Barry Parham's Blog: The Mooncalf Communion, page 48

Skullburn

(More fun ways to frighten timid people)

Earlier this month, while I wasn’t looking, I got blindsided by another birthday. They’re relentless, these birthday things – I could swear I just had one last year.

Generally speaking, I’m a big fan of birthdays, especially the ‘milestone’ years. If you’re a guy, the milestone years are very cool. You know the list:

Year One: You’ve made it! You’re breathing, your parents have submitted your resume and references to several exclusive kindergartens, and you’re safe from any retroactive Roe v. Wade issues, unless you vote Republican.
Year Eighteen: You’re not old enough to have a beer, but you’re old enough to go point guns at brown people in some sandbox with a name like Absurdistan.
Year Thirty: You’re in a mortgage, but you’re out of testosterone.

But once you get past thirty or forty years of this, you find yourself celebrating more, well, obscure annual victories:

You’ve made it to the next prime number
You’ve made it another year without clipping cents-off ‘Depends’ coupons

Personally, I’ve tried to benchmark the last few, um, prime numbers a bit differently. As each birthday rolls around, I try to deliver on a couple of personal goals:

Do something I’ve never done before
Avoid seeing my name in the obituary column

Here’s the problem: the list of things I’ve never done before is shrinking. The legal list, anyway. And at my age, Illegal things no longer hold any allure. Other than one marginally actionable incident involving a staggeringly gorgeous bartender from Illinois and a bitter ferret from Charleston, I’ve studiously avoided activities that might result in me having to say things like “Yes, Your Honor” and end up wearing loose-fitting state-issue clothing.

So this year, I shaved my head.

Ever done that? It was a lot more difficult than I expected. I mean, we’re talking about my brain’s veneer versus my cheesy twelve-pack of chin scrapers. I consider myself very lucky to have gotten out alive, with only two new divots in my head.

It wasn’t just that there was more real estate to survey, more lawn to mow. It was like invading a foreign country, with no maps and minimal ordnance. I mean, think about it: you’re attacking your own skull with a razor you bought at the grocers for 79 cents. Plus, this isn’t at all like shaving your face, or your chin, or a coastal ferret, something you’ve done maybe 10,000 times before (not the ferret).

This was a trip to rural head. This was crania incognita.

And because I’m approximately as coordinated as a damaged mollusk, I can only use one hand to do anything, which usually doesn’t slow me down very much, unless I need to clap. But when I was trying to shave my head, even my ‘good’ hand seemed to have a mind of its own. I spent long minutes staring at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, trying to communicate non-lethal razoring vectors to my wrist, so that I wouldn’t gash my brain wagon and suddenly become what is known as ‘breaking news.’

But since you’re reading this, you probably figured out that I survived the deforestation. It took forever, but I survived. After the scrape-tivities, I dried my dome and dabbed at the divots. I threw out the razor and threw on a hospital scrub shirt. And lastly, I took a few moments for review and introspection.

My first surprise in the mirror, once the mission had been completed, was that I looked like an escaped mental patient from some particularly sadistic future. There’s just something about a freshly-shaved, mildly-pale-blue-tinted top-skull that screams “Nurse Ratched! I want my cigarettes!“

Looking back, maybe the scrub shirt was a bad idea.

And my de-pelted skull wasn’t at all what I’d expected. I’d always assumed that, under the hair, I’d been carting around a coy but structurally perfect geodesic masterpiece, sure to bring an envious tear to the eye of Buckminster Fuller and any other bowling ball manufacturers.

But no. My unveiled over-veined head bulges in the back, like that short-tempered she-beast from the Alien movies; you know, that bucket-headed drool-monster with the ‘live and let live’ personality of the Queen of Hearts, the territorial management style of Leona Helmsley, and the deluxe dental plan of Joe Biden.

So be warned, all you potential head denuders. Your bush-hogged bean is not perfect. But that only makes sense, considering the body your head is sitting on.

It gets worse. Wait till that first time you expose your Carlsbad Cavernized pale pate to the sun at the beach. You can practically hear old Sol snickering, “Oh, the things I’m gonna do to that head!” And then, après skullburn, try and find a nice unscented anti-glare SPF 8000 ointment.

On the other hand…

The Upside of Cranial Strip-Mining

If you’re single and still shopping, being hairless attracts a whole new dating niche: the free-lance phrenologist.
You can rent out the additional skull space for billboard signage. Keep it tasteful — polite society tends to frown on three-dimensional cows with bad spelling skills hawing heterosexual chicken biscuits.
If a passing bird decides to, well, jettison anything, at least it won’t land in your hair.

It’d be okay if you could harvest your head and then spend a few prime numbered solar cycles coming to terms with your new neck marble. But eventually you have to leave the house, because although, as a country, we’ve figured out how to land on the moon, we still can’t get anybody to deliver Mexican food.

And you newly nude-capped guys should know this: bald evokes commentary. When faced with the suddenly shorn, the general public refuses to go quietly into that bald night. Co-workers will bombard you with their sudden repertoire of ‘baldy’ jokes, that they consider hilarious to the point of Pulitzer nomination.

No worries. Should the jokes get out of hand, just send in the ferret.

Theoretically, though, there is social potential in being close-cropped. I’m told that many women consider a bald head to be virile. That’s certainly true in my case, assuming ‘virile’ means ‘appears to have lost a fight with a multi-bladed farm implement.’

But, like most things, it’ll all work out. If things get desperate, I can always phone the coast, call in a favor, and staple on a ferret toupee.

After all, it seems to work for Joe Biden.

Ol’ 55

(Some thoughts on growing old gracefully. Or not.)

This week, I hit a milesto…strike that.

This week, a milestone hit me. This week, I turned fifty-five.

Fifty-five. I am a speed limit.

I know, I know. Lots of adults pooh-pooh adult birthdays. After all, they say, we’re not children anymore. Birthdays are for children, only. Children, we’re told, should be seen and not heard, whereas adults, we’re told, should be obscene and not absurd. Although I could’ve misread that.

So grown-ups will employ that irritating, all-knowing cant of the head, purse their lips and stare mistily over your shoulder, and assume that tweed-jacket-with-elbow-patches look that means ‘I’m about to impart wisdom all up in here.’ Then they’ll say things like “oh, I quit counting birthdays” and “after a certain age, birthdays don’t matter anymore.” You should know a couple of things about these people:

They’re old.
They’re lying.

I think it’s fine for adults to celebrate, or at least acknowledge, one’s birthday…within reason. I mean, you have to make some allowances for being a grown-up. When you’re fifty-five, you can just run up to total strangers in restaurants, hold up your fingers, and yell “I’m this many!” Be fair. While you’re working out all the 55-year-10-finger schematic issues, their bisque’s getting cold.

True: you might get away with such behavior at a Chuck E. Cheese. But if you’re celebrating your fifty-plus birthday at Chuck E. Cheese, well … as Joe Biden might put it: I got three words for you – deep therapy.

And once you get past a certain age, forget about inviting a bunch of friends over to spend the night. That’s just not going to end well; plus, it could come back to haunt you if you ever decide to enter the ministry, or run for public office. (Once you’re in public office, however, sleepovers are practically expected.)

In America, your age is everybody’s business. For over four decades now, marketing companies have been asking me what age group I’m in. This is a critical piece of data for marketers, something they call ‘demographics’ (literal translation: ‘number of active credit cards’). And now, I’ve graduated from the ’45 to 54‘ age group to the next one – the penultimate one – the ’55 and Over‘ group. (literal translation: ‘He’s still breathing, or what? Hold a mirror in front of his mouth. Or an active credit card.’)

So at fifty-five, I expect to see a whole new onslaught of targeted, tempting, pre-geriatric offers, not to mention a full-on frontal assault by the membership department at AARP (literal translation: ‘the Borg collective from Star Trek, but with walkers’). That never-resting gang of mercenary marketers has been relentlessly hammering me since I was about eight, possibly because they misinterpreted my age group after I used a compound noun. (literal translation: ‘something found in a prison yard’)

Month in, month out, with military precision, AARP mails me a thick welcome kit, complete with personalized membership card and several thousand exclamation points. This has been going on since, roughly, the year America landed on the moon, an event which so confused our planet that Billy Preston became the fifth Beatle. (Shortly thereafter, the Beatles broke up, but that was George Bush’s fault.)

But the relentless ‘Geezer Nation’ ad assault from AARP is just one wave in the endless battle for my budget. I have achieved the age when the (e)mailbox fills with very conflicted marketing messages; the Captains of Commerce are sending me some seriously mixed signals. For example, in any given week, I’ll get such disjointed “who are they talking to?” calls to action as these:

Why I should diversify my portfolio with gold
Why I should abandon all hope and dump my mortgage


Econo-sized 5-gallon tubs of once-a-day Viagra tablets (discreetly delivered)
‘Don’t put if off!’ discounts from our tasteful selection of customized caskets (featuring our bestselling model, the Eterno-Wrap! Now available in your choice of irrelevant colors!)


Fabulous lake-front property beginning at only $750,000
Fabulous penny-pinching weekly bargains on canned meat

If they must mix their messages, couldn’t they at least try to be helpful? For example, to brighten up the casket spiel, why not borrow from the Viagra ad?

‘Eterno-Wrap is intended for the treatment of Erect Dysfunction, also known as extended horizontality, or persistent deadness. Discuss your status with your doctor to ensure that you are healthy enough for death. Do not stay in this box if you maintain a pulse lasting for more than four hours. Side-effects of not being consistently alive may include a sudden decrease in vision (not to mention heartbeat), chronic tardiness, and a tendency for people to say, “aw, don’t he look natural.” In some cases, you may be mistaken for comedian Stephen Wright or suddenly find yourself eligible to vote.’

And here’s some free medical advice from an on-the-cusp geezer: if, while you’re dead, you experience any nausea or sexual discomfort, please contact your physician immediately.

And then, by all means, contact the nearest network television executive.

How To Run a Planet

(America faces new challenges…and that’s just our leadership)

Sometime during this last summer, some guy in California released a movie clip on You-Tube.

And immediately, all over the planet, nothing happened.

True, this little-known film clip had promising potential to be a trouble-maker. The clip contained ‘religious’ references that might offend people in countries where they have sand sidewalks. Also, the director of the movie had spent the bulk of his cinematic career churning out smutty gems like “The Sexpert” and “Young Lady Chatterley” (I and II).

But the point is, nothing happened. For months, nobody, anywhere, cared. Life went on. In America, people rationed their TV time between watching football teams out-injury each other, watching presidential candidates out-insult each other, and watching a 6-year-old kid named Honey Boo Boo smoke fake cigarettes and drink real Red Bull.

And then, in September, an anti-America anger volcano erupted in practically every country where people wear open-toed shoes and eat chickpeas.

So, naturally, the White House issued a statement, lamenting the riots that had somehow manifested in over a dozen countries at the same time, and blaming the sudden violence on that film clip from last summer.

And then the President flew to Las Vegas to attend a re-election fundraiser.

Then we got word that rioters in Tripoli had destroyed a Hardee’s, a move that threatened to set the Libyan economy back by several years. (An adjoining Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise was also attacked, but the rioters were foiled after the KFC’s clever night manager deployed a canola oil slick.)

So, naturally, the White House issued a statement, lamenting the deaths of thousands of defenseless Thickburgers, and blaming the fast food massacre on Paul Ryan’s budget.

And then the President flew to New York to attend a re-election fundraiser.

Now, to be fair, it’s not easy being President of the USA, and Commander-in-Chief, and Leader of the Free World, and to still maintain a golf handicap of 18. Plus, when you finally do get a few minutes at home alone, there’s all those armed men walking around on your roof.

Think you could do better?

Well, let’s find out. We’ve put together a little quiz, to see how President You would stack up against the guy that’s there now.

Let’s see how you would handle the pressure of juggling all things Presidential: things like projecting hope, deflecting blame, projecting your chin, biting your lip, and displaying your profile at the same time, pinching your thumb and forefinger together and making little up-and-down pointy gestures, and trying to keep a straight face while giving an acceptance speech in front of a bunch of fake Greek columns.

Ready? Let’s begin.

~-~-~-~-~-~~-~-~-~-~-~

What do you call an eruption of self-destructive mob violence in an Arab nation?

A predictable reaction to decades of desperation
A  culturally-fed alternative translation of religious texts
Thursday

~-~-~-~-~-~

Within 72 hours of the first incident, US embassies from Africa to Indonesia were under attack. As America’s Fundraiser-in-Chief, what do you blame it on?

A 3-month-old movie clip
Mitt Romney noticing that US embassies from Africa to Indonesia were under attack
Maybe not everybody has seen your Nobel Peace Prize yet

~-~-~-~-~-~

Because you’re too busy campaigning for re-election, you blow off all those pesky Daily Intelligence Briefings; instead, you just watch a short PowerPoint presentation and skim through a how-to primer (Religious Fascism for Dummies). Finally, you agree to return the Pentagon’s phone call, and the Joint Chiefs present you with a full slate of Chief Executive options. Which option will you select?

Direct military intervention
Crippling economic sanctions
A five iron

~-~-~-~-~-~

A Cairo protestor is caught on camera, showing his displeasure with America in the usual way – by stomping up and down on a sign written in German. What will be the most likely reaction from world governments?

France surrenders to the sign
Qatar purchases Cairo
Greece asks Qatar for a loan, offering to write a post-dated check
Qatar purchases Honey Boo Boo

~-~-~-~-~-~

When attempting to convince voters of your global qualifications to lead America, what will be the centerpiece in your display of competency?

Your years of familiarity with the geopolitical disciplines
Your decades of depth in the intricacies of international law
Your Al Green impersonation

~-~-~-~-~-~

Regardless of his crisis – or his historically consistent failure to manage them – the President can always blame somebody else. Any target in this list will do, but which is your favorite?

The Bush recession
The Bush tax cuts
The Bush stock market
The Bush job market
The burning bush
Bush’s Baked Beans
Bush Hog rotary cutters (single- or multi-spindle)
Kate Bush
Republicans
Earthquakes
Republican earthquakes

~-~-~-~-~-~

Congress, meanwhile, rather than face any difficult decision-making in an election year, actually voted for an increase in spending. What tactic might make them wake up to some fiscal realities?

The imposition of term limits
An intensive, long-term series of town hall meetings
Having their knees removed

~-~-~-~-~-~

During this heated political season, which of these words is now considered a racist slur?

Health care
Chicago
Niggardly
A salad bar with freshly-sliced cantaloupe
It’s a trick question. These days, every word in the English language can be considered a racist slur.

~-~-~-~-~-~~-~-~-~-~-~

See? Being President’s tougher than you thought, huh? So don’t be too quick to blame this one.

After all, he’s only superhuman.

The Second Second Coming

(Even from deep space, this year’s Democratic convention was weird)

“Artxsnkl?”

No reply. The long dark starship was silent. Jmkorgpld raised his voices.

“ARTXSNKL?”

“Yo!”

“I just pinged another one.”

“Can you classify it?”

“Not yet. But I got an aura sample.”

“Sweet. Galactigoogle it, and let me know. I’ll be in the regenerator.”

Jmkorgpld swiped his desk clean, strapped into his work spine, and jacked in to the computer console. The wavy little logo blinked on, and then the console announced, “Hello, Jmkorgpld. Thank you for using Windows 7.6579 x 10.5E8 (Service Pack 2). Please wait.” A surge, and the wall lights dimmed and pulsed. As usual.

“Unbelievable,” carped Jmkorgpld to himself. “We can bend time and space, but we still can’t figure out how to run a torsotop and the regenerator at the same time. If we had any peer species, I’d be embarrassed.”

Jmkorgpld attached two leads, knuckled the ‘Analyze’ glyph, and watched his data manifest. After an irritating light-dimming second, the screen spoke.

“Based on my analysis of your input aura, you appear to have picked up a modulated signal from a seriously remote source: the planet Terra, which is, like, 3 bus transfers from here. The aura’s abnormally high emotion signature matches my previously stored patterns of something Terrans call a ‘DNC convention’.”

Jmkorgpld clapped two of his hands. A Terran political convention! What a find! They’d waited four light years since the last one!

Democrat politics. All the religious fervor of a Southern tent revival, but without the deity. A current-day Caligula festival, plus funny hats.

” Artxsnkl, I got a hit. It’s Terra again.”

“Terra. Why does that name sound familiar? Isn’t that the planet that still uses politics?”

“They were. Now they’ve switched to something called ‘international martial law.’”

“Well, they never were very bright, were they. Got a clean, steady signal?”

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Madcap Mantra Movie night!”

“All the classic comedians! John Kerry! Jesse Jackson! “

“Maxine Waters! Joe Biden!”

“Groucho Marx!”

“You wish. Okay, cue it up, Jmkorgpld.”

(And now, thanks to the miracle of time compaction, combined with warp travel and a total disregard for facts, we bring you a bit of what Jmkorgpld and Artxsnkl saw…)

~-~-~-~-~-~~-~-~-~-~-~

The sole purpose of the 2012 DNC convention was to re-anoint their Main Man, the main event, Barack Barry Hussein Soetoro Obama, for a second term as President. And prior to the convention’s kickoff, the convention center’s exterior had been ornamented by a 16-foot-tall sand sculpture of the main event, Barack Barry Hussein Soetoro Obama.

The man erected a statue to himself.

Unfortunately, rainstorms damaged part of the DNC’s little Mount Rushmorelet. At first glance, it appeared the rain had washed away Obama’s right side. But then somebody pointed out that Obama doesn’t have a right side.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Despite threatening to overwhelm the convention with 10,000 confused smelly people holding misspelled signs, the Occupy movement slouched into town with about 800 people wearing a total of $7 in retro clothing. Unfortunately, nobody had remembered to bring any food, so naturally the Occupiers started demanding free food from the city. The city refused, but they did give the Occupiers a few pairs of John Kerry’s flip-flops.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Facing huge drops in attendance, convention planners reneged on their rental of an entire football stadium, gave away buckets of event tickets, and ultimately had to bus in college students and entire black church congregations, and a container of raw meat for the Occupiers. A reporter noticed an empty “Department of Corrections” bus idling outside the convention hall, but given the week’s list of guest speakers, the bus could’ve been dropping off or picking up.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Nancy Pelosi was not the first to speak on-stage; she was, however, the only speaker to refer to Barack Barry Hussein Soetoro Obama as “that brilliant hunk of man-flesh.” She went on to applaud some obscure, unread Health Care law that provides free contraception to coeds by taxing the sale of your home.

According to her, Barack Barry Hussein Soetoro Obama is Earth’s only hope to stop those one-eyed slavering Republicans and their godless attempts to curb women’s reproductive rights. (Republicans deny this charge, saying a woman can reproduct all over the place if they so choose – just bring your checkbook.)

~-~-~-~-~-~

Speaking of ‘godless,’ the Democrats got badly scalded after somebody removed the words ‘God’ and ‘Jerusalem’ from the party’s official platform. So, in a bold bipartisan gesture, the delegates consulted some polls and then voted to amend their platform by inserting the words ‘Santa’ and ‘Wolfie’s Deli.’

(There was an unsubstantiated rumor that Republicans had floated a fake poll, showing that a vital voting bloc, single hermaphroditic neo-Hispanic mothers with lactose issues and a mortgage-backed Pell Grant, were in favor of Nancy Pelosi wearing spandex leggings and a Hannibal Lector mask. Within minutes, another floor vote was called, and Pelosi was observed trying to pick out a matching pair of shoes.)

~-~-~-~-~-~

Everyone looked forward to the “Obama’s not the pig I said he was four years ago” speech by Bill Clinton, though, like Pelosi’s “bill,” nobody knew what was in it. But there was even more buzz after the speech, when the crowd learned that Bill had ordered a pizza.

~-~-~-~-~-~

The aforementioned coed Sandra Fluke, that contraceptive Gatling gun, apparently found a sex-free moment to speak to the crowd. After the crowd learned more about her, several people volunteered to pay for her birth control.

~-~-~-~-~-~

The parade of professional policy experts continued, including those crack global economists and time-proven business experts, Scarlett Johansson and Eva Longoria, both of whom set personal records for remaining dressed in public.

~-~-~-~-~-~

At one point, John “Chin Plow” Kerry showed up and – honestly – accused somebody of flip-flopping. Even the Democrats snickered at that one. Kerry spoke for a few minutes and then surrendered to the band.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Near the end of the week, there must have been a security glitch at the DNC convention, because Nancy Pelosi managed to get back on stage during a smarmy ‘American Dream’ video, pretty much confirming the media’s mounting concern that this whole week was rapidly spinning out of control. After a few minutes of blinking like a caffeine-crazed ferret, the former Speaker actually said, “Wasn’t that American Dream story the story of America?”

Pelosi then caromed back to health care. She began boasting that the new law, which weighs more than most hospitals, would keep women from being a pre-existing condition, whatever that meant. At that point, she was tackled, dragged off-stage, and fed to the Occupiers.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Finally, on Thursday night, the crowd was treated to a short psychotic episode by Joe Biden, aka The Incredible Shrinking Asset. Joe’s job was to serve as the warm-up act for his boss and, if possible, not disclose the location of any nuclear silos. Not surprisingly, therefore, Biden leaked most of Obama’s upcoming speech, resulting in about half of America switching to another channel. After all, once Joe had jumped the shark, nobody needed to actually watch the speech, so people were free to go take care of more important chores, like folding laundry, or dusting your velvet paintings of Debbie Wasserman Schultz playing poker.

~-~-~-~-~-~

About ninety minutes into his ten-minute speech, Biden’s allure was spent, not to mention his opportunities to say “literally” when he meant “virtually.” Michelle Obama had this look on her face like she’d swallowed too much wasabi. Finally, during a particularly emotional clause, Biden poked himself in the chest one too many times, and a disgruntled segment of his hair follicles walked off the stage in protest.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Backstage, the week’s star speaker, the main event, had been impatiently pacing the wings. Across the room, Obama’s ego watched the follicles storm off. It whispered to its host, and Obama spun around. Mistaking the rug remnant for all of his Vice President, the main event made his move.

President Obama took the stage. The straggling die-hards in the remaining crowd tore their garments, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews saw visions, and 241 overweight women in big hats went into spontaneous psychological labor.

Barack Barry Hussein Soetoro Obama began to speak. And after a few minutes, Jmkorgpld paused the spaceship’s feed.

~-~-~-~-~-~~-~-~-~-~-~

“Artxsnkl , this is practically the same speech he made four years ago!”

“Well, why not? It worked then.”

“Point taken. Humans. Oy.”

“Any dip left?”

~-~-~-~-~-~

Elephant Talk

(an imaginary GOP convention…from an imaginary non-GOP POV)

Emcee: “Good evening, gentlemen and gentlemen, and welcome to our gala Corporate-Sponsored Middle Class Hate-Fest and Offshore Grandma Abattoir, aka the 2012 Republican National Convention!”

(sounds of 50,000 rich old white men cheering)

Emcee: “My name is Reince Priebus – seriously, that’s my name – and I’m Chairman of the RNC, not to mention the only person in America whose name can be rearranged to spell Eerie Crib Puns.”

(sounds of 50,000 rich old white men applauding)

Emcee: “And now I, Ripe Siren Cube, am honored to convene the 2012 convention by hammering this ceremonial gavel on a large wooden platform painted to look like the Middle Class.”

(sounds of 50,000 rich old white men trying to say ‘woot’)

Emcee: “Unfortunately, there is a hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast, so now I, Brie Snipe Cure, postpone this convention until tomorrow, or Tuesday, whichever comes first. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.”

(sounds of 50,000 rich old white men misdialing an Ybor City escort service)

EDITOR’S NOTE: As it turned out, it was a good week to avoid Tampa altogether. After all, the Gulf Coast city was about to be besieged from all sides:

Hurricane Isaac creeping up from the South
Trouble-minded Occupy Movement trailer trash scumming in from the East
That simple idiot Joe Biden being flown in from the North to stage some kind of foul-mouthed Disruptathon, as though, in addition to Isaac, Tampa needed another windbag
And 50,000 Republicans descending from everywhere, which generated a severe condiment shortage among the local restaurants – there’s just not enough catsup on Earth for that many expense-account-funded fried-shrimp-eating God-fearing gun-toters.

(Tuesday)

Emcee: “Okay, folks, welcome back. I’m Epic Rube Siren, and if the hurricane season will back off for a minute, I hereby reconvene this convention, where we plan to nominate Governor Mitt Romney, a man cleverly referred to as ‘Mittens’ by liberals, and third-graders.

(short animated film of Mitt Romney stealing mittens from senior citizens and distributing them to an all-white Olympic dressage team in the Cayman Islands)

Emcee: “During this week, we’ll hear from several women, minorities, and various ‘people of color,’ even though we hate them. We’ll hear from Ann Romney, an aloof, out-of-touch ‘corporate wife’ who lives off her spouse’s wealth, has never worked a day in her life, and who only puts on shoes when she needs to kick the help. Oh, wait – that’s John Kerry. We’ll also be joined by people like Condoleezza Rice, a black woman who, despite being on the faculty at Stanford, having a seat on several boards of directors, being a member of the National Security Council, having been selected as Secretary of State, and having performed with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, refuses to admit that she doesn’t stand a chance of succeeding in America without the cradle-to-grave protection of the Democrat Party’s Nanny State.”

(Low, muttering sound of Joe Biden cursing, though it may have had nothing to do with this humor column. You know Joe.)

Emcee: “But first things first: right now, let’s listen to some people talk and make gestures, and then we’ll watch some professionally-produced, emotion-invoking video advertisements for our candidate, all of which will attempt to present the candidate as a product – a timesaver, a hot blouse, a shiny new car, whatever – that you simply cannot live without.”

(upbeat intro music from a bunch of guys that look suspiciously like David Letterman’s house band)

Emcee: “Folks, please welcome Speaker of the House, John Boehner.”

(several minutes of what was either Boehner’s speech, a low-frequency feedback hum, or one of your more atonal medieval monastery chants)

Emcee: “Thank you, Speaker, for that speech, during which your voice almost modulated. We appreciate you coming all the way from Washington, and for bringing both of your facial expressions.”

(sprinklings of applause, interspersed with those unmistakable unscrewing sounds of hotel mini-bar minibottles)

Emcee: “Folks, after hearing that speech, I think we can all agree on one thing: forget voter IDs – what this country needs is a way to identify people who can’t tell a joke!”

(sounds of ‘Amen!’ and ‘Here! Here!’ and ‘Waitress!’)

Emcee: “And speaking of laugh riots, please welcome Senator Mitch ‘Mitch’ McConnell to the stage!”

(several minutes of oration, and the cold truth is this: we’re not going to repeat it here. We simply don’t have the heart to put you through that.)

Emcee: “Thank you, Senator McConnell. Man. What a stem-winder, eh, folks? And I thought Al Gore had no rhythm! That may be the whitest five minutes I ever heard in my life. I’m gonna go out a limb here and guess that Big Mitch never moonlighted, scoring rhythm tracks for Morris Day and the Time. Whoa. My man McConnell makes Mel Torme sound like George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars.”

(suddenly, the taped sounds of spaghetti western music)

Emcee: “Well, look! It’s Clint Eastwood and an empty chair, overtly symbolizing the current occupant of the Oval Office in an existential and pejorative manner that’s sure to infuriate Chris Matthews, that hypertensive Barackolyte over at MSNBC!”

(Insane applause, which gets even louder after some under-medicated conventioneer starts chanting ‘Sergio Leone for President!’)

Clint: “Do you want another four years?”

(“NO!”)

Clint: “Do you want Boehner to tell another joke?”

(“NO!”)

Clint: “Do you realize that, during his speech, Jeb Bush mentioned milk eleven times?”

(“NO!”)

Clint: “If I say ‘Make my day,’ will you collectively act like nobody has ever uttered three more inspiring words in the history of mankind?”

(“NO! I mean, uh, “YES!”)

Clint: “Just for kicks, somebody go tell Ellen Barkin I shot the chair.”

(sounds of the audience chanting ‘No more years!’ – which makes no sense until you remember the previous hotel mini-bar reference)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Reviews of Eastwood’s ‘empty chair’ skit were mixed; however, it turns out that the chair had a more cohesive economic policy than the current President.

Emcee: “Well, that wraps up our convention. Thanks for coming, don’t forget to vote, and remember this: our candidate has undercoating, comes with A/C and complimentary floor mats, and gets more miles to the gallon than the competition! In closing, please enjoy this unimaginably expensive display of balloons falling from the ceiling. On behalf of rich old white men, I’m Beer’s Epic Ruin, saying ‘good night’ from Tampa.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: We apologize for all the Reince Priebus jokes, but if you think that’s bad, just wait till the other convention – we hear the Democrats have somebody named Dick Harpootlian.

Whoa.

Welcome to the Zen’s Wearhouse

(You’re gonna like the way you like you – I guarantee it)

Are you a tweep?

If there are any youngsters out there reading this, you should know that, not that long ago, asking a question like that could get you arrested, hit in the nose, or, depending on what State you lived in, engaged to someone with questionable teeth.

But now, as everybody knows, “tweep” is just a new addition to the American lexicon, a term that, roughly translated, means “the sound a bird makes when it’s being censored.”

I made that up. I do that, you know, from time to time. Sometimes I just make stuff up, in order to frustrate any publishers who might be toying with the idea of actually acknowledging one of my books, thereby making me rich and famous.

No, a tweep is a person who has an account at Twitter, that other wildly successful social media platform. (Twitter is sharing its success, of course, with facebook, that now-publicly traded company who’s losing money so fast they can’t even afford to buy a capital F.)

Now, there are some Twitter purists who’ll say a tweep is a Twitter message, not a Twitter user. Yes, there really are such purists, and they have long, heated, unimaginably dull debates online, and if you know of anything more wretched than that, please share it with us. (tweet that tweep to @my_peeps #lemming)

I’m a tweep, along with some 150 million other people. And that’s why I brought this up: not long ago, one of those 150 million other tweeps tweeted me, offering to be my ‘life coach’ and, as she put it, help me “get my Zen on!”

Really. That’s really what she said. Get my Zen on.

Get my Zen on? Yikes. That may be the ugliest cultural collision I’ve personally witnessed since that awful day when John Denver started covering Bob Marley tunes.

Get my Zen on. Whoa. Girlfriend’s, like, down in six with my koan and stuff, and awareness is in the house, home tweepies. Satori, fuh shizzle. (To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I just said there, so if I insulted you, please forgive me and blame George Bush.)

My very own life coach. Because I have the utmost respect for all these “Let me help you with your self-help” entrepreneurs, I’ll call her Aura Babe. In her tweep and at her website, Aura Babe wants you to know that she is an Internationally Certified Visual Coach. (I don’t know where she got her International Certification, but I’m guessing Photoshop was involved.) Aura Babe assures me that there are only a very few ICVCs in the whole world, and I would go beyond calling that a mere fact – I would call that a blessing. (I don’t know how the relevant authorities manage the globally available pool of Visual coaches, but I’m guessing a statute of limitations is involved.)

And what, as you probably would never think to ask if you lived to be 130, is Visual Coaching anyway? Well, ‘visual coaching’ is an acquired skill that, according to Aura Babe, involves coaching visually (I’m not good enough to make this stuff up). In fact, Aura Babe has even coined a phrase for her technique: Meditation and Manifestation with Markers.

As her website states, by using the time-honored M&M/M techniques, you will learn to focus your attention – for brief periods of time – just by doodling with colored markers! Isn’t that amazing? Aura Babe really puts the “magic” in “magic marker,” eh?

(You and I, at one point in our lives, would’ve called this “coloring.” And afterwards, we would each be handed half a graham cracker, and then – Nap Time.)

The site’s FAQ page explains that “Image coaching” lets you discover “images” that “speak” to you so you can tell your “story.” We would like the FAQ page to know that all that cute “use” of quotes is very “irritating.”

See, Aura Babe knows that 86% of us learn visually. Or maybe she doesn’t know; on another page, she says 65% of us learn visually. (I wonder if Aura Babe knows that 100% of us proofread 100% visually, although proofing won’t “stop” anybody from making up “goofy” phrases like “get your Zen on.”)

But when one chooses to surrender oneself to the ministrations of an Internationally Certified Visual Coach, why, successfully donning one’s Zen is just the beginning.

Once you’re in the capable hands of Aura Babe:

You can unleash your moxie.
You can stand in your sacred self’s tallness.
You can experience deep connection without having to care for anyone else (exactly what you’re connecting to, I don’t even want to guess)
You can up-level your mindset.
You can quiet your Inner Critic, not to mention your Itty Bitty Doubting Committee.
Instead of cowing to the Bitty Committee, you can tune in to your Inner Whisper.
You can become an active co-creator of your own life (I’m not sure how that works, but don’t listen to me – most of my Zen’s still at the dry cleaners).
You can brainstorm ways to monetize your passion. (This … again, depending on your jurisdiction … is called prostitution.)

And don’t think for a minute that you’re not capable of being all you can be. Splattered across the website are motivational soul-warmers like this: You got moxie up the wazoo!

On the other hand, there’s this online warning:

IMPORTANT: This Retreat is NOT for everyone! If you are opposed to the law of attraction, healing energies, and other “woo-woo” concepts, this probably won’t be a fit for you!

Woo-woo concepts. Because sometimes, a single woo concept is just not enough.

The cost? Bah! Here at the Co-Creator Fun Park and Crayon Self-Expression Sanctuary, there are no costs; there are only investments. The introductory session is a paltry $99, or $75, depending on the page you visit. So hang on – if this lady keeps building web pages, soon this whole weekend’ll be free.

But no worries! If things just don’t work out for you and your moxie’s woo-woo, Aura Babe says refunds are “easy peasy!”

Hmm. I don’t know about you, but I’m just not comfortable putting my tall moxie in the co-self-creating hands of some toothy peasant-skirted bimbo whose financial strategies include marginal mathematics like “easy peasy.”

The Visual Coaching sessions are usually done in “one-one-one” settings, which either means Aura Babe is too busy being intuitive and non-Itty Bitty to bother with proofreading, or it means there’ll be something going on that involves three people, and I personally don’t care to be quite that intuitive.

Aura Babe coaches professional coaches, too, and promises to teach them the ability to earn more while doing less. This, she says, is a spiritual law of success. Coincidentally, it is also a good working definition of “civil service.”

And speaking of slipshod work and no accountability whatsoever, Aura Babe points out that she loves to “do in person workshops!” So if you’re a person workshop, you better sleep with one eye open! Somewhere out there is a woo-woo moxie uplifter looking to do you in.

And finally…

Note to Aura Babe: Your web pages have several “Page Not Found” problems, so check your website’s links, and do it often. It’s not easy peasy, but abandoning a person’s pre-uplifted moxie in a dark, navigational dead end is not conducive to visually monetizing one’s wazoo.

Fuh shizzle.

That Darn Joe!

(He’s wild! He’s wacky! He’s one heartbeat away from our nuclear codes!)

Okay, this week, let’s start with a joke:

Joe Biden.

[rim shot]

Yeah, you’re right. That’s not entirely fair. Let’s add a little context:

Joe Biden spoke.

[rim shot]

Get ready for it, citizens: Joe Biden, the unchallenged champ of “he said WHAT?” is back for an all-new round of speech spasms. True, “Boo-Boo” Biden’s always been hovering in the wings, forever floating about the perimeter, keeping a kettle of klutz simmering on the stove. But now that it’s re-election season, Joe and his patented Random Gaffe Generator will be all over the place; that is, unless he goes totally off the reservation and his party’s puppet-masters decide to “seal his records.”

Some beltway insiders are conjecturing that if Joe Biden doesn’t mind his mouth and curtail that urge to ad lib, his next job might be as a Lake Michigan reef.

[rim shot]

Yes, now that the 2012 Olympics have wrapped, Americans are awash in that other grueling, obsessive, every-four-year competition: upgrading our iPhones.

I’m kidding, of course. I’m talking about a different circus that’s come to town – that three-ring rubber-room insanity known as presidential politics. As if the faked, not-really-live, live Olympic coverage wasn’t bad enough (and it was), we now have to put up with parties, platforms, promises, position papers, polls, policies, pandering, pundits and politicians.

Politicians…that unpredictable subclass of upright mammals (well, usually) equipped with a special set of gifts:

Teeth so bright they require their own sunglasses
Hair that could double as a South Florida hurricane shelter
The uncanny ability to simultaneously shake your hand, pat your child’s head, wave at donors, and extract your wallet, with only two arms (well, usually), and do it all while smiling, spending money, and promising not to spend money

And now you and I are being force-fed a bottomless broth of political coverage-slash-cheerleading-slash-analysis-slash-opinion, unless, sometime just after the last election, you took the clever, preemptive action of cutting off your head. Even then, though, you’re probably not safe – some zealous TV pundit would still find you, tap out the most recent poll results on your chest cavity, and ask you for a donation.

(Yes, I know. You cut off your head. You don’t have ears to ask. They don’t care.)

Look, here’s some professional advice, and I’ll be honest (grab the honesty while you can – if our topic is politics, we won’t be seeing much of that). If you ever decide to write a humor column, politics is the easiest possible topic. Also, politics is the hardest possible topic. (Yes, I know. A lot of my professional advice is like that.)

Writing about politics is hard, because no matter what you write, you’ve immediately alienated half the country. It’s like picking sides in a family argument, or saying you like Batman more than Superman, or eating at Chick-fil-A.

On the other hand, writing about politics is easy, thanks to the huge, endlessly-renewable pool of material.

Which brings us back to our unrestrained friend, Joe Biden, the Incredible Shrinking Asset.

Now, to be fair, Joe’s hardly the only politician who regularly chews on his own feet. It’s just that he won’t shut up long enough for us to go write about anybody else.

For example, when Mitt Romney announced Congressman Paul Ryan as his Vice Presidential pick, Romney goofed and introduced Ryan as “the next President of the United States.”

History was made today on the political front, when GOP candidate Mitt Romney, who kills women and is not a real Christian (or even worse, is) announced his running mate: Paul Ryan, a congenial Wisconsinite who likes fishing, camping, and pushing grandmothers off cliffs. For the first time in history, a Party has simultaneously nominated two misogynistic murderers for the White House!

[rim shot]

True, Barack Obama made the exact same mistake some 4 years ago, introducing Joe Biden as “the next President of the United States.” The difference is, when Obama announced that Biden was President, the entire state of Virginia committed suicide.

And then, not to be outdone, Joe Biden hopped on stage and referred to his running mate as “Barack America.”

It’s a gift. Boo-Boo’s in a class of his own.

Today, at a presser in Topeka, North Virginia, Joe Biden unveiled his own health care plan for Seniors. But then he dropped it. Aides say it was hours before they got the smell of Chivas out of the carpet.

[rim shot]

In fact, during one recent speech, Biden went so blank that people thought he was a tobacco executive. Joe forgot who his opponent was (he called him “Governor” Ryan). He forgot what state he was in (Virginia). He even forgot what century he was in (this one).

Today, at a campaign rally in Bangor, Kentucky, Joe Biden challenged the foreign policy credentials of his opponent, Monsignor Meg Ryan. Then Joe wowed the crowd with a rousing rendition of the Prince classic, “We’re gonna party like it’s 1899.”

[rim shot]

And Boo-Boo doesn’t just go blank; he goes blankety-blank, too. Joe’s shell-shocked handlers lightheartedly refer to his azure vocabulary as having “a firm commitment to adjective equality.” You or I would call it “swearing like Joe Pesci channeling Chris Rock at a Quentin Tarantino audition.”

The upcoming televised debate between Biden and Ryan may be the first debate in history to require an FCC-mandated five-second delay.

Paul Ryan, by the way, was selected as Romney’s running mate some sixteen days before the Republican’s national convention. Those that watch such things say it was an unusually early pick, a history-changing statistic if ever there was one, and I wanted to share that with you in case you’re not unconscious yet.

The political junkies rushed to point out that it was the earliest a Veep pick has ever been Veep-picked, except for the 2004 election, when John Kerry inexplicably tapped John Edwards, that well-groomed testament to testosterone. (The Edwards pick may have been rushed by necessity, since Kerry had to catch him in-between hair appointments and heir appointments.)

And while we’re on the subject of oddly-shaped heads, let’s give a nod to Nancy Pelosi, that strangely grinning, seemingly eternal Congressional fixture who now claims that the ghost of Susan B. Anthony speaks to her in the White House. That may or may not be true, but it’s still no excuse for a grown woman to walk around Washington with coins sticking out of her ears, especially a woman who walks like some sorority pledge prank victim whose pantsuit legs were sewn together at the knees. Basically, Nancy’s a cross between Kathy Bates in “Misery,” Lucy Ricardo off her medication, and the Tasmanian Devil on crack.

Nancy’s no longer a threat to become an Oval Office occupant, but not that long ago, she was third in line to be President, and the fact that Nostradamus never saw that coming is why I don’t own any ‘Nostradamus Rules’ t-shirts.

One final note about Boo-Boo: in 2008, Biden himself got the Veep nod from Obama only two days before the convention, possibly because Joe was hunkered down at his home in Memphis, Delaware, reading a comic book about the War of 1712 and watching the CBS news magazine “90 Minutes” with his wife, June Bidet.

Today, during an unplanned visit to Chicago, Vice President Joe Biden announced that he was withdrawing from the election campaign, due to experiencing a severe case of natural causes after running backwards at high speed into several dozen bullets. Biden referred to Taking the Big Dirt Nap as a “temporary setback” – after all, he can still vote and, as everybody knows, nobody messes with Joe.

[rim shot]

Olympic Segue XXX

(And so it ends, except it never ends)

If you heard a huge crash this week, don’t worry about it. It happens every four years, and it just happened again. That loud noise you heard was just the sound of a head-on collision as NBC’s waning coverage of the 2012 Olympics ran smack into NBC’s waxing coverage of the 2012 Elections, just prior to NBC’s pending coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics.

No bystanders were injured in the collision; fortunately, dozens of colored pie charts were killed.

Those sneaky Greeks and their sneaky every-four-year’s games. Did they do this to us on purpose? Way back when, while they were thoughtlessly designing Olympic Games instead of going through Socrates’ medicine cabinet and clearly marking the “poison” vials, do you think they knew? Did they foresee that, centuries later and continents away, another democracy would design every-four-year Presidential elections … and then, like calendar masochists, schedule everything to happen during the same year?

In 776 BC, ancient naked people participated in the very first Olympic festival, which, according to the internet, was invented by Al Gore. The games were created to honor the gods and godettes that inhabited Mount Olympus, which, according to MSNBC, was invented by Barack Obama. Those original games were also covered by NBC, back when they were still a tiny start-up called NBG (Naked Broadcasting Guy). And, like our current Olympics, NBC had to deal with a bit of a time delay, while everybody sat around waiting for the famous emperor, Sid Caesar, to get born and invent the Orange Julius Calendar.

The first-ever ancient Olympics didn’t go very well, due to the first-ever wardrobe malfunction. (you didn’t really think all those Greek athletes were naked on purpose, do you?) But the second Olympic Games (Olympiad Deux) were rescued, thanks to the intervention of one Mittus Romnius, a self-starter from the outlying province of Mormos; a man who, like politicians, then and now, had a gift for managing armed naked guys. Contemporaries of Romnius called him a classic entrepreneur, which was a high compliment, given that nobody in BC had invented that word yet. Romnius also invented wind-proof hair.

Historical Sidebar: Generally speaking, that Mount Olympus crowd were just a bunch of loud, vindictive, pouty, pampered whiners, with access to insane amounts of power coupled with zero amounts of accountability. (In other words, they were the BC version of the US Congress.) However, the Olympians did possess one enviable characteristic: they were completely fictitious, which is a delicious concept indeed, especially when you consider the US Congress.

If you watched the tail end of NBC’s 2012 Olympics coverage, it was easy to tell that the Games were wrapping up, because NBC’s crew were desperately scrabbling for airtime filler that they could shove in-between the few remaining, less-popular events. NBC producers were frantically slapping together James Bond retrospectives, re-scoring World War II mini-documentaries, or analyzing the deep-set theatrical motivations underlying some of the character choices made by Benny Hill and Mr. Bean.

At one point, NBC went so far as to provide live coverage of Tom Brokaw making anagrams from British-y words, like Parliament, Lord Mountbatten-Smythe, and body English.

But all that remained for NBC, Olympic-wise, was to cover those “niche” sports that don’t require stadiums (or, to use the classical Greek plural for stadiums, angora).

And these last-day add-on sports are just not in the same popularity class as those timeless, “classic” Olympian crowd-swellers like track & field, swimming, soccer, and Mob Syndicate Badminton Wagering. No, these are the odd cousins; the red-headed step-sports. These are those back-page-of-the-program events that somehow, over the years, managed to sneak their way on to the Olympic schedule next to the “serious” athletic challenges, like running with a little stick, jumping over a high stick, and throwing a pointy stick. You know the ones:

Solo Rhythmic Gymnastics: This sport usually features a tiny female from a country named Belalugosia, dressed like one of the background singers at an Elton John concert, and sporting enough mascara to forge a fake visa for Tammy Faye Bakker. For three minutes or so, she repeatedly dislocates all of her joints, on demand, while waving a long pastel-colored streamer. After she completes her routine, she hops up and down, the mascara waves madly at the audience, and then both collapse into racking sobs. As one might.
Team Rhythmic Gymnastics: Here, we introduce Sir Elton’s full “Rocket Man” chorus, and add hula hoops. For the allotted time, the participants rhythmically gymnasticate in such perfect synchronicity that you would swear they’re computer-generated Belalugosians. And they do it all in time to abnormally unusual music. (I don’t know who selects this music; let’s just say that I wouldn’t want to see that person standing outside my window in a fading twilight.) And then sometimes, just to make a change, the gymnasts will lob what look like giant red Q-tips at the ceiling. As one might.
Full-Contact Speed Monopoly: Actually, I made this one up. But given some of the other stuff going on in the modern Olympics, I had to tell you I made it up, didn’t I?
Dressage: Here’s one that doesn’t even require an athlete at all. Now, I’m not saying horse riding has no value, in the grand scheme of things. I just don’t grasp the Olympic athletic value of watching horses jump over fake fences while being ridden by perky pony-tailed Posture Pals dressed like Cracker Barrel gift shop lawn jockeys.

But all weird things must come to an end – even Hunter Thompson-level weird things, like a major television network trying to pretend, in prime time, that its reruns of the Olympic Games aren’t reruns of the Olympic Games.

And so, now, NBC News must prepare to fly home, switch theme songs, huddle with their counterparts at MSNBC, and gear up for their analysis of the 2012 Presidential Election (quickly, though, before the 2014 Winter Games!)

Are they up to the task of covering a Presidential election with respect, with intelligence, and without pointy sticks? I’ll leave you with this defining Olympic moment, and let you be the judge.

In what is sure to secure them a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism, those hard news hawks at NBC broke this momentous sports story in the closing days of the 2012 Games: 16% of Olympic gold medal winners cry during the presentation of their medals. NBC analysts were also able to confirm that British athletes are the most likely to tear up, while athletes from China cry less than any other.

Ooh. Take that, Woodward and Bernstein.

Chariots of Ire

(How yogurt and naked badminton killed the ancient Olympics)

Did you watch the Olympics? You did? How? Every time I tuned in, somebody was trying to sell me underwear.

Or a President.

As you probably know already, the NBC television network bought the rights to cover the Thirtieth Olympiad which, according to NBC’s overworked fact-checking department, is being held in London, the capital of Ontario, California. And according to our fact-checking department (the internet), NBC has officially raked in over $1 billion in advertising sales for this year’s Olympics.

NBC has taken an interesting approach to covering the games live from London, which is five hours ahead of New York, 8 hours ahead of LA, and 3,000 years ahead of Detroit, the capital of Iran. All during the day, NBC brought us live coverage of commercials; then in the evenings, during prime time, NBC ran reruns of commercials, peppered with batches of live commercials.

And in-between the daytime and nighttime Olympic coverage, NBC’s endlessly-grinning adjective wranglers provided Olympic updates, after warning us that they were providing Olympic updates. These news professionals would actually look into the camera and tell people, “Okay, if you don’t wanna know who won, turn your head! Don’t look, okay? Ready? Are you sure?”

I’ve never seen anything like it, except from much shorter people who were wearing shorts and eating a candy necklace.

Leading the pack this year in Olympic commercial buys were some commercial buyers you might not have expected. Sure, there were the ubiquitous spots for sports equipment, power drinks, and personal injury lawyers. But vying for the Gold Medal in “most Olympic advertising dollars” were these strange bedfellows:

1)      Chobani yogurt

2)      Fruit of the Loom

3)      Barack Obama

“Huh? What?” you may be saying, and with a rich vocabulary like that, you’re well on your way to a career with MSNBC. But it’s true – the current occupant of the White House was in a spending war – with an underwear factory. Of course, it’s not an entirely level playing field: Fruit of the Loom has to buy ad time with their own money. And Obama has a kind of home-field advantage, too – according to MSNBC, he actually descended from Mount Olympus.

Michelle “The First Michelle” Obama just happened to be vacationing in London, too, though I suppose that might’ve been pure coincidence. Maybe she just flew across the Atlantic Ocean to show her support for Fruit of the Loom, or to try and outlaw some English food. But while in London, The First Michelle was interviewed by one of NBC’s resident enamel flashers, and in keeping with NBC’s coverage of this White House, it was utterly unbiased, probing, and intense.

NBC: Did your brilliant husband say anything inspiring yet today?

TFM: Yes.

NBC: How brilliant is your gorgeous husband?

TFM: Several.

NBC: May I kiss this photo of your miraculous husband?

TFM: Make it snappy.

But even when the peahen network did manage to slip a little Olympic coverage into their Olympic coverage, it came off more like some kind of internal competition for Cutest Commentator:

~-~-~-~-~-~

Bod: Good evening, everybody. My name is Bod Costco, and on behalf of NBC, may I welcome you to the 2012 Olympic Games, here in beautiful Athens, the capital of Ontario. We’ll be right back.

[Commercial segment that runs longer than CERN's atomic clock]

Bod: Welcome back! I’m Bod Costco. Over the next several weeks, I’ll be staring at you with my highly rated, non-threatening wide-eyed expression. Isn’t that right, Tweety?

Tweety: That’s right, Bod! Hi, everybody! I’m the perky and non-threatening Tweety Shallot, and here we are again at the Beijing Olympics! Yes, the Olympics, that magical time when the world comes together so Americans can make fun of other athletes’ names! But since we paid obscene amounts of money to be here in the Scottish capital, let’s get right to our commercials!

[Commercial segment that lasts longer than Israel's captivity in Babylon (the capital of Norway)]

Tweety: Welcome back, everybody! Tweety Shallot here, one of several dozen vapid, grinning Journalism majors hired by NBC, based entirely on our outstanding dental work! Over to you, Chaz Charles!

Chaz: Thanks, Tweety Shallot! I’d like to welcome everybody to London, the capital of Wales. I’m Chaz Charles, here with your Olympic weather! But first, these words from our sponsors.

[Commercial segment that takes longer than a phone call for computer software support, if the support center was being run by the DMV, who outsourced it to a US Post Office facility in New Delhi, Ontario]

Bod: That’s our show. Good night, America!

[Cue extremely lame electronic keyboard arrangement of the theme from Chariots of Fire]

~-~-~-~-~-~

In any case, here are a few Olympic moments, as I recall them, except for the ones I just made up, as if I were NBC’s fact-finding department. But bear with me. Given the time zone issues, the language issues, and all the interruptions while I ran to the store to buy more underwear, or yogurt, my Olympian observations may be a bit confused.

~-~-~-~-~-~

In the very first medal competition of Olympiad XXX, the nation of China (aka Bank of America) won … hang on to something … the coveted women’s air rifle competition. I know, I know. I’m crushed, too. Now, you be strong, okay? Call a friend for support if you have to. There’s always the 2016 Games. Don’t let this destroy you.
Unfortunately for NBC, however, after that breathless thriller, 90% of NBC’s worldwide viewing audience switched channels and went back to watching “Dancing with the Real Housewives of the Jersey Shore Network Stars at the Osmond Family Feud Reunion Special, starring Justin Bieber as Betty White.”
Ann Romney’s horse, Rafalca, was slated for dressage competition in the Olympic Games, but sources say the animal was a bit out of sorts after having to ride all the way to England on top of the plane.
Tragedy struck Team USA when swim team member Carrie Nano, a teenager from Topanga Canyon, electrocuted herself while texting during the 400 meter freestyle.
Of course, it almost goes without saying that Michael Phelps won another handful of medals. It won’t surprise me at all if, one day, we see headlines like this: Dateline 2060 AD – pseudo-human avatars at the Virtual Olympics went wild as 75-year-old swimming legend Michael Phelps claimed his 54th Medal, after coming in first and third in the Physical Therapy Knee Extension Pool 3-meter dash.
In case you missed it, there was a badminton scandal, and that’s the first time in all of human history that those two words have ever been used in the same sentence.
I watched lots of women’s beach volleyball (of course, I only watch it for all the well-written articles). I was never sure which team was from where but, based on the uniforms, I’m thinking it was usually Sherwin Williams versus Abercrombie & Fitch.
On the other hand, watching men’s water polo proved to be a bit distracting, since all the guys in the pool were wearing some kind of Nathaniel Hawthorne-ish wimples on their heads. They all looked like half-naked mutant Puritan chambermaids.
In tennis, women’s singles, the legendary Serena Williams and her bionic serve slaughtered a Russian opponent to win the Gold. After the match, three battered, semi-conscious tennis balls filed charges of cruel and unusual punishment.
A swimming medalist from China denied all charges of “doping,” despite being observed at the mouth of the Thames eating krill. After the race, she protested the allegations by sitting at the bottom of the pool for three days.
A sprinter from the diminutive Marshall Islands raced in front of an Olympic crowd larger than the entire population of his home country! Coincidentally, aging pop star Madonna, following her doctor’s advice to cut back, announced that she’s dating the Marshall Islands.
Team USA won a water polo qualifier against Montenegro. I didn’t know Montenegro was a country; I thought it was a sandwich.
For the first time ever, the tiny island republic of Palau was represented at the Olympics. Upon learning that a citizen had left the island nation, Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson started yelling something about the island getting all unbalanced and ultimately tipping over. Johnson was immediately whisked away for observation, and was then re-elected.
Mitt and Ann Romney went home empty-handed (Ann’s horse placed thirteenth), but political pundits say the horse is likely to pick up all of Ohio’s electoral votes.
Of course, there were moments of pure athletic brilliance. I watched a young female Brazilian gymnast perform the most amazing combinations of flips I’ve ever seen. Had I attempted jumps and landings like that, there’d be nothing left of me but a big pile of “tate” issues – prostate and testate.
Michael Phelps make some interesting international news, too, when he got a job offer to be the entire Montenegro navy.
And as if the Badminton Mafia story wasn’t enough, there was more shameful news as three teams from former Soviet republics were caught taking a dive – cameras caught them trying to throw a game, in the fiercely competitive Rock/Paper/Scissors semi-finals, by illegally changing their vote to ‘paper.’

~-~-~-~-~-~

So there’s our peek into the XXX Games. We’ll see you four years from now, at the games in Rio de Ontario (the capital of Manila). Until then, good night, thanks for watching, and don’t forget to eat lots of Greek yogurt in your underwear!

Love Me (Chicken) Tender

(Why you should wait an hour after eating before you read the news)

This week, while you and I went about our normal routines of apologizing for working hard and being successful, the world was busily attending to its own mission: to be even more silly than last week.

And, as usual, the world found a way – as documented by a bevy of bizarre, media mania-fed events, like accusations of dead pets voting, the story of a Nigerian guy who got gang-wifed, and the transgendered breakfast wrap boycott at Taco Bell.

I made that up, of course. Nobody’s boycotting anybody’s breakfast just because of the sexual orientation of a tortilla. That would just be silly.

Wouldn’t it.

But America was prepared to go even sillier than that. So let’s set the week’s mood:

This week in London, the 2012 Olympic Games began with Team Australia getting lost on its way from the airport, which was not all that surprising, given that NBC News confused Australia with Austria. Next, there was an uncomfortable national flag mix-up between those madcap neighbors, North Korea and South Korea, the Hatfields & McCoys of the Pacific Rim. And America’s athletes were seen parading around in some bizarre, one-world fashion combo of Catholic school uniforms, Continental Airlines flight attendant scarves, and French berets, all made in China.

In exurban Denver, a guy put on a costume and shot seventy people, was arrested, showed up in court with orange spray-painted hair, ignored his lawyer, sat in the jury box, and then dozed off. So local authorities are watching him closely for signs of…ahem…abnormal behavior. Apparently, it takes quite a bit to be considered abnormal in Colorado. Maybe it’s the altitude. After all, where I live, some people think I’ve a loose screw just because I believe the universe was created.

Elsewhere, a non-profit group in Virginia was being questioned for sending out voter registration teasers to dead people and pets, actor Steven Seagal was being sued over the death of a pet dog, and US President Barack Obama said he ate a dog.

That’s how bizarre this week has been. You do realize, don’t you – I’m several paragraphs in to this, and I haven’t had to make anything up yet.

Okay, I did make up the part about the Continental Airlines scarves. Scarves are no longer allowed on planes that weigh more than 12 ounces.

But the absolute cherry on this week’s Cake of Kooky has been the fried chicken firestorm about Chick-fil-A: a sprawling story of hate, intolerance, and heterosexual chicken biscuits.

Here’s the back story, in a nutshell: in an interview with Dan Cathy, the calm, sane CEO of the wildly-successful Chick-fil-A food chain, Cathy expressed his personal opinion in favor of traditional marriage. Then he shut up and went home.

And so, of course, since the gentleman had hurt absolutely no one by stating his personal opinion, he and his entire enterprise were immediately pilloried by protesting crowds of non-traditional-marriage advocates, armed with posters, magic markers, and terry-cloth chicken suits.

And now, all that “Be tolerant or I’ll hate you” tolerance threatens to derail one man’s entrepreneurial dream, a simple, timeless dream shared by so many of us: the opportunity to sell a piece of chicken and, with any luck, tick off Rahm Emanuel.

And so, here, presented in no particular disorder, is a list of news stories. Some of them aren’t entirely true. But that’s your only clue.

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The Mayor of Boston has accused Chick-fil-A of serving heterosexual fried chicken, non-union waffle fries, and cage-raised buns. (According to an unsubstantiated rumor, the buns may also be hot, or cross, or both.)

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To protest a restaurant executive having a personal opinion, some activists are planning to hold what they’re calling a same-sex kiss-in.

In a repulsive counter-offensive, supporters of the restaurant have collectively threatened to buy a chicken biscuit.

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Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel says Chick-fil-A’s values are not “Chicago values,” and is trying to block the restaurant’s commerce options in the Windy City. Chick-fil-A cleared the City Hall hurdles, though, after they arranged to have six pullets murdered, tossed a Treasury Department’s biscuit in Lake Michigan, and pimped out two bags of waffle fries.

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According to a press release, action actor Steven Seagal has purchased a new facial expression. Seagal, who is also a producer, guitarist, a reserve deputy sheriff, and an incredibly bad standup comic, reportedly bought the expression from Al Gore, who had several expressions still in their original packaging. The purchase now gives Seagal a range of three expressions: stoic anger, pensive hesitation, and that feeling you get when you bite into a bad oyster.

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The Chick-fil-A controversy continued to heat up today, and is now spilling over into other franchises. Al Sharpton has accused Colonel Sanders of being an antebellum racist, citing an encrypted lyric allegedly uncovered while listening to several bluegrass albums played backwards. Sharpton also pointed out that the Colonel wears white suits. (And we would like to point out that if the Reverend ever has a sanity hearing, he should try to have it in Colorado, if you catch our drift.)

Upon hearing that the franchise’s spokesman is a Colonel, Ron Paul demanded that we get all our troops out of Kentucky.

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New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg has shared his two cents on the Chick-Fil-A phobia-fest, stating that it would be unfair to penalize a business simply because its CEO supports primitive mating rituals, like traditional marriage, or fidelity.

However, continued Bloomberg, guests who wish to make a toast at traditional wedding receptions in New York must use wineglasses no larger than 12 ounces, and the city will no longer allow brides to be “biggie sized.”

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In response to the anti-chicken protests, a conservative group, the One-Rooster-One-Hen Coalition, has demanded that cable TV providers immediately discontinue all Hanna-Barbera cartoons. The demands came after the offended activists learned that Fred Flintstone was allegedly having a gay old time.

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Due to the poor economy, gas prices, record drought, and rises in associated costs, restaurants whose recipes use meat saw their stock prices plummet. Taco Bell stock soared.

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Today in Arizona, a Chick-fil-A was picketed by a group of transgendered illegal alien cows wearing misspelled sandwich boards. When things got out of hand, Sheriff Joe Arpaio wheeled in and arrested six Catholic nuggets.

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A splinter group calling themselves the Liberal Activists for Moronic Ennui (LAME) has sued the chicken wings giant, Hooters, demanding that the popular bar & grill only offer left wings.

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Yesterday, Roseanne Barr may have expressed her opinion on the Chick-fil-A story. Or maybe she didn’t. Nobody cares about Roseanne Barr.

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In an anti-marriage editorial, Alternative Lifestyle advocates pointed to a “cautionary tale” from Africa, in which a Nigerian man was allegedly forced to have sex with all six of his wives, a dubious household chore which allegedly killed the man. Friends enviously recalled a consistently chipper fellow who, in-between constantly conjugating verbs (among other things), was regularly required to not mow the lawn or fix the sink, forced to lie on the sofa all day and eat slice after slice of delivery pizza while not wearing any pants, and made to watch hour after hour of televised football.

In related news, politicos were quick to point that Mitt Romney’s grandfather had had twelve wives. This may or may not have any bearing on candidate Romney’s qualifications for public office, but I think we can all agree that it makes Grandpa a masochist.

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Supporters of Chick-fil-A suffered a major setback today when animation legend Foghorn Leghorn was outed by Yogi Bear, who admitted to being ‘on the rebound’ after a messy breakup with someone known only as Mr. Ranger Sir. The pronouncement came during an impromptu pic-a-nic lunch with Yogi, who wore a tasteful porkpie hat but no pants. The imaginary rooster’s bold statement was considered a victory, not only for chicken pride, but for domesticated and feral partners in trans-species relationships everywhere.

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So there it is. That’s the kind of week we’ve had here in America, where all menus are created equal, and every citizen has an inalienable right to lifestyle, puberty and the pursuit of moderately-sized soft drinks.

And in case you were wondering what our government’s been up to during all this controversy, here’s a final food-related story:

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A recent edition of the USDA’s employee newsletter is promoting, among other things, something they call “Meatless Monday.” Apparently, though, USDA management have a seriously low level of confidence in the cognitive skills of their employees, because in the sentence just after the Meatless Monday announcement, the USDA felt the need to clarify that the effort “encourages people not eat meat on Mondays.”

So what we have here are civil servants that can’t grasp a complex phrase like “Meatless Monday.” Maybe they can attend a taxpayer-funded seminar in Vegas or something. Imagine that class:

Instructor: “In other words, on the day after Sunday, you should eat things that aren’t cow-shaped.”

Tenured USDA Drone: “Is this gonna be on the test?”