You Are Dumb - Dead People

The White Miracle Of America

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:14:45 -0500

Racism, 7 July 2008

Memo to Jesse Helms: YOU ARE DEAD.

I grew up in the 80s, and developed my politics in the 90s, so I have to say, learning of the death of Jesse Helms inspired me to question one of the core fundamental tenets of my knowledge. Namely, that Jesse Helms hadn't already died. That's how it is with people with no redeeming qualities - when they're not actively making life worse for the rest of us, it's as if they've largely ceased to exist. July 4 just made it official. But that's no reason not to look back in anger at some of Jesse Helms' greatest hits:

HATING ART: Jesse Helms is probably most famous for his publicity-garnering struggle against federal arts funding. It was precisely the kind of "common-sense" stupidity that the Republicans love to trade in. Your tax dollars are paying for pictures of a bullwhip handle up a dude's ass! How can anyone defend that? Well, because by defending that, you're defending the underlying principle under attack, which is that if the government is going to be a patron of the arts, the government needs to be a patron for the kind of art that WOULDN'T be commercially viable. There's already an infrastructure in place to fund art that Jesse Helms approves of. It's called QVC. I believe they've got Thomas Kincaid lithographs coming up next hour.

HATING GAYS: Jesse came from a simpler time, a time before loving the sinner and hating the sin became a code phrase for hating the sinner. These days, if you cut out the dog-whistling and the pleasantries and state outright that a lesbian shouldn't be appointed to Housing and Urban Development because she is a lesbian, you might get into a bit of trouble. At the very least, the left would force you to apologize and the right would send you a free copy of the Acceptable Gay-Bashing Thesaurus. But sure enough, in 1993, Helms objected to a Bill Clinton appointment on those very grounds. ACTUAL POSTMORTEM QUOTE TIME!

"I’m not going to put a lesbian in a position like that. If you want to call me a bigot, fine." Yet even though Helms gave his permission, it appears that the majority of the media are bending over backwards to avoid calling him a bigot. Even though he was a bigot. Which, by the way, brings us to our quintessential Helms remembrance:

HATING BLACK PEOPLE: Would you like to know how big a racist Jesse Helms was? I mean, sure, he opposed the Civil Rights act repeatedly. And supported segregationist candidates. And opposed affirmative action. And stirred up fear of affirmative action to defeat his black opponent in the 1990 election. But all of that pales beside this lovely quote from Bob Dole. I was watching CNN, and Dole was on talking about Helms' death without trying to mention the elephant in the middle of the room wearing a very large white hood with a slit for the trunk cut into the front of it.

"Jesse didn't move as quickly. Other Democrats in the South didn't move as quickly. Were these Southerners racist? I don't know. I don't know how you define racist."

Let's dissect the living shit out of that, shall we? First of all, "didn't move as quickly". In other words, Jesse Helms was a charming anachronism. A bit slow, if you will. I'm guessing that means "kept dropping the N-bomb every time we had him over for dinner." Next, Dole mentions Southern Democrats. Any time a Republican mentions Southern Democrats, you know we're talking about racism. Republicans looooove to mention unreconstructed Dixiecrats because it gives them a false equivalency when it comes to racism. Never mind that most of those Dixiecrats ended up as Republicans once the Dems embraced civil rights.

But that last line is the kicker. Bob Dole doesn't know how to define racism. That's incredibly fucking convenient. Here we are, shortly after the death of one of the Senate's all-time great racists, and Bob Dole, whose wife is sitting in that same racist's Senate seat, is suddenly unable to define racism on cable news. That's great. I wonder if he's never known how to define racism, or if it's a side-effect of all that free Viagra he got for doing those commercials? They should put that on the label. "If you have an erection lasting more than four hours, or manage to forget the meaning or racism, consult your doctor."

Of course Bob Dole knows what racism means. And of course Bob Dole knows Jesse Helms was a screaming fucking racist. And so does everybody else. That's what news stories mean when they call him "controversial", and say he "angered liberals." That's what Trent Lott meant when he said "He had a philosophy, had principles he believed in, and he stood and fought for them.". And I can only assume that's what Dubya meant when he said "Jesse Helms was a kind, decent, and humble man and a passionate defender of what he called 'the Miracle of America.' So it is fitting that this great patriot left us on the Fourth of July."

I will say this - in leaving us, Jesse Helms showed us the most important thing about old, white, racist assholes. That when they die, there are fewer of them left.

Two Jims And A Big Baby

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:44:40 -0500

Dead People, 25 June 2008

Memo to James Lileks, Karl Rove, and James Dobson: YOU ARE DUMB.

For those who wonder about such things, no, yesterday's lack of column was not a tribute to the death of George Carlin. Not that he's undeserving of tribute - I'm just saying the two events weren't related. I do think it's both fitting and sad that he died when he did, though. Sad, because he died before the stupidity he railed against had fully bottomed out and we perhaps started to climb out of the hole we've dug ourselves. And fitting, because he died with all his most cynical feelings about the state of the human race completely justified. And in honor of that, IDIOTS SAY THE DAMNDEST THINGS!

"I never heard Carlin be as hard on himself as he was on his favorite strawmen. That wasn’t his job, of course, and you can’t fault him for the routines he didn’t do. But the more you confront and accept your own human faults the less outrage you find in the small mishaps of others, and I never got the feeling Carlin spent a lot of time interrogating his own character with the same confident derision he brought to things much greater than himself." - James Lileks.

Fuck you, James Lileks. Not for speaking ill of the dead, a pastime which I support wholeheartedly and, I suspect, will engage in with great glee when YOU finally pass on to a magical land where all the people remember Paul Anka and serve Jell-O salads and nobody is black. No, fuck you for being such a condescending prick about it. With the faux-sympathetic bit about how maybe Carlin would have been nicer if he'd recognized his flaws - flaws which you yourself don't actually bother to fucking enumerate.

About the only bad thing Lileks points out about Carlin is that Lileks found his later, politically-charged work less funny and more lecture-y, which is what happens when someone who's right is yelling at someone who's wrong. That's not Carlin's fault. But don't worry, James. Carlin never expected you to listen, and in your posthumous ramblings, you've managed to help vindicate Carlin's work. Dipshit.

"Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by." - Karl Rove.

I'll give Karl credit where credit is due. Only the first sentence is racist. The rest of it is some of the weirdest fucking image-mongering I've ever seen, and that includes the entire rest of Turd Blossom's illustrious career. Is Karl Rove trying to turn us away from Barack Obama by telling us he's essentially a cross between James Bond and Jon Stewart? Because I'll forget that FISA bullshit in a minute if it means trading in the retarded brush-clearer for someone who hasn't run up a record class deficit in addition to all his other record deficits.

I mean, obviously, Karl's trying to tap some deep vein of doughy, middle-class American resentment here, but as someone who would never come within 1,000 feet of a country club willingly, if I were forced to be at one, I'd be desperately looking for the guy making fun of everyone else in the country club. And I'd endure second-hand smoke to join in.

"I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology. He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter. Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?" - James Dobson

As irritating as this long election season is, you have GOT to love all these chances to see some of the most dominant rhetorical forces of the past decade, like Rove and Dobson, completely off their fucking game. First Rove attacks Obama for having metaphorical pretty girls date him, and now Dobson loses his shit because Obama mentioned his name in a speech about abandoning religious extremism in politics. And he does this by... being religiously extreme in politics. Even to a country deadened to hypocrisy, James Dobson accusing Obama of distorting the Bible will be the laugh line of the month.

Oh, and Dobsie? Let me answer your question. No, you aren't required to conform your efforts in a democracy. Assuming that means what I think it means. You do, however, have to be prepared to LOSE. And from the sounds of things, you've got a lot of preparing to do before November.

Watchin' Scotty Fly

Mon, 14 May 2007 21:38:17 -0500

Dead People, 15 May 2007

Memo to Space Corpses: YOU ARE DUMB.

Underneath all the layers of cynicism that have been laid down lovingly like lacquer over my black, black soul, I'm a bit of a nerd romantic at heart. And it always brought a tinge of warmth to my cockles whenever I heard about Roddenberry or some other SF luminary getting their ashes shot into space. Sure, with Roddenberry it might have been more appropriate to mix the ashes in a bottle of booze and pour it over a half-naked actress on a casting office couch, but still. Journey into the great beyond. Huge symbolism. Very nerd romance.

I never looked into it beyond the one-sentence reports that Blank's ashes were, indeed, shot into space. Until now. And it turns out that not only is it all bullshit of the highest order, it's bullshit of the highest order even when compared to our other ridiculous death rituals.

I learned this from a somewhat inaccurately titled E! News headline, "The Search For Scotty's Ashes", in which we learn that the earthly remains of everyone's favorite spherical drunken warp drive mechanic did not in fact make it into space, but instead came down in a mountainous region of New Mexico, and were proving difficult to recover.

My first thought was that this was crazy talk. If you try to shoot the ashes into space, and things go horribly wrong and the rocket crashes, you don't try to recover them. They fall under the Jack Handey Keys In Lava rule. They're just ashes. They're not lost hikers or something. Write off the rocket, call the insurance company, make sure the waivers in your contracts are up to snuff, and everyone MOVE ON.

But the devil, as they say, is in the details. Here's what I learned from the E! article that really drove me up the fucking Jeffries tube. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"It's not like Mr. Doohan's lost. The rocket did hit its landing target, but it's in a very mountainous and rugged terrain. They can't get to it by foot or by vehicle. They have to take a helicopter up there."

Susan Schonfeld, a representative for Space Services, the ash holes who launched the rocket. Which was supposed to come back down. Because that's how their racket works.

When your ashes get shot into space, they go up about 72 miles - to the edge of the atmosphere. And then they come back down. Oh, and it's not all your ashes, it's a tiny symbolic portion of them, which get shot up there with a couple of hundred other symbolic portions of other people who paid five hundred bucks.

Which is, if I even need to say it, fucking lame. From what I understand about cremation, the ashes you get are just a symbolic representation of the body anyway. So then they take a symbolic portion of THOSE ashes, and put them on a rocket which doesn't actually go into space, but just touches a symbolic representation OF space before returning to Earth. At that point, why even bother? Throw some dirt in the air and save yourself the five hundred bucks. Net effect? Exactly the same, except you've got five hundred more bucks.

You know, everyone got mad when Keith Richards joked about snorting his dad's ashes, but at least if that had happened, the ashes would have actually gone up his nose. This is like wetting your pinky, dipping it in the ashes, touching it to your face, and saying you snorted them. And you can only get away with THAT one Wednesday a year, and then only if you're a Catholic with a good sense of humor.

Fuck that. You do not get to say your remains were shot into space unless it was ALL your remains, and they made it ALL THE WAY into space. And stayed there. That's what shot into space means. Leave the semantic quibbling for pharmaceutical ads and attorneys general. Especially if it's James Fucking Doohan.

If you're shooting James Doohan in the space, his ashes don't fucking FLY COACH. Jammed into a rocket with two hundred other dead people, no leg room, no fucking peanuts, and having to share the space with some science experiments NASA couldn't bother with on top of it all. Sure, he was just a B-grade actor milking a famous role for every last fanboy penny, but that still ought to earn him his own rocket. Or at least a window seat.

No Cheers Today

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 17:12:39 -0500

Comics, 10 April 2007

Today, I'd like to take a moment to discuss B.C. creator Johnny Hart, who passed away over the weekend. I think this may mark an important moment in this column - the first person to pass away after being "featured" in You Are Dumb.

Oh, sure, lots of dead people have appeared in these pages, but it's usually the circumstance of their deaths that causes them to appear here. Which leads to a fun fact you can share at dinner parties - it's at least one thing that John Paul II and Kenneth Pinyan have in common. Let's hope it was just that one thing.

But Johnny Hart... Johnny Hart was one of the very first targets of the column, back in the days when columns didn't even have snappy titles, just the subject up top in bold. He got in not for being a born-again, which he was, or being a dick about it, which he frequently was, but for being Old White Guy Racist and thinking it was funny.

And now he's dead. Had a stroke right before Easter. Which is strangely ironic, because for years I've had to take pains not to read B.C. right before Easter, because I know it'd give me a fucking stroke.

But that's all in the past now. Each death diminishes us, as they say. Oh, sure, thirty seconds later they're backpedaling on Hitler and Pol Pot, but still, let's give them the benefit of the doubt. Each death diminishes us, and it would be unseemly to cheer Johnny Hart's death just because he produced two comic strips (Wizard of Id {shudder}) of heart-rending inanity and filled at least one of those strips with frequent exhortations about how his invisible sky daddy was the bestest invisible sky daddy of them all.

We will not cheer Johnny Hart's death. Because it would be wrong. Because it would be unseemly. And most importantly of all, because of this. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Richard Newcombe, founder and president of Creators Syndicate said 'B.C.' and 'Wizard of Id' would continue. Family members have been helping produce the strips for years, and they have an extensive computer archive of Hart’s drawings to work with, he said." - Associated Press

SWEET FUCKING ZOMBIE JESUS CAVEMEN. The comics page is like some kind of horrific feudal landscape, and the Hart family will not give up its eighteen square inches so long as one single member of the bloodline remains to cut and paste digitized Fat Broads under awful puns.

And so, what little meaning or solace we all could take from Hart's death is snatched from our grasp. Who knows? Maybe newspapers, bereft of two standards they put on their comic pages pretty much by default since the 1960s might have used that space for a couple of new strips. Maybe ones that contained jokes from either of the past two centuries. But no. The Hart family has PhotoShop, and if Newcomb's tacit admission was to be believed, have been writing most of the retarded fake dictionary entries for years anyway.

Life is fleeting. Comedy is hard. But even though Johnny Hart was wrong about the nature of the universe and the role of a deity in it, he's still managed to assure himself an afterlife. Because franchises are eternal, blessed be thy copyright.

At Least Three Miracles Short

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 19:37:48 -0500

Republicans, 12 July 2006

Some of you may notice more technical glitches than usual. This is because, due to lightly frying my personal computer, YAD is being updated on a bit of a catch-as-catch-can basis, from whatever machines I can get access from. This too, shall pass.

Anyway, if you followed the link that appeared unintentionally for four hours on the front page yesterday, this will be anticlimactic. But I'll still issue a memo to Rev. William Lawson: YOU ARE DUMB.

You see, once again, we have a case of an aphorism not only being treated as a hard, fast rule, but taken to such extremes as to accidentally make a mockery of said aphorism. In this case, "don't speak ill of the dead".

Which is bullshit. You speak ill of the dead if the dead were bastards. But we can't have that, can we? Richard Nixon liked puppies. Ronald Reagan had a winning smile. Slobodan Milosevic... OK, that one I'll give you, but he was a dirty foreigner, so we could be objective about his war crimes.

But apparently we're all chomping at the bit to posthumously exonerate Ken Lay. Yes, I'm still pissed off about Deady Boy. What do you want? I was cut off from the global information stream for four days. My brain still thinks it's last Thursday.

And you'd be pissed off too if you read the shit Bloomberg published about Lay's funeral plans. You see, Lay will be buried in Aspen, Colorado, instead of his native Houston. Lay will be cremated, which is one more thing for you conspiracy theorists to seize upon. For me, it's just one more missed opportunity. If I were a wealthy corporate powermonger who keeled over in the world's toniest ski resort, I'd want to be buried right on the fucking slopes. No headstone, just a nearby sign reading "Mogul in life, mogul in death." But that's why I'm not a CEO.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Rev. William Lawson, Kenny Boy's friend and pastor. Lay's not being buried in Houston, you see, because he felt Houston wasn't supportive enough of their hometown CONVICTED FELON. Not supportive the way Lawson is. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"I plan to tell them this is not the first time somebody good has been falsely accused and even crucified. Just like Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy, my hope is that people will view Ken Lay in a much more positive light after his death. Even though people say he's a robber and a crook and that it's a good thing he's dead, we have the right to tell his family we've seen this before, and history can be kind."

And there's your HOLY SHIT moment for the week, folks. Rev. Lawson, comparing Ken Lay, who screwed thousands out of their old age pensions and whose family, thanks to the timing of his death, doesn't have to pay the government the millions of dollars in fines that would have been levied at the sentencing that no longer can take place, to JFK, MLK, and JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF.

I thought maybe with the first two Lawson had a kind of phonetic confusion. JFK, MLK, Kenny Lay. You can't say there's no rhyme or reason to the comparison. Just reason. But pastors don't ever use the word "crucified" by accident. That shit would be outre even if Lay hadn't been convicted of six counts of fraud and conspiracy. Where did Ken Lay's pastor get the idea you could rearrange the facts of a person's life so that they look much rosier, more optimistic, more successful than they actually are?

Oh, right.

Circle, Meet Jerks

Thu, 03 Nov 2005 07:50:05 -0600

Great Britain, 3 November 2005

Memo to the Diana Circle: YOU ARE DUMB.

But that doesn't mean true, princessy love is beyond your grasp. I have an idea, but you'll have to wade through a bunch of mockery of your life's work to get to it. But isn't enduring great hardship for the common good the kind of thing you like to pretend your idol stood for?

You see, the Diana Circle is a small organization of completely bugfuck Princess Diana fan-nerds. It's precisely the kind of thing you knew had to exist somewhere, but like plushies, your brain tries to block them out so you don't learn the horrific details.

But here at You Are Dumb Dot Net, your willful, sanity-preserving ignorance will not be tolerated. In pursuit of that goal, I found the homepage of their US chapter. And though the 1996-era design, complete with tiled background, giant centered text, and awkwardly-positioned, oversized pictures did melt my face like Toht looking at the contents of the Ark, I managed to return with their mission statement. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Our mission is to uphold and defend Diana's memory and reputation. To campaign tirelessly for a fitting memorial in her name. To support our partners in other parts of the world in the quest to do what is right for a woman who did so much good for others."

The Diana Circle first made headlines during the wedding of Charles and Camilla, which they protested. Interviewed at the time, Circle member Laurien Lewis made the astonishing statement that " If she were still with us today, she would have been very moved." I think we can all see the flaw in that logic.

Anyway, the Circle continues to treat Camilla as if she were the Mike to Diana's Joel, the Doggett to Diana's Mulder, the world's first royal Dick Sargent. Which brings us to current events, and Charles & Camilla's visit to the US, and the actual protests of the actual visit by actual Diana Circle US members, which in turn leads to this ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"This is Diana country. We love Diana still. They're not welcome here. To look at the both of them is to remember what they did to Diana." - Lisa Stewart, 35-year-old Tampa homemaker, who apparently fancies herself the British Royalty Consultant for the Arizona Minutemen.

You know, even under the Patriot Act, I'm pretty sure that cheating on your wife, then waiting almost a decade after your wife's death to marry your mistress, is not grounds for deportation from America. It's not like Camilla wrote "Peace Train" or anything.

But I promised the Circle true love, and I will deliver. Because here, in this very country, is a group of desperate men, equally devoted to pointless protests for a retarded cause. The Protest Warriors. If we can get the Protest Warriors and the Circle of Diana hooked up, not only will both groups have less free time on their hands, but their eventual offspring will be so simultaneously obsessive and ineffective that they'll be mistaken for ugly footrests and given to Goodwill.

It's a fairy-tale happy ending, really.

The Best Column Ever

Fri, 29 Jul 2005 13:24:01 -0500

Washington (State), 18 July 2005

Memo to Unnamed Washington Dude: YOU WIN.

I thought I knew why I did this column, but I was wrong. It wasn't until today when I realized that this space, this calling, has been treading water for a year and a half - waiting for this moment. Austin Gullette was the fucking warm-up act. It's all downhill from here, folks. When historians look back at You Are Dumb Dot Net, they're going to mark July 18, 2005 as the day the column peaked. And it's all thanks to one anonymous man from Seattle, Washington.

Who died.

Having anal sex.

With a horse.

As regular readers of this space know, the particular brand of stupidity that involves sticking your dick into an animal is not unfamiliar territory. We've even been tracking which states fuck which animals. Texas is pigs, Wisconsin is cows, Georgia is mules, and South Carolina is dogs. Washington is now officially horses.

But here's where it turns interesting. See, the guy died. So I'm thinking he tries to fuck a horse in the ass, gets kicked in the head for his troubles, crushed skull ha ha very funny Darwin Award wackiness ensues. But the guy didn't die from a crushed skull. He died from a PERFORATED COLON.

Which means he somehow convinced a horse to fuck HIM up the ass. Thereby making him the stupidest person in the entire universe. Dan Quayle can sleep soundly knowing that at long last, he is number two.* I don't care how much of a superfreak you are - we're talking about a sexual act where [UNPLEASANT IMAGE ALERT] even if it goes according to plan, you're going to be shitting horse-spunk for a week afterwards.[UNPLEASANT IMAGE ALERT ENDS]

I'm not entirely sure how that would even work. Everything I know about horses, I know from two sources. The Michael Martin Murphy song "Wildfire", and the movie "Seabiscuit". And I've never seen Seabiscuit. All I know is that Tobey Maguire hurt his back filming it, and did not hurt his back because the horse was fucking him in the ass. Us Weekly would have said something if he had. So I have no idea how you convince a horse to do that, and I ain't gonna Google it, that's for damn sure.

But I do know this. Once you get a horse to start fucking you in the ass, it's neigh impossible to get him to stop. Stallions do not attend sensitivity training. They do not understand that whoa means whoa. So in the end, it's an awful, awful, painful, hilarious, awful, stupid, and very very funny way to die.

I feel bad for his family, but they may never release his name, so perhaps they can just grieve for the loss of their stupid, stupid son and escape the public ridicule. But I feel worse for the community of Enumclaw, in King's County, where the farm and the horse were located. Oh, and the state of Washington.

I feel bad for the state of Washington because now we all know from news reports that bestiality isn't illegal there. Which is funny, because I don't remember them approving gay marriage, and I thought legalized bestiality could only follow the sanctioning of homosexual marriage. Apparently, Rick Santorum was wrong.

But Enumclaw... the farm... OK, first, apparently if you look in the wrong places on the Internet, Enumclaw is to real animal-fucking enthusiasts what Amazon.com is to people who can read. Police have hundreds of hours of surveillance footage with guys coming to the farm, getting it on with whatever species suits their fancy, and going home. Enumclaw is bestiality's EuroDisney.

And here's the funniest part, the part that even I, in my expansive genius, couldn't think to make up. The EXACT SAME DAY it was revealed to the world that Enumclaw, King's County, WA was the capital of Unspeakableactania, the county put out a press release. For its county fair. And the title of that press release, as revealed upon using Google News to search on "Enumclaw", is printed below, unedited, in boldface and italics. ACTUAL ULTIMATE QUOTE TIME, PART ONE:

"Animal magnetism: Mascot Day highlights list of promotions, discounts for King County fairgoers"

Take a few seconds to get over that one. It took me the better part of ten minutes before I could even pick my jaw up off the floor. This is the kind of synchronicity entire RELIGIONS spawn from. And when you're done, you can enjoy this fine sentence plucked from the middle of the press release. ACTUAL ULTIMATE QUOTE TIME, PART TWO:

"Roll up your sleeves and prepare to experience the messiest GOOD, CLEAN FUN around."

Like I said, it's all downhill from here, folks.

*I will let you all make THIS joke yourselves - you don't need my interference for this one.

Pope Pope Pope Pope Pope Pope Pope

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 14:26:05 -0500

Main Column, 4 April 2005

Pope pope pope pope pope pope pope pope pope pope pope pope pope pope pope pope pope pope pope pope pope pope pope.

Don't mind me. I'm just trying to do that thing, you know? That thing where you keep saying a word over and over until it loses all sense of meaning and just becomes a random syllable pope pope pope pope pope pope pope pope.

It's not working. It's almost as if I've heard the word "pope" used in sentences so many times in the past two weeks that it's impossible to remove context from the sound. Can't imagine how that would have happened. Anyway, on the occasion of the Pope's death, I'd like to extend the following to what I'm sure are my many Catholic readers: a nice, hearty "big whoop".

Popes are to Catholics as puppies are to small children. They're cute, nice to have around, fun to dress in funny hats, and if one happens to die, well, it's down to the shelter for Pope #2! You'll be sad for a little while, but you'll have a new pope soon enough. And he'll be the same color as the old pope, and he'll have about as much hair, but he'll be younger and more sprightly and will bound around the world making sure nobody ever uses condoms. It'll be adorable.

But until then, because this is such an important event for the world, and because someone might have spent all weekend playing video games and watching wrestling instead of writing, here's a very special PopeCorpse News Roundup.

POLES WANT TO BURY POPE'S HEART WITH KINGS

That is not a metaphor. They apparently want to strip John Paul for parts so that they can get a little bit of dead Pope action in his hometown of Krakow, Poland. It's apparently a "keeping up with the Joneses* kind of thing, as Warsaw has Chopin's heart in an urn, while for the time being Krakow has had to settle for one of Mr. Spock's prosthetic ears. Apparently, in Old Europe, a Spock ear is not quite the powerful symbol of religious iconography we have here.

GUESSING GAME BEGINS ON POPE'S SUCCESSOR

Not for the Church, it doesn't. I guarantee you they've known for months who the new Pope would be. It's not like John Paul II drove his Popeswagen off a cliff or something. They've had a long time to prepare. But if you're still wondering who they'll pick, allow me to spoil it for you. It'll be some European cardinal with conservative views who doesn't have any embarassing statements on the record anywhere. There'll be a couple of Western Hemisphere, non-white guys talked about the same way we talked about Colin Powell as president. You know, as cover. You have to interview everyone for the job so you look modern and stuff.

In the unlikely event they do pick a Pope Of Color, though, that'd be fun. Then we could have a new slogan for America. "LESS PROGRESSIVE THAN THE VATICAN". Should just about fit on a coffee mug.

ROYAL WEDDING TO GO AHEAD DESPITE POPE'S DEATH

Which, thank goodness, finally answers the question "What will non-Catholics with plans for this week do?". Similarly, I would like everyone to know that if the Pope's funeral ends up being on Wednesday, I will still be watching "Mythbusters" as per my original plans. There is no need for panic.

WORLD GETS FIRST GLIMPSE OF POPE'S BODY

Ah, the headline, where decorum apparently trumps accuracy. We've seen the Pope's body for the past 26 years - waving, walking around, blessing people, even a great shot of the top of the pope's head peeking out from a giant window that I wish I could find. NINJA POPE. What we're getting a first glimpse of is his corpse. His DEAD body. But you can't put that in the headline or you'll get angry letters.

* In case you're still wondering what separates You Are Dumb from other politicomedic comedy Webcolumns, keep in mind that other, lesser lights in this pseudoindustry would not have been able to resist typing "Joneskis" here. While we do not eschew puerile ethnic humor as a matter of policy, we only go for the blatantly obvious when we can do so in a way that makes it look post-modern and ironic.

Spastic Topic Monkey Friday Rides Again

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 11:18:14 -0500

Main Column, 18 March 2005
Been a bit since I've done one of these, now that I think about it. The Topic Monkey has been practicing Zen meditation and relaxation exercises, and has been terribly calm of late, only to relapse suddenly and horribly when it heard the news about Paul Wolfowitz running the World Bank.
I mean, what the FUCK? Paul Wolfowitz? The guy who has, by most measures, never gotten anything right ever? I mean, there's incompetence, and then there's INCOMPETENCE. He is correct two fewer times per day than a stopped clock. Joel Schumacher heard the news, and is rumored to have expressed wonder at how Wolfowitz keeps getting hired to do things. That's how much of a fuckup Wolfowitz is.
At least we all know why, a few weeks ago, John Snow floated BONO as a possible choice for the job on one of the Sunday news shows. To make picking Wolfowitz seem relatively tame by comparison. "Sure, Wolfowitz doesn't know shit about economics or development. Sure, his predictions have, in retrospect, proved less apt than a crack-fueled fever dream. But at least he's not an egotistical Irish rock singer in tight pants and oversized sunglasses!"
Wolfowitz at the World Bank, Condi at State, Karen Fricking Hughes at State... you know what the Bush administration is? I'll tell you. You know how, every once in a while, you're sitting around with a bunch of your friends, and one of you starts off with "Man, if I were in charge of everything..."? And then that guy starts handing out fake appointments? "Yeah, Bob, I'd totally make you Secretary of Defense, because you have two guns. MIke, you can have Finland when I rule the world. All of Finland. Katie would be in charge of secretly killing everyone I hate."
The Bush administration is the closest thing we have to that in real life. Once Dubya got his second term and didn't have to worry about anything, it was all "Paul, you can run the big bank, 'cause you're so good at that when we play Monopoly." and "Joel, you can make the next Batman movie. Screw Christopher Nolan. What the fuck was up with Memento, anyway? Making a movie backwards. I should have him sent to Gitmo. Made no sense." I think he made John Bolton the ambassador to the U.N. 'cause he loves Bolton's walrus impersonation.
I hear Wolfowitz's first proposal is to put ATM's in all the Third World countries and start charging fees for withdrawing foreign aid.
Other than their magical ability to raise the blood pressure, the best part about reading letters to the editor in the local paper is when you hit something, and you cannot, to save your fucking life, decide whether the person writing it is really serious. They express a viewpoint that could only be expressed by someone making shit up for a laugh, but do so in a way so completely devoid of any of the standard Sarcasm Markers that you're forced to conclude they are just barely sane enough to recognize what a typewriter and postage stamp are used for. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!
"Right after Minneapolis bans leaf blowers (Star Tribune, March 15), I wish it would focus on a much more disturbing fuel-combustion menace: buses. These big, gas-guzzling machines literally shake the windows of my apartment when they rev their engines down Hennepin Avenue. I can't even sit outside and read a book in the summertime due to their obscene noise! It's time bus riders get rid of their "me, me, me" attitude so the rest of us can have some peace and quiet." - One "Kevin Watterson" of Minneapolis.
See what I mean? Buses as "gas-guzzlers"? Yeah, if you buy one to commute by yourself to work, bus mileage could be considered worse than an SUV. But nobody does that. "Obscene noises"? I've heard plenty of obscene noises during my association with public transit, I'll admit, but traditionally, you have to be on the bus and sitting in front of someone with a cell phone for that. Not really audible from street level. How can anyone write about bus-rider's "me, me, me" attitude with a straight face when he wants to eliminate public transit because he can't concentrate on his book? Yet everything I know about semantics, sarcasm, and comedy tells me Mr. Watterson means every word. Fucking amazing.
If it were up to me, and it SHOULD fucking well be up to me, Terry Schiavo would die. Not of peaceful starvation after removal of her feeding tube, but in some kind of wacky, Rube Goldberg freak accident involving two judges, a nun, three window washers, Margaret Dumont, several pies, and Roy Moore's Ten Commandments monument. And it would all get caught on tape, set to the tune of "Yakety Sax", and aired this Sunday on CBS in place of "Spring Break Shark Attack". Then, at least, her last days would have some dignity.

Another Word For "Rooster"

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 13:28:35 -0500

Main Column, 28 January 2005
Memo to Frank Shurden, Steve Cooley, and Juan Alvarez: YOU ARE DUMB.
Pointing out stupidity and laughing at (or near) it is not a unique or original calling. There are whole industries and infrastructures devoted to this. Because I know this, I try to be fast, different, or both - and if I can't manage that, I'll usuallyi pass on a particular subject. But sometimes, even though you know everyone else is going to cue on the exact same things you are, the calling is too glorious to resist. And that, my friends, is the case with Oklahoma State Senator Frank Shurden.
Shurden, as I presume you're well aware by now, wants to reintroduce cockfighting to Oklahoma. Steve Shurden loves cock. And loves to see hot cock-on-cock action. But his ability to sit in a room with dozens of other men and watch a pair of perfectly matched cocks going at it has been hampered by busybodies who have decided that the cocks, and their cock ring, shouldn't be allowed in Oklahoma because it's sick and unnatural.
Google's gonna love that fucking paragraph.
To appease animal-rights activists who are understandably concerned about a blood-sport in which chickens with razor-blades attached to their feet fight to the death for the amusement of Oklahoma rednecks without access to Internet porn, Shurden has come up with a creative solution - replace the razor blades with little boxing gloves for the cocks.
By the way, cockfighting has been illegal in Oclahoma for... almost three whole years now, and according to Shurden, was a $100 million (presumably per year) business. You would think, if Oklahomans had $100 million a year to spend on cockfighting, they could buy a whole lot of other entertainment to replace it, but apparently not. Even with a hundred million bucks in your pocket, there's nothing better to do in Oklahoma.
In addition to the boxing gloves, the chickens would wear, get this, electronic vests. The gloves and vests would have sensors in them, and would electronically keep score for the bout. So, essentially, an Oklahoma lawmaker has spent his time and effort developing LAZER TAG FOR CHICKENS. I guarantee he hasn't done one bit of research into whether chickens WANT to play Lazer Tag. We already know humans don't, of course, but chickens are even dumber than eight-year-olds, so who knows? It's ACTUAL BAWK TIME!
"It's like the fencing that you see on the Olympics, you know, where they have little balls on the ends of the swords and the fencers wear vests. That's the same application that would be applied to the roosters." - Man, Oklahomans must think little balls solve EVERYTHING. They keep re-electing Jim Inhofe, after all. Bonus points to Shurden for realizing that "applications" are "applied" to things. Nice sentence construction for a guy who loves watching birds bleed to death.
Quite possibly the central tenet of You Are Dumb Dot Net is that we have to point out and criticize the stupid people because they ruin things for the rest of us. And that lesson was rarely more apparent than in California on Wednesday, when Juan Alvarez decided to kill himself. Which would be fine in and of itself, but his methods left a lot to be desired.
On the off chance you just came out of a mine shaft, Alvarez decided to kill himself by getting hit by a train. In his SUV, which he parked on the tracks. Which he then got out of, having apparently changed his mind. Two trains derailed, eleven people died, and hundreds of people's lives were messed up because one idiot couldn't find a tall building, a bridge, or some bleach. He is dumb. He is also in custody.
Reports from Thursday indicate that Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley will, get this, seek the DEATH PENALTY for Alvarez, who's charged with eleven counts of murder as a result of his FAILED SUICIDE ATTEMPT. You see what I'm getting at here. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!
"He's not going to engage my sympathy because he was despondent. His despondency doesn't move me." This is what happens when "tough on crime" rhetoric gets out of hand. Regardless of the circumstances, they're gonna send this guy to the gas chamber, giving him what he wanted in the first place. What's next, punishing bank robbers by giving them sacks of cash? Lunacy! Even assuming the pro-execution folks are generally right, and the death penalty acts as a deterrent, it's not gonna deter SUICIDAL PEOPLE. If anything, it'll encourage them. Want a nice, quiet gas-chamber death at state expense? Thanks to Steve Cooley, now you know what to do.

Remembering Reggie

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 12:26:00 -0500

Religion, 28 December 2004
It's not polite to speak ill of the dead.
I mean, hell, most people didn't even speak ill of Richard Nixon after he died, which extends beyond politeness to the kind of delusional, overwrought, complex system of manners and etiquette you read about in books that get turned into Merchant-Ivory movies. You know, the stuff with the calling cards and such. The kind of thing that makes you wonder if Emily Post had OCD and managed to inflict it on an entire nation.
In the spirit of that tradition, I offer the following quotes without comment, in the interests of remembering NFL star Reggie White. YAD and Reggie only co-existed for a short time, which I think is a damn shame.
THE LATE REGGIE WHITE ON HOMOSEXUALITY:
"As America has permitted homosexuality to establish itself as an alternate lifestyle, it is also reeling from the frightening spread of sexually transmitted disease. Sin begets its own consequence, both on individuals and nations."
"I've often had people ask me, would you allow a homosexual to be your friend. Yes, I will. And the reason I will is because I know that that person has problems, and if I can minister to those problems, I will."
"I'm offended that homosexuals will say that homosexuals deserve rights. Any man in America deserves rights, but homosexuals are trying to compare their plight with the plight of black men or black people. In the process of history, homosexuals have never been castrated, millions of them never died. Homosexuality is a decision. It's not a race. And when you look at it, people from all different ethnic backgrounds are living this lifestyle, but people from all different ethnic backgrounds are also liars and cheaters and malicious and backstabbers."
THE LATE REGGIE WHITE ON WHY GOD MADE THE RACES DIFFERENT:
"Hispanics are gifted in family structure. You can see a Hispanic person and they can put 20 or 30 people in one home. They were gifted in the family structure."
"When you look at the Asians, the Asian is very gifted in creation, creativity and inventions. If you go to Japan or any Asian country, they can turn a television into a watch. They're very creative. And you look at the Indians, they have been very gifted in the spirituality."
THE LATE REGGIE WHITE ON WHY ROME KICKED ASS:

"Rome had strong families when they first started out. It was founded on high moral standards. Each father was respected as the head of the family. In the early republic, the father had legal authority to discipline rebellious members of his family.

THE LATE REGGIE WHITE ON WHY ROME STOPPED KICKING ASS:

"Number five, there was an infiltration of a lie. As Roman families prospered, it became fashionable to hire educated Greeks to care for the children. Greek philosophies, with its humanistic and garish base, was soon passed on to the Roman families.

Reggie White. Packer* Sacker**. Minister. Amateur historian. He will be missed, both by football fans and the millions of homosexuals he never got the chance to save from themselves.

Here's a fun little game we can play. The media helped spread two interesting ideas in the week or two before Christmas. This would be the liberal media, of course, chock full of leftists and Communists seeking to impose their ideology on Mainstream America. As a result, one of these fact should be common knowledge by know, and the other will have been almost completely ignored by the general population. Can you tell which one is which?

1 - The American Civil Liberties Union is part of an orchestrated campaign to destroy Christmas and oppress Christians by completely removing Christianity from the public sphere.

2 - The American Civil LIberties Union has, through exhaustive Freedom of Information Act requests, uncovered FBI e-mails that refer to an executive order, from the President, authorizing the use of harsh interrogation tactics (a.k.a. abuse and torture) for detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

I have to say, it's funny the way the right-wing keeps lucking out like that. I mean, a bunch of them just happened to start making the ACLU look bad over the Christmas thing, which they coincidentally happened to mostly invent in the same exact way, right before the ACLU gets ahold of documents implicating Bush in prisoner abuse. You almost can't MAKE a break that good.

*Strictly in a football sense.
*Also strictly in a football sense.

No Stupid "Mourning" Puns

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 11:42:30 -0500

Main Column, 11 June 2004

Happy National Day of Mourning, everyone! I sure hope I can get to the mall before the Day of Mourning Sales are over.

Oh, wait. National days of mourning are fucking stupid. Never mind.

It's not even necessarily that it's Reagan. I understand there are a lot of people, especially people with money and power, that practically worship our newest corpse-in-chief. That's fine. And for these people, these Reagan conservatives, NOTHING is too good for Reagan. Not processions, not ritual, not getting his smiling face on whatever they can manage.

Well, OK. Stem cell research that might have made his last years less of a living hell, THAT was too good for him, but then them's the price you pay when you cozy up to Jerry Falwell in the 80's to get your job. Oh, sure, Nancy can ask all she wants for the embryonic stem cells, but the fundie monster Ron helped create is running science now. The irony is palpable. I mean, the closest I could come to an analogy is if, say, a whole bunch of our problems right now were caused by a group of nutjobs in some country that Ronnie funded and armed because they were fighting the Soviet Un.... oh. Wait. Shit.

But aside from it being Reagan, why we need an official day of mourning six whole days after Reagan died is beyond me. It's 2004, folks. I'm sorry, but we all live faster now. Even the Amish had heard and mourned and were done with the whole thing by Wednesday noon. Give us some credit. Many of us have high speed Internet access at home, work, or our local libraries.

At this point, we should have had a National Hour-Forty-Five of Mourning. Let's say on Tuesday, 8:15 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., Eastern Standard Time, tape delayed for the Pacific. Mountain time, check your local listings. That would have covered it. It's not as if all those people had to walk past the casket. Please. 80% of those fuckers were doing it just so they could say they did. Of the 20% who had some kind of valid connection to Reagan, at least half of those could have been weeded out by some fair, egalitarian process. Get Katherine Harris on that job, come to think of it.

We have things called cameras. We can even use the hi-def ones. Rent out some theaters. People can walk past the screen of their local Multiplex. Touch the screen, get some nachos, make a morning of it. What do you think, you're gonna be able to smell him in the rotunda or something? If you sense the faint reek of death and decay, odds are it's coming from the sweaty bastard behind you. STAY HOME.

I mean, if I were... someone completely different, I could totally justify walking past the casket. I mean, back in '84, the school band I was in played for a Reagan re-election rally in Rochester, NY. I was in the SAME ARENA as Reagan. We shared a deep personal connection. I helped, in some small way, to get him re-elected*. I could totally get away with going and pay my respects. But I'm not a self-obsessed dickhead with an overactive thyroid**.

Some of you may be asking, at this moment, "Who are YOU to judge how other people grieve?" I say this, because there are now a whole bunch of new people reading the site. I'd like to extend a hale and hearty YAD welcome to the Barony of Nordskogen and all you sick fucks googling your hearts out for every last detail of the Heemeyer Granby Armored Bulldozer Rampage. Anyway, for future reference, judging is kinda what I do around here. At least, whenever I see something DUMB.

* For those wondering, yes, I did throw up, just a little, in my mouth as I typed that.

** The thyroid's the one that makes you all maudlin and melodramatic, right? Whatever.

I Hate Morning In America

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 11:43:41 -0500

Main Column, 7 June 2004

Memo to the media: HURRY UP.

Let's just get it over with quickly, since we can't escape it. After all, when Nixon died, all of a sudden he was some kind of great statesman, instead of the drunken racist filthy crook that all those pesky facts pointed to. So now Ronnie has finally kicked it, and I know you're all lining up to jerk off his corpse and display your Photoshopped soft-focus portraits with the waving flag behind them, but move through it as quickly as you can, because I just ate.

In one sense, it was like God thought this weekend was my birthday, because first Creed broke up, and then Reagan died. But if there's one thing Ronald Reagan and an Islamic militant have in common, it's that they were both of more use to me drooling in a house somewhere than actually dead, because death makes them martyrs.

I can't even imagine what kind of cathartic apotheosis must have been happening on Fox News this weekend. Unclean worship of Reagan is one of those freakish arch-conservative points of view that they've managed to mainstream to the point where if you don't love "The Gipper", you're a commie. Just ask CBS.

And that's another thing. Ronald Reagan wasn't the fucking Gipper. George Gipp was the fucking Gipper. How rude is that, anyway, to just up and assume the fucking persona of someone in the real world who you happened to play in a movie? I bet all those Young Republicans out there weeping in their Coors this morning would have a fucking embolism if James Brolin started calling himself the "Great Communicator".

Reagan was the reason my generation shit itself when they ran "The Day After". "The Day After" does not hold up well. It's not actually a particularly good movie. But with Ronnie and his fucking plastic hair running things, there was a palpable sense in the air that at any moment, he could have some kind of communist hallucination, or press the wrong button, and rain nuclear fire down upon us all.

I mean, we were terrified of STEVE FUCKING GUTTENBERG walking around on a soundstage full of the simulated styrofoam rubble of 80's civilization. How the hell can you deify the man most responsible for an entire nation being freaked out by STEVE GUTTENBERG? I mean, as bad as Iran-Contra was, as bad as the October Surprise was, as bad as Reaganomics was, that's the most chilling indictment of the Reagan years right there. We were so fucked up as a country under Reagan that Steve Guttenberg TV-movies were giving children legitimate nightmares.

Bet they don't mention THAT in any of the four thousand retrospectives you're gonna see in the next two months.

Luckily, unlike Reagan, the death of Creed has NO DOWNSIDE WHATSOEVER. So even while Dan Rather waxes poetic over slow-mo footage of that evil retard president (the dead one) smiling, we too can maybe smile, just a little. Because as horrible as the world is right now, Creed still broke up.