A Philosophical and Political Question

Do Teabaggers Dream of Demon Sheep?

More Fake Celebrity Death Rumors From Twitter

TheRealNietzsche God is dead! OMDG!

PeteTownsend Rock is dead, they said. :(

SamClemens I heard rumors of Mark Twain's death.

JLennon Luap Deirub I

Warning: Giant Harry Potter Spoiler

We have an exclusive spoiler for the new Harry Potter film. According to our confidential sources, The Half Blood Prince will feature the death of a "major and beloved" character.

New Holiday: June 6 is "Fuck You Ann Coulter Day"

To mark the original publication date of her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism, June 6 has been named Fuck You Ann Coulter Day. Ann Coulter has published many books, but Godless has been chosen for this special honor because it contains truly timeless comments on widows who lost their husbands in the attack on the World Trade Center. Highlights of Coulter's text include "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much... How do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy." Commentary like that richly deserves a national holiday like this.

Here are some ways that you can celebrate Fuck You Ann Coulter Day.

• Arrange a bible study group to discuss whether or not it's possible for Ann Coulter to go to Hell if she has no soul.
• Close your eyes and imagine that you're throwing used tampons at Ann Coulter.
• Ponder how God and Ann Coulter can co-exist in the same universe.
• Give people respect and treat them with kindness and know that this increase in decency will cause Ann Coulter to break out in hives.
  
• Gather together with friends to play a festive holiday game. Take turns throwing up. Whoever's stomach bile most closely resembles the writings of Ann Coulter wins an apple pie.

Get MAD and Get Even (More MAD)

When you were a kid, did you love MAD Magazine? If you read this blog, I'm guessing the answer is "Heck, yeah!" Well, I have some bad news for you: After their 500th issue, MAD will be switching from a monthly format to a quarterly format. This is, no doubt, a sad outcome of the general decline in magazine circulation across the publishing industry. I fear that MAD will only have a harder time staying afloat as a quarterly since it depends on topical humor.

Well, I think if we (and by "we" I mean "the internet") all pull together, we can do something about it. Now is the time to stop being nostalgic for our childhoods and start buying subscriptions. If not for ourselves, then perhaps as a gift for our kids (or our friends kids, or our nieces and nephews...) Subscriptions are cheap at only $19.99 for 14 issues. Look, you don't even need a checkbook--you can do it online:

Click Here to Get a Subscription for Yourself or Somebody You Love

If we can't reach the critical mass necessary to reverse the fortunes of the magazine that helped shape (and by "shape" I mean "warp") our sensibilities, then at the very least we'll be teaching kids the unique joys of reading MAD:

• Wasting hours looking at all of the little details
• Learning how to be world weary without being cynical, learning how to question authority without being a jerk about it
• Re-reading old issues to get all the dirty jokes that went over your head the first time around
• Yelling at your mom when she throws out your old -- and surely priceless -- issues when you went to college

I'm counting on you, blogospher. If we can make "Talk Like a Pirate Day" a real holiday, if we can redefine the meaning of Rick Santorum's last name, if we can make Perez Hilton gainfully employed... then surely we can pull together and help our old friends at MAD keep the satire coming.

Finalists for the Best Patent Award

The nominees are:

• The Heisenberg Compensator, patent by Dr. Emory Erickson
• The Positron Collider, patent by Dr. Egon Spengler
• The Flux Capacitor, patent by Dr. Emmett Brown
• Focused Erasure Procedure, patent by Dr. Howard Mierzwiak
• Earth, patent by Deep Thought

Merry (Belated) Christmas!

Based on in sitings of Christmas tree displays at Borders Books, posters for Vince Vaughn's annual Christmas movie on the street, and Bruce Springsteen's "Santa Clause is Coming to Town" at the corner deli, Christmas officially started on October 27th this year. That gives us a glorious 59 days to celebrate the Christmas before the day I thought Christmas started on. Adjust your calendars accordingly to reflect the new start dates for holidays:

Christmas: October 27th
New Year's: November 3rd
Valentine's Day: December 17th
Memorial Day: March 27th
The 4th of July: May 6th
Halloween: September 2nd
Thanksgiving: September 28th

In an Early Draft of the Watchmen Script, Alan Moore Explored Other Character Concepts for the Comedian

It's late at night. New York City. 1985.

A grappling hook shoots through the air and catches on a window frame. We see Rorschach perched in the window, about to enter the empty apartment apartment. His grappling hook is still hooked to the frame.

Breaking away from the panels, we reveal the title of the first issue in bold, black letters: "Why Is There Air?"

Back in the Comedian's apartment, Rorschach looks around the room and notices a photograph of the victim. He's a handsome African-American male, dressed to play tennis. He's posing with a white male. Both are smiling. From the clothes and the hair, the photo appears to have been taken in the 1960s.

Rorschach goes to the closet. Opening the door, the closet seems to be empty except for a few overly colorful, heavily checkered sweaters. He pushes the sweaters aside and notices a small button on the back of the closet wall. He presses it. The back of the closet slides open to reveal a hidden space.

The centerpiece of the hidden alcove is a superhero costume. There is a pair of yellow spandex shorts and a matching shirt. The shirt has a light orange "B" logo on it. There is a matching cape and a pair of yellow boots. The costume is completed by a pair of white boots and a black eye mask.

Rorschach lays the costume on the floor to study it. He says "Hurm."

Rorschach notices there is a picture hanging next to the costume. He picks it up. It's a photograph of the masked adventurer Brown Hornet and his two sidekicks Stinger and Tweeterbell.

With Apologies to Shel Silverstein: Sarah Palin's "Where The Bridge to Nowhere Ends"

There's a place where honesty gets lost in the wind
Blown away by politicians' lies.
But there was one clear-voiced maverick
And to the straight-talking truth he would always stick...
And then he threw it all away with his running-mate pick
From where the bridge to nowhere ends.

From convention to election in every speech
To the role of reformer she pretends:
Pork barrel pet projects she claims to have slowed
Says she stood up against earmarks, but that's a big stinking lode.
Bragged she stopped the wasteful spending, but the money still flowed
To where the bridge to nowhere ends.

"Thanks, but no thanks," must be some sort of code
For "I'm keeping the money that I'm entitled and owed!"
True, she stopped the bridge--but she's still building the road
To where the bridge to nowhere ends.

Created By Marketing Executives With Too Much Downtime, Part 3

Today Borders books sent out an e-mail to their mailing list that contained a series of coupons and sales notices. One of those sales qualifies as...

The Saddest Direct Marketing Campaign Offer of All Time

Here, for your review, is the offer in that qualifies Borders for this dubious distinction.




Offering consumers 5 romance novels for the price of 4 (and making the offer a week before Valentines Day) crosses the line from "meeting the consumer's untapped needs" to "exploiting the consumer's human frailty at a time of emotional weakness."

Study: The Predictive Qualities of Rob Reiner's Stand By Me

An Empirical Analysis Comparing the Futures of the Actor Wil Wheaton and the Character "Gordie Lachance" from Stand By Me


Finding Number 1: Stand By Me achieves mixed results in predicting the appearance of a 30-something Wil Wheaton.

a. In his adulthood, Wil Wheaton neither looks nor sounds like Richard Dreyfuss, the actor who portrayed the older version of Gordie Lachance.

b. Based on the appearances of both actors at the time of this study in 2008, Wil Wheaton continues to strongly resemble John Cusack who portrayed Gordie Lachance's brother Denny in the 1986 film.


Finding Number 2: There is a strong correlation between the career paths of the performer and the character

a. The real life Wil Wheaton and the fictional Gordie Lachance both grow up to be professional writers. Mr. Wheaton does not yet appear to have the same level of success as Mr. Lachance as seen in the film's coda. (It is estimated that Mr. Lachance's literary acclaim is on par with Stephen King's.) However, Mr. Wheaton does appear to be more technically adept than his on-screen counterpart in that, unlike Mr. Lachance, he would most certainly know that he should save his manuscripts before turning off his computer.

Pop Quiz: Is This Book by Stephen King or Jane Austen?

Section One: Books Named After Women
1. Emma
2. Carrie
3. Lady Susan
4. Lisey's Story
5. Christine
6. The Beautiful Cassandra

Section Two: Books Named After Groups of Women
7. The Woman in the Room
8. The Little Sisters of Eluria
9. The Three Sisters

Section Three: Books Who's Names Sound Like New Calvin Klein Fragrances
10. Different Seasons
11. Persuasion
12. Desperation

Section Four: Books Named After Places
13. The House on Value Street
14. Northanger Abbey
15. Mansfield Park
16. The Marsten House

Section Five: Books About This And That
17. The Begger and the Diamond
18. Sense and Sensibility

Highlight the "invisitext" below to check you answers.
1, 3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 15, and 18 are all by Jane Austen. The others are by Stephen King.