The only thing that’s happening in the world right now

The only thing that’s happening in the world right now.

Hey there ‘The News’ just stopped by to see what’s happening in the world today can you give me a quick recap?

JACKSON COULD REST WITH THE STARS-

Right thank you I heard about Michael Jackson I was actually wondering about the civil unrest in Iran.

CELEBRITY DEATH RUMORS SPREAD ONLINE-

Yes, yes, I’m sure it’s astonishing how a number of older sick people might die during a heat wave in southern California. I’m really more concerned about North Korea firing missiles into the Sea of Japan. Can they send a Nuke that far?

BBQ COMPETITIONS ARE HOT!

Holy shit Palin Resigned?! How did I not hear about this?

50 HOT NEW WAYS TO PLEASE YOUR MAN!

Hmm, I need to stop getting all my news from Glamor.

Every NPR 'World Music' Segment Ever

He sucks

DJ Douchebag

We take you now to (Vietnam/Venezuela/Tibet/Burkina Faso) where an age old tradition is being giving new life. The music of (insert band name here) is a fusion of (traditional location’s) folk music and (lounge/“gives it a hip-hop-beat” /trance/swing/big band) to create an otherworldly new sound. With one foot in the old world, and one in the new, this music bridges the gap between history and the present.

[Cut to terrible track of music in language you can’t understand. Ideally includes guttural stops.]

We sat down with (artist with shitty foreign name) to learn more about this fascinating musical art form that is taking Vietnam and the New York underground by storm.

TERRY GROSS: Some people have criticized your commercialization of an iconic cultural art form. How do you respond to that?

[For the rest of the interview, pretend audience is actually invested in the purity of the Throat Singers of Tuva, or is upset about how it has been kept in a cultural deep freeze until this woman/bunch of dudes who listen to terrible American trance beats, saved it.]

Anti-American Hockey

"Umm, why have they started playing?"

About a week ago I went to my second Hockey game ever. I was excited, no so much for the hockey game, but because I wanted to sing the national anthem. I’d been practicing you see, and I was ready to impress all my friends with my rich Bass voice and ability to harmonize (The fact that singing was the thing I was most excited about might clue you in to why I don’t attend many sporting events).

Like many Democrats, I’ve learned that patriotism isn’t just for the Right anymore. I, along with my fellow liberals, am starting to get over the uncomfortable feelings associated with a shitload of American flags, a giant bald eagle, or a bunch of drunks chanting “USA! USA!” Now I chant right along (semi-ironically of course).

However, after the game started I noticed something odd. I hadn’t gotten the chance to sing the national anthem. “No wait that can’t be right” I thought. I distinctly remembered everyone standing; some with their hands on their hearts, while a little blonde girl sang something. “No, that was God Bless America” I corrected myself “God Bless America is not the national anthem.”

Dear readers, I don’t attend a lot of sporting events, so you are going to have to help me out; do they only sing the national anthem at Baseball games? Did I show up late and miss something? Has God bless America become the new national anthem, or can I go back to feeling unpatriotic?

Barack Obama, “Don’t fuck this up for me America”

"I need you to not fuck this up America."

In a heartfelt address to supporters in Iowa yesterday, Senator Barack Obama urged Americans to “Not fuck this up for me.” He continued, “I believe we have a righteous wind at our backs and that people are ready for a change. It would be an immense tragedy if we were to fail because someone photo shopped a picture of me shaking hands with Osama Bin Laden or something.”

Obama elaborated on other possible scenarios that might cause him to lose the upcoming presidential race because of what he calls the politics of fear, “In the next few days you’ll probably hear some more wild allegations, like that I’m not technically an American citizen because I was born in Kenya, or that I slept with a prostitute during my senate term, or you’ll hear some Nostradamus quote like, oh I don’t know, ‘He will be of two races and will bring the great city in the west to ruin, consuming the land in fire.’”

At this last statement some members of the crowd clearly became agitated and Obama addressed them directly, “That’s not even a real quote! I made it up just now. See, this is what I’m talking about!” Obama urged his supporters to “Just do me a favor and Check out Snopes.com before you send an email to 100 of your friends with a header like ‘Obama = Antichrist?!?!?!’ Can you do that for me America? Can you be cool?”

Don’t Vote Please

I remember when my 3rd grade history teacher impressed on me the importance of voting. “It doesn’t matter what you vote for as long as you vote!” Now that I’m a little older, I see how very wrong she was.

I think both Republicans and Democrats can agree that it’s a mistake to “get out the vote.” Sure I like it now that it’s going well for the Democrats, but remember 2000 and 2004 when a whole lot of evangelicals suddenly decided that it was time to get politically involved? That sucked!

Don’t get me wrong I vote for anything. I voted for state controller John Chiang even though I was running against him! But that’s because I actually care about the issues. The last thing we need is a whole bunch of politically uneducated people making snap decisions in the voting booth.

Only vote if you are going to vote the way I do. If you are undecided, don’t vote, (you are clearly dumb). If you are an asshole, don’t vote. If you want a candidate you can have a beer with, don’t vote (same as the asshole one). Stop encouraging people to vote, unless you know beforehand that they are going to vote: Yes, no, no, yes, yes, Barack Obama.

Chiang 2012!

Left Behind Series is a Riveting Nonstop Thrillride!

Why is it called the Rapture again?

You have probably asked yourself, ‘what’s the deal’ with Evangelical Christians? “Why can’t they just let everyone have their own beliefs?” you wonder, while you sip your latte and listen to the liberal, leftwing, antichrist run media, with your homosexual friends, on your way to an abortion clinic. “What’s their problem?”

After reading Left Behind I have discovered exactly what their problem is. Their problem is you, or more specifically the fact that you wouldn’t be going to hell right now if you would just give them five minutes to talk to you about Jesus. Would that kill you?

You see, The Bible says “There is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10) I don’t want to get technical but basically this means you’re going to hell. In the novel the protagonist’s daughter questions why a just God would do these kinda awful things (like wanting to send everyone to hell). Her father says, “Careful honey. You think I’m wrong but what if I’m right?”(pg. 165) See, if you question these ideas it’s a pretty good way to let Satan into your heart. Also, you could die any second now. The smart money is on becoming a Christian right now and then working out the details later. And by ‘Details’ we mean ‘figuring out if this actually makes any sense.’

Also in the book: A ton of huge miracles happen, but instead of trying to convert people by saying “Duh! God set the sky on fire, like a week ago, and then everyone who was a ‘real Christian’ mysteriously disappeared, in a very literalist parallel to the book of Revalation!” They think the best way to convert people is to tell them about their own personal life story/decision to come to Christ.

4 Stars!

Taco Bell Dads

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htasoS8GWbc

Ostensibly this is a candid video of a Dad’s first trip to Taco Bell after six years in prison. The Dad complains that he can’t remember the name of what he has been craving for years. He remembers that it had ‘a soft shell and a hard shell’ (a strange and perhaps impossible duality). He cannot remember the name. In his haste he orders something other than what he craved. Beneath this seemingly banal exterior there lie deep philosophical statements about longing, the nature of justice, and identity, all reminiscent of Kafka’s The Trial.

The Father wants something with a name he cannot remember! The significance of this nameless longing becomes apparent when it is juxtaposed with the fact that throughout the narrative we never learn why the father has been incarcerated. His crime (real or imagined), the source of his yearning, even his name have been meticulously erased. The father is faceless, obscured by shadow, and the glare of the Taco bell lights. One wonders how justice could have been served; everything that ‘Dad’ was has been monstrously erased by the inexorable push of ‘traffic.’

Dad bemoans the fact that he thought he would have been able to ‘Go inside’ and ‘sit and figure out what it is he wanted.’ But there is no time. Dad has no agency; he politely accepts his meal and dives off into the darkness. He asks his son to ‘turn that camera off’ a thinly veiled reference to suicide.

Alone in the Dark: A Really, Really Awful Game

Oh no fire! I’d better slowly amble down this hallway.

Hey do you guys remember games that went a little something like this?

>You are in the Vivarium. There is a door to the north.
North

> There is a door to the north.
Go North

>I don’t know how to go that!
Walk north.

>I don’t understand.
Open.

>Open what?

Open door! (Asshole)

>You open the door. You are in a closet. There is a key here. You die of Starvation. THE END.

That’s what playing Alone in the Dark feels like. You know that there’s a fun adventure in there somewhere, but there’s no way in hell you’ll ever find it because you’re too busy slowly walking off a ledge! You know what I mean about slowly walking of a ledge right? I’m talking about those infuriating parts of a game where you stand on a ledge that you’re clearly supposed to jump across. You try to jump, but instead your character stupidly steps off the ledge and whirls around to catch himself at the last moment, climbing up, so you can try it all over again. “Hmm… Maybe if I get a running start… Fall! Whirl! Catch! Climb back up. Shut off console. Write angry game review.”

It’s just the worst game; every single thing you try to do is impeded by poor controls. The building you are in erupts in flames and starts collapsing, but your character seems unperturbed, slowly walking away. “Is there a ‘run’ button that I’m not pushing? Ah there it is! No, no, that’s a ‘slowly jog’ button.” I know what you’re thinking ‘But Funbox don’t you know that unnecessarily slow protagonists stupidly bumbling about are a great way to build tension?” No actually, we didn’t know that.

F+

My Debates With Creationists Would Go Better If They Didn’t Lie So Much

My debates with creationists always go better in my head than in real life. Does this happen to anyone else? I always feel like, “How could I lose? Not only are the creationists super wrong, they’re completely ridiculous!” Well, it helps if they don’t need to tell the truth. “Did you hear about the Dinosaur footprints with human footprints next to them? How do you explain that?” Let me give you an example of what I mean.

In High School I went to a very fundamentalist church. I remember we watched a creationist documentary where the interviewers had somehow gotten Richard Dawkins to talk to them. They asked something like “Can you give even one example of a case where a mutation has added information to a genome and not subtracted it?” Richard Dawkins looked stumped and shocked. Ka-boom! Take that Richard Dawkins!

Wow, did that documentary take him down a peg or what? Nailed him! God-1 Atheists-0!

Now even though I was rooting for God at the time I also happened to believe in evolution (It wasn’t my fault, I went to a good High school). I could think of lots of examples where information had been added to a genome. I started to say something about polyploidy where organisms have extra copies of the same chromosome. Doesn’t that seem like a pretty good example adding information? “Well yeah,” The creationists said, “but that’s just copying information that already exists, it’s not new information.”

I imagined myself rebutting this with “You’ve already granted that mutations exist, you even grant that some mutations are beneficial. Clearly, if there are 2 copies of the same gene on separate chromosomes and one of them mutates, that’s an example of new information right?”

But you know I never got that far. It was all “Look, not even Richard Dawkins could think of an example and he’s the High Priest of evolution.” I didn’t know who Richard Dawkins was at the time but clearly, if he can’t think of an example then no examples exist, right? I never got to make my neat argument about how strawberries are Octaploid (8 copies of the same chromosome and delicious!). Nope, none of that mattered because who was I? Just some Kid. I wasn’t a renowned scientist, so obviously I was wronger than Richard Dawkins, and he was wronger than the creationists. That made me the wrongest! There was no other explanation.

Years later, after I had decided that religion was all bullshit, I read Richard Dawkins’ book A Devil’s Chaplin. In the book he tells a story about how some Australian filmmakers came to his house and asked if they could do an interview. He agreed and as they were interviewing him they asked a question that only a creationist would ask, about adding information to the genome. Richard Dawkins stopped the interview and told them to leave and was angry at having been duped but they begged and pleaded, “We’ve come all the way from Australia to interview you.” He eventually let them continue.

Now maybe that’s why he looked so stumped and befuddled before. Maybe not, maybe Dawkins was just trying to cover his ass and it’s all a big conspiracy. It doesn’t really

matter. Who cares whether Dawkins is right or wrong, the theory is correct, and there are tons of examples to prove it.

This is why I always win my imaginary debates with creationists and seem to lose my real life ones. They aren’t allowed to lie in my imagination.

If you have a story to tell about a debate with a Creationist, or an "evolutionist" please share.

Your Mama’s not America’s Next Top Dance Crew!

Is it just me or are the Moms on ‘Your Mama’s not America’s Next Top Dance Crew’ just doing worse and worse each week? I mean look at last week’s episode.

Donny Walberg: Alright let’s see what the Judges thought of that last performance.

Big Sis’: Alright, that was tight! Trip-Lip I thought your moves were off the hook.

Justin Jeffre: Tone Ride, your choreography is sick, You're the sickest dancer I’ve ever seen!

Huge audience applause

Donny Walberg: Alright, and what did you guys think of Nancy?

Close up on Nancy, a 53 year old housewife, she is out of breath and clearly in pain.

Maxwell Sheffield: Nancy, you have to understand that this late in the competition we can’t have second rate performances like that. I mean you were supposed to incorporate a back flip into your dance, I didn’t even see one back flip.

Nancy: I can’t do one. I told you, I’ve had knee surgery.

Big Sis’: Nancy, I have to ask you. Do you even want to be here? I mean look around you, you are the last Mom in this competition. If you want to represent for the Moms then you have to step it up. All the other Moms have gone home!

Nancy: Well… that’s because they weren’t 23 year old professional break-dancers. I’m not sure how we were ever supposed to win.

Maxwell Sheffield: See that’s what I’m talking about. A big part of the problem is that bad attitude.

Nancy: Can I go now, please?

I mean come on! I think the show should be called Suck it up (Nancy) and DANCE! I think I’m going to vote for Trip-Lip.

Did you Know Einstein was (Insert your religion here)?

When I was younger my Dad gave me some advice that has served me well over the years. He said, “If you need to convince people of something, make your point but then say that it’s a quote from Thomas Jefferson, and people will believe you.” Here’s a good example of what I think he means:

“If ever you should need to convince people of something, simply pretend that your ideas are one and the same as someone of great import, and people will believe you”
-Thomas Jefferson

See even the great Thomas Jefferson agrees with me!

People have started to catch onto the Thomas Jefferson thing though; nowadays you’re much better off quoting Einstein! For example did you know that Einstein shared your particular set of religious beliefs? It’s true! Whatever you happen to believe about God or the afterlife you can find a quote from Einstein supporting it!

The fact that Einstein is perhaps one of the most misquoted people of the 20th century shouldn’t slow you down. For example did you know Einstein was a Buddhist?

"Only Buddhism is compatible with science. It covers the smallest particles to the largest creations of the cosmos. It is the only religion capable of scientific truth."
-Einstein

Or that he didn’t approve of gambling?

“God doesn’t play dice."
-Einstein

It’s also important to note that Einstein found no conflict between Science and religion:

“Other great thinkers, however, including the physicist Albert Einstein, have found no conflict between the varying teachings of science and religion; but consider divinity and the natural universe to be one and the same.”
- Einstein

It doesn’t really matter what Einstein actually said or did as long as it comforts you to think that one of the greatest minds of our time was a Hindu, or that he was a big fan of Homeopathy. The best part is that you can probably win arguments and convince people to come to your next church/temple/whatever service, because the fact that Einstein was a great physicist also automatically makes him great in all other realms of thought! Almost no one ever bothers to check to see which quotes are real and which ones are misrepresented.

If you really have the time, you should make up a long story where some sassy student (who turns out to be Einstein) totally blows their teacher out of the water with flawless but weird logic and wins an argument proving that God exists. You could submit that shit to Chicken soup for the soul!

This will impress anyone who doesn’t know that Einstein was an atheist, or at least a skeptical agnostic (Just like me!).

“People are always misquoting me to support their religious beliefs; it's annoying because I am an Atheist, like the members of Funbox!"
-Einstein

The Checkpoint

Letting out a soft grunt while straining to lift a jar of pickles nearly half again my size, I remembered to bend my knees to protect my back. I hate giant wholesale clubs. Store aisles shouldn’t be wider than the street I live on. Worse yet, it was construction day and a large part of the cereal section was now inaccessible. Grizzled highway workers shooed patrons to the side of several orange cones as a large asphalt machine rolled over a lone box of Cracklin’ Oat Bran. CRUNCH.

As much a hated the place, leaving was even worse. I paid for my items, and moved to the store’s exterior doors. Feeling once again as if I were about to sneak across a former Soviet state’s boarder, I prepared to flash my photo ID. Tall fences and barbed wired forced shoppers to funnel through a single checkpoint area, and a fascist-looking guard wearing a neatly pressed store uniform and brandishing a TASER, paused each would be exit-er to check identification. I suspected wives and children had been lost this way.

“Papers. Your papers please,” echoed the detached but authoritative voice. It was finally my turn for screening. “And what was your purpose for this trip?” the guard asked.

“Um...shopping?”

He looked skeptical. I wasn’t sure how could theft could have been a problem when everything available for purchase weighed upwards of 50lbs, but I wasn’t about to ask. The guard eyed me suspiciously as if all this store exiting were just part of an elaborate plot to spirit away pallets of deodorant via some sort of clandestine underground railroad.

“We're actually having a barbecue if that helps,” I offered. The guard seemed to consider this for a moment before finally easing up and moving his hand away from the TASER. I’d talked my way to freedom.

As I loaded the car of pickles onto the flat bed of my neighbor’s borrowed truck, I couldn’t help but emit a thoughtful sigh of relief. Well, maybe it was more of a grunt, I really don’t remember which. Either way, I was nearly halfway home before my pulse finally stabilized and a thought had finally occurred to me: shopping shouldn't need a cover story.