The Sporadic Curmudgeon

From the great state that delivered us unto the clutches of GW Bush and his logic-challenged god-jockey minions comes further evidence of Republican inbreeding.

A new bill is extruding its way through the moist, festering bowels of Florida’s government that would, among other things, allow university student to sue professors for teaching them science or exposing them to the Socratic Method. The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, is also one of the biggest turds floating in the Terri Schiavo cesspool o’ hypocrisy.

In the course of the story, Baxley contradicts himself several times. Let’s take a look, shall we?

“Some professors say, ‘Evolution is a fact. I don’t want to hear about Intelligent Design (a creationist theory), and if you don’t like it, there’s the door,’” Baxley said, citing one example when he thought a student should sue.

Just a few paragraphs down, when refuting Rep. Dan Gelber’s [D-Miami Beach] criticism of the demented bill, Baxley changes his tune:

But Baxley brushed off Gelber’s concerns. “Freedom is a dangerous thing, and you might be exposed to things you don’t want to hear,” he said.

And as a student of 20th century American history, this is my personal favorite:

“The critics ridicule me for daring to stand up for students and faculty,” he said, adding that he was called a McCarthyist.

Baxley later said he had a list of students who were discriminated against by professors, but refused to reveal names because he felt they would be persecuted.

I don’t know; sure sounds a lot like ol’ Joe "I have in my hand a list" McCarthy himself, if you ask me.

In a development bearing an uncanny resemblance to a terrible 1961 Danish-American sci-fi flick, paleontologists have found soft tissue in a 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil, including blood vessels.

This is absolutely amazing paleontology news, and will doubtless result in a complete rethinking of the fossilization process. But almost equally astounding is the fact that this discovery closely parallels the opening of one of the worst movies of all time, Reptilicus.

The film, directed (if you can call it that) by the notorious Syd Pink, is dumbfoundingly, hilariously bad, and involves a huge sock puppet ripping up a cardboard version of the Danish countryside. I guess what they say is true: Science is a goofy mistress.

It’s Easter time again, which means it’s time for my secret shame. I have a problem. With Peeps®.

I know, I know… Peeps® are cutsey. They’re childish.

They’re also the most addictive thing since Philip met Morris. This is the time of year when I spend my nights cruising Walgreens, hands shaking, with crystals of magenta sugar crusting the corners of my mouth. My tastes have become so depraved that Peeps® straight from the box don’t do it for me anymore. I leave the packages open for a week, until the little bunnies and chicks get all hard and leathery. That’s when they’re best.

I’m not alone in my addiction, either. One of my co-workers tells me that putting Peeps® in the microwave for ten seconds or so makes them swell up, and when they contract again they’re nice and chewy. I can’t wait until I get home tonight.

I don’t know how much longer I can keep functioning like this, but the damned things taste so good I just can’t stop.

It didn’t used to be like this. In the old days penises did not wander around a guy’s body like caribou hunting for lichen. Now you’ve got to think twice before shaking somebody’s hand.

The extremely disturbing image you’re currently shuddering at, though, isn’t a rare case of spontaneous genital migration. Russian surgeons have helped a man with malformed sexual organs by attaching his penis to his arm.

I used to know a guy that treated his malformed self-esteem by attaching other men’s penises to his… um, on second thought, never mind.

Many thanks to the person that sent me this story. I’d give his name, but he’d probably never forgive me.

A Japanese company, B2Up, has released a chewing gum that increases the size of your bust. The gum, aptly named “Bust-Up,” can supposedly increase breast size by up to 80%.

I fervently hope Bust-Up becomes available in the US. I forsee a Golden Age of entertainingly infantile practical jokes.

I was hunting around the web last night for an xml version of Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary (a vital part of my secret plan to alienate my readership by including humor no one but an antiquarian would get) when I ran across a modern successor: The Devil’s Dictionary X. Unlike most pretenders to Bierce’s throne, this one is actually smart and funny. Some examples:

Bitch

1. any woman who is all business.

2. a former girlfriend who has opted to discuss that unfortunate evening widely.

3. a small, skinny man with close cropped hair and a squeaky nasal voice who plays the submissive in all sexual encounters; eg, Eminem.

Cold

a mathematical constant: wherever your spouse or room-mate likes to keep the thermostat, plus two degrees.

Force, the

an invisible energy field which surrounds us and binds us to our mothers’ basements and our latex girlfriends.

Slander

v, to orally interpret the meaning of statistics.

One caveat: were I the possessor of a thin epidermis, I’d probably be happier not going there. Like all great satire, the Devil’s Dictionary X is promiscuously vicious, and no one gets out unscathed.

Special Note to Big John: Yes, the first definition was chosen with you in mind.

In the spring of 1828 an oddly passive young man showed up in the town square of Nuremburg, Germany, virtually incapable of communication. Concerned townspeople were eventually able to get through to him, and he told a disturbing tale: prior to his sudden appearance he had never seen another human being. He’d been locked in a dark dungeon his entire life, his jailer remaining unseen until just before his release. This was the beginning of the mystery of Kaspar Hauser. It only got stranger from there.

The Fortean Times is running a five-page article on a new theory regarding Hauser. This is the most detailed account of the affair I’ve run across since the inaccurate but perceptive 1974 Werner Herzog film Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (Every Man For Himself And God Against All). The film is also notable for the performance of Bruno S. as Kaspar, who was reportedly hypnotized for his role.

If you’re into bizarro history (and who isn’t, really?) then you’ve got some entertaining reading ahead of you.

Yahoo! News is running an interesting piece on the current 3D boom we’re experiencing, and what IMAX is doing about it. I’ve seen a couple of 3D IMAX films, and the combination of stereovision and a huge honking image is tough to beat. Plus, it’s about time we had another 3D boom, since it’s been 22 years since the last one suffered an ignominious end.

By my count, this makes the sixth time 3D has been popular (1880 or therabouts to 1900 or so, a tiny boomlet in 1920s New York, the Big One in 1952-1953, a porn-fueled 1968-1972 boom, and the 3D renaissance in the early eighties).

If you’re interested in 3D, you might want to grab your red-blue anaglyph glasses and head over to one of my sub-sites, Anaglyph @ Atomic Deathray.

A Romanian man (where else?) has discovered that symbolism shouldn’t be confused with reality after doctors removed his penis from a wedding ring. In all fairness, he claims his mistress did it to him as revenge because he fell asleep while doing the deed. I’m not sure that’s an improvement on the initial assumption, though…

The story also notes a man who got That Which Maketh Him A Guy caught in a cola bottle, which is an inversion of the usual beverage container/horny idiot mishap. It certainly raises a few circumferencial questions of its own. Is there a Romanian girth gap?

President Bush presented 14 National Medals of Science and Technology in a ceremony at the White House today, causing a tear in the fabric of reality. While cause for concern, quantum physicists today stressed that the rift in spacetime is far from unprecedented.

“We see this kind of thing all the time,” said Professor Milton Heggler, director of the Aurora Cosmological Institute, a Washington-based consortium of quantum physicists. “Especially since Bush took office in 2001.” Heggler sketched rapidly on a whiteboard as he described how the hole in space, also known as a singularity, came about.

“From experimentation, we know that observing a phenomenon alters it on a quantum level,” he explained. “This means that human consciousness has a measurable effect on reality itself, which implies that thought is a form of energy.” He drew a sheet of deformed rubber on the board. “We also know that mass bends space and time around itself, like so. Einstein taught us that mass and energy are just different phases of the same thing. Anything that possesses energy also possesses mass, and that includes the President’s thoughts.”

But why would that tear the fabric of space and time apart? Simple, says Professor Heggler. “President Bush is an evangelical Christian who believes in the literal truth of the Bible, meaning he is locked into a 2,000 year-old mindset. He is therefore hostile to any scientific discoveries made since the invention of the telephone in 1876, with two exceptions: he has said he likes jet aircraft because piloting one made it easier for him to get laid, and the CIA’s synthesis of cocaine into rock form in the mid-seventies has made it much easier to keep so-called ‘urban people’ from getting too ‘uppity’.

“When a true Luddite like Bush proposes to honor men and women who have made significant additions to the body of human knowledge, the sheer chutzpah of it is just so massive that the whole thing collapses in upon itself. Reality was never designed to handle that much hypocrisy. Something has to give, and if space and time didn’t tear, then something far worse might happen.”

When asked to speculate, Heggler shuddered. “Perhaps a complete breakdown of the laws of physics ending in an incursion by hordes of huge demonic tapeworms. Unimaginably horrible.” He paused. “Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that last part. You don’t know about the monster tapeworms yet, right?”

At last report, the quantum singularity was seen drifting west. Heggler said that there are currently some two dozen singularities floating around, and cautioned readers not to interact with them. “I know it’s tempting to jump into a singularity in an attempt to escape this foul alternate universe we’ve been trapped in since November of 2000, but the chances of making it back to a sane reality are slim. Still, it’s technically possible, I suppose.”