So, earlier this week, I went to Pittsburgh and, after a cookout, a undisclosed quantity of cheap beer, and innumerable musings about the nature of broad axes, I sallied forth with a merry little band to go catch X-Men 3: An American Wolverine in Paris.  What follows are my thoughts, in no particular order, about this latest cinematical experience, and for the love of all that’s good and decent, be forewarned that they’re chock full ‘o spoilers, such as the fact that as the rumors predicted, Snape kills Professor X.  This said, read on only if ye be men of valor, because otherwise, I’m seriously about to ruin all the secrets.  So there.

            First, I think I speak for all good men and women of all the races and nations of the Earth, of generations past and present, and innumerable ages yet unborn, when I say that it has always been my deepest heart’s desire to see Kelsey Grammer brutally slaughter hundreds of people in an epic fight scene other than the one in the last episode of Frasier.  It was totally worth the wait.

            After Mystique lost her powers, she totally looked like Monica Lewinsky.  And everybody else in the theatre said there wasn’t any social commentary in the movie.

            I think that really, the one great failing of the movie was that it failed to add enough hilarious outtakes and crazy alternate endings.  Like at the very end when Magneto is sitting in the park playing chess by himself because all the other old people don’t like him, it would be so totally awesome if like, Hitler just drove by and Nelson laughed him.

            And speaking of Magneto in the park at the end, why didn’t he get, you know, arrested by the federal government for destroying half of San Francisco and killing everybody and all that?  Were the police just like, “I’m sure that now that he’s lost his powers he’s harmless enough,” Or, “Well, yes he is technically guilty of about a jillion different felonies, but hey, I think he learnt his lesson back there.”

            Ooh, or what if he was sitting at the chess table there at the end and all of a sudden Christopher Lee came up with all his funky white robes and his power staff that looks like his house and everything and was all like, “Hey dawg, heard you got pwned out there yesterday, ever thought about being a wizard for a change?”

            Or maybe, for the classy subtle angle, if at the end they just showed a shot of him going into a pointy hat and magic shop before an ominous fadeout.

            Also, the way they brought Professor X back at the end was totally lame, it would have been so much better if instead of being all lame about it, they’d pulled a Bob Newheart and at the end, after he died and everything, he wakes up in sickbay back on the Enterprise and Dr. Crusher is there looking all worried and stuff, and he’s all like, “You will not believe the dream I just had, Beverly.  It was even weirder than that time I lived an entire life in half an hour while learning to play the flute in a 3,000 year old weather satellite.”

            As much as I appreciate the importance of the psychological advantage in battle, can’t really see how throwing flaming cars at people is really that much better than just throwing regular cars at them.  I mean, unless all the cars he’s using are right from Smallville, it’s not like they’re going to blow up all that much more just because of the fire.

            And why did they have to start off the movie with Wolverine decapitating the Iron Giant?  All he wanted to do was come to Earth and stop war!

            Finally, if after seeing this movie you get all worried about Gandalf setting your car on fire and throwing it at Kelsey Grammer, just go ahead and buy a Saturn, because they’re not made out of metal, just packing foam, communism, and the souls of the damned.

            I was hanging out at my sister’s place the other day, and she had a couple stacks of DVDs on the sofa, so I picked up what I thought was Bowling for Columbine and read the back.  It was really sounding like a kickass movie, until I looked at the front again and found out I’d accidentally picked up Batman instead.

            I’m beginning to suspect that the Bangles are in fact, not a reliable source of information regarding life in the real world because the other day I happened upon all the cops hanging out in the donut shop.  However, contrary to what I’d be told, in song no less, they failed to sing and dance or go “oh way oh” before walking like an Egyptian.  Oh the disappointment.

            Why is it that people can get away with wearing “Your problem is that you’re stupid” shirts in public without getting punched?  Is there some rule that if you put it in print on your torso, others are obliged to be less offended by your lame insults?  I mean, I’m as guilty as anyone here, since I frequently wear my “Anybody want a peanut?” shirt around with no actual intention of giving out peanuts, but still.

            I’d like to teach the world to bling.

            We keep a nightlight in our barthroom at home, not so much to fend of the troll that lives in the medicine cabinet (Bob Dole) but so that nobody gets lost on their way down the hall.  Last week though, the bulb burned out and all we had left were these red Christmas candle lights, which means that our bathroom now glows with this hellish red-litten aura of demonical doom.  Which is kind of cool, unless you’re given to having toilet demon-related nightmares already, because this doesn’t help at all.

            Also, that was supposed to be “bathroom” rather than “barthroom” up there.  Our house does in fact have a barthroom, devoted to Karl Barth and all his funky ghetto ninja dance moves and theological musings, but it is in fact lighted by a menorah made entirely out of plastic shot glasses and the Cobra Terrordrome, so adequate illumination is no problem.

            They’re making a new movie about Bob Dylan, guess what?  One of the people playing him is Cate Blanchett.  Which is totally awesome, because now I can finally get to see Bob Dylan give Frodo the Light of Eärendil, which has always kind of been a big life-goal for me.

            I was at the movie theatre, and they had a big poster with all the Muppets on it, and there in the back, betwixt Rolf and Gonzo was none other than, dun dun duuuun! The Rock.  So yeah, I’m glad to see that he’s finally coming out of the muppet closet, so to speak.  I mean, I’m sure we all kind of suspected for a while.  Like all those times you’d see him out and about with Miss Piggy, and that time Beaker called in sick and he missed a wrestling match so that he could help Professor Honeydew out with one of his wacky experiments.  But still, I’m sure Muppets everywhere will be inspired to stop living the lie of secrecy.

            Why is it that when you’re at a restaurant and your group is taking a bit to figure out what they want and so you ask the waitress if you can have another minute, she always interprets this to mean, “Leave my table alone and never, ever come back, especially if we all start waving at you.”  Seriously, this happens all the time to me.  I’m guessing that waitresses, like Vandal Savage, immortal caveman supervillian extraordinaire, have a highly unusual sense of the passing of time.

            Also, did you ever wonder who would win between Vandal Savage and Captain Caveman?  I mean, they’re both cavemen, so I’m guessing that the universe would just implode or something, which would be kind of nice for a change.

            Kenya, has often (okay, just this once) been called “The North Carolina of Africa.”  A land veritably teeming with mystery, fraught with adventure, wonder, and man-eating hippos, Kenya is where all the cool kids want to be, (assuming that the cool kids these days are even smart enough to know where Africa is in the first place) and indeed, I’m sure that all of you out there have just been pining away asking yourselves, “Gee whilikers, when is Ben going to write a helpful little article on Kenya?”  My friends, that day comes today.  Also, Amy happens to be over there right now, spending two weeks doing mission work, building stuff at an orphanage, and teaching all them loveable orphans the gentle art of kung fu monster truck intergalactic space monkey warfare.  And thus, in an effort to divert myself from sliding into an excessively angsty state (Washington) here’s everything you’ve been simply dying to know about Kenya.

            In Kenya, everybody farms coffee, yet drinks tea.  Likewise, everyone there hunts for lions, but eats only Steak-ums and manatees.

            Kenya is part of the British Commonwealth, along with Australia, Canada, Uganda, New Zealand, and Middle Earth.  Zimbabwe used to be in there too, but a couple of years back Kenya played this totally awesome practical joke on them involving filling Zimbabwe’s dorm room up with whipped cream and bacon bits, after which point Zimbabwe wussed out and transferred to the EU along with Vermont and the Lost Continent of Mu.

            There’s like, a million wildebeests there, which would normally be okay, except for the fact that due to a clerical error back in 1968, all of them are named Steve, which means if you call one of them, the other nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine all come too, which tends to leave one’s vestibule in a state of considerable disarray, unless of course one happens to have invested in wildebeest screens.

            When everyone in Europe was out colonizing Africa and junk, England was busy putting a totally bitchin’ sound system in the HMS Victory so that they’d be able to totally serve France at the next dance off.  But just to make sure they wouldn’t get left out of the whole colonialism thing, they sent someone down to Kenya to lick it and then stick a fork in it, just so that no one else in Europe would want any.

            Kenya is approximately twice the size of Nevada.  In your face, Nevada!

            The world’s largest viper (Norbert the Gaboon Viper) lives in Kekemega Forest with his mom and her boyfriend Chuck, where he spends his prank calling people in Nairobi with that old “I am the viper; I have come to vipe your vindows” gag, which still gets people all the time, in spite of a massive PSA campaign telling people not to fall for his serpentine shenanigans, as well as under no circumstances to admit that their refrigerator is running or that they keep Prince Albert in the can.

            Lake Magadi is one of the world’s largest sources of sodium carbonate.  And Cool Ranch Doritos.

            Once some guy made some movie about a couple of lions in Kenya who ate a bunch of people and stuff.  One of the lions eventually defeated his evil uncle and became king of the jungle again. The other, after much soul searching, discovered that in fact, courage is what puts the ape in apricot, and armed with this new outlook on life, went on to direct music videos in Zanzibar.

            Remember The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?  That started out in Kenya.

            Ditto for The Goonies, Soylent Green, and King Lear.

            Some say that the Garden of Eden is in Kenya, so if you’re over there and you find something that looks like it might be it, mark it down on your GPS and then go tell a teacher, Wonder Woman, or a lion.

            I was out driving the other day, and this dude just pulled out right in front of me, which kindled my wrath against him, and thus I honked at him.  But instead of cussing me out or looking embarrassed or anything, he started waving frantically at me and leaning out his window, like he was trying to tell me something important like, “No, no, don’t honk, It’s okay, I’m a leprechaun!”  Or, “Shhhhh, quiet, I’m actually a ninja on an important beer run and you’re blowing my cover!”  It kinda worked though, because after that, I wasn’t as mad at him anymore.

            My dog is going all gray around the snoutular region, except for this one little patch under his nose.  All of which is well and good, except for the fact that when he looks at you head-on, he kinda looks like he’s got a Hitler moustache, which rules ineffably.

            If I were Asian, I’d be mad as hell, because I’d be the only race and/or ethnic group that Hallmark doesn’t make personalized greeting cards for.  Well, Asians and Morlocks, but they’re not really that into greetings cards anyhow.  Maybe if someone went and made a “Sorry I Ate All Your Eloi” card…

            I saw a fat guy the other day who was wearing a shirt with Star Wars writing on it, you know, where it’s all wide at the bottom and then recedes into the distance?  All I can say is that the overall effect was far from slimming.  Also, if you’re a fat dorky guy already, do you really want to be wearing a shirt that emphasizes both these unhappy truths?  Remember, just because it impresses all your homies down at the Android’s Dungeon doesn’t mean it’s gonna make Princess Leia throw her gold bikini at you in a fir of passion.

            At our church picnic, the pastor suggested that we let all the people with canes and walkers go to the front of the line, the problem is that in addition to old people, my church boasts a healthy population of pimps and 1920s plutocrats, like the Monopoly Guy, who doesn’t even need to jump ahead in line, since he can just ride up there in his little racecar if he wants to.

            Up near Winchester, I saw a sign for Triple K Fencing.  That’s got to be the least clever cover operation for the Klan since they tried to open up that Kappa Kappa Kappa sorority at JMU.

            Why is it that Hummers come with that reinforced, riveted down deck plating gas cap?  Are they just that much more likely to blow up?  Or are Hummers just so incredibly hardcore that instead of burning gas a bit at a time the car just ignites it all at once, then contains the resulting massive explosion right there in the unnecessarily badass gas tank?  Or is it just because the Hummer is already the universal vehicle of those tragically insecure in both their affluence and masculinity and a shiny gas cap is really just icing on the cake?  The world may never know.

            Speaking of things that other people have on their cars and I don’t, I got tired of being the only person left outside of the Amazon River Basin who lacks such a modern convenience.  But rather than getting rid of my van (since after all, my great-great-great-grand American folk hero Bigfoot Wallace whittled it out of a buffalo) I decided to create my own remote entry system out of a blue-butted baboon and a dinner roll.  You see, the baboon lives in my van all the time, eating blintzes, writing the great American novel, etc, and whenever I’m coming back to the car, I just carve the dinner roll into a mighty ocarina of remote vehicular entry upon which I play an aria of such surpassing and otherworldly beauty that it charms his little primate heart and he unlocks my doors for me.  Then I have to feed him the ocarina.  So, other than having to carry around a giant bag of dinner rolls everywhere, it’s pretty sweet.  Also, Ataxerxes (the baboon) is a big fan of the Bangles too, so we can totally jam out to all our favorite 80s hits whenever we’re on the road.

            The end is here.  Life as we know it has come to a sudden and horrific end, and the world and all that is in it now crashes headlong towards utter ruin.  Elliot has been voted off of American Idol.  Yes, this past week, local Richmond guy Elliot Whatshisface lost in a close three-way vote between himself, The Golden Calf of the Israelites, and Dagon the Philistine Fish-God, who, to his credit, did a pretty bang-up rendition of “Sunshine Lollypops and Rainbows” on the night in question.  At any rate, people in Richmond haven’t been this angry since we lost the War.

            Remember back in 2000 when everyone was all freaking out because of allegations that George Bush had rigged the vote or sent Dick Cheney out with a shotgun to the polls?  Well, that pales in comparison to the wild conspiracy theories being spun even now, most of which boil down to a couple of main points.  One, American Idol hates the South, and two, Elliot was just so gosh darn messianic that clearly for him to lose, vile and malicious forces had to be in play.  Because of course, he couldn’t have just not been good enough.  I know, I know, heresy, but someone has to say it.  So anyway, now the poor guy has to come back to Richmond to either get awarded a pity contract to do an album, or he can go back to working at Bagels & Beef, or wherever he was before the gods of stardom saw fit to toy with his destiny. 

            But the fans, of course, have other plans.  Rumors abound that Elliot shall return to Richmond, not in his earthly form, but gloriously transfigured, as Elliot the White, emerging triumphant from his seemingly fatal battle with the entertainment Balrog that is Ryan Seacrest.  Some who claim to have met him in person claim that he has the power to heal the sick and the lame, and if there’s one thing that all this has shown us, it’s that in Richmond, we’ve got plenty of people who are totally lame.

            Indeed, even now a prophecy has begun to circulate that his faithful, the Elliites, if you will, must stand against the rest of us apostates in the coming days, for before Elliot returns to Richmond, we shall have to suffer through the reign of a great deceiver, the Anti-Elliot, who shall lead the people to destruction, turn the James River to blood, blot out the Sun, eat all of our knishes, and smite the city council with a mad plaguey case of the stupids (some defenders of the prophecy point out that this has already come to pass for the most part).  At the end of this great tribulation, the Anti-Elliot will transform himself into the form of Richmond’s greatest foe (other than Spanky, Lord of the Mole People and Bob Dole) the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.  Then, in this our greatest hour of need, Elliot will once more appear, all shiny and triumphant and whatnot, riding a chariot of flaming leisure suits and beans, and breathe fire and pop rocks upon his nemesis, and with an assist from the Arthur Ashe statue, shall beat all unbelievers down into the earth with a tennis racket.

            After this, a thousand years of paradise shall ensue, after which point everything will just go back to the way it used to be, except that by this time, the Feivel the Polish Immigrant Mouse will be the mayor, and the motto on City Hall will have been replaced with a neoclassical bas-relief of a bunch of walruses playing Uno.

            So, welcome back, Elliot, it’s been a long strange trip for all of us, but you’re the lucky guy who now gets to be stalked by every crazy TV addict in the metro area for the rest of your life!  And if you happen to see Dagon again at the class reunion, tell him I said Hi!

So, today happens, in case you weren’t keeping track, to be a red letter day if ever there was such a thing; a day on which the very nature of the way in which our race looks upon the universe changed forever.  Why is this a date of such particular historical significance then?  Not just because it was the 7th recorded perihelion of Haley’s Comet, nor even because it’s the anniversary of the patent of the rubber band (known as the gum band in Pittsburgh and as the circle of the Prophet Mohammed in Nebraska).  Nay, it was upon this very day, one year ago that I first started my blog back on myspace.  Of course, back then even I knew not that there would ever be such a thing as teacupmammoths, but even then, I was already taking on the forces of evil in the world that all those other blogs run by those fat cats in Washington were afraid to deal with.  In this particular instance, the object of my ire was the secret connection between Gomer Pyle and Captain Marvel. 

Not to be implying things, but two days after I originally published my little exposé, both Gomer Pyle and Captain Marvel disappeared from the public eye and were last heard to be living the secret lives of hula girls in Vatican City, Iowa.  The very next day, I made fun of a number of totally unfunny comic strips, and but a single week later, Marmaduke was found mysteriously dead in his Central Park penthouse (he has since been replaced by a half dozen midgets in a shag carpet).  By the end of the week I had thoroughly made fun of Anakin’s whiny dark side angstiness, and before the week was out, critics all over the world agreed that Darth Vader started out as a sissy of intergalactic proportions.  Let’s take a little stroll down memory lane then, and see what other mighty empires have fallen before me:

On June 5^th, I brought to the attention of all the world the hazard posed by my one-time roommate Krazy Kevin.  Almost immediately after reading of this, the UN swung into action, sending none other than Hans Blix to Kevin’s ferret-infested tenement, where it was determined that he was indeed a weapon of mass destruction, and as such was told to cease being so darn crazy if he didn’t want to have sanctions imposed upon him.

On June 28^th, I first brought to the attention of the human race the horrible threat of Spanky, Lord of the Mole people.  Not losing a moment, our government declared a state of emergency and sought to capture, if not destroy this menace to superterranean civilization.  Unfortunately, Spanky dressed up as a desperate housewife (Martina van Buren) and escaped north of the Mason Dixon Line, where he was quickly appointed a tenured professor at Harvard, before getting kicked out for putting one of those sandworms from Dune in the Dean’s office.

On August 14^th, I passed along a tip sent in by astute reader Scott of the Antarctic, that when you ride alone, you ride with Hitler.  Thousands of readers worldwide quickly mobilized to keep Hitler from bumming rides and leaving snickerdoodle crumbs all up in their glove compartments and whatnot.  By the end of the month Hitler, tired of riding the bus and pedaling around on his Nazi bigwheel, was compelled to buy a Prius, thereby saving all America from having to suffer through his chronic automotive flatulence.

September 12^th, I first decided to make Mondays fun by writing about all the stuff I thought of that’s not quite funny enough to write a whole blog about.  In response, Monday suddenly became cool so cool that it got its on TV show and developed an $700 a day ham addiction before almost killing Oprah and going into rehab.

And finally, on November 9^th, I made fun of Jumanji and Zathura.  In a precision missle strike the next day ay 0600 hours, both movies and Robin Williams were destroyed by the Israeli Air Force, thus making the world a little bit safer.

So there you have it, just a few examples of how the world hath been changed for the better by teacupmammoths.  So keep on reading, my various and sundry homies, together change the world one narf at a time!

            So, unless I’ve yet again been hurled through a space-time distortion and into an alternate world exactly like ours but with one horrible difference (in this world, all steaks are composed of lava and broken dreams), I’m pretty sure that today is Mothers’ Day.  And since I’m way behind on my cross-stitch/musical cuisinart present, and it’s Sunday night and the only cards left at Walgreen’s are based on the premise that the intended recipient of said card is black, this one’s for me mum!

            Who, when I was but a little tyke, taught me to be both discerning and tough, in part by allowing me to once eat a peach pit, which, to the best of my knowledge, did not kill me, but only made me stronger.

            Who didn’t mind too terribly much when I dropped out of soccer after half a season because I lacked all talent on a truly mind-boggling scale, never again to play anything even resembling a sport.

            Who was okay with the fact that, I once, as best I can remember, believed myself to be a dinosaur for the better part of 2^nd Grade (interestingly enough, this was the year that I apparently impressed upon my teachers that I was gifted).

            Who agreed some 20 years ago to live in the attic at some point in the future after my sister became evil and needed to take over the house.

            Who did not falter in my upbringing in the ceaseless (and futile) task of trying to make me cooler than I actually am, which on one hand happily prevented me from going to school dressed as Skeletor on more than one occasion, but also brought about an era of enduring infamy known to leading Benologists as “The Year of the George Washington Haircut”.

            Who kindly refrained from expressing her true feelings about the manner in which I taught the dog to burp at people immediately before going off to college (me, that is, the dog only did a two year program as an auto tech), despite the fact that I am almost positive that amongst her circle of friends, having a socially burping dog is not quite the status symbol that it is in my own merry little band.

            Who could have named me after Great Uncle Nimrod, but didn’t.

            Who has always supported me in my never-ending quest to build more effective medieval projectile weapons and ballistic potato delivery systems while all the other boys were off doing summer internships in Dubai.

            Who has always possessed a certain ethereal dignity which keeps her from getting pulled into so many less than honorable ventures, such as the time that everyone else in our family decided to reenact the Hunchback of Notre Dame with hand puppets, in old Virginia accents, while giggling like a gaggle of Japanese schoolgirls, whilst in a Canadian travel office.

            Who once, when an alien invasion force parked us into our driveway on the day of my sister’s balled recital, punched a Vorgon Battle Cruiser in the face, just so we wouldn’t be late.

            So thanks Mom, for all the stuff what you’ve done for me over the years.  Happy Mothers’ Day!

            And also, since it is kinda Grandmothers’ Day too, I just want to give a shoutout to a certain grandmother of mine who once pegged our cat in the head with a can of orange juice and suggested, in all earnestness, that when my sister gets married, she ought to dance around in an apron so that all the men there can put money in it.  Also, whenever I was little and we were baking cookies, she always let me lick the spoon, even when there were raw eggs in the batter (fortunately, all they did was make my coat more lustrous).

            You know how when you go to Monticello and buy something, they try to give you all your change in 2 dollar bills and nickels?  It must really suck when you go to Abe Lincoln’s house, cause all they’ve got are fives and pennies.

            You know that terrorist guy we’ve been after for a while, Zarqy Zark and the Funky Bunch or whatever his name is?  Well, it turns out that not only is he actually the long lost third Olsen twin, but our army has a dedicated force of specialists whose only job is catching him and forcing him to do the truffle shuffle on a live worldwide podcast.  Which all sounds like a great idea and all, until you realize that the worst way in the world to motivate people is to give them a job, pay them by the hour, and then tell them they’ve got no set date to be finished by.  Heck, they probably caught him months ago, but just keep saying he’s on the run to keep getting paid.  “Hey, did y’all catch Zarkon yet?” “Nope, we almost had him this time, but then he turned into a beautiful narwhal/helicopter and flew away in a hail of rainbows.”  “What, not again, that’s like, jeez, the fifth time this week, you guys need to hurry up and bag him!”  “Haha guys, I just told him the one about the narwhal/helicopter again; we’re gainfully employed for another week!”

            I passed by Ducks in a Row the other day, because even though I love my ducks, everybody knows that when you buy them pre-rowed like that at a big retail chain, there’s a severely scandalous markup on them.  That’s why I prefer to go to Ducks in a Heap, where they just dump ‘em off the pallet and you pick out your own.  Sure you have to sift through a few factory rejects and slightly irregulars, but hey, a man’s gotta save his money for more important things, by which I mean medieval weapons and curried mutton gummi bears.

            I saw a car bearing a plate the other day, the text of which read, I SELL UM.  Okay, if you can’t even remember what you sell, maybe you oughtn’t be trying to put it on your car, unless of course the poor soul in question merely didn’t know that you can only have eight letters and actually said, “I sell, um, y’know, those things, whaddyacallems, like pants, but with, you know, more of that stuff, that fire stuff, like cheese or something, yeah,” little knowing that DMV does not smile kindly upon dictation.

            You know how much of a geek I am?  I recently bought an external hard drive.  But wait, it gets worse, because I could either get a boring one or one that looked like a book.  And I got the one that looked like a book.  And I did this because Inspector Gadget’s niece, Penny had a computer book and this somehow struck me as a quality worthy of emulation.  So, yeah, the worst part is, I could not be happier.

            Why does everybody only eat artichoke hearts anyway?  I mean, not like that’s all that we all subsist off of, but rather that that seems to be the preferred part of the artichoke anatomy for culinary use.  I bet the Indians used every part of the artichoke, you know, as great herds of artichokes used to blanket the Great American Desert before the white man came, their great leathery wings blotting out the very Sun.  My guess is that we still take all the other parts like the artichoke pancreases (pancrei?) and sell them to third world countries and Rhode Island, or maybe put them in spam.

            It’s a darn good thing the letter K exists; otherwise we’d have no readily available way of making words that start with a C all extra cute.  Also, people would always be getting the Klan mixed up with all those other clans out there, and they hate that, though I suppose that, being the Klan and all, they probably hate lots of stuff anyhow, like HDTV, ferrets, the Pope, Diet Rite Cola, steak’ums, speedboats, apricots, electrical tape, provolone cheese, Adlai Stevenson, Luxembourg, the collapse of the American pants industry, the ipod Nano, DVD-Rs, pinking shears, Colorado, and William Shatner, to name just a few.

            While many of you have no doubt been recently going about your daily lives and epic battle scenes, footloose and fancy free as a metric ton of kittens in a skating rink, I, as always, have been scouring the net for threats to humanity.  Normally, this is awesome, but unfortunately, the other day I finally found one.  Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and unlike that guy from REM who looks like Captain Picard’s little brother, I don’t feel fine.  What fresh horror has been unleashed upon the world, and from whence doth it come, you may well ask?  Well, not surprisingly, it comes from Hollywood, and as to its actual horribulosity, I think it’s best if I begin at the beginning.  So, if you want to have a few last moments of happiness delighting in the joys of this world before I taint them all forevermore with the knowledge of a truth to hideous to comprehend, why not take a moment and go do that?  And then get good and drunk and come back here.

            Okay, said all your goodbyes to the idea that mankind is anything other than doomed?  Okely-dokely.  Well, you may know that the idea is presently being kicked around Hollywood to make a new Star Trek movie, which would be, under most circumstances, uber peachy keen.  This movie, however, is meant to take place back in the day, when Kirk and Spock were still at the academy, doing intergalactic panty raids and putting a Rigelian Beefalo in Dean Fugleman’s office, after which hilarity will inevitably ensue.  And were this the end of the story, all would be beer and skittles indeed; but alas, I have learned from sources too dark and wlatsome to mention here, whom they intend to cast as Young Captain Kirk.  Perhaps if John Belushi were still alive, it would have been different, but the fact is that the role appears destined to go to – it’s still not too late to avert your eyes – Ben Affleck.  Now, I have already made it abundantly clear how much I hate Ben Affleck in all his vile incarnations in this space before, but having him play Shatner is the ultimate atrocity against coolness.  Indeed, it is as if all the very universe itself was suddenly bestirred to give forth a mighty narf, which shook the very foundations of the Earth with its absolute retardedness.  Why did they do this?  Even the very wisest cannot say, but really, by this point we’re well beyond asking about the whytos and the wherefores and must rather work on a solution.  Seriously, this is like having Hitler play the title role in The Diary of Anne Frank, except for the fact that that would actually be hilarious, so let me try a different way to convey my deep and abiding loathing for Ben Affleck.  You know how everyone hates Osama bin Laden?  Well imagine that way back in the day, before he ever became famous, your parents named you something like Osama bin Laden Davidson.  Not only would you hate Osama for all the stuff he ever did, like the time he dipped your sister’s ponytail in the inkwell at school, or the time he rolled your grandmother’s yurt, but the very fact that he had sullied your fair name would make you hate him all the more.  That’s how I feel about Ben Affleck.

            Gene Roddenberry must be spinning in his grave, which technically speaking, is in space; he did not fly a bomber against the Nazis just so that future generations of Americans could throw his hard won victory away by having Ben Affleck play Captain Kirk.  And need I even mention that if Ben Affleck gets this role, then we can be all but certain that Spock is going to be played by Matt Damon.  I cannot emphasize enough how bad this could be for future interplanetary relations.  I mean, the Vulcan’s are going to contact our planet in the year 2063, if they see that we’ve decided to portray one of their greatest people as Matt Damon, then in spite of their logical nature, they’ll be madder than Mohammed at a political cartoon convention, and zark out.  Now, it may be the case that zarking out may lead to the eventual destruction of Hollywood, which would be kind of nice, but still, the line must be drawn here.

            Fortunately, a solution has presented itself to me.  What we must do is convince William Shatner and the rest of the original cast of Star Trek to form a fellowship dedicated to the destruction of Ben Affleck.  They must lead him deep into the Mines od Moria, where he will reveal himself to be the ancient creature of fire and shadow we suspected he was all along.  Then, Shatner will do battle with him on the Bridge of Khazadum, before they both fall into a totally deep hole and Shatner eventually slays Ben Affleck and smites his ruin upon the mountain side.  A nice added benefit of this will be that Shatner will now become Shatner the White, and when he meets Chekov, Sulu, and Treebeard later on in Fangorn Forest, everything will be awesome again.

            Some day, I want to invite Keanu Reeves over for dinner.  I will serve soup, and furnish him with nothing but a fork to eat it with.  Then, when he asks for a more appropriate utensil with which to dine, I shall reply, “There is no spoon.”  And collapse into paroxysms of laughter.  Then he’ll probably kung fu punch me or something, because, you know, he’s the chosen one.

            I hate those books with nothing in them but sadistic questions, like “Would you rather get set on fire, or fed to a puma?” or, “Would you switch to the metric system if it meant finding a cure for cancer?”  I’ve already got enough decisions to make without stupid hypothetical ones too.  So I want to do a book of easy questions, like, “Would you eat a delicious roast beef sandwich in order to save a kitten?” or, “Would you rather take a nap or get punched in the face by Mr. T?”

            When you ask people what the one book is that they’d take along with them were they to be stranded on a desert island, most of them say things like, The Bible, or Lord of the Rings, or TV Guide.  But that’s ridiculous; because the book you ought to choose is something like, Myron G. Smackleton’s Compleat Guide to Raft-Building and Navigation for the Novice.  Then when you get back home despite losing your volleyball and most of your sanity, you can catch back up on the great works of Western Civilization.

            If I was writing a book on crazy facts and stuff about the language of the elves, I think I’d call it, “Quenya Believe It?”

            While we were down at the beach, Amy, who hath excellent taste in such matters, got me a P.G. Wodehouse book, which, by the way, is thus far an excellent read.  The thing is, she wrote a little “I hope you enjoy this as much as I did” dedication to me on the front page.  The only book I’ve gotten her yet though, is “At The Mountains of Madness” which is a bit more of a horror story than P.G. Wodehouse.  How do you dedicate a horror novel to someone anyway?  “I sincerely hope none of the stuff in here ever happens to you.  Toodles, Ben.”  It just doesn’t work, even if you dot the I’s with little hearts.

            You know how when they do a stage special for a comedian or other such personage of professional amusement, they always have the camera follow him all the way out from the green room to the stage, which invariably takes, like, just long enough to do all the credits.  Well, what if Billy from Family Circus ever did one of those?  It’d take like, the entire show just to get him out on stage, because he’d be all climbing under Old Man Weaselton’s lawn mower and through electrical conduits and across the cooling pond at the treatment plant.

            Speaking of which, I bet if you took that kid and just put him somewhere where he had to go in a straight line, like at the bottom of the Grand Canyon or something, his head would just explode.

            In the gift shop at work, we sell rabbits’ feet.  The problem with this is that every single person who comes in and sees them makes the infinitely witty remark, “I guess they didn’t bring much luck to the rabbit!”  I swear, when I rule the world and the Culling of the Tards begins, they shall be the first to go.

            Also, people who dress their babies up like fruit.  Seriously, someday future generations are gonna look back on that like we do on slavery and the Partridge Family, and future historians will have to convince people that times were different back then and we didn’t know any better.

            I want to take a math class, and then when we get some homework with a lot of division in it, I’m not even gonna touch it.  Then the next day when my professor sees it, he’ll ask me, “Ben, where is your division?”  Then, I’ll finally get to fulfill my dream of quoting General Pickett in the classroom and reply, “Suh, I have no division.”  Then I’ll be expelled, but it’ll be worth it.

            Isn’t it convenient how all the artificial sweeteners in the world just happen to come in different colors?  How serendipitous that Sweet N’ Low, NutraSweet, Splenda, and Generic Cancer-Inducing Petrochemical Derived Beverage Additive all just naturally decided not to get up in each others’ respective grills by fighting over say, pink.  I however, want to throw a metaphorical monkey wrench into this happy little arrangement by coming up with a new sweetener and making the packages in randomly selected primary pastels, thus throwing the world into total chaos.