you are the only person not reading this blog.

In the nooze

2011-05-05T09:38:00.003-04:00

The internurdz and the teevees are all abuzz with the Obama bin Landry story this week. Everyone is talking about.

You know what NO ONE is talking about? Bacon socks.

Dear Jesus,

Please make them all see the error of their ways and start talking about bacon socks. And if they don't, then smite them. Smite them real good.

Yours in You,
Smokey

This Week in Jesus-Related Advertising

2011-04-07T11:15:00.005-04:00

It seems like every other day, some quaint and cuddly, blasphemy-themed chain restaurant from New Zealand is messing with Texas. And by Texas, I mean Jesus. This time it's Hell Pizza, which is running a billboard campaign that, at first glance, only appears mouth-watering. It's only when you look a little closer that you start to see all the offensive, Jesus-related things going on here.

Keep looking if it doesn't jump out at you right away, everybuzzy. It took me a few hours to figure it out, too.

Limited time??!?! Earth to Hell Pizza: Jesus is with us always and everywhere. And his buns, unlike yours, totally rule.

Honestly, I think I'm getting quaint-and-cuddly,-blasphemy-themed-chain-restaurant-from-New-Zealand-messing-with-Texas-and-by-Texas-I-mean-Jesus fatigue. And apparently, I'm not the only one. Church peeple are getting seriously peeved about all this meanness directed at Our Lord and Savior. For realsies!

Anglican Church media officer Lloyd Ashton said the campaign was disrespectful to many religions and the people who followed them.

"They [the billboards] join a long line of advertising that's in questionable taste that slings off [at] things that lots of people hold precious.

"It's disrespectful to what a lot of people hold very dear."
- New Zealand Herald

I've always been an admirer of Anglican Church media officer Lloyd Ashton's work, but I have to say, I really don't get how this campaign would be disrespectful to many religions. Since when is there more than one religion? I thought there was just Christianity and then 6.4 billion people who are totally wrong about everything.

Whatever the case may be, though, it's worth pointing out that for as long as We've been Buddies, Mister Jesus has pretty much always been able to handle His own fights. I mean, no offense to Anglican Church media officer Lloyd Ashton or anything (if that's even his real name), but The Dude can walk on water and turn three fishes into enough food for like six hundred frillion peeple. Plus, He literally IS the only way to get into heaven!

I think if Jesus's Feelings are hurt, He's probably capable of letting Hell Pizza know where they can stick their buns. In fact, I have so much faith* in Him that I'm not even going to mention the Hell Pizza thing in this letter I'm about to write to Him.

Dear Jesus,

What's up, Dude? How's It hanging these days? Things are pretty good down here, I guess. There was a weird smell in the break room the other day, but I don't think it's worth wasting a prayer on. Probably it's just a dead aminal or something. (I hope it's a unicorn!)

Hey, how about those Cincinnati Reds? 5-0 to start the season, huh? I know that was totally You, and not just because Joey Votto and Drew Stubbs keep looking up at you every time they cross home plate, either.

Hope You're having an awesome Thursday!

Piece,
Smokey.

Beware Of Unicorns

2011-04-04T10:46:00.004-04:00

What you CAN see in this video are two orphaned baby bears from China playing with a tiger cub:

What you CAN'T see are the unicorns lurking in the shadows, fostering and nurturing this unholy alliance via their Chinese minions. It's the unicorns who are pulling the strings here, peeple. Don't be fool'd. This isn't about cute, cuddly baby aminals, this is about the beasts of the field reasserting their dominance over the human race. It's gonna be just like Middle Earth up in here, back when Sauron and Voldemort and the dinosaurs were the Head Lizards in Charge. And mankind will once again have to look to Jesus to take up the One Ring and defeat Voldemort and Sauron and the rampaging hordes once more, just like He defeated them in the popular young adult book series, The Bible.

We need Jesus now more than ever. Which of course means that old Smokey is gonna have to get involved.

Dear Jesus,

Long time no talk. Sorry, (Son of) Man. Totes my bad.

Listen, I need to ask You a flavor, on behalf of humanity. Would You mind chatting with Your Dad and seeing if this tiger-bear alliance thing can be stopped in its tracks? I'm not saying kill the cute baby aminals or anystring, I'm just saying it's pretty obvious that this is unicorn handiwork, and I know those conniving bastards got left off of Noah's Ark for a reason. (Part of Your Dad's Divine Plan™, I'm guessing. Wink, wink.)

Let's keep the unicorns where they belong: in cans.

Thanks in advance, Dude. You totally rule.

Yours in You,

Smokey Robinson

There. YOU'RE WELCOME AGAIN, HUMANITY.

That's Not A Knife...

2011-04-02T12:40:00.006-04:00

Remember the other good ol' daze before the movie Crocodile Dundee came out, when no one had ever heard of Australia before and we didn't know what a knife was? Those were the other best times.

In light of the massive advances made in knife technology in the past 25 years, I think perhaps it might be time to update the franchise. Because in deference to comedic genius Paul Hogan, this really isn't a knife anymore:

This, however, is:

Axe-Knife, everybuzzy. That's wassup.

It's just a shame that the namby-pambies over at Gerber Legendary Blades are totally overreacting to the reports of injuries caused by the knife falling out of the handle of the axe. Any axe-knife worth having is also worth a few stitches and/or missing digits.

What's happening to this country? It's like everyone's balls got cut off by knives falling out of the handles of their axe-knives or something. Ugh.

The Goings-On at Fox News

2011-03-31T16:42:00.003-04:00

Remember the good ol' daze, when men were men, women were women, and Fox News's coverage of ill-attended, pro-conservative-agenda protest rallies was always, um... how do you say in English... padded with footage from other protests to make the rallies look more bigger?

I miss those times. Those were the best times of all the times.

But apparently, the era of protest-padding is over. Observe:

Come on, Fox News! You're blaming the weather? Whatsa matter, did your testicles call out sick today? Why don't you just man up, or grow a pair, or whatever it is that you ordinarily do before you insert falsehoods and embellishments into your protest coverage?

Get with the program over there, peeple. We're not tuning into your channel to watch footage of a sad group of morons who skipped a day of work so they could huddle in the rain and tell everyone else how to live their lives! We're tuning in for... um... okay, gimme a second, it'll come to me...

The Re-Return of Smokey Robinson

2011-03-31T10:34:00.003-04:00

Ah, spring. The season of life renewing. Or, if you work in the Canning Operations division at the Dole Fruit Plant (still unaffiliated with Dole Foods, Inc.), the season when Rebecca "The Token Jew" Goldman starts bragging about how good her son is at Tee Ball, which is pretty much the most complicated sport of all of the sports. I'm guessing that's why she named him Tiger Woods Goldman.

I bet she regrets that now, though.

Personally, I've never been a big fan of spring myself. I don't go to work every day in a massive, eleven-story underground fruit canning complex because I'm the outdoors-E-type. (If you're curious, I go to work every day in a massive, eleven-story underground fruit canning complex because I'm under contract to go to work every day in a massive, eleven-story underground fruit canning complex. And also, because sometimes there's free pie. Although, come to think of it, it's not very often. In fact, I think it's been about three years since the last time we had free pie, but there's still one or two slices left that look almost as fresh as they day the pie arrived in the break room.)

But I'll tell you what I am a fan of: turtles eating mushrooms.

Oops, wait. That's a tortoise. My bad.

Welcome back to the internets, everybuzzy.

What an Outrageous Waste!!!!!!

2010-09-19T20:49:00.003-04:00

Has anyone else seen this Coors Light commercial where they launch a giant, rocket-shaped bottle into space? What the hell sort of world is this? Why is this a worthwhile expenditure of time and efforts when there are diseases in the world that need curing??!

And did you know that every hour, 36 homeless children learn that they have cancer? Or that there is a new line of Ford axles that make your car extra- extra-tuff?

I can honestly not remember the last time my liberal morals were subject to such outrage as this evening's NFL telecast on NBC. I feel like writing someone a letter and voting for the Green Party.

RIGHT AFTER I GO TO CHILI'S FOR THE $20 DINNER FOR TWO!

Bananaphone Down!

2010-09-07T11:27:00.003-04:00

Usually, getting my attention during the morning commute to the Dole Fruit Plant (still not affiliated with Dole Food Company, in spite of some serious efforts on the part of Plant management) is the province of peeple with fashion sense that is SO NOT FASHION as to endanger the eyes of both me and my fellow subway riders. Someone has to stand up for the little guy and tell those peeple just how NOT FASHION they are.

But not today.

Today's subway crisis began, simply enough, with a traditional male-female couple that boarded the A train at 175th Street. I didn't look at their faces, I just got a sense of them as the woman sat down next to me in the middle seat of a bank of three, and her dude stood in front of her holding onto the railing. Somewhere just before 168th Street, he reached into some pocket or pouch and handed her a banana, which I presume she ate. We were between 145th and 125th Streets when I noticed her out of the corner of my eye brandishing the limp, empty banana peel at him. The two of them then had the following exchange:

Girl: My bananaphone isn't working.
Guy: What?
Girl: My bananaphone isn't working. It collapsed.
Guy: It has no dial tone.
Girl: It's not working.
Guy: Mine is ringing.
Girl: Brrring! Brring!
Guy: Hahaha.
Girl: Hello? It's still not working.

She ended up tucking the collapsed bananaphone into his belt or a strap on his backpack somewhere in the 70s or 80s, and when we pulled into 59th Street, she got up and walked past him with what appeared to be little more than a friendly tap on his shoulder.

By then, I was already blaming Barack Obama. This is what happens when an Orwellian socialist Muslim takes over the USA: people become so afraid of the government and public services that they literally let their bananaphones go to waste, or even stupidly attempt self-repair, instead calling up the bananaphone company and getting the help they require. This, in turn, leads to the bananaphone companies not having enough work to merit paying full salaries, which then puts all kinds of talented, qualified bananaphone operators and technicians out of work when the companies outsource their jobs to China and the Philippines and Peru and stuff.

This country is the worst.

The Retirement of Amanda Bynes: Day 2

2010-06-22T10:06:00.005-04:00

It's still hard to believe it's over, that she's gone and she won't ever come back. I really thought I had enough to deal with this week, what with the BP Oil Spill hitting the two-month mark and the death of sausage legend Jimmy Dean. But no more Bynes?

In the immortal words of the intranetz, "fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu." And also, "lolcats."

This is what you're missing, world.

It's what we're all missing.

Dear Jesus,

Don't do this, man. Give us back our Amanda Bynes. Give us that Bynes!

Love and pickles,
Smokey.

How to Fix the Oil Spill

2010-06-02T13:38:00.005-04:00

The peeple at BP (hereinafter, "Beeple") are obviously retarded. They're going to fix a leaking oil well with a junk shot? Or a top kill? Or relief wells? Are these really the best ideas those Beeple could come up with to plug the hole?

Earth to Beeple: everyone knows that natural disasters are caused by zombies. So obviously, the solution this problem is brains. Duh, beeple. Or as a zombie would say, "brains."

Chuckle chuckle chuckle vurp.

If you wanna get serious, the solution to this problem is Jack Shephard from LOST. If anyone knows how to put a cork in a hole that's leaking poison into the world, it's that guy.

And look how happy it makes him!

(Thanks be to videogum for the pics.)

Dear Teh Obama,

Forget about Jack Bauer. His show got canceled anywhoop. CALL JACK SHEPHARD. He's on an island somewhere.

Also, brains.

Brains,
Smokey

Because We Are Nashville?

2010-05-06T18:45:00.002-04:00

A large part of the reason that we are being ignored is because of who we are. Think about that for just a second. Did you hear about looting? Did you hear about crime sprees? No…you didn’t. You heard about people pulling their neighbors off of rooftops. You saw a group of people trying to move two horses to higher ground. No…we didn’t loot. Our biggest warning was, “Don’t play in the floodwater.” When you think about it…that speaks a lot for our city. A large portion of why we were being ignored was that we weren’t doing anything to draw attention to ourselves. We were handling it on our own.

Some will be quick to find fault in the way rescue operations were handled, but the fact of the matter is that the catastrophe could not have been prevented and it is simply ignorant beyond all reason to suggest otherwise. It is a flood. It was caused by rain. You can try to find a face to stick this tragedy to, but you’ll be wrong.

Parts of Nashville that could never even conceivably be underwater were underwater. Some of them still are. Opry Mills and the Opryland Hotel are, for all intents and purposes, destroyed. People died sitting in standstill traffic on the Interstate. We saw boats going down West End. And, of course, we all saw the surreal image of the portable building from Lighthouse Christian floating into traffic and being destroyed when cars were knocked into it. I’m still having trouble comprehending all of it.

And yet…life will go on. We’ll go back to work, to school, to our lives…and we’ll carry on. In a little over a month, I’ll be on this website talking about the draft. In October, we’ll be discussing the new Predators’ season with nary a thought of these past few days. But in a way, they changed everyone in this town. We now know that that it can happen to us…but also know that we can handle it.

Because we are Nashville.
-by Patton Fuqua
taken from here

First of all, and I say this as (no joke) a die-hard Nashville Predators fan, what the fuck? You know why no one is paying attention to Nashville? It's because it's Nashville.

You know why people paid attention to New Orleans? Because a) our thankfully now ex-president double-booked himself with both "crisis management" and "press conference in which I will break my arm patting the FEMA director on the back for his insanely grate crisis management skillz" during the exact same 45 minutes, and b) because IT'S NEW ORLEANS. IT'S FREAKING AWESOME.

(I have an expanded theory on the Bush double-booking incident that involves Dick Cheney conjuring up Hurricane Katrina in a cauldron in the White House Dungeon, cackling all the way, and then popping upstairs and telling Georgie W. to go ahead to the press conference and he would totally take care of everything. A sinister grin slowly spreads across Cheney's face, he snickers evilly to himself, and as the unsuspecting prezident skips out to the Rose Garden, Cheney's snicker crescendoes into a maniacal laugh, and lightning surges in the window behind him. That dude was a villain with a robot heart.)

New Orleans rules. They have Pat O'Brien's. They have crawfish and po'boys (and po'men and po'women too, ba dum bum!), there are streetcars and awesome Creole restaurants. There's Bourbon Street, for crying out loud! Anyone in their right mind in Nashville would have to concede that the most awesomest street in Nashville wasn't anywhere nearly as awesomest as Bourbon Street. (Which of course would beg the question, "what the hell am I still doing in Nashville?")

When was the last time you heard someone talk about the amazing meal they just had at one of the best seafood restaurants in Nashville? Or about how they went on Spring Break there? Do they even HAVE Spring Break in Nashville? Is it like Bible study and country music at the Grand Ol' Opry for a week?

Nashville, I'm sorry, but you're basically the New Jersey of the South. And New Jersey, I'm even sorrier to associate you with anything as bland and dull as the home of country mus-blichh. You know the ol' Smoke Monster loves you, Miss Jurzie.

But honestly, no one would care if either one of you got looted.

Which, by the way, Nashville, you did. Ahem.

But will the Nashville looting get as much attention as the head-up-your-ass, holier-than-thou, look-how-God-DIDN'T-rain-fire-on-Dollywood superiority complex on steroids that Patton Fuqua vomited up? No way, man. Because they're Nashville.

Virginia Is For Losers!

2010-04-08T11:10:00.006-04:00

If there's one thing that everyone in America agrees on, it's that we all love a loser. That probably explains why the Boston Red Sux have lost so many fans since they won the Whirled Series in 2004, and why nobody likes black people ever since we elected Tracy Morgan (or whatever her name is) to be our first black president in 2008.

Because let's face it, everybuzzy, what is there to love about the Red Sux or black people if they're not losers anymore?

Fortunately, the great Commonwealth of Virginia has given us something else to love: namely, the great Commonwealth of Virginia, which has gone beyond the call of duty to remind the world what humongous losers they are.

To wit, the following proclamation:

WHEREAS, April is the month in which the people of Virginia joined the Confederate States of America in a four year war between the states for independence that concluded at Appomattox Courthouse; and

WHEREAS, Virginia has long recognized her Confederate history, the numerous civil war battlefields that mark every region of the state, the leaders and individuals in the Army, Navy and at home who fought for their homes and communities and Commonwealth in a time very different than ours today; and

WHEREAS, it is important for all Virginians to reflect upon our Commonwealth’s shared history, to understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War, and to recognize how our history has led to our present; and

WHEREAS, Confederate historical sites such as the White House of the Confederacy are open for people to visit in Richmond today; and

WHEREAS, all Virginians can appreciate the fact that when ultimately overwhelmed by the insurmountable numbers and resources of the Union Army, the surviving, imprisoned and injured Confederate soldiers gave their word and allegiance to the United States of America, and returned to their homes and families to rebuild their communities in peace, following the instruction of General Robert E. Lee of Virginia, who wrote that, “...all should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war and to restore the blessings of peace."; and

WHEREAS, this defining chapter in Virginia’s history should not be forgotten, but instead should be studied, understood and remembered by all Virginians, both in the context of the time in which it took place, but also in the context of the time in which we live, and this study and remembrance takes on particular importance as the Commonwealth prepares to welcome the nation and the world to visit Virginia for the Sesquicentennial Anniversary of the Civil War, a four-year period in which the exploration of our history can benefit all;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Robert McDonnell, do hereby recognize April 2010 as CONFEDERATE HISTORY MONTH in our COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA, and I call this observance to the attention of all our citizens.

If you're wondering who Robert McDonnell is, he's the governor of Virginia. And if you're wondering who Virginia is, it was one of the many Southern states that LOST THE CIVIL WAR.

I think we all everybuzzy owe Governor Ronald McDonald a great big thank you for resurrecting the memory of Confederate history during these turbulent political times, as talk of insurgency and rebellion against the lawfully established United States government are once again becoming fashionable. It's helpful to look back and reminisce about those glory days of yestercentury when the mighty Union army crushed the pitiful southern rebellion, thus proving that THE CONFEDERACY WAS A BUNCH OF COMPLETE AND TOTAL LOSERS.

Of course, Governor McDoodle is a white male, which means he has very little experience being a loser - although he is a member of the Republican Party. (A zing! About teh politix! Ouch!)

To McDiggle's credit, he's certainly making a valiant attempt to establish his LOSER credentials. Public proclamations about his Commonwealth's role in helping the South lose the Civil War are a very good start. Next thing you know, he'll issue a statement reminding all of us how strongly he supported insurance companies' right to deny sick people health insurance - another victory for the North! (And another zing for Smokey!)

Conveniently (is conveniently the right word?), Governor McDweeble's Confederate History Month proclamation neglected to mention anything about that whole people-owning-people thing. But that's not really his fault. After all, when you lose as miserably, and on as many fronts as the South did when THEY LOST THE CIVIL WAR, it gets hard to keep all the details straight of how badly you got beaten.

McDurgle defended the omission with the rationale that "there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia."

You have to appreciate when a white man takes a stand on principle, even if that principle is racism.

But after hearing his stance decried by just about every single person with even the faintest sense of decency, Governor McDribble did what southerners do best: HE BACKED DOWN.

That's why we here at the blog love Governor McDipple - he's a loser, through and through. And since he already works in the former capital city of the Confederacy, he should feel right at home.

The Pillow Bride

2010-03-11T14:03:00.003-05:00

Lee Jin-gyu fell for his 'dakimakura' - a kind of large, huggable pillow from Japan, often with a picture of a popular anime character printed on the side.

In Lee's case, his beloved pillow has an image of Fate Testarossa, from the 'magical girl' anime series Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha.

Now the 28-year-old otaku (a Japanese term that roughly translates to somewhere between 'obsessive' and 'nerd') has wed the pillow in a special ceremony, after fitting it out with a wedding dress for the service in front of a local priest. Their nuptials were eagerly chronicled by the local media.

'He is completely obsessed with this pillow and takes it everywhere,' said one friend.

'They go out to the park or the funfair where it will go on all the rides with him. Then when he goes out to eat he takes it with him and it gets its own seat and its own meal,' they added.
The pillow marriage is not the first similarly-themed unusual marriage in recent times - it comes after a Japanese otaku married his virtual girlfriend Nene Anegasaki, a character who only exists in the Nintendo DS game Love Plus, last November.
from Metro.co.uk

Dear Dad,

I know what I disappointment I am to you. I know how much you hoped that by now, I would have worked my way to a respectable career, or at least moved out of the basement. But I need you to start accepting the choices I've made. I don't think that's too much to ask. A man has to follow his heart and his dreams, or else he ends up nowhere. You told me that once, and I have lived my life by that advice even when you refused to support me in the past, like the time I went on the all Kool-Aid diet for three weeks and ended up giving myself diabetes. I followed your advice then, and I'm following that same advice now too, and so I have some news to share with you: I married Liz.

I know the two of you haven't always gotten along in the past, and I know you don't particularly trust her. She confessed to me about all the times she tried to force herself on you, but she's really sorry about all of them, and she promised they won't happen again. It's water under the rug at this point as far as I'm concerned. I hope you can believe that too, and I hope you can find it in your heart to support this marriage, because it's what both of us really want.

Liz is so much like you, Dad: willful and headstrong; sassy and overbearing; deathly afraid of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You even have the same bizarre fetish for Costa Rican men who wear socks with sandals. I wish you could see that. I wish you could take the time to bond with her, to get to know her, and to forgive her for using all of your spoons to freebase cocaine with her friends in the backyard. She's such a good person, and she has such a kind and generous soul, and such a soft, cottony exterior too. I really wish you could open yourself to those parts of her, and not just focus on the questionable things. We all have our demons, after all. (Remember that time you got arrested for trying to rob a McDonald's?)

It's funny, we were talking on the bus this morning on our way to City Hall, and she actually mentioned how much the two of you have in common. I wonder if maybe that's what you dislike about her? It's a perfectly natural thing for a boy to want to marry a girl who is just like his father, but if you need time to acknowledge and accept that, I understand.

There's something else too. Liz told me what you said to her about how she could do better than to get stuck with a guy like me. I know when you said that, you were looking out for my best interests, and trying to make sure I didn't get hurt, and I love you for that. She's a really beautiful girl, and I know what a shameless flirt she is, and how much attention she gets when we're out at the park or the funfair. A lot of men (and women too) make comments to her like, "hey, why don't you ditch this guy who is somewhere between 'obsessive' and 'nerd' and come home with me?" I must hear that upwards of sixteen or twenty times every weekend. But she loves me, and I love her, and I promise I can handle it. You don't have to worry about me getting hurt. I may always be your little boy, but I'm married now. We know what we're doing, and both of us went into this with our eyes wide open. I promise, no matter what happens, I'll be okay. (Unless she leaves me, in which case I'll most likely kill myself.)

We're going to the arcade now to play video games until I run out of my allowance, but I just want you to know that I love you, I'll be home by 7, and I would really appreciate it if you could buy us a package of gummi bears and some Cherry Kool-Aid to celebrate our good news. Liz is really excited to have you as a part of her life and her family now, so I hope you can be equally welcoming to her.

I love you more than I love Ryan Seacrest, Dad. I really mean that.

Your son,
Lee Jing-yu

P.S. Liz asked if she could call you "daddy" from now on, but she said she only meant it in a purely sexual way. Isn't that cute?

The Search for a Missing Boner

2010-02-23T12:20:00.007-05:00

I think we can all agree that when a man who delighted millions with his science fiction portrayal of a Cold War-era Russian stereotype living on a spaceship commanded by a dude from Iowa begets another man who delights millions with his portrayal of a Spiccoli-esque D+ high school student on Long Island in a seminal '80s sitcom, and the second man goes missing in Vancouver on Valentine's Day, then we as a culture have really let ourselves down.

Thankfully, that has never happened.

No, I'm just kidding, it totally has. Where have you disappeared to, Andrew Koenig? Alyssa Milano is sick with worry. As are a surprising amount of people on the facebag.

Frankly, I say all those people are hypocrites. Why is it only when Dustin Diamond is getting airbrushed out of "Saved By the Bell" cast photos, or when the miniature black kid who played Willis's younger brother on "Diff'rent Strokes" is getting arrested in Utah, or when the dude who played Boner on "Growing Pains" goes missing in Vancouver that we, as a society, wake up and take notice? Maybe if any of us (meaning all of you who are the only ones not reading this blog) had bothered to check in with Boner Koenig before he disappeared, then none of this would have happened. We (again, I mean you) have nobody but (y)ourselves to blame.

But here's what I really don't understand: he went missing in Vancouver during the Olympics? How this is possible, Kiptin? Vancouver is covered all over in cameras! (Side note: how much better would that sentence have been if it was "Vancouver is covered all over in clover?") Anybody thought of checking all that HD footage of everything except hockey to see if Boenig is visible in the crowd? 'Cause tell me a guy with this hairstyle wouldn't stand out, even in a crowd of weirdo figure skating fans:

You picked the wrong part of the world to go missing in, Boenig. We're gonna find you, and then as soon as we know you're okay, we're gonna go right back to forgetting about you, just like we forgot about Boner after he left "Growing Pains" for the army. I guess we'll be seeing you in Sochi in 2014...

What We Know About the Future

2010-02-18T16:13:00.000-05:00

It is a well documented fact that Jesus's first act after graduating from Hogwarts, changing his name to Santa Claus, and moving to North Pole, Alaska was to start the original Frozen Olympics right here in the good old U. S. of A. Here we are 4,000 years later, and the FroLympics have moved to the icy wasteland of Vancouver, Canada, all because of stupid Al Gore, who just had to come along and invent global warming, didn't he? Why couldn't that jerk have been born in Antarctica? That place is freezing! (At least, until he gets his grubby, climate-changey hands on it...)

But as upsetting as that is, that's all in the past now. And the FroLympics, in spite of the fact that NBC's coverage is pretty heavily grounded in the present (and that the coverage itself is tape-delayed), are all about the future. News flash, everybuzzy: the future is very gay, and very Canadian.

Meet Adam Rippon (also known as "Laser Batman"). At this year's U.S. men's figure skating championships (or, "Homopallooza"), Laser Batman was touted by none other than Scott "I'm At Least As Gay As Boitano" Hamilton as the future of American men's figure skating. Sadly, Laser Batman didn't qualify to represent America in the FroLympics this year, because the future of American figure skating is evidently only the fifth or sixth best skater in the country. If I were Laser Batman's parents, I would pretty much stop loving him for that.

I don't think Laser Batman is even a third as gay as Johnny Weird (or whatever his name is) either, which is pretty shocking considering just how gay Laser Batman is. How gay is he? Let's put it this way: Laser Batman is gayer than Adam Lambert and Albus Dumbledore and boys who read Twilight combined! But Johnny Weird has a show on the Sundance Channel, meaning that Laser Batman's only real chance to out-gay him is to land a multi-season deal with Bravo.

Something to shoot for if you ever want your parents to love you again, Laser Batman.

The future is far less bleak in Canada, however, not just because they have the FroLympics and no global warming, but because of Marianne St-Gelais, who actually managed to win a silver medal in women's 500-meter short track speed skating yesterday, on her 20th birthday - a performance that far outdistances Laser Batman in terms of competitive success, but falls miles short in homo-sin-uality. Here's a picture of Marianne St-Gelais at a competition last October, and you can tell just by looking how gay she ISN'T:

My guess is that Laser Batman watched her victory at home yesterday, consoling himself with a pastel-colored cocktail while taking refuge in the arms of some big, burly-chested lumberjack who thinks he's actually a girl. There could the makings of Laser Batman's Bravo show based on that relationship, but for the life of me, I would NEVER EVER WATCH THAT EVER.

If you're concerned about the lack of silver and gold in America's future, however, there is a lawmaker in South Carolina who might have you covered.

Meet Mike Pitts, a retired police officer turned State Representative with an idea so crazy that it just might work. Pitts is ready to turn back the clock on financial sanity with a bill that would outlaw money - or, as Pitts refers to it, "paper with ink on it." Pitts uses words like "collapse" (the verb, not the noun) and "collapsing" and "collapse" (the noun this time) to describe the potential dangers to the U.S. economy if we keep trying to use money to pay for goods and services. His wise and researched alternative: load up your pockets with precious metals, like gold and silver - commodities whose fluctuating values could leave you feeling like you just won (or lost) the lottery every day!

I think Pitts is onto something here. Because we may never be able to bring snow or winter or the FroLympics back to America, but if Pitts has his way, at least we'll have gold and silver (assuming we don't get robbed by people who aren't weighted down by pockets full of gold and silver, that is). And I know from my long correspondence with Him that that is exactly what Jesus Claus would have wanted - that, and for Laser Batman to get that show on Bravo.

I'm-a back!

2010-02-10T15:40:00.000-05:00

Well, that was easy!

It turns out that all I had to do to get resurrected was agree to appear at jury duty. Naturally, I assumed jury duty would be like Purgatory, where people sit around bored all day, waiting to get called into small rooms with lawyers. But real jury duty is actually SO MUCH BETTER THAN THAT.

The first person who came to speak with us Monday morning was a wizard, as in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Class of '88 - that kind of wizard. Of course, he didn't do any majick tricks - he was just there to tell us how to fill out our jury questionnaires. But he did sign majick autographs afterward: his name morphs into the great seal of the state of New York, and back again! That alone was worth the price of admission.

Speaking of which, was jury duty always that expensive to get into? $70, and I didn't even get a good seat. If that happened at a Knicks game, I'd be pretty mad. (Although unlike jury duty, a Knicks game is an unbelievably boring place to spend two days.)

Anyway, jury duty was great. I'm still full from the hummus and vegetable platters. But now that I've been dead for like a month, I have an absolute shit-ton of paperwork to take care of. Not to mention the many issues I keep having with my reassembled body, but I really don't think this is the forum to talk about those things. Does anyone know a good doctor who specializes in zombies and/or reanimated tissue, though? I'm thinking whoever works on Joan Rivers would probably be good.

Hello from Beyond

2010-02-01T10:26:00.004-05:00

Hey, everybuzzy. Please forgive me for the frowny-facedness of this here blurg post here, but the thing is that I, Smokey Robinson, am now dead.

I'm kind of ashamed to admit it. It's not the kind of thing you proudly show up at home one day and you're like, "hey, guys, guess what? I'm dead! Hello? Guys?" It's mostly like in the movies, where you're either a zombie and some "vigilante hero" is trying to hack you to bits with a chainsaw, or else you're invisible and inaudible to everybuzzy who isn't Whoopi Goldberg (who, by the by, makes really amazing oatmeal raisin cookies.)

The actual dying part is kind of a gruesome story. I was sitting in the Cannery one day at Dole Fruit, reading The Loving Bones, which is this book by Alex Sebold about a teenage kid who is actually dead for the entire book, which they tell you on page 1 without even writing SPOILER ALERT. (Speaking of which, spoiler alert: I die at the end of this paragraph. See how easy it is?) Anyway, Rebecca Goodman (our token Jew) must have overheard me saying "I wish I could know what it was like to be dead," because when I stood up, my shoelaces had been tied together, but in a very Jewish way. Next thing I knew, I fell over the railing and then tumbled ass-over-elbows into a very inconveniently placed pineapple slicer.

Those pineapple slicers are a real bitch to clean, especially when the guy who regularly cleans them is beginning to ooze out of one of them. Rex "The Supervisor" Hymen kept yelling and yelling, "Smokey! Where the [censored] is Smokey [censored] Robinson, god[censored]?!" I would gladly have told him where I was, except that one of my lips was, at that very moment, about to drip onto his right shoe. Also, the living can't hear the dead without the aid of the aforementioned Ms. Goldberg. But at the time, I didn't know that.

Anyway, hi!

This whole dead thing really isn't that bad. Did you know that in heaven, Bill Clinton is still president, and the Democrats enjoy sizeable majorities in both the House and Senate? And that ALL the bears are named Lollipop the Bear and drive around on Vespa Scooters with skull-and-crossbone stickers and holsters for their AK-47s? Also, the only meal is Kraft Cheese and Macaroni too, because it's the cheesiest. This place is gratest. It really is!

(Psych! It isn't really. This place is the worst - not "the wurst," like a hot dog, which would really go great with all the mac-and-cheese, but the WORST, as in the most miserable place I've ever been. Every time someone calls up Dole to complain about finding one of my eyeballs or a tooth or a fingernail fragment, I have to sit there while Patrick Swayze and the guy who originally played Dumbledore laugh at me for like three hours, which feels like eternity. Also, it takes like four minutes to press a single key. I have been writing this blog post since December 30!)

By the way, I was wrong: there is a God. He wears a turban and He doesn't speak English, so nobody up here understands what He's saying, and most people think He's a Terrorist. He is also in no way affiliated with My Buddy (and Friend of the blog) Jesus Christ. God is actually the Assistant Night Manager at a convenience store called Seventh Heaven, which is supposed to be a clever reference to "Seven Eleven," but nobody gets that without having it explained to them. Some say He really is all-powerful. I say He pours a mean cherry Icee - easily the third-best I've ever tasted.

Anyway.

I recently met Dan Fogelberg, who was quite touched by the flattering obituary I wrote him. We were sipping cherry Icees around Christmas with Carol Channing, and the two of them told me that there's actually a way for me to come back. Are you ready to learn what it is? All that has to happen is that a single cell from my former body has to be ingested by a human male, get metabolized, undergo meiosis, get broken down into amino acids (they're the building blocks of protein!), and finally, be converted into a sperm cell. Assuming I don't then end up in a sock or a drainpipe, it's a simple matter of racing the other sperm cells to an egg cell, become a zygote, then an embryo, then a fetus, then get born in Detroit, have a successful career as an R&B singer, and move to New York City at 68 years old to work for a middling fruit concern.

Piece of cake.

So here's what I need from you, dear readers: eat Dole Fruit Factory brand pineapple.

I'm sure the slicer where I met my end was probably very thoroughly scrubbed before the next batch of pineapple went in. Dole Fruit Factory has very exacting standards of hygiene, after all. But even the most exacting standards must have left a cell or two of mine behind, right? (Don't think about that too long, or else you won't want to eat the pineapple anymore.) Presto. We're halfway home already.

This, obviously, only applies to my male readers. Ladies, for once, this isn't about you. (Until I get back to the top of the charts, that is!) Let's get eatin', dudes! We're just 70 short years from being able to start this whole bloggerizing operation up again!

And just to be on the safe side:

Dear Jesus,

A little halp, (Son of) Man?

Thanx,
Smokey

P.S. Can You catch me up on what I missed on YouTube?

Tuff Times for Us All

2009-12-03T00:52:00.005-05:00

Hi, everybuzzy. Please forgive the unpleasant greeting, but I'm so mad I could eat Pop Rocks and not share them. Jesus isn't returning my emails these days.

And I think I know exactly who is to blame for that.

No, not Barack Obama. For once, this appears to have nothing to do with Him.

But it DOES have something to do with one of Barack Obama's brothers, and I mean that in the sense of how black people call other black people their brothers, because they were all born in the same village in Kenya and have forged Hawaiian birth certificates just so they can be president, because as we all know, being president is such a low-stress gig and so easy to get that what African citizen WOULDN'T want a job like that?

Anywhoop, the great "Jesus's Email Silence of 2009" is the fault of another Obama: Eldrick "Tiger Woods" Obama.

I understand that Tiger's "transgressions" are morally reprehensible to the upright and unimpeachable paparazzi stalkers and tabloid journalists who can't stop covering this story, and that no one else in the country has ever cheated on someone they were married to or tried to flee a golf-club-wielding former bikini model while they were hopped up on painkillers at 2:30 in the morning. But does it really mean that every professional golfer and/or Son of Man has to suddenly and without warning abruptly cease communication with his or His mistress(es)?

How is that remotely fair?

It feels a lot like when you're speeding down your local parkway and you happen upon some miscreant in a '98 Nissan who just got pulled over by a quota-hunting state trooper, and then all of a sudden traffic slows down for about a quarter mile. But the officer has virtually every single one of his faculties occupied by the scalawag in the Sentra! That is the quarter mile in which to live it up!

Speed all you want! Drive drunk! Suspend habeas corpus! Start an illegal war! Wiretap your fellow Americans! Ban stem cell research! THE COP IS BUSY! GO NUTS!

All the gossip sites have all their microscopes and telescopes and garbage picking operations and forensic fabrication artists squarely pointed at Tiger Woods Obama right now, which means there simply isn't the time or manpower for them to cover another celebrity scandal or a budding romance between, say, a random Messiah and an aged Motown star masquerading as a bloggerizer/Fruit Plant employee. It's simple mathemagicians!

And here's some more good advice, courtesy of Accenture:

Ha ha ha, you know what ELSE isn't always paved? The patch of the Nevada desert where I'm going to take Jesus and bury His (Sweet) Ass if he doesn't start answering my Himdamned emails. I don't expect Him to stay buried for more than three days (he has a pretty well-documented pattern), but I still have to try to get through to that Bastard somehow. I WILL NOT BE JILTED BY JESUS*!

Translation: quit being such a Youdamned Goody-Goody, Jesus. The "morality cops" are looking the other way.

More importantly, this motel room is expensive, this negligee is itchy, and this champagne isn't going to drink itself.

Answer my emails. And don't go pretending You didn't get them either - I know that Youdamned iPhone of Yours is on all the time.

*Actually, that statement might be factually inaccurate. It seems quite likely that I, like all the Jews in Christendom will, in fact, be jilted by Jesus.

Another Deflated Gasbag

2009-11-12T16:36:00.004-05:00

So Lou Dobbs quit, eh? Or did he really get pushed out so they could outsource his job to an illegal immigrant who will work for a much lower wage and no healthcare?

Ha ha ha, I totally have Dobbs's number.

I was originally inclined to buy the man a cupcake as my way of saying thank you for shutting the fuck up. But then I found something even more speshul.

Dear Lou Dobbs,

America is a better country with you not on television. On behalf of a grateful nation, please accept this can of Manhattan style fish assholes.

Love and kisses,
Smokey Robinson and the Funky Bunch

Consoration for the Phirries and Their Phans

2009-11-05T10:51:00.004-05:00

The Whirled Series is officially over now, everybuzzy, and whether you rooted for the Broad Street Bullies, the Bronx Bombers, or the Minnesota Bullwinkles (not pictured), I think it's pretty safe to say that, in spite of all the time you spent watching, in spite of all the energy you spent cheering, in spite of all the cocaine you let Robinson Cano and Pedro Feliz snort off your delicious ass, chances are that they probably won't call the next day.

And if you're from Frilladelphia, that's not the only ring you won't be getting this year. (Zing!)

Well cheer up there, Phuckaroo! Don't let the Phils' ills be too much for this fan! I know it looks like the entire city of New York is giving you the Phinger and telling you to phuck oph, but that's just the way the skyline is shaped.

But if you still can't bear the 370-day championship drought in the City of Brotherly Lovers (ew!), here's some things you can be gratephul phor while you're waiting around for next year.

1. You already won the 2009 Whirled Series!

At least according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, you did. This ad ran on Monday, just after the Yankees had taken a 3-1 series lead. Perhaps they borrowed phact checkers from Phox News. Or perhaps they were merely taking their cues from Jimmy Rollins's pre-Series prediction that the Phillies would win in phour games - or phive if they were pheeling generous. It's not at all clear which phour or phive games Mr. Rollins's was referring to, but one thing IS clear, and it happens to be the second thing Philly phans can be happy about:

2. No Jimmy Rollins fortune telling business!

With the myth of his psychic skills now debunked, Rollins's entre into the lucrative world of astral projection and Wee-Jee Boards and Professional Mumbo Jumbo-ism can now comfortably fall in the ditch of broken dreams along with Philadelphia's hopes to repeat as Whirled Champions.

He had to see it coming, though, right? Oh, maybe not.

3. Ryan Howard's Birthday is in two weeks!

That's something to be happy about, isn't it?

4. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia!

Not the show, I'm talking about the actual fact that it is literally ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA. Scholars maintain that the reason for this is because of a dracula named Twilight. And scholars are never wrong, or else they wouldn't be called that.

5. No more foul territory reports from Ken Rosenthal!

I initially thought Ken Rosenthal's imitation of Steve Carell's character from Anchorman was Fox Sports' attempt to make more hip by bringing in a comedy act - kind of like when ABC brought in Dennis Miller to do Monday Night Foosball, only much, much, much funnier. It turns out, however, that Ken Rosenthal is just a short white dude with a microphone and an IQ approaching 36. And since we already have enough of those guys on the teevee (I'm talking to YOU, Barack Obama), I am very much looking forward to seeing Ken Rosenthal shut the hell up.

Or not seeing it. Or... well, whatever.

6. You're not that phar from New York!

So if you want to come to the parade, or if you'd like to call into WFAN and rant about Yankee steroid usage (because I'm sure nobody in the history of the Phillies ever even HEARD of steroids, and also that the windows in their glass houses are all perfectly streak-free), or if you just want to drive up the Turnpike to remind yourself what a champion city looks like, all it'll cost you is $11 or $12 in tolls, which the grate state of New Jersey will be more than happy to accept.

I really think six things is enough, and if you can't be happy with that, maybe you should start doing yoga or something. Anyways, I don't have time to keep going with this. There's a parade in New York tomorrow, and my victory outfit isn't going to plan itself.

Not Our Year

2009-11-04T11:08:00.008-05:00

It saddens me to no end to report that in yesterday's New York City mayoral election, it was Mike Bloomberg, and not the Muppets, who took Manhattan.

In fact, the Muppets didn't even come in second. That honor went to someone called "City Comptroller Bill Thompson," whose haircut led me to believe he was at least half-Muppet himself.

(Hey, psst! Am I the only one who thinks "Bill Thompson" sounds like a made up name? How generic can you get? Bill Thompson? It might as well have been Jack Smith or Bob Mitchell or Bill Thompson or something. Bill Thompson is like the kind of name you used to check into a hotel when you don't want the federales or that nosey wife of yours to find out where you're staying. What are you hiding, Bill Thompson, if that fake-sounding name IS your real name?)

Anyway, Bill Thompson lost, and now he has to go back to the same job he had before, and probably have lunch at the same stupid cafe downstairs in the lobby of the same dumb, boring building, which is almost as frowny face as the Muppets NOT taking Manhattan, as I was led to believe they would.

The New York times says Mayor Bloomberg no longer seems invincible, and I agree that he does look pretty vincible, which is what makes the Muppets' failure to take Manhattan all the more heartbreaking. This is like reliving the failed Oscar the Grouch '08 campaign all over again. Only this time, with 30-35 percent more tears.

Is Athletic Success the New Black?

2009-11-03T11:42:00.008-05:00

Fruit workers, particularly those in the various canning divisions of your major fruit conglomerates are a shifty bunch, full of testiness and simmering currents of rich, creamy, bacon-and-cherry-flavored, race-based bias and resentment. And nothing brings that bias and resentment bubbling to the surface like beisbol.

When Jackie Robinson broke the Collar Barrier in 1947, there were riots and looting throughout the fruit canning world, and the entire operation of the Dole Fruit Plant here in midtown Manhattan had to be suspended for almost thirty years before the furor could be calmed. It took a surprise appearance and impromptu concert by a dashing young black man named Kenny Loggins to get things stable.

Those were the days.

Needless to say, my friendship with Alex Rodriguez (the baseball player Alex Rodriguez, not the nuclear physicist Alex Rodriguez, that punk ass) has therefore been somewhat problematic for me at the old Fruit Plant. It's not because he's a widely despised public figure. Dole-mites love widely despised public figures as a general rule. It's because he's black.

Welcome to post-modern America, and thank you very much, Barack Obama.

There used to be a time when men were real men, women were real women, transvestites were neither real men nor real women, and Americans could comfortably use race as a reason to dislike other Americans. Remember the politics of hate and all that? I miss the 80s so much sometimes.

See, because now, it's the opposite of that. The peeple I work with don't dislike I-Can't-Believe-Clay-Aiken-is-Gay-Rod because of his race. They dislike him because of his repeated postseason failures, his admission of steroid usage, and the fact that he loves to pull down his pants and run screaming through midtown Manhattan with fermented wheels of Gouda cheese. And because they dislike him, they therefore assume he must be black. QED, quid pro quo, summa cum laude, lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, Amen.

On the handful of occasions when my pal has stopped by to visit, his reception at the hands of the various members of Canning Operations staff has run the gamut from nasty, sustained peltings with full cans of bacon-wrapped cherries to much more friendly peltings with half-eaten cans of bacon-wrapped cherries with the tops removed, because the edges of those tops could really hurt somebody. (That's how you can tell the C-Ops staff are in a forgiving mood.)

Of course, discerning cultural anthropologists, as well as anyone with a pair of eyes and a rudimentary understanding of Spanish names, would dispute the notion of Tina-Fey-Rod's blackness. Then again, he is dating Kate Hudson, goes the counter-argument. Also not helping matters: all this postseason success and glory and clutch performance, the kind of performance reminiscent of notable black men like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan and the aforementioned Kenny Loggins, who rushed for a then-record 282 yards and 7 touchdowns in a game between Georgia and LSU in 1982.

It's getting so you can't be good at anything in this country without peeple assuming that you're black and hating you for your success, although not necessarily in that order. Thanks again, Democratic Party.

And thanks also to fine folks in the C-Ops division at Dole, who are throwing those cans of bacon-wrapped cherries at me for no readily discernible reason. They couldn't possibly think ol' Smokey Robinson here is black, could they?

I've-Been-Workin'-On-The-Railroad-All-The-Livelong-Day-Rod, take me away-Rod!

This Week in Balloonery

2009-10-16T12:27:00.004-04:00

In the roughly 14 minutes a day when I’m not either bloggerizing, canning peaches, discussing Sartre, or prank-calling the assholes from the Chiquita company volleyball team (just kiddin’, those calls totally weren’t from me! Love you guys!), it’s a pretty safe bet that you can find me trolling the internerds for all things balloon-related. Balloonery is always pretty widely covered by bloggers and the Jew-run media alike, and deservedly so, for what other adventure sport gets the pulse pounding like a balloon ride? This is what has kept balloonism at the forefront of the American imagination for centuries, while things like revolutions, powdered wigs, the Cola Wars, and Bayrock Alabama (or whatever that guy’s name was) have all fallen by the wayside like the passing fads they were.

Needless to say, I was caught entirely by surprise yesterday to see the entire nation hold its collective breath while a child hid in his parents’ garage. It wasn’t until much, much later, when I read the story on pinkthingsandballoons.com (my fave site on the planet! xoxoxo!) that it started to make sense why this story had captured the hearts and medullae oblongatae of everyone you know and I know combined, including the oh-so-lickable Diana Ross: They thought Falcon Heene was in a balloon!

No wonder the story got three hours of airtime on CNN!

Of course, what the Falcon Heene incident highlights (other than the obviously impending grounding of that adorbzable little trickster) is the compelling and urgent need for stringent legislation to protect children from balloons, and perhaps from homebrew aircraft of every stripe. We can’t have the irresponsible amateur aviators of this nation leave their temptingly fun flying contraptions loosely tethered to their backyard fences where children might accidentally not climb into them and thereby transfix an entire nation without some sort of consequence. Or else the next kid not to climb into a Reynolds-Wrap-and-toothpick craft could be YOURS…

The balloonistas in this country are inevitably going to cry foul over such an egregious restriction of their rights. But they only have themselves to blame. I mentioned how popular their chosen pursuit is, didn’t I? This would be totally different if it were, say, a story about a kid getting shot with an Uzi at a gun show. Gun-related mishaps don’t garner nearly the attention that balloon safety non-incidents do, and for very good reason. You can’t even find reliable statistics about gun deaths in this country, because it’s just not that big a deal. Meanwhile, the Falcon Heene Affair very publicly raises the number of balloon-related media frenzies that do not involve fatality or injury throughout recorded history to ONE. And that’s something that we and our elected representatives can simply not afford to ignore.

Also birthday clowns. They cannot afford to ignore this either. And carnival workers. And horses. Pay attention, horses, if you're not already doing so. (It's hard to tell with horses in New York - you get the distinct impression that a lot of them are going through life with blinders on.)

To think, this all could have been avoided if the Heenes were gun enthusiasts. Nothing like a good Second-Amendment-sanctioned child slaying to keep a family below the radar, eh? Chuckle chuckle chuckle bang.

A letter to an Old Friend

2009-10-13T12:20:00.002-04:00

Dear Jesus,

Hi!

So I know You and me haven’t really talked since Angelina Jolie took over Your spot as my spiritual adviser and frozen yogurt buddy. I mean, You kind of had it coming after You spent the entire summer on Fox News telling people to bring their guns everywhere and blasting “President Hopey McNobel Prize” (Your words) for trying to horn in on Your healing-the-sick game. Let’s just face it: I needed help, and You were Nowhere to be found. There were no sets of footprints in the sand.

Between You and me (and Your Dad, since He/She knows All), I think frosting me at the ESPYs was a little bit juvenile, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt like the stigmata. You certainly know how to cut me, Lord. Angelina and I can’t seem to find our footing as spiritual adviser/advisee and fro-yo enthusiasts either. She always insists on meeting up in LA even though she knows I can’t fly without potentially lethal doses of horse tranquilizer in my system. Also, she likes Pinkberry even though that shit is disgusting. (Nice job fooling the masses on that one, BTDouble-You. That abomination has Jesus written all over it.)

But that’s not what I’m writing to talk about today. I’m writing to talk about Japan, the benighted land that You and Daddy obviously either forgot or gave up on, as evidenced by the country-wide obsessions with sushi, Godzilla, Scooby-Doo, and being teeny tiny. I strongly suspect Your Abandonment is also why the Japans have to keep inventing so many technologies there so they can keep up with your chosen people, the Americas, where Hummers and M&Ms plain chocolate candy and Motorola-brand cellular telephones rain from the sky, and where free syringes full of Your magical healing essence periodically wash up on the shores of Long Island and New Jersey only to be “mistaken” for medical waste (probably to fool the poors into being afraid to eat the syringes themselves, right? Thought so.).

The Japans have none of that, except the cellular telephones. But their cars are much more smaller, and M&Ms there have a distinct octopus flavor. (Okay, I don’t know for certain that it’s Octopus, but it’s definitely the flavor of some kind of underwater cephalopod.) And according to this miraculously preserved piece of video evidence from YouTube, the Japans are also evidently forced to walk around at a fraction of normal human speed.

Wasn’t Your Mother Jewish? How do You not feel just the teensiest, Japan-sized amount of guilt for this?

You disgust me, Jesus. That is the opposite how Renee Zellweger made Tom Cruise feel in the hit ABC sitcom Jerry Maguire. But since I need some delicious fro-yo STAT, and since we don’t really take breaks from canning during the pre-holiday rush, can You possibly pick me up some? And please don’t forsake me with the atrocity that is Pinkberry.

Yours in David Schwimmer (he played Ross on the hit ABC sitcom "Friends", in case You forgot who he was or thought he was a Japan or something),
Smokey

The Facts Are In!

2009-09-28T16:17:00.005-04:00

Allow me to kick a scenario your way:

Imagine that you are Adolf Hitler.

Heaven knows (heavenos?) that some of y’all have zero problem imagining that you are Adolf Hitler, particularly if you want public healthcare or are named Barack Obama. Shame on y’all. Hitler was like the Abominable Snowman, but of people. Stop imagining that you are Adolf Hitler RIGHT NOW, sickos!

Now. Where was I?

Right.

So imagine that you are Adolf Hitler.

Just, you know, free your mind and conceptualize yourself managing a two-front global war and orchestrating the death of millions of human beings, all while speaking German and scratching at your itchy vagina.

“Wait, what?” you are probably saying. “Hitler had a vagina?” you are hypothetically adding. “Wouldn’t a man that powerful have access to some kind of topical cream or ointment to alleviate the itching?”

Well the joke’s on you because no, he wouldn’t have, because Germany had (dramatic music) the Public Option.

Okay, that’s not true. Germany never had (dramatic music) the Public Option, because that was invented by Barack Hussein Obama, whose name, roughly translated from its Swahili origins, means “Adolf Hitler, but reincarnated, and this time with (dramatic music) the Public Option, muhuhahahahaaa!”

All right, that’s not true either (I think).

But what is true is that Adolf Hitler, it turns out, was a girl.

US archaeologist Nick Bellantoni found fragments from the skull believed to be Hitler's were too thin to be from a male, and suspected it was the remains of a much younger woman, The Sun reports.

"The bone seemed very thin - male bone tends to be more robust. It corresponds to a woman between the ages of 20 and 40," Dr Bellantoni said.
-news.com.au

Well that explains the fake mustache, eh? Chuckle chuckle chuckle poop my pants.

The experts, of course, have all wrongly concluded that the remains must belong to someone else other than Adolf Hitler. Stupid experts. When are they EVER right? Obviously, it's the right skull, we just got the other facts about Adolf Hitler wrong. Duh.

But you’re probably still wondering how a man with cooties and menstruations and such managed to almost take over Europe, and also whether there were ever any naked pictures of him on the internets. Well, you’re right to wonder. We’re all right to wonder.

By the way, remember before when you imagined you were Adolf Hitler? Hahahahahahaha, I win. I just sort of made you teh gay. Take that, Kirk "Teh Gay" Cameron!

Farewell, Jorge Montenero, we hardly knew ye.

2009-09-15T09:25:00.007-04:00

On the way to the Fruit Plant this morning, I walked past a Verizon truck blaring "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" while the driver screamed along at the top of his very out-of-key lungs, and a line of people on 46th Street waiting to see LeBron James sign books at the 5th Avenue Barnes & Noble, proving that not having ever spent a day in college is no obstacle to getting a book deal in the 21st-century US of A.

What more fitting expression of grief could there be, I thought, for the late Patrick Swayze, who sailed off to the Grey Havens to be with Gandalf and Frodo and Tupac and the gang yesterday?

He may never have had the musical chops of Dan Fogelberg or the hair styling chops of Bob Barker or the dancing chops of Tom DeLay, but there is virtually no way to reasonably deny that the Swayz would have been at least as good as, if not marginally better than that shitbag Peter Horton in the hit 1990 volleyball flick Side Out, a role that would have landed him back where he belonged, opposite his The Outsiders co-star C. Thomas Howell.

Now that is a reunion I would maybe have watched on HBO if there were nothing better on at the same time.

And who can forget the pottery love scene in Ghost when P to the "atrick Swayze" wrapped his oiled, muscular arms around that short-haired raspy-voiced dude and ruined a bunch of clay while "Unchained Melody" played from a boom box hidden in the open kiln behind them? Poetry on film, everybuzzy. Although it does make a person wonder what ever happened to the other guy in that scene...

Of course, P-Swayz was most famous for uttering the line "nobody puts Baby in a corner" in a pivotal scene in the movie Point Break, a line which has been relegated to meme status in the past 18 hours by every two-bit hack with a Twitter account. I have news for you twits: nobody puts "nobody puts Baby in a corner" in a corner. Whatever that means.

For me, the death of "the House Swayze and Means Committee" is eckspecially hard-hitting, since, like most American boys, I once longed to grow up to become Jerry Orbach so I could appear opposite The Swerz onscreen and admit how wrong I was for assuming he knocked up Penny, and then tacitly give him permission to go screw my daughter in his stylishly messy Catskill dance instructor bungalow. Who among us DIDN'T have that dream? Here's hoping Swayze and Orbach reprise that scene for God and Jesus and Santa Claus and the deceased cultural relevance of Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen and all the angels and saints and demons in heaven.

Although the low-hanging fruit here would be a Kanye West joke, I can think of no more fitting or appropriate farewell for Patrick Swayze than this Surge Wakefield remix of "Bacon is Good For Me." Feast your eyes, and your grief, on this, America.

9/9/09 9pm

2009-09-09T20:44:00.002-04:00

OH MY FUCKING GOD, IS BARACK OBAMA ON GLEE??!?!?!!!?!!

I LOVE Him!! Like more than Jesus and Bob Barker and Len Cariou and Dan Fogelberg and the World Wildlife Fund and Tacos and Diana Ross put together! This is better than the Justice League!

Wait...

It's 8:45.

Fuck. I'm early.

And yes, I suppose I could just NOT PUBLISH this piece, but you could also simply not have read it.

Jesus, teh Obama, do I always have to do ALL YOUR WORK FOR YOU?

2009-08-19T11:55:00.014-04:00

Oh, teh Obama. Teh Obama, teh Obama, teh Obama. If I've told you one thing over and over again since you started running to teh president, it's that you can't get anything done in American politics without getting help from celebrities. I tried to warn you after jigg razzlefrazzle the blah (the artist sometimes referred to as Judge Reinhold, but not on this here blog here since his refusal to endorse Oscar the Grouch for President) endorsed someone else other than you for president, but you didn't listen. You didn't listen then, and you don't listen now, and it's surprising that a man with ears the size of satellite dishes would not listen that much, because you would think that ALL you would do is listen, which is not true. It's like you have to wrongfully arrest a high-profile black Harvard professor just to get five minutes alone with you these days, teh Obama!

This is not the change we can believe in. Again.

And just look at the state of your Heathcliff Healthcare Reform-Time Play Pal, or whatever clever and catchy thing your marketing experts are failing to call it. Nobody wants it! Nobody was actually interviewed for the writing of this piece. Nobody very clearly went on record in support to teh Obama or to his Heathcliff Healthcare. I HAS QUOTABLE SOURCES. I AM JOURNALIST.

But this is not about me. This is about you, teh Obama, and how I can help you win back public support for Heathcliff Healthcare from more people than Nobody. All you need is two celebrities and a little bit o' hope.

Here's whatchagottadoo:

1. Get the Jesus Endorsement

Show a picture of Jesus and Heathcliff Healthcare (seriously, how is there not a man, woman, or post-op transsexual dressed up in furry mascot suit yet?) with their arms over each other's shoulders, all smiles and birthday cake and Skittles. And a banner that says, "Jesus endorses the Obama healthcare plan and the public option!"

Then you get Jesus to write a statement on his facebag page like Sarah Palin did. For instance:

I support the Obama healthcare plan because there are like 300 million Americans and I am totally fucking exhausted from having to answer prayers from people without insurance. Come on, mankind. Do you have any idea how many wide wide receivers there are that need My help to catch touchdown passes? Go Steelers! JK! LOL! My point is that I am a Busy Dude. I don't have time for that AND sick people. What am I, Superman? LOL.

Also, from what I hear up in Heaven, Obama's a pretty great guy. Then again, We really don't get that that many Republican voters visiting the Great Death Panel in the Sky.

See? Piece o' cake, teh Obama!

And then you can stand there at your town halls and be like, "who's gonna fuck with Jesus? You gonna fuck with Jesus?" Then you throw down the microphone, walk off stage, and write me a thank-you card.

2. Get Harry Potter to Bounce at Your Town Hall Meetings

People wanna show up with guns, I have a real simple fix. It's called magic. I read about it in Hogwarts, A History.

Psych! That is totally not where I read about it.

But cereal, teh Obama, this is Problem Solving 101. If you have a leaky pipe, you call a plumber. If you have people calling you a Nazi and carrying rifles and handguns to your rallies, you get Harry Potter out there to run your crowd control operation. Dude handled a fully-grown cave troll when he was 11! (SPOILER ALERT.) AND he beat freaking Voldemort! (SPOILER ALERT x2.) Some whacked-out muggle with a big metal stick isn't gonna be much of a threat.

Of course, those same asshole protesters who are out there with signs calling you a Nazi will probably show up with new signs that say "you can expelliarmus our guns, but you can't expelliarmus our ridiculous overblown partisan rancor!" But the joke's on them because yes, we can.

Look, ABC, We Need to Get Something Straight. And that Something is Tom DeLay.

2009-08-18T12:08:00.006-04:00

Here in the Canning Operations division at Dole, we have a saying. I won't tell you what that saying is, because wow, is it off-color. I hereby refused to publish said saying on the blog. But we have it, and you don't, so there. Mnyeh.

Dear you (if that IS your real name),

PLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.

That's the equivalent of me giving you the raspberry. Hurts, doesn't it? Kinda gets you right there in the ego, right? Right? Sorry about that. But you brought this on yourself.

Yours in Angelina Jolie,
Smokey.

In case you're curious as to how I come to my seemingly arbitrary and capricious decisions about what content I omit (or "censor" since "omit" is such an ugly and politically sensitive term) from the blog, I apply the same standards as are used by such fine entertainment organizations as, for example, the American Broadcasting Corporation (hereinafter referred to as "ABC"). ABC, for example, would not allow the word "motherfucker" to appear in one of their broadcasts, so neither will I. ABC would also never air a piece claiming that former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is a violently flaming homosexual with a fetishist streak and a taste for the blood of small children. And neither will I.

Of course, the other side of that particular rare, commemorative, nautically themed coin is that ABC will also never air any piece in which Mr. DeLay is complimented on what a fantastic piece of ass he is, or the stunning gentleness of his womanly caresses, or how great he looks wearing a tiger-print miniskirt and NOTHING ELSE. And so, even though that is the Zod's-honest truth, I'm afraid I won't either.

That is how much I respect the standards of ABC, the network that brought us the hit ABC sitcom "Growing Pains," and the other hit ABC sitcom "Lost."

But I do have one beef with ABC, and it concerns, of all things, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whose multi-faceted attractiveness is as much a mystery to me as his sexual proclivities are, I swear, I swear, I swear.

My beef concerns the definition of the word "star."

And the motivation for said beef is the news that former Texas Congressperson (and current cutey-patootie) Tom DeLay will be appearing on the next season of the hit ABC sitcom, "Dancing with the Stars."

In most cases, I'm perfectly willing to grant some poetic license when it comes to nebulous terms relating to human characteristics or classifications that are hard to quantify in the first place - a flexibility that ABC nearly exhausted in its repeated attempts to promote The George Lopez Show as "comedy." It works, provided you broaden the definition of "comedy" to mean "something that someone, somewhere in America, either living or dead, might laugh at, or at least yawn at in a manner that could be confused with laughter if your eyes were also narrowed from yawning at the same time." See? Makes comedy almost seem sort of elusive and all-encompassing, doesn't it?

English, it turns out, is brimming with terms just like that, with definitions that are hard to pin down. What, for instance, is retarded? Actually, that's easy. Retarded is putting Tom DeLay on a show like the hit ABC sitcom "Dancing with the Stars" and not changing the name of the show. Because frankly, the idea of expanding the term "stars" to include "hot and sexy former congressmen/criminals who may or may not have obscenely kinky streaks in them" is a stretch, even for the network that brought us the hit ABC sitcom "Gray's Anatomy" and also the other hit ABC sitcom "NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw."

I think we can all agree that the lords and ministers and privy counselors at ABC ought to sit down and, as they themselves would say, "straighten some shit the fuck out." Because that saying that we have at Dole is one cocksucking motherfucker of a hilarious saying, and goddammit would I love to share the fucking shit out of it with all of you. If only it weren't so off-color!

U.B. Kim Jong-Illin'

2009-08-13T16:15:00.007-04:00

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Thursday released a South Korean worker it had held for several months on charges of denouncing its political system, signaling what analysts called a desire by the North to ease relations with the South after months of tensions over its nuclear weapons program.
-The New York Times

It's crazy times in North Korea these days, everybuzzy. You may think it's crazy times right here in America, where the Obama evidently wants to kill old people and get the government involved in Medicare for the first time ever, but that's peanuts compared to North Korea. Remember when they used to be able to hold a grudge? Remember when they put the "is of evil" into George W. McBush's "Axis of Evil?" Remember how scared you were after you microwaved that can of Pepsi when you were 11 years old, and your parents threatened to send you to a North Korean prison, which was like the most unimaginably brutal and awful punishment in the parental arsenal?

Nuh uh, not anymore. You don't even need a swashbuckling, womanizing ex-President on your side either. In these enlightened times, getting released from a North Korean prison is basically as easy as getting out of high school detention. Just forge a note from one of your parents, and you are GOOD TO GO.

Dear North Korea,

Please let go of my Eggo. And by Eggo, I mean son, not the delicious brand of waffle we sell here in America, where we think you are evil. Adios, amigo. La puerta esta abierta.

Hola,
Mr. Robinson (Smokey Robinson's dad).*

So simple, even a caveman could do it, provided that the caveman could write Chinese, like my dad. Why, it's easier than trading in your cash for a brand new government clunker - and faster too!

Of course, the ultra-modern space children of Nowadays have far more gruesome things to worry about. Like having their iPhone 3GS's and all their apps for that and their facebag status updates taken away, or being forced to go outside and get some fresh air. Also, what's a microwave? And a Pepsi? That's what the kids say today, in this age of replicators and delicious food in pill form, because this is the future. Not this The Future either. The actual future. With flying cars and office buildings that can come pick you up if you're late for work, like in the Harry Potter show. Technology! Dumbledore!

*Not his actual name. The note, however, is real.

Thanks for pooping in my ice cream AGAIN, internets

2009-08-04T13:52:00.004-04:00

Here. This is from the internets. Please has some.

According to the New York Observer, Dustin Diamond's deal to write a tell-all memoir for Gotham Books fell through a few months back. According to a source, Gotham Books dropped the project after they deemed the ghostwritten manuscript to be unpublishable, largely because "it contained many assertions about cast members from Saved by the Bell that Gotham felt were unverifiable."

-New York Magazine

This is heartbreaking news. Screech's tale deserves to be told, not airbrushed out of the cover of Peep-hole Magazine and also at the same time retroactively airbrushed out of the official cast photo from 1989 like he was some fourth-rate child actor on a third-rate TV show whose career never amounted to anything.

SCREECH'S TALE OF WOE AND HOT, BUT STILL HEARTBREAKING "SAVED BY THE BELL" INCEST DESERVES TO BE TOLD, GODDAMMIT! YOU HAVE PISSED ME OFF AGAIN, INTERNETS!

And to those of you who would say, "um, dude, chill, it's just Screech," I have this to say to you, right up in your face, or "grill" as they say in the parlance of our times:

Wait a tick. JUST Screech? Was the blonde sister from "Family Ties" JUST the blonde sister from Family Ties"? Was Jonathan Bauer (the weirdo freaky gay little brother from "Who's the Boss?") JUST Jonathan Bauer (the weirdo freaky gay little brother from "Who's the Boss?")? Was Buddy from "Charles in Charge" JUST Buddy from "Charles in Charge?" Was Vinnie from "Doogie Howser, MD" JUST Vinnie from "Doogie Howser, MD?"

Okay, okay, Buddy did go on to become a fundamentalist Christian and make movies with Kirk Cameron or something, I think, and the freaky gay kid from "Who's the Boss?" went on to become an even freakier and gayer adult. And Vinnie might be a bad example too, since he actually had some success after changing his name to Jude Law and impregnating a bunch of women. But how many of them landed another TV series? These losers weren't even compelling enough to get an E! True Hollywood Story, right? I mean, come on! Even the Coreys got a freaking E! True Hollywood Story.

Jennifer Keaton, I'm pretty sure, is dead*. Rest in peace, Tina Yothers.

I'd like to read what Styles from the Teen Wolf movies has to say about the behind-the-scenes on those joints. Where's that book at? Oh, is it being SILENCED by the internets too? These "actors" are "people" too, and THEIR HEARTBREAKING TALES OF INCEST AND LOVE AND HEARTBREAKING INCEST DESERVE TO BE TOLD! Just like those little dudes who played the mismatched twins on "The Hogan Family." That's the juicy tell-all America is clamoring for!

You went too far this time, internets, if that IS your real name. In the words of Jack Nicholson, you have fucked with the wrong marine. Not me, of course. I'm not marine material, what with the pacifism and the poor eyesight and the tracheotomy and all. But Dustin Diamond - he is the wrong marine, and you have fucked with him, internets. Nice work.

*our fact-checking department assures me this is false.

The Power of Leprechauns

2009-07-29T11:07:00.005-04:00

Well, good morning, America! (HEY, that's catchy...) Have a YouTube link, on the house!

I am completely beside myself by the power of teh cute and teh adorbz. Which is why the video player is pink, because of teh power of teh cute and teh adorbz. I would have preferred little heartbursts, or choruses of angels, but YouTube - stingy bastard that he is - doesn't offer little heartbursts or choruses of angels as a choices of customization. So it's pink. Kiss my ass. (Also pink, relatively speaking.)

Where was I?

Right. The boy.

Can you believe this teeny tiny miracle child is only five years old? And he wrote that song? And played it? And (more or less) sang it? On a stage? In Seattle? On Earth? In front of "people" from Seattle, Earth? And did I mention he's only five?!!

He sings about murder so capably for a five-year-old, doesn't he? I remember when I was a five-year-old, all we did was watch Barney and eat Jujyfruit and crap our diapers and occasionally - occasionally - get in really vicious bar fights where brass knuckles may or may not have been involved, I'm not telling.

But actually killing a man...

And then writing a song about it...

This little five-year-old motherfucker is cold, yo. In addition to teh cute and teh adorbz. But I suspect teh cute and teh adorbz are probably just cuz of special effects and leprechauns.

To Whom It May Concern:

2009-07-28T23:50:00.000-04:00

Dear Diana Ross (aka Sandy Arugula, for purposes of remaining anonymous on this here blog which you are the only person not reading),

I believe I have gone on record as to how I feel about them apples.

Your pal in Jolie,

Smokey

Really, amazon.com? If that IS your real name?

2009-07-23T15:19:00.003-04:00

So the fucking "Yo Quiero Taco Bell" dog dies, and all amazon.com can think about is buying a billion dollars worth of shoes? That's sick, amazon.com. Sick.

I wish it was the 1990s again. Nothing bad ever happened then, and everyone had morals. Like Newt Gangrich, whoever he was. Also, there was Pearl Jam. I mean, when they were good.

Accio the '90s!

Will Wieners Ever Taste the Same?

2009-07-15T13:20:00.001-04:00

It's a sad time to be in America, everybuzzy. Not because of the unexpected demise of 50-years young Michael Jetson, which was sad and all, but not nearly at this level. Do you, America, realize who ELSE just died last week? Do you? I'll give you a hint: he had a way with B-O-L-O-G-N-A.

Oscar G. Mayer, Jr. is gone. No joke. Fucking Oscar Mayer fucking DIED! Now he's with Tupac too!

Dear People Who Are Famous Enough to Have Wikipedia Pages,

STOP FLEEING US TO BE WITH TUPAC. We need you here, or else there's no need to have wikipedia in the first place.

Make with the not dying. Good. Now just keep that up.

Still breathing,
Smokey.

I know I run the risk of blowing this Oscar Mayer thing way, way, wa-hay-haaaaay out of proportion. Thank Zod it's the first time in my life I have ever done that. But seriously, my facebag status = "mourning", everybuzzy! And your facebag status should = "mourning" too, for who among us can claim not to have been touched by this great man's meat? Why, for generations, Americans from sea to shining sea, young and old alike, have gladly and gratefully been raised with this man's wiener between their buns. The next time someone even mentions the word "United Nations," I just know it's gonna make me think of that wonderful man and the thin, fleshy tubes that were so amazing to have in my mouth. Especially covered in mustard.

But now he's dead, and I for one think this is one of those occasions where you probably want an open casket funeral, just so we're all very clear on what becomes of the body.

Rest in peace, Wiener Man.

Playin' Hooky

2009-07-07T13:41:00.006-04:00

So hi.

I'm not at work today, because I had to call out sick so I could fly to LA so I could briefly take off my Canning Operations Technician hat and put on my Aging Motown Star With a Mild Case of Typhoid Fever hat, which I had to do because they asked me - Smokey Robinson - to open the festivities at the memorial service for Michael Jackson, who is with Tupac now, by reading letters from Diana Ross (friend of the blog) and Nelson Mandela (NOT friend of the blog, or if you prefer, friend of the NOT blog). That's totally worth faking an illness for. I told Rex "the Supervisor" Hymen that I had an aortic dissection. What is that, by the way? Does it clear up in 24 hours?

For the record, Diana's letter was awesome. But that Mandela dude - it's like he's from a different continent or something. Or that he's incontinent maybe.

Of course, the most fitting and moving tributes came courtesy of Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant, because who better to commemorate Michael's years in the NBA than two of his former Laker teammates? Personally, I'll never forget that time during the '87 Finals when he elbowed Robert Parrish right in the Adam's Apple and got ejected with the Lakers down by 2. Kuh-razy, right? And then he moonwalked off the court yelling "ho!" at the top of his lungs... so typical. I was sitting courtside with Jack Nicholson at the time, while a young prostitute named Hugh Grant was going down on me.

Ah, memories.

Anyway, so long, Michael. I'm glad America forgave you for being weird and perverted. There's probably a lesson in there for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but I don't have any idea what that lesson is.

Smokey Robinson, Artiste!!

2009-07-01T14:44:00.005-04:00

Hey, everybuzzy! It's happy times today! Fun and goodness and Skittles are in the air! And Cheerios, which are heart healthy, but also better for your teeth than Skittles!

Also safer, since there are no Cheerios-fueled riots. You have not known fear until you've been walking down the streets of midtown Manhattan munching on a falafel sandwich only to be set upon by crazed hordes of sugar-saturated business people trailing rivulets of rainbow-colored Skittle spit (or "Spittle") down their neckties and shirts. That's fear. And as I said, you have not yet been properly introduced to fear. Fear? This is my audience. Audience? This is fear. Come to New York and visit us today, because in addition to facing fear in person, Skittles are in the air, as I believe I mentioned a couple times already. PAY ATTENTION. Free Skittles for anybuzzy who wants them!

And WHY are Skittles in the air? Along with fun and goodness and happy times and smiley-faced balloons (not pictured)? I'll tell you why.

Really.

But not yet.

Okay, I lied. I'm about to tell you now.

Ready?

Wait, seriously, are you ready? I mean, it's not like you need to strap yourself in or anything, which would be ridiculous, but are you prepared for this kind of good news - the kind that will make you click your heels and pop your gum and fart "The Star-Spangled Banner?" Because that's the level of goodness of the news about which I am rhapsodizing. Skittles are in the air. Fucking SKITTLES, everybuzzy.

And do you want to know why?

It's because canning is making a comeback. BOO-YA.

Obviously, some of the harder-bitten existentialists here at Dole (I'm talking to you, Rex "The Supervisor" Hymen) don't really care, and have been trying to burst the rest of our bubbles all the livelong day. "Canning never went anywhere," they said, "we've been doing it for years. Now quit farting 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' dammit, and get back to work!" But to the doubting Rex "The Supervisor" Hymens of the world, all I have to say is this:

Nanner nanner.

Because yes, it's true, we haven't stopped canning for years now (not counting coffee breaks and national holidays). But only rarely - like maybe once every six months - has our work been favorably compared in the mainstream media to Baroque painting and Renaissance sculpture.

Check this out (emphasis added, but only slightly):

When tough times hit, it's said that people "go back to what they know." Across the country, some people are trying to find out what their grandparents knew. Old and young alike are trying to pick up a new skill and save a little money by learning the art of canning food.

-Jennifer Moore
National Public Radio (!)
June 20, 2009

I AM AN ARTIST! YES, I CAN! JENNIFER MORE FROM NPR SAID SO!

So stick that in Your Stigmata and smoke it, Jesus. You're dealing with Smokey Robinson the artist now! I'm so freaking stoked I could fart "The Star-Spangled Banner!"

But if you'll excuse me, first I have to do some work. Those bacon-wrapped cherries aren't going to make art out of themselves...

The Endless New York City Fashion Parade Continues

2009-06-23T11:13:00.005-04:00

I will never understand how, in an era where the sidewalks of cities across the world are littered with bloggerizers armed with 32GB iPhone 3G S's that have cameras and internet connections and apps for that, how a grown man could let himself walk out of the house with the bottom half of his body clad in this...

...and not expect to be made famous (or infamous, perhaps?? Like a pirate? Yar? Who's with me?) by this blog, which you are the only person not reading.

Blue pants? Seriously? AND blue shoes that are not made from suede, but rather from some mass-produced, glossy, scratch-resistant polymer (sort of pictured, and also sort of not pictured)? Even the great Elvis Prestley would has his work cut out for him trying to rhapsodize about those shoes while keeping his rhymes and beats funky fresh, and Alvis Prasley is the greatest ever* when it comes to rhapsodizing about shoes while keeping his rhymes and beats funky fresh, right? Right?

Oh, and as for the blurriness, ha ha, yeah, thanks for pointing that out! See, what happened was that I was laughing, and also I took this picture on a moving train, and also, fuck you for noticing, you jerk. I suppose you're too cool to spend entire subway rides covertly snapping pictures of random strangers and their fashion faux pas, right? Why don't you go stick your head in a bucket of something gross and/or toxic. Who do you think you are, Alvin Praxley or something? You make me sick.

'Kay, bye! Thanks for reading!

*Okay, that's not true. Technically. Pretzly is good, but nobody beats Michael Bublé when it comes to songs about shoes and funky fresh beats.

A Brief, But Still Panoramic History of the Dole Fruit Plant, Part I

2009-06-17T15:58:00.003-04:00

The Dole Fruit Plant is not associated with the Dole Food Company, Dole Food Company, Inc. or Castle & Cooke, Inc, currently headquartered in Westlake, California. Neither is the Dole Fruit Plant affiliated with the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, the historical forebear of Dole Fruit. This much needs must be made clear right at the start of things; despite appearances which were designed to fool the public into believing the contrary, the fine people at the Dole Food Company have done absolutely nothing to deserve having their names and reputations besmirched by any association with the scandalous and unsavory history of the Dole Fruit Plant in New York City. At various times though the years, Dole Food Company has attempted to sue the Dole Fruit Plant for trademark infringement and various other things (i.e. a 1978 nuisance suit over a particular Dole Fruit Plant employee’s bad breath), but the Fruit Plant has two distinct advantages in this regard: first, its internal legal staff has had surgical alterations to their brains to allow them to be extra-vicious and need less sleep than ordinary human beings; and second, said legal staff enjoys a close relationship with the governments of the United States, Canada, the Philippines, Vatican City, the Principality of Monaco, France, and an endive salad made in 1982 that rules most of northern Africa and the Middle East.

In short, they are not to be trifled with.

The Dole Fruit Plant was founded in New York City in 1921, at the height of a trend of fashionable political discord that the Fruit Plant’s Founder, Dr. Joseph Dmitri, wanted desperately to get in on. Dr. Dmitri was raised by his proto-fascist godparents in an obscure Greek corner of the Tyrolean Mountains, and he had always dreamed of being able to freely libel and slander anyone he chose for the express purpose of establishing them as villains in what he liked to think of as “The Great Comic Book of Life.” Given the state of world politics in the early 20th century and the seeming obsession with ideology-based “scares,” Dr. Dmitri perceived the time was right to create his own. So he set sail for America – America, the Home of the Brave And Also of the Highly Susceptible to Paranoia; America, the Land of Opportunity for Extreme Political Fear-Mongering. Dr. Dmitri saw America as a melting pot, but also as a seething cauldron of anxiousness and unrest ready to boil over if heat could simply be applied. And he saw himself as just the man to apply that heat. “America is a melting pot,” he wrote in his journal in 1919, “but also a seething cauldron of anxiousness and unrest ready to boil over if heat can simply be applied. And I am just the man to apply that heat.”

America was full of opportunity for scores of tens of dozens of hundreds of millions of thousands of pounds of immigrants in those days – and not just for extreme political fear-mongering, either. The American economy was festooned with plum, high-paying jobs in fields as diverse and satisfying as 18-hours-a-day-sewing and rock-breaking-from-sunrise-to-sunset. Some immigrant laborers earned entire, luxurious pennies every day.

Dr. Dmitri, however, did not need to seek his fortune. His family was already wealthy. His journey to America and his quest to capitalize on the “scare” phenomenon were predicated largely on boredom, the sort of deep malaise that had led so many other great men (such as Einstein and Hemingway) to lives of decadence and sloth and murder. So Dr. Dmitri spent some of his considerable family fortune purchasing a zeppelin, which he flew to America and then detonated for no better reason than it was simpler than paying for hangar space. Also, because it really impressed a girl he had picked up in Paris whose name he failed to learn before she perished in the zeppelin’s fiery explosion.

Dr. Dmitri was not a man who sensibly dispensed his considerable sums of money. It was well known in Tyrol that Josef Dmitri could get a bit slack in his guard on the old purse strings, particularly if you fed him enough feta cheese. Also, he had terrible luck with women. his combustible companion from Paris was neither the first nor last woman who would explode at his hands.

Dr. Dmitri quickly discovered that there was no money to be made from scares in the private sector. Government funding seemed to be the way to go. And in order to secure said funding, Dr. Dmitri quite sensibly approached the venture under the guise of research. “Far easier,” he wrote “to convince the American government to study the ill effects of a major social movement than to simply vilify and eradicate them, though extermination is obviously still the objective here. Muhuhahahaha.”

How Dr. Dmitri settled on existentialists as his choice of scare targets is, at this point, a mystery lost for the ages, a mere pebble dropped into a vast ocean of time and meatball parmesan sandwiches from one of the finer Italian restaurants on the eastern side of midtown Manhattan. Why someone would need to drop a pebble into such a ridiculous and confusing metaphorical ocean is beyond the power of scholars to understand because scholars are really nowhere near as smart as they’re always rumored to be. Also, it’s irrelevant, because the metaphor is really weak. An ocean of time and (really, really good) sandwiches? Even really good sandwiches have limits to their usefulness at some level, and this is that level.

The point is that Dr. Dmitri chose, as his scare victims, existentialists. That jerk.

Coming in part 2: Dr. Dmitri gets an enemy.

My Immortality, Realized

2009-06-10T10:22:00.006-04:00

Bienvenue to my legendariness.

I have done it. I am now immortal. I am the Author of the One Millionth Word Ever in the English Language Ever, of All Time. And what's even better is that YOU ARE NOT the Author of the One Millionth Word Ever in the English Language Ever, of All Time. By the way, that is totally going on my next business card.

The One Millionth Word Ever in the English Language Ever, of All Time...

Is...

"Web 2.0"

[this was the placeholder for the One Millionth Word Ever in the English Language Ever, of All Time, which was not, as it turns out, "noob." But it totally could have been "blorkenheim" if enough people would just have believed in themselves.]

I don't want or need to get all preachy on y'all, but you know, the One Millionth Whatever totally could have been "blorkenheim" if enough people would just have believed in themselves. You would have manned up if I were Colbert, and you goshdarn well know it.

Anyway, congratulations. To ME!

Oh, and by the way, I'm not kidding.

Meet the new Jesus (this time with really awesome boobs)

2009-06-04T11:22:00.007-04:00

Move over, Oprah Whimfree. Now there's something leaner, whiter, and more descended-from-the-loins-of-Jon Voight on top of the Hollywood Reporter's list of the 100 most powerful celebrities in celebrity-dom. That's right, it's Angelina Jolie. Yes, that Angelina. Yes, that Jolie. The coup has been staged, and thanks to the laser-guided incendiary missiles (not pictured) she had installed in her massive lips (yes pictured), Jolie is now more powerful than you, Oprah!

It's true, too. How else do you explain the fact that she's even on the list after the release of that piece of trash Wanted? (Which, for those of you keeping score at home, also starred the dude who played the half-goat in Narnia, the Witch, and the Kids in the Armoire - what was his name? Right, Morgan Freeman.) I'm no film expert, but I would think attaching yourself to that kind of box office poison would be enough to strangle the life out of most people's movie careers. But what does Jolie do? She maneuvers it into sequel talks. And her character died at the end! Spoiler alert!

In and of itself, that's not really enought to make Jolie more powerful that Oprah, with the book club, and the ability to induce poultry-related riots on a whim, and her daily strangle-hold over the consciousness of millions of suburban women that make up the backbone of this recession. You have to add in the lip missiles (not pictured). Then it's power. A sword would be cool too; just something to think about.

So no more letters to Jesus, because that dude's act is getting way old at this point. (Seriously, Son of Man, get some Band-Aids and put on some Your-Dad-damnned Nikes and a pair of jeans already.) And no more letters to Oprah either, because you're not number one anymore, Oprah, and also because the touchy Chicago courts are really, really narrow-minded when it comes to the definitions of "harassment" and "violating a restraining order." From now on, it's Jolie for me.

Dear Jolie,

Smite them. Smite them all. Unleash teh fury.

A sword would be cool too; just something to think about.

Yours in number-one-ness,
Smokey F. Robinson

P.S. Can you make it so we don't have to wait till January for the next episode of Lost? I NEED TO GO BACK TO THE ISLAND.

My Immortality

2009-05-07T18:17:00.003-04:00

I have literarily just been given a golden opportunity to realize my potential and become world famous for something. I am going to the be the author of the One Millionth (1,000,000th) Word Ever in the English Language Ever, of All Time. In fact, thanks to some creativity, and a secret which I will now reveal to the world - on the condition that you all promise not to plagiarize my idea in any language or in any country of the world, from now until the end of time, come what may, E Pluribus Unum, amen - I am technically already the writer of the One Millionth Word Ever in the English Language Ever, of All Time.

Here's the scam, everybuzzy:

First, you has to read this article here.

Then you has to reed the millionth word, which is [insert MILLIONTH WORD here, probably "noob" at this point], and will appear also in a post which, thanks to the magic of the internet, I have scheduled to be published at precisely 10:22 AM on June the 10th.

Then, you has to look at the date 'n' time of the blog post published on 10:22 AM on June the 10th (hint: it will be 10:22 AM on June the 10th) and compare it to the date and time in the article I referenced above. Go on, be resourceful. And pay no attention to the fact that this article was actually written on May 7, 2009 at 6:17 PM. Or actually, pay all the attention that you want. Because it is now recorded for posterity, thanks to the swell folks at blogger.com (hi, guys!), and I therefore must be right. Because the internet - and in particular blogger.com - never lie.

Seriously, guys, this is like if someone told you the date and time you could get away with robbing a bank, only there's no money in it, and also it's much, much, much, much more nerdy than that. But whatever. I thought of it, and you didn't. And I didn't even need to spin the Frozen Donkey Wheel or leave the Island!

So there, Alfred Feinstein, or whatever yer name was. Stick that in your General Theory of Relativity and smoke it. And don't forget to tell all the other people in Hell that Smokey sez wassuuuuup!

By the way, if you do plagiarize my idea and scoop me as the million-word-writer, I will still be the guy who brought you The Idea to Become Famous on the Internet by Writing the Millionth Word in the English Language. And you, Mister or Miss Poopyhead who stole my idea, can go kiss your own poopy head. Also, I will write your obituary on blogger.com, and date it for JUNE 11, and then I will be famous (and possibly wanted) for being suspiciously, precognitively aware of the death of a complete Poopyhead stranger.

Also by the way, there are still 544 words to be accepted into the language before the Millionth, so if we work really hard and our timing is impeccable, and we can somehow choreograph a 25,000-person simultaneous media posting, we can all get together to make the Millionth something unexpected, like "blorkenheim," which so far appears nowhere on the Internet or in the media. Except here, I guess. So make that a 24,999-person effort. And I don't want or need to get all preachy on y'all, but you know, the One Millionth Whatever could totally be "blorkenheim" (24,998!) if enough people believe in themselves. You would man up if I were Colbert, and you goddamn well know it.

Blorkenheim! 24,997!

Finally!

2009-05-01T13:28:00.003-04:00

There is no fight left to fight anymore, people. Satan has been killed. In Mississippi. Take a look:

Sort of an ignominious end for the Prince of Evil, isn't it? To be killed in Mississippi? I mean, shouldn't he at least have gotten gunned down while he was on Spring Break in Daytona Beach, passed out from drinking $2 "you call it" shots? This is actually sort of pathetic.

And frankly, if that chalk outline is to be believed, he's not quite as svelte as I would've thought either. I wonder how he charmed generations worth of people into sinning with a figure like that? He must've had a great personality or something, I guess.

Oh well. He's gone now, so I suppose we'll never know.

Thanks again, Jesus!

SPOILER ALERT

2009-04-30T14:10:00.002-04:00

[Thanks, bits and pieces.]

Boo-Earth!

2009-04-22T13:55:00.000-04:00

Today, as everyone knows, is Earth Day, which is earth's birthday, which means that according to the Jewish calendar (official calendar system of the blog), the earth is 5,769 years old. That means that if there were really a Mother Earth, she would have hit menopause and moved to Florida like 5,720 years ago. I bet she has a hell of a tan by now.

I know I've publicly celebrated Earth Day in the past, but that is so over now. I am taking a page out of the Republican playbook here - not the page where I actively campaign for the dissolution of the country that I claim to love more than you, or the page where I make eloquent defenses of the choice movement at Right To Life dinners, or the page where the people who expose the people who okay'd torture have their judgment publicly questioned while the okay'ers slink freely among the public. Wait, is that the hypocritical page? Okay, then yes, that is the page I'm taking out of the Republican playbook.

Because I am refusing to celebrate Earth Day this year. I protest!

I've been in kind of a protestical (not pro-testicle, you pervert) mood this week, actually. It all goes back to Monday morning, when I looked in my sock drawer and saw that among my scant choices were a pair of black socks that said "Wednesday" on them (in yellow). Initially, I recoiled at those socks. Oh no, I thought. I can't possibly wear Wednesday socks on a Monday... But then I started wondering exactly what repercussion would befall me if I just went ahead and shot the lock off, and put on the damn socks. Before I knew it I was yanking the socks out of the drawer and cursing at them, "fuck you, socks! You're not the boss of me! Why don't you swallow my foot and see how you like it?"

It felt so good that I followed that up by wearing my Sunday socks yesterday. On a Tuesday. Nobody pushes me around, see!

Which brings us to today. Earth Day, if that is its real name. Give me one good goddamn reason why I should celebrate Earth Day. Every fucking day is Earth Day, let's not kid ourselves. This isn't like that whole Mother's Day thing where we have to pretend that our mothers are actual human beings with feelings and take them out of the home for an entire excruciating day, this is for real. There is no alternative to Earth. We are being bullied into submission by a dictatorial planet so intent on keeping us here that you literally have to get your kinetic energy equal to the magnitude of your gravitational potential energy in order to reach escape velocity! Talk about clingy...

Besides which. Earth is responsible for giving us this:

Absolutely unforgivable, Earth. Shame on you. SHAME! I hope your birthday sucks and that you explode from eating poison cake.

This could be the beginning of a 6,000,000-page serial novel!

2009-04-17T20:35:00.004-04:00

The premise of my next work of fiction, length undecided:

“So, um, what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a trained killer.”

“A trained killer.”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’m really a trained killer.”

“Okay. So, um,… what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a trained killer.”

“That’s your story and you’re sticking to it?”

“Yes. That’s my story. I’m a trained killer.”

“And for whom do you kill trains?”

“Cute.”

“Sorry. For whom do you turn tricks?”

“I’m a trained killer, not a trained seal.”

“I was calling you a whore, not a trained seal.”

“Probably not the wisest thing to say to a trained killer.”

“If only I knew one.”

“Oh! Me, pick me! Hi, I’m a trained killer!”

“How do you, um, do it?”

“Like, what’s my method?”

“Okay, sure.”

“I poison people.”

“You poison people from the government, and they still let you have a profile on eHarmony?”

“I know. ExceptI don’t poison people for the government.”

“So do you work for?”

“A small private security company. I’m not at liberty to say more than that.”

“I think you’ve said plenty.”

“Well, I’m having doubts about it.”

“About your…career choice?”

“Yes.”

“Which you still maintain is that you professionally poison people.”

“Right. I’m having some doubts about that though.”

“Like, ethics questions?”

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

“Huh. Let’s talk.”

This Ex-stinks.

2009-04-14T10:16:00.006-04:00

These two news items remind me of this great stegosaurus place I used to know on 9th Avenue, back in the Mesozoic era. Damn, I haven't been there in ages. Boy, could I go for a nice, medium rare stego-steak right about now...

Anyway.

Item 1:

A rare Worcester’s buttonquail (Turnix worcesteri), a probable female, which is also locally known as the Philippines quail, is shown being photographed while being held by a bird hunter in Caraballo (above).

The bird, thought to be extinct, was photographed for the first time in the Philippines, and then sold to a poultry market as food.
from cryptomundo via boingboing

Item 2:

Fishermen in the Philippines accidentally caught and later ate a megamouth shark, one of the rarest fishes in the world with only 40 others recorded to have been encountered, the World Wildlife Fund said Tuesday. The 1,100-pound, 13-foot megamouth died while struggling in the fishermen's net on March 30 off Burias island in the central Philippines. It was taken to nearby Donsol in Sorsogon province, where it was butchered and eaten, said Gregg Yan, spokesman for WWF-Philippines.

from Yahoo!, also via boingboing

Now, I realize I might have Easter on the brain (you should too, Christians...), but isn't this a little bit like if the apostles had tried to take a bite out of Jesus when he reappeared? It's like, "oh, hey, Son of Man, we totally thought You were extinct! We're so glad You're back! And have You been working out, because That Flank of Yours is looking pretty tasty... no, wait, come back!!"

They don't call him the Lamb of God for nothing, folks. Am I right? Who's with me?

What's with all that gathering lightning?

Dear Jesus,

Zap.

Marshmallows and lollipops,
The Smoke Monster.

Dude, the Day After Easter is Painful Enough As It Is

2009-04-13T14:39:00.005-04:00

I don't know about anybuzzy else, but the day after Easter is not a happy day for me AT ALL. First of all, there's the realization that good ol' Jesus C. (Friend of the blog) has gone back to His spaceship with Elvis Presley and the Tooth Fairy until His birthday party in December, or at least until one of those fake "Christmas in July" promotions where retail stores give huge discounts on vacuum cleaners and Michael Bolton CDs (Jesus's two favorite gifts!).

And second of all, I'm always a little bit sluggish the day after Easter because of the massive amount of labor involved in obtaining my favorite Easter delicacy, chocolate-covered rabbits (not pictured). Because as any connosieur of chocolate-covered rabbits knows, it is really hard to catch a rabbit. And it is even harder to convince the rabbit to sit still while you dip it in a pot of molten chocolate. There may be more than one way to skin a cat, but that's cats, and that's skinning, and we're talking catching rabbits and dipping them in molten chocolate, which is quite the holiday undertaking, let me tell you.

I remember the days when Cadbury Creme Eggs used to be enough for me. But then I discovered that not only are they not real eggs, they're not laid by a real bunny either. Fakers! And I am all about the authenticity, folks, as you probably already know from a cursory critical examination of the lyrics to my hit song, "Tears of a Clown."

Anyway.

I always try and make a few extra chocolate-covered rabbits, sometimes to give out as gifts, and sometimes just for me. But these are lean times. The Great Repression is in full effect. So this year, I not only had to compete with the speed and caginess of my leporine prey, but also with the dozens of hungry Wall Street bankers who prowl the streets of New York nowadays in search of pigeons, rodents, and small game animals for sustenance. I'm not a competitive person by nature. I just want to collect my coneys and be left in peace, not harrassed and held at Blackberry-point by some down-and-out Lehman Brothers layoff-ee who rifles through my pockets and then laughs at me for carrying around Goonies trading cards. They're just there to give me luck with the hunting, you jerk.

God damn, was that woman mean.

And of course, that's all not to mention the disappointment that comes when you bite into the head of a chocolate-covered bunny and discover that the rabbit you worked so hard to catch and dip has somehow managed to disappear from its chocolate tomb, leaving you with nothing but a hollow, hare-shaped piece of chocolate. I know it's very thematic and Easter-appropriate and all, and I strongly suspect that Jesus somehow magicks them out of there as a prank on me (very funny, Jesus), but honest to Christ: if I wanted hollow chocolate, I'd buy it from a fucking store.

My point is that the post-Easter Monday is already fraught with enough exhaustion and heartache. So the last thing I needed to see when I looked at my Internet first thing this morning was this:

The Peekaru? Seriously? W.T. Fuck, America? Who's responsible for this? I want names. When Jesus comes back next year*, I'm totally ratting you guys out.

*That's assuming Barack Obama doesn't blow up the world before then, which is a pretty generous assumption considering how he's doing so far.

How Cheerios' Heart-Healthiness Was Put to Complete Shame

2009-04-07T14:50:00.011-04:00

Looks like Lucky has a new marshmallow buddy:

This is not your breakfast cereal. This is like Jesus's breakfast cereal and Superman's breakfast cereal combined, only on steroids and methamphetamines and crack, and with surprisingly low nutritional value. Your breakfast cereal can't even keep you from getting hungry again before noon, though, because all it has are seven healthy grains, and not marshmallows with the power to manipulate time-space.

I hate to say it, Kix. You may be kid-tested and mother-approved, but we're talking about the ability to violate Einstein's laws here. Lucky Charms wins in a landslide.

The problem is that it's a gateway physics-defying cereal. I already have one friend who got looped on time-controlling Lucky Charms and gravity-defying Captain Crunch, and is now in suspended animation 300 feet above Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, just hanging there in mid-air with this horrified look on his face. It's pretty gruesome. But it's also a very visible cautionary tale for the children.

Gasp! Oh my Zod, I think I just figured out how they're going to end the hit ABC documentary Lost! With a cartoon leprechaun!

You're welcome, America, for once again doing your homework for you.

Spotlight on my junk mail (yes, again)

2009-03-18T10:13:00.003-04:00

From: Elaine Masters [mastelaine@gmail.com]
To: Smokey R [clowntears@piealamodeproductions.com]
Date: Tue, Mar 17, 2008 at 5:31 PM
Subject: My Honest Desire

Hello,

I am Elaine Masters now undergoing medical treatment for cancer. I am married to Dr. David Masters who worked with United Kingdom Embassy for ten years before he died in the year 2002.

Before my Husband died, we both made a deposit of a total sum $8.6M in a financial company here in U.K. Recently, my Doctor told me that I have few months to live due to cancer problem. Having known my condition I have decided to donate this fund to an honest Person. who will be trusted to assist me in my last desire to help the poor and the sick through charity.

Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I stated herein. Hoping to hear from you. Remember to send your response to this email address: mastelaine@gmail.com

In His Arms.

Mrs. Elaine Masters

***

From: Smokey R [clowntears@piealamodeproductions.com]
To: Elaine Masters [mastelaine@gmail.com]
Date: Tue, Mar 17, 2008 at 5:33 PM
Subject: Re: Your Honest Desire

Dear Mrs. Elaine Masters,

Thank you for contacting me with your offer to donate $8.6 million to me. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who wouldn't know quite how to respond to such an offer, or who might think that someone sending an unsolicited email offering to give $8.6 million to a stranger is too good to be true. Fortunately for you, I have a great deal of experience accepting huge random donations from people with limited functional English knowledge who have never met me.

So let's do this.

I'm sure the easiest way to arrange the transfer would be for me to forward my bank account information, including PIN numbers and online passwords and whatnot. But that's just what they'll be expecting us to do. So here's what I'm thinking instead: if you can arrange to get the $8.6 million in $20 bills, I will send you 430,000 stamped business envelopes, and you can mail the Jacksons to me one at a time.

I know this plan might seem inefficient and somewhat costly, but trust me when I tell you that you do not want the tax-related hassle of writing me a check, or directly depositing the funds into one of my many bank accounts. Too many questions. Too much paperwork. Too many sticky entanglements with the law. Too much marshmallow on my fluffernutter.

Besides which, I'm the one doing you a favor anyway. I'm not talking about assisting you in your last desire to help the poor and the sick through charity, I'm talking about the other favor I'm doing for you, which is to spare you the burden of being rich anymore. I'm sure you'll agree that this economic climate is not exactly hospitable to people who have lots of money. Why, just yesterday, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) called for fatcat AIG executives who approved bonuses to their Financial Products division to either resign or commit suicide. Suicide! Just for being rich!

It's times like this when you have to ask yourself what the point of the American dream is. Well, not you, since you're apparently in U.K. Also because you have cancer problem and will be dead soon.

Anyway, the money. Let me know if my plan is acceptable to you, or if you have a different suggestion about how to get me the money. I say "different suggestion" and not "better suggestion" because honestly, I don't see how you can top my 430,000-envelope idea. But go ahead and try if you want to, chuckle chuckle chuckle.

Yours in song,
Smokey Robinson.

And now, an offer for FreshDirect...

2009-03-16T10:20:00.005-04:00

Dear FreshDirect:

You did it!

I am so excited and so proud of you for finally managing to deliver me my eggs without cracking any of them in the course of said delivery. I admit, I was less than optimistic when I opened up the box and saw one of the egg cartons lying on its side. Oh no, I thought. Here we go again.

Actually, that's not exactly what I thought. My inner monologue tends to be a great deal more profane than that. I think it's because one of my personalities is a sailor who swears like, well, a sailor, frankly. What I actually thought was, oh fucking no. Here we fucking go fuck a-fuck-gain. Fuck.

Please excuse the language. Also, please excuse the low expectations. (My sailor personality is also very jaded about 21st century customer service. Sorry.) I'm just being honest here, though, which I hope will give you greater insight into the FreshDirect customer experience, which, believe me, can be a profanity- and pessimism-inducing experience even if you don't have an alternate personality with a maritime background and a bitter streak.

Anyway, I just wanted to compliment you on finally getting the egg thing right. This is the third time I've ordered eggs from you, FreshDirect, but it's only the first time I've actually gotten all the eggs I ordered intact. Both of the other times, various amounts of egg breakage in my orders have resulted in my account being credited for the full value of all the eggs. In other words, I have not yet actually paid for a single egg.

Until today. And believe me when I tell you that I am fucking happy to do so.

As a matter of fact, I even feel kind of guilty, probably because one of my other personalities is an abusive parent with an overdeveloped sense of remorse. I feel guilty about everything.

But I especially feel guilty about having eaten so many free eggs. So, FreshDirect, in the spirit of quid pro quo (Is there a spirit of quid pro quo? What does that even mean?), I'd like to credit you $5.00 on my next order. If you could please just add a random $5.00 charge - not in return for a product, not for a service, but just because I asked you to - I would be very much obliged. It's my way of saying, "good job, fucking FreshDirect! Thank you for all the free goddamn eggs. Oh, and I'm sorry I hit you - please don't tell your mother."

Yours truly,
Smokey Robinson.

Conversations with Jesus about People Our Age: Alex Rodriguez

2009-03-07T19:19:00.005-05:00

This is the year that yours truly, Smokey Falafel Robinson, the Motown Marauder himself, turns 33 years old. Now, some of the skeptics out there will say, "hey Smokey, that's impossible," or "hey, Smokey, you're a liar," or "come on, Smokey, quit stealing my gummi bears," citing the following evidence:

1. "Shop Around," my first chart-topper, was released in 1960,

2. According to my wikipedia page - I mean, birth certificate - I was born in 1940.

3. I have, in fact, been stealing gummi bears.

But what those skeptics do not know is that I was actually born on a small island named "Lost," which is the same island where they currently film the ABC documentary of the same name. So while it may seem impossible, trust me when I tell you that, as hard as it may seem to believe, I am only as old as Jesus was when He croaked.

Speaking of Jesus (a Friend of the blog, by the way), we here at YATOPNRTB managed to get Him to take a little bit of time out of His Busy Schedule to chat with us about some other luminary personalities who are celebrating their year of Crucifixion, only without the crucifixion part.

First up is Alex Rodriguez.

Alex, or "A-Rod, as he is sometimes referred to in the media," is a baseball player for the New York Yankers, or so we are told. And A-Rod, as he is sometimes referred to in the media has been having something of a rough go of it lately, ever since his fourth-favorite Chihuahua, Calcetin, died of a poison-related illness some weeks ago that I swear to Zod I know nothing about. To a lesser extent, A-Rod, as he is sometimes referred to in the media has been dogged by recently confirmed rumors that he is of Hispanic descent - something that would be hard for anyone to get over. (Right, Mom?)

Jesus and I sat down with A-Rod, as he is sometimes referred to in the media over a cold glass of steroid juice and some Growth Hormone sandwiches, which are a specialty of Jesus's.

Unfortunately, because of an unexpected wizard's duel between Jesus and A-Rod, as he is sometimes referred to in the media, and a memory charm that shot off sideways, I am unable to reprint the happenings of that meeting, because I can't remember them. But suffice it to say that it's probably not a good idea to say to Jesus that "at least I wasn't crucified, Dude," no matter how hard Jesus is laughing at your misfortune. Something to keep in mind next week when we sit down with Tiger Tiger Tiger Woods, y'all.

Hold me close, young Tony Danza

2009-02-19T14:04:00.000-05:00

So here it is, mid-February already. The days are starting to lengthen, the groundhogs are in the midst of shutting the fuck up for another year, and I find myself fighting a rising tide of disappointment in Tony Danza.

It's not because of "Who's the Boss?" - at least, not entirely because of that - and it's not because of his ill-fated daytime talk show. It's because I walked by the display window of a Barnes and Noble this morning on my way to the Fruit Plant, and I did not see a Republican-themed cookbook called Grill, Baby, Grill, written by Tony Danza, with an introduction by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

WT Fuck, Danza? WT Fuck?

I honestly don't know what I have to do to make this happen. I've tried everything there is. For the past six months, I have wished on every star I've seen. I have said prayers to Jesus and the Easter Bunny and All Their Buddies. I have farted "The Star-Spangled Banner." I have used radiation to amplify my brainwaves to that Tony Danza could receive the suggestion telepathically.

So far, I have nothing to show for all of that. Actually, I do have quite a large tumor just above my neck, but... oh, no, wait, that's just my head. So we're back to nothing. Six months of wishing and hoping and planning and praying down the drain.

I guess Dusty Springfield was right after all.

Now it's 2009, mid-February, all that other stuff I mentioned in the first paragraph. And there is still no Tony Danza Republican cookbook on the market. Meanwhile, the resonance of "drill, baby, drill" is disintegrating faster than the Democrats' ability to stay on message. Stupid Democrats. Stupid Republicans. Stupid Tony Danza. Stupid me. Stupid everybody.

But mostly, Stupid Jesus. If you go back far enough, this is clearly His fault. Jesus is the alpha and the omega of blame. So to those red-state consumers who are flush with spare cash for politically-themed cookbooks written by C-List celebrities who are not as telepathic as they're supposed to be, you know Whose fault this really is.

A Sandwich Board of the Times

2009-02-17T00:30:00.007-05:00

An old, grizzled man with a sour look wanders up to the counter of a pawn shop, lustily tugging at something in his coat pocket, and nursing a mouth dryer than a British sitcom. The man is desperate for liquor. He's desperate for food too, but a man's gotta have priorities, and that bottle of Old Granddad next door isn't likely to drink itself, because even a bottle of Old Granddad finds Old Granddad disgusting.

The man's clothes are a vision of decrepitude and dereliction, the uniform of a veteran of the war for survival on the cruel streets. It's a war that no one is winning, since the sides and the battle lines haven't ever been made clear. Nor, for that matter, have the opposing forces who are supposed to be squaring off. Is anyone fighting against survival on the cruel streets? Because if so, I'd like to meet them. Please contact the blog.

For now, though, let's get back to the story of the old man with the sour look and the as-yet-unrevealed object in his pocket, which I will tell you right now is a Blackberry.

The cashier raises an eyebrow at the approaching "customer." He looks bored and unimpressed. Between the sob stories and the outright frauds, this man has had more of his time wasted than all of the time wasted on the internet by all of Generation X put together. He barely looks up from his e-paper, although this is in part because the opacity setting on the e-paper is low enough that he can see through it, since the pawn shop is roughly as likely to look after itself as the Old Granddad is to drink itself. If these analogies and metaphors aren't clear enough for you, please contact the blog.

"Yeah?" says the nonplussed cashier.

"I wanna sell this," says the old sourpuss. And he whips out a Blackberry Curve, which once retailed for the unthinkable sum of $349.99 without a contract from AT&T Wireless.

Sorry, that sentence was wrong. It should say, "And he whips out a FUCKING Blackberry Curve, which once retailed for the unthinkable sum of $349.99 without a contract from AT&T Wireless." I changed it at the last second because I was worried that people might freak out about the profanity if I didn't mention it first and give them a chance to look away. Spoiler alert.

Anyway.

The cashier says, "fuck off," and then adds something in Spanish to the effect that he wishes he had a boot long enough to kick that gavron in the mantequillas while the old man hustles to grab his prize and shuffles backward to the door, the look on his face grown even sourer. This is the fourth FUCKING pawn shop that turned him down! (Spoiler alert: more swearing.)

He emerges onto the cruel streets and with his arms outstretched, casts a hideous curse at the heavens above. Just a few short years ago, the Blackberry was a status symbol, a veritable declaration that the person carrying it was too much of a self-important asshole to leave his email behind for like an hour and a half while we grab dinner with his friends. It used to be like, diamond shoes? Check. Pockets stuffed with $50 and $60 bills? Check. Blackberry Curve? Check. But now, this bedraggled, poopyheaded old man can't even scrape together enough cash from the resale value to buy a bottle of cheap, disgusting booze.

"Why?" the old man yells, anguished, at the God who has forsaken him every bit as much as He forsook Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord and Savior, that day on the Cross a couple thousand years or so ago. The old man's inadvertent sobs divide his subsequent bellowing calls into syllables: "Why-hy-hy-hy? Wah-hah-hah-hah-ha-ha-haaaaaaaeeeeee?" And as he rears back and hurls the worthless hunk of really sophisticated electronic equipment downward at the oddly anachronistic cobblestones of the road, the old man gets struck by lightning and dies, because I couldn't think of a reasonable way to end this paragraph without killing him.

People, the story you've just read is true. Except that it hasn't happened yet. But it will. Oh yes, it will. These economic crisis times are worse than I ever conceived, even in the wild safari that is my imagination. Because while it's true that homeless men aren't actually selling Blackberries for crack or alcohol or ice skating money (yet), you can tell we're headed in that direction. I discovered the proof from a sandwich board I saw outside of Whole Foods earlier this evening.

Take a look, world:

That's right. BLACKBERRIES ARE 2 FOR $4 AT WHOLE FOODS. I double-checked with three store clerks, a manager, eighteen other customers, the cops who dragged me out of the store, and the old homeless man with the sour face who was lying on the sidewalk about four feet from where this picture was taken.

You can't see him because I had to stand astride him in order to get a good angle on the sign. But his face was really sour, let me tell you. I wish I had a Blackberry to donate to him, but I don't really carry loose change in my pocket anymore, because I'm a grown-up now.

Oh, and FYI: this picture was taken by my pal Knickers, who is a FUCKING iPhone.

[SPOILER ALERT: There is plentiful swearing contained in this post.]

Decepticons!

2009-02-09T19:54:00.004-05:00

When the timer on my microwave runs out, my microwave does more than just beep. Just beeping would be enough. Frankly, it's sometimes too much. But the beep I will take for granted. Beeping is what microwaves do, after all, and to ask them not to do it would be like asking a plate of lasagna to not be delicious, which would be ridiculous.

I'm not asking my microwave not to beep, I'm saying it's cool about the beep, and can we please move on? Because there are other things to talk about in regards to this microwave, whom I occasionally refer to as MicroDave the microwave. As in, 'sup, MicroDave the microwave? Y U beepin at me? That is how I talk to my MicroDave. And he beeps back at me. That is what is up.

But that is not what is all.

My microwave then - then, as in after the beeping - displays the following words, in the monochromatic digital alarm clock font that would obviously be monotone and masculine if it had a voice:

YOUR FOOD IS DONE

Pardon me, MicroDave, but all you know is that the timer is done. You don't know jack shit about whether my jack cheese is melted, and half the time, you're fuckin' wrong, okay? Okay, MicroDave? (the microwave?) Don't presume to tell me my food is done when for all you know, I've finally snapped and stuck a handful of metal canisters full of pressurized cleaning agents inside you and decided to end it all. You are a deceiver, MicroDave. You are a liar! You are a machine who spreads deception and we all know that deception is just one letter away from Decepticon, which is another sort of deceitful machine altogether, but you're probably cousins.

It's times like this when I long for the old days, when the machines didn't talk back so damn much. I miss those old days. I feel nostalgia.

Thank Zod I'm not a vampire, or I would probably be able to achingly remember all the way back to when we didn't even have the word "microwave." And also, thank Zod I'm not a vampire because my nephew would be scared of me. I know I'm about to risk losing a sizeable contingent of my audience by saying this, but I am totally and one hundred percent anti-vampire.

Gay Men and Puppets Are Here to Save You

2009-02-08T11:38:00.003-05:00

I have the lyrics from "Away in a Manger" stuck in my head this Sunday late morning, just sitting there in my brain like yesterday's oatmeal, which is sitting in the GladWare container out of which I didn't finish eating it, getting crustier by the second. Somehow, the metaphor seems to have drawn me away from my point, though, which is about the lyrics from "Away in a Manger."

It's not a subconsciously guilty response to having skipped church this morning. I have skipped church for more consecutive weeks than Tiger Woods has been number one at golf, and for more consecutive weeks than Barack Obama (who is the Tiger Woods of black US presidents) has been number one at being awesome. At least, I don't think it's a subconsciously guilty response to skipping church. But that's the thing with subconsciousness, isn't it. You can never be sure.

Except for this time. I am sure this time. I am sure it's not my subconscious because I know what this "Away in a Manger" business is about. That was the song that first made me fall in love with baby Jesus. And it's hard to think that after all those years of being at least as devoted to him as most of the nuns I'm friends with, I would give it all up for a flash-in-the-pan circus man named Paul Anderson, just because Paul Anderson can walk on stilts.

Then again, Paul Anderson looks like this:

So we really can't blame me, can we?

In the words of the Tiger Woods of black US presidents, Yes We Can.

People are always talking about sin. Studies show that apart from talking about childhood obesity and chewing gum, talking about sin is the most popular use of the human mouth that there is. Catholic priests use their mouths to talk about sin ALL THE TIME, which is ironic because they probably also use those same mouths to fellate their altar boys, because all Catholic priests are child molesters, again, according to studies.

Speaking of which, I once had a molestation-minded Catholic priest chase me around a church once. He caught me by the organ.

You can't really consider Jesus my boyfriend, but I think the point that my subconscious, and my conscious, and Barack Obama are trying to make is that by falling so hard for Paul Anderson, I have sinned against the Lord Jesus, or J-Lord Perry, as I sometimes call him. After all, Jesus was a carpenter, and Paul Anderson is a circus performer, and the only place a circus performer should come before a carpenter is in the bizarro Yellow Pages, where things are in backwards alphabetical order, and where forsaking Jesus for Paul Anderson is not a sin.

But this is not the bizarro world. It's the world where Barack Obama is president, Tiger Woods is number one at golf (even though he hasn't played since June), and religious comeuppance comes not only from subconscious lyrical reminders of Jesus, but also from moralistic musical sermons by men on YouTube who are obviously gay:

I have always taken pretty much a "meet it head-on" approach to dealing with sin. Obviously, that was wrong. I don't know why this didn't occur to me before. I guess because I am not Tiger Woods, or Barack Obama, or Jesus. I am but a poor servant of the higher mastery that is the Dole Fruit Company, a practicing existentialist, and a sucker for a dude who can make his own stilts.

Here's a little more temptation to look away from:

How to Saw Wood To Build Circus Stilts -- powered by ExpertVillage.com

Where are your puppets and homos to save you now, bitches?

Look out, Jesus.

2009-02-03T15:25:00.000-05:00

All right, check this dude out:

And tell me that hair doesn't make your chest go all thumpy-thumpy like in the cartoons.

Blam. You have been hypnotized.

This is Paul Anderson, and he is like Jesus on stilts. Which makes him better than Jesus, because Jesus didn't walk on stilts. That takes talent, the kind of talent you would definitely read about in the Bible, which covered every single detail of Jesus's life in the kind of detail that only Michael Phelps and Barack Obama can appreciate.

In fact, there should be a Bible of stilt-walking, and it should star Paul Anderson. (INTERNET: THIS IDEA CAN BE YOURS, FREE OF CHARGE. YOU'RE WELCOME.)

Instead, there's this.

How to Add Multiple Levels to Your Stilts -- powered by ExpertVillage.com

I kind of wish I could go back in time and vote No on Proposition 8 in California so that I could gay marry this man's hair and stilts and his cool, cool glasses too. The rest of him I could kind of take or leave, especially after 22 episodes that all start with that "...and here we are!" line.

Look, Paul Anderson: just because you're in the circus doesn't mean you have to talk like you're in the circus, you know what I mean? You're better than Jesus, dammit. Start acting like it.

Dear Jesus,

Move over, Son of Man. There's a new heartthrob in town. Barack Obama has brought the change we need, and his name is Paul Anderson.

You are officially Yesterday's News, Jesus. You are the Pull-My-Finger of Messiahs.

Peace, love, and Freedom toast,
Smokey.

Behold, The Printed Blog.

2009-01-23T00:14:00.003-05:00

I have just discovered a site known as The Printed Blog, which I refuse to link to out of principle. (I think it's principle. It might be out of principal - I can never remember which of those is which.) If you want the link, send me a SASE (that's a self-addressed, stamped envelope, to any Nickelodeon fans from the mid-80s who happen to be in the audience today!), and I'll send you the link by US Mail, which is like the Pony Express with a massive carbon footprint and stamps that no longer need licking.

Sorry, getting back to my point. The Printed Blog (not pictured) (or "hyperlinked").

I thought one of the nice features of blogs was the drastic reduction of our US Mail-sized carbon footprint, wasn't it? I mean, wasn't the whole point of "zines" and "weblogs" and the "intranet" to conserve paper? Wasn't that at least part of it?

And now comes a service willing to print out the good parts of the internet and deliver it to you. This is not progress. This is not change blah blah blah-ieve in. This is what was missing from Alanis Morisette's song "Isn't It Ironic:" this is IRONY.

I propose that we all start a letter-writing campaign to The Printed Blog to tell them how ridiculous they are and how much paper they're wasting. And be persistent - they usually throw out the first 500 or 1000 pieces of hate mail - you have to really want it, people! Be with me on this! Letter-writing campaign to conserve paper!

Dear Fozzy Bear:

Per our agreement, enclosed above please find your one (1) corny joke. Your payment is due in ten (10) business days. Please don't tell Kermit about this. Or Jesus.

For services rendered.............................................$8,000

Your pal in Jesus,
Smokey.

Obama Sucks Inaugural Balls

2009-01-21T10:08:00.006-05:00

I woke up this morning with a smile on my face and a clear breath of air in my lungs, because I knew that I had gone to sleep last night with President Barack Obama protecting me. Of course, Mister Prez (or The Old Shoe Magnet, as I like to call him) was probably heading to his fifth or sixth party when I went to sleep, but that's beside the point. Things were just better this morning. Even the green crusty thing in the corner of my eye was somehow less crusty and a more pleasing shade of green. Also, it was singing show tunes.

But then I went outside, and discovered that change hadn't come to the streets of New York City, at least not in the literal sense that there would be actual change littering the streets of New York City. Then again, we do have a pretty dedicated and conscientious sanitation department, so I guess it's possible that change came to the streets of New York City last night, and our modest municipal services workers already got it cleaned up, leaving no evidence of the change we were told would come to the streets of New York City, which is basically the same thing as if change did not come to the streets of New York City.

Pardon me, The Old Shoe Magnet. Sorry to interrupt your dance party, but I believe we were promised change?

I feel justified in my blooming rage. A lot of people don't feel justified in their blooming rage, but I am not one of those people. Maybe I was one of those people yesterday, but I've changed since then, and my rage is in bloom, and I feel justified in that. Because as far as I can tell, the only thing that came to the streets of New York City since yesterday was plenty of dog shit. Other than that, and the singing green crusty thing in my eye, and my feeling of justification in my blooming rage, and the air smelling sweeter, nothing has changed at all since Obama became The Old Shoe Magnet.

That's not change we can believe in.

I just assumed the dogs would start crapping Skittles or fruit salad or something. (Maybe cole slaw?) I mean, aren't things supposed to be better now? Wasn't yesterday supposedly the beginning of a whole new era? Blah blah blah watershed moment blah blah impossible sixty years ago blah blah blah free pizza for everyone?

What happened to all that?

I'm sick of this President Obama dude already. It's like 10:07 in the morning now, and he's basically done nothing at all since he got sworn in. Where's my health care, dammit? Where's my dog that shits Skittles? Where's my 3 AM phone call, which I probably would have gotten if Hillary Clinton were The Old Shoe Magnet.

This is the worst day. You said you would be different, Obama but you're just like every other President because the dogs still poop dog poop and the pizza place isn't even open yet, much less giving out free pizza. So all I'm saying, as we get ready to watch your approval ratings drop to the mid-20s by later today, is watch out for flying shoes, you big jerk.

Plane Crash Theory #3: Blame the NFL!

2009-01-16T16:44:00.003-05:00

Sometimes, the answer to a riddle is staring you right in the face, and so you write a blog piece explaining it, only to discover that there is an even more staring-you-right-in-the-face answer to the same riddle lurking in the shadows. Why is it lurking there, you wonder? But you ignore that question and instead write another blog piece about the second answer, only to discover that you have once again been taken in like Steve Jobs's wardrobe, and that a third answer is now in the mix that beats the piss out of both the first answer, which was staring you in the face, and the second answer, which was also staring you in the face but also lurking in the shadows for some weird reason that it will probably never bother to tell you about.

Thankfully, this has never happened to me.

Even more thankfully, I'm done writing that paragraph.

And yet more thankfully than that, I have once again solved the case of the crashing US Airways plane, saving the NTSB the trouble of doing its job, and saving the taxpayers of the United States a sum equivalent to roughly 15,000 Vietnamese Dong, or 98 cents.

The whole crash was an elaborately staged metaphor, paid for by the NFL, to augur the result of this weekend's AFC Championship game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers. Bird beats man! Ravens win!

Of course, it's entirely possible that I'm wrong, but if I were the Steelers, I wouldn't be too comfortable, even if they did manage to somehow squeak past the Ravens. Because you know who'll be waiting in the Super Bowl? The winner of the NFC Championship game between the Philadelphia EAGLES and the Arizona CARDINALS.

Anyone who waited until after reading this post to call their bookie, YOU'RE WELCOME.

Unemployment Scam Alert - A Public Service Message from the blog

2009-01-16T12:26:00.004-05:00

So apparently, this inauguration thing is a pretty big deal. Word on the "street" is that there's going to be speeches and a big parade, network coverage, and a whole slew of people freezing their keesters off, all to celebrate the fact that an old white dude from Texas is joining the swelling ranks of the unemployed.

Speaking of which, Texas's unemployment was sitting at 5.7 percent as of November '08. Add in George W. and whoever else lost their jobs in Texas in the past couple months, and it could easily top 6 percent when the next report comes out January 27th.

Why is this relevant?

Maybe it's all that sleuth-work I did yesterday twice solving the mystery of the crash of US Airways 1549, or maybe it's the fact that I've been wracking my brain trying to track down the Pee Bandit in the Canning Operations Division of Dole Fruit who keeps leaving the urinals full, or maybe it's the fact that I constantly smell conspiracies at work around me, but I smell a conspiracy at work around me.

Because pursuant to the unemployment extension signed into law by Gorge Bush last November, in states with unemployment rates higher than 6 percent, unemployed workers are eligible for an additional 13 weeks of benefits vs. states where the unemployment rate is underneath the 6 percent line.

So to all of my readers in the Dallas area, if you would please be so kind as to keep your eyes on the local unemployment offices to see if and when Mr. W. Bush shows up to file. He has to give a goodbye speech at Andrews Air Force Base Tuesday afternoon, and it's like a three-hour flight from DC to Texas, so I'm guessing he'll be the first guy in line Wednesday morning. I got a shiny nickel for the first person who sends in a photo.

Plane Crash Theory #2: Free Lost Promo!

2009-01-15T16:49:00.003-05:00

If my geese theory isn't entirely satisfying, I have two things to say to you:

1. What kind of an idiot are you to not accept the reality that is so obviously staring you in the face? Geese did it! It's as plain as the plane in the water!

2. You are absolutely right.

Not to worry, though, because once again, without even stepping out of my subterranean working quarters, I have managed to assemble the pieces of a theory based on the evidence that is staring us all in the face.

Did anyone else happen to notice that WABC, the New York affiliate of ABC, was the first network to cover the story? And did any of those people who noticed that also happen to glance ahead in the television listings to next Wednesday, when a CERTAIN ABC DRAMA about a PLANE CRASH is having its SEASON PREMIERE?

It's a PROMO! For LOST!

I has solved it again! I am genuis!

Plane Crash Theory #1: The Lazy iPhone Geese Theory

2009-01-15T16:27:00.005-05:00

Everyone at the Fruit Plant is abuzz with speculation about this plane that just crashed into the Hudson. It seems there's a healthy amount of skepticism about the whole "flock of geese" alibi, and understandably so. I mean, when you boil it down, I know geese are basically bloated bags of green shit with feathers and wings and brain power equivalent to that of a piece of moldy fruit, but even moldy fruit has the sense to get out of the way of an airplane. Have you ever heard of a piece of moldy fruit getting hit by a plane?

I rest my case.

Still, the whole incident does raise a lot of questions. For instance, what the hell are migratory birds doing in New York City in January? Is this part of some new, super-lazy but highly technologically savvy generation of geese that heard all about global warming and thought they'd be off the hook about the whole "flying south" thing, but then they caught a look at the forecast on the weather.com app on their iPhones and decided maybe they should head south before this weekend, and being that they were both lazy and equipped with iPhones, they decided to hitch a ride on the next flight heading to Greensboro?

Makes perfect sense. I have solved the mystery, as I always do. YOU'RE WELCOME, US AIRWAYS AND THE FAA. My bill will be in the mail.

The Consequences of Seeking Flame-Broiled Perfection

2009-01-12T22:46:00.007-05:00

Feast your eyes on this:
Yes, it's a bag of Kingsford charcoal, sitting in phone booth on the corner of 46th Street and 5th Avenue in New York City. If you guessed it, you are a winner. Contact the prize hotline to find out what you've won.

But if you're like me, it isn't good enough just to know that there was a bag of Kingsford charcoal sitting in a phone booth on the corner of 46th Street and 5th Avenue in New York City. There needs to be a punchline too. Well, I tried, everybuzzy. I racked my brain the entire way home, and for the three subsequent hours, and I have come up with zip. Zilch. Nada. Fuck all.

I did, however, remember that there was an empty bag of charcoal sitting in a garbage can in Grand Central Station one morning last week as I made my way up from the 7 train toward the Dole plant (not pictured). Which leads me to two possible conclusions, neither of which I find very satisfying: (1) someone is grilling in midtown and not offering me any, or (2) Alex Rodriguez is trying to send me some sort of weird, non-literal, possibly vaguely threatening message.

Look, Old Bay-Rod, for the last time, I'M SORRY I DROPPED YOU AS MY FRIEND ON FACEBOOK, BUT I REALLY WANTED THAT WHOPPER. Besides, you never SuperPoke me back anymore, and you refuse to play me at WordTwist because you're too busy running around with Madonna and eating fish with Kate Hudson to spend time with your real friends anymore. You've changed, Haunted Hay-Rod. You've changed. And not the good kind of change either, where you start sending notes and chocolates at unexpected times. Leaving crumpled bags of Kingsford charcoal where I'll just happen to see them... [SMOKEY shakes his head reproachfully]... not cool, man. Not cool at all.

What the Ultra-Fast Reaction Time of Our President Is Actually Telling You

2008-12-14T16:06:00.005-05:00

I was going to talk today about the hairstyle that has become the new object of my desire, and particularly the stiltwalker from the ABC circus who wears said coiffure. We'll come back to that later. Because in the words of The Brady Bunch Movie, something suddenly came up. Namely this:

I have to take a break from laughing for a minute to compliment the gentleman on his aim. That is precision! I have plenty of experience hurling projectiles toward people (usually volleyballs toward the bare-chested assholes from rival New York City fruit production companies... watch the f**k out, Chiquita...), but given my limited practice time throwing shoes (I have actually thrown shoes three times in my life), I don't think I could guarantee that the direction of my missiles would be quite this true.

Nice work, dude! I hope you enjoy the beating.

But I reserve my highest praise for Mr. President himself -- not because he kept his cool and somehow managed to act with less rashness than the invasion in the first place, but because he managed to dodge not one, but both shoes! You normally only see him employ that kind of dexterity fending off uncomfortable questions from reporters about his motivation and decision-making, or evading military service, or ignoring the wants and needs of his fellow Americans.

That is impressive, sir.

It has made me wonder if perhaps there is more to this hobbit than meets the eye, and by hobbit, I mean monkey-faced politician. Those reflexes can't be easy to come by. Does he maybe know karate or judo, or some other martial art? Does he fight crime during the ten hours a night in which he claims to be sleeping? Is it like a Jekyll and Hyde thing, where he is fated to forever be possessed of two rival personalities - by night, a behind-the-scenes doer of good works, valiant and of unimpeachable character; and by day, a improbably daft world leader of totally impeachable character?

Maybe that memoir won't be so hard to sell after all, eh there, Mr. Prez? YOU'RE WELCOME FOR SAVING YOUR REPUTATION. You can owe me one later.

The Few, the Proud

2008-12-11T14:23:00.005-05:00

From Politico:

Blagojevich's approval rating at 7 percent

The vast majority of Illinois voters want scandal-plagued Gov. Rod Blagojevich to immediately resign as governor, according to a new poll conducted by the Glengariff Group.

The poll shows 70 percent of voters believing that Blagojevich should resign now, while only 25 percent should wait until he is proven guilty. A 73 percent majority support the impeachment of the governor – including a majority of Democrats – with 58 percent “strongly supporting” his impeachment.

His approval rating, meanwhile, has tanked to seven percent. Among Democrats, only 13 percent approve of his performance.

As a lifelong Illinoisan, I am proud to count myself one of the noble Seven Percent who would undyingly pledge my support to my captain, my kinsman, and my governor, Rod Blagojevich. As long as there is breath in my body, I shall endeavor to expend that breath giving him my full-throated endorsement. Not torture, not damnation, not the very fires of Armageddon could possibly make me lessen my commitment to the Blagojevich cause. Wild wolves may tear my flesh asunder, but my enthusiasm for this man and his super-stylish haircut will not diminish.

For it is as is said in Scripture: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for thou canst go fuck thyself if thou wilt not give me five hundred thousand dollars (US) for a Senate vacancy."

Know your Bible, people. Do the right thing.

You Know Who You Are

2008-11-08T02:58:00.008-05:00

I cannot claim credit for finding this. I can't even claim credit for blogging about this first. This comes courtesy of my college roommate and another former housemate of ours from the days when we lived on Duke Street in Nueva Brunswick, which is in Nueva Jersey. If you didn't ever stay up late enough to see NJN sign off at like 2:30 in the morning, chances are you haven't seen this. But for those other owls who were sitting awake on their living room couches, contemplating actually doing homework for once or just masturbating and then heading to bed, all while going into their fourth straight hour of channel-flipping, you know what I'm bloggin' about...

I'm blogging about this "movie."

On this subject, I can't write anything more sublime than this, which was written by our good friend Squawking VFR. Mr. VFR and I were roommates for more than four years. And rather than try to tack my thoughts onto his gorgeous testimonial to Garden State pride, allow me instead to present for you a fun fact about Mr. VFR.

Mr. VFR's favorite movie is (or at least was) none other than the 1987 box office juggernaut, Planes, Trains & Automobiles. (Directed by John Hughes, starring John Candy and Steve Martin, runtime: 93 minutes.) Who wouldn't love it, right? But VFR was a quirky dude, and his relevant quirk was that he would only watch this movie on Thanksgiving.

Understandable. It's a holiday thing, a tradtion thing, whatever. Except that we never celebrated holidays together, and we certainly never celebrated them at our college places of residence. (To some extent you could argue that at college, every Friday and Saturday night is a holiday, but again, whatever.) So why the hell did he bring the tape to school with him?

I think I know why. It was to tempt me into the embarrassing predicament, late in our sophomore year, of having to explain to a room full of my friends why my roommate had just interrupted us, 45 minutes into Plains, Trains & Automobiles, and angrily demanded that we eject the tape from the VCR immediately. And in so doing, Mr. VFR had generously also given me this very story that you're reading. And stories are the rarest gift of all, kids.

I have no shadowy psychological idiosyncrasies to share about the other housemate involved in the finding of this fine piece of Jerseyana. But if he's out there reading this, I hope he knows that he has my sincere gratitude for its discovery. Good job, man.

How I Imagine the Inaugural Ball Will Go: A Play in Less Than One Act

2008-11-05T19:54:00.004-05:00

[SMOKEY slides up to SCARLETT JOHANSSON]

SMOKEY: Hey, Scar-Yo. Wasssaaaaaaaaa...? Are you enjoying the Inaugural Ball? Hey, remember just before I asked if you were enjoying the Inaugural Ball when I said, wassaaaaaaa...?

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Ew. Who are you?

SMOKEY: I'm Smokey Robinson, baby. [sings "ONE HEARTBEAT - THE JESUS VERSION"]

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Sorry, Smokebag or whatever, I only like guys with vaguely Middle Eastern middle names.

[SMOKEY stares blankly.]

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Middle name, Middle East. Middle, middle. It's about the symmetry.

SMOKEY: Do you have someone writing your dialogue or something?

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Yes. You, stupid.

SMOKEY: Right.

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: I gotta go.

SMOKEY: No, wait.

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: No, you wait, Mister... what did you say your name was?

SMOKEY: Smokey Falafel Robinson.

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Oh. [This next one should be read VERY SWEETLY.] Oh! Hiya, Smokey. Wanna come back to my place?

SMOKEY: You mean, ditch out of the Inaugural Ball to go have sex with Scarlett Johannson?

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Hey, back off, pal, who said anything about sex? I just wanted to snort cocaine off your ass and break some shit in my hotel room.

SMOKEY: You know, you really are a lot more freaky than you seem like you would be, Scarlett Johansson.

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: A girl's gotta eat.

SMOKEY: Fair point. Although I don't really see how that's related to anything we just talked about.

[Enter JESUS CHRIST, Our Lord and Savior.]

JESUS: [interrupting] Excuse me, have either of you seen a Yellow Lab puppy? Looks like Old Yeller, only smaller? Like two months old maybe?

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: I saw a Golden Retriever once.

[JESUS and SMOKEY stare at her.]

JESUS: Man, the Obamas are gonna kill Me. I was supposed to be puppysitting but then I saw Kate Moss over by the ice sculpture, talking to Bill Ayers and some dude in a turban. I mean, Kate Moss. I had to try and tap that, man, she's a supermodel. I'm only human. Plus, I'm like Her Hugest Fan. Now what the fuck am I gonna do about the Obamas' dog?

SMOKEY: You know, Jesus, You seem like a lot more of a Douchebag Fuckup than I thought You would be.

JESUS: Dude, not now, okay? Like I don't have enough to fucking deal with just from the Parental disappointment. You think your dad is a ballbuster? Fuck, I gotta find that dog. Sparkles!

[JESUS exits.]

SMOKEY: Did Jesus just say the Obamas were going to kill Him?

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Do you have any cocaine, Falafel?

SMOKEY: Indeed I do. [SMOKEY winks at audience and smiles expansively, that liar.]

[SMOKEY and SCARLETT JOHANSSON exit. Later, SCARLETT JOHANSSON finds out that SMOKEY doesn't have an exotic middle name, and that the song "ONE HEARTBEAT" is cheesy as hell, and also that SMOKEY has a pretty obvious crush on JESUS. Meanwhile, Jesus flees the country when He's unable to find the OBAMAS' NEW DOG, which they were going to take with them to the WHITE HOUSE.]

Welcome to the Future, America. Population: You (as long as you are not teh gay).

2008-11-05T14:32:00.005-05:00

Boy, oh boy, America. You sure do know how to pick 'em. At least, 52.3% of you do.

For me personally, this is a pretty dark day, because Barack Obama still owes me the measly $32 he borrowed from me three years ago at a restaurant in Georgetown, and now there is virtually no chance I will be able to get him to pay up. Seriously, do you have any idea how difficult it is to get close enough to yell threats at a U.S. President if he doesn't give you your money?

Well, I'll tell you. It's very difficult.

It's a dark day for other reasons too. In picking the more sober, serious, intelligent, energetic, pragmatic, and progressive candidate, I think we've pretty much spelled the end of comedy for the forseeable future. Saturday Night Live is probably going to have to go back to forcefeeding us unbearable tripe like "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer" and "Mr. Bill." I gagged a little just writing that last sentence.

Worse still (as if there could be anything worse than an Obama presidency) is the apparent passage of several bills that outlaw teh gay marriage. (Does anyone else smell a revival of "Church Chat?") As long as gays are facing this kind of institutional rejection, there is almost no chance that I will live to see a President who is truly teh gay and mock him/her for being a President and First Lady rolled into one. I was really looking forward to that.

Then again, up until yesterday, I never thought I'd live to make fun of a black President either, so I suppose you never know.

Here's a Nickel's Worth of Free Advice

2008-11-05T00:48:00.002-05:00

Just because two people say things does not mean that they both made valid points. Much more often, one person is just speaking nonsense, and should consequently be punished for their insolent behavior.

For example, if I say something and you disagree with it, you are wrong and should be ostracized from society.

Therefore, ergo, and henceforth, you shall all be on notice, people. No more Mister Nice Smokey. And do you want to know why? Because not ONE of you sent me a Guy Fawkes Day card. Not one.

Disappointed, America. Very disappointed. [SMOKEY shakes head.]

And don't be all like, "oh, I was busy," because I know you fucking found time to vote. Jerk.

This was SO going to be Oscar the Grouch's last-minute Get Out The Vote message!

2008-11-04T05:40:00.001-05:00

Curse you, Barack O'Bama. You've outflanked me for the last time. I hope you nearly choke on a pretzel during the Super Bowl - even if you don't win.

Just When You Thought You Were Safe from Rush Limbaugh...

2008-10-31T10:01:00.004-04:00

In addition to having a token Jew here in the Canning Ops Division at Dole(I'm talking about Rebecca Goodman, who hasn't stopped yammering about her kid's effing Jedi costume like it's the most original fucking idea in the world, which it maybe was THIRTY YEARS AGO), we also have a token black guy, who has been here all along and was not just invented for the sake of this blog post, I swear to Zod.

His name, by a freak coincidence, is Rush Limbaugh. That's right - Rush Limbaugh is a big, husky black dude who likes to make off-color jokes about having sex with Rebecca Goodman's kids - the boy and the girl - which we all tolerate because it's the only thing that shuts Rebecca Goldman up. You have NO IDEA how hard it is to fall asleep on the job while Rebecca Goodman keeps yammering on about her kid's effing Jedi costume, which I am mentioning again because that's what Rebecca Goodman does, and I want to share the misery with you. Smokey equals spite for the win!

Anywhoop, here is what I just said to Rush Limbaugh The Black a few minutes ago, during the annual Hallowe'en jokey-joke fest that will be occurring in front of the coffee machine in the break room all the livelong day today: I said, "hey, Rush - isn't that the same costume you had on last year, or is it just that all your outfits look the same to me?" Chuckle chuckle chuckle gum disease.

Human Resources - or Human Re-SNORE-ces, as I call them, ha ha ha - just called me up for a meeting. Not sure what it's about, but I'm guessing that despite the rough economic circumstances, and despite the constant calls for budget restrictions and the threat of layoffs due to a sharp decrease in the consumption of canned goods*, they're probably going to give me a raise.

Fingers crossed, everybuzzy!

P.S. I came dressed as Rachel from Friends today. Weird coincidence that it happened to be Hallowe'en.

*This is actually not true. Because of their durability and their long association with camping, fallout shelters and other forms of apocalypse survival, the canned goods industry thrives in the worst economic climates. Canned goods are like the roaches of the food world, which is why, for a brief time during the 1970s, Dole experimented with adding a roach to its logo.

Is There No Depth to Which this Year's Crop of Candidates Will Not Stoop?

2008-10-30T10:58:00.000-04:00

Ever since I stopped running the Oscar '08 campaign (for which I was beaten soundly with the Big O's trash can lid), I've been hearing a lot more about this Irish fellow named Barack O'Bama who's running for El Presidente, and this other guy named Sarah Palin, who is starring in the upcoming JJ Abrams Star Trek movie. No, wait - that's Zachary Quinto. Sorry, I keep getting them confused. I think it's the ears.

Anyway, you won't believe what these two guys are up to! Check out this headline about the O'Bama guy:

He left a trail for his ill grandmother? Seriously? Why didn't he just go see her? What kind of a jerk makes his sick grandmother get up from her death bed - in Hawaii, no less - to do a scavenger hunt to find him? Is he so busy running for president that he can't just take a couple of days away from the campaign and go visit her? What about her needs?

I think it's pretty shameless to keep trying to grab votes while you're ailing grandmother is chasing after your bread crumbs. But it's not the most shameless vote-grabbing effort this week - not by a long shot. Because it turns out that Sarah Palin is actually not a dude, but a chick! And that's not all. Check this out:

Amazingly, the video has since been removed. Go figure.

Obama was on TV? And I missed it? Wait, is he the black dude or the white dude? He is? And I MISSED IT?

2008-10-29T21:08:00.003-04:00

W*** T** FUCK?

Well, I can't be the only one. I bet ABC can't wait for the Nielsen dials to come in tomorrow - this is probably going to be an EASY win for Pushing Daisies. Chuckle chuckle chuckle crap my pants.

Oh, and P.S. Gary Unmarried will return next week at its regular place and time. So you can exhale now, America.

Whew!

2008-10-29T21:06:00.002-04:00

That was a great episode of Pushing Daisies! Can you believe that thing that happened with Ned and Emerson and Charlotte where they all got dressed up to play poker? Remember how funny it was? Ha ha ha funny!

What else did I miss on tv?

What a Day!

2008-10-29T19:58:00.000-04:00

Okay, what the hell, New York City? What's with the kamikaze plastic ramekin that came spinning down the staircase at me in the 59th Street Station today, and then veered off toward the turnstile like it was trying to cut me in line (which is offensive) before crashing, disturbingly into a wall? It was like a little trapezoidal wheel of fear and death and plastic. I was scared!

Uhh!

Wow. I need to unwind. I'm gonna put on Pushing Daisies and relax for a little while.

-Smokey

This Week in Guns

2008-10-27T11:14:00.004-04:00

Hello, fellow patriots and residents of the Great Trailer Park that is the U S of A!

Wilkommen and bienvenue to This Week in Guns: a celebration of freedom and God and the rootin'-est, tootin'-est, shootin'-est amendment in the Bill of Rights - that's right, I'm talking about good old Number Two.

In this week's edition of TWIG, we're doing some good old fashioned Jew-blaming. So put down the Stroh's and the Beretta, and take off those safety goggles, and let's get started!

Ah, who are we kidding - you don't use safety goggles, do you? But seriously, put down the gun and the beer, just so you don't accidentally shoot yourself in the drinking hand, spilling beer and blood all over your keyboard and destroying your ability to scroll down and read the rest of the Jew-blaming.

Not that gun accidents are for realsies. They're just a device used by the liberal media coastal elites to rob of us the freedoms guaranteed in the God-stitution. Which brings us to today's item:

Boy Accidentally Kills Himself With Uzi
(AP) An 8-year-old boy died after accidentally shooting himself in the head while firing an Uzi submachine gun under adult supervision at a gun fair.

The boy lost control of the weapon while firing it Sunday at the Machine Gun Shoot and Firearms Expo at the Westfield Sportsman's Club, Police Lt. Lawrence Valliere said.

The boy was with a certified instructor and "was shooting the weapon down range when the force of the weapon made it travel up and back toward his head, where he suffered the injury," a police statement said. Police called it a "self-inflicted accidental shooting."

more...

Let me be the first one to call bullshit on this story.

Are we honestly expected to believe that an eight-year-old kid, firing an Uzi under professional supervision, would have an "accident" like this? Ridiculous! Shooting guns is like the safest thing in the world, and every professional knows exactly what they're doing. Also, there are no accidents, only cleverly disguised conspiracies, which is why it's so important to have guns in the first place.

This has "Children of Israel" written all over it. Think about this, anyone who's skeptical: who manufactures the Uzi? I'll give you a hint: it starts with an "I" and ends with "srael Miltary Industries." I am optimistic that you can do the rest of the math yourselves.

The boy's name is not being released. But I think it's clear that he was no Einstein, since Einstein was a Jew and a pacifist and probably never would have picked up the gun in the first place. Which is fine, I guess, if that's how you want to live your life, Einstein, you pussy. Personally, I'd rather die in a blaze of glory at eight years old.

It's Not Easy Being Green

2008-10-21T12:18:00.007-04:00

Hey, everybuzzy. Hi. How are you doing. I hope you're okay.

Sigh.

So Oscar the Grouch isn't really speaking to me. We have two weeks left in the campaign, and it turns out that thanks to the work of ACORN, there are more people registered to vote under the name "Oscar the Grouch" than there are who plan to actually vote for him. All that red state-blue state-green state mumbo jumbo that we were hoping for has turned out to be nothing but a bunch of red state-blue state-green state mumbo jumbo that we were hoping for.

It's time to face the facts: this election is pretty much done for the Grouch-Piggy ticket. Maybe it was over before it started, like one of the aborted fetuses that Barack Obama loves so damn much and probably eats for breakfast before he prays to Mecca and calls up Bill Ayers and Osama bin Laden on the phone to talk about which buildings he's planning on blowing up first after he gets inaugurated.

In the end, we never had any hope of competing with Obama's far superior marketing machine. I mean, when you've got advertising like this:

and this:

What hope is there for anyone else? How can you look at these things and NOT want to vote for Barack Obama? I want some Obama Bucks! I want more abortions and same sex marriages! Sign me the hell up!

But the Oscar campaign was beset by further struggles too. Remember back when Hillary Rodman Clinton dropped out of the race, when the candidate field had been whittled all the way down to two with just a few months left before the election? This Race to the White House™ started with eighteen people and got all the way down to TWO! How much longer could it possibly be before the pool narrowed even further, to just ONE, and then ZERO! That was the centerpiece of my electoral strategy, if you recall.

There were a few problems I didn't foresee. First of all, these McCain and Obama chaps turned out to be much more persistent about becoming president than I thought. I just assumed that since every other Democrat and Republican changed their minds and decided not to run, so would John McCain and Barack Obama. I assumed wrong.

Worse than that, it seems I wasn't the only person who backed a surprise candidate with the hope of gaining some late momentum. Check out some of the competition:

Seriously, how the fuck is Oscar supposed to compete with Caligula? Talk about executive experience - dude was in charge of the Roman Empire! I'm sure in comparison, people are gonna be real impressed by a raggedy puppet in a fucking garbage can, right?

And the Nurglon thing? Folksy, family values - that's what the American electorate responds to! Plus, I have no idea how, but they lined up a major party affiliation! All I can say is wow. Good luck to you, being. I hear judge rimjob the blah* is even considering endorsing them, and who can blame him?

Worse than all that, it turns out the John McCain is actually a much bigger grouch than Oscar could ever hope to be.

Which brings us back to why Oscar isn't speaking to me. See, I was a little bit pissed off at him for not even acknowledging the lovely chopsticks set I got him for National Grouch Day last week, and so I may have accidentally referred to Oscar as "would not even be in the same grouch league as John McCain if there were an official league of grouches" on a conference call with members of the press and virtually all of our high-level donors.

Oops.

Anyway.

Two weeks left before the election, and I think it's time to call it on the Oscar '08 campaign. Time of death: still in the womb.

Oh, and to all those of you who will say they saw this coming, please feel free to fuck yourself with something large, metallic, furry, and partially green. Like, say, a garbage can with a Muppet sticking out of one end. Fuck yourself with that.

Have a Lousy Grouch Day!

2008-10-15T15:04:00.002-04:00

You know what to-day is? It's official Grouch Day. I hope your grouch day is filled with trash and anger. Now get out of my garbage can!

Calling it off?

2008-10-09T14:24:00.003-04:00

I had one last ace I was waiting to play. I didn't have it all together just yet, though. The God endorsement. Nothing trumps Jesus coming out for the Republicans except the God endorsement. Carries a lot of weight with the aerial hunting crowd and the "we get our news from 'The Daily Show'" crowd.

Oscar's people (meaning me) have been on the horn to God every day for the past six months. You know, praying. The way people telephone their deity when they need absolution for not remembering to DVR the season premiere of "The Office."

I guess someone else was praying a little harder though.

You, O God, have raised up Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin for such a time as this. . . Help them, O God, to strengthen our economy, to keep our taxes and spending low . . . and grant them the privilege of being elected the next president and vice president."
From the Washington Post, somewhere in the middle of the article

SMOKEY: (shaking head, looking downward toward the sidewalk) Republicans. (looking upward, shaking fist at the sky) Republicans!

Oscar's plans to beat Kenny Crandell are rapidly eroding.

No, no, MY Fellow Prisoners!

2008-10-08T19:55:00.002-04:00

Damn you, John McCain! "My Fellow Prisoners" was going to be the name of my hit Broadway musical comedy about living in a police state masquerading as a democracy. But now, all anyone will think is that I'm alluding to you.

It was also going to be the title of a chapter in my eventually forthcoming novel, The Brass Ring. Thanks for spoiling that too, you jerk.

JERK!

[SMOKEY runs off, sobbing.]

You Made Me Do This, Moviegoing Public

2008-10-06T13:16:00.004-04:00

On my way to work this morning, I saw a woman in a battery-operated wheelchair walking a dog, and I felt compelled to laugh. I immediately regretted the compulsion, but I think it's important for me to get all defensive right now and note that what I was reacting to was not the wheelchair or the dog, but rather the comedic possibilities if she were to walk (or roll) into a bar.

If this kind of lowbrow humor offends you, you have nobody to blame but yourself. I was all prepared to make a more sophisticated joke, but I am as sensitive to my cultural surroundings as a flower is to being shat upon. Because while the nitrogen in said shit may be nourishing, on the whole, it fucking stinks.

So if you want a return to finer things, to campaign updates from Oscar '08, to tales of the Dole Fruit Plant and the Canning Ops division, to letters to Jesus, and to spotlights on my junk mail, you have a responsibility not to let fucking Beverley Hills Chihuahua finish anywhere near the top of the box office standings ever ever again.

Otherwise, my next post will start something like, "so this gay Jewish crippled woman taking her dog for a walk from her wheelchair walks into a bar," and you'll have nobody to blame but yourself for that either.

Seriously. Which of you fuckbags saw that movie this weekend? Raise your hand. Good. Now chop off your hand, pick it up, and pound yourself in the head with it as hard as you can until you pass out from the combination of concussive blows, shame, and blood loss. Then get some kind of unconventional object to replace your hand, like a desk lamp or a maraca or a rubber chicken or something, and write your story into a hilarious movie called Johnny Desk Lamp Hand and make a million dollars. It won't buy you a new hand, but at least you'll have a million dollars. You're welcome.

Things to Look For At the Vice Presidential Debate

2008-10-02T17:06:00.002-04:00

This isn't actually so much of a post about things to look for as it is about things to NOT look for, because the people who run the debates are fascist jerks and I hate them. So instead of seeing the rambling old codger with the hearing aid and the pit bull with lipstick and the pig, um, also with lipstick, all America gets is the codger and the pit bull, because the Committee Who Selfishly Runs The Vice Presidential Debates (their official name) doesn't want the voters to have to make any actual choices. Thank Zod the CWSRTVPD doesn't also run a restaurant, or else every meal at their restaurant would probably be a choice between a hamburger and a chicken sandwich, both served with a heaping helping of their special "Who gives a crap, we want Miss Piggy in the debate too!" sauce.

Fucking politics sucks. Muppet Show film festival at my place tonight. BYO episodes of the Muppet Show.

Screw You, Mars

2008-10-01T13:20:00.004-04:00

I can't decide who pisses me off more - the Martian lander(s) that discovered it's snowing on Mars, or the planet Mars itself for basically mocking us and our global warming problem that may not be a problem but may in fact be simply the will of God and Jesus and Alex Rodriguez.

On the one hand, there's the Martian lander(s), joyriding around another planet, taking pictures of the scenery, sending vacation slide shows back to Earth, and never ONCE asking how we're doing even though the economy is on fire like it was made out of a pile of wood that somebody lit on fire with a match or a torch or a crude fire-bearing device of some kind. Um, Earth to Martian lander(s): whose tax dollars do you think are paying for your little ski trip up there on Olympus Mons, or wherever the hell you are?

But on the other hand, I don't appreciate a whole planet making fun of the degrading conditions of our global climate either. That is Jay Leno's job, Mars. Not cool. Know your place. I hope God starts blessing you with His attention one of these days, and then you'll be sorry, just like we are. Fuck off, Mars, if that is your real name. I'm totally canceling my planned mission to you.

Oh, and happy Breast Cancer Awareness Month, everybuzzy. Stay aware.

Bad Joke Alert, Awesome Marketing IDEA

2008-09-27T02:06:00.004-04:00

Matt's Debate Summary: Blah blah blah Obama, blah blah blah McCain, 90 minutes, and not one "yo mama" joke. Like, "yo mama's so poor, she would qualify for a tax cut under both of our tax policies," or "yo mama's so fat that all of our impressive strides in airport security are probably an added difficulty for her," or "yo mama's so old, she was there for McCain's first debate, which was scheduled to pit him against a velociraptor, but McCain successfully managed to avoid that debate by postponing it until after the dinosaurs went extinct a mere 5,000 years ago."

Not one.

Just a lot of mumbo jumbo about policies and other countries and how K-Mart commercials, the belwether of the advertising industry, have really sucked since Rosie O'Donnell and Penny Marshall stopped doing product endorsement.

The whole hour and a half, do you know what I was thinking? Three things:

A. I hope Jesus is watching this*

B. What the fuck am I supposed to do with the 250 "O vs. O" banners I had printed after Jim Lehrer told me that they were going to let Oscar the Grouch stand in for John McCain? And why is that the third time this week I got seduced and lied to by a PBS show anchor? God!

C. What if I made a calendar with pictures of nuns stripping and called it, "Getting Out of the Habit?"

That last idea has promise.

*Of course Jesus is watching this. Jesus watches everything we do and takes notes on who's' naughty and who's nice, just like the government, and Santa Claus.

Reports of Advancing Ice in Hell...

2008-09-24T16:23:00.010-04:00

Dear Clay Aiken,

Okay.

I can deal with the Fannie Mae collapse. I can deal with the government buying AIG. I can deal with the entire economic sector on the verge of meltdown. But you? Teh gay?

This, sir, is too much.

This is a time to set aside our partisan blinders, to forget that we are Republicans and Democrats, to ignore the bitter schism between those of us who voted for you and those of us who voted for Ruben Studdard. This is a time for idle Americans and American Idols to come together as one to solve our nation's problems, and then to vigorously massage our nation's shoulders with warm oil, like you did to me at that party in Seattle when you swore that you weren't gay.

Seriously, what the fuck are you thinking? Is this really the time to make shocking announcements? Haven't we - meaning you and me, but also all of America - been through enough this week? Mortgages are going bad. Banks are failing. Must we also now face the knowledge that you, Clay G. Aiken, are a member of Dumbledore's Army? Must we now also be forced to learn that the G is for Gay, and not for Gilbert, as was previously reported?

For shame, sir.

I think you should suspend your homosexuality and fly back to Washington, DC to meet with the president and the other leaders of Congress about how best to handle the current economic crisis.

Oops, I meant, I think you should suspend your homosexuality and fly back to Washington, DC to meet with the president and the other leaders of Congress about how best to handle the current economic crisis, you homo.

Seriously, I can't believe you're gay. You swore to me that you weren't. You swore, Clay. I am so never making out with you again. I hope you drop dead, but in a very prissy and obviously homosexual way.

But I do have a question: are gay people capable of finding themselves attractive? Because if so, ew.

Okay, bye!

Love and kisses, but in a totally manly and appropriate way,
Smokey.

News from the Campaign Front

2008-09-24T09:48:00.003-04:00

I'll be honest, the atmosphere around the Oscar the Grouch '08 campaign offices has been pretty grim lately. We fumbled what looked like sure endorsements from jerk rimjob the blah (aka judge reinhold, whose name is still unworthy of capitalization), and from Ron Paul - although we were able to claim at least a minor victory in getting him to endorse third party candidates in general. The category definitely includes us, so in the most technical of senses, we actually did get Ron Paul's endorsement. Then again, technically, so did the freaking Communists.

We're also making zero headway with the Children's Television Workshop and noted chef Jim Henson. CTW is still pretending not to read this blog, and Jim Henson, it turns out, is dead. (Spoiler alert.) Bobby Flay was willing to come on board to help us out, but the grilled Gonzo he auditioned with was fucking terrible. What a hack.

Also, we have no money. The only greenbacks in the entire campaign office are the green backs of Oscar's puppeteer-controlled hands, which he keeps slapping me with every time I deliver him another piece of bad news. And bad news hasn't exactly been in short supply lately. So we got domestic abuse going for us too. But please don't tell Oscar I told you, or I don't even know what he'll do - probably send me to Bobby Flay's house to be made into inedible smoked Smokey.

I am pleased, however, to announce two pieces of good news today, the proverbial silver linings on the cloud that is otherwise raining bird shit and dog shit and the pain of being slapped by a Muppet all over me.

Firstly, we have dumped Pervez Musharraf from the ticket. Oscar's new vice president will be pause none other than drum roll sound effect Miss Piggy exclamation point.

Something seems wrong with that last sentence. But NOTHING seems wrong with our new VP choice, a pig that you can truly put lipstick on, although you will get viciously karate chopped if you try. True, Miss Piggy may not have a retarded baby, but she does have some pretty weird-looking children on account of being married to a puppet frog.

As expected, the Mrs. Miss Piggy the Frog selection has considerably shored up our support among the Muppet American community, where we currently hold a 65-30 lead over Barack Obama, who has been widely mistaken for a Muppet because of his massive ears. Other than that, putting Piggy on the ticket has done jack squat. For me personally, it means having to deal with the two most high maintenance puppets this side of Statler and Waldorf, both of whom have endorsed John McCain, by the way.

Still, it qualifies as good news, because Oscar and Miss Piggy told me so, and because they're the ones with their fingers on the buttons that, when pressed, administer high-level electrical shocks to the battery clamps on my singed nipples. Please, if you're reading this, send help. These fuckers are vicious!

I'm kidding! I love being tortured by icons of children's television! Where was I? It's so tough to concentrate past the blinding pain...

Oh, right - the second bit of good news. Which is this: no matter what else happens, Jesus is still my friend.

And he'll zap you any way he can. Word. Who needs to win an election when you have friends like this?

Couldn't you just slide off your chair looking at this guy?

2008-09-22T00:03:00.002-04:00

Oh my Zod, check this OUT.

Fast forward to 3:25 if you want to skip the dreck and get right to the good stuff. I'm talking, of course, about Bob Barker's exquisite coiffure. Hide your vaginas, ladies, for no female body part will be safe from the awesome erotic force that is Bob Barker's hair.

I'm trying to swallow my jealousy, but it tastes awful, like someone put too much soy milk in it.

Hitting the Links

2008-09-17T10:10:00.004-04:00

Dear Jesus,

from Slog

I freakhog LOVE THIS.

I thought You were maybe slightly offended with my idea for what to do with the host wafers. But this tells me You're ready to put a whole new spin on the marketing ideas for "body of Christ."

Now maybe You and me could get together and make that Sausage a little "Smokey," if you know what I'm saying. (I'm implying that We should have teh gay sex.)

Toodles,
Smokey Robinson

Dr. Ahab

2008-09-13T14:22:00.003-04:00

Hi, everybuzzy. Smokey L. Robinson here, and I'm tellin' you the truth today. Starting with this: the L is for Love. Smokey Love Robinson. I'll give the ladies a minute to recover before I continue.

Okay.

We're taking a short trip back in time now, to a little over a month ago, the day that I sauntered past "The Future." As I mentioned, I was coming out of an early-morning medical procedure when I saw The Future. It wasn't hard to imagine I'd be seeing something, since, also as I mentioned, I was on some absolutely awesome anesthetic (hereinafter, the "AAA").

I got a call this week from my gastrointerologist, with what seemed like good news. "Your biopsy came back negative," meaning, in this case, that I don't have Celiac Sprue. I know, thank Zod, right? So I can go on eating anything I want, but the mysterious stomach pains which sometimes plague me will evidently go on unexplained. This is why I say it seemed like good news.

The doctor told me to watch out for spicy foods and dairy, which is exactly what I told him was my problem in our first meeting in June or July. But the thing is, we already knew that. Everyone knows the perils of eating spicy food. It's why Indian people and country singers make such great masochists: you can overdo it with the cumin, but you run the social risk of committing the massive party foul of crapping your pants.

But I am neither Indian nor a country singer. I'm just your average bloggerizer with a trick digestive tract.

It's a month since my visit to the [redacted] Center, and I'm finally finishing coming down from the AAA, or perhaps it's the roofie I got slipped last night at the bar when I accidentally drank that chick's cosmopolitan instead of mine. It's three months since my first visit to Dr. [redacted], whom I had really hoped would be a better criminologist. This is what I was thinking last night, when it occurred to me that maybe he was a better criminologist than that. Maybe I was the one unsolvable case that was torturing him and keeping him up nights. Maybe he was tuning in to reruns of House, or ER, or Grey's Anatomy, or Scrubs (Zod, I hope it wasn't Scrubs), trying to find some clue as to what was wrong with me.

Audible gasp! Maybe I was his white whale! I read Moby-Dick once! (Once!) I am therefore qualified to make this analogy! Maybe he was up nights, sitting at the kitchen table in front of a stack of books and a six-year-old laptop trailing wires to the wall because its battery was dead, searching the realm of available knowledge (including WebMD) for an answer. Maybe he was back to the late-night drinking, smoking again too, rubbing his jowls or the freshly waxed top of his head and muttering sweet nothings into his stethoscope. I mean, maybe the mysterious ailment that was eating me up inside was eating him up inside too!

Now, I realize that strays a little bit from more traditional representations of Ahab and Moby Dick, that maybe my gut was really more like Sir Gawaine's green dragon. I also understand that my "Dr. [redacted]'s Office as Pequod" allegory completely neglects the role of Starbuck, who may have been represented by the stern and stentorian, yet somehow warm and welcoming German woman who manned the actual office at the Dr. [redacted]'s office. I'm not really sure how, though. And the thing is, I don't really know Sir Gawaine. I read Moby-Dick once (once!), and Ahab went crazy trying to catch that whale, much like I hope Dr. [redacted] goes trying to solve my stomach issue.

I would love to read the story of that doctor's slow descent into madness. Three months till Christmas, everybuzzy. Let's get busy on this one.

Smokey wonders...

2008-09-08T19:17:00.001-04:00

...if churches ever donate their organs.

A Public Service Announcement

2008-09-06T22:09:00.007-04:00

Hey, all you Catholics! You've been taking communion every Sunday since you were eight years old, but did you ever stop to consider how fattening your host wafers are? Because it turns out they're made with (gasp of horror) Crisco™!

(Actually, the gasp of horror comes now. The last one should have been a "wait for it, wait for it..." My bad.)

This is according to the website Kingdom.com, which, I must admit, is the cleverest fucking name I can think of. Say it out loud if you don't get it. Now say it without the "dot" in "dot com." See? Genius.

What's not so genius is this ingredient list:

"Unleavened recipe," eh? Sounds like they're going after the Jewish Catholics to me. And how about that recipe, huh? "Flour, water, and vegetable shortening" - it doesn't quite set your toes a-tapping, now does it? How is this recipe going to get on the radar of any of the personalities from the Food Network? We're talking 6-second prep time, max.

The real tragedy is the tremendous marketing opportunity that everyone from Nabisco to the Vatican is missing out on. Think about the ornamental crucifix industry. People spend BILLIONS on those things every year! If they'll bring the cash for jewelry, just think of the possibilities for a snack food deal. Or don't, since I already did it for you.

Endless possibilities (Cinnamon Jeez-It? Hello?) and a built-in market. It's a surefire winner. Boo-ya.

Dear Jesus and Nabisco,

You're welcome (again!). Send checks to [redacted].

Love and weight gain,
Smokey.

I have to confess that Sarah Palin kept me up last night...

2008-09-04T07:52:00.002-04:00

Not so much because of her rousing call-to-arms to a Republican party that had been back on its heels, but mostly, because she farts in her sleep.

Highlights from New York's Ongoing Fashion Parade

2008-09-03T17:13:00.006-04:00

Sometimes, it's like every week is Fashion Week in New York City. Take, for example, this week, when an unidentified, but nevertheless totally Asian, woman wore this on her feet:

If you're stuck on the blue shoes and/or the artlessly ripped up jeans (and no one would blame you if you were), then you're missing the high point of the outfit, which is just below the jeans, and just above the shoes. Those are not socks, folks. Those are some unholy marriage of pantyhose (yuck) and those little pantyhose-material foot covers that they make you wear if you attempt to try shoes on barefoot at Kinney Shoes or Payless (double yuck).

I'm calling them stocklets, because it sounds like the retching noise you make when you see them.

But what is even more remarkable than simply one Asian woman on the 6 train wearing stocklets is this:
Yes, a second Asian woman in stocklets! On the very same train!

Now, I realize that it's hard to tell that these women are Asian without seeing them drive a car, but this whole post wouldn't have been near as riotously funny as it was if they weren't the real deal. (Ha! Try saying that with a Chinese accent!) So once you come to the conclusion that this post was riotously funny (any minute now... you're almost there), it follows logically that the women must therefore be Asian, and that my pillorying them publicly for their lousy fashion sense could quite possibly make me teh gay.

Don't worry, though. I am not teh gay. But they are definitely teh Asian.

This Shit Writes Itself

2008-09-03T15:42:00.002-04:00

“Give the woman a chance to at least have two or three weeks of answering questions before you say, ‘Oh, she’s not prepared to be president or vice president,’ ” Mr. Giuliani said in an interview on the ABC program “Good Morning America.”

See the article here.

Spotlight on my junk mail

2008-09-03T15:13:00.003-04:00

From: E.Claid@surrey.ac.uk
To: Smokey R [clowntears@piealamodeproductions.com]
Date: Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 1:53 AM
Subject: Confirmation Letter from COEFA

Dear Beneficiary,
Good day to you and Compliment of the season. I wish to Congratulate
and Inform you that you have been shortlisted as One Of the Beneficiary Of
this Year Chevron Online Endowment Fund Award (COEFA). For more
Information please contact the Officer Incharge.
Mr. Alexander Dickson
Email: chevrontexacoclaimsprocess@hotmail.com
Tel: :+44-703-592-9763
**Note: All replies and querries or questions concerning this message
should be sent to chevrontexacoclaimsprocess@hotmail.com
Yours Faithfully,
Dr.LEWIS ANDERSON
Chief Executive Officer

***

From: Smokey R [clowntears@piealamodeproductions.com]
To: E.Claid@surrey.ac.uk
Date: Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 3:16 PM
Subject: Re: Confirmation Letter from COEFA

Lew,

Dude.

What the fuck.

Wait, sorry, that's impolite. Despite the behavior of SOME PEOPLE who don't bother answering their emails, even when you send in your application to the Chevron Online Endowment Fund Award in JULY 2003, I am going to be polite here. So let me begin again.

Lew,

Compliment of the season to you too. But what the fuck.

Are you really just going to send me this email today like NOTHING EVER HAPPENED BEFORE? Are you really going to act like we never met at that party, or like you ever promised me IN FRONT OF MY MOM that I was a shoo-in for this award FIVE YEARS AGO? Are you really going to have the unmitigated gall to stand there in your jodhpurs and your pea coat and tell me that five years later, I am merely a FINALIST?

Fuck you, Lew. I wish I never fucking met you. I don't even think I want to be one of the Beneficiary Of this Year Award. And I want those fucking cuff links back too. I only give birthday gifts to real friends.

Piss off, jerkwad,
Smokey.

Invisible Gallagher Fever: Catch It!

2008-09-02T11:48:00.005-04:00

Hey, everybuzzy. I'm a little down in the dumps today. First of all because I went into Labrador Weekend without writing anything about my thoughts about the VP announcement by the re-Pube-Lick-ens. I started writing this Friday morning, back when I had all this hyperintelligent pre-pick analysis to make. But just like Hurricane Gustav's expected direct hit on New Orleans, it didn't quite happen.

I'm also a little down in the dumps because when I started to write said analysis, it was gloomy outside. And gloominess, it is widely known, is the best backdrop available for waxing philosophical about candidates for high public office. But now it's all sunny and beautiful and perfect outside, which of course makes me utterly miserable.

But because I am as courageous and daring as a beauty contestant-turned governor, I'm going to give my pre-pick analysis to alls of yous anyways. I'm going to pretend like it's Friday morning, like it's still gloomy outside, and like we haven't yet found out that Tina Fey was the governor of Alaska.

Here goes.

Hey, everybuzzy. Happy Labrador Weekend.

I'm a little down in the dumps today, because it's gloomy outside. And when it's gloomy outside, the Fruit Plant is an almost unbearably sad place to be. Most of us who work in Dole Canning Operations are pretty hardcore existentialists, and existentialists are extre-hee-hee-heemly prone to weather-related depression. This is why the powers-that-be at Dole are pretty seriously debating the possibility of moving the entire C-Ops division to Hawaii. Of course, a lot of us are glum about that too because we fucking LOVE New York, if for no other reason than it provides us relatively easy access to the Annual Briggs-Goering Existentialism-athon and Bake-Off, which is routinely held in rural Pennsylvania.

But as Sartre himself would be the first to point out, existence comes before essence. And moving to Hawaii, where everything is all sunshine and rainbows and overabundances of pineapple is bound to put some smiles on the faces of even the most hardened scabs in the C-Ops crew. So lube up those laugh lines, Rebecca Goodman! Also, get some sunscreen, because you have a really fair complexion, and you don't want to burn. Oh, and please, please, please stop with the freaking email poetry about your son's soccer skillz. Just because he's named Pele does not make him some sort of prodigy of el futbol. Sending your son away to live in Brazil, on the other hand...

But that's not the only reason I'm depressed. Additionally to the aforementioned weather-induced funk, it appears that I won't get the Republican nod for VP with John McCain this year. Not that I particularly wanted it, mind you, but I was still hoping. I was hoping blindly, in the blind way that blind people blindly hope to win the lottery without buying a ticket, or how little kids hope that the watermelon at the church summer picnic this Sunday will spontaneously explode, showering everyone in gory pink and green carnage.

It's called Invisible Gallagher.

Always brings a tear to my eye.

Anyway.

Obviously, if they're passing on ol' Smokey Robinson for Veep, they must have someone pretty good in mind. So here's my three guesses for who McCain's vice presidential pick will be, based on my detailed analysis of the political landscape, particularly the formidable challenges posed by Barack Obama and the Democrats after this week's convention, and by the torturous legacy of George W. Bush as commander-in-chief.

1. Voldemort.

His conservative credentials are outstanding. His debating skills are unmatched. And his ability to torture his opponents into submission through use of the three "Unforgivable" curses is going to prove a pretty tricky obstacle for Joe Biden to overcome in the Vice Presidential Debate in St. Louis. Also, this is a dude who managed to survive by transferring his essence to the body of one of his followers and drinking the blood of unicorns, which he presumably first killed with a legally obtained firearm. That's the kind of survival ethos the Republican party desperately needs this year.

He's pro-torture, he's pro-little people suffering, and he speaks Parseltongue, three things that are certain to resonate loudly with the conservative base and the evangelical vote. And let's not forget, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named killed that sniveling whiner Cedric Diggory, the jackass who tried to steal Harry's girlfriend. It's time we all admit that none of us really liked Cedric, and that the reason we felt so bad about him getting killed in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (oops, spoiler alert) is because we secretly wished Voldemort would step in and do the dirty work. Mission accomplished.

2. Rep. Jesus (R - WI).

Even though he voted against the Bush tax cuts, Jesus has usually been a lockstep supporter of the President for the last eight years. Yet somehow, he has managed to emerge from the Bush era with his reputation totally unscathed. Leading political analysts speculate that some sort of divine intervention may be involved, though this has largely been debunked by a series of press releases attributed to God himself, in which the Creator enumerates several complaints about Jesus's behavior on earth, citing specifically his "party tricks" of turning water into wine and walking on water as "the kind of showboating We simply do not condone up Here."

Jesus also has only tepid support among evangelicals and so-called "values voters" who see his lack of a family as hypocritical, particuarly in light of all that shit he said about cleaving to your wife. In a 2005 press conference, Jesus seemed to backtrack from the 2,000-year-old comment, noting that it was "really just something You say in an election year."

But the Jesus pick, despite its controversies, would still be a predictable move for so-called "maverick" John McCain, which has led political analysts and conservative radio hosts to speculate that McCain will forsake Jesus "like God did when He was on the cross," and pick someone completely out of left field. (Note: I wrote that before I heard about Sarah Palin, I swear.)

3. Rep. Jesus (R - WI) disguised as Voldemort

This one more or less speaks for itself. All the Jesu Bambino, with none of the softy, leftist, hippie bullcrap about being kind to your neighbors or loving each other the way God loves us. This election year, it's kill-or-be-killed. And who better to do the killing than a man who can later rip of his mask and forgive himself for doing it?

I think this is the clear favorite.

So there you have it. That's what I thought was going to happen on Friday, back when the weather was gloomy. Obviously, I now know better. But I still think Voldemort and Jesus are probably both in line for cabinet-level positions in a McCain administration. Voldemort would be a hell of a secretary of Labor, wouldn't he? And can't you just see Jesus at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, getting into fights with low-level staffers and sending memos that everyone laughs at behind his back? Because I totally can.

Get it? I totally can? 'Cause I work in canning operations? I think that's why Obama has taken the place by storm lately. His whole "yes, we can" slogan really resonates with the people here at Dole. And I hear he does pretty well among PepsiCo and Coke employees too, because yes, they can.

An Oscar Campaign Promise™!

2008-08-28T19:11:00.004-04:00

If Oscar is elected president, he promises to take pretzels off the enemy combatant list, where they have been ever since January 14, 2002, when a brave pretzel (coincidentally named Dennis Kucinich) tried to, um, "serve articles of impeachment" on the President, as an actor said to a bishop.

You have to be very careful with your wording when mentioning what Dennis Kucinich, the Pretzel was really trying to do.

Note to the government: these are all jokes. I just wanted to spell that out, because I know how easy it would be to, um, "be misread and sent to Guantanamo," as an actor said to a bishop.

Anyway, that's an Oscar Promise™!

And because this isn't getting nearly enough media coverage, here's Oscar's campaign poster again:

The Oscar '08 Endgame

2008-08-26T14:02:00.004-04:00

Heaveno, people. Oscar '08 update comin' atcha.

It's crunch time at the Oscar '08 campaign headquarters, and you know what that means. It's time to name our vice president, and map out our final strategy for defeating both Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Oops, I mean John W. McBush.

First off, a little managing expectations.

Yes, I believe that Oscar is a better candidate than either of these men, if for no other reason than he's a Jim Henson puppet, so people already know whose hand is up his ass. But Oscar has a significant electoral problem that neither Obama nor McBain has, and that problem is this: no one reads this fucking blog. How in the hell I managed to scare up 3,152 votes for Kenny Crandle in 2004 remains a mystery. If Oscar manages to get TWO votes, I would consider that a victory. And if he manages to actually carry a state, then I will buy everyone in that state pizza. (I'm talking to you, Texas and California!)

Now, on to the main events.

1. Oscar's vice presidential pick.

Seems like a lot of the emphasis with the VP picks centers on experience - specifically, foreign policy experience. One little crisis with the Russians in Georgia, and there's, like, a stampede of contenders to get to the nearest airport: Joe Lieberman, Lindsay Graham (who is a dude, by the way, despite the name), Joe Biden, Cindy McCain, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Sherman Helmsley, each one jockeying to prove that he is the man who can pull the world back from the brink of collapse.

But Georgia is a lot like the actress who played Kimmy Gibler on Full House, in that they are both overrun by undersized Slavic men with poor personal hygiene. Also, because no one in America really has any idea where they are. (Republican VP hopeful Tim Pawlenty would have been on his way to Georgia too, but having been educated in the American public school system, he bought a plane ticket to Atlanta. Zing.) And while it's easy to crack jokes about how dumb Americans are and how remote and useless and stinky Georgia is, the point is that there are other countries in the world with more John-Stamos-esque global statures, where a candidate for Vice President could reasonably hope to glean some meaningful foreign policy experience. Countries like Pakistan, for example.

Therefore, it is with great pride that we announce that Oscar the Grouch's running mate for Vice President of the United States shall be...

Pervez Musharraf.

Think about it. You can't beat him for foreign policy experience. He's been the president of an entirely separate country for most of this millennium! And his credentials keep looking stronger and stronger since the government of Pakistan took about four days to collapse after he left office - a fact which also provides a fantastic contrast with George W. Bush, whose government collapse occurred not only while he was on the job, but also because he was on the job.

I know that given my longstanding friendship with Pervez, not to mention our mutual affection for all things Ben and/or Jerry, people will scream patronage. Also, they will scream for ice cream. And you know what, those people will be right. They'll be absolutely right.

2. How to beat Obama.

This one is simple. So simple that it's a wonder the Republican party hasn't figured it out already. Then again, the Republican party is pretty dumb. I mean, we're talking about an "organization" (I use the term loosely) of "people" (I use the term even more loosely) that has actually fielded Dan Quayle and George W. Bush - two men whose combined IQ would be easily outdistanced by a mentally retarded stick of chewing gum - as candidates for high public office. Translation: Republicans are very dumb.

So here's some help. This is the new slogan of the campaign to elect John McCain:

John McCain already got beaten by a bunch of Asians. Let's not let him get beaten by a black guy too.

It's that simple. No one will vote for teh Obama now.

3. How to beat John McCain.

I really don't know how to beat John McCain. Maybe we can ask his Viet Cong captors for some tips. Zing.

No, seriously, let's ask them. My bet is that they're working at Guantanamo right now - as janitors, though, because their torture résumés aren't nearly extreme enough to qualify them as interrogators. It's true! And it's also today's fun fact for the day: the "torture" practiced by John McCain's captors in Vietnam is actually significantly less severe than the "interrogation techniques" sanctioned by the Bush Administration for use in prisoner questioning in Guantanamo!

Nothing but the best for our enemy combatants!

But unfortunately, this still doesn't answer the question of how to win against John McCain. Maybe it's like that old riddle about the minister, the rabbi, and John McCain being on an airplane together, and the airplane starts to crash, but with only two parachutes available, and bearing in mind that this is after John McCain was tortured but before he met Cindy, the minister says he has a wife who loves him and he just wants to see her again, and the rabbi says he has a wife who loves him and he just wants to see her again, and John McCain says, "I'm married to a former model who's now five-foot-four and big as a house; you guys take the parachutes." Maybe that's how you beat John McCain. I'm not sure.

Mao's Successor Hua Dies; Number to Be Retired

2008-08-20T16:16:00.002-04:00

Hua Guofeng, former Chairman of the Communist Party of China, Premier of the People's Republic of China, and NHL left winger, died today at the age of 87. Hua is most remembered for being Mao's handpicked successor, and for his two-year stint as a left wing on the Stanley-Cup winning New York Islander teams in 1982 and '83. In tribute to his memory, the Islanders announced today that they will retire his number 43 sweater at a ceremony in the Nassau Colliseum this October.

Hua joined the Communist Party in 1938 and rose through the ranks, becoming minister of public security in 1975, and ascending to the premiership of China following the death of the super-sexy Chou En-Lai in early 1976. He assumed the chairmanship of the Communist Party in China after Mao died later in the year. But the Triple Crown (Premier of China, Chairman of the Communist Party, World's Greatest Grandpa) eluded him, the third title having been granted, via coffee mug, to 88,000 men across the United States, but never to Hua despite being really, really, really nice to his daughter's brats in Guangzhou.

After being ousted from power by the sinister wiles of Deng Xiao Ping, Hua went west all the way to Long Island to live out his childhood fantasy of playing in the NHL. He joined the New York Islanders in the midst of their run of four straight Stanley Cups, playing along such notables as Denis Potvin, Mike Bossy, and Jesus Christ. Although Hua was mostly known as a bruising, checking-line forward and penalty killer, he occasionally managed to dazzle with his skating and his stickwork. His 28-goal campaign in 1981-82 included nearly a dozen goals that would have been included in highlight reels, if anyone in America watched hockey highlight reels in the first place, which they didn't.

His most spectacular moment on the ice, however, came in the second period of game 3 of the 1982 Stanley Cup finals, when Hua leapt eight feet into the air and pirouetted over Vancouver Canucks defenseman Lars Lindgren near his own blue line, landing immediately behind him. Hua then stole the puck from the confused Lindgren, skated into the Canucks' zone unmolested, and floated a wrist shot past a gaping Richard Brodeur for an easy goal.

For his career, he amassed 52 goals and 159 points in two NHL seasons with New York, winning the Stanley Cup both years, all while retaining his title as junior Vice Chairman of the Communist Party until the position was eliminated in the middle of the 1982-83 season. He spent the end of 1983 and most of 1984 backpacking across Europe, returning to China in December after having discovered the joy that is Michael Jackson's Thriller.

In addition to being remembered and celebrated in his own country, the Islanders have announced that Hua's number, 43, will be retired by the team on Monday, October 27th before a game against the New York Rangers. Hua will also be posthumously given the World's Greatest Grandpa award that he coveted for so much of his adult life.