As we all know by now, health care reform is the worst thing to ever happen in America.  Health care reform will rape your grandmother and burn your house down.  If you ran into health care reform while walking down a dark alley, it would push you down, steal your wallet, and call you a “nancy boy.”  Health care reform will kill your dog.  Health care reform will come over to your apartment in the middle of the night and eat all the potato chips.  Health care reform will do every bad thing that you could ever think of.

…So as I say, all right-thinking Americans know already that ObamaCare is awful.  But what of the great unwashed masses who are still undecided about health care?  How to best attack this terrible Democratic plan that will lower health care costs and reduce the deficit?  That’s been the problem facing the Republican leadership over the past few months.

_____

Luckily, the Republicans have come up with a solution.  “…And what was this solution?” you might ask.  Debate the health care bill on the merits?  Propose a rational alternative?  Naw!  Hells to the naw, silly!  These are Republicans that we’re talking about.  Thus, their solution was uniquely…  GOP-ish.  And I’m sure you’ll be surprised by it.  They’ve decided to use MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF QUASI-RACIST HYPERBOLE THAT IS UNCONNECTED WITH REALITY ON ANY LEVEL.  …Unexpected-ish!

And so, on the eve of the health care bill passing (probably), it’s time to take a short look back at the various things the GOP has said about reform and the Democrats.

And so, just in the past couple of weeks…

1)  Glenn Beck compared health care reform to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

2)  Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) compared reform to a Japanese suicide bombing.

3)  Lindsay Graham then went on to insult a Democratic Japanese-American Senator, comparing him to a drunken kamikaze murderer.

4)  Senator Paul Broun (R-GA) compared reform to an attack from the North during the American Civil War.

5)  Glenn Beck (him again!) said that reform was intended as “reparations” for slavery.

6)  Paul Broun (him again!) said that if reform passed, the Democrats would take Americans’ cars away.

7)  Paul Broun (aaah!) also compared Obama to Hitler, and said that Obama was trying to create a private military force in order to get his agenda passed.  (This is after he claimed that reform would kill Americans.)

8)  Paul Broun (oh Jesus god no!) also also said that health care reform would steal American’s guns away, and determine how Americans can educate their children.

Ah, nothing like Republicans spazzing out in the face of a bill that would, — again — lower health care costs and reduce the deficit.  Oh, the horror!  Quelle horreur!

_____

The Republicans are gone.  The Republicans are in la-la land; or, more accurately, they have decamped to “RepublicanLand.”  It’s a beautiful, mythical place, filled with rainbows and unicorns.  It’s almost like a Disney theme park of sorts.  In RepublicanLand, up is down, left is right, and the Democrats are the greatest menace that this world has ever faced.  It’s a pleasant place to live — if you’re a Republican.  Too bad it bears no resemblance to reality as we know it.

_____

Just to recap briefly, Republicans are currently saying that the Democrats are fascist militaristic dictators who want to steal your car, steal your guns, steal away your childrens’ education, start a new civil war,  and drunkenly dive-bomb America and kill American citizens  …Ah, reality.  Sweet, sweet reality.

I don’t think the Republicans are actually crazy enough to believe anything that they’re saying at this point.  (Well, except for Glenn Beck; he’ll believe anything.)  What I think is that they’re freaking out; that they’re bugging out.  Bugging out about a bill that — and this can’t be restated enough — will lower insurance costs and reduce the deficit.

_____

…At times like this, it’s good to take a step back.  The Democrats are politicians.  And yes, politicians kind of suck.  On the other hand, the thing about politicians is that they want to remain popular.  So, hypothetical.  Let’s assume that the Republicans are right about everything.  This would mean that the Democrats are secret fascists who want to steal your car and murder your mother.  …Right.  …And how is that a good plan again?  Assuming that this is what Democrats really want to do, wouldn’t voters get pissed off if all these secret evil Democratic plans were enacted?  Wouldn’t voters then remove all Democrats from office?  The Republican theory assumes that not only are Democrats evil — but that they’re also psychotic, with no concern at all for their own success or well-being.

…I’ll leave it up to you to decide which is actually the crazy political party here.  If we want, we can live in the reality-based community.  Or we can emigrate to RepublicanLand.  RepublicanLand; where the sun always shines, and the hills are made of candy, and the rivers are made of pure whiskey.   In RepublicanLand, the Democrats are pure evil, and the GOP is the noble defender of pure virtue.  In RepublicanLand, no one ever gets sick or dies, and we all live forever, and thus will never need health care reform.  It’s a perfect place; the ideal home…  except for one problem.  It’s not actually real.  It’s just a story told by liars to self-deceivers who desperately want — no, need — to believe the story that is being whispered in their ears.  RepublicanLand, where reasonable political discourse goes to die.

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/nonsense/2010/03/21/welcome-to-republicanland/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/nonsense/2010/03/19/the-bible-now-in-3-d/ http://thefastertimes.com/nonsense/2010/03/19/the-bible-now-in-3-d/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 20:13:44 +0000 Oliver Miller http://thefastertimes.com/nonsense/2010/03/19/the-bible-now-in-3-d/

3-D technology!  It’s the wave of the future.  (Well, more accurately, it’s the wave of the future circa 1950, but whatever.)  But 3-D movies are back!  …For some reason.  And this is very personally exciting to me, because I’m red-green colorblind.  My first and only experience with 3-D movies thus far was with “Avatar,” which every American citizen was legally required to see, as far as I can tell.  Oh man.  The funny thing about being red-green colorblind is that it means that YOU CAN’T ACTUALLY SEE ANYTHING IN 3-D.  So, gosh, did I love the shit out of “Avatar,” or, as I call it:  “SMUDGE:  THE MOTION PICTURE.”  (Or “BLURRY STUFF B’ HAPPENING:  THE MOVIE.”)

This is great.  3-D!  At long last, we have come up with a movie-making technology that gives 98% of the audience headaches, and makes it impossible for 2% of the audience to see the movie at all.  Awesome job, Hollywood, way to go!

_____

And I have even more good news, everyone!  …For not only is 3-D back, but it’s bringing Jehovah the Lord God of Hosts along with it.  Yes, yes, yes.  There’s going to a 3-D movie version of the Bible!  Taste the excitement.  And here’s the relevant press release:

The world’s oldest story is on a collision course with cutting-edge Hollywood technology.  …Paramount Pictures and former Walden Media co-founder Cary Granat…  are mounting “In The Beginning,” a 3-D telling of the creation story.  The film is using The Book of Genesis as its primary resource.

[The] $30 million film will use 3-D visuals to transform the oft-told tale into a spectacle that the filmmakers hope will attract family-and faith-based audiences that flocked to “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe…”  The Genesis tale of creation took [sic] a week that began with God creating light, culminating with Adam and Eve on Day Six, and a day of rest on Day Seven.  But I can guarantee you this film is going to take more than a week to make.

Finally, a 3-D version of the Bible.  And yay, it’ll be about the funnest part of the Bible…  the Old Testament!  Finally, we’ll get to see endless lists of people’s ancestors…  in 3-D!   And we’ll get a twenty-minute description of how many cubits long the Ark is…  ALL IN 3-D!!!

Naturally, we’re all very excited about this.  But here are some pressing questions that I have for the filmmakers:

1)  How do you make a “family-based” movie about the Book of Genesis, when Adam and Eve are buck-ass naked the entire time?  Is it going to be an “Austin Powers” type of thing, where their genitals are constantly conveniently obscured by random branches, leaves, apples, and stray evil snakes?

2)  What will God look like?  Will he be more of a stern patriarchal white dude?  Or more of a “Star Trek” style floating cloud of anti-matter type of thing?  …And isn’t showing God in any form blasphemous, according to the Old Testament?  So we’re making a movie where the main character can’t even be seen?

3)  Will we be keeping the part in the Book of Genesis where Lot tries to get his daughters gang-raped by a crowd of villagers?  And then the part where his daughters get him drunk and rape him?  And then the part where his daughters’ children have incestuous sex with each other?  …Again, how is this a “family friendly” movie at all?

4)  Will the film leave things open for a sequel?  A sort of “…THE END.  OR IS IT?” kind of thing?  I myself am mightily looking forward to a 3-D version of the Book of Judges.  It’ll be boring-list-tastic!

5)  Has there ever been a good movie version of the Bible?  The only one I can think of is “The Last Temptation of Christ.” And people hated that one, because it dared to make Jesus seem interesting-ish.

…And so on and so forth.  So many questions.

_____

And now, it’s Full Disclosure Time™ on my part.  I was once sent to rehab for drinking too much.  And entertainment was highly limited in my rehab clinic.  We only had two books, for instance.  One was the Alcoholics Anonymous handbook.  And one was the Bible.  (We also had a VCR with three movies:  “Return of the Jedi,” “12 Monkeys,” and “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.”  Which is a fairly…  random collection of movies.)

Since I got tired of reading the AA manual fairly quickly, I devised an exciting plan.  I would read the entire Bible (and here’s the fun part) in order, from start to finish. I made it as far as three pages in before my head exploded.

Okay, first of all, God creates man and women.  And then a page later, he creates the animals.  And then a page later, he creates man again, then creates the animals again, then creates woman again; except this time, instead of being created at the same time as man, she’s magically grown out of man’s rib.  Huh?  Say what now?  Didn’t this all just happen?  But in a different, contradictory way?  …And then, the same messed up stuff happens again.  First, God creates plants, using his God-like powers and such.  And then, in the next chapter, he creates plants all over again.  …Wait.  What happened to the first plants?  Did they all die?  Where’d they go?  AND WHY DOES CONTRADICTORY STUFF KEEP HAPPENING?  AND WHY DOESN’T THIS BOOK MAKE ANY SENSE?  …And remember; at this point, I had still only read three pages, and the Bible had already contradicted itself four times.  (And that’s without getting into  other dumb yet obvious questions.  Such as:  how do you have “days” when the sun hasn’t been created yet?  And where did Cain’s wife come from?  Etc…)

Thus, here’s what I learned from my stint in rehab:

A)  Don’t ever drink so much that you have to go to rehab.  (Seriously.  Put that drink down.)

B)  If you want to believe in God, then don’t read the Bible.  (Seriously.  I had a much more positive attitude towards God before I realized that the Bible was just a bunch of contradictory mooshed-together stories.)

…So there’s that.  The Bible is weird.  Will the film “In the Beginning” tackle this weirdness issue, possibly in 3-D form?  Almost certainly not.  But on the plus side, it’ll be in 3-D.  So when I go to watch it, the movie will just be a gigantic headache-inducing greenish blur.  And since I won’t really able to see anything, I’ll never be able to tell how badly the movie sucks, which works out.  And so, all hail 3-D!  …And thank heaven for small mercies.

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/nonsense/2010/03/19/the-bible-now-in-3-d/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/nonsense/2010/03/19/sarah-silverman-on-tigers-balls-and-mexican-food-shooting-out-of-your-ass/ http://thefastertimes.com/nonsense/2010/03/19/sarah-silverman-on-tigers-balls-and-mexican-food-shooting-out-of-your-ass/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:07:53 +0000 sarah silverman http://thefastertimes.com/nonsense/2010/03/19/sarah-silverman-on-tigers-balls-and-mexican-food-shooting-out-of-your-ass/ My dog’s breath smells like if cheese had an asshole.

I know Nazis are evil, but you have to admit they’re cute when they’re super little or elderly or sleeping.

I wanna make a T shirt that says, “MR. ROGERS WAS RIGHT.”

Mexican food is the steroids of the “Most-Stuff-Shooting-Out-of-Your-Ass-In-The-Least-Amount-Of-Time” competition.

I’m worried about Tiger’s balls. They aren’t used to having the same semen in there this long.

The richest black man in NYC has got to be Duane Reade.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone!  Finally, a day to acknowledge all the loutish drunken potato-eating Micks in our lives.  No; no.  I kid.  I love the Irish.  I really do.

…And in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, let’s take some time out to, um, honor the Irish.  And to honor the greatest Irish writer.  And to honor the greatest book ever written by the greatest writer of all time.  And this book is, of course…  “Ulysses” by James Joyce.

Yes, yes, yes.  We all hate being told what the best book ever is.  We all hate lists made by experts.  But in this case, the experts actually happen to be right, for once.  “Ulysses” actually is the best book ever written.  And I’ll prove it to you, sort of.  And so I present…

A QUICK GUIDE TO “ULYSSES” FOR THE BENEFIT OF YOU SEMI-ILLITERATE DUDES

…“Ulysses” was written by James Joyce in 1916, and takes place in Dublin, covering the single day of June 16th, 1904.  What’s it about, you say?  Um…  Well.  Basically.  Um.  What happens is, Stephen Dedalus, this over-educated, pretentious guy, gets kicked out of his house, and spends the day wandering around Dublin.  Meanwhile, Leopold Bloom, an average-joe sort of guy, spends the whole day wandering around Dublin because his wife is fucking some other guy that day, and he’s trying to avoid going home.

But that’s not really what it’s about.  Try this:

Stephen Dedalus, this guy whose mother has just died, is wearing all black and living in a tower.  He thinks he’s Hamlet.  (Because Hamlet wore all black and lived in a tower.)  Leopold Bloom, this guy who’s been wounded in love, thinks that he’s Don Juan.  But he’s not.  And Stephen isn’t Hamlet either.  Most of us spend our whole lives thinking that we’re someone that we’re not.  Stephen and Bloom are trapped in their wrong roles, but then, after wandering all over Dublin for a day, they meet, and for a second they really realize who they really are.  Bloom is Ulysses; a wise, crafty, heroic adventurer.  Stephen is Telemachus, his noble son.  Together, they are father and son.  They meet, realize this for a second, and then they part and never see each other again.

But that’s not really what it’s about.  Try this:

Books are bullshit.  Did you ever read a book and think, “this is nothing like my life”?  Movies too.  Who ever runs down an alleyway, chased by thieves?  Who, for that matter, ever has a perfect meaningful conversation with their wife or husband or kid or girlfriend that suddenly resolves all these issues that they’ve been having?  Books are a load of crap.  And here’s a book that isn’t like that.  Nothing gets resolved.  It’s hard to figure out what’s going on.  Things only change very slightly.  That’s what “Ulysses” is like — and, let’s face it — that’s what all of our lives are like too.

Or this:

It’s the first book ever written where people masturbate, pee on walls, curse, take dumps, think about pussies and penises, and have normal human conversations.  And it was written in 1916 and it’s still more modern that most of what is written today.

_____

Here’s the book itself, talking about what it’s about:

Chapter 1:

And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love’s bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea,
And all dishevelled wandering stars.

Chapter 2:

He came forward a pace and stood by the table.  His underjaw fell sideways open uncertainly.   Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from me.

“History,” Stephen said, “is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

From the playfield the boys raised a shout.  A whirring whistle:  goal. What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?

“The ways of the Creator are not our ways,” Mr. Deasy said.  “All history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.”

Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:

“That is God.”

Hooray!  Ay!  Whrrwhee!

“What?” Mr. Deasy asked.

“A shout in the street,” Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.

Chapter 9:

Hold onto the here, the now, through which all future plunges into the past.

Chapter 9:

If Socrates leaves his house today he will find the sage seated on his doorstep.  If Judas goes forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend.  Every life is many days, day after day.  We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, giants, ghosts, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.

Chapter 16:

“…Why did you leave your father’s house?”

“To seek misfortune,” Stephen said.

Chapter 17:

What did each do at the door of egress?

Bloom set the candlestick on the floor.  Stephen put the hat on his head.

For what creature was the door of egress a door of ingress?

For a cat.

What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the guest, emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage from the rear of the house into the penumbra of the garden?

The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.

With what meditations did Bloom accompany his demonstration to his companion of various constellations?

Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible in incipient lunation, approaching perigee: of the infinite lattiginous scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000 ft deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth:  of Sirius (alpha in Canis Maior) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles) distant and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet:  of Arcturus:  of the precession of equinoxes: of Orion with belt and sextuple sun theta and nebula in which 100 of our solar systems could be contained:  of moribund and of nascent new stars such as Nova in 1901:  of our system plunging towards the constellation of Hercules: of the parallax or parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality evermoving wanderers from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.

Were there obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast?

Of the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratifications of the earth:  of the myriad minute entomological organic existences concealed in cavities of the earth, beneath removable stones, in hives and mounds, of microbes, germs, bacteria, bacilli, spermatozoa:  of the incalculable trillions of billions of millions of imperceptible molecules contained by cohesion of molecular affinity in a single pinhead: of the universe of human serum constellated with red and white bodies, themselves universes of void space constellated with other bodies, each, in continuity, its universe of divisible component bodies of which each was again divisible in divisions of redivisible component bodies, dividends and divisors ever diminishing without actual division till, if the progress were carried far enough, nought nowhere was never reached.

_____

Confused?  Don’t worry about it!  In order to get booze money, James Joyce taught Berlitz language classes.  These are classes where you teach English to foreigners, while only ever speaking in English.  You’re not allowed to speak to your students in their own language. It’s the “total immersion” theory of teaching, and it’s supposed to work better than other methods.   …So when he was working, James Joyce spent eight hours a day having conversations like this:

–My name is Mr. Joyce.  It is raining outside today.  You are holding an umbrella.

?

–Today it is raining.  You are holding an umbrella.

??

–In your hand.  An umbrella.

???

–Um-brell-a.

So if you’re confused while reading the book, fuck it!  Don’t worry about it!  Just skip to a part where you’re not confused.  Hell, I skipped most of chapter 14 myself.  Joyce is writing in a new language; he starts off kind of easy, but then he gets harder and harder.  And like a good foreign-language teacher, he’s trusting us to figure out things on our own.   So don’t fret!  The book is confusing, but so is fucking life, and we do that every day, not expecting to understand every single fucking thing that’s going on.  So go forth, my winged monkey people, and read:

The book.

Another quick guide to the book.

The book being read out loud. (Only thirty-two hours long!)

…So check out all of that shit and then get back to me.

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/nonsense/2010/03/17/the-best-book-ever-written-is-irish/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/nonsense/2010/03/15/the-glenn-beck-insanity-watch/ http://thefastertimes.com/nonsense/2010/03/15/the-glenn-beck-insanity-watch/#comments Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:35:51 +0000 Oliver Miller http://thefastertimes.com/nonsense/2010/03/15/the-glenn-beck-insanity-watch/

Glenn Beck is a bold, truth-telling journalist; a man who has revolutionized the world of cable news as we know it.  On the other hand, he’s also a dangerously unbalanced individual; the kind of guy who would grab you by the shoulders at a party and yammer on for two straight hours about the Illuminati and the Federal Reserve.  …In short, Glenn Beck walks the razor’s edge between genius and insanity.

And so, we are proud to unveil THE GLENN BECK INSANITY WATCH, in which we analyze the latest statements of Mr. Beck, in order to see what level of crazy (if any) they contain.

(And by the way, your humble reporter would like to apologize for missing Glenn Beck’s comments on the Census and slavery last week.  For that would have made a great column!  But your humble reporter was busy working at his second job…)

_____

And so, without further ado, let’s begin the inaugural Insanity Watch.

Question:  What is Glenn Beck acting crazy about this week?

Answer:  Christianity.

And here’s the relevant quote:

Where I go to church, there are members that preach social justice as members — my faith doesn’t — but the members preach social justice all the time.  It is a perversion of the gospel.  You want to help out? You help out.  It changes you.  That’s what the gospel is all about:  You.

Social justice was the rallying cry — economic justice and social justice — the rallying cry on both the Communist front and the Fascist front.  That is not an American idea.  And if we don’t get off the social justice economic justice bandwagon, if you are not aware of what this is, you are in grave danger…

I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church website.  If you find it, run as fast as you can.  Social justice and economic justice, they are code words.  Now, am I advising people to leave their church?  Yes!

_____

The genius of Glenn Beck is that he sees conspiracies where an ordinary human would see…  nothing at all.  “Social and economic justice,” in this context, just means the idea — preached by Jesus in the gospels — that Christians should help the poor and the downtrodden.  But where a normal person would say:  “Aw, isn’t that nice?”, Glenn Beck says:  “No!  Fools!  This is all part of a vast interconnected network of Communism and Nazism!”

Question:  Just how crazy a thing was this to say, anyhow?

Answer:  Fairly crazy.

_____

First of all, Glenn Beck has apparently never heard of Godwin’s Law, where the first person to compare something to the Nazis…  loses.  But then, Glenn Beck compares everything to the Nazis (Democrats, Obama, health care, college professors, etc).  Glenn Beck could probably link the Nazis up with Starbucks Coffee if he really felt like it.  “You want me to give you my NAME so that you can get my coffee order?  You know, there was ANOTHER group of people who took lists of names.  A little group called THE NAZIS.  …Maybe you’ve heard of them.  Now give me a free biscotti for my trouble.”

Also, Glenn Beck seems to have a uniquely…  odd view of the Nazis, in that he thinks of them as running around helping poor people all the time.  Most of us think of the Nazis as being the dicks who invaded Poland and who were assholes to the Jews.  But perhaps Mr. Beck thinks that World War II movies are full of lies, because World War II movies are generally made by liberals.

…And finally, it’s pretty crazy of Mr. Beck to attack Christians, since about 50% of Fox News’s audience is made up of fundamentalist Christians.  (The other 50% is made up of people who think that Ayn Rand was the greatest writer ever.)

And not only did Glenn Beck attack Christianity, he attacked what is really the nicest part of Christianity.  I’m no Christian myself.  But my favorite thing about Jesus is that he talked constantly about helping the poor, the meek, and the helpless.  If you’re going to attack Christianity, you might want to complain about, oh, I don’t know, the Crusades, say.  Or sexual molestation in the Catholic Church.  Or the way a lot of Christians seem to hate gay people, etc…  But no, Mr. Beck went right for the jugular with his strong “Encouraging people to help poor people is WRONG” stance.

On the other hand, Glenn Beck does get some points for consistency here.  You see, Glenn Beck is terrified of Communism and Nazism, even though these are completely imaginary enemies.  Because no current human being is running around saying, “Hey!  You know what was a great idea?  Communism and Fascism!”  …No one is doing that, because no one would ever say that.

But still, Glenn Beck sees phantom-like Commies and Nazis everywhere, and boldly rants against them.  He rants against them even at the expense of alienating his core audience:  conservative Christian-folk.  That’s a crazy thing to do, but it’s at least consistently crazy, and so we’re going to bump up his final score a little bit.

And so…

FINAL INSANITY SCORE:  87% CRAZY

(On a scale of 0 to 100, with “zero” being the least crazy person in the world, and “one hundred” being “Lindsay Lohan,” Glenn Beck scored 87 points.  Better luck next time, Mr. Beck!)

Diet Pepsi:

I feel like I’m running out of clever words with which to describe diet sodas, and that’s a concern.  In other news, I currently work part-time at a wine store, and all I ever do is lie.  Which is what I feel like I should do with Diet Pepsi.  People at my store ask me about wine, and I don’t even like wine that much.  So I lie.  And the thing that I’ve learned about lying about how something tastes is that you need to be imaginative.  Someone asks me about, say, a red wine, and I’m like:  “Oh, it has a strong bouquet of shale.  With an undercurrent of  oak.“  This is a perfect lie, because it’s meaningless.  Wine can’t taste like a rock with an undercurrent of a tree.  But the lie sounds fantastic and profound.  …Anyway, to bring us back to base — Diet Pepsi has a strong undercurrent of Diet Coke.  Except with a less good advertising revenue.  And so it gets a grade of:  C.

Caffeine Free Diet Coke: …Which is the only soda that my girlfriend ever drinks.  My question here being:  “Why?“  No sugar and no caffeine and it tastes bad.  Why not just give up soda altogether?  There are plenty of other drinks, after all.  I hate people who can’t make a choice like that; it’s why I like atheists better than agnostics.  So okay, diet soda, fine.  (Especially if you’re a, um, diabetic, which my girlfriend is.)  …But no caffeine?  Isn’t soda just basically a caffeine delivery system?  …Dante reserved a special place in Hell for the indecisive, and that’s what I think the lovers of Caffeine Free Coke are:  indecisive.  Or, as Yoda once said:  “Do, or do not.  There is no ‘try.‘”  …Oh, wise little Yoda.

Anyway, what were we talking about?  …Oh, the soda itself?  It tastes bad.  Grade:  C-minus.

Coke Zero: For centuries, philosophers have been fascinated with the concept of “zero.”  How can a number be a number and yet not a number?  …If you know what I mean.  …And did you know that “zero,” as an idea, wasn’t even invented until the 13th century — 5,000 years after all the other numbers were invented?  (This is just the kind of pointless information that you’ll learn while reading these reviews, and you’re welcome.)

Anyway, the idea of “zero”!  It’s impressive, maybe.  It is a thing…  and yet is not a thing.  Like, for example, how many enormous wild tigers do you have in your apartment right now?  Zero: I’m guessing.  But is that something?  Don’t you almost always have zero tigers in your apartment?  So what does it mean to point that out?  Is there a point?  Or no point?  …Think about all of this for too long, and you’ll go crazy.  And so, “Coke Zero,” we must pause to salute you.  You are something, and yet you are nothing.  You embody contradiction.

…As for the taste of “Coke Zero” itself, it tastes like slightly better Diet Coke.  And so, in conclusion, whatever.  Grade:  B-minus

Spirit Zero: Let’s not talk about that whole “zero” thing again!  So…  Sprite.  Hmm.  The slogan is “Obey Your Thirst.  Drink Sprite.”  Wow.  Soda slogans are pretty fascist, aren’t they?  “YOUR PATHETIC WHIMS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING.  DRINK YOUR SPRITE, SLAVE!”  …Yay.

I’d make a terrible advertiser, I guess, because I’m wussy like that.  My slogan would be:  “Perhaps maybe you’d enjoy a small sip of Sprite, if you’re not doing anything else right now?  …Or not? Anyway, sorry for bothering you.”  …But then, I’m pretty wussy.

Anyway, Sprite Zero tastes…  shockingly good.  For once I’m going to drop the irony here.  I’d never tried it before, but it tastes just like a normal soda, with no “diet” taste whatsoever, except it’s less grossly sweet than normal sodas, which is actually an improvement.  Well done, Sprite Zero!  Grade:  A

Diet Sunkist:  Whoa.  Holy crud.  They still make Sunkist?  Color me very surprised.  I haven’t thought about Sunkist since 1985, at least, and really, I associate the soda with the 80s, and bad commercials with girls in bikinis and that “Good Vibrations” song.

Honestly, I guess I just don’t go to the supermarket often enough, because they had a lot of stuff that I didn’t think still existed.  …Like Deviled Ham.   And “Five Alive.”  And “After Eight” brand mints.  …Whoa.  All the forgotten brands of my past.  And “Junket”!  They even had “Junket”!  Do you even remember “Junket”?  I bet you don’t.

But that’s the American supermarket for you; a “mausoleum of all hope and desire,” to quote William Faulkner.  (To be honest, I just wanted to squeeze that Faulkner quote in here so that you would think I was smart.)  …And as for Sunkist, it also tastes pretty good!  Fruit flavors seem to be the winners here with diet sodas.  First lemon-lime, and now orange.  Kind of surprising.  If I ever saw someone with a Sunkist, I’d make fun of them, but still…  a pretty good diet soda.  Grade:  B-plus.

Diet A&W Root Beer:  Close your eyes.  Now take a sip of root beer.  Now forget what you’ve just drunk, and ask yourself:  “What does this actually taste like?”  …Answer:  toothpaste!  …Right?  Root beer actually tastes exactly like toothpaste.  …Bizarre.  Someone pointed this out to me once, and it ruined root beer for me forever, because they were right.  Anyway, I just wanted to point this out again, so that I could ruin root beer for you too.

As for Diet Root Beer.  …Well, do you like the idea of diet toothpaste?  If so, then we may have found the soda for you, my friend.  Grade:  D-minus.

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Nota bene: A version of this column also appears on the website “A Sweet Life.”  Which is a very fine website that you can go to by clicking here.

After a short sabbatical from Bathroom journalism while I attempted to live solely inside my bathroom like the unnamed Parisian in Jean–Philippe Toussaint’s wonderful Novella The Bathroom, I am back and ready to discuss all the relevant bathroom-related news one misses while actually living inside a bathroom. *

Every few years it seems as though a think tank at P&G gets together to see what they can add to a razor to convince people that what they currently own is obsolete. This seems like a good pretense for an episode of Mad Men. It is also, in my opinion, an annual money grubbing tradition. Ever since November 15, 1904, when patent #775,134 was granted to King C. Gillette for a, “Safety Razor,” a rapid evolution has taken place. New brands enter the market, and are quickly bought by P&G if they are the least bit successful. And new innovations in the razor business take place constantly. From Gillette’s Track II, the first mass produced multi-blade razor in the U.S. with a disposable blade cartridge, Gillette has been able to sell the cartridges at a higher price than the single blades, allowing higher profits, and beginning an astounding series of prolific innovations that some would call necessary, and others would call bullshit.

Gillette Innovation Timeline

1977: The Atra (Pivoting head)

1985: The Atra Plus (with lubricating strip)

1989: Sensor System (Twin Blades, Spring-loaded, aloe)

1994: Sensor Excel (Same as the sensor but with a more kick ass name and has something called Gillette calls “microfins”)

1998: Mach3 (3 Blades. Also sounds like it’s an airplane. Used by Tiger Woods and Roger Federer)

2001: Mach 3 Turbo (An even faster airplane)

2003: M3 Turbo Champion (in race car red) M3 Turbo G-Force (Granite Handle)

2004: M3 Power (Vibrates. Claims to raise up hairs before they are shaven. This claim was ruled as unsubstantiated and inaccurate by a federal judge)

2005: M3 Power Nitro (This is getting ridiculous. Inspired by high performance racing vehicles.)

2005: Fusion (5 Blades, Trimmer on back)

2005: Fusion Power (5 Blades, Vibrates)

2007: Fusion Power Phantom (Sleek, Black)

2008: Fusion Phenom (Manual or Power)

2009: Fusion Gamer (Used only by God)

For once however Gillette seems to have been beat at its own game by two Florida brothers Louis and Peter Tomassetti, whose invention — The Shave Mate — administers shaving cream straight from the razor to your skin!

The Shave Mate comes in two flavors: “Diva” for women and “The Titan” for men. Both seem to be exactly the same except the Diva is pink and spits out pink shaving cream. They have been picked up by Walgreens to be sold nationwide. With corny and unknown British TV personality Anthony Sullivan as their spokesman, Shave Mate seems like it might be just ridiculous enough to convince consumers that all other razors are obsolete… that is, until they use it.

Boasting six (“Count ‘Em!”) blades, and having actual shaving cream dispense from the handle, the Shave Mate seems like just the razor for the 21^st century male. But right out of the package you can tell that the Shave Mate is cheaply made. It has the unsurprisingly shoddy craftsmanship one finds with many “As Seen On TV” Products. Still, as a shave aficionado, I was excited to try this puppy out — especially considering its possible historical spot in the timeline of razor innovation.

I turn the bottom of the razor, which doubles as an on-off switch, to “on,” and push down to dispense the shaving cream. At first I think, cool, my razor dispensed shaving cream! Then I rub it on my face and it does not feel like much thought was put into the shaving cream itself. It’s okay, but it has no perfume to it, and it’s rather thick, but not lathery. I continue on and shave with the six-bladed razor, and I’m not impressed. Some would say the more blades, the closer the shave; but I tend to believe the more blades, the more chance you have of cutting yourself and walking around with toilet paper on your face for the next hour. My theory rings true with the Shave Mate. There’s only a very weakly-lubricated aloe strip above the blades, the kind most of us are used to seeing on their Gilettes. The bulky handle doesn’t make it easier to control the blade, and it’s an awkward shape.

Altogether the shave is not terrible but definitely nothing special. I would compare it to the shave from a mid-level disposable three-blade razor. I’m also wary of the amount of shaves the cream in the handle will hold up for; especially for women and all the distance they have to cover (even though I think most of you are vagazzling these days anyway). The Shave Mate will make a wonderful razor for the man on the go. I myself would put it in my weekend bag (yes, I have a bag, and it’s for weekends), so it’s not a complete disappointment, but its not going to eat into Gilette’s profits. At the end of the day, the Shave Mate makes me wonder if we are at a point where shave technology (in terms of a the manual razor) is finally at a standstill. But I will leave it up to the fine people at Gillette to see what they come up with next. It’s the best a man can get, right?

* I did not actually live inside my bathroom but I did read the novella and now want to as it seemed like an interesting idea.

Every time a latte-sipping East Coast liberal media elitist like me writes an article about Sarah Palin, there’s always the same response from the Right.  And the response from the Right is as follows:  “Y’all Dumbocrats are obsessed with Sarah Palin, and that’s because you are just soooo afraid of Sarah Palin, ’cause she speaks the truth and you can’t handle the truth and she’s so totally going to beat Barry Hussein Obama!  Run Sarah, run!  The liberals are scared of you!  Palin/Beck/Limbaugh/Cheney/Brown ‘12!”

…Ahem.  Well, no.  That’s not actually the case.  I am not actually scared of Sarah Palin.  In fact, here’s a full list of the things that I am scared of–

Killer bees, hurricanes, flying, heights, my eyes getting stabbed with a sharp or pointy object, my car breaking down in rural Alabama (this happened to me once; it was not fun), the bug room in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” the bug creatures from “Star Trek II,” bugs in general, slicing my foot on a broken piece of glass while swimming at the beach, um, bugs again, cancer, drowning, depression, death.

…See?  And was Sarah Palin anywhere on that list of things that I am scared of?  No.  She was not!

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In fact, I love Sarah Palin.  Sarah Palin may be bad for America, but she’s good for me.  Sarah Palin is comedy gold!  Every time she opens her mouth, she says something funny/idiotic.  In fact, we’re going to coin a new word, “funnidiotic,” that will be slightly hard to pronounce in real life, and will also only ever be used with reference to Sarah Palin.

…At least, I fully believe that Sarah Palin is “funnidiotic,” and that she is human comedy gold.  But to be honest, I have never watched a full interview with her, or made it all the way through one of her speeches.  And so, it is time to put my theory to the test!

Luckily, this past Monday, Mrs. Palin appeared on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”  Yes, yes, yes.  Finally, Walking Fake Outrage Machine™ (Sarah) got to meet the Sentient Mediocre Comedy Unit™ (Jay).  …And less luckily for you,  I was available to “Liveblog” the entire interview.  And so, without further ado, let’s begin!

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LIVEBLOGGING THE JAY LENO/SARAH PALIN INTERVIEW

0:00 – And we’re live and watching the interview!  Ahahahahaha!  Just kidding.  I’m watching video clips of it the next day on Hulu, so as not to subject myself to an entire episode of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”  I’m sure that you can sympathize with my decision here.

0:03 –  Hey, it’s Sarah!  People continually act like Sarah Palin is hot, in a sort of mass-delusion, lemming-y type of way.  But I am looking at her now, and she is not…  hot.  If I had to bang one horrible conservative chick, it would not be Sarah Palin.  I’d go with Michelle Malkin, who is authentically hot, or even Michelle Bachmann (I like her crazy eyes).

0:10 – However, even though Sarah is not particularly hot, she is wearing nice jeans and shoes tonight. So, a few extra points for style there, Sarah.

0:32 — Jay asks Sarah if she thinks she’s controversial. She shakes her head no, then says, “But I’m one with the strong opinions, strong ideas.  …I’m not one to sit down and shut up.”  Wait.  Isn’t that almost the dictionary definition of “controversial”?

1:40 – Sarah says her college degree was in “Communications.”  I do not think that I have a joke here.

1:55 – Jay Leno has the only comedy show audience ever who would applaud at the mention of the words “Fox News.”

2:31– Jay Leno is pandering, pandering, pandering.  …Pander on, my friend.  Pander on.

2:58 — Jay Leno:  “The whole media is a bit like the Mafia… you go after the person, you don’t touch the wife or the family.”  No, Jay.  That’s not the media.  That’s just you.  Remember how you broke Conan’s legs, Mafia-style, and then cut out his heart?  That was only a few weeks ago.

3:39 – Jay is asking if Sarah has “learned” anything from all her experiences.  Her answer, simplified:  “No.”

3:58 — Sarah complains about the ‘Family Guy’ controversy, then complains that she hasn’t had a chance to “follow up on the controversy in the media.” …Um? Sarah? You have your own show on Fox AND YOU’RE ON THE TONIGHT SHOW AT THIS VERY SECOND. I think that counts as being given a chance to follow up in “the media.”

(…And also, just to add to that; Sarah, you continually REFUSE to give interviews to members of the mainstream media.  So you’re angry that people who you refuse to talk to haven’t talked to you?  …In other news, my head just exploded from all the irony and then I died.)

4:13 — Sarah calls Family Guy “lame.”  She also repeatedly calls the show “The Family Guy,” but whatevers.  For the first time ever, I am slowly nodding my head in agreement with Sarah Palin.  Family Guy is pretty lame.

4:32 — Sarah complains for the 1,300^th time about the media talking about her children, after she used her children as props in the campaign, discussed her own children continually, had her daughter appear on Fox News, tried to cover up her daughter’s pregnancy, got in a feud with her daughter’s boyfriend, and wrote a book where she talks about her children all the time.  Gosh darn that ol’ biased liberal media!  Because, you see, Sarah Palin hates discussing her children whom she mentions at every possible opportunity.

5:03 — And it’s the end of part one of the interview!  Let’s take a short break so that I can smoke three cigarettes and bang my head against the window repeatedly.

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PART TWO (IF YOU CAN STAND IT)

0:00 – …And we’re back for part two!  Following a short commercial for Verizon Phones™ that Hulu forced me to watch.  See, I like my Verizon phone, but I cannot make the phone alarm clock work, ever.  I guess, in a way, this is a good thing.  I’d never wake up on time anyway, but now, at least, I can blame this on my phone.  Anyway, I’m blathering to avoid talking about Sarah Palin.  Let’s continue.

0:17 – Jay asks Sarah about the “funny” controversy of her writing notes on her hand.  Her response:  “Ha-HAA-hehauw.”  Which is the exact same laugh that my mom does when my mom doesn’t actually think that something is funny.  This is awesome.

0:37 — The audience applauds mindlessly at the mere mention of the words “tax cuts,” like the mindless stupid monkeys that they are.  …Sorry.  I think the experience of actually watching “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” is making me a little grouchy and bitter.

1:19 – We’re still talking about the hand-notes thing.  And Sarah says, “Just to get the Left all wee-wee’d up, I’m gonna keep doin’ it!”  …”Wee-wee’d”?  It is important to remember that this person WAS ALMOST VICE-PRESIDENT.

2:32 — Sarah Palin is talking about the Tea Party movement, and seemingly just proposed either a civil revolt or an Anarcho-Communist-rebellion, I’m not sure which.  Luckily, of course, she never actually means anything that she says.

3:10 – Tepid, halfhearted applause at the mention of John McCain’s name.  For the record, the word “wee-wee’d” got a much better reaction from the crowd than the words “John McCain.”  …And it is important to remember that John McCain was almost our President.

3:56 – Sarah Palin zings Jay Leno about him stealing back the “Tonight Show,” and for a second, I kind of like her.  …Does this mean I hate Jay more than I hate Sarah?  Probably.

4:03 – Oh no.

4:05 – Oh no no no.

4:08 – Jay is going to have Sarah do a comedy monologue.  This can’t possibly be going anywhere good.

4:45 — “Kev” makes his only contribution to the show thus far.  He says the words “Really” and “Oh yeah.”  Keep on cashing that paycheck, Kev.

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/nonsense/2010/03/03/sarah-palin-and-jay-leno-together-at-last/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/nonsense/2010/03/02/my-girlfriend-is-a-raging-vampophobe/ http://thefastertimes.com/nonsense/2010/03/02/my-girlfriend-is-a-raging-vampophobe/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:38:37 +0000 Gregory Clouatre http://thefastertimes.com/nonsense/2010/03/02/my-girlfriend-is-a-raging-vampophobe/ I just found out that my live-in girlfriend of two years, “Tina,” is pretty much an unabashed, unapologetic bigot.

Thursday night during Cheese, Crackers, and Checkers, Tina told a dicey joke that I thought was in really poor taste. Now, I can never remember jokes correctly (Tina loves to pick on me for this), so I don’t recall exactly how this one went, but the punch line might as well have been: “Isn’t it funny that vampires are a weird inferior race with gross alternative lifestyles and special needs that are fun to ignore!” Luckily, not a single one of my confirmed guests showed up that night, making me the sole witness to her disgusting outburst. I first tried explaining to Tina that I didn’t think the joke was funny and that she should think twice before passing that kind of toilet material around, but without a thought, she abruptly disagreed. Thus began an epic conversation turned probably-breakup argument which revealed a heart sick with hate, as black as a Sharpie marker, and, I fear, just as reliably permanent.

The mask really came off when I asked Tina to elaborate on her idea of a typical vampire. I’m not kidding, verbatim, this is what she said (her words not mine): “They all wear black capes and slick their hair back. They live in castles, and they kill people.” WTH! I sleep next to this maniac?! Hearing how casually the hate-spew flowed from her foul mouth made me wonder if I had somehow fallen through a time warp and been sucked all the way back to 2002–when vampires were “monsters” and the world was still an idiot.

It is astounding to me that after four or five whole years of progressive work towards vampire civil rights across all mediums of entertainment, despicable attitudes like Tina’s are still around. She went so far as to say that she “would not want vampires living in her neighborhood!” and her most pathetic line of defense was to continually scream, “Vampires are not real you dipsh*t!” I feel like that excuse has worn quite thin, as we all know now that minorities, vampires, aliens, homosexuals, mermaids, robots, werewolves, and pirates are all like the rest of us–just a little “different”. Well, real or unreal, natural or supernatural, on a great HBO show or living just down the hall, it doesn’t matter to me, there is no gray area, intolerance and bigotry are 100% unacceptable. I’ll bet that every crooked notion that Tina has about vampires is based on old movies she saw or weird books she read from a least six years ago! How was I supposed to react to this?

(Incidentally last fall, in a similar situation, I was forced to part ways with a very close friend. In a crowded cafe he kept loudly describing the refugee characters from the film District 9 as “big creepy insects.” I was severely embarrassed by his insensitivity concerning Apartheid in South Africa. I haven’t seen him since.)

Tina even refused to understand how not being able to go out in daylight constituted a physical handicap for vampires. She didn’t care that they couldn’t mail a package or open a checking account. Tina might have great hair and a full-time job, but her appalling attitude towards the disabled was the last straw. I left the house that night to clear my head, and I’ve been sleeping on the streets since. I assumed that I’d just crash on my yoga coach’s couch, but his secretary told me that he had actually died in a car fire literally just minutes before I called! A real shame because I felt like he really listened when I talked to him about this stuff.

Photo: mediamemo.com

Vaginas!  We all like them.  Although, if I could veer perilously off-topic for a second (and I always can), vaginas are the source of a Very Minor Disappointment™ in my life.  As a teenage guy, I saw breasts many years before I actually ever saw a vagina.  And unfortunately, breasts raised my expectation level a little too high.  “Wow,” I said to myself.  “If boobs look this awesome, then surely pussies will look even awesomer!”  …Wrong!  Incorrect.  Vaginas do not actually look cooler than breasts.  Oh well.

However, vaginas do make guy-on-girl sex possible.  And guy-on-girl sex is one of America’s favorite activities.  And so we should all pause from time to time in our busy lives, to give thanks that vaginas exist.

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…But wait.  If I could just speak to the ladies in the audience for a second.  (Let’s pause for a moment to allow all the guys to leave the room.)  …Okay.  Hello, Ladies.  Do you like your vagina?  …Of course you do.  But have you been feeling lately that your vagina looks a little, well, I don’t know:  oh, let’s just come out and say it.  Have you been feeling lately that your vagina looks a little blah?

Of course you have!  Duh.  Your vagina looks so bland and blah and it’s been driving you crazy!  Well, fret no more, my female friends!  For help is on the way!  For I bring you VAJAZZLING:

As you can plainly see from the photograph, “Vajazzling” is the process of adding little rhinestone-y thingies to freshly-shorn vaginas.  StyleList has the scoop:

The procedure was made popular by New York City’s Completely Bare Spa, as a post-waxing add-on service.  An esthetician decorates your newly bare nether region with stick-on Swarovski crystals in the design of your chioce.  A starburst?  A heart?  A butterfly, perhaps?

…Completely Bare owner Cindy Barshop…  did offer us this tidbit of information about how men react to the vajazzle:  “They LOVE it!” she said.  “They love it even more especially when it’s a surprise.”

Oh, yay!  Crystals in the shape of a heart, a starburst, or a butterfly, glued on to your freshly waxed vaj.  Finally, a way to make your pussy look like a glitter T-shirt from “Hot Topic”!

And hey!  Hypothetical men love it!  …And hypothetical men especially love the vajazzling when it’s a “surprise.”  And I guarantee that it’ll be a surprise!  A surprise along the lines of:  “Wow.  You glued rock-hard imitation diamonds directly next to the point where our nether regions make contact.  Um?  …Thanks so much.  Or, at least, thanks for not gluing on barbed wire or broken glass or something even more potentially painful, I guess.”

And here’s a video of a vajazzling session taking place, if you can stand it:

Ugh.  Just ugh.  And perhaps the most dismaying part of the above video is the revelation that the entire vajazzling trend was started by…  Jennifer Love Hewitt.  And so, here is the original video of J. Love Hewitt talking about having her vajayjay glitter-ified, on the “Lopez Tonight” show.  Go ahead and watch, as the parallel worlds of annoying starlets, unfunny talk shows, and stupid trends collide, merge, and explode:

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Wonderful.  And now it’s time to play “Choose Your Outrage.”  The most outrage-ifying aspect of the whole Vajazzling trend/non-trend is the following:

A)  The fact that Jennifer Love Hewitt calls her vagina her “precious lady.”

B)  Anything involving Jennifer Love Hewitt, up to and including “The Ghost Whisperer.”

C)  The word “Vajazzle” itself.

D)  The word “Vajayjay.”

E)  Any stupid slang term for the female genitalia, besides just plain “vagina” or “pussy.”

F)  The fact that the process of vajazzling, to modify my previous joke somewhat, just ends up making you look like you’re wearing an Ed Hardy T-shirt on your genitals.

G)  All of it.

And the actual answer is, of course, “none of the above.”  The most horrifying part of this trend is that, due to the inevitable process of metrosexuality, soon enough, this will also be a trend for guys.  Which means that circa 2015 or so, I’ll probably end up having stick-on crystals applied in a pattern of flames above my penis.  And that sucks.  And so, as always, I weep for the future.  …And as always, I hate you, Jennifer Love Hewitt.

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