credit: / juL /

Why do Americans get so angry about politics? It doesn’t seem like many people even know what is happening.

-Someone who wants to be anonymous

First, do you know what truculence is? It is aggressive self-assurance, belligerence, a kind of bravado that falls, ultimately, on an arbitrary distinction. Dem vs. Rep; red vs. blue; us vs. them; seriously just a big waste of time, right?

I don’t have political opinions. I have political convictions. I believe that every citizens responsibility is to forward the candidate that they feel will makes the most intelligent decisions for the future of the country. The future is the most important consideration in choosing a leader. Any nation that walks forward while staring backwards is doomed to stumble.

Americans believe in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, supposedly, they scream about it, sing about it, and fight about it. But, for some still unknown reason many of them only believe they as individuals are entitled to these things. That is a problem.

I think the greatest anger comes from people who have not taken the time to observe the world around them. The United States are at a cross-roads; they need to stop dreaming about the myth of utopia and address the world as it exists today. A long period of prosperity has made many people myopic. It is sad that recent history has stranded many people that were once fruitful, but hobbling the nation to buy a few years will only hurt us in the long run.

True Americans are looking into the future — accepting that what is good for the nation is good for them. Some people had the good fortune to live in a time where they could be selfish assholes, but that is over. The time for truculence is over. True Americans will buckle down into modesty; into building the future; into the pursuit of simple happiness. To truly love your country means accepting that the pursuit of happiness does not mean tomorrow.

I know that doesn’t really answer the question. Let me try again. When it comes right down to it Americans are smelly ill-mannered, jock-straps. No, thats not right either. Americans are pointlessly angry because too few of them ask several important questions:

1. How does the United States drive its economy?
2. How do I guarantee that we continue to grow?
3. How do I pass prosperity to the next generation?
4. Is it appropriate to limit others in a way that I would not want to be limited myself?

Ultimately, the best thing that anyone can do is ask a lot of questions about their country and ask lots of questions of their friends. Familial connection to a party is rather silly, because modern American political parties (Democrat & Republican) are conveluted at best.

Ask lots of questions about your society, please.

Overheard: Why aren’t there any monkeys here?

Map of Monkeys:

• Pink = White People
• Orange = New World Monkeys
• Red = Old World Monkeys

You will notice that there is a suspicious lack of monkeys in the high White People areas. I endeavor to answer why.

I went out into the Interweb to find pictures of how monkeys react to various people and substances.

Monkey + Monkey = Fist-Fight

Monkeys, like sorority girls, will start wresting if you throw them in a pool.

Monkey + brown kid = Hugging

Obviously these two had some issues but the monkey at least looks happy. Apparently monkeys make bad baby sitters. They also make bad role models; unless your biggest goal in life is to live someplace warm and sunny while you eat fruit all day. On second thought that sounds nice if you throw in a drink. Monkeys make great role models.

Monkey + White Person = Biting

See. No one in this picture looks happy. This obviously malnourished simian has resorted to semi-cannibalism to solve his problems.

Monkey + Expensive Sandwich = Death


This monkey was killed by eating an expensive sandwich, #63 from StuffWhitePeopleLike.com.

Monkey + 11 minutes of NPR = Death

Eleven minutes listening to public radio, #44 from SWPL, this monkey fell off a porch. Even more proof that monkeys might not like White People.

Monkey + Booze = Hilarious

Wait. That looks like a Zima. And this monkey is still alive and relatively happy. I am going to ask Official Zima Monkey and Certified White Person Martin Bowling why he thinks that monkeys and White People don’t live in the same places:

You know I too wonder about the Caucasian to monkey ratio. Maybe cause we’re such assholes?

So there you have it the only thing that White People and Monkeys agree on is Zima.

No monkeys were harmed in the making of this blog.

If you like this post you should take part in my newest project: Take Part in Art!

What the fuck is “fire eagle”? what is it good for? why did i bookmark it? why did i sign up?

- Chris

FireEagle is Yahoo!’s version of DodgeBall. You remember DodgeBall, right? No, you don’t remember DodgeBall? Well it was an early entry to social media that came out in like 2005. Basically you text your location and it tells everyone you know with it a certain radius where you are.

Essentially it is cyber-stalking meets microblogging meets fail concept from 3 years ago. Why you signed up is anybody’s guess. Maybe you liked DodgeBall but hate the fact that it is owned by The Google.

The only thing I think of it being useful for is mass texting your friends to let them knoe that you are lonely and drinking in their neighborhood.

Why can’t you get a tossed chef salad? Pile of lettuce, pile of ham, pile of turkey, couple eggs. Can’t they mix it up?

- Ginny

First  bit of history care of Epicurious;

Though nobody has ever stepped forward to claim the title of the chef in “chef’s salad,” the dish has been attributed by some food historians to Louis Diat, chef of The Ritz-Carlton in New York City in the early 1940s. He paired watercress with halved hard-boiled eggs and julienne strips of smoked tongue, ham, and chicken. (The concept of the chef’s salad dates still earlier; one seventeenth-century English recipe for a “grand sallet” calls for lettuce, roast meat, and a slew of vegetables and fruits.)

Yes, Ginny, one can physically toss a Chef’s Salad but it gets messy. Also there was an agreement made in 1978 that strictly what types of salads that may be tossed. On a more serious note you should be careful who you ask to toss a chef’s salad; it could end badly.

What will be the approximate top ten “sexy ___________” costumes for women, 2008?

- Casey

1. Patent Attorney
2. Non-French Maid
3. Sanitation Engineer
4. Paperboy
5. Sitcom Writer
6. Walrus
7. Certified Public Accountant
8. Large Hadron Collider Mechanic
9. Cat
10. Lumberjack

credit: BrittneyBush

credit: Hello_Serjiy

Is there a god?

- JeremyLuebke (@)

Jeremy, that is a good question. And very hard to answer. Ultimately I think it falls on each of us to make some time to answer the question as an individual. Because it would be unethical, and in some places illegal, for me to get you so high that you touch the unnameable that either is or is not the God that you speak of I must defer to asking opinions.

Fredrick Nitsche: God is Dead <–(links to YouTube Video)

Obviously F-Niche believes there was at one time a God, but alas our repugnant nature turned said God belly up. Which either means yes (but now no), or it was all a social construct. So, Niche leaves it up in the air.

Thomas Aquinas: I can conceive of such a thing that is perfect, and in being perfect it must exist. For existence is more perfect than non-existence so it must be that the thing I conceive is true.

So, I had to paraphrase a bit, but, no real help from Tommy-boy. For a proof it contains far less math than say the Pythagorean Theorem, now that’s a proof. I will turn his statement around a bit: I can conceive of the perfect cake and in being the perfect cake it must exist for “being” is prerequisite to being perfect. the obvious hole in the logic is that I consider “being in my belly” as being prerequisite to being the perfect cake. Hence, the perfect cake does not actually exist; because it is already inside of me.

The same problem hits every individual. Does perfect connote existence? And that is a different bag of worms all together.

Penn Jillette: Believing there is no God means the suffering I’ve seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn’t caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn’t bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.

Penn says no. No, there is no god. We are responsible for all good, all evil, and there is no redemption save reformation & active pennance. The active belief that God is a fallacy allows for open interactions pan-culturally and the increased ability to take responsiblity for our part in the world.

My Mom: What is wrong with you?

My mom brings up a point. Does it really matter? However, I don’t think that was her intention in the statement.

I think that there are people who are comforted by the concept of total subjugation to something that is out of their control and there are people that are comforted by the concept of efficacy. For each of those people the answer is different. Finding an answer to: How do I fit into the Universe beyond what I can see? is something that every person should take the time to do.

Because there is more to Heaven and Earth than is dreamed of in the philosophy of man, Jeremy Luebke.

Here is $5. I don’t know what question to ask.

- John Moroney, from the coffee shop

Thanks for having faith in me. In return, because it has taken so long for you to ask a question, I will say something nice about you:

John is a very funny man. In every sense of the phrase: he is an entertainer, a bartender, and a writer. He makes me laugh most of the time and has a boundless energy. He is a nice guy, but dentist recommend against kissing him because of chipped teeth; not schmaltz content.

Watch his video on dating. It contains marshmallow-bits of truth that will sweeten the milk of your otherwise boring today. Most of his work is NSFW and if you live in Seattle you may recognize him from Zombie Tapioca Lovefest.

Other nice things about John:

• He has made the only Bloody Mary I can stand to smell, let alone drink.
• He is tall.
• He has many talents — including once designing a car, and a chair.
• He has a tendency to just show up in places I like to frequent.
• Umm… I believe he finds the concept of Dentistry Humor funny.
• Oh! He laughs very load when I tell jokes; that’s my favorite quality in anyone.

And that is what is good about John Moroney.

Goodnight, and Good Luck.

30

According to Matt Inman and the good people at OnePlusYou I could win a fair fight against 30 five-year-olds, approximately one first grade class. So that begs the question:

What would it look like for 30 five year olds to attack me?

My meticulous study of video games and monster movies tells me that either a battle will ensue after I am ejected from a car after a high-speed chase into a room where the 5-year olds are feasting on their previous victim or I will get a strange feeling about an empty room seconds before five year olds start pouring in through windows and ventilation shafts. For the sake of this post I will assume the windows and shafts method.

Now that we are all in the room I think it’s going to go down like this:

Because I am a young healthy adult there is no question that I could destroy any given 5-year-old human in a one-on-one competition. For the record I’m going to give them the kind of mercy that they would never show me by stopping when they are unconscious. The major action is going to come when they start acting as packs, or one hive mind, and they will. I have been a camp counselor; I’ve seen the team attack.

credit: Philofoto

On average 5-year-old weigh 40 pounds (18 kg) so I am going to have trouble if I get more than 12 at a time attached to me. To overcome their numeric advantage I need to take advantage of my height and reach by doing a lot wide striking and throwing. In truth I will likely need to get a hold of a smaller one and use them as a bit of a shield when possible.

What most people mistakenly think of lifting the kids off the ground, but that’s a mistake. After half-a-dozen 40 pounders you will find that your endurance is running down. Endurance is the one thing that I will never be able to match them on. If you have ever watched little kids play soccer you know

1. They never get tired
2. They instinctively swarm

Instead doing a lot of running I will need to consolidate their approach by getting a wall of corner to restrict them. The first wave is always a distraction to get your eyes of the real danger, fresh fighters. I need to take advantage of their lack of tactical skill by disrupting their movement. This means strategic force; pushing the first wave under the swarm; using their natural momentum to trample their fighters. The ensuing pile up would allow me to literally step over the more aggressive kids to pick-off the slower ones that don’t get caught in the initial push.

By moving quickly I can use the wall or corner that I was formerly in to pin down most of the kids, simply raining blows down on who ever is on top. Certainly there will be some tenacious brats that claw there way up from the ground, but the pace of fight should be significantly slowed.

I suspect the pile would look like this; only with more shoe prints & crying and kids instead of puppies.

credit: WoofB

Having achieved a thinning of the heard my job is now keeping my pace consistent to make sure they don’t go on the defensive. Their small bodies and low weight makes it much easier for them to maneuver and scale objects. If one or two of them hide I may be in for a protracted battle – and no one wants to recount unconscious children while pondering where the last one is hiding. So, I need to keep the speed up and throw small ones at anyone who tries to run away. Truly this would not be a flashy fight; just dirty brawling and a lot of crying.

credit: pcgn7

Again, based on my study video games the doors will re-open after I have defeated the last one. I will be allowed back into the world of adults where I can have a bourbon and discuss grown-up things with an improbably proportioned woman.

So to boil down the tips for fighting off a swarm of kids:

1. Stay mobile.
2. Use broad swipes, like a bear.
3. Be mean.
4. Never let their cries for mercy cloud your thirst for survival.

credit: berbercarpet

Is there anything you can put on a cake that would make it less appetizing?

-Casey

In the grand illusions that so many of you insist qualifies as Real Life there are a handful of questions that shake one to the core. This is one of those questions: Is there anything you can put on a cake that would make it less appetizing? Cake, like Coffee, is a platonic solid. A thing that is unto itself; neither composite nor fusible.

I know that some of you protest saying that cake contains knowable parts like flour, eggs, and chocolate. But, this is the the child like view of one who has not escaped the rusty chains of mundanity to see that synergistic complexities that create an ambrosial substance like cake. Case-in-point gross frosting does not deter one from the consumption of cake solids they slather.

It takes quite a bit of thought to truly create a foul topping for a cake. Take for example Salmon Paste as a topping that sounds bad, but all you have to do is make a savory lemon and onion cake and it suddenly isn’t bad at all. You could make a sour-cream and chives frosting, that sound horrible, however, if pair that with a potato cake suddenly it seems alright. If you made a potato flavored cake I think you could even put chili on it. So, you see what I mean. Seriously you are hard press to envision a topping that has not application to the proper cake.

However, I do believe it is possible to make an unappetizing cake. A truly inept cook can create a wretched cave-shadow version of Cake that leaves the viewer/taster worse for the experience. Take the tale of one Midwestgrrl:

Let’s see, what went wrong next? Oh yes, the cake. I did everything right for the cake until I folded the flour in. What looked like a beautifully smooth, fluffy batter was actually hiding huge pockets of unmixed flour, which showed up very unattractively in the finished cake. So, the finished consistency of the cake was “rubbery fried egg with flour pockets,” which, let’s face it, is not something you would want to try if you saw it on a menu.

You can also make an unappetizing looking cake:

Kitty Litter Cake

Yes, it looks like kitty litter, but it is actually Germans Spice Cake with vanilla pudding, green cookie crumbles, and Tootsie Rolls. Overall that cake probably tastes fine.

Certainly Casey it is possible to add something to cake that makes it bad, but you have to have either stoic determination or a very loose definition of cake.

During a rousing round of drinks with some Internet friends we addressed the fact that Martin Bowling looks like a gentleman in his Twitter Avatar:

But looks like and Arby’s Sandwich in real life:

When I heard the question that I most dread:

Do you know who you look like?

The answer is a resounding, yes, I do know who I look like. But, there is always a tense moment for me. I have been likened to 3 people in the last 10 years, and depending on your tastes you probably recognize one of them.

Maybe? Why are you looking at me like that?

The first one that I ever heard was Jaye Davidson AKA Ra from the Stargate movie:

I guess a little bit. The problem is that most of the people who made this comparison were not SciFi geeks. They were an entirely different type of person; the kind that know Jaye as the Transexual from the Crying Game:

Back in the 90′s I had long hair. I was also a teenager so I did have that uncomfortably androgynous look that many teens take on. Also I had seen both movies so I wasn’t really taken aback that people wanted to compare.

All of the trouble none of the fun.

The next round of “Hey you look like…” was a little more curious for me, because I totally missed the cultural phenomenon that brought the next look-a-like on to television. While I was wondering around Coasta Rica, Panama and Nicaragua Meadow Soprano was boning some guy named Noah:

His real name is Patrick Tully. One of the first things I did after returning to the States was go to Las Vegas. After 3 months in the jungle I didn’t have much desire to interact with security personnel at major resorts. But every night at least once a security guard the size of a grizzly bear would walk all the way across a bar, pool, or whatever to inquire:

Security Guard: Are you the guy who slept with Meadow on the Sopranos.

Me: No, I am a guy getting drunk at a wedding.

Security Guard: Really? You look just like him.

Me: I don’t think I have slept with her.

I wish it weren’t true

Finally, most recently, and the choice of 5 out of 5 people who had drinks with me at the Blue Moon on Wednesday:

David Cross from Arrested Development and Mr Show. But seriously I don’t see the resemblance. Compare. One of them is David Cross mouse over the picture to find out:

or

And that’s, apparently, who I look like.

credit: Auzigog

Q: i want to see live naked girls but hate beaches and don’t want to pay $1 a song. what’s a reasonable way to go about this?

-Chris from Portland

Chris, since you apparently live at the intersection of pale and cheap the only real solution is to throw a party. Not just any party, but a Toga party. Toga parties and Halloween parties are traditional American venues for being exhibitionist without taking responsibility for it.

The trick is many people are still too inhibited to just get naked and dance. So, you have to introduce a social lubricant, e.g alcohol.

It just so happens that I have a graph of the affect of alcohol on people’s likelihood of committing nudity.

Compare that to my second graph: How likely you are to notice you are nude.

Dancing and togas, as some of you know, leads to a high Accidental Nudity Quotient (ANQ). ANQ is widely observable in people like Paris Hilton, Tara Reid, and Lilly Allen. Accidents, plus low chance of caring, plus high Spontaneous Nude Outbursts (SNO) make toga parties a prime location for nudity sans dollars or beach.

The only issue is getting sufficient lubricant into your guests. I recommend sangria, but soak some pineapple in everclear first. Your guest will quickly reach the 50% Spontaneous Nude Outburst 50% not caring about accidental nudity caused by dancing/wardrobe malfunctions.

Be warned that high levels of alcohol and nudity may drastically change the type of party you have on your hands; leading to mysterious stains on your upholstery, walls and floor. These people have the right idea, kiddie pools seem effective as a prophylactic against mess, as does throwing a party in your backyard. Just don’t let your friends drown.

credit: AndyFitz