You know, if it turns out that they never make a fourth X-Men movie, I think it would probably be a wise course of action to just pretend that Kate and Leopold completes the tetrology.

            At my job, we happen to be right next door to a bridge (our other neighbor, a forest, is always keeping us up late by throwing nature raves and getting the cops called on them when the deer get drunk and knife each other) and we also happen to have a number of walkie talkies.  As a result, anyone driving over the bridge who happens to also have a walkie talkie can unwittingly share their thoughts with us as they drive over said bridge.  Unfortunately, these thoughts are invariably something akin to, “Whoa, this is a totally high bridge!”  Every single freaking time.  Mind you, it is a pretty high bridge, but really, is it that important an epiphany that you need to tell everyone else in the convoy and interrupt me teaching a bunch of 2^nd graders about how the Powhatans made their canoes (mostly with nunchuks and their phat needlepoint skillz).?

            I bet that if you were a vampire and you ate a bowl of Sun Chips, you’d probably die.  Again.  So if you suspect yourself to be a vampire, but you still want to be health-conscious, maybe you’d better stick to the Baked Lays.

            You know how when someone is choking, people always run up and pat them on the back?  I think that’s the worst thing you can possibly do.  It’s like you’re offering them kudos for failing to chew adequately.  “Hey,” you appear to be saying, “You’ve managed to get a Swiss Roll stuck in your throat again.  Good work, you deserve a pat on the back!”  All that kind of thinking does is encourage people to keep on choking.  Rather, when somebody is choking, you ought to smack them on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper, so they learn that choking is bad, and is the sort of behavior with which you will not put up.  Don’t wait too long to do it though, otherwise they won’t make the connection and will just think you’re beating them.

            If you were a member of one of those South American tribes that can’t count past two, you would also be most foolish for your bowling team to appoint you the task of scorekeeper.

            The bathroom mirror in Sheetz is just low enough that if I had an afro, it would be completely useless for inspecting it.

            I’m really tired of ending letters with things like, Love, or Sincerely.  They seem so trite and I worry that the people to whom I am addressing epistles will fail to recognize how deeply I care for them.  That’s why I propose changing it up a bit.

            “Dear Grandma, thank you for the pajamas, they make me to resemble a plaid marmot and smell strongly of communism.

            May your foes tremble before you,

                                                            Ben”

            Did you ever notice how all Elton John songs sound exactly alike?  I just did the other day, and man, it’s like the whole world has changed for me.

            I bet Gene Simmons, despite all his great contributions to human civilization in the fields of rock n’ roll, monster slaying, and being able to lick his own elbow, lives a life of secret shame because of his brother Richard.  Yeah, just imagine how those family reunions must go.

            Hey everyone!  Guess who got dumped yesterday!  No, not Dick Cheney.  Nope, nope, not Batman either.  No, not Chewbacca either; to my knowledge he remains happily married to Mrs. Francine Bacca.  Give up then?  It was me!  Yes, yet again, a woman with whom I was in love decided that a life of unremitting solitude was preferable to one in which I played a part, and as a natural consequence, I am once more single.  What then is to be done?  I could always get all emoed out, write free verse poems about spirals of darkness and the depressingly high cost of eye liner, and go out to Hot Topic to buy a pair of black pants composed entirely of zippers, but you know, that’s just not really my style.  Or I could become one of those bitter, lovelorn souls who hate all women and decide to take their revenge by being a total loser and spending every night of their natural life sitting around in their underwear, watching Babylon 5, and eating Cheez Whiz out of the jar.  But I’ve never really enjoyed Cheez Whiz nearly enough to embark upon such a plan.

            What then, does a fellow have left to do, when he finds himself adrift in the world in such a fashion, after he’s packed up all the things that remind him of someone and replaced all the “Woot, I’m in love!” songs on his iPod with Bjork?  The answer, as I’m sure you will have already guessed, is for me to turn to a life of supervillainy.  I know, I know, you’re probably thinking, “But Ben, you’ve promised you were going to do this sort of thing before, but you’re no sooner back from Lowe’s with the parts to your death ray when a shiny object distracts you and you once more take leave of your nefarious schemes!”  My friends, this time it shall be different.  Already I have begun drafting plans to make my van into a helicopter with a totally sweet shark face painted on it.  At this very moment I’m researching dental appliances that will allow my dog to bite through steel girders.  I’ve even made a reservation for tomorrow night with a voice coach to work on my maniacal laughter.  Clearly with plans like these, an army of goons with face-concealing helmets and a secret lair beneath Mount Rushmore cannot be far behind (I know volcanoes are more traditional, but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you see a ballistic missile shoot out of George Washington’s left nostril).

            I realize, of course, that getting into the burgeoning field of supervillianation just because of a bad breakup can lead to bad things.  Darkseid for instance, has based his entire reign of terror on getting Wonder Woman to be his wife (she of course, values him as a friend, but simply doesn’t feel ready for the commitment right now).  However, and I know that it’s always risky to go with what’s fashionable at the moment, I’ve decided to go with more of the Lex Luthor model, in which while you most certainly are a big hit with the ladies, romantic woes and tribulations never get in the way of you deciding to raise an America-eating continent from the depths of the Atlantic (no worries though for my readers here in the States, should I ever find that my career path is leading me in a sunken continent-raising sort of a direction, I promise to raise mine way out in the middle of the Pacific, or possibly next door to France).

            Really, I think that what keeps a lot of us unlucky in love types out of the field of global domination is the idea that it takes a lot of work and startup capital.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In fact, all you really need is a close encounter with a radioactive meteorite or a magical alien artifact of unimaginable power, or barring that, to be bald and always wearing white linen suits.  For instance, if Captain Picard and Mark Twain ever joined forces, they could easily be the greatest supervillain ever.  So anyway, I’m going to go out hiking in the mountains a bit alter this month and maybe hit up all the local mystical antique shops, and if nothing turns up, then it’s simply time to shave my head and make a trip to the Big & Tall.

            So, if any of you out there feel like auditioning for jobs and henchmen (and these are the top drawer kind, by the way, where you get to have like, an afro and a katana made out of fire) feel free to send me a resume, and if all the rest of you could possibly see your way to collectively trembling in fear at the very idea of me ruling the world, I would be ever so obliged. 

            Let’s face it, in these times of turmoil, trial, and doubt, there are many things that can keep a person up at night worrying.  Things like international terrorism, Bob Dole’s mullet (which would be a mulletastic name for a band), Stephen Hawking’s techno DJ career prospects, and of course, whether or not any witches from the 18^th century need to be apologized to by the Commonwealth of Virginia.  Fortunately, though all the rest remain major sources of angstiness, you may now feel free to cross the last of those off of your emo list, because as of last week, the Governor of Virginia formally apologized for the trial of Grace Sherwood, the Witch of Pungo.  This is her story, all of which is true, except for the parts I made up.

            Grace Sherwood lived in Virginia Beach in 1706, with her husband and three sons, in a very, very, very fine house, with two cats in the yard.  She was reputed to be thoroughly the epitome of magical hotness, and was well-known for not taking no guff from nobody.  Like most of us, she enjoyed wearing pants on a regular basis (which, back then was kind of unusual, since most women dressed either as ninjas or pirates.  Or pirate ninjas, for the exceptionally fashionable).  Also like most of us, she enjoyed flying around in a teacup and occasionally traveling therein to England.  Whether she made herself all tiny and fun-sized when carrying out this unusual operation is left unsaid.  And one supposes that if she simply kept a mammoth teacup around to purely for such outings it would have turned up the first time the police showed up at her house.  And how did they learn that she’d been going over to England in said teacup anyhow?  Did the mayor of Pungo get a letter from the King of England saying, “Hey guys, just thought you might want to know, some crazy ho from your side of the pond has been hanging out over here lately and stealing all our royal English flava.  If you could drop a house on her or something, it would be much appreciated.  See ya at the Revolution in a few, King Smacky Vander-Cheeselings IV”

            Also, just in case you were wondering about the whole teacup thing, it seems that way back in the day, brooms were far from the officially endorsed for of travel for witches and Harry Potter.  Originally colanders were all the rage, and it wasn’t until later that things like teacups, hubcaps, houses with chicken legs, and William Shatner’s toupee gained widespread acceptance amongst the airborne magical community.  All of which kind of makes sense, since of you think about it, riding around on a broom for any length of time would be totally uncomfortable and even if you’re in league with the Devil, you’re still going to want to avoid unnecessary chafing like that.

            Now, as if this weren’t enough to get a person hauled before a judge, Grace Sherwood was also generally believed to sneak into places by slipping through keyholes, though once she was there, all she apparently ever did was makes someone’s milk spoil once.  In terms of non-keyhole-related witchery, she is said to have once bewitched someone’s crops (how can you tell anyway?  Did his crops start glowing or doing phat beatbox rhythms?), and a brief yet terrifying rash of incidents involving flaming bags of flying monkey poop (that’s poop from a flying monkey, by the way, rather than the more mundane flying bag of poop from a regular, non-flying monkey) on the front porches of her neighbors.

            Now, the people of Virginia, being a fairly inexperienced group when it came to witch detection, didn’t really know where to go from here, and thusly decided that the best way to figure out the matter for sure was to have her inspected for any black marks of demonic allegiance.  And since they didn’t really find anything all that conclusive and she was, as I said back in the first paragraph, rather on the attractive side, they went back and had her looked over again, just to be sure.

            Now, by about the sixth time through with this, it dawned upon people that as much fun as this was turning out to be for the whole family, this trial really had to be going somewhere, at which point they decided that the best thing to do would be to tie her to a big Bible and throw her into the river, the idea being that water hates evil things like Ringwraiths and fat kids with waterwings, and that if she floated, then surely she was a witch.  On the other hand, if she sank, than clearly she was alright after all and not a witch, and someone would be along in a couple of weeks to kind of fish her out and apologize for the mistake.  Amazingly, she agreed that yes, this seemed like a good course of action with no foreseeable problems.

            So, on July 10^th, Grace Sherwood was tied to the aforementioned big Bible and thrown into the river.  Much to her credit, rather than either sinking or bobbing around like a duck, she saw fit to paddle around in the water singing a cheery little song until she managed to untie herself and swim back to shore.  All of which begs the question of whether, even for such an important purpose as witch-finding, it is appropriate for a body of Christians to tie a Bible to someone evil and toss it into a river, which does not immediately present itself as being one of the more Godly uses for the Gospels.

            Anyhow, they sent her to jail for a bit, but after an unexplained series of problems with guards turning into newts, and the fact that no place with a keyhole was going to keep her on ice anyway, they let her go, after which point she went on to live a long life of wacky hijinks, pants, and flying about in tasteful kitchenwares.

Now, were I one of those moralizing political types, I’d probably put something in about the importance about separating politics and religion.  The truth is though, that the whole thing is just too silly to really learn any important lessons from, so instead, just stay in school, don’t do drugs, and always vote for retired pro-wrestlers.

            If you asked me which tribe of Israel was my favorite based solely upon their contribution to the art of sandwich making, I think I’d have to go with the Tribe of Reuben.

            So, in Norway recently, some people were out on one of those whale-watching cruises, and they saw a whale, out cruising all majestically whilst straining jillions of krill and nachos from the frigid arctic seas, and some other boat just came by and shot it, like, right there in front of the tour boat.  Seriously though, if you had told me they had drive-by shootings in Norway, I probably would have suspected something like this.

            If Marvin Gaye was looking to do a greatest hits album, he would be both wise and hilarious to call it “Totally Gaye”.

            The worst people in the world are the ones who run the Paralympics.  Not that it isn’t cool to do athletic competitions for the wheelchair-bound, but you shouldn’t name your organization anything that includes the word “limp” when dealing with the disabled.  Really, not since the Jewlympics back in the 50s has an Olympic spinoff been so crassly named.

            When I’m President of the World (now taking campaign donations!) I’m going to legally add an X to the spelling of espresso, so that all the world shall have to say it the way that my brain always wants to.

            I was always disappointed that in Oregon Trail, when someone in your family died, you didn’t get an extra 50 pound of food (or slightly less if they died of malnutrition).  Also, that when you shot buffalo, they’d flip over and stick their legs in the air; this rarely happens in real life.

            In other news, I am no longer allowed near the wildlife section at Maymont.

            I saw the most ominous billboard for a hospital ever the other day.  It had this really intense-looking doctor on it, and the words, “It’s your health; choose wisely”.  Seriously, sometime the medical industry gets just a bit too cutthroat for me..

            Not that it’s my place to mention it, but if Canada would make the Dudley Do Right song their national anthem, they’d get so much more military respect from us violent ass-kicking nations.

            Those Kryptonite brand bike chains are the most dishonestly marketed things ever.  They’re not real kryptonite, it’s just that Superman hasn’t stolen your bike because of all the superheroes in the world; he has the least desire for a bicycle.  Except for Fat Lazy Couch Potato Lad, he’s not really into the whole bike stealing scene either.  And even if Superman did want to steal your bike, all he’d have to do is stand a safe distance away and melt the chain with his heat vision, or throw Jimmy Olsen at it.

            Just once, I’d like to see a villain just accept the fact that bullets just bounce off Superman without feeling the need to try it and see for himself.  Though no the other hand, it does always look pretty cool, so if you were about to be caught anyway, you might as well get to see for yourself.  Which begs the question: if you shoot Superman, does it count as attempted murder?  I mean, it’s not like anyone realistically thought he’d die, so at most it ought to count as assault, though even then, it’s kind of a flimsy charge.  I’d probably have to go with littering myself.

            If lead can stop the radiation from kryptonite, why doesn’t Superman just sew a bunch of it into his suit?  It isn’t like the extra weight would slow him down.

            Why is it that in movies, whenever someone has a large column or something falling towards them, they always run directly away from it, instead of just stepping slightly off to the side?  That’s why lumberjacks are rarely in action films, because they deal with that kind of thing everyday, and rob the situation of all its drama by just heading in a completely different direction altogether.

            If I’m ever President, Oregon shall rue the day they decided to put a lake on their quarter.  It would have been so totally awesome had they instead put a picture of a Conestoga wagon and the inscription: “One of Your Oxen has Died” That would be unspeakably sweet.  Or, barring that, “Timmy has dysentery.”  Way to go, Oregon, land of broken dreams that you are.

            You’ve probably heard of the KGB, the Soviet Union’s spy agency.  What you perhaps didn’t know is that the initials KGB actually stand for “Kremlin Ghost Busters.”  It turns out that Lenin was actually terrified of Slimer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow man and organized a special security force to keep them out of his hair, so to speak.  Then later, after Stalin took over, he decided the name and the proton packs were just too cool to get rid of so he put them all on spy duty.  And now you know the rest of the story.

            I want to replace my van’s license plate with one that just has a barcode on it.  That way everybody will think I’m from the future and be impressed by my self-adjusting sneakers and uber-leet hoverboard skills. 

            There’s an entire website out there devoted to pictures of cats that resemble Hitler.  Whenever life has you down and you fear there’s no goon left in the world, remember that, and smile inwardly with fiendish glee.

            I saw a package of Huggies in the store, and the box said “Now Baby-Shaped!”  I’m confused here, weren’t Huggies baby-shaped all along?  I mean, if they weren’t, then what the hell were they shaped like?  To my knowledge there is but one legitimate purpose for Huggies and it involves putting them on babies, and yet apparently Huggies Ltd. International only just realized that their intended market was babies, rather than say, gila monsters or chia pets.  I’m just glad that diapers are the only thing they make.  Oh look honey, “New, hand-shaped gloves!”

            They say there’s no wrong way to eat a Resse’s, but I’m pretty sure that if you were creative enough, and/or Hitler, you could probably find one.

            For instance, one totally wrong way might be to put in into your ear.  Because even if you’re the kind of sicko who enjoys that, you have still failed to eat it.  Perhaps Resse’s, you ought to change your slogan to, “We’re not going to judge you for eating candy like a freak.”

You know how Apple started out by putting a trash can on their desktop, so that you could, you know, trash your unwanted files.  Then Windows decided to get in on the act and do them one better by having an environmentally-friendly recycling bin, so you could recycle your hard drive space.  Not I though; I want an OS with something like say, a Municipal Filth Incinerator, so that instead of merely deleting my files, I can take them out and burn them, spewing an acrid cloud of noxious smoke into the pristine bandwidth of the Internet, poisoning the forests of the web and clubbing the baby seals of cyberspace.  Grrrr, I’m evil!

            Whenever people are talking about how bad our society is, they always mention how the Indians used every part of the buffalo, while we only use the tasty bits and the parts containing weapons-grade fissile Buffalonium (atomic weight 247).  What they never mention though is that as bad as we are, we’re still waaaaay better than zombies, because all they do is eat the brain and throw the rest away.  Yeah, take that zombies, you really suck at preserving nature’s splendor for future generations!  Which is of course why I’m not even going to think about buying a hybrid until Al Gore manages to reign in all the zombies, which to my knowledge, he is not presently doing.

            Where are all the agnostic mantises?  I’ve never seen one.

            Richmond, it ought to be obvious to all by now, has always been a city of great diversity.  Yes people of many races, religions, and preferred steak preparation methods have long called Richmond home.  Richmond also happens to be home to a thriving vampire community, assuming that one vampire counts as a community.  The vampire in question is reputed to be none other than WW Poole, and this is his tale: (then again, maybe it isn’t and I’m getting him mixed up with a couple of Richmond’s other vampires, of which there are presently reputed to be several, though lest you worry, they prey mostly upon the emo)

            WW Poole, who’s first and middle names we shall henceforth assume to be Wedginald Weaseltrousers, was some mildly wealthy guy who lived in Richmond back in the late 19^th century, having been chased out of England under suspicion of being a vampire and dodging his income taxes.  As so many freaks and weirdoes eventually do, his path led him eventually to Richmond, and there he set up shop.

            Now, Mr. Poole was not fantabulously wealthy, rather, he was that kind of wealthy that people are in Victorian romance novels, you know, where even though they’re always talking about how money is tight and someone has to go ahead and marry Heathcliff, nobody in the family seems to have a job and all the servants keep showing up for work anyhow.  And what should a man of such modestly impressive means do upon finding himself here in town?  Why build a castle out of sheet metal, of course (unbeknownst to many, there is traditionally no better way to make a splash in Richmond society than by being demonstrably undead and building a castle out of modern industrial materials, just in case you were looking to impress anybody).

            Richmond, lest any try to tell you otherwise, is a city of very industrious folk, and if you happen to be appropriately weird, then you may rest assured that in short order all manner of rumors shall spring up in connection to your person.  Mr. Poole proved to be no exception and before long it was noised about that he had beneath his castle a dungeon lair where he did all sorts of crazy vampire stuff, like sleep in a coffin shaped like a racecar, turn into a bat and fly around shrieking, and counting stuff in a jovial and educational manner.  It was also said that he built his castle deliberately near to the Richmond city prison and via a system of underground tunnels, did his own part to, shall we say, render parole a moot issue for the more succulent inmates within.  And of course after the castle was destroyed in the 40s, there were just enough rumors that such things were found to keep the legend alive.

            But I digress.  Mr. Poole has the misfortune to die in 1922, and for three years, did very little other than lie in his tomb in Hollywood Cemetery and occasionally go “Bleugh!” at passing youngsters.  In 1925, however, there was a collapse in the Church Hill railroad tunnel, and though no definitive evidence was ever found to pin the disaster on mole people, one can only infer from what happened next that they were working in collusion with our dear friend, Wedginald Weaseltrousers Poole, Esquire.  For immediately after the collapse, from the mouth of the tunnel emerged a creature whose flesh hung about him like ribbons and whose teeth were uncommonly pointy.  Far from being the least bit disturbed by recent events, this singular individual was observed to quiver, as if with unholy glee, and immediately flee on foot.  Those who dared to follow chased him to the tomb of Mr. Poole, where they are said to have found the door locked from within.  Needless to say, to this very day at midnight on some of your more spookier of holidays (Halloween, Boxing Day, Samhain)  all the goth kids hang out there, paint them selves up with pentagrams graven in Heinz 57 Sauce, and read bad poetry about Darkness, Satan, and Not Being Familiar With The Concept of Shampoo.

            And, just to make everything all uber symbolic and whatnot, the tomb of WW Poole just so happens to be adorned without with a statue of a lamb, this being said to signify a charming twist on the biblical verse about mutton and the king of the jungle, that mostly Mr. Poole is just a’lion in the mausoleum, but when he escapes, he’s on the lamb.  And with that horribly bit of punnery, I wish you good night, and sweet dreams.

“There ain’t no cure for the summertime blues” ~ Eddie Cochran, 1958

            There is a disease which annually kills over 17 bajillion people every year*.  It strikes silently, often without visible symptoms, and can affect anyone, regardless of race, sex, or whether or not you live in Canada.  That disease is the Summertime Blues, and despite the fact that almost half a century has passed since Eddie Cochran first tried to raise public awareness about the threat posed by the Summertime Blues, scientists still have yet to find a cure.

            This is no doubt in part due to the fact that while diseases like AIDS, Parkinson’s, and that thing that Stephen Hawking has have all recently been brought to the public eye by celebrities who didn’t care about any of them either until they came down with them and decided that the most important thing in the world was to find a cure, no famous or pretty people have come down with the Summertime Blues and gotten into the whole fundraising scene.  My friends, it is time to change this sad state of affairs by joining the race for a cure.

            While it is true that there is no cure for the Summertime Blues, there are treatments, most of which involve a combination of electro-shock therapy, monkeys, watermelons, stolen hotel bath towels, and EZ Cheez, all of which are far too scientific and ridiculous to go into here.  With early detection and a generous slathering of unquestioned funding and those little flavor packets that come with ramen noodles, it is possible for many sufferers of the Summertime Blues, (or STB, as we in the abbreviation industry (or the AI) like to call it), but even the best that modern medicine has to offer falls far short of the goal of completely eradicating this horrible plague.

            No one is sure where the Summertime Blues first came from, though many geneticists are fairly confident that it has something to do with that time that Rick Moranis got turned into a devil dog.  Others, who are quite possibly just trying to stir things up, maintain that it first developed when American settlers briefly tried to use buffalo in place of orange juice.

            How can you help support the cause?  First, send me lots of money.  Lot’s of it.  Buy a teacupmammoths T-shirt, write me a check, carve me one of those big stone wheels they used to use for currency in Indonesia before they went over to the Euro, whatever, as long as it’s shiny and I can trade it for beer.  If you want, I can even send you some pictures of adorable children from 3^rd world countries.  Sadly, raising a fuss and a holler, and writing to your congressman will not work, nor will taking your problem to the United Nations, since North Korea, Sudan,  and Djibouti all sit on the Council of Silly Ailments, and all three of them think you’re a big poophead.

            Wearing a ribbon would probably help, because if there’s one thing that diseases and international terrorists fear more than any other, it’s a colorful magnet stuck to the back of your car.  Unfortunately, the color blue is already taken, and if you tried to go around wearing a blue ribbon, you would at best be taken for the winner of the regional hog-calling contest, and at worst be sued by PBR.  The black ribbon already belongs to fighting melanoma, and supporting anarchy and the Amish, so it’s right out too.  Orange is always nice, but it’s already been taken by feral cats and Ukrainian independence, so no help there either.  Silver is the ribbon for supporting the abuse of the elderly, and I like to think that we opposers of the Summertime Blues are better than that, so it’s no good either.  In fact, the only color ribbon that’s still free is apricot with magenta polka dots and the Decepticon symbol in the middle, so by process of elimination, that’s the one we have to go with.

            So yeah, join the fight against the Summertime Blues today, because together, we can build a more awesomer tomorrow.  Do it for the children.

            *This number is based on a combination of demographic surveys, CDC tabulations, ingredient lists on cereal boxes, and the fact that a bajillion is a fun number to say.  Bajillion, bajillion, bajillion.  I feel better now.

            During the cold war, the Army developed nuclear landmines capable of causing a ten kiloton explosion.  They were to be buried around Berlin in the event of a Soviet invasion, and were designed so that during the winter, chickens could live in them and keep them warm.  When ever you think about us beating communism, remember that it was exactly this sort of thing that carried the day.  American scientists also discovered that the Nuclear Chicken Mines would be an excellent name for a band, but the war ended before they had time to get any major gigs.

            I wanted to paint a shark face on my van, to symbolize its ferocity and vulnerability to attacks by Richard Dreyfuss, but upon further inspection, I discovered that the front wheels are set in a way highly detrimental to the depiction of shark faces.  However, I did a bit more research and found that there is one deep sea creature that would work: the humpback whale, because it’s got that weirded out wiggedy, over the face, flip top head.  Not only would this imply that my van is capable of cruising the highways while simultaneously straining billions of interstate krill through its mighty baleen, but it would also be a visible testament to the fact that Star Trek IV was totally sweet.

            Why does Batman not have a Bateaux?  It’s like the one vehicle specially named to fit with his theme, and he chose something else like the Batdinghy.

            Why do Dennis the Menace’s parents keep letting him come to dinner parties?  I mean, every single time they have someone over, Dennis makes sure to bring up whatever snarky thing his parents said about the guest in question (which is of course completely avoiding the issue of what kind of people his folks must be to talk trash about literally everyone who they invite over for supper).  Seriously Mr. and Mrs. The Menace, if you don’t like your boss, then you’d best keep your kid locked upstairs, because otherwise we’ll all get treated to a one panel strip of your son saying with all innocence, “Why ain’t you dressed like a bitch?  Cause my dad you’s always actin’ like one!”

            On a similar note, maybe Mr. Wilson ought to just take his phone off the hook at night, since it seems like he gets about three one in the morning calls a week from the human ferret next door.

            If you really want to mess with people, next time you’re out, take a magic marker into a public restroom and write something on the walls like, “You know what?  Jews aren’t so bad after all.” Or “For a deep philosophical discussion on the cultural implications of the lesser known works of Geoffrey Chaucer, call Becky at 555-8372.”

            I think it’s really dangerous to get one of those “Hey, I’m an Organ Donor!” license plates, because if the guy behind you needs a new kidney and is tired of waiting for the system to work, you could find yourself in the middle of a most unfortunate “accident”.

            I’m glad that if they had to remake just one Charleton Heston movie with Marky Mark, that it was Planet of the Apes, because if they’d tried such shenanigans with The Ten Commandments, I’m pretty sure divine wrath would have been in order.

            How does 7-11 get away with making their motto that “Oh thank heaven…” thing without getting sued by atheists and other non-Christian folk.  Watch, now that I’ve pointed it out, I’ve gone and jinxed them on it; in a couple of weeks you’ll be driving by and see one with a big sign that says, “Oh, thank Allah for my 72 virgins and 7-11” which will actually be kind of an improvement, so far as catchiness goes.

            I am inclined to believe, though it is ever a difficult thing to trace this sort of business to its very origin, that it all began when the headlight of my van decided to snuff it one night, thereby rendering my estimable vehicle into what both botanists and theologians alike have commonly termed a “padiddle.”  Now, being as it is the case that my van, by some great stroke of foresight on somebody’s part, came equipped with two headlights, mist likely in case of just such an eventuality as this, I failed to notice at first, the diminished luminosity of my totally fly ride.

            Unfortunately, this new event did not fail to escape the attention of on of the many policemen who hang about Jeff Davis Highway in the small hours of the morning, it being one of Richmond’s seamier underbellies (of which there are many), and since it is apparently the case that 89 Plymouths are all the rage in the international terrorism  scene these days, I found myself shortly promising to an officer of the law that I would replace the faulty lamp in short order, as well as hoping that he didn’t feel the need to ask me how many axes I presently had along with me (because let me tell you, no matter what line of work you happen to be in, the authorities rarely approve of any number in excess of three).

            Now, the great problem with changing headlights is that at night, when you need them, it’s far too dark to replace them properly, and in the daytime, the Sun is shining anyway and you can just forget about them altogether.  At any rate, it was the better part of a week before I got around to actually changing the offending bulb.  In the interim, I found myself to be constantly passing police cars, and was therefore presented with the continual choice of whether to allow them to see that I had in fact, as a result of raininess and constitutional ennui, not yet gotten around to changing the bulb, or to just turn on my highbeams and risk giving offense.  In any case, I eventually had a day off and was able to summon sufficient vitality to get the job done at last.

            Which brings me, of course, to the next event in my litany of hilarious sorrows, when the next night, shortly after stopping at one of Richmond’s many fine Wawa’s, I made most unpleasant discovery that my van had, either out of capriciousness or a mere yearning for a bit of excitement, decided to drive as if someone had nailed legos to all of its tires.  Now, there are, as regarding these sorts of things, two main kinds of people in the world.  The first are those who, when presented with a problem, step back, figure it through, and do not proceed with other things until finding a practical solution.  The second is comprised of they who, rightly figuring that it is already late and there are not, in fact any legos visibly attached to their wheels, decide to ignore the problem and hope that it goes away.  I myself have subscribed to this latter view for most of my adult life, and can attest to it’s efficacy in ameliorating nearly all ills.  Sure enough, I turned out to be right, for within another day the matter had resolved itself satisfactorily, as either my van had quickly wearied of the entire super offroad effect, or its mutant healing factor had kicked in.  I was now, however, in the unenviable position of being really low on gas, and in a distinct hurry.

            The discerning mind may well ask why I was in a hurry.  Well, it just so happens that I often find myself running late, much in the same vein as Osama bin Laden often finds himself to be living in a cave, and monkeys often find themselves to be addressing the vicissitudes of life by throwing poo at them.  Indeed, if Virginia and Late were ever to declare war upon each other, I would be sorely pressed to choose sides, since both make an impressive claim for being my natural and native state.  To make matters worse, the gas gauge with which my van came equipped has always held the view that in our increasingly precision-obsessed world, it would be a breath of fresh air for it to merely tell me, whether I had more or less than half a tank on hand at any given moment.  At the particular given moment in question however, less than half a tank seemed to be in vogue, and since every time I took a corner the low fuel light would flash menacingly at me, I ever so carefully drove the approximately twenty miles between my job and the nearest gas station, arriving with that turns out to have been enough gas to easily carry me another 500 feet or so.

            I departed from the gas station then, in high spirits, and remained blissfully unaware that a soda had rolled itself beneath one of the back seats, quite possibly in an attempt to avoid being quaffed.  Which was all well and good save for the fact that the combined effect of gravity and a really sharp offramp caused a biggish piece of lumber I had in the back to come crashing down upon it.  I, of course, did not know this at the time, being simply sensible that there had been a large thunk, followed by a hissing sort of a detonation, like a mortar hitting a laundry hamper full of snakes, and the sudden realization that the contents of my van, including myself, were now very damp, and slightly carbonated.

            The good news, as of course there always is, is that this explosion seems to have been taken by my van as a sort of disciplinary act on my part, and as a result, no further mischief seems to be afoot, automotively speaking.  Though of course, in the words of Princess Anastasia, one never knows.

I bought some new cargo pants, because if there is one thing that brings me joy above all others, it’s being able to hit myself in the knee with my cell phone every time I take a step.  This time, however, I foolishly went with the classy brand, and saw that they were sold not as pants, but merely as a cargo pant, which is totally whack, because if there is one thing that should always be plural, it is pants.  And monkeys.

            I’m gonna name my kid Marco, so that from an early age, he’ll hate going to the pool.

            At work, we got some new polo T’s to wear around the site.  Mine is red though, and if there’s one thing I’ve learnt from Star Trek, it’s that if you wear a red shirt out into the forest, you’re darn well gonna get all the potassium leached out of your body by a cloud or a horta or something, or at least have to fight a bunch of freaks to keep the quatloo economy alive.  I wish they’d asked me before they ordered, I’d rather have gotten a blue one, cause they come with a tricorder, a bowl-cut, and the Vulcan Death Grip.

            If I ever start a company that sells baby food, I’m gonna ditch the baby and put a picture of Robocop on the jar.

            If you happened to be both a carpenter and a harvester of wheat, and wished to advertise your services with an appropriate logo, you would probably be severely confused when all your customers turned out to be communists.

            Did you ever notice how in movies anything containing radioactivity has to have a big nuclear symbol on it?  And not just like, official American stuff, but like things built by mad North Korean scientists and stuff.  No offense, but if you really want to be considerate of people, then why not just refrain from building a hellish engine of destruction in the first place?  Try building a nuclear-powered Easy Bake Oven or a nuclear sundial instead.

            I want to start a barbershop quintet, because I bet we’d totally pwn all those other guys who had one less dude on their team.  Especially during the steel cage match.

            If you were both a Jehovah’s Witness and a vampire, I bet you’d be severely conflicted on the subject of blood transfusions.

            I want one of those Superman shirts, but with two S’s on it instead of one.  That way people will look at me and be left wondering whether I’m a fan of the Nazis, or I just really like steamboats.

            A lot of people say that the future isn’t going to be like Star Trek; however, I have proof that they are wrong.  Next Generation, of course, aired back in the early 90’s, when the internet was still little more than a cardboard box full of Duck Hunt cartridges in Al Gore’s basement of solitude.  And yet, the following are actual quotes from Data in Episode 16, Season 3: “LOL, the third crosslink transfer series is complete.” “That is a complex question, LOL.” “You are truly becoming sentient, LOL.” “What are your wishes? LOL” “LOL, put him down!”  Yet again, we have clear proof that Gene Roddenberry anticipated not only the technology of the 21^st Century, but also the geeky net lingo.

            The next Harry Potter movie really ought to be called “Snapes on a Plane”.

            As most of you will doubtless have already gleaned (glent?) from recent newspapers, Jedi holocrons, and Family Dollar advertising circulars, Germany has finally gotten around to putting a historical highway marker up over where Hitler’s Secret Bunker of Doom is.  This is, of course, an intensely controversial thing to do, since every time you even mention Hitler in Germany all the Neo Nazis go crazier than old people at Ukrop’s on double coupon day.  Because, you know, there’s probably all sorts of secret Nazi science and stuff still down there, like say, all the ancient artifacts that Indiana Jones didn’t manage to save from them, like the Credenza of Longinus, or Moses’ Catcher’s Mitt.  Or maybe it’s just the secret lost flavors of Fanta that Hitler was planning on unleashing after he won the war, like Mango Blitzkreig, Fuhrerberry, and Von Ribbenpop.  But I digress.

            The real question here, I think is whether Germany is going to go all the way in turning this into a historical site or just wuss out and go with a sign and one of those machines that squashes pennies into little Hitler-related souvenirs.  Now personally, as an historical interpreter myself, I think the best way to do it would be to have a living history museum where professional historical dudes could reenact what life was like back when Hitler was around.  So at one station you could have like, Hitler in hobbit pants running an old-timey flour mill, and another one of him in a hoopskirt and corset trading with the German Indians for corn (which the Indians called “maize”).  And then maybe a ways off there’d a like, a little diorama of Hitler building a palisade with traditional tools, while on the other side of the park they’d have like, a traditional Hitler pewter shop where old Adolf himself would be casting little things like tiny collectible spoons and lead-free musket balls.

             But let us assume for the moment that even in Germany, where the squirrels are red and Helga is still an okay name for an ubermodel, chronic funding issues exist for historical sites.  In this case, they would have but one recourse; that last resort of historical places and minimum security prisons: talking barrels.  Like, you’d show up there with your family and you’d walk a ways down the Historic Hitler Heritage Trail, and there’d be a sign and a barrel with a button on it.  So you’d let little Wilhelm punch it and then the magic would begin. (Note: Never in the history of teacupmammoths have I so regretted not being able to offer the site in an audible format as I am concerning the next paragraph.  Sadly, I was unable to find any text to speech programs that really convey the flavor I'm going for here, so unless you're content to have this be Stephen Hawking as Hitler, which would be pretty funny in its own right, just steer clear of the AT&T R&D page altogether )

“Allo, I am Adolf Hitler, it was on this very site on May 17^th 1942 that I lost the Battle of Hastings.  You see, I had been out late the night before mit some auf mine homies at der luftwaffle haus, and vas still verrückt im mein kartoffel.  So ja, anyways, it turned out that I had managed to show up not only in the wrong war, but also in the wrong century, all of which you can learn by looking at the Bayeux Tapestry, which incidentally is available in der giften shoppen.  Now please continue along ze trail to the scenic uberlook, where I shall speak to you from the next of these most uncomfortable barrels.”

Yeah, that’d be pretty sweet, especially if they had a Sno-Cone stand there, because if Hitler had one weakness, it was his all-consuming passion for Sno-Cones.  Well, that and his weakness against bullets and being set on fire, but just you try to set up a bullets and getting set on fire stand at a family tourist attraction and see how many takers you get.

Anyway, assuming Germany learns a few lessons from how we do history here in the states, they ought to be okay with this whole thing.  Also, as an added bonus, I was looking through my art folder the other day and I discovered that at one point I did, for no reason that immediately presents itself, a picture of Hitler as an ent.  Please accept it with my compliments. 

            So, it turns out that The Omen has its own Myspace page.  Honestly now, who in their right mind wants to be in Satan’s Top 8.  And anyway, what do you write about if you’re the Devil incarnate?  “June 12^th: Man, I’m so depressed.  Ever since Cindy left me and I got fired from down at the frou frou cheese shop my life has just been one long silent scream of angstiness.  On the bright side, I just can’t wait to see Spiderman 3!”

            My Mom, for reasons not entirely understood by myself, decided to buy a rubber purple dragon to decorate the kitchen with.  For reasons even less obvious to me, she has apparently decided that it would be a capital idea to have him just live in my box of cider.  Now, if I were more of a heavy drinker, or she were more the sort of person given to making symbolic statements as a way of keeping her family on the straight and narrow, I might be tempted to read too much into this, but as it is, I think this is just her revenge for all the times back in the day when I left Skeletor and Man at Arms locked in mortal combat in the lunchmeat drawer.

            I was at Wal-Mart the other day, and in their computer accessories aisle, they had printer ink.  The problem was that all the boxes had brightly colored butterflies on them.  Sorry Wal-Mart, but whoever told you that the butterfly is an ink-producing animal was lying.  Really, this is worse than the time all the frozen crab legs there had a picture of a manatee on them. 

            Did you know that George Washington had a set of hippopotamus teeth made after he lost all his original ones?  I bet that’s why he was such an effective President.  Nobody wants to be bitten by an angry founding father with hippo teeth.  He must have been like Jaws or something.

            In a completely non-characteristic bout of conformity last week, I bought a Batman antenna topper.  The problem is though, that now I have Batman’s severed head stuck on my antenna, and he looks so freakin serious.  It’s like he knew this was coming; that someday the Joker would manage to remove and shrink his head and mount it on a Plymouth Voyager, so now all he can do is bear it stoically.  Also, whenever I go above about 60, he spins around, which does nothing to enhance his dignity.

            Speaking of heads, why is that shampoo called Head and Shoulders anyway?  Do a lot of people out there have insanely hairy shoulders and need a special shampoo for them?  Am I paying more by always getting the shampoo with the shoulder option?  Is there a shampoo out there simply called Head, which would suit my needs more affordably?

            This all of course begs the question: have they ever thought about making a foot care product called Knees and Toes?

I passed a truck today for Southern Tile Delivery. I kid you not; their acronym does not leave a favorable impression.

You see Keanu Reeves is doing a new movie in which he falls in love with Sandra Bullock.  And travels in time.  Honestly, I’m beginning to think that he’s got some kind of contract thing going on where unless he gets to travel in time and be the Chosen One, he just won’t sign on.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m okay with this and all, but someday someone is going to make a time traveling chosen one movie with say, Lindsay Lohan in the starring role, and the universe will just implode or something.

If you went postal and shot up a Target, it would be tragic, yet strangely appropriate.

            It’s a good thing that most obscene gestures are things that you have to do like, really deliberately.  Like, what if there’s a culture somewhere where waving your open hand cheerfully at someone was a mortal insult concerning both goats and the mother of the person at whom it was directed?  I hope there is such a country, and that someday they send a lot of immigrants here.  Unless of course this culture already happens to be the French, in which case it would explain a lot.

            This happens to be one of the more exciting times in colonial Virginia history (which, as all right-thinking people know, is way better than what passes for colonial history up in New England), primarily because the quadracentenial of Jamestown’s 1607 founding is fast approaching (or Stardate -715634.4351851852 for all of you tourists from the future), I thought it might be a good time to deal with a few of the myths, misunderstandings, and historical narfage concerning the most famousest of Indians, Pocahontas.  So gird about thy loins with The Girdle of Learning Some History, because it’s time to set the record straight.

Myth: Pocahontas was a princess.

Fact: Actually, she wasn’t.  You see, the Powhatan Indians were what we call a matrilineal society, in which royalty was chosen not by the line of descent from the king, but rather by a series of grueling yet hilarious reality shows in which those who wished to be the next chief would have to live in a house with all sorts of washed up celebrities from the 1580’s, such as Francis Drake, captain of the humorously named ship, The Golden Hind, William Shakespeare, who was still at this point completely ignorant that future generations would decide that he was either gay, black, or a posthumous committee, and Vanilla Ice, who lead the English navy to victory against the Spanish Armada.  As a result, Pocahontas was not in the running at all to take command of the nation; rather the next in line was Junior Assistant Sub-Chief, Gary Coleman.

Myth: Pocahontas and John Smith were, as the bard himself once said, “getting’ it on.”

Fact: At the time of the first English settlement, John Smith was in his mid to late 20s.  Pocahontas was about 10, and spent her days running around the village naked singing the theme from the Powerpuff Girls, as all the children of the Powhatans were wont to do.  This was not, his writings tell us, really something that John Smith was into, and as such they mostly just messaged each ther on Myspace a lot.  True, the name “Pocahontas” means “little naughty one” in Algonquian, but hey, what’s in a name after all?

Myth: Pocahontas spent all her time jumping off of the majestic waterfalls of the James River and talking to her pet raccoon.

Fact: By the time the Powhatan Indians arrived on the scene, there were no more majestic waterfalls left on the James, all of them having been hunted to extinction thousands of years before during the end of the last ice age.  As for the talking raccoons, the Powhatans had no use for raccoons, talking or otherwise, except in the form of the raccoon hot pocket, the raccoon hat, and the occasionally role of a tetherball.  The English, as we now know from recent archaeological evidence, did in fact keep, tame and look after raccoons briefly, but when they turned out to be incapable of human speech or wacky hijinks, they were eaten.  Take that, Miko.

Myth: Pocahontas looked totally weird, as evinced by that portrait of her they’re always showing.

Fact: Actually, that’s simply the only picture of her taken during her life, and it happens that she had the bad fortune to have had it taken at the London DMV.

Myth: When the Indians and the English got angry at each other, they’d all march purposefully off to war, taking the most circuitous and scenic route possible, like Billy from Family Circus, while singing a dramatic two-part battle duet about how much they disliked eachother.

Fact: In truth, while the English were very fond of marching places, they were epically white, and as such lacked the rhythm necessary for such large-scale impromptu musical performances.  As for the Powhatans, they were really more of a moseying people, and while they did their best to engage the English in song, it just came off really awkward and they just decided to fight it out with a bit of cheery whistling and a couple of drum solos.

Myth: If you’re ever at a historical site in Virginia and see someone dressed as an Indian, it is an excellent idea go up and say, “Whoa, are you Pocahontas?”

Fact: Actually, it is a great idea to do this.  Assuming that you also happen to think that it would be fun to have your kidneys removed through your ears with a dull oyster shell.  Otherwise, you may wish to back off and not be such a ‘tard.

            So there you have it; everything you always thought you knew about Pocahontas but in horrible reality, did not.  Well, I think we’ve all learnt something very important here today, so class gets out early for the day.  For extra credit, be sure to bring me a buffalo or one of those delicious talking raccoons to class tomorrow.

            Well, here we are again, on the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year, and all the smart money is on Satan appearing in all his demonic evilness and doing a really bad remake of a 70s movie (speaking of which, isn’t just a little bit blasphemous to try and cash in on Satan?  I mean, even if its not like, a mortal sin or anything, it seems like one of those things that makes you more likely to get struck be lightening or eaten by a hungry, hungry hippo).  And then like, jump out of a volcano somewhere as a cheap stripper doth a cardboard cake.  And, um, you know, fly around and be all apocalyptic and stuff.  The only real problem is, of course, that in fact, this whole 666 date thing is that it actually comes once per century and according to every single “stuff what happened today in history” page I could find, absolutely nothing of historical interest has every happened on June 6^th, ’06, in any year, ever.  No demons flying around throwing marshmallow peeps or death at people, no oceans turning to blood, no Captain Planet after-school kids-stay-away-from-drugs-or-I’ll-eat-your-dog special, nothing.

            This of course leaves us at a bit of an impasse concerning the reliability of pop culture prognostication concerning old Beelzebub.  It is of course possible that, Prince of Darkness that he is, just has a really busy schedule and never goes in for the big holidays.  Or maybe, inveterate butthead that he is, he just likes messing with everybody and his favorite number is like, 582, but since it never comes up for him when he plays it on the lottery, he’s kind of given up on the whole superstition deal and become a more secular source of all evil.  Or maybe he’s just a trekkie and is waiting for stardate 666, which happily enough won’t be until September 1^st, 2323, at which point I expect to have become an immortal caveman supervillian and be living under the sea in my fortress of doom, surrounded by minions and singing crustaceans.

            But before we even get into all the complications of bringing to Devil himself to Earth, let’s take look at a few of the greater concepts of Old Sparky down through the ages.  The Bible tells us that Satan, much like William Shatner, rebelled against God and was cast out of heaven with all his groupies to run amok here on Earth and give goth kids someone to write edgy yet vacuous songs about.

            In early America, the whole goat-legged pitchfork guy look was widely favored, to the extent that forks came to be looked upon as the dining utensil of Satan and all good people either made do with sporks or just adjusted their mental image of Lucifer to have him wielding something a bit less common, like a pair of salad tongs, a spatula, or a rubber chicken.  A fiery rubber chicken of lies and eternal damnation.

            The Pope, who is, it appears, still learning the difference between the “reply” and “reply to all” buttons on his email recently made major eschatological booboo (that’s less dirty than it sounds) by confiding in the entire internet that he personally believes the Devil to be none other than President Martin van Buren, who happily enough died in the year 23,000,000 BC, after an unfortunate yet hilarious time machine accident, so we’re all safe after all.

            And of course, according to those guys who wrote all those Left Behind books, the Devil is in fact Vigo the Carpathian, who shall remain imprisoned in a New York art museum forever, so long as Harold Ramis remains a faithful brother of that weird order that tried to kill Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

            As for myself, I though the temptation to just pin being Satan Incarnate on Ben Affleck is both great and oh so probable, I’m gonna go with the less obvious route and suggest the Pillsbury Dough Boy.  First, he looks like some creepy little anime ghost thingie.  Second, he has no belly button, much like Alfred Hitchcock (who lost his when it fell off on the Shockwave at Kings Dominion).  And of course, he never takes off his hat, which suggests the presence of either horns or the hidden face of Voldemort.

            So anyway, until next time, I don’t think any of us have to worry much about all of this- RAAAAWRRRR!!!! AT LAST I AM FREE! FREE TO BRING RUIN TO THE EARTH AND TYPE IN ALL CAPS!  MWAHAHAHAHA, THE NEW AGE OF DARKNESS HAS BEGUN; WHAT WAS WILL BE, WHAT IS WILL BE NO MORE.  TIME TO LISTEN TO SO LINDSAY LOHAN ALBUMS AND SEND OSAMA A FRIEND INVITE ON MYSPACE.  Oops, sorry about that, the cat just jumped on my keyboard there.  She’s been kinda funny ever since my grandmother pegged her in the head with that accursed Babylonian can of orange juice.  Well, she’s hovering around in a circle of fire again, so I’d better let her out for the night.  Catch y’all tomorrow!

            I dunno about all y’all guys and gals out there in blogland (which may or may not be a real place or merely a figment of my tortured imagination, like Count Chocula and the miraculously wacky resurrection of Calvin Coolidge), but if there’s one thing that keeps me lying awake at night all angsty and sleep-deprived, it’s the decline of western civilization.  Well, that and the fact that someone seems to have gotten me a subscription to Stuff magazine.  I’m not quite sure when it happened, but I think it was back around the beginning of the year when my first issue shewed itself unto me.  My mom, who is a woman of decency and discretion if ever one lived, saw fit to leave it on my desk, face down, lest I be corrupted by the image of the scantily clad whore of Babylon on the front cover.  Either that or she was worried that the aforementioned brazen hussy of the media might see what a horrible mess my room was and tell all her scary supermodel friends. 

Anyway, I’ve never been quite sure what to do with it.  I mean, I’m sure there are folks in third world nations going without borderline celebrity porn and technogossip, so just throwing it away doesn’t seem right.  At the same time, I can honestly say that I’ve always been just a little too weirded out by some of the blurbs on the cover to venture within its skanky pages.  But then, the world must know what perils lurk in the hearts of magazine publishers, so here follows a brief tour of this month’s attack on that that is good and decent in the world.

First, the covergirl of the month is Brooke Burke (who may very well already be a senator from some state up North for all I know), who has apparently traded most of her clothes for an alliterative name and a retro hairstyle.  Also promised in this issue are exclusive photos of Kristin Cavalliari, who, not to be outdone by Miss Burke has also given in to the alliterative name craze, and Michael Moore’s feet (really!) which I can only hope are wearing more than the other people so far mentioned.

And of course, I’m promised fifty ways to live like a rock star.  And by fifty, they mean of course, three.  Namely, big money, crazy sex, and total destruction.  Now, I’m an old fashioned kind of guy here, and I’ve always been a fan of the cashless economy of the future, and find such a retrograde position in Stuff to be somewhat offputting.  As for crazy sex, I personally find crazy people to be extremely non-sexy and as a result would be much more intrigued if the blurb said something like “emotionally well-adjusted sex” or “hey, why not take your time and just take her out for dinner and a movie first?”  And so far as total destruction goes, I already get all I need of that from my subscription to Evil Overlord Quarterly (this month’s covergirl: Attila the Hun!) and since Stuff hasn’t done too well thus far in terms of winning my trust, I think I’ll just stick with what I know about the annihilation of all that is.

            So far I’m just to the table of contents and I’ve already been promised a peek at Skeletor’s homoerotic fantasy.  I’m sorry, but the Skeletor I know is a dedicated and faithful husband to his wife Betty and his three children, Toby, Beast Man Jr, and Rush Limbaugh, and would never in a million years even think of such a thing.  Stuff magazine, you’re not doing too well here.

            On the very next page, I find an ad for a razor with five blades.  I’m sorry, but now they’re just making stuff up. 

            Page sixteen; so far, at least half the pictures have been of dudes.  This does not bode well.

            Page fifty presents me with the opportunity to get washboard abs with the assistance of Stacy Keibler, who apparently ran away from her tyrannical uncle and his tree-based cookie factory to become a professional ab-abber.  Alas, my abs are already so mighty that France signed a non-aggression pact with them, so this does me no good whatsoever.

            Moving on, I get the chance to buy a professional goatee trimmer.  I didn’t even know that having a goatee was a profession.  What’s the starting pay for being a professional haver of goatees?

            On page 81, Motley Crue (whom I shall not honor with the unnecessary umlauts which they insist upon) say one ought to beware of vans.  Perhaps so, Mr. Crue, at least you should beware of my van, for with it I shall smite all who dare to oppose me.  Yet again, Stuff manages to choose the wrong side, because vans are always cool.  Just ask yourself: What did Mr. T drive around in?  That’s right, a van.  And since, according the Gospel of Awesome (it’s in the Apocrypha, ask for it at your local Christian bookstore) Mr. is infallible about what totally rules (seriously, in the council of Nicea, the early church decided to make Mr. T like, the Pope of cool stuff and he’s been right about everything ever since), vans are just ineffably cool.

            And finally, Stuff tries to teach me how to cut down a tree.  Look Stuff, I’ve had just about enough of you trying to tell me how to run my life, be a rock star, and slander Skeletor, the last thing I want from you is your opinion on how to fell a tree.  In fact, I will personally go up against you in any sort of a tree-vanquishing contest you can imagine at a moment’s notice.  Like, I can be coming out of Waffle House with all my homies at like, three in the morning, and you’ll be all standing there by my van (which you will beware of, lest it smite thee) with a tree, and I’ll just pull out a felling axe from like nowhere, like Anime characters are always doing and like Optimus Prime used to do with his trailer when he turned into a robot, and I will mightily slay the tree in question, and then turn it into something in conceivably awesome, like a monster stuck/catapult/wet bar.  So yeah Stuff Magazine, I don’t know how you decided to invade my mailbox, but bring in on!

            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.

            So, as all of you already undoubtedly know, the Spanish government has decided to grant human rights and citizenship to apes, based on the fact that they share a great deal of DNA with us, they’re cuter than most of us, their poop-throwing skillz are vastly superior to those of most Spaniards nowadays, and of course the fact that once they count as citizens, the Spanish government will be able to take up to 70% of their bananas and tire swings in annual taxes.  Some may say that this is a bad idea because apes aren’t really intelligent (though if intelligence became a requirement for citizenship, we would probably see our list of registered voters drastically shortened, to say nothing of pretty much cleaning out congress), other say that if we allow apes citizenship, then it will be merely a matter of time before the Spanish government starts granting human rights to other lower life forms, such as turnips, stoats, and boy bands.  And some just think the whole thing is retarded.  The truth, however, is that far beyond merely being an exercise in doofusulosity, this could be the beginning of the end for humanity. 

            For you see, the three sorts of apes the Spanish plan of granting full equality are chimps, gorillas, and orangutans, the very same three species that took over the world in Planet of the Apes, (The good one, not the new one with Marky Mark and the Monkey Bunch).  Indeed, no sooner shall the Spanish have ratified this new law, than apes from all over the world shall leave their homelands and immigrate to Spain, where they will quickly form a large and fanatical voting bloc, quickly overwhelming the native population and establish a new ape government.

            But it won’t stop there, because as we all know, apes, like Osama bin Laden and the Olsen twins are not merely content to rule over their separate empires of eternal darkness, performing catchy musicals and kicking babies, but inevitably turn their boundless ire to the one object in the universe which they hate above all others: The Statue of Liberty.  Yes, the first thing that the apes may be relied upon to do as soon as they take control of the EU will be to attack America, land of freedom that it is.

            Perhaps you doubt that apes hate us that much.  Remember how at the end of Planet of the Apes Charleston Heston was all walking along the beach and found that it was Earth all along?  He thought it was at least like, a thousand years in the future, but alas, all that had transpired had really taken like, two weeks.  The ape rebellion has begun, and if we hope to preserve the Statue of Liberty for future generations of Americans, that they too may be protected by it from the vile machinations of Vigo the Carpathian, we must act without delay.

            My plan, audacious though it may sound, is, I believe, the best chance we have to stop this madness with a relatively modest, yet totally awesome, amount of gratuitous violence.  I propose that we hire the two greatest ape fighters that America has to offer, Charleton Heston himself, veteran bane of the apes that he is, and Dick Cheney, whose army of robo-baboons and unparalleled shooting people in the face abilities make him nigh unstoppable as well.  These two must immediately disguise themselves as 19^th century opera divas and work their way to Spain on a tramp steamer.  Once there, they’ll lure all the apes out of hiding and into the open by building a humorously large fiberglass banana and hanging it from a helicopter, which they will then fly out over the Strait of Gibraltar, which Charleton Heston will have caused to turn into dry land, thanks to his divine mastery over the elements.  Once the army of apes runs out after the aforementioned banana, Charleton Heston need merely withdraw his providential hand, at which point the ape army shall be drowned and, just for good measure, shot in the face by Dick Cheney, who has at last mastered the art of the Hadoken.  After this, universal peace and harmony will soon follow, as the stars of the heavens come into perfect alignment and all the nations of the world at last agree that football is actually that sort where you where a helmet and score touchdowns, while the one with a black and white ball and really low scoring shall hereafter be known as “curling”.  Gummi bears shall rain from the sky and everyone who won an Oscar this part year will be eaten by trolls.

            When I was little, and I saw that episode of Next Generation where Picard gets borgled, I always wondered why he kept saying “I am so cute as a borg.”  I mean, obviously he was, he didn’t need to keep pointing it out, like Riker was going to be all like, “Darn right you’re so cute as a borg, girlfriend!”

            I was at the bank, and they had a sign which read, “It’s always a good thing to save for a goal!” But what if your goal is something evil, like committing genocide, or buying a bunch of Partridge Family records?  Good job First Market, way to encourage financing for evil.

            I saw a Mercedes the other day, the plate of which said MB OF R3.  Mere words cannot express how relieved I am to know that not only have The Monkey Butlers of Richard the Third come back to Richmond, but they’re apparently traveling in style.

            You know how they have fat camp for the portly youth of today, where they go and earn like, I dunno, fat merit badges, and study fat lore, and fat basket making?  They need a camp like that for kids with ADD and call it concentration camp.  And they’ll learn all sorts of good study skills and like, ways to help them pay attention in class and stuff.  Also, it’d be fun to tell kids who were acting up, “Timmy, if you don’t stop fidgeting this very moment I’m going to send you to concentration camp!”  That would wunderbar.

            There’s apparently a coastal plant called Diablo Buckwheat.  Nothing I can add to that could possibly make it any funnier than it is already.

            I saw a boat being towed down 95 the other day called “Bound for Pleasure.”  There’s just something wrong with society these days when someone can go and take their freakily-named S&M boat down a public interstate like that without some decent-minded citizen setting them on fire, though they’d probably enjoy it anyway.  Freaks.

            There’s a barber shop in the mall called Mr. Nick’s.  You know, if you’re going to be shaving people, maybe your name oughtn’t be Mr. Nick.  At least Abercrombie & Fitch had the good sense to change their name from Mr. Make You Look Like a Three Dollar Ho, take a page from their book, Mr. Nick.

            Barnes & Noble had a book called, “The Book of the Dead.”  So I got all excited, because I love the Dead.  I opened it up though, and it was just full of pictures of mummies and skulls and Bob Dole and stuff, no Jerry Garcia anywhere.  I was severiously disappointed, to say the least.

            They say if you buy an animal and plan on killing/eating it, you shouldn’t name it first.  That can cut both ways though.  Sure, your kids’ll hate you if you get an axe and go out into the backyard to kill Mr. Buttons, but say you got say, a sheep and named it after something unspeakably evil, that’d only make it easier to kill it.  “Where’s my gun woman, I’m a going out in the yard to shoot Paris Hilton!” “But Cletus, you only bought her yesterday!”  “I said, ‘where’s my gun?’”

            The other day I saw Saruman out hiking on the trails at Henricus.  That’s great and all, I just hope he’s not breeding orcs with goblin men back there; we’ve already got enough of that going on down at the boat landing.

            If Ted Danson ever learns how to read and decides to write an autobiography, it had better be called, “Danson in the Moonlight.”

            There’s a restaurant in Carytown, and their sign says, among other things, “We’ve got a Patio!”  Like, in quotes, just like that, which strikes me as really weird, assuming it’s just a regular patio.  I mean, quotes are for saying stuff like, “Our priority is quality!”  or, “Putting the pug in pugilism!”  So unless it’s like, the metaphorical patio of good customer service, I think it’s time someone taught them a lesson.  In grammar.

            It is a generally accepted fact that as role models go, Barbie leaves a lot to be desired, insofar as presenting girls with positive and empowering notions of what women are capable of in this world.  It is similarly acknowledged by all the cool kids of the sociology scene that He-Man, as a general rule, is not a cartoon particularly noted for instilling in its viewers the qualities which make one a well-rounded and badass global citizen.  But, how often does anyone ever take the time to compare the two, each on its own terms, in the view of determining which is in fact doing a better of job raising our children whilst we’re all off playing quoits and drinking absinthe?  Fear not, ye funky readers, for today, I shall do just that, the better that a few loathesome and wlatsome myths may be laid to rest like Zombie Chester A. Arthur.

            First, let’s take a look at their respective family situations.  Barbie has no parents, has been dating Ken (who, it just so happens, is a eunuch) for approximately a brazillion years, and other than occasionally taking the time to be a sterling example of sluttiness for Skipper, is the very epitome of everything that most parents (except for Scientologists, of course) want their little girl to be.  He-Man, on the other hand, is constantly looking out for his parents, King Randor and Queen Whatshername.  He’s put of college and further career plans just so that he can stay home and look after the family business (in this case, fighting Skeletor and growing soybeans).  And how many brothers would drop everything and travel to a completely different and unicorn-infested dimension just to help your sister fight a pig man?  He-Man would (and, as my sister would surely tell you, so would I).

            Now onto the matter of accepting those who are different from yourself.  Barbie has like, a hundred and fifty friends, all of whom look exactly like her.  Barbie doesn’t make friends with fat chicks, or people with less than ideal complexions, nor with anybody whose feet are anatomically constructed for anything other than high heels, nor black people.  And of course, the doors in the Barbie dream house are all too narrow for Barbie’s one handicapped pity friend to fit her wheelchair through (which also explains why we’re all still waiting for that Barbie/Professor X crossover).  He-Man on the other hand, hangs out with nobody except for freaks.  Just about everybody in his posse save for his immediate family and girlfriend has something blatantly non-standard about their physiognomy.  In fact, it can be pretty much completely assumed that if you’re one of He-Man’s homies, then you’ve got like, a giant battle hand that makes you fall over, or maybe you have a mechanical neck that lets you, you know, look over stuff, or maybe you’re just a giant bee.  Whatever the case, He-Man loves you anyway, and not even in that condescendingly patronizing affirmative action way that so many superheroes do.  None of this, “Let’s all listen to the unique cultural insights of Man-E-Faces concerning the phenomenon of lookism in our society before I punch this robot in the face” nonsense.  Nope, aside from valuing the talents of all his compatriots, He-Man never goes and makes them feel all different and freaky, despite their flaming level of freakitude.

            And how about economics?  Barbie seems to never have a steady job, despite having tried her hand at everything from being an astronaut to a 15^th century tavern wench to Nelson Mandela.  Yet she lives a lavish lifestyle in a giant pink house with three walls, drives numerous sports cars, and dines exclusively on endangered species and 3^rd world orphans.  He-Man on the other hand is still living at home to help save up more money for graphic design grad school.  Not only that, but home is Castle Greyskull, which, though no doubt the absolute favorite spot with all his dawgs, is not exactly the kind of romantical bungalow that he needs to win Teela over.  Even so, it’s paid for, and He-Man is a fellow who lives within his means.  Unlike Barbie, he works two jobs, one as the Prince of Eternia, and one as a beefy guy with a tan who likes to punch things.  Also, he occasionally moonlights at Heavenly Ham during the Christmas season.  And he’s a devout Methodist.

            So the choice, she’s a’clear, if you let your kids play with Barbie they’ll soon end up as racist, elitist, unemployed, skankaholic, exhibitionists, while if you introduce them to the wonderful and diverse world of He-Man, they’ll soon learnt he value of getting along with those different than themselves, living on a budget, wearing furry briefs, saving the world, and filial piety.  I rest my case.