Sticker Shock

Memo to Racist Hicks: YOU NEED BETTER EXCUSES.

Seriously, pigfuckers. Work on your plausible deniability. I know that you wouldn't be dipshit racist rural hicks if you had a brain in your thick, meaty heads in the first place, but where's your supposed work ethic? It may take you ten times longer to come up with an excuse for your racism that doesn't sound completely implausible, but it'll pay off in the end.

Remember the Kentucky senator's race? Where they called the senile senator's opponent "limp-wristed", a "switch hitter", and someone for whom the word "man" may not apply? It worked, and Bunning won in a squeaker. But the people who did it actually had the gall to come out and say, in their defense, that they meant none of it in a sexual way.

That's an awful excuse. Nobody believed that excuse. It was just embarassing. They didn't put any effort at all into it. Not in coming up with a slur, and not in coming up with an excuse to get out of the slur. Bunning was a major league PITCHER, for fucksake. If you can't work some gay innuendo off of THAT, you probably... live in Kentucky, actually.

Of course, even here in the northern wastes of Minnesota, we have a spiritual South. Some of it, true to its backwards nature, is actually situated way to the north. And some of it is in Mankato, south of the Olsen-Olsen line.

In Mankato, there is a mall. The River Hills mall. A for-real mall and everything, with a Sears AND a Penney's. And recruitment centers for all four branches of the military. Shockingly, no Hot Topic. Oh, and a little store called "Custom Now"*.

"Custom Now" is not, as you may think, a slightly archaic demand for people to shop there. No, it's a place that sells stuff with words on it. Presumably the usual array of Big Johnson Sex Wax shirts, local sports jerseys, and Jack Daniels labels. Maybe some of those Calvin-pissing-on-an-automaker-logo stickers. One thing Custom Now doesn't sell anymore, though, after being told to stop by the River Hills Mall management, is a certain bumper sticker.

The text of the sticker - I kid you fucking not - is as follows: "SAVE A HUNTER - SHOOT A MUNG".

Now, since half a dozen hunters were recently shot and killed in Wisconsin by a Hmong hunter from St. Paul in an incident that received national media exposure, it would be understandable for you to think that perhaps the proprietors of Custom Now decided to (a) cash in on tragedy, (b) express redneck outrage, (c) do so in a patently racist and violent way as is their wont, and (d) misspell the name of the ethnic group they were trying to slur. This is how a reasoned, rational mind takes new facts and combines them with history and experience to reach a conclusion.

If you're feeling particularly generous, you may think that the misspelling was deliberate, so that, when questioned by the media or the mall managers about why you are selling a bumper sticker full of classic American pigfuckery, you could claim in all innocence that it was a reference to the mung bean, and since beans are easier to shoot than deer, you are "saving a hunter" a great deal of frustration and a fortune in expensive deer urine. This would not be a GREAT excuse, but it would at least show a bit of initiative.

And it would be better than what Custom Now came up with. Owner Michael Baumann claims the stickers were a half-dozen leftovers from a customer's order that got put out for sale by accident. Normally, the store wouldn't even print anything racist in the first place, but the customer explained that "MUNG" stood for "Miniscule Unseen Naughty Gnat", and thus, the sticker was OK.

Credit where credit is due - whichever racist fuck came up with the sticker not only knew the word "miniscule", he knew that it meant "small". Perhaps he has had it shouted at him frequently by a series of disappointed, moderately erudite girlfriends over the years. And I can see "Gnat". After all, you live in Mankato, you need something bad that starts with the letter "G", and you know you'll get in trouble if you say "gay".

But that leaves "UN". Now, you know the United Nations is bad, after all, Norm Coleman said so, but Miniscule United Nations Gnat doesn't work. Gnats are hard to see, and hard to see is kind of like invisible... so there's Unseen! Miniscule Unseen N... Gnat. And that's when you get up to the counter and you need an "N". And you panic. Because you did not plan ahead.

And that's assuming you believe Baumann. Which is tough to do, because he's REALLY dumb. It's ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"If I'd known that would have turned into a racial slur, I would never have taken the order. Our store is not a racist store. Half of our store is minority." That's a lot of stupidity in three sentences. It didn't "turn into" a racist slur when people started complaining, Baumann. It was a racist slur the instant a guy asked for a bumper sticker that joked about shooting Asian immigrants. Second, by definition, nothing can be HALF MINORITY. Learn math. And third, how large a payroll does a shitty Mankato mall printing place have? Two? Four? Giving minimum wage jobs to a whopping PAIR of Mankato's non-white community does not make you Enlightened Whitey or get you off the hook. Not the pigfucker hook, and not the DUMB hook. Next time you pull something like this, make your excuse to the press part of your plan.

In the most informative news article, the shop is named as "Custom Zone", but "Custom Now" makes for a joke you're about to read, so I'm sticking with it.

Somewhat At A Loss For Word

Memo to Norm Coleman: YOU'RE A DUMB FUCKING HYPOCRITE.

In fact, "hypocrite", even "dumb fucking hypocrite", doesn't really do Norm Coleman justice. He deserves a whole new term to describe his particular brand of toadying, self-serving hypocrisy. I have a few ideas, but I can't settle on just one.

• Hypoprick
• Forktongued Cockbastard
• Reverse Coproperistaltic Narcissasshole
• Professor of Rectotongular Studies at Suckup University
• Alternately, we could just start calling any weaselly, self-promoting, over-rated, publicity-grabbing, plastic-haired, dental-capped, party-switching lying scumbags "Norm Coleman".

I've mentioned Norm Coleman and his nigh-limitless supply of unmitigated gall in the past, of course. He's the former Democrat St. Paul Mayor that jumped ship to the Republicans and won his Senate seat thanks to an unfortunate plane crash and the subsequent right-wing "reality adjustment action" on Paul Wellstone's memorial service.

When we last heard anything of note from Coleman, he was part of the Republican Neo-Truth Squad at the Democratic National Convention, telling every lapdog reporter who had ten inches to fill that John Kerry was a flip-flopper. You may have sensed a disturbance in the Force around that time, as if millions of voices cried out at once, "Hey, weren't you a Democrat a couple of years ago, fuckoid?" and were suddenly ignored.

Junior Senator Coleman, basically, is the new kid they let into the club 'cause his dad lets him borrow the sportscar on weekends. Desperate for acceptance and approval, Coleman bounded into his new role like a retarded puppy, eager to please his new masters.

"Hey, guys! Man, you know what sucks? Liberals. I used to hang around those guys, and man, do they really suck. I hate them. You're much cooler. Could you pass me the dip? And some PAC money? No? Hey, that Kerry, he's a flip-flopper, isn't he? He flips and flops all the time. Flip. Flop. Hey, can I be on your super-secret committee? No? Man, that Arlen Specter needs to get in line. I peeked at him in the Senate bathroom, and he's got a tiny dick. But I'm not gay! We sure hate those gays, huh, guys? Sorry about not delivering Minnesota for Bush, but it all worked out in the end, right, guys? Guys? Where are you going? Hey, you guys hate the U.N.? I hate it too!"

That's Coleman's latest kick. "Investigating" the UN Oil for Food corruption scandal. He's a regular Sherlock Hound, that one. Today, in one of the most stunning feats of hypocrisy since, well, the last time he opened his cakehole, Coleman called on UN General Secretary Kofi Annan to resign. And here is his logic. It's ACTUAL SPECIAL ANNOTATION QUOTE TIME! What Coleman's been saying is so special that I've developed a unique new annotation system for his quotes. Underlined passages denote outright lies. Bolded passages denote unproven allegations, and bolded, underlined sections denote areas you should be laughing and crying at the same time at Coleman's unwarranted chutzpah.

"The decision to call for Mr. Annan's resignation does not come easily," Coleman wrote. "But I have arrived at this conclusion because the most extensive fraud in the history of the U.N. occurred on his watch. The bottom line is, one man was in charge and if we're going to get to the bottom of this,he's got to step back so that we can have trust and credibility and transparency in sorting out what happened."

"If we're to get to the bottom of this, if there's to be any credibility, the person that was at the helm during the course of this thing cannot be... the guy that we go asking for help and assistance in getting the people we need to talk to... Any private company would have asked for his (Annan's) resignation. But the members of the board, in this case Security Council members China, Russia and France,have all benefited from Saddam being in power."

After Abu Ghraib, after Valerie Plame, after the 9/11 commission report, after the Halliburton scandals, after the Red Cross determining that we're TORTURING people in Gitmo, after a botched invasion and an incompetent occupation and oh, by the way, NO FUCKING WMD's, Norm Coleman, whose nose was mistaken for a polyp during Bush's last physical, can actually dare to use the phrase "ON HIS WATCH" with a straight face?

That he's even able to utter the words "trust", "credibility", and "transparency without his tongue turning into a venomous, hallucinogenic tree frog and his last, bloated moments on Earth being spent ripping off all his clothes and doing a spastic mambo on the Senate floor merely reaffirms my atheism. That he can pretend that the Security Council member his FUCKING FEET ARE TOUCHING RIGHT NOW never benefited from having Saddam in power turns my stomach.

Even assuming the absolute worst possible scenarios in the oil-for-food mess are true, which is an iffy proposition at best since there are six different investigations going on concurrently and lots of different stories flying around, Norm Coleman has a nigh-homeopathic fraction of the moral and ethical authority required to be calling for anyone to step down because of abuses carried out by their underlings. 2008 can't come soon enough, shithead.

It's Not Bad, It's Worse

National politics got you down? Then whatever you do, for fuck's sake, do NOT look at the local races. Becuase THEY ARE DUMB.

I have never in my life wished for another man to fuck a pig and get caught more than I do right now. Except that if he did, if there was some Austin Gullette protege out there, he wouldn't make the news unless he was running for Congress. And even then, they'd get confused over the term "pork-barrel". The news is 80% politics, 20% Iraq, with a 15 percent overlap of Iraq/Politics. If Ashlee Simpson had appeared on SNL three weeks from now, her story wouldn't have petered out in less than a week. Thank goodness for small favors.

Anyway, they say that all politics are local. And I say that all politics are fucking stupid. By applying the Fucking Stupid Commutative Principle, then, we find that all local politics are fucking stupid. But now we need evidence to back up our theory. Can we discover any? Let's find out together.

ILLINOIS: You've heard of Illinois. That's where Barack Obama is giving Alan Keyes the kind of man-spanking Keyes professes to hate, but secretly loves. Only it's in the polls. But you may be surprised to know that there are other politicians in Illinois, some of them potentially almost as dumb as Keyes.

Jerry Weller, a Republican congressman from Illinois, is being challenged by Tari Renner, head of the poli-sci department at Illinois Wesleyan U. Weller, like some high school jock filled with roid rage, apparently feels the need to refer to his opponent as "the professor" at every opportunity, although there is no evidence as yet that Weller's campaign literature features crudely-drawn caricatures of Renner in a cap, gown, and big glasses. Weller, who is engaged to marry the daughter of a genocidal Guatemalan ex-dictator after the election, also is telling people that because some fringe anti-drug-war website "endorsed" Renner, that Renner is PRO-HEROIN. That entire preceding sentence is 100% true, especially the part about the dictator's daughter. I know. Even as I typed it, I thought to myself, "Damn, I'm making up some funny shit... wait, this is the TRUE part!"

KENTUCKY: Still, that's nothing compared to Kentucky, where Senator Jim Bunning is suddenly fighting for his career after going what many independent observers are calling COMPLETELY FUCKING NUTSO. He accused Democrats of beating his wife. He repeatedly changed the rules of his one debate with his opponent Daniel Mongiardo, performing his half of the debate on video from Washington, D.C., in an RNC studio, with no independent observers present. And he STILL got caught breaking the rules by using a teleprompter.

Faced with trouble, Bunning's camp did what any self-respecting Kentucky Republican would do. Called his opponent a queer little faggot who likes to fuck other men in the ass. Not in so many words, of course. This is Kentucky 2004, not Kentucky 1992! They've moved out of the Dark Ages, people. No, instead, David Williams, president of the state senate, made the point with subtlety and class. It's ACTUAL HOMOPHOBE-BAITING QUOTE TIME!

"What a shame it would be if we traded the strong left hand of Jim Bunning -- the punch that he has -- for the limp wrist of Mongiardo. [Bunning is] fully capable of still throwing that hard pitch from the mound. And his opponent is a switch-hitter who doesn't know if he's on the left or the right."

See? It's a baseball metaphor! 'Cause Bunning used to play major-league baseball, which is 100% straight and American. Williams, of course, denied that his statement was meant in a sexual way, and to give him the benefit of the doubt, allow me to list all the various connotations and meanings the term "limp wrist" has that do not apply to homosexual slurs.

There, I'm done.

MINNESOTA: And how much more local can you get than my own back yard? In our own Sixth District, just a ways north of me, Republican Mark Kennedy is staving off a challenge from Patty Wetterling, who rose to prominence after her son was abducted in 1989. Kennedy, who is apparently a bit of a complete asshole, started running ads that accused Wetterling of having "latched on to radical extremist groups".

My heavens! Did she visit a Hezbollah training camp? Join PETA? Was she, in fact, an Al Qaeda deep-cover mole, and her so-called "abducted son" was actually a DIRTY BOMB? No. "Latched on to radical extremist groups", translated from Asshole Politician into English, comes out as "Received support and money from MOVEON.ORG". Folks, if MoveOn is a radical extremist group, then Habitat for Humanity is the Symbionese Liberation Army.

So, over the next five days, as you look at the presidential election and despair at the state of politics, take heart in the knowledge that it gets much, much worse the farther you move down the ticket.

Something Giver, Maybe?

Memo to Tim Pawlenty, governor of Minnesota: YOU DUMB, EVIL, FUCK.

On behalf of the European invading force, I'd like to once again apologize to the indiginous peoples of America. We seem to be biologically incapable of not fucking you over every chance we get. Every once in a while, we give you something we think we don't want as a half-assed way of making up for all the shit we've pulled in the past. And then it turns out there's actually MONEY in it, and we take it back, and give you something ELSE we think is worthless to make up for it. You know, there used to be an expression for that, but I just can't remember what it is. In any event, it's a shitty way to act, but at this point, it's practically enshrined as tradition.

Which doesn't excuse Tim Pawlenty for not only trying to do it again, but doing it in such a crass manner that I'm surprised he's not throwing in a truckload of smallpox-laden blankets to sweeten the deal.

See, back in 1989, Minnesota negotiated a deal with tribal leaders that let them run gambling casinos in the state. Since then, the casinos have done pretty well for themselves, because, well, a whole lot of people find flashing lights, buffet tables, and Wayne Newton* much more interesting than statistics and math. They've made quite a bit of money in the past fifteen years, and don't think we haven't noticed.

See, in 1989, the agreement that was reached was that the tribes would keep their money, and not give any of it to the state of Minnesota. Because they're technically sovereign nations, and because technically we've fucked them non-stop for five centuries. Unfortunately, Republicans are a lot like Daffy Duck. You can't leave a big pile of money lying around like that without them going all bug-eyed at it and conniving ways to get some of it for themselves.

Pawlenty, being the conscientious sort, explored all the options available to him before settling on blatant extortion.

Our fine governor has basically demanded that the tribal leaders meet with him to negotiate a better deal for the state. Better to the tune of three hundred and fifty million dollars. Per year. As the Star Tribune helpfully pointed out to put this in perspective, this is roughly half as much money as the state took in this year from every other corporation's income taxes PUT TOGETHER. Pawlenty says that's about 25% of the tribes' casino profits, which, much like the "75% of Al Qaeda" figure, should be taken at face value and not examined in any detail at all, please..

Since this would obviously be a crappy deal to make from the tribes' perspective, Pawenty's going to need a pretty big stick to get them to come to the table to negotiate away their money. So he's threatening to bring in non-tribal casinos from the big casinso companies, under the argument that even though Indian tribes have had exclusive casino rights for the last 15 years, it's not really exclusive, and if they want it to really be exclusive, they'd better pony up the dough.

Even when you ignore the issues of sovereignty and legality, the whole thing stinks to high heaven. Imagine if Pawlenty went to the board of directors of, say, OfficeMax. And he goes to them and he says, "Gimme a whole bunch of money, which I estimate is a quarter of your profits no matter what your numbers actually say. If you don't, I'm going to use my power in the government to open up a whole bunch of Staples stores, capice?"

There'd be a HUGE uproar and scandal. And that's without a long history of our ancestors attempting to wipe out all the paper salesmen in the prairie. But do you think most of the people here are going to stand up for the tribes? Me neither. Even when the state's representatives are blatantly using the kind of threatening language you'd normally find in a bad "Sopranos" episode. Yes, it's ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"The issue here is the tribes have a choice. I came away from my [Las Vegas] meeting thinking that the best outcome would be a new arrangement with our tribes. [The state could get] substantially more revenue from a private gaming option, [but] we would have pressure to have more than one casino, although that could be done. We'd also have to establish a gaming commission. But that could be done too." - Dan McElroy, Pawlenty's chief of staff.

Appalling. He might as well have come out and said "I'd hate for anything... bad... to happen to your lovely casino," while one of his henchmen smashed in a slot machine with a baseball bat. If they could get $350 million a year out of a couple of new, non-Indian casinos, and the previous agreements really allow it, then what's stopping him? I'll tell you what. More casinos means less profit per casino. There isn't, despite a certain amount of anecdotal evidence to the contrary, an infinite supply of suckers with money in this state.

So instead, Pawlenty, like so many of his forebears, is going to try to strongarm the natives to get their piece of action they wanted no part of in years past. Thanks for making us all look bad again, fuckhead.

*Here's an interesting behind the scenes moment for you. I planned to just type in Wayne Newton as a prime example of the kind of entertainment they have at casinos, but I decided, in fairness, to visit Grand Casino's Minnesota web site. And right there, listed for Friday, October 22 at their Hinckley casino was... WAYNE NEWTON.

Go Cry Into Your Little Hankie

Memo to you and your Homer Hanky: YOU ARE DUMB.

Today, we're going to discuss why sports fans are worse than nerds. Sports fans like to mock nerds, which is perfectly understandable, until you realize that sports fans ARE nerds, at least by the officially accepted YAD definition, which is "someone who will tell you about their hobby even though you don't want to know".

The sporties are bad enough during the regular season, but let one local team get into the playoffs, and all of a sudden, their numbers swell, their fervor grows and throbs, and they start hanging shit up and waving shit around. Like Homer Hankies.

A "Homer Hanky" is the offical square of cheap cloth printed by underpaid third-world labor of the Minnesota Twins. You can tell it's a Homer Hanky, and not an ordinary nose-wipe, by the words "HOMER HANKY" emblazoned upon it. The Homer Hanky is then waved by fans whenever another chapter of the Iliad is completed.

OK, I'll admit I'm not actually precisely aware of the proper HH* usage. I don't know if it's waved to encourage a home run, or to celebrate one. I don't know if it can also be used as a regular hanky, or if it's sacrosanct in order to protect people in neighboring seats when it's subsequently waved. I do know that it's vitally necessary to give the fans something to do during a baseball game, because that way, you mask the astonishing level of inactivity on the field.

Baseball cracks me up. It truly is the "national pastime", because a lot of people spend a lot of time doing nothing during a baseball game. And don't send me e-mails or come to the forum with your Ken Burns shit about how all these guys work really hard and it isn't easy to stand there for the eleven or so subjective hours it takes to get through a game and all that. I've heard it all before.

The fact is, at any given moment during a baseball game, there are 18 people playing. Technically, that number could be more, thanks to the designated hitter rule, but trust me, it is kinder to baseball to leave that number at 18. Of those 18 people, throughout the entire game, five of them are guaranteed to be sessile. They have nothing to do. It's a different five people depending on when you check, but it's always at least five. That's a 28% inactiviy rate right there, or, by my handy conversion chart, "College Freshman".

For a vast majority of the time, that five number actually varies between five and eight, and spends a lot of time on 7 or 8. Let's be generous and split it evenly, 1/4 of the game five people are inactive, 1/4 of the game it's 6, etc. That's a 36% inactivity rate, and again, we go to the conversion chart, and see that that compares roughly to a cubicle drone on an average day.

The best hitters in baseball manage to hit the ball about a third of the time. Let's be generous and say that every hitter is that good. That means that for two thirds of a game, seven more people are inactive. This brings the total inactivity rate in a game of baseball to a mind-staggering, conservative estimate of 62.1%, or Someone Recovering From Minor Surgery.

But even during the times when the ball gets hit, not everyone in the field gets involved in the play. Let's again be generous, and assume that every single time the ball gets hit, it results in a triple play involving one fielder and three base-guys. That means for 1/3 of the game, an additional three people are inactive. Bringing the total inactivity rate in a game of baseball to SIXTY SEVEN POINT SIX PERCENT. That means that when you go to the single most exciting baseball game in the universe, where everybody is hitting like an All-Star and every play is part of a highlight reel, people are only actually doing stuff a third of the time.

THIS is what you're all excited about. This is what you hang your hankies up over, what makes you add "GO TWINS" to our electronic bus signs that would otherwise tell us where the bus is going, what makes you overturn cars and set them on fire on the off chance your local group of two-thirds-sessile steroid freaks defeats the other cities' teams? At least when nerds get excited about stuff, it's stuff where things actually happen**. And at least their stupid made-up merchandise lights up and makes sounds and fires missiles. It's not some cheap fucking piece of cloth you have to wave around for nine innings to keep your attenuated attention span happy because NOTHING'S HAPPENING ON THE FIELD.

So there you have it. Sports fans have been mathematically proven to be worse than nerds. Nerds, you may feel free to use these statistics at the next social gathering in which sports fans are also present, but I waive any liability for any wedgies that this action may incur.

*I was sick of typing "Homer Hanky" by the time I hit the first "m" in the first paragraph, so it's HH from here on out.

*OK, not the Stargate SG-1 fans, I'll grant you that one.

Don't Fear Change

Memo to the world: I LOVE YOU.

There is no hate in my heart today. Only joy. The kind of pure, effervescent joy that can only come from slamming fools into bridge pillars like they were Princess Di. I speak, of course, of Burnout 3, the holiest of holy driving games, a game so good that it makes me love everyone.

I love Dick Cheney. Thank you, Dick Cheney, for putting the lives of everyday Americans ahead of partisan politics. They may say the Bush administration didn't do enough to prevent 9/11, but they've learned from their mistakes. When Dick Cheney had concrete evidence that electing John Kerry would cause a devastating terrorist attack on America, they didn't sit on it. They ACTED. Cheney interrupted his own campaign speech to warn the American public that if they voted for Kerry, we would all die horribly at the hands of Muslim extremists who hate our freedom. You cannot help but love such an act of purest altruism.

I love George W. Bush, whose charming malapropisms and cottonmouth obviously belie a competence so understated as to be almost indistinguishable from random chance and background noise. Why, just the other day, in Missouri, he told a crowd of friendly, loyal Midwesterners that "Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many O-B-G-Y-N's aren't able to practice their, their love with women all across this country." Thank you, Dubya, friend to horny gynecologists everywhere. You're just like a regular guy. Plus, if I vote for you, I won't die in a terrorist attack ever again.

This is so much nicer, isn't it? Maybe I should see if "youaredumbbutthatsok.net" is taken. Without that extra bit of reassurance, really, the site seems awfully harsh and judgmental for the newfound joyheart beating in my lovechest.

I even love Bob Ferdinand, of Fridley. He wrote an insightful letter to the local newspaper about how global warming can't possibly be real because it was a lot cooler in his backyard this summer. Oh, sure, others have made that point beforehand, usually in jest, but Frigid Fridley Bob was deadly serious. He even used numbers (74% below average days!), so you know he must be a real scientist. I think it's great that scientists have stopped publishing the results of their climate studies in stuffy old scientific journals and put them in the editorial pages of newspapers. I can only hope that one day, there will be a scientist who learns to draw, and then he can teach us all about science right next to "Ziggy" and "Love Is". After all, the editorial page is still a bit hoity-toity, what with it being near all those long, boring stories at the back of the main section of the paper.

I love George Lucas. He's a brilliant writer and an epic filmmaker whose best moments, ironically, are in the small scenes, like when C-3PO got his head stuck on a Battle Droid's body, or when Anakin Skywalker compared Queen Amidala's skin to sand. His only real flaw is that he is, like all great artists, a perfectionist. I think it's great that he's changed the Special Editions even MORE for the DVD release of the Star Wars trilogy, with a new Jabba, a new voice for the Emperor, and putting dreamy Hayden Christenson's ghost where that lumpy Sebastian Shaw guy was in "Jedi". I mean, if I could go back and change my eighth-grade history papers and get them regraded and then bought by millions of devoted Bryan Lambert's Eighth Grade History Paper fans, you know I would.

Actually, that's a great idea! The Web is impermanent! It's all-digital! It can be seamlessly changed. I will follow the example of my new hero George Lucas and create You Are Dumb: Special Edition. Reflecting the newfound joy and love in my heart, I'll go back and "digitally remaster" all my old columns! Zell Miller's not that bad a guy! It's not pigfucking, it's piglovemaking! Ninjas and Mormons CAN get along in peace and harmony! People aren't dumb and wrong, they're just... misguided! Differently-thinking!

Plus, now that I'm a more experienced web-columnist, I can go back and add technological innovations I didn't have available to me back in February, like Flash animations! Multi-colored text! Blink tags! You'll be able to experience You Are Dumb Dot Net all over again, for the first time! Only nicer! And friendlier! And full.... of.... love.........

Why are you all looking at me like that?

Stickless Fury

Memo to Minnesotans: THE STATE FAIR IS DUMB.

Put down your torches and pitchforks. Search your feelings. You know this to be true. Your happy little agrarian Lollapalooza is a nightmarish, lumbering self-parody. Go ahead, admit it to yourself. It's not like it'll stop you from going.

The State Fair is like Disney's version of the 50's. Only it's not Disney, it's one of those Disney knockoff companies that puts out a cheap direct-to-video version of whatever story Disney adapted. You know, like when "Aladdin" came out, and then there was suddenly this video of "The Arabian Prince" with suspiciously similar cover art on it, and if you were foolish enough to give in and buy it for your kids, you were treated to 40 minutes of "animation" with about a dozen drawings and one bored guy doing all the voices? It's like that company got hired to build a transient amusement park celebrating White Midwestern Culture Circa 1954. For two weeks. Every year.

If it were actually held somewhere in the state where there are still, you know. ANIMALS, and if it were held in some mythical country where "farmers" weren't an endangered species, then yeah, OK, have your little State Fair and look at cows and shit*. But it ain't. It's held smack-dab in the middle of the Twin Cities Metro, so that aging suburbanites can gawk at cows, stuff their faces, and relive the fun of a simpler time.

Which would be just fucking dandy, except that most of the antiquated "fun" of the State Fair is just stuff we have better versions of now. Crappy rides. Staring at cows. Heads made out of butter. It's much like the difference between playing Ms. Pac Man in 2004, and playing Pole Position in 2004. Bear with me. You know these analogies always pan out in the end.

Playing Ms. Pac-Man in 2004 is fine, because while games in general have improved since Ms. Pac-Man was released, the actual Ms. Pac-Man game hasn't been significantly improved upon. But if you're playing Pole Position in 20004, you've let nostalgia take over your critical faculties, because virtually every single game with a car in it between 1982 and today is better than Pole Position in every way that matters.

Similarly, virtually every activity at the State Fair has been improved upon elsewhere. Rides are larger, faster, and permanent. Crappy carnival games are available all summer long with ample free parking, and can even be played in the wintertime in many area mall arcades. Cows have been segmented, wrapped in plastic, and placed into refrigerated cases for your convenience. And in the Age of Viagra, does anybody REALLY care how big your zucchini is? In addition, many foods have actually been removed from sticks.

Over the next two weeks, "on a stick" is going to be said more times than at the Crucifixion Developers' Conference of 372 B.C. And every time they say it, my blood pressure's going to go up two points. That's the thing they do here. Put stuff on sticks so you can carry it and eat it. Usually fried stuff. They consider it a badge of honor here to find something that has previously gone un-batter-dipped, un-deep-fried, and un-sticked, and correct that grievous error. They can suck my dick on a stick.

You people need to realize something. Between the Minnesota State Fair and Scotland, there are simply no edible products in the history of gastronomy left to deep fry. You've dipped it all in batter. It's done. Pickled eggs. Mars bars. Caviar. If the Chilean soccer team had been Minnesotan, and had crashed in a plane full of eggs, milk, flour, and canola oil, they STILL WOULD HAVE TURNED TO CANNIBALISM. "Well, we've got the makings for batter, but nothing to fry! Hey, Sven! C'mere!" Their lives were saved by Sven. On a stick.

I went to the State Fair once. Now, I've grown up with a fairly sheltered, fairly suburban, fairly middle-class lifestyle. I have spent most of my past 35 years surrounded by Caucasians. And the State Fair was the single whitest experience of my life. It was an albino ocean. Did you know that for the next two weeks, legally, the actual Caucasus region has to be called something else, because the Minnesota State Fair supersedes it? I'm not saying that people with melanin don't attend, or are lynched near the lemonade stand or anything. I'm just saying that either it was a freakish coincidence, or certain subsets of the Minnesota population are more inclined to re-live the 50's than others.

But hey, don't let me ruin your fun. Just don't expect any sympathy from those of us who are earning our coronary infarctions honestly, through heroic quantities of Taco Bell and righteous rage. I ain't goin' out with a batter-dipped stick lodged in my aorta, I'll tell you that.

* Feel free to parse this sentence in either of the two potential ways it can be read. Both are equally valid.

A Treatise On The Nature Of Inevitability

Some things are inevitable.

Even before I started chronicling the annals of stupidity on this very site, I knew that. The sun rises, the sun sets. People age, people die. The tides rise and fall. And certain sets of stimuli will always prompt the same fucking response when applied to enough stupid people.

It's been colder than usual for the past week here in Minneapolis. Weather in the 60's. In August. It's a bit outside the norm, yeah. Doesn't bother me, of course, because, well, I fucking understand thermodynamics. It's a hell of a lot easier to generate needed heat than to pump away the excess, so if I've got a choice between sixty degrees and putting on a jacket, or 95 degrees and cranking a half-assed wall air conditioner, well, you can guess what I'll pick every time.

Except for the thing. The thing that they always say when it's cold. The inevitable thing. You dread it. You fear it. You almost want it to happen just so it'll be over with. But you always hold out hope that if you just keep to yourself, try not to pay attention to conversations on the bus, or in your office, that this time, you'll make it through. This time, you won't hear it.

And then some fuckwad the third in Chaska thinks he's so incredibly fucking clever for coming up with it that he sends it to the newspaper. And the newspaper editor, in an inexcusable deriliction of duty, runs it in the letters section. What is that editor thinking? None of us will ever know, but I hope and pray that he was huffing paint thinner beforehand, because impairment, while not an EXCUSE, mind, would at least provide a valid explanation for why it saw print.

So, to that nameless newspaper editor, and more importantly, to Robert R. Fafinsky III of Chaska, MN, I hereby bestow a hearty You Are Dumb Dot Net "Fuck You, And Your Mama Too" award for being the first person during this cold snap to make the goddamn global warming "joke" in my presence.

Since you all know what I'm talking about, I reproduce his version of it merely for cataloging and in-depth classification purposes. This is an allowed scientific use of ACTUAL QUOTE TIME, as authorized under subsection 2-C.

"It is the middle of August, and I am shaking out of fear of global warming. Wait a minute, I am actually just shivering due to the recent record low temperatures in the region." Har de har har. It is, as they say, JUST LIKE COMEDY. Note the way he led us down one path, and then, partway through, switched it up! You thought, O foolish reader, that you would be reading a liberal environmentalist screed the likes of which the local newspaper often prints in its pages, but I, Robert R. Fafinsky THE THIRD, have pulled the wool over your eyes with my jape!

After all, if's called Global WARMING, not Global Making It Cooler Than Usual During August, right! You utter dipshit. I mean, it's bad enough that you have to flaunt your complete misunderstanding of climate change and the whole issue, but that's nothing compared to the disservice you've shown to Sweet Mother Comedy. Comedy is not some fifty cent whore you can use, quickly, embarrassingly, and inadequately, and then toss aside when you're done with it. But that's just what your weak-ass joke has done. You've shamed Comedy. You owe Comedy a formal apology. If Comedy had a glove, it'd slap you across the face with it and challenge you to punchlines at dawn. And you'd lose, because, and I'm not sure if you've figured this out yet, but you're not fucking funny.

Let this be a lesson to you all. The next time you think, even briefly, about making any variation on the Global Warming joke thanks to some local climatic event, think of Robert R. Fafinski THE THIRD. Learn from his mistake. Halt your tongue, or, failing that, at least have the common decency to put a bit of an ironic, "I know what I'm saying is a shitty joke" lilt into it. Treat Comedy with due respect, and she will pay your blessings back tenfold.

Take it from one who knows.

Den Fuurnihooars

Memo to the hundreds of people camped out in front of the new Ikea store yesterday morning: YOU FUCKING STUPID FUCKING FUCKS ARE FUCKING DUMB.

As a resident of Minneapolis, about a year or so ago I lived through the Krispy Kreme Onslaught. Minneapolis did, up until that point, not have any Krispy Kreme lardpuck shops. The donuts, which were just donuts, goddammit, had somehow accreted dozens of near-godlike qualities through word-of-mouth and mass delusion. Eating a Krispy Kreme donut was supposed to be akin to a mouthgasm, the kind of pleasure usually reserved for royalty. A dripping torus of pure heaven. And we were finally going to be able... no, we were going to be given the honor of being permitted the HONOR of buying them.

There were lines around the block. To be in possession of even a single Krispy Kreme donut gave you the ability to wage confectionary class warfare upon your friends and co-workers. Honest, caring Midwesterners wrestled with the "share or hoard" ethical dilemma. There may have been rioting in the streets.

Eventually, as more locations opened and boxes of the fucking things started clogging a rack at Target, we all came to our senses, realized they're just donuts, and moved on. Plus everyone jumped on board with Atkins, and as it turns out, KK donuts have WHEAT in them, so they became anathema. I hear Krispy Kreme is working on a low-carb donut now, but so far all they've managed is a bowl of hot fat with a layer of melted sugar on top, and it keeps melting the cheap plastic spoons.

You'd think we'd have learned our lesson, but nooooooooo. Now we've got an Ikea. Cheap, functional Scandinavian furniture. I have nothing against Ikea furniture. I'm not going to go all Fight Club on you, don't worry. But nearly 200 people CAMPED OUT OVERNIGHT so that they could be amongst the first to shop at the store Wednesday morning. And if an errant bulldozer had come careening through their ranks, killing them all, the average IQ in the Twin Cities metro would have jumped three points.

At least with the stupid fucking donuts, if you didn't have a KK shop in your area, you were out of luck. You had no other options, short of FedEx overnight, and all that nets you is a huge shipping bill and a box of day-old donuts. Furniture, on the other hand, deteriorates at a much slower rate.

If you live in the Twin Cities, and you wanted Ikea furniture before July 14, you could FUCKING WELL GET IT. Ikea does mail order, people. What kind of mentality, exactly, leads you to decide that sleeping overnight on pavement near the Mall of America is perfectly acceptable behavoir, yet going to a website and placing an order is TOO MUCH HASSLE? You people need help.

The first fucker was out there on Sunday night. SUNDAY NIGHT. There were actually six people there, but five of them won a contest and got a couple of grand worth of stuff to be there. I don't know if I'd swim in my own filth in Bloomington for four days for $2,000 worth of furniture, but you know what the sixth guy got? An eighty-buck armchair. That's 20 dollars a day. That's ninety five cents an HOUR. Toothless whores with only three limbs sell themselves for more than 95 cents an hour. Sweatshop workers in third-world countries are lining up to offer 30-year-old Carl Aasen career advice.

Aasen is Swedish for "asshole". And I believe, to use another Swedish phrase, that it's AKTUAAL KWOOUT TYM! ''I've never done a crazy thing in my life, and this is probably the last one."- Carl Aasen. So the guy decides to do ONE SINGLE CRAZY THING in his entire lifetime, and it's waiting four days in line for an eighty buck chair. You wild man. Either Carl is the dullest human being on the planet, or he's got a collection of mummified neighbor heads in his basement.

I just want every last one of the 2,000 people in line yesterday morning when the store opened, at least one of whom actually wept with joy according to news reports, that I hate you and I hate your shelves. Happy Belated Ikea Day!

At Least He'll Be Able To See The Forest

"I, Robot" scored very well amongst focus groups composed entirely of impotent men, you know. Just sayin'.

Memo to Republicans: STATES' RIGHTS ARE DUMB.

At least they are the way you use them. The whole thing about conservatives is that they're supposed to be for a small federal government, and that any time a decision could be made by local government, it should be. And that's fine. I mean, it's STUPID, but it's fine as an alternative philosophy.

Me, I spent a couple of years working for a small-town newspaper interacting with "local government" on a regular basis, and as bad as big-time politicians are, at least they're motivated by large-scale evil. Local politics is like a cable access reality show where the prize is two pieces of bubble gum and a nickel. You give these people any more responsibility, and it's Lord of the Flies all over again next time the school board meets.

But modern Republicans aren't actually interested in "states' rights". They don't want to just hand issues over to the states willy-nilly. States' rights are for stuff they can't get away with nationally. Unless you're in the South, where "states' rights" just means "We shoulda won that goldang Civil War!".

Any time you hear "give greater control to the states", you're seeing an agenda that wouldn't fly nationally, but will do just fine in red-state militia land. Like abortion restrictions. Or forestry. Ol' Dubya wants to "give the states greater control" over whether to allow logging roads, and therefore LOGGING, in national forests. Currently, thanks to our last President, you can't do it. There's almost 60 million acres of roadless national forest that's supposed to fucking well stay that way. And Bush can't get away with overriding it nationally, so he wants to "let the states decide". Ha ha ha.

Here's one of the dirty little secrets about liberals. As much as we love to hug the trees in a strictly euphemistic sense, we actually don't live NEAR trees in any significant numbers. We live on the coasts and in the big cities where any trees that DO exist were put there by the government, right in the median strip or through that sad little hole in the sidewalk. Out there where most of the real trees are, that's Scary Conservative Land. And gee, I wonder what the scary conservatives in Scary Conservative Land are going to decide to do with their trees? State's rights!

Here in Minnesota, where we've had to clear a big treeless swath through the Twin Cities to make room for all the liberals, our Scary Republican Governor has already gone on the record as saying this plan to cut down more trees is "good for the environment. As the reddening light filters through the summer leaves, I look at the forest floor, and think to myself, "What the fuck am I doing out here? I need a Wi-Fi point! It's ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Minnesotans can be assured that Governor Pawlenty will exercise the judgment necessary to balance forest access with environmental protection." - Pawlenty spokesman Dan Wolter, five seconds before running off-stage to put in a buy order on McCulloch stock.

Of course, just suggest that a state might have the right to decide whether or not gays can marry, and you'll see how far the conservative love of states' rights gets you. Sorry, Massachussetts! At least you're welcome to cut down the last dozen or so of your trees. An Office Max would look good right about there, anyway.

Oh My Darlin' Nicotine

Memo to everyone who's used the phrase "smoking ban" in the past three weeks: YOU ARE DUMB.

I mean, I thought the concealed carry bullshit last year was bad enough, but it seems like every summer now we have to have a big brouhaha pitting Public Safety against Individual Rights. And both sides rife with annoying dumbasses.

This year, Minneapolis and St. Paul are thinking of joining the ranks of New York and LA and banning smoking in restaurants and bars. It is, as anyone who's been near NY or LA a couple of years ago can attest, a bit of a divisive issue, pitting obnoxious assholes against nosy do-gooders in a battle to the heat death of the universe.

After watching months of debate, I have finally settled my own internal struggle over the issue, which pitted my general leftist "public health" streak against my vaguely libertarian "back the fuck off" tendencies. Which made things fairly difficult for nearly thirty seconds until I realized that every single person involved on either side of the debate couldn't argue worth a damn and were a bunch of hysterical ninnies. My path was clear. Fuck 'em all. I don't smoke, I don't have asthma or allergies, I don't care, and you fools can't fucking make me.

It is, like I mentioned above, very reminiscent of the concealed-carry debate, where every single day, gun-control liberals would be predicting epic, Miller's Crossing shootouts every hour on the hour through the streets of downtown, while the Charlton Heston wannabes in their gated communities bemoaned their inability to fill anyone of color full of lead who threatened them by coming within a 50 foot radius, leading to anarchy, chaos, the keying of their Lexus, and the imposition of a fascist dictatorship where the Edina school board used to be.

Enough already. And it's not as if they've stopped now that the law's on the books. Every couple of months, some wag with too much time on his hands and a Hotmail account feels the need to let eveyrone reading the paper know that the other side's dire predictions of doom didn't come true. Thanks for the tip, Concerned Citizen. I'm sure Bob Woodward will be asking to intern with you any fucking minute now.

Same thing's happening with the tentative smoking ban. The anti-smoking people are running around yelling about how second-hand smoke is full of tiny Jeffrey Dahmer particles that work their way into your lungs and stuff your alveoli into tiny refrigerators, one by one. Every single day, a poor waitress's lungs explode in a cloud of black and pink tar, you know. All because they're forced to serve jalapeno poppers to people who can't taste anything anyway.

I would be more sympathetic to their cause if I didn't live in a state, and in a country, where most of our electricity comes from coal plants belching particulates into the air, and where the administration thinks 40-year-old tech is just dandy for our lungs because upgrading to something post-LBJ would cost his energy buddies a portion of the money they stole this decade. Think globally, breathe locally. It's enough to make me consider taking up smoking in public, until, of course, I listen to the Other Side.

The other side, of course, is where they're predicting the immediate shutdown and bankruptcy of every single bar, restaurant, and coffee house in the Twin Cities Metro once those tobacco lovers abandon the scene in droves. Massive boycotts and economic destruction await as soon as the rights of millions to take a side trip to Marlboro Country during lunch at Applebees are impinged in the slightest. Their non-stop whining and claims of becoming a persecuted minority would ring much clearer if I could hear them over the sounds of the GIANT MONKEY ON THEIR BACK that's screeching and throwing nicotine-laden poop all over the public discourse.

So, you know. Do whatever the hell you want. Ban smoking. Force everyone to smoke. I don't care anymore. Argue about it amongst yourselves for the next year or so. Maybe if we can keep the local governments tied up with this long enough, they'll forget about the whole "new stadium" thing.

Bragging Rights and Assholes

Memo to the asshole on Highway 169 North: YOU ARE DUMB.

In fact, let's expand the mandate a bit to any asshole who permanently affixes something to the back of their car without actually thinking about what it says. Like getting a tattoo when you're drunk, it's a bad idea. Case in point. People who spend their money on personalized license plates that say something that was already on the back of their car for free. I've seen a Lexus with the license plate "LEXUS", a four by four with the plate "4 X 4", etc. I can only assume they got hung up on the idea of a personalized license plate, only to discover, to their horror, that there was nothing at all interesting about them, so they panicked.

Similarly, bumper stickers. If you must express a viewpoint using your car's ass as a medium, put some thought into it. Take some care. Try to show us something we haven't seen before. And try to show us something that makes sense.

Which brings us to the asshole on 169. Driving there on Monday afternoon, we saw a bumper sticker that said: "NO ONE CAN KILL AMERICANS AND BRAG ABOUT IT. NO ONE."

Which is an incredibly odd sentiment to put on your car if you take it literally. I mean, no one can play ping-pong with their own spleen, either, but you don't see people with "DOWN WITH SPLEEN-PONG" bumper stickers. If it's so impossible that you have to state not once, but TWICE, that "no one" can do it, then what's there to be concerned about? Obviously, for it to be enough of a problem to warrant a bumper sticker, SOMEONE must be killing Americans and bragging about it.

Maybe he means Dubya? After all, as Governor of Texas, our president presided over 134 executions, including children and the mentally disabled. And in an infamous Talk magazine interview, openly mocked one of them (Karla Faye Tucker). Perhaps he's still incensed at the President's callous attitude toward life and death?

Of course, Americans kill Americans all the time. Maybe he means the perpetrators of the thousands of murders in the US every year. I bet some of them brag. Corporate polluters? The NRA? Those guys at Enron who had the parties and the cheering during the California wildfires? Hm.

That's the problem with unclear bumper stickers. We simply don't know. Oh, of course we could play the ODDS, and assume that since he 's so hung up on Americans being killed and bragged about that it must be non-Americans that are doing the killing and the bragging. Heck, we could even play the odds further, and assume that he means filthy brown Ay-Rabs that are doing the killing and the bragging and must be stopped.

Which brings with it its own set of problems, doesn't it? Because for that to work, for the 169 asshole to be able to take a moral high ground so absolute that it can be printed on vinyl and adhered, permanently, to a steel bumper, then Americans would have to be so noble that none of us would ever even consider bragging about killing foreigners...

Oops.

But this is my point. Ten minutes of sober reflection would have revealed to the 169 asshole that the entire point of his bumper sticker is demolished by the mere existence of Ann Coulter. He'd have reached the conclusion that putting this bumper sticker on his car would make him an asshole, and, ideally, not done it, thus simultaneously saving hundreds of drivers from having to read assholery and depriving me of fodder for the column.

Today's article has been brought to you by yee-haw jingoism and the numbers one, six, and nine.

They Shall Over-Rev

We live in troubled times. Corruption is rampant. Abuse of power runs unchecked. The vaunted "will of the people" is sapped, thwarted, ignored, and manipulated on a regular basis. But finally, the people are saying they have had enough. They are going to send a message to those in power. They are going to take to the streets and raise their voices. Their rallying cry: two bucks a gallon is an UNSPEAKABLE CRIME AGAINST AMERICAN HUMANITY.

Yes, Americans last week were out in front of gas stations, protesting high gas prices. Take a second to read that sentence again. It's slippery. It glides off the mind, as we are well-conditioned to treat something like that the way we'd treat a pink elephant hallucination. Pretend we never saw it and move along. But it's true.

In York, PA, Dan Wagner waved a sign outside a gas station encouraging people driving their cars to honk their horns if they thought gas prices were too high. The resulting vibrations in the pillars of civilization were picked up by ultrasensitive seismographs in Ohio for nearly three minutes until a bunny started hopping outside the Akron Seismology Institute, completely obscuring the readings.

The average price of a gallon of gas in York County that day was $1.99 a gallon. Dan Wagner's message? "I'm here to say, 'Hey, let's get 'em down there'." Dan Wagner is an idiot.

Right here in Minneapolis, there were signs and chants outside gas stations on Friday. Signs like "TANKS A LOT". And "Bushgivesmegaspains.com (Yes They Are Setting Up A National Web Site)", which is right up there with We Shall Overcome as protest slogans go. I'd love to make fun of them even more, but nobody bothered quoting any of them. And when local TV news decides you don't have anything interesting to say, that's a much harsher indictment than I could ever come up with.

Average price of a gallon of gas in the Twin Cities when these protests took place? $2.04.

In Huntington, West Virginia, Marcella Adkins, also requesting the honking of drivers sympathetic to her cause, explained that "As working people, we need lower prices. As things are today, you work and you put it in your gas tank." Upon reading the phrase "working people need lower prices", four dozen economists had aneurysms and died. Fortunately, the total was two short of the 50 dead economists required to qualify Adkins for the Congressional Medal of Honor, because she didn't do it on purpose. She's just dumb.

Gas prices in Huntington as of May 10, which is all I could find because some hick probably got chaw in the Huntington newspaper's websearch function, causing it to be completely unable to sort results by date? $2.05 a gallon.

These protests are apparently being organized by America Comes Together, a group devoted to two goals. First, they want to convince Ameriica that George W. Bush is to blame for the current prices at the pump. This is a noble goal, as it reduces complex global political and economic trends into a wave of anger at someone I can't stand. Unfortunately, their second goal appears to be spreading their message through the somewhat nonstandard medium of "annoying fuckheads with astonishingly poor handwriting and signmaking skills". If these people expect to be taken seriously as a movement, they need to manage better spelling and more legible signs than, say, a Monday Night RAW audience. If you cannot leap this astonishingly low bar, STAY HOME.

Better yet, stay home anyway, you whiners. People on the coasts have been paying $2.20 a gallon for over a year now, and they suck it up and they pay because they need to get to where they're going. People in other countries pay $4-$6/gallon for gas, and have for years, and they suck it up and they pay because they need to get to where they're going. You need to get a fucking grip.

And here's your happy, gift-wrapped grip, courtesy of You Are Dumb. You know where else they're protesting gas prices this week? Beirut, Lebanon. A place where the average salary is considerably lower than Minneapolis, MN. Know how much a gallon of gas costs in Lebanon? $3.28. You know what happens to people in Lebanon who protest gas prices? They get SHOT TO DEATH.

So suck it up. Count your blessings. Count your mileage. Take your signs, especially your Pavlov Specials that make other drivers think they're doing more than adding to noise pollution when they lay on their horns, and shove 'em up your ass. Die fast, die soon, and get your corpse squished by lots of rocks so that a hundred thousand years from now, you'll be useful to some future society that needs to make plastic out of you.

More Crackers, More Crackers

Memo to David Pence: YOU ARE DEVOUTLY DUMB.

The Cracker Police are at it again. And I'm not talknig about Mississippi cops. No, it's Whack-A-Catholic time again, as the debate over who gets to munch the Godbiscuit heats up yet again. And this time, in my own backyard.

David Pence is rounding up a Pastry Posse, you see. He's not actually calling it a Pastry Posse, of course. Catholics are less fond of wacky alliteration than I am, which is probably for the best. Pence's Pastry Posse, like some rogue group of Atkins vigilantes, will be doing everything it can this Sunday to make sure no stinking sash-wearers get any of that sweet, sweet Mock Jesus in St. Paul, MN.

The sash, specifically a rainbow sash, is a new thing. In the past couple of years, on Pentecost Sunday *, gay Catholics wear a rainbow sash to Mass. It's intended to send an important message, a message of tolerance, a message of changing the church from the inside. The rainbow sash proudly states, "Even though most of you hate gay people and oppose everything we stand for, we still want to come by on Sundays and bring a hot dish to the potluck because our parents taught us to believe in this one specific iteration of Mr. Invisible Sky Buddy."

To which David Pence proudly responds, in essence, "If any of those freaky homos tries, to paraphrase one Macho Man Randy Savage, to 'Snap Into A Savior', I'll be up there with my big burly manbuddies to run interference, and possibly a pick of some kind, because even though pretty much every other Sunday they've been showing up without incident, this week I can figure out which ones are the fruits."

That was not an actual quote. That was merely a comedy device. In the event of an actual quote, there will be a short siren, a flashing light, and a representative from You Are Dumb Dot Net will appear on-screen to inform you that it is ACTUAL QUOTE TIME.

"At Catholic Charities, anybody who is hungry gets fed. But the Eucharist isn't like that. The Eucharist is a restricted meal. The Church has always said you don't come to Communion unless you believe in Christianity the way the Catholic Church has transmitted the tradition.'' - David Pence, who, upon uttering the phrase "restricted meal", makes me almost regret having made the one alotted Atkins joke up in paragraph three.

The actual methods by which Pence's Posse's Pastry Prevention will take place are unclear. Pence himself has ruled out tackling, presumbably because of the risk of gay cooties. He's also claimed to be committed to nonviolence. But there will be some form of "disruption". Perhaps there will be some sort of loud noise and visual distraction, or a kind of "Hands Across Three Pews" human chain. Or possibly we can glean some tactical information from the name of the group.

See, I've been calling them Pence's Pastry Posse because the actual name of the group is so astonishingly, hilariously bad that it needs to be presented in the proper context. The official name of Pence's Pastry Posse is.... The Ushers Of The Eucharist.

Done laughing yet? No? OK. I'll wait.

Feels good to get that out, doesn't it? Ushers of the Eucharist. I hope they have the little hats. And the flashlights. "Can I show you to your wafer, ma'am?" "I'm sorry, this section has been booked by an entire group of intolerant heterosexuals. We've got a few seats here in the back, if you promise to be quiet and not make a nuisance of yourselves." "Bride's party or groom's party? I'm sorry, but only one of each is allowed. This isn't Massachussets."

Unless, of course, they meant it as a reference to top-selling recording artist Usher, whose single "Burn" currently sits atop the... nah. That'd be DUMB.

* I have no idea what Pentecost Sunday is, as my first guess, involving the celebration of the price of tiny stones, is apparently not correct.

Stanek-Whiners

Memo to the Stanek-whiners: YOU ARE DUMB.

But first, some housekeeping. I skipped a day yesterday. Depending on how long you have been reading YAD, you may have found this strange or abnormal, but it's simply one of the side effects of the You Are Dumb Dot Net Pledge Of Internet Anger Quality, by which you, the reader, deserve a minimum standard of a half-assed column.

Unlike many Internet content providers, I understand the complex balancing act that comes from both wanting content that doesn't suck too, too badly, and the desire to read something, ANYTHING, you haven't read before instead of working. And that's why I promise you, my loyal readers, who stopped by multiple times yesterday to see if I'd managed to pull something out of my butt yet, that if I can't even half-ass 500 words of anger, profanity, and neologisms, then it's best for everyone that I just let it be. You deserve better. You deserve at least the bare minimum of motivation and effort that I can scrape up. I can only bitch about game reviews so many times before you all turn on me and set me on fire, after all.

And anyway, I skipped a Wednesday. Wednesday is New Onion Day. So it's not like you didn't have options.

With that out of the way, we turn to the delicate issue of the Stanek-whiners. Which, for non-Minnesotans and locals who don't follow the news, requires a bit of an explanation.

Rich Stanek was Gov. Pawlenty's choice to become Commissioner of Public Safety. Gov. Pawlenty, for those who may not know, is an asshole. Seriously. You all made fun of us for picking Jesse Ventura, but at least he was the kind of asshole you could respect. Pawlenty's just a classic "fuck all y'all" Modern Republican cronyist fuckwad. Jesse did a lot of stuff I didn't like, but there's no way in hell he'd be running around scraping up money for stadiums, attacking gay marriage, screwing over the poor... as much, and appointing racist cops.

Rich Stanek was a racist cop, you see. Twelve years ago, in a police brutality suit which alleged that Stanek beat the living hell out of a melatonin-rich individual who hit his car, Stanek gave a deposition. And in that deposition, he admitted to telling racist jokes and throwing the n-word around like it was confetti at the Macy's parade. Oh, and this was the second time he'd been sued for beating up someone he'd stopped for DWB.

So this came out. Again. And all the people who should have cared each of the FIVE TIMES he won elections to the state House and this came up finally got their act together, and it got some play in the media, and he resigned. And then the fucking whiners came out of the woodwork.

Biggest whiner of all, of course, was Pawlenty, who started off talking about how concerned he was, and how problematic this was, and the public trust, and how he just found out about this horrible thing when it hit big. A few days later, seeing the whining take hold, he changed his tone. He didn't accept the resignation of his racist cop because he was a racist cop, you see. It's just that people get so upset by racist cops that it would have been difficult for him to get confirmed by the legislature.

"He's changed." "That was 12 years ago." "Watch what you say!" "Political correctness ruining people's lives!" "Partisan warfare!" WHINERS. Stick a plunger in it. Stanek is not some kind of horrible victim here. He gets his old job back (although people are making a bit of a stink about that now, too, so who knows?) A guy who fails to secure a high-paid, high-profile government job merely he beat up a couple of black people and called them names in the 90's is not a CAUSE. This is a bit of karmic payback. You think the $55,000 needed to settle the two brutality suits came out of HIS pocket? No, it came out of the department budget. Which means it came out of OUR POCKETS. And then, for a decade, he got to help make the laws of the state.

Do you hear that? I believe it's an iPod Mini, taken to the lab from Fantastic Voyage, and shrunk down to the size of a red blood cell. And through the tiny, tiny headphones plugged into it, you can hear a low-bitrate MP3 file in which they recorded the world's smallest violin playing the saddest song in the universe. Poor Rich Stanek.

"He's changed." "That was a long time ago." "What about redemption?" Fuck that noise. Even if he's a completely changed man, he was a RACIST COP. On the big list of things that keep us from glorious Utopia, racist cops are easily in the top ten. Racist cops ruin lives permanently. It's taken TWELVE YEARS for this to catch up with Stanek, for him to finally start seeing some consequences, and you whining bastards think he should get a pass now, too? YOU ARE DUMB.

Mark Dayton

Memo to Mark Dayton: YOU ARE DUMB.

You are a United States Senator. You are one of one hundred people who form the upper house of the federal government's legislative branch. There is a war on. So maybe you have better things to do in your spare time than fuck around trying to get baseball games on TV.

I mean, far be it from me to question a senator's priorities. Wait. Actually, VERY CLOSE be it to me. It's right here, next to the Vanilla Coke. Question a senator's priorities when he's spending time pandering to whiny fantards and business interests over goddamn baseball.

It's bad enough that your local ilk have to run around every single year trying to get the public to pay for shiny new stadiums. After all, if we don't have shiny stadiums, the teams will leave, and then, in the unlikely event that any of them win a national championship, some OTHER city will have to deal with rioting fans setting overturned cars on fire. These are OUR TEAMS, dammit. And if we don't spend tax money on tripling the capacity of luxury skyboxes, our cars will remain vertical and flame-free.

A city without flaming upside down cars simply isn't worth living in, after all. It provides variety. Interest. Flickering light effects. We live in the midwest, for fuck's sake. We can't afford to be any MORE boring, or we'll all fall asleep and crash our cars, flipping them over and setting them on fire. Obviously, stadium opponents would rather spend money on the poor and let OCCUPIED cars burn, instead of spending money on stadiums and letting PARKED cars burn.

Of course, if we do end up with a new baseball stadium, nobody's gonna fucking go and buy tickets. Not if Mark Dayton has his way. Because right now, you can't see the games on TV for free. The team took all the games and is trying to start a fledgling cable network to air them on. Victory Sports Network. Since it's Minnesota, it really should have been called Victory Between Forty And Eighty Percent Of The Time On Average Network, but they couldn't make that work as a logo. Anyway, these are the owners of sports teams, and as such, are completely unsympathetic individuals, so fuck them.

The cable and satellite companies don't want to shell out for it, though. This is because they are huge multinational corporations who do not have the time or the energy to make piddly little deals that only involve a single, non-New-York major metropolitan area. Because they are cable and satellite companies they are, as such, completely unsympathetic individuals, so fuck them too.

In an ideal, free-market world, these two behemoths would fight it out amongst themselves until it worked out or it didn't. But this is America, where the free market only counts if you want to pump mercury into the rivers or don't want people to eat while they're between jobs. The free market can't possibly be used to manage something as vital to the national interest as televised baseball games. Those of you outside Minneapolis may be laughing, but you haven't heard the news coverage. People are DISTRAUGHT that they can't watch the home team play. It's a travesty, a tragedy, and three to four other words that start with TRA and end in Y.

And what bigger voting bloc is there than people with multicolored caps and fucked-up priorities? I can't think of one. And neither can Senator Dayton, who has set up closed-door non-negotiation negotiation sessions (because they are somehow legally barred from negotiating). He's doing this "on behalf of those thousands of Minnesota Twins fans", and because he "want(s) the Twins on television, soon."

Well, good for you. While you're at it, I'd love to see more Angel, Firefly, and Home Movies. You're my senator. I voted for your sorry ass. So get cracking. And while you're at it, get The Swan canceled. Let me know if I need to wear a cap before you listen to me.