Fact: You can't eat 10 double cheeseburgers

Maybe you can. Maybe you can't. It could be impossible. You never know until you try. I bet Takeru Kobayashi could do it. This guy's a champ many times over, and even holds the world
record in burger eating at 97 (White Castle sized, but that's still pretty damn serious). As Willie Randolph would say to Joe Torre, "Yeah that's a lot of meat."

McDonald's double cheeseburgers are hefty, succulent, and a dollar a piece. Based on price alone I'm surprised that McDonald's doesn't host a double cheeseburger eating competition. It's done wonders for Nathan's reputation. But then again, Nathan's doesn't spend copious amounts of money on litigation defending themselves against ridiculous class action lawsuits that eventually get thrown out because even a judge knows better than to let a bunch of parent's sue because of their inability to overcome a childs sedentary lifestyle.

McDonalds does manage to send the right message to the general public through advertising. It's not like the stuff is bad for you or anything right?

Despite all this rambling about McDonald's I do have a point. While there are a handful of gifted individuals that have the raw talent, determination, and skill to eat 10 double cheeseburgers, it is easier said than done.

A friend of AoF, M.D.C. has made wild drunken (and sober) claims that he can eat TEN double cheeseburgers with ease. These claims have never been backed up by actual performance. In fact at a Super Bowl party he was presented, Sneak King Style (ok, technically mook-king style) with a pyramid of ten double cheeseburgers on a silver platter. The challenge was met with great protest, and when the dust settled, NINE double cheeseburgers remained.

Even Harvard would put up a better showing than that. Pathetic. Now I know some people might take issue with my criticism. But I KNOW I can't eat ten double cheeseburgers. Hell, I can't eat ten White Castle cheeseburgers. But if you make the call, you gotta back it up. Even this douchebag stepped up and documented his odyssey. I'll tell you what, I need to move to Texas, so I can partake in a challenge worthy of note. It's one thing to eat ten double cheeseburgers. It's entirely different to claim you can eat 10 double cheeseburgers but never attempt to back up your assertion of fact.

Kobayashi would be disappointed.

B.K. Layup: News in Brief

If you were stealing cell phones wouldn't you do the same thing this guy did?
...i know some people would...

Hugh Grant managed to get himself arrested, again. This time it was over something he could have put in his mouth...not Divine Brown's...

This is just damn sexy...my hump, my hump my hump my hump...

These crazy Germans. Yeah they make a great car, but apparently only one form of transportation is acceptable currency.

Something smells funny. This two and half year old couldn't figure it out...not divine brown, more like...doo-doo brown...

Lastly, if you were an armed guard at the US Embassy in Kyr-gyz-stan and a naked man approached in a threatening manner, would you shoot him? Maybe if he was doing a meatspin. (link will not be provided. you can do that research yourself. perv.)

The Layup Post

Fact: Sometimes you find things on the internet that you just can't elaborate on. No way to make it funnier, its just there for the taking. This, like laying in bed when a drunk girl stumbles into your room and does her thing without you having to move your lazy ass, is a layup post. As our friends at Urban Dictionary put it: "an easy score. an uncontested basket. He saw Betty across the room and he knew it was going to be a layup."

It makes my job much easier, which is good considering I have a final due in under 24 hours that I'm not close to finishing. But I am dedicated to you the reader. So with that, sponsored by the left side of the Yankees infield, I give you: Gay Rodeo's Most Popular Event. (It's also worth your time to watch Gay Rodeo Curious). What's funnier, the fact that there's a gay rodeo, or that it is everything you would have expected? I just don't know. . .

Today's Obituaries

Yes, I realize that this is a fairly morbid sounding title for a post. In truth, the idea for it pretty much started out in a morbid fashion. I'm sitting here, killing time at work, trying to think of an idea for a post. I checked out the google news and saw again that David Halberstam was killed in a car accident yesterday. Then I remembered that Boris Yeltsin dropped dead yesterday also, hopefully drunk, definitely fat. So I decided to go on the New York Times Obituaries section and see who else died yesterday that might be of note. Obituaries always kill me in that the author always has to come up with some sort of phrase that sums up this person's existence. Sometimes its short and easy, like if they were a scientist or something. Other times its rather long-winded, mostly because that person lived a relatively unimportant life.

Here's some of the highlights from today's obit page (bear in mind that these are supposed to be the most famous people that died yesterday):

Conrad Spizz, 90, an Opera-Loving Master of Smoked Fish, Dies: Excellent name, loved to smoke meat, FACT.

Alvin Roth, Bridge Champion, Dies at 92: I'm impressed.

Marie M. Clay, Remedial Reading Specialist, Dies at 81: At least she probably could read better than Kenny Irons.

George Webster, 61, Who Was Denied Increase in Pension From N.F.L., Is Dead: Why is Webster remembered for what he couldn't do? I want my obit to read "TDX, 159, Did not have x-ray vision."

Jean-Pierre Cassel, 74, Actor Who Starred in ’60s French Comedies, Dies: Yet his death was tragic. Irony rears its ugly head.

John R. Drexel III, Socialite and Scion of a Banking Family, Dies at 87: Life is not fair enough for this to be Paris Hilton's obit sometime in the near future.

Kelsie B. Harder, Name Expert, Dies at 84: Sadly, I never had the opportunity to ask him the origins of the name "Pubert".

Otto Natzler, 99, a Ceramicist Celebrated for His Inventive Glazes: Is bongsmith a legitimate trade?

E. Dorrit Hoffleit, Scientist, Dies at 100: Couldn't leave out a scientist. Looked at test tubes and whatnot all day, calculating friction quotients, determining molecular compositions.

In closing, I couldn't resist the opportunity to use the epitaph from Royal Tenenbaum's headstone: "Died Tragically Rescuing his Family From the Wreckage of a Destroyed Sinking Battleship."

Chasing Aaron, etc.

So here I am, sitting on my couch, watching the eighth wonder of the world known as HDTV. I'm enjoying one of the most wonderful things in life, Baseball Tonight. Baseball Tonight is one of the great bonuses of spring in that not only is baseball back, but there's another half hour plus of TV programming on that I can use as an excuse to not do work. Especially during finals when I curse myself for being the piece of shit that I am and taking advantage to the fullest of non-attendance taking classes.

Before I delve into what prompted me into this post, I just want to adapt a fitting quote that the great David Hirshey worked into his most recent Premership post on Deadspin. From the well-adapted fine social contributor Pete Doherty: "Your loyalty to a team can never die. Ties are stronger than they could be with a woman. If she goes and sleeps with your best mate, it's over. If the Rangers manager slept with my best mate, QPR would still be my team." Hirshey goes on to wish the manager of Arsenal would sleep with a buddy of his. I agree whole-heartedly. If Willie Randolph were to sleep with any of my friends, we'd still be cool. Things would forever be a little off, given the man-love, presumedly consensual. They could, however, just pretend it was Willie's daughter that they were with (soon to be Fordham graduate, mind you, and Willie's giving the commencement speech this year), especially since a foolish friend of mine who is soon to be getting married thinks she probably has a fine moustache also. (In looking for a picture of her, I found her MySpace page. The internet is something.)

Wow I'm getting sidetracked. The whole point was to do the unnecessary and call out Steve Phillips for being a fool. He claimed that Barry Bonds should sit on a road trip if he's about to break the record so that he could do it at home and not embarrass MLB. John Kruk seemed genuinely incensed by this very possibility. I couldn't pick a side because Krukkie's fantastic jheri curl distracted me ("Just let your sooooooooul glow"). This did get me thinking however. With all the hullabaloo over Bonds' inevitable destruction of the most sacred record in all of sports, what other records could there be about to be broken that simply don't get enough publicity.

Here's a short and thoroughly uncomprehensive list:

3. Bear Grylls eating disgusting things. Experts estimate that he will soon suck all the liquid from fresh elephant dung on the African continent sometime in the year 2012, spiraling the dark continent into an even darker future full of dry dung that no one would dare squeeze into their mouth as if it was the most fucking delicious and refreshing fruit ever. God damn.

2. Second man to hit the moon with a home run. We all know that Vladimir Guerrero destroyed the moon almost two years ago in a competition with Alex Rodriguez over a can of Pepsi. FACT. Nowadays its looking as if that didn't happen and that ARod is projected to hit the moon sometime in the last week of April. I would predict it sometime later in the season, but they don't call him Mr. April for nothing.

1. Biggest Trouble in Littlest China. Sure, you may remember there being some pretty big trouble in little China back in the eighties. Jack Burton's epic battles against Mr. David Lo Pan in San Francisco's Chinatown is gonna look like a butterfly flapping its wings in mainland China compared to what my magic eight ball predicts. Boxer Day, 2009: Hillary decides to replace the White House restroom lighting with Chinese lanterns. White House staffers then discovery Hillary's darkest secret.

Live Blog: Man v. Wild - “Sierra Nevada”

11:23: Intro has a shot of what looks like Bear trying to take a shit right before he parachutes off of something. Excellent work on the graphics in this show btw (having trouble with sarcasm on the fly). I will be severely disappointed if Bear didn’t demand to do them himself.
11:24: Timeout for a quick house-call from Doc Rippopotamus.
11:26: Conversation about what the roast that DGD made did to all of us. Horrible.
11:31: Ultimatum issued that we resume the live blog. Kinda forgot about it.
11:32: Bear jumps out of what appears to be a perfectly fine airplane. He’s going to attempt to land in water. Ought not to be too much of a problem. Hangs on the wing of the aircraft for a while for dramatic effect. I have high hope for the episode so far.
11:33: Bullshit that he just landed in this tiny lake. Literally on the face of a mountain. DGD makes a call for naked pushups. So far so good. He’s stripped all the way down. You’ve got to be kidding me. You have to see the French Alps episode to get this. He fucking jumped into freezing cold water for no good reason, then jumped out, ran to the shore, stripped naked, and did pushups and god knows what else. I fell off the couch laughing so I didn’t get to see everything.
11:35: Bear just told a wonderful anecdote about getting Diarrhea. (I see that I capitalized Diarrhea. There was no good reason. I think I subconsciously believed Diarrhea should be given the respect it deserves with the capitalization due a proper noun.)
11:36: Bear runs up to the face of a cliff. Decides that it would take a couple hours to go around so he decides he has to go down the face of it without any equipment whatsoever. You gotta be kidding me. Really Bear? I think I’d take the time to go around.
11:39: Watching commercials for no good reason. Someone is slacking on the DVR.
11:41: Sonofabitch. Just discovered that the live blog is being live blogged by TW. Is live blog hyphenated? This is tough work.
11:44: OK, Bear decides to build a raft for some reason. He appears to be excellent at it. How do I not know how to make a sturdy raft from driftwood in about 6 to 7 minutes?
11:48: Fairly certain that Bear was in fake danger there. Claimed to have fallen off the raft at the precise time they needed a commercial break.
11:52: Decided to take a break from the show for a while. Bear was flaunting his roaring fire that he built immediately with a fucking flint and what may have been a turd. He definintely lit fire to a turd in Africa. He always seems to have the best fires made from the driest wood scattered about the forest. The wood we get from Krauszer’s shares no similarities. Shocking that the same place that the guy behind the counter who tried to sell TW a lighter shaped like a penis would have sub-par wood.
11:54: Goddammit, I look up just in time to see Bear eating something awful. He must have it in his contract that he has to pretend that absolutely everything could be food. He is required to eat something vile every fifteen minutes, preferably while I’m trying to eat.
11:56: Yes! I heard about this scene. Can’t wait to see how he’s gonna try and catch a wild horse.
11:58: I think there’s about to be some human-equine action. The child of this horse and Bear would form some sort of super-centaur. Wow, that was impressive. The horse was having none of that and just pushed him off and stepped on him. Possibly on his nuts.
12:00: Yup, just ate a fucking snake. Bear just ate a snake whole, sans head. It seemed particularly fitting that the commercial immediately following was for an Applebee’s steak. Couldn’t have held out Bear?
12:06: Fuck yes! Bear just threw a stick at a rabbit and killed it. That happened so quickly I’m still getting over it. He made a throwing stick (apparently a common weapon) and was trying to convince us he’d kill something with it. Then boom. I’m fairly certain that he could establish himself as a minor deity in some cultures.
12:10: That rabbit looks delicious. He goes about telling a story about some guy whose pants had an apple in it that a bear stole when he was sleeping. Bears are like homeless people, always out to steal your pants.
12:14: Bear’s eating ants. Nevermind that he just had a delicious rabbit that tasted like it was from a barbecue (his words).
12:17: Bear is absolutely fucking amazed at the sight of a huge lake. He must’ve been something as a kid. Better yet, imagine if he was retarded. Holy shit. It’d be like a dog barking at the mailman.
12:19: OK, seems fair that Bear has decided to swim the lake rather than walk the maybe ¼ mile around it. Uses his pants as a life preserver. This whole episode has just been one long excuse to take his pants off. His next location is Boystown where Lloyd had to go to deliver the signing papers to Jay Lester.
12:20: Bear finds a road magically. He tells about the life lessons he learned while pretending to get stuck in quite a nice section of the woods. If there is a lesson I’ve learned here is that these things are tough to write and I’m not as funny as I think I am. If there’s a second lesson to be learned is that bears are not to be trusted because they will steal your pants whenever they get the chance.

Live Blogging Touchdown Xerxes Live Blogging Man v. Wild: Sierra Nevada

11:24 – TDX decides that we have to pause Man v. Wild in the opening credits for important pre-show business.

11:30 – DGD requests water and wheat thins. (he might be gay, i mean anorexic)

11:31 – Ultimatum issued. There will be no pausing the DVR from this point forward. Sports guy doesn’t get to tell the MLB to stop playing as he live blogs….or does he?...

11:33 – Dougie’s Goin’ Deep makes a call form Bear to do naked pushups

11:34 – This picture should reside over my mantle

11:35 – TDX attempts to take a sip of water, but fails, laughing at the word “diahhreah”

11:36 – deciding to give up trying to remember how to spell diarreah

11:37 – TDX notes that he would take the time to find a way around a cliff, while Bear decides exactly the opposite. I nod in asset at the statement by TDX that “you gotta be kidding me” as Bear crabwalks down the side of the mountain.

11:38 – noted amazement by TDX at the success Bear has at crabwalking down the mountain.

11:38.35 – TDX feels that a broken bone is not significant enough to get you out of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

11:39 – I am presently forcing TDX and DGD to watch commercials (during a pre-recorded DVR show), waiting to see how long it will take them to get pissed and yell at me.

11:40 – DGD taps his fingers and stares at me in annoyance.

11:41 – …bam… – I just lost a buck…to myself…

11:42 – TDX states that my delay in fast forwarding is only acceptable if I am live blogging a live blog. The jig is up. I have been caught. My amusement wanes…

11:44 – DGD has a brilliant suggestion for a new show – having a camera crew follow someone doing the same thing Bear does…not so sweet…but having the guy watch Man v. Wild and have him try to copy what Bear does…much sweeter

11:45 – I admit that I would do that show. Sans climbing perhaps…

11:46 – TDX is upset at how slow the river is moving. The rapids increase, he is still incredulous about the stability and durability of the raft.
11:48 – TDX calls shenanigans on the danger of the river. Well not really shenanigans, he merely said it was fake danger. I call shenanigans on his call of fake danger. Which aren’t really shenanigans. …wee shenanigans…

11:52 - I discuss my plans to record a video birthday message. TDX suggests doing it in front of “Planet Sunrise”, which may trump my fireside chat or golden popcorn acceptance speech ideas.

11:53 – TDX asks if Bear ever started a fire with shit in Africa. What else are you starting a fire with in Afrcia? Dust? Elephant Tusks?

11:54 – I’ve delayed my commercial fast forwarding. I am going to stare them down until they tell me to change it. Over under, 40 seconds. I take the over. Damn. I just lost another buck…to myself…

11:56 – Commercial break over. TDX has admitted to slacking at live blogging. Yeah, he sucks.

11:56 – Wild Horses. Much laughter ensues.

11:57 – apparently we’re watching the Indian technique at taming wild horses. Bear is not politically correct. Unless he’s talking about the middle of the road baseball franchise located in Cleveland, and was the subject of the Charlie Sheen, Tom Beringer movie series “Major League”. TDX is hoping he really does ride this horse for the rest of the episode. Claims that we have “been deprived of something truly wonderful as seeing Bear on horseback”.

12:00 - My suspicion is that TDX wants to ride Bear. Would it be correct to give that the moniker, “bearback”?

12:00 – taking a pee break.

12:03 – DGD asks if the drug companies are giving impotency a fancy name, like ED. Damn these commercials.

12:07 – Bear just killed a rabbit with a “throwing stick”. The unintentional comedy is difficult to understand without seeing it first hand.

12:14 – TDX asserts as fact that you should never eat a spider if you are lost in the wild. Apparently the nutritional value is not worth the sheer awfulness of having to EAT A FUCKING SPIDER.

12:19 – TDX notes that this episode has just been an excuse for Bear to take his pants off. Cardinal rule, you NEVER go out once the pants are off. If you’re out and pants come off, its probably a good night…or you crapped your pants...then it's a bad night.

12:20 – Episode over. Goodnight.

ESPN Hyperbole at its Best

TOMORROW NIGHT, IT'S BIGGER THAN HANK AARON BREAKING HOME RUN RECORDS, IT'S BIGGER THAN MCGWIRE/SOSA HR BATTLE, HELL IT'S BIGGER THAN JACKIE ROBINSON!!! IT'S. . . . . two guys who happen to be from the same country facing off possibly three times at the most. Holy shit, this is ground-breaking, I'll bet Rosa Parks is sitting up in heaven pissed that she couldn't pull off something of this magnitude.

Ok, to be fair, I get it, MLB is now globally integrated, this marks two of Japan's biggest stars facing off for the first time (in the US), blah blah blah. Just show me Erin Andrews' rack a few times during the broadcast and I'll be sure to forget all about that, seriously. Well, maybe I'd settle for a breaking report from Pedro Gomez. I pose a modest question for all sports fans out there: Pedro Gomez was given a full time assignment following Barry Bonds . . . in San Francisco, where I hear he likes to hoop it up once in a while, coincidence? I think not. Anyway. . .
(bigger story, Steroids, or baseball's first public couple?)

Have we gotten to a point in society where everything needs to be groundbreaking and bigger than the game itself? Forgive me, but do you think a baseball fan is going to see right through this ESPN? Shitty game, over-hyped. We have the Mariners, who look like the Marlins in the year directly following a World Series title, except they have shitty vets and no good young talent. . . so maybe they're nothing like the Marlins and just continually suck. In the other dugout we have the Red Sox. They have what appears to be a World Series contender with a formidable rotation, if Schilling spends less time on 38 pitches and more time on locating his fastball and if Julian Tavarez suddenly decides to give the Red Sox another reason to keep him besides shutting Manny the hell up.

So here we are, Dice-K, the $100 million dollar man, versus Felix freaking Hernandez who could be battling Dice-K for Cy Youngs for years to come if he gets traded to a major league team. But do we hear about this? No, because we have to focus on the fact that Ichiro, who has been in the bigs for years, is battling Dice-K. Forgive me but I find the fact that a-rod used to throw td's to Doug Mientkiewicz much more interesting. The likely result of this match-up? Who cares. If there isn't some kill-bill type shit, or at least a baseball take on Shaolin Soccer, I'm going to be pissed. Who wouldn't pay to see Dice-K warming up then Ichiro jumping from the batters box out to the mound and bicycle kicking him all the way into the monster . . . IN SLOW MOTION! (for those of you with a lot of time, here's a longer, and slightly better, clip). With statements like this from Ichiro, "I hope he [Matsuzaka] arouses the fire that's dormant in the innermost recesses of my soul. I plan to face him with the zeal of a challenger," can we really rule out this possibility?

Pray For Mojo

The subject of today's post: Helper Monkeys. This is in contrast to the type of monkeys that I thought about blogging about, namely, monkeys that are thoroughly unhelpful. That would be generally 99.9% of the entire monkey population. Monkeys, on the whole, have given just about nothing to modern society, other than form the basis for the evolutionary chain that we are currently at the end of. This is taking the logical leap that you believe that the earth is more than roughly 5,000 years old, the Bible is generally not to be taken as scientific fact (maybe scientific is the wrong word to use), and Jesus does not normally dress up as Abraham Lincoln or Uncle Sam (this link's worth it).

Now that I think about it, monkeys have been rather detrimental to modern society. Exhibit A: AIDS. I don't care that it's an unsubstantiated statement that AIDS came from monkeys. I just said it, now its a FACT. Done. Exhibit B: Flinging Poop. This is key in the life of the monkey. Poop is there to be flung. Why else would it exist. Simple creatures those monkeys. And teachers apparently. I can only imagine that this Canadian teacher loved trips to the House of Monkeys at the zoo.

On the other end of the spectrum exists those monkeys that aim to help us in our modern society. By us I mean the old and enfeebled. The kind of people that heat waves are meant to kill off. Central Air is unnatural, yet so decadently wonderful. So it turns out that Helper Monkeys are legitimate creatures and they help cripples. (Christopher Reeves made his dress up as Supergirl. It creeped out everyone around him).

I must now make a plea to the Internets. Do your part. Train some monkeys. We here at AoF have already submitted our petition to give some monkeys specialized training. I only hope that there is a legitimate demand out there for monkeys that smoke people/other monkeys at beirut, make a mean cocktail, and unnecessarily demand to wear a banana suit when they get hammered. Should monkeys even get hammered you say? That's a chinese riddle without an answer.

Fact: Weekend Digest

I just thought I'd bring your attention to some of the more absurd events that are taking place around the world. Normally I'd ask some of these people to be AoF contributors, since absurdity is right up our alley. But I don't think I could even make this stuff up.

In Michigan, your video iPod isn't so special...

...i think the writer of this article hits the nail right on the head from the get-go...

I suppose anything's possible, but would you really think a 30 year old woman could pretend to be a 17 year old boy? Her 14 year old girlfriend's parents did.

...think that's bad? She raped and beat her too...

Overweight in Brazil? Perhaps a visit to the race track is in order.

...I'll be honest, I find this both sad and moderately humorous...Does that make me a bad person?...probably.

I would have preferred a monument to SPAM, but we can't all get what we want...

...Bosnia should be happy they didn't serve cow chips...I'm serious about the SPAM monument too...

I choose not to vote because no matter which way I vote, the results are the same. In Missouri, they just don't vote...at all...

Think about how pissed you'd be if you had testicular cancer. Its not the end of the world, relatively curable, and hey, at least you get to keep one nut. Now imagine how pissed you'd be if you woke up, the doctor told you they accidentally took the wrong ball, and by the way, you still have cancer....

Alright, I'll admit there's a bit of a running theme featuring humorous/satirical pictures featuring G-Dub. To be perfectly honest I don't go out of my way looking for these pictures. It's purely coincidental that when I searched for pictures of Satan, Bush happened to pop up. Similarly, when you do an search in Google for "Failure", the second most popular link is for G.W.B. It used to be that you could just do an "I'm feeling lucky" search and you would get that page, but I blame Technorati for ending that.

Anyway, here's another picture I stumbled upon when doing a picture search for "absurdity", and here's the site its from. I'd say its a tad bit over the top, but quite humorous if you don't take politics too seriously.

Fact: 24 Even Makes Republicans Cringe

As many of you may have noted by my esteemed colleague's constant (not-so) subtle jabs, I am a card carrying Republican and damn proud of it. More specifically, I am a consequentialist libertarian; just for the record. I dislike democrats, mostly extreme liberals (and also extreme conservatives) who make shit up and argue from the bottom of their bleeding hearts, albeit without any facts to back them up. Maybe I'll send them the link to this site as my community service for the decade. But even more-so, I despise the dip shits who use their celebrity to spout off absurd theories and bash our country even though our "greed ridden" society has created them and given them the platform to let stupidity flow like piss on your roommate's car at the end of a drunken night. It's called capitalism you communists, if you like Canada's "national health care" system, go up there and wait a year for an appendectomy, that's one less year we have to see your face. If you like Cuba's amazing government, hell, why not take a parlay with their health care as well, (ok but seriously let's clarify the links to those last two amazing assholes) then go learn to love Castro or die. Sounds a bit like New Hampshire actually, and who doesn't like New Hampshire?


The preceding rant was brought to you by Jack Bauer, who is actually the emperor of the United States. What's that? The US is a democracy? We don't have an emperor? Better go into witness protection because Jack Bauer just uploaded your address into his PDA and is coming to torture and kill you for questioning the legitimacy of his throne. You have 10 minutes . . . that's not true, grab a last meal because Jack Bauer invented witness protection, basically, you're fucked. Anyway, not that you'll be around to read it, this post is hopefully one of a weekly installment pointing out the absurdities of each week of 24. (Yes, it is the absurdities that makes it enjoyable, but honestly, it hurts sometimes).

*****Spoiler Alert***** (as noted, we don't care)

This week was a lesson in how government does not even come close to functioning. VP Noah Daniels (problem 1a, who votes for the ticket with a candidate named Noah on it?) has decided to become a Democrat and pretend the Constitution says whatever supports his ideas. Therefore, within the 25th Amendment, the inability of the president to discharge the duties of his office apparently means that taking the position he has taken all season is a sign of disability or conflict of interest, and a disagreement over policy might lead to that. (The scary thing is that this might actually be a plausible argument, proving once again that reality is sometimes more absurd than fiction). Going further, there are more power shifts in 20 minutes than probably happen within a full term in Washington. Nuke them, wait don't, yes do it, wait no, hang on maybe we will, no definitely not Palmer wins . . . oh no wait Palmer has decided to nuke them going against everything he stands for. Nice. Roller coaster effects like this tend to cause some nausea. Fortunately, Tom Lennox has seen situations worse than this, like when he facilitated the return of Vigo the Carpathian.

The second problem with this episode is the fact that Grendenko, in a display of manliness like no other, cuts off his arm with an axe (which just happened to be in the boathouse), then gave up the one guy who can probably help him escape, then dies under the pier because the asshole has been bleeding profusely for 20 minutes. Does this make any sense? I mean we know he's out for himself, but you would think that would include something minor like, I don't know, living?

from this: to this!? . . . really?

Finally, besides the fact that merely waking Wayne Palmer up from a coma has made him fully functional, Milo kills me. Honestly, this is the most unbelievable part of this show (no it's not Jack knowing how to fly everything from a plane, to a drone, to a really big kite). Really producers? This computer geek really goes from fighting some dude for Chloe to pulling ass like Nadia? Really? REALLY? This is the guy that is almost brought to tears by Morris and after taking one bullet he's Jack's protege? Really? I think not.

Education in Review: Harvard University

I was watching some mindless television at two o'clock in the morning the other night and came across some programming that epitomized exactly how much I was wasting my time. Granted, I'm all about laying in bed at night, willing to be quasi-entertained by whatever happens to be on, fingers crossed, hoping to watch that sweet total gym commercial with Christie Brinkley and Chuck Norris. It's basically an attempt to stave off the darkness that creeps in on the outside of my vision, the sort that usually only an unhealthy dose of ketamine brings.

So anyway, back to the initial point. I flipped through the channels and CNN caught my eye. It was Larry King Live with Chris Rock as his guest. I think he was pitching that shitty looking "I Think I Love My Wife" movie. Of course he doesn't love his wife. He tolerates the mother of his children. At best. What surprised me was the language that he was getting away with. He caught himself saying tit and asked if he could get away with it. Larry King said he could, and then he himself said tit. Rock then said tit a bunch more times and King, unprovoked, called something or other a bunch of bitches. Rock then qualified that by saying that they were bitches that needed to be slapped. Which is the best way to describe Harvard.

A bunch of bitches that need to be slapped. Here's a quick anecdote that best describes what a bunch of bitches Harvard is. Direct from Wikipedia: "Maroon was not [Fordham's] original color, magenta was. Magenta was used on the uniforms of Fordham's "base-ball nines." The color was also used by Fordham's archrival, Harvard. Both institutions claimed prior right to use of magenta, and neither institution was willing to make concessions. Since it was "improper" for two schools to be wearing the same colors, the matter was to be settled by a series of baseball games. The winning team could lay claim to magenta. The losing team would have to find another color. Fordham won, but Harvard reneged on its promise."

I hope they all get great jobs, the kind of great jobs that I could never get. I hope they are extremely successful in those jobs and really make an impact on society. I hope it's the kind of impact that really makes the world better for all of us. Then I hope they die of stress related diseases from the 80 hour weeks they worked for twenty-odd years. Also, if it's too much to ask, I wouldn't mind it if they were to die of an Oregon Trail type disease, like a snake bite or, even better, dysentery.

Verdict: One fist up, all the way up to the elbow.

Fact: You can't sue Satan.

Really. It can't be done. Go ahead. Try it. I don't like to lose so I'll represent Satan (as long as he pays). What? You think I'm joking? I have persuasive authority that Satan is immune from suit, much like the immunity granted to the States by the 11th Amendment. (ok not EXACTLY like the 11th Amendment, but in a much unholier-than-thou way)

Still don't believe me huh? For all you legal scholars out there, I invite you to examine the case brought in the Western District of PA, United States ex rel. Gerald Mayo v. Satan And His Staff (54 F.R.D. 282). (If you don't have Westlaw Access, then look here)

What you may notice is that judge held that plaintiff would not be granted leave to proceed in forma pauperis who in view of questions of personal jurisdiction over defendant, propriety of class action (a lot of people want to sue Satan), and plaintiff's failure to include instructions for directions as to service of process (where the hell is Hell?...Michigan).

What does this mean? Satan has no address. Apparently "HELL" is not a place where the prince of darkness (no not Mike Cameron's son) can be served.

So there you have it. If you sign a contract with the devil, you do so at your own risk. You will lose your soul with nothing to show for it. That is a FACT.