies Keeping Us From Buying Alcohol on Sundays. You know what? God doesn’t give a shit whether you buy you booze in a grocery store on in a restaurant on Sundays. In fact, he’d probably prefer if we didn’t have to get in a car, drive to the bar, cloud our judgment, and then have three more drinks before getting in the car. You can get booze on Sundays IN ALABAMA FOR HELL’S SAKE. If Alabama has a more sound policy on anything than your state, consider disbanding into a series of independent city-states immediately.

Yet my jacknoramus governor–who actually chooses to call himself Sonny as an adult man–claims this would endanger lives. Fuck you, Sonny, and fuck that ignoramus old biddy trembling in her sunbonnet in some dingy church worried that Crazy Old Testament God will bring his thunder down on Georgia if we can buy a bottle of cheap Aussie Shiraz on Sundays and drink it with my family. And if we’re going to spend time with our family, WE GON HAFTA DRANK, Sonny. You want family values? Let us nip down to the liquor store to make ourselves pleasant for company. Believe us, it’s better for all concerned. God knows this, right God?

YES ATTENTION QUIVERING TARDBILLIES OF GEORGIA PLEASE LET ATLANTA CONTINUE TO BRING LIFE AND MONEY AND INTERESTING THINGS TO YOUR WORLD BY ALLOWING THEM TO BUY ALCOHOL WHENEVER THEY LIKE. ALSO, IF YOU WANT CONVENTIONEERS TO COME BACK, YOU SHOULD BRING BACK 24 HOUR CLUBS. PEOPLE LIKE BOOZE AND WHORES. THEY’RE GOOD FOR BUSINESS. GOD, OUT.

See? Even God wants that to happen. He might be willing to kill your firstborn to make it happen, Georgia! Or maybe not. You’ll never know, but why risk it? He’s done it before, and he might do it again if you don’t let us purchase a case of PBR on Sundays like the pansy failed hipsters we are.

Opening kickoff and WHOOOOP!!! Down to the 35 yard line and David Akers from…from….

Tom Jackson: (sighs) Louisville.

Berman: Tom, Jesus, sound like you gotta pair. Edit that out. Let’s keep going.

Jackson: …

Berman…and the pick by Fred “Rockin!” Robbins! Tweet! Tweet! Tweedly-deet!

Jackson: Heh. Heh.

Berman: Cut. CUT! TJ, you gonna join the land of the living here? I make a funny, and you’re giving me the half-heh. I need a full chuckle out of you to make this happen. You’re here to laugh at me and talk a little football. You ready, Chuckles?

Jackson: Yeah. I’m…I’m ready.

Berman: Why are you wearing a white tux, by the way?

Jackson: I’m going to a party in a minute.

Berman: Hey, are you gonna get your man Boomer in on that party?

Jackson: Oh, I will. I just have to wiggle my finger and you’ll be in.

Berman. All right. Now let’s see some first-rate second banana action here, TJ. Now that’s McNabb to Buckhalter! GENERAL BUCKHALTER!!! KLINK! YOU’RE AN IDIOT!!!

Jackson: That Hogan’s Heroes reference does it. I’m inviting you to the party right now, Boomer. WHOOOOP!!!! Would it pain you to mention something that happened after 1990? DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKING ANNOYING THAT NOISE IS?

Berman: What? My WHOOOOO—

Jackson: Finger. Wiggling.

Jackson: TAKE YOUR BUSTED ASS BOOMER SCHTICK TO HELL, BERMAN! STRAIGHT TO FIERY HELL, YOU FAT BASTARD! OR SHOULD I SAY, BACK BACK BACK TO HELL, ASSHOLE!!!

God it’s going to suck watching NFL football for the next tree weeks just because of the people who cover it. Especially Chris Berman.

One can only hope that when the time comes, the obituary-gland won’t fail you in your hour of need. If necessary, though, just take inspiration from the sublime obituary of Wyoming’s James William “Jim” Davis, who you know is cool simply by virtue of having a “nickname” built into this name.

Read on for a man’s obituary written as a man should write it:

Jim, who had tired of reading obituaries noting other’s courageous battles with this or that disease, wanted it known that he lost his battle. It was primarily as a result of being stubborn and not following doctor’s orders or maybe for just living life a little too hard for better than five decades…

In lieu of flowers, he asks that you make a sizeable purchase at your favorite watering hole, get rip roaring drunk and tell the stories he no longer can.

Short of having “he died tripping over his cock during a celebratory orgy to honor his triumph in a one on twelve cage fight for charity, surrounded by the naked and exhausted bodies of at least forty women,” this might be the apex of postmortem tribute potential. We’re xeroxing it and just plugging our name in for Jim’s, just in case we finally encounter a hungry Ed Orgeron in a dark alley one fateful night in the not-so-distant future.

As Chris Mottram said when I showed him this: “Even with our economy collapsing, fake gay is still funny.” This is truly our country. (HT: Dave.)

“This is the Chocolate-covered Strawberry Waffle Ball. It’s a plump fresh strawberry dipped in chocolate and then covered in sweet waffle batter and then deep-fried. Makes perfect sense.”

No, no it doesn’t, sir. Not in the least.

Not only are you weak at the gym, but you are annoying as hell, too.

So, before we get to the season and the pseudoephedrine pace of real, living, breathing portion of the year, let us list our proper rules for gym use and happy co-existence with your fellow gym-mates, mostly because we’ve already written it, it’s two weeks before the season, and we’re still pissed at Professor O’Dorkley who spent 20 minutes in the squat rack on Tuesday reading the New York Times and doing sets of one rep at a time while promising “I’ve just got a few more.” We hope you choke.

One: Don’t stink. Everyone stinks at the gym, but the occasional fragrance frotteur insists on wearing the gym clothes they pulled from the trunk. These are the gym clothes that, if put in an enclosed glass container with lab rats, would eat the rats in a flash of tentacles, blood, and little rat screams. They’ve been in the person’s trunk for at least two days, enough time to turn innocent sweat and shed skin cells into weapons-grade biological material in even a mild climate.

If you have the option, gym asshole, just work out nude with a towel under you rather than wear these toxic vestments. This way, you avoid sharing the smell of your ass with everyone, though you do so at the cost of showing everyone your actual ass-hole, which is just marginally better than the aromarama you put us through with your moldy stinkarmor. Marginally, we say.

Two: Your coaching tips are appreciated! No one minds a friendly discussion of form in between reps, perhaps punctuated with a playful shoulder chuck or the more contemporary terrorist fist-jab between new friends, or even the Beastmaster/Mongolian elbow shake one really should use at the gym.

Everyone, however, will think you are a complete asshole for being a freelance personal trainer in the gym. My squat form is off? Great. It’s my business if I want my intestines to fly out of my balls, thank you very much. When you snap your sternum in two bouncing 325 off your chest on the bench, we’ll be sure to point out just how bad your form was there, too.

Three: Don’t warm up in the sauna. We don’t have a sauna at the gym, mostly due to the conditions inside the sauna being identical to the conditions you face stepping out into the parking lot of the gym, meaning a sauna would really just be a room outside with wood paneling and a fat guy sitting naked in it, and around here we call that a “mobile home.” In the interest of not duplicating services, most Atlanta area gyms don’t offer saunas.

But for those who do like a nice, relaxing schvitz after a lift often find themselves invaded by fuckwits who, for no discernible scientific reason, believe it’s good to stretch in their nasty clothes in the sauna, a practice as based in actual science as the ancient and noble art of augury. No, don’t bother leaving. We always slaughter chickens and examine their innards over here on the curl bench. Really, it’s fine.

Four: Yes, I have a penis, too! The locker room is a place to change clothes and clean up. Sure, you have to get naked to do this. You don’t have to do the whole “divining rod” walk across the locker room naked, however, because the water is in the showers, and we’ll just all sneak peeks and compare manhoods the way Xenu intended us to: surreptitiously, and with a hint of shame.

Four-A: Hey, you look like Merlin when you turn upside down! A special note from the ladies’ perspective on this issue:

Barstoolio: Also the Super Nudes in the locker room. The ones who blow dry their hair for ten minutes before putting on their clothes. It’s gross when they bend over to blow-dry upside down.

Barstoolio: Upside down, you look like Merlin! I’m so glad you showed me!

Poof! Watch me make your dignity disappear!

Five: Don’t sing along to your iPod. There’s an asshole currently belting out “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful” by Morrissey in your gym. It’s us. We’re an asshole, and we apologize for it profusely. It’s a loathsome habit only made funny when you’re doing an exercise that the song you’re mouthing underscores in an ironic way, like performing a sotto voce rendition of “Gay Bar” while doing squats and performing oral sex on another man. We mean, doing squats.

Six: Shrug guy. Yes, you’re new haircut guy. We know the central drama of your life is blindly thrashing through the urge to spread your genes as widely as possible by crafting every sad little angle of your life to a narrow, sickly hypertrophied vision of masculinity emphasizing the cheapest, most desperate appeals to the opposite sex: tan flesh, huge upper body muscles, and some disgustingly hayseed conception of “wealth.”

Yes. That guy.

The aerosolized sorrow of your pathetic existence is enough to ruin a gym trip, but that we can block out for the most part. What we can’t avoid is your douchebag ass floating right over the dumbbell rack doing an exercise solely used to make you look better in a wide-collared silk shirt: the shrug. Let us get to the weights without having to wade through your Muscle-Milk flavored pool of Darwinian anxiety, dude, and go over to the mirror to do your shirt-filling exercises. You know you want to anyway.

Seven: Creepy Short-Shorted Fart Guy. This could just be us, but every gym we’ve ever been to has an old-ish wintergreen of a man who wears short shorts, farts like a bellows on the treadmill while running, and who insists on doing wide-legged stretches in the middle of the gym for all to see. If this is your father, please smother him in his sleep with a deep, plushy pillow. Thanks.

Eight: Cap’n Grunty. Noise is acceptable, really, it is: where else but in the back of a police cruiser and in your proctologist’s office do you have an excuse to really, really let out a solid grunt from real physical duress? Presumably, you should be working out hard, and exerting yourself in a manner Eugene Sandow would endorse while twiddling his mustache.

But heaving and hawing like you’re attempting to crap out an entire unblemished diorama of the Battle of Gettysburg while doing every single exercise you do is just gauche and untoward. (The little bayonets are the worst part.) The only acceptable time to make noises like that is when lifting buses off helpless old ladies, or when throwing buses onto helpless old ladies. Any other time is just exhibitionism.

Nine: Whoever has just taken the machine I want to use. Yes, machines are for pussies and will-o-the-wisp ladyboys who might as well put a hamster wheel in their house. We would, if we could, but sadly most homes don’t come standard with this despite Double Dare’s groundbreaking work in Human Hamster Wheel Design.

Oh, you noticed us looking nastily at you? Because you happened to get on the rowing machine/treadmill/awesome elliptical machine that lies to you by telling you you just burned ELEVENTY BILLION CALORIES without any tangible effort? It’s because we hate you for not stopping for coffee on the way, or for finishing up your kickball game or whatever dickhead thing you were doing immediately prior to taking the machine we wanted.

Seriously, go fuck yourself. We’ll be over here on the exercise bike. Yes, the bike. The one that doesn’t move.

God, you’re an asshole.

Ten: Anorexigirl. No, you look great. You do, really. All that work you do on the treadmill you’re always on when we walk in, or the class you’re just stepping out of when we’re leaving, or the frenzied lunges and crunches we see you doing over in the corner? It’s a pleasure to be so obviously exposed to someone’s personal demons on a weekly basis, really, no, seriously. It’s a privilege we have that we didn’t even ask for! Free! You’re just giving it to us, like the free sample lady at Chik-Fil-A in the mall! You just hand it out one sweaty surreptitious anxious look in the mirror at a time, and charge nothing for the service.

You’re like a charity devoted to hurting our hearts with your thinly veiled soulpain, and you apparently have robust funding to provide this for the duration of our gym membership. One nice thing about you, though: you never hog the free weights, since your brittle bones would snap in two beneath even the slightest weight.

25. Italian starlet Edwidge Fenech. She’s particularly stunning when set to dreamy Italian quaalude music. Fact: if you should fall in doomed love with an elusive but alluring younger woman, music like this starts playing spontaneously, but only if you happen to be in Europe.

Correction: only if you are in Western Europe. In eastern Europe the song “Cherokee” by (natch) Europe will begin playing.

24. Rope swings.

If you’re not in traction, you’re just not trying. (Nepal laughs at your puny American rope swings! And safety regulations!)

23. Swindle:Gotham font. I adore it right now for no particular reason. It’s not just for Obama signs and public building in New York anymore!

22. Swindle: Songs that sound like they were written for unmade sci-fi films.
“Stars,” Ulrich Schnauss; “First Wave Intact,” Secret Machines.

21. Holly: GiantMicrobes.com. Nothing says, “I’m ready to take our relationship to the next level,” like a plush scale model of Black Death.

20. Swindle: Crawling floor slides
12:02:35 PM Swindle: Agonizing, but everyone in the gym turns around to wonder what you’re doing, which for we attention whores is wonderful.

19.Holly: Magic Bullet (kitchen appliance, not vibrator)! The Personal Versatile Countertop Magician!

18. Swindle: Wired.comSwindle: It’s like Popular Mechanics for metrosexuals.

17. Holly: Home grill accidents.

(See “Rope Swings”—if you’re not in the burn unit, why did you even buy a grill, candy-ass?

16. Swindle: The renewed mean Office–articularly Ryan’s coke problem and subsequent arrest. Coke humor never goes out of style.

15. Holly:Danger Mouse.

The bombingest, rodent-infestedest, humor-slightly-over-your-headingest afternoon cartoon of your childhood. Entire series now available on DVD!

14. Swindle: Naps. What? It’s summer-ish. Plus, keep it to fifteen minutes and you’re safe; any longer, and you wake up eight hours later feeling like you’ve been rohypnol’d.

13.Holly: Apple Color. A nerdgasm in a box, rocking your face off with 16 layers of color grading since NAB 2007.

It’s still early, but I think it’s safe to say it’s true love.

12. Swindle: Hot Rod. Features Bill Hader and the brilliant Danny McBride as the most lovable and believable rednecks you’ve ever seen, even with the standard Michaels SNL Star Vehicle Script bringing the quality of the whole show down several notches.

11. SomeECards.com.

(NB: Previous item not to be construed as anything less than abject worship of Iron Man)

10. Which, by the way, Iron Man. Holy shit. How did it take this long to come up with a comic book movie this good? 100 kerosene cocktails to Marvel for making the damn thing themselves and showing up every studio in town doing it.

9. Swindle: Dunkin’ donuts coffee/green tea comboing Anxiety/booster/killing rage/booster/hearing static that isn’t there/booster/hands feeling like two balloons/fluoride and antioxidants

8. Holly: Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation. “Dear Dr. Tatiana: I think my boyfriend and I are ready to make love. But why is his penis covered with enormous spines? Signed, Concerned Bee In Buffalo.” Neat trick: try reading this on the beach and see what manner of gentleman stops by your towel.

7. Swindle:The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian The drawings make it. A half-white/half-Indian kid is depicted in it. In the white kid’s hand? “New Gap Bag.” In the indian kid’s hand: “Plastic Bag filled with Crushing Reality”

6. Holly:RoboRaptors. “A Fusion Of Technology And Personality!”*

*SENTIENT DINOSAUR ROBOTS. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG. Brought to you by DARPA toys.

5. Swindle: 21. Quiz Bowl

4. Holly: 4. Point Break Live. There are several iterations of this show playing up and down the west coast right now. It is a moral imperative that all humanity exp

3. Swindle: 3.Private islands.

One big cable. One huge satellite connection. One freshwater source. One speargun. Ten cases Zybrowka vodka. Go.

It’s a matter of time.

2. The Aqua Jump: A 25-foot floating trampoline that can be towed behind a boat.

1. Swindle: 1. The Thirty Years War. All other wars pay rent to the 30 years war, because it owns them lock, stock, and barrel. Over the course of the war, the population of the German states was reduced by about 30%; in the territory of Brandenburg, the losses had amounted to half, while in some areas an estimated two-thirds of the population died. Germany�s male population was reduced by almost half. The population of the Czech lands declined by a third.

The Swedish armies alone destroyed 2,000 castles, 18,000 villages and 1,500 towns in Germany, one-third of all German towns. That’s without guns. You know it was serious bidness, because even the goddamn Swedes were getting their Viking on.

It was triggered by “The Defenestration of Prague.” Case. Closed.

We’ll get the CI up ASAP, but in the meantime accept comic gold. Warning: the chorus of this song is:

Why you comin’ home
at five in the morning?

Something’s going wrong,
Let me smell yo dick.

You may recognize it from Lord Byron’s epic poem Manfred. You may not. Either way, it’s awesome.

Note: always wear rhumba panties and a corset to bleach your cheating man’s clothes. (HT/Blame: OPS.)

Orson
25. Powerlifting. I blame Barwis, but I can’t go to the gym without doing something stupid with a bar and an Olympic rack. It’s way too fun doing moves that leave your whole body shaky like you just ingested a bad crack latte. It’ll be awesome until a disc flies out of my spine and knocks out grunty guy over on the fly machine over there.

Holly

24. Macrobiotic yogurt. The closest thing to cannibalism in your grocer’s refrigerator.

23. Mulberries. There’s a tree outside my door loaded with them. It’s like a squirrel-germ infested snack on the way to the car every time. I haven’t died yet, though I have found myself standing in the middle of the road feeling indecisive without explanation.

22. Murder, She Wrote marathons on the Hallmark Channel DON’T YOU EVER JUDGE ME.

21. Maniacally checking the weather in Islamabad. If it’s not hazy in Islamabad, the piano strings of the world are hopelessly detuned.

20. Cutting out contact paper in shape of school logo and applying to skin before venturing outdoors. If you want the brand to last all year, you have to start early.

19. Assigning neglected colors to new schools. Ohio State and wal-mart flannel plaid= TOP SCORE.

18. Twins! (higher?)

17. North Korea. It’s the last evil hermit kingdom we have left. They’re vanishing ecosystems, you know. Plus, they have casinos now! It’s like Vegas with pellagra.

16. Drive-ins. Fill your truck bed with the couch cushions from the back porch and ten of your alkiest friends. It’s like rolling with toddlers that can drink.

15. Korean bathhouses. Being naked never felt so clothed. Plus: beer and Korean BBQ at hand at all times. Just mind the transfer of spicy Korean red pepper from the hands to tender nubbly parts in the bathing process.

14. Mario Kart. The Chanel of console games.

13. Kettlebells. Because you’ve always wanted to work out with a cannonball with a handle. It’s also hard to make prose any more parodical than that on Pavel Tsatsouline’s website:

Liberating and aggressive as medieval swordplay, kettlebell training is highly addictive. What other piece of exercise equipment can boast that its owners name it? Paint it? Get tattoos of it?

Once the Russian kettlebell became a hit among those whose life depends on their strength and conditioning, it took off among hard people from all walks of life: martial artists, athletes, regular hard comrades.

MMmmm. Hard comrades. Not gay at all. Just have to go break my back in order to begin the process of juggling 180 pound balls when I’m in my mid-sixties. After I get a fucking ice pack.

12. Rereading the classics.

11. Purchasing golf shirts, the caftan of the surrendered husband.

10. Fireworks Superstores.

9. Perfecting gas-efficient driving. I coasted from downtown atlanta to decatur the other day. Lights be damned: gas is cutting into my liquor budget. The tickets will pay for themselves.

8. White trash tourist strips. Go-karts, bungee jumping, and dinosaur-themed mini golf on the same block.

7. Discountpunk. If tweedles can get cool pimping out 800 dollar keyboards retrofitted with typewriter keys, I can start an art movement based on my dad’s corporate office decor, ca. 1984. Oh yes, that’s a Leroy Neiman print of Jack Nicklaus next to Og Mandino’s Collected Works.

6. Bastille Day.

5. The Olympics. Watch as someone unveils an American flag, is mowed down by Chinese paramilitary police, and is then revealed to be American swimmer Michael Phelps. You know you want to watch a Chinese swimmer dive in with a lit cigarette.

4. Mastering the physics of hammock sex. Ups your endorphins, and strengthens your core bettter than some pansy-ass rubber ball.

3. Questing for respectable sockless men’s footwear It’s the holy grail of men’s fashion. I know it’s a myth, but I’m still out there stepping on “J” and plunging through the floor tiles.

2. Shark Week. Or: live every week in the manner of. TJ would:

1. Waiting patiently for Mercenaries 2. Everything. Is. Flammable. That’s the name of my upcoming autobiography, too.

Someone has beaten us to it. If that’s the price to pay for being well-informed, then too fucking bad. SIR–this rules. Thank you, Orson Swindle, Atlanta, GA USA.