You Are Dumb - Holidays

Induhpendunce D'Oh

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:16:51 -0500

Holidays, 4 July 2008

Memo to the American Family Association: ENJOY FREEDOM, MORONS.

It's a holiday, which means most of you aren't actually reading this. That means I get to put in MINIMAL EFFORT. I enjoy minimal effort, for reasons that should be obvious. Luckily, the American Family Association believes in MAXIMAL EFFORT when it comes to being dumb. Donald Wildmon's group is the grand old dame of the bluenose ball, still kicking it butt-stupid after 31 years.

And man, do they hate gay people. They hate gay people so much they don't even like gay people calling themselves "gay". They think gay people should always be called HOMOSEXUALS, presumably because the more syllables you have, the more disgust you can work up in the audience. And if the AFA is committed to anything, it's committed to quintupling disgust. So what they do is replace the word "gay" in any wire stories they run on their site with the word "homosexual". Presumably by some sort of automated process. Which led to the following appearing on their website last week. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday... Homosexual didn’t get off to a particularly strong start in the first semifinal..."

The wire stories, of course, were talking about track star Tyson Gay. Man, I wonder how he learned to run so fast?

Clearly, this bothered the AFA, which is used to being a national laughingstock for stuff they do on purpose, not stuff they do by accident because they're crazy. So they jumped right back on that bucking bugfuck bronco and went after McDonalds for its support of the tyson homosexual agenda.

No, seriously. Well, except for the "tyson" part. That bit was the kind of clever wordplay you'd enjoy if you read the column on holidays. But they really do want us to boycott Mickey D's. Why?

"McDonald’s has chosen not to remain neutral but to give the full weight of their corporation to promoting the homosexual agenda, including homosexual marriage."

McDonalds' crimes? First, they gave $20,000 to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. Second, one of their corporate employees is a member of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. And third, the AFA really hates gay people. If there are any other reasons, they're lost amidst the crappy, hysterical writing and even worse design of the boycottmcdonalds.com site.

Clearly emboldened by that one time they got Ford to stop advertising in a gay magazine*, the AFA now thinks it can take down what is arguably the modern world's first example of horrifying American global corporate dominance. They'll be lucky if all they get is a bun and a pickle. Of course, knowing them, they'll see the bun and the pickle as promoting the homosexual agenda.

*I know this because it's the only touchstone the hundreds of retarded commenters on the site bother using.

Remembering

Sun, 25 May 2008 22:02:30 -0500

Iraq, 26 May 2008

Memo to America: BY THE WAY, WAR.

It's funny how things change over time. It used to be that Memorial Day was set aside to remember all the soldiers that died in our past wars, and pretend all those wars were justified. Now, it's a time we've set aside to actually remember that we're at war. In two countries. So far.

It's easy to forget, for a whole bunch of reasons. For one thing, we've collectively decided to experience the negative drawbacks from this war on a several-steps-removed basis. We're not paying higher taxes, for example. But nothing's free. You know what happens when the government prints up pallets upon pallets of $20 bills, flies them over to Iraq, and hands them out? Eventually, those dollars make their way around the world, and thus, the overall value of the dollar drops. Which makes everything more expensive.

You're noticing it at the gas pumps now, and in the grocery stores, but we're just starting to see it. It's just going to get worse. I mean, I'm no Paul Krugman, but when you hand out 1.8 billion dollars in cash with no documentation, and up to another 13 billion in cash with only the barest minimum of documentation, I can't help but think that's bad, from an economic standpoint.

Of course, there are hundreds of thousands of people with a more direct stake in this whole deal. You know, those of you who lost an arm, or two legs, or your livelihood, or your brother over in Iraq. The family members, the social workers, the people who actually see the day-to-day consequences while cable news spends twenty-three-and-a-half hours a day talking about how yummy John McCain's ribs are.

And yes, I'm part of the problem. Yes, I have plenty of excuses. I'm at best cultural commentary, so if there's no culture, there's no commentary. But more importantly, and I think this gets to the root of the whole problem, talking about it doesn't do shit.

Now, this wasn't always true. There have been a bunch of times, over the years, when talking about it might have made a difference. Like in 2002. There were plenty of people, myself included, talking at the time about how this was a huge fucking mistake, how George Bush would just use the conflict as a way to assuage his moronic ego and funnel billions of dollars to his rich friends. Nobody listened. And what's worse, all the people who didn't listen still have jobs, and they pretend they sorta kinda felt that way the whole time, when in reality they were all blood-crazed jingoists.

Like in 2004, when we talked and talked and talked and talked about how the war was going horribly, and the mission wasn't actually accomplished, and maybe, just maybe, you should stop listening to Rush Limbaugh speculating on whether John Kerry really got wounded and deserved his purple hearts in Vietnam and think for half a goddamned second about what you'd be voting for if you re-elected Bush in November. And at least fifty one percent of you didn't listen.

And in 2006, we talked about how important it was to vote for Democrats, so that they could get into Congress, claim the majority, claim subpoena power, get in charge of all the investigatory powers and the purse strings so that at least there'd be some kind of check on that crazy fuckhead you elected twice over. And you listened. And, well, we were wrong about that one, because they keep giving the money and they keep getting walked all over by criminals in suits who treat them worse than Mayberry treated Don Knotts.

Movements were started, and were marginalized. Marches were held, and were minimized. Protesters were caged, voters were ignored, laws were flouted, and Glenn Beck is still drawing a fucking paycheck.

And this year, we'll do our damndest to keep telling you that no, he's not a Muslim, and no, just because his dad was a Muslim doesn't make him an ex-Muslim, and no, it shouldn't matter that he's black, and no, he's not a latte-drinking elitist, and yes, he's going to talk to other countries because for eight fucking years we've been dropping very expensive bombs on them and it's accomplished less than nothing. And maybe you'll listen, and maybe you won't. And maybe Obama will at least try to extract us from the epic clusterfuck we've built, and maybe he won't.

And maybe we'll keep talking about it, and maybe we won't. It's not the most morally uplifting stance to take, the cynical, fuck-all-y'all, take our blog and go home attitude. But you can't say it's not understandable.

Zirkle In The Zand

Wed, 07 May 2008 07:09:13 -0500

Racism, 7 May 2008

Memo to Tony Zirkle: YOU ARE DUMB.

But incredibly useful. Yes, I know Zirkle is old news. The story of the fringe Republican candidate for Congress in Indiana who famously appeared at a celebration of Adolf Hitler's birthday, and claimed afterward that he didn't know they were Nazis, and anyway, he'd speak to anyone.

But really, the Nazi thing is just the icing on the crazy cake that is Frederick Anthony "Tony" Zirkel. A man whose campaign website is so awesome the "Home" link is FOURTH on the menu. That's how many vitally important things Tony Zirkel has to tell you about, folks. And honestly, once you dive into the rabbit hole that is Zirkle's campaign website, which is just one small part of tonyzirkle.com, you'll never want to leave.

Right off the bat, for example, you learn that Tony Zirkle has a plan for energy independence. But it's not just any plan for energy independence. It's a plan for energy independence in ten years, combined with a plan to eliminate the national debt (not deficit) in 25. And the name of this plan? "Operation Yoda".

Why does he call it "Operation Yoda"? I was afraid to find out. And then I was thrilled by the possibility of finding out. And then I was afraid to find out again. But I had to know. For me, and for you. And so I looked. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"America faces a national security risk. Energy independence. We are now facing almost $4 a gallon in gas and we risk sinking our economy if we fail to act. In the Star Wars movies, Yoda told Luke Skywalker, 'Do or do not do. There is no try.' I’m proposing an Operation Yoda to do energy independence in the nation without any ifs, ands or butts." - Tony Zirkle's press release on "Operation Yoda".

That paragraph is the gift that keeps on giving. It's got more mistakes in it than the first half of a John McCain press conference. Yoda only says that in one of the Star Wars movies. Technically, he doesn't say it in ANY o fthe Star Wars movies, because Tony Zirkle, setting a new standard for due diligence, got the money quote wrong. There's extra "do" in it. I can only assume the extra "do" came from the "butts" that shouldn't be there either. And not to question the word choice of the nation's premier inadvertent Nazi sympathizer, but is energy independence really something that you "do"?

That's perhaps the biggest crime of the Bush presidency. It's put the idea into the heads of the Tony Zirkles of the world that a basic command of both the English language* is not a prerequisite for public office. Basic pop culture and grammar errors aside, though, what does Operation Yoda have to offer?

Apparently, we will achieve these goals by building really big highways through porn shops. I shit you not. He calls them SABEs, for "Super Auto-Bon Expressways", an Anglicization which I think spits in the face of the memory of Hitler, who Tony Zirkle accidentally loves. We will then announce to the world that we will begin exporting energy, which we'll be storing on "flash drives" that we can use to power everything, because they're reusable and rechargeable.

Lest you think his plan is entirely magic-based, he also proposes building ten nuclear plants a year, the output of which I presume would be used to fill those flash drives that we can plug into our electric cars and go tooling down the Auto-Bon over the remains of every porn shop Tony Zirkle can identify and direct the highway to crush. Did I mention that Tony Zirkle has a thing against porn? Because he has a thing against porn.

"I’ve been getting a flood of e-mails and phone calls, some of which include death threats, about my attempt to raise awareness of how the great porn dragon inspires Jews into pornography and prostitution and then, like the snake he is, turns the public against the Jews. Some have questioned whether there is any link to Jews and porn-prostitution... Let’s save our Jewish brothers and sisters from this tyrant king porn dragon before we get to another world-wide pogrom."

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, when I think of one group whose representation in the fields of pornography and prostitution is wildly disproportionate and excessive, I think of the Jews. But at least with this Jimmy James double-translated biography of a political philosophy you can make some sense of it. Well, with the help of other Zirkle writings, at least. You see, apparently, Hitler would have been denied one of his biggest propaganda victories against the Jews if the Jews hadn't been such porny whores. In other words, Zirkle defends himself from charges of anti-Semitism by pointing at how they were dressed and telling the Jews they were asking for it.

Awful? Yes. Batshit crazy? Yes. Hilarious? Yes. But that's nothing. Here, in what I guarantee is the single greatest ACTUAL QUOTE TIME of 2008, is what Tony Zirkle sounds like when he gets on a roll:

"What goes around, sometimes comes around, and sometimes a Zulu massacre comes right back in a dot com a few generations later to taunt a people in a new, more efficient destroying form of the same song, different dance hate speech. If addiction prone blanches can't get their act together, then all of us who have a shred of justice in our spine may one day have to debate the idea of giving them what their ancestors gave to the natives, the author or whom is still honored with placement on the $20 bill, and consider for a second, before being publicly scorn-burned to a 33rd degree crisp, the merits of exiling them to a 44 state reservation and consider slavery reparations where the 12%, 6 state FL, GA, SC, MS, AL, & LA South shall rise again under the transformed Bible-to-Gospel belt." - A section from Tony Zirkle's "Internet Porn" policy. Really.

Mocking Tony Zirkle for speaking to Nazis is all well and good, but I think it does Zirkle a disservice. It focuses on one unfortunate campaign event, when his entire campaign is so completely fucking insane, Ron Paul and Alan Keyes would refuse to appear with him on the 700 Club. Although, come to think of it, Tony Zirkle is just the guy to shore up John McCain's support amongst hard-core conservatives. He'd make an excellent running mate. Just tell McCain he's a governor from a battleground state, and the Maverick won't notice until at least late October.

*See also: sanity.

Your Annual Reminder

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 22:46:04 -0500

Internet, 31 March 2008

Memo to the net-connected universe: DON'T BE DUMB.

It's that time again. Tomorrow is April Fool's Day, which means today I am obligated to remind you and inform you that the Internet will be lying to you even more than usual tomorrow.

Studies have shown that on the average day, the Internet is lying 72% of the time. From the Nigerian scam, to the actual genitalia of the person you're chatting with, to that poetry LiveJournal actually being deep and insightful, the Internet is full of lies the way Chock Full of Nuts is full of coffee.

But on April Fool's Day, that all changes. According to this study, on April 1, 1998, a full 134% of Internet pages visited by individuals contained at least one falsehood. You may wonder how this can be possible. And I'm here to tell you.

The first thing you need to remember is that nerds think they're funny. Nerds think they're funny because nerds also think that women like men with a sense of humor. They think this, ironically, because they read it on the Internet on April Fool's Day.

The second thing you need to remember is that nerds have a more difficult time than most determining when certain behaviors are appropriate vs. when they are inappropriate. April Fool's Day, however, has a long cultural tradition of jokes and pranks being acceptable.

And the third thing you need to remember is that nerds write everything on the Internet.

Thanks to these three factors, April Fool's Day becomes the great opportunity for every fucking nerd with a keyboard and a broadband connection to attempt to achieve that most noble and lofty of goals: to someday be listed amongst past Internet pranks other people inexplicably believed. For society's well-being, we must prevent them from achieving this goal, and to achieve this, we must become the very antithesis of Parappa The Rapper.

We've gotta do what? We've gotta not believe!

It's That Time Again

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:17:46 -0500

Main Column, 10 March 2008

Memo to entropy: FUCK YOU.

It's my birthday, and as is You Are Dumb Dot Net tradition, I take the day off. But not the way I normally take the day off, no. On my birthday I give you all a little something to tide you over until the next column. So what am I doing instead of hating John McCain? I'm playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl.

And why am I playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl? Because I am a late-life Nintendo convert, and because you have got to respect any game that decides it needs to have Will Wright as a weapon. And the character roster is DEEP. I've only unlocked a couple of characters, but even I've hit some major surprises:

He's fairly slow, but if you hit down plus B, he lets out a devastating indictment of the mainstream media. He made Pikachu cry, and convinced the Ice Climbers to run for their local school board to overturn the creationist majority.

Unstuck In Time

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 22:27:52 -0600

Holidays, 29 February 2008

I feel like I should do something special.

Today is the first Leap Day in You Are Dumb Dot Net history. Back in 2004, it fell on a Sunday, so clearly, there would be no column. And who the hell knows if I'll still be doing this in 2012. We may all be underwater and homeless by then, and even if my iPod is waterproof, I'm not gonna peck these things out on the tiny keyboard every single day.

But fuck it. February 29th is a day unstuck in time, so I think I'll just use it to bitch about something that's been annoying me since the Super Bowl, but which I never bothered getting around to. So, belatedly, to the GMC corporation, YOU ARE DUMB.

I wasn't actually watching the Super Bowl, but I was in the same room for a while as people who were. And I saw the Super Bowl ad for the GMC Yukon Hybrid. Which consists of an animated, somewhat abstract dude pushing a boulder up a hill. And here's what the announcer says. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Why push? Why change? Why grow? Why dream? Questions you don't have to ask yourself when you never say, 'It's good enough.' When you never say, 'It can't be done.' When you never say never." At which point the dude gets the boulder up to the top of the hill, and it stays there.

The ad is infuriating on every single possible level. The most important one being that there's only one fuckin' guy who pushes a boulder up a hill, and that's SISYPHUS. And the whole point of Sisyphus is that he was cursed by the gods to NEVER get the boulder up the hill.

But according to GMC, Sisyphus's problem was simply that he didn't care enough about getting that boulder up. If he'd just read "The Secret", and visualized, and persisted, if he never said never, that boulder wouldn't stand a fucking chance. According to GMC Yukon, Sisyphus was a pussy.

It's not like there wasn't other, more appropriate imagery they could have co-opted for the same effect. For example, the Little Engine that Could. I mean, I'm not a marketing guy, due to my overdeveloped sense of self-awareness and ethics, but even I can see that the Little Engine that Could is (a) a vehicle, and (b) supposed to, by its own internal logic, make it up the fucking hill.

I can only imagine what it must be like to work for GMC, when Human Resources comes around with this year's motivational poster. Prometheus, chained to a rock, his liver being eaten by vultures, and the caption, in big, bright, happy letters? "HANG IN THERE, BABY!"

Also, they're pimping a Yukon Hybrid as some sort of pinnacle of human achievement. Hooray! Now people who don't need a vehicle half the size of a Yukon can feel slightly better about the twenty one whole miles per gallon they'll be getting if GMC's numbers can be believed*. Gee, thanks! Twenty one miles per gallon? That should stop global warming dead in its tracks. And here I am, stuck with all these sandbags and sunscreen, looking like the guy on January 2, 2000 wondering what the hell he's going to do with three hundred cans of beans.

You know what driving a Yukon Hybrid is like? It's like taking Mother Earth out on a date, giving her a roofie, leaving five bucks on the nightstand, and then patting yourself on the back for being such a nice guy. Well, guess what? Sisyphus never got his rock off, so neither should you.

And the kicker? The absolute topper to GMC's message of achieving the impossible, no matter what the cost, no matter what obstacles stand in your way? A little disclaimer, in block letters, beneath the beauty shot of the white Yukon on a white background:

"LIMITED AVAILABILITY".

It's a pity there's no hell, because it's a damn shame GMC's ad agency won't get to burn in it. Let's hope they last long enough to enjoy the heat here on Earth.

*Ha.

Looking Forward

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 23:43:00 -0600

Holidays, 1 January 2008

Memo to 2008: YOU WILL BE DUMB.

I have to say, if I were going to decide to hang up my hate hat and end this grand experiment in the mocking of our collective notsobrightitude, now would be the perfect fucking time to do it. For my sake, anyway, if not for yours.

The very first year of YAD was a presidential election year, and between the inevitable stupidity, the non-stop media coverage, and the incomprehenibly disappointing result, the whole thing was not what I would call 100% pure adrenaline.

This year is going to be utterly dominated by the election, from the Iowa caucuses in two days to the pre-inauguration hoopla around New Year's 2009. It'll be eleven solid months of watching the Democrats, in constant fear that they will find a way to fuck up what is the closest to a sure thing we're likely to see in politics. The reward for which will be a chance to cast my vote for Hillary Clinton, an act which, as I've said in the past, just may lead to a fatal Election Day aneurysm.

And it'll be eleven months of watching the Republicans, in what is not so much a primary process as it is a series of back-room dares about who can get away with saying the craziest shit. A process, by the way, that Tom Tancredo didn't think he was strong enough for, despite his insistence that everyone around him was an illegal Mexican immigrant.

But Tancredo couldn't compete. The first caucus hasn't even started yet, and in just the past week, we've had Mike Huckabee warning us that the Bhutto assassination would lead to an influx of Pakistani illegal immigrants carrying shoulder-mounted missile launchers across the Mexican border. And you've had a (now former) Guiliani campaign manager tell us we need to drive all the Muslims back into their caves. Hell, just yesterday, Huckabee closed out the year with a bang - a press conference where he showed everyone in the press the full version of the attack ad he was REFUSING TO RUN against Romney, answering the question "what would it take at this point to insult the media's intelligence?"

At this rate, by May, Mitt Romney is going to be dismantling abortion clinics with his teeth, John McCain will announce his plans to open a chain of safe, family-friendly Baghdad-style street markets , and Fred Thompson will open his eyes and remember he's running for President.

It's going to be an epic slog, a Bataan Death March of comedy. A Trail of Tears with dick jokes. But hey, Larry The Cable Guy has another movie in the can. It's called, get this: "Witless Protection". I don't think Hollywood needs to worry about BitTorrent when they're putting out movies you can imagine, in their entirety, based just on the star and the title.

Still, I must look on the bright side. Pakistan is now a destabilized nuclear power - that's always good for a few laughs. Jamie Lynn Spears will have her baby, so that means I can top off my apathy tank for free sometime around the summer. And Ron Paul still has fans, so no comment thread on the Internet will ever be safe again. There. That's more like it. Let's just hope I can flip off 2008 for 365 straight days without a cramp.

Auto De Feh

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 22:27:30 -0600

Holidays, 21 December 2007

Memo to the auto industry: HO HO NO.

Over the years, I've sort of backed myself into a holiday tradition of noticing ludicrously stupid shit marketed to the public as potential Christmas gifts. Usually the kind of thing you'd never allow into your own home, but think is just perfect for cluttering up your friends' and family's lives. You know, like separate appliances for reheating frozen pizzas.

Well, Christmas is imminent, and I haven't noticed a goddamned thing. Either the impending recession has gotten the attention of Corporate America, in which case I'll be chilling my eggnog with chunks of Hell this year, or my obsession with getting all 120 stars* kept me away from commercials for the past six weeks. I know where the smart money goes on this one.

Well, OK. I did see one thing this year. It's something I see every single fucking year, my most hated of all Christmas gift ads. You've seen them too. The setup can vary. Sometimes its a family opening up nice, but ultimately unspectacular presents. Sometimes it's a young couple pulling up to their house. But they always end the same way: with a car wrapped in a giant fucking bow.

I cannot stress this enough. If you surprise someone with a car for Christmas, there is something seriously fucking wrong with you. Doubly so if you go with the giant bow. There was a less cynical time when I thought the bows were advertising props, and you couldn't actually get a car wrapped in one, but these days, before I even looked, I knew it had to be out there. And it is. Along with full wrapping-paper options for people who think the giant fucking bow is passe or doesn't go far enough.

Cars should be chosen. Picked out. Thought about. They are a major purchase, not an impulse buy. If you're making that kind of financial decision and not telling the other person in your life about it, either you're a complete moron for whom all the Christmas morning glee will bite you on the ass when the bill comes due, or you have too much fucking money and shouldn't be flaunting it by parking CARS WITH BOWS ON THEM in your front yard.

The only person who should be surprising people with new cars is Bob Barker. And no, I don't care. I won't put Drew Carey in that joke, because if you put Drew Carey in that joke, the joke stops being funny. It takes a while for actual reality to seep down into Punchline Reality, and Drew's going to need a few more years under his belt before he can be included in any Showcase Showdown related comedy.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. People should not be giving cars as gifts, and car companies shouldn't be spending two or three months a year trying to normalize what is, in essence, aberrant anti-social behavior. Even if that is, essentially, their mission statement at this point.

*A dream fully realized, by the way.

Bored. To The Purple!

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 22:12:31 -0500

Holidays, 29 October 2007

Memo to USA Today: YOU ARE USEFULLY DUMB.

So, are any of you as balls-numbingly sick of politics as I am? If you're not, I suppose I understand. But I have to keep my wick dipped in the fetid pool of political news because, well, that's where a lot of the stupid makes its home. And after a while, the accumulated mental barnacles of religious fundamentalism, rampant incompetence, cowardice, and just plain evil build up to the point where I need to dock and scrape them off before I head off to see again.

Or, shorter version: FUCK POLITICS.

Which is why I'm turning to the single least political source of news on the entire planet. The Purple. AKA the "Life" section of the USA Today. For decades, The Purple has been the standard-bearer for banality in print journalism. If you don't give a shit about it, and think that nobody else in their right mind SHOULD give a shit about it, then odds are Al Neuharth's lackeys have killed some trees and painted the pulp with it.

For example - were you aware that the endlessly-covered spate of vapid starlet legal troubles in the past year has inspired a small handful of people to make Halloween costumes based on them? Neither was I. But only because it's the kind of thing I wouldn't have even considered devoting a synapse to. Of course people are dressing as Lindsay, Paris, and Britney for Halloween. It's an inevitability.

And people participating in inevitabilities shouldn't think they're clever. Or get attention from national newspapers. Or even get attention from the lazy-ass entertainment sections of lazy-ass, "national" "newspapers" that two and a half decades of sarcastic quotes have never managed to diminish. But there The Purple is, telling us all about cheap and ugly costume tie-ins:

"Channel an imprisoned Paris Hilton by donning blond extensions and stripes — pink and black, of course. (Forget standard-issue jumpsuits: This is a minidress.)"

One of the hard and fast rules of Halloween is this: there are two, and only two, conditions under which it's OK to have a costume you have to explain to the other people at the party. The first is the Obscure Nerd Cred costume, and the second is the Pun Costume. If you have to tell me what the fuck you're dressed as, you'd better inspire a stronger reaction than "Oh. I guess I can see that." or I'm going to have to hurt you.

And I'm sorry, but a pink and black striped minidress with hair extensions does not exactly scream "Paris Hilton" to me. Why not use head-to-toe glowing green makeup and Rick Solomon's penis? Sure, it's less topical, but it shows effort.

But don't worry! The Purple does not limit its tale to the retailers who sell cheap and vague pop culture to hordes of last-minute, I-guess-we'll-go-to-the-party-after-all shoppers. No, they make sure their story has the personal touch. Which is where Manhattan social worker Kyrra Rankine comes in. You see, last year, Kyrra dressed as "pregnant Britney", complete with Britney Spears tour T-Shirt, under the 70's plastic costume principle that putting a picture of who you're supposed to be on your costume is just as good as actually looking like them. So what is Rankine planning for her big encore? ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"I got so many good responses as just plain pregnant Britney. I just can't leave her. She's given me too much material to work with. Underneath it all, I'm sort of a fan: 'You go girl, work it out. Make it happen for next year, so I can have fancy extensions in my hair or something.'"

This is what I love about The Purple. There are stupid people in this world who do not have blogs. Stupid people who do not post comments to YouTube videos. Stupid people who don't hold high elected office, don't run a megachurch, and aren't Pope. Stupid people who go about their everyday lives in complete obscurity, until a USA Today reporter talks to them, and they decide to tell Britney Spears, by proxy, "You go, girl."

Without USA Today, I would lose track of the fact that these people exist, and yes, they irritate the fuck out of me too. Especially when they talk about using a brunette wig to help them simulate "bald Britney", in a clear act of overt defiance against the very meaning of the word BALD. And that's why it's so important for us to vary our hate diet.

Out Like A Monkey

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 22:00:52 -0500

Holidays, 30 March 2007

Ah, spring. When a young monkey's heart turns to... actually, let's not think about what young monkeys' hearts turn to, and just jump right in to SPASTIC TOPIC MONKEY FRIDAY. Friday's got a red butt!

And it's the end of March, so it's time for me to once again remind everyone at the spout end of the Internet tubes that the Internet lies to you, because it thinks that's funny. Your best bet is to ignore the Internet entirely on Sunday, but barring that, just assume that everything you see, whether it's new product announcements, the weather, or the headlines on Fox News, is a huge fucking lie typed up by someone who thinks they're a lot funnier than they actually are.

Just meet the entire information superhighway with stony silence. I don't want to see a single fucking poster this year saying "Man, it's April Fool's Day, so this is probably a hoax, but maybe it's true!" No, it's not true. Bush isn't resigning, the iPhone will not be free to everyone with a MySpace account, and the surge is not working.

A quick memo to my nemeses at the Howard Center: FUCK YOU. As regular readers of the column know, I regularly get e-mails from "natural family" proponents the Howard Center. They also go by World Congress of Families, which I don't usually mention because Howard Center is faster to type. But their latest e-mail screed really pissed me off, because the subject line read thusly:

THE LEFT TAKES NOTE OF WORLD CONGRESS OF FAMILIES IV

Way to make me feel like the proverbial chopped liver, fuckers. I took notice of you years ago. The actual subject of the e-mail is some primo "they're afraid of us" boasting because some people have noticed they're having their huge annual meeting in Poland this year. The e-mail asks: "Feminists, militant secularists and the vanguard of the sexual revolution agree that the World Congress of Families is a threat to their agenda."

Their evidence for this are two articles noting that (a) they're having a meeting, and (b) they're bugfuck. I don't know if that counts as agreeing that they're a threat, except in the same way that having two dozen puppies in your living room is a threat to your upholstery agenda.

For those of you keeping track of the Katherine Kersten Banality Index, this week saw an increase of nearly six percent in average Kersten banality. This week, she wrote two more columns on the "Flying Imams". I can only assume that the obsession with a minor incident from last year is her equivalent of holding her hands over her ears and yelling "BLAH BLAH BLAH I CAN'T HEAR YOU" at all the actual things happening in the world these days. And I can't blame her for that.

I can, however, blame her for the ludicrous, outdated reference she pulled in Monday's column, ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"But the real bull in the imams' china shop is right here in Minnesota. Like some legal equivalent of Hulk Hogan, Gerry Nolting of Minneapolis law firm Faegre & Benson, came storming out of his corner last week."

If Kersten mixes drinks the way she mixes metaphors, she must spend every evening vomiting in her backyard. Boxers come storming out of their corners, not elderly orange retired wrestlers with more reality shows than working knees. And there's a bull in the ring? And the ring's in a china shop? Either Kersten is an awful, awful writer, or I need to spend a lot more time hanging out in the law offices of Faegre, Benson, Toro, and Hulkster. If it's like that normally, the place must be COMPLETELY insane when casual Friday rolls around.

Look Forward In Anger

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 19:28:14 -0600

Main Column, 2 January 2007

Memo to 2007: YOU WILL BE DUMB.

I've never done best of the year. I took a stab at it once, it went poorly, and I decided that year-end wrapups are just copouts from people without the balls to just skip a day. But it is a new year, both for the column and for, somewhat less importantly, the world, and it seems appropriate to commemorate that in some way.

And then I saw a poll from the AP about how 2007 will go, and I realized you're all a bunch of pessimistic bastards. Sixty percent think the US will get hit by a terrorist attack. 70% think we'll get slammed by a natural disaster. 90% expect higher gas prices, which isn't so much a prediction as it is a statistic that proves ten percent of all Americans are actively delusional.

I can't compete with that kind of pessimism! I mean, only 25% of you think the second coming of Christ will take place in the next calnedar year! Hell, I can't even decide whether that's good or bad. For me OR for the 25%. But I do have certain expectations for the coming year, and the kinds of things I'll be hating on.

And first and foremost, I expect 2007 to be the Year of Disappointment with Democrats. I know, it's a bold prediction, given that every year from the New Deal on could be described that way. But this year's going to be especially bad. Because we all know what we WANT to happen when the next Congress gets sworn in. Laws! Oversight! Investigations! Nancy Pelosi's Hundred Hours! We'll see almost none of it, of course.

Let's make a big pile of progressive hopes and dreams. Just heap them high. Impeachment, minimum wage, gay marriage, whatever. Big honkin' pile. Now let's take away the stuff that, no matter how much we wish otherwise, isn't actually part of the Democratic Party platform. Call it a third. That leaves us 67% of our pile.

Of that 67%, now let's remove everything that the Democrats won't push through because it will piss off their big contributors. That's... another quarter. Down to 42%.

Now let's remove all the stuff that, despite being sound policy, isn't politically salable in the 2007 climate. Another 15% gone, leaving us with a tiny 27% pile.

Now let's remove all the stuff that, despite being sound policy, leading Democrats don't THINK is politically salable in the 2007 climate. Another 20%. Leaving a paltry seven percent.

Now try to imagine how much of that seven percent Dubya will be able to veto.

And as far as investigations and oversight go, if you haven't been watching the post-mortem fellating of Gerald Ford over the past week, pay attention. Because Ford's stunning, crowning achievement, for which he is being praised on high from every corner, is PARDONING NIXON.

By pardoning Nixon, you see, he helped "heal the country". He helped us "move on" after a "difficult and trying time". He didn't "bail out his buddy who got him the job" or "interrupt the investigation". No, he saved America by keeping America from ever finding out how fucking corrupt their government was.

Healing and moving on are concepts that, in the political realm, were invented for the sole purpose of keeping crooks from experiencing the full measure of consequence for their actions. Anytime any politician says it's time to move on, it's because they're not done shredding things yet. And I guaranfuckingtee you that you'll be hearing calls to "move on" and "put all this behind us" before a single glowing subpoena gets issued. Probably linked to the idea that moving on will allow us to do the important work Congress needs to do for the American people.

And we all have seen what THAT looks like for the past six years. So the official You Are Dumb mantra for 2007? Don't get your fucking hopes up.

Dress The Part

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 22:05:44 -0600

Holidays, 31 October 2006

Memo to The Loyal Readership: SHOW YOUR ALLEGIANCE.

Today is Halloween. The day when Beelzebub corrupts all the little godless children into renouncing Jesus in exchange for stale Tootsie Rolls, and the limits of what can legally be called "flame retardant" are tested. I know how much you all want to show yourselves as proud You Are Dumb readers on this most unholy of days, which is why I'm giving you this handy list of You Are Dumb Dot Net -related costume ideas far too late for you to actually do anything about it.

FERNIE

Needed: Three plant fronds, plastic or real. Staple gun. Angry disposition.

Yes, just staple three vaguely plant-like fronds to the back of a shirt and go as Fernie, the beloved You Are Dumb Dot Net mascot. Fernie, The Hating Fern is the hit of any party, with his trademark glowering and eventual nutpunching of all and sundry. Plus, you'll be instantly able to recognize OTHER You Are Dumb Dot Net readers. They're the ones walking up to you and asking if Lambert even does that damn fern thing anymore.

XBOX LIVE MARKETPLACE

Needed: Tray, bowl full of glass beads, bowl full of candy corn, winning, can-sell attitude.

This one's a bit conceptual, especially since it's a topic I haven't actually addressed in a column yet. But here's how it works. Fill one bowl with glass beads, and one bowl full of candy corn. Place on tray and carry around. When people ask you for some candy corn, ask them for, say, a nickel. Exchange the nickel for 5 of the glass beads. Tell them these beads are "points".

Then, offer to exchange the candy corn for points - three candy corn for every two points. After taking four beads and dispensing six candy corn, they will be left with one glass bead. When they ask what they can do with one glass bead, tell them to shove it up their fucking ass for all you care, you've got their nickel. NO REFUNDS. Then laugh maniacally and tell them that by Easter, you'll be offering a Candy Corn Upgrade Pack consisting of some plastic grass and a basket for another 400 points.

GHOST OF KENNETH PINYAN

Needed: Horse-head-on-a-stick toy, white makeup, pained expression.

This should be blatantly obvious. Get bonus points for every party you ruin by responding to every inquiry about your costume with "Oh, I'm Kenneth Pinyan! This horse fucked me in the ass until I died!". At the top of your lungs. Over and over and over again. Until they kick you and your horse out and you're forced to wander the streets.

LIBERAL BLOG COMMENTER

Needed: Strong vocal chords, Buck Fush T-shirt (optional)

The Liberal Blog Commenter costume is all in the attitude. Just remember to pepper your conversations with 9/11 conspiracies, act like you have Markos on speed dial, and whatever you do, don't forget to comment loudly about how every single thing you say or do will get you declared an enemy combatant and sent to Gitmo where you'll be waterboarded by Dick Cheney right after they cancel the midterm elections and declare martial law.

It's easy! The tough part is remembering to stop on November 1.

Siss Boom Bah Humbug

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 23:24:19 -0500

Holidays, 4 July 2006

Happy July 4th! FIREWORKS ARE DUMB.

Sorry to metaphorically piss in your metaphorical cornflakes, but they are. Fireworks are stupid. But more importantly, they are stupid in inverse proportion to their professionalism.

Your city's big display down by the river, then, is only a little bit dumb. Fireworks are a prime example of what I like to call a pre-cable medium of artistic expression. An art form that relies in large part on a "wow" factor that decades of technological advancement have rendered moot, so they get by largely on tradition.

Now I'm sure there are fireworks craftsman out there who this will piss off. People who are immersed in the field, working day and night to tweak the colors and shapes of individual shells for a largely unappreciative audience of rubes. But at the end of the day, all you've got is a sky full of flaming chunks and a headache from gunpowder smoke.

Think back to all the fireworks displays you've witnessed in your life. Do you remember the details of any of them? The shapes, the colors, the patterns? Do you remember them more easily than the words to "I've Been To Paradise, But I've Never Been To Me"? Consider that a helpful metric for your next stab at comparative artistic value.

But whatever. I'm not really going to hold you culpable for the demise of rationality in society if you lay on a blanket tonight and spend two hours ooooooooing at airborne explosions. At least you're not trying to recreate the experience in the comfort of your own home.

On the big list of recreational activities I don't understand, setting off your own fireworks falls somewhere between obsessive lawn care and furry sex in overall effability.

I'm not even really concerned about the safety aspect. Fuck knows there are few enough evolutionary pressures on American society. Handing a sparkler to your five-year-old kid is in no way WISE, but neither is it particularly harmful to the species in the long view.

I just don't understand why people bother. I can only assume it's some kind of warped view of the principle of perspective. If big explosions far away are cool, tiny explosions right near my face must be JUST AS COOL. It's like when the professionals put on a show, only it's smaller, it's over a lot faster, and it fizzles out half the time. I suppose in that sense it's a lot like sex.

But last time I checked, bottle rockets weren't wired to the pleasure center of the brain. At least, not when used according to manufacturer instructions and aimed carefully. So what drives people to haul their SUVs to gaudy roadside stands in the hopes of purchasing explosives of dubious provenance they can take home and set off while drunk? I don't know, but I'm guessing the impulse doesn't start in the cerebral cortex.

Hail Satan!

Tue, 06 Jun 2006 07:43:09 -0500

Holidays, 6 June 2006

Memo to the Dumb: DON'T PISS ME OFF TODAY.

Yes, it's 6/6/6. The Date Of The Beast. And that's fine. Have your numerological fun. Up to a point. What point? I think we both know what point. There's a line that separates Fun WIth Numbers and Retarded Superstition, cross it today at your own peril.

Let's keep in mind at all times that there is no Number of the Beast, because THERE IS NO BEAST. Anything strange, weird, or bad that happens today is happening for the same reasons strange, weird, and bad things always happen. And if I sense for one second that one of you fucking morons isn't fully aware of this, and are remarking on it without a full set of Ironically Self-Aware Deflector Shields, I will snap my tether and take a hostage.

Because there's no Satan. No devil. No pitchfork, no pointy tail, no dark presence harvesting souls. Every single fucked up thing in the world today is the product of human ingenuity. Greed, stupidity, short-sightedness, bugfuck insanity, bigotry, war, murder? All ours.

Baby thrown out a window? People. Baby tossed in a dryer? People. Bribes in a freezer? People. Dick in a pig? People. Well, people and pigs, but when pigs do it it's OK. Torture? People. Waterboarding? People. Coverups? People. Bombings, beheadings, and cartoon-inspired arson? People. Throwing gay people under the evangelical bus to desperately shore up your base in a move so blatant and shameless even the media sees through it? People.

If you forgot something today, it's because you forgot something. If you stub your toe today, it's because you moved your foot into a solid object. If you cheat on your spouse, it's because you wanted to fuck someone else. No devil on one shoulder, and certainly no angel on the other.

That's what those in the know call "free will", the gift of sapience, the ability to observe, interpret, reason, and then act based on your observations, interpretation, and reasoning. It's a hell of a gift, and has given us everything from the International Space Station to New Super Mario Bros.

And it's a gift most of you piss away every single fucking chance you get. You squander it in favor of "absolute truth", you abandon it out of laziness, or you toss it away because you can't bear to listen to what it's telling you.

So, you know, woo. Devil Day. Have fun with it. I know I will. But don't forget that the entire goddamn universe will still be here tomorrow, and it'll care just as much about the arbitrary alignment of an even more arbitrary numbering convention as it does today - a quantity I like to think of as the intersection of Jack Road and Shit Ave.

Tomorrow, people will still be dumb of their own free will. Try not to be one of them.

Kill Me, I'm Irish!

Sun, 19 Mar 2006 22:52:30 -0600

Holidays, 20 March 2006

Memo to John Dunleavy: YOU ARE DUMB. AND LATE.

On Friday, I connected, almost instinctively, two things I really hate. St. Patrick's Day and bigotry. It was mainly a matter of convenience, a transparent attempt to make two unrelated topics fit into one column. And it's a shame, really, because had I known about John Dunleavy, I could have saved myself a lot of effort.

John Dunleavy runs Manhattan's St. Patty's Day parade. It's the most famous St. Patrick's Day parade in the country, because Manhattan's tall buildings and rectilinear layout naturally force everyone to walk in a reasonably straight line no matter what their blood alcohol level. And I had vague memories of past clashes between the New York parade and gay Irish groups who wanted to march. But I'd put them in the back of my mind. It's 2006, it's New York City, they must have cleared that shit up by now, right? Of course not. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"If an Israeli group wants to march in New York, do you allow neo-Nazis into their parade? If African-Americans are marching in Harlem, do they have to let the Ku Klux Klan into their parade? People have rights. If we let the ILGO in, is it the Irish Prostitute Association next?"

The ILGO is the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization. Now, I've come to the defense of gays and lesbians many, many times in this space. But that was before I learned, thanks to the logical and analogical powers that only a Catholic parade organizer can muster, that the gay and lesbian community is dedicated to the extermination of the Irish people. And I'm sorry, I can't support that. Not even this close to St. Patrick's Day.

I was fine with them when they were just destroying marriage, ruining cowboys, and stealing Rosie O'Donnell from us. But ethnic cleansing? That's just wrong.

What amazes me is that there can even BE an Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization, given Dunleavy's revelation. Gay Republicans, Gay Baptists, and now Gay Irish. It all seems so inherently contradictory.

This, by the way, is the sixteenth year that Irish gay groups have attempted to march, and the sixteenth year they've been rebuffed. You've gotta think that by now, they don't even really want to march. But they can't stop trying, because technically it's bigoted oppression by technically a bunch of fucking meatheads. And you can't let that shit stand.

But at the end of the day, they've got to know that all they're really fighing for is the right to dodge the cold vomit of the thousands of John Dunleavies who've preceded them on the parade route. If there were only a way to back out gracefully, short of exterminating the Irish.

Or the John Dunleavies of the world could stop being such unapologetic reactionary fuckheads. But if they haven't learned anything in sixteen years, I wouldn't wait for them to start now.