Onion Vol. 41 #35

Christian Science
Pharmacist Refuses To
Fill Any Prescription

A new Onion, sporting a new look.

• American Voices - [renamed from "What do you think?" and apparently now a daily feature]
  
  • on Pat Robertson's Remarks - "This recalls a moral and ethical dilemma theologians have grappled with for millennia, namely: Is it right to murder people?"
    
  • on U.S.-North Korea Relations - "We should say we have a magic flying house, and then when they say, 'Yeah, we do too,' we'll say, 'Gotcha! There's no such thing!' and they'll look like morons to the international community."
  
  
  
• Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can't Index
  "We believe that Google Desktop Search is the best way to unlock the information hidden on your hard drive," Schmidt said. "If you haven't given it a try, now's the time. In one week, the deleting begins."
  
  
• Bush: Vacation Ruined By 'Stupid Dead Soldier'
  "This is a terrible tragedy," Bush said. "If this dead soldier of a son had the ounce of sense he needed to keep his worthless ass alive, my last few weeks might have been peaceful. I mourn the loss of the beautiful August mornings, and the sweet afternoons that could have been spent on the porch swing listening to the songbirds. All Americans mourn this loss."
  

Tube Gossip 2005 Recap

Seen here a scant six days ago, I bring you more priceless gems from Tube Gossip. This catches me up back to the beginning of 2005.

• I never know what to say. I just stand there and look at her tits.
  
• He does well for himself, considering he's an effeminate, bisexual pimp.
  
• I reserve the right to be rude to ugly people, particularly ones who dress like that.
  
• I don't like all this peasant-chic. I know real peasants and they don't dress like that.
  
• He has absolutely massive hands... they are like waffles.
  
• Luke actually says "LOL" when he thinks something is funny... freak.
  
• You're just some jumped-up cockney bitch who talks out of her backside.
  
• You have to admit that Satchmo was a pretty stupid nickname.
  
• She's desperate to get broadband and I think we both know why.
  
• This is where Thomas the Tank Engine comes to die.
  
• Eventually, everyone in Asia will get adopted by Angelina Jolie.

Anti-Blessing

Via A Tiny Revolution, some Red State Son comedy from a recent peace rally. This first part is his Pat Robertson impersonation, giving the festivities his (anti-)blessing.

Dear Lord, please ignore this gathering of peace activists who reject your command that America wage war throughout the world, and know that in their hearts they wish to destroy your holy system of corporate capitalism.

And Lord, I pray that you keep these ACLU-loving traitors from turning God fearing Americans into pacifists, atheists, feminists, socialists, communists, Satanists, environmentalists, vegetarians, vegans, fruititarians, Rastafarians, witches, warlocks, demonic elves, lesbian vampires, homosexual werewolves and cross-dressing leprechauns.

For as your Son and our Savior once put it, "Blessed are the hitmen, for they shall inherit the Earth" and "Do unto others, but cover your tracks, to minimize blowback."

And Lord, it appears that I have once again embarrassed your Republican party by calling for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. And even though I'd still like to see Chavez's head blown off, and Venezuela's vast oil reserves seized and privatized by American petroleum companies, I regret my outburst, and ask that you punish me harshly. I need not specify how I should be punished -- we've been over this many times, and you know what I like and how long and hard I like it. I leave that to your discretion.

Again Lord, thank you for this war and the many more to come. In Jesus's ballistic name, amen.

Uninsured in America

Cringe-inducing tales of inadequate medical service via This Modern World.

Gina, a hairdresser in Idaho, whose husband worked as a freight manager at a chain store, had "a peculiar mannerism of keeping her mouth closed even when speaking." It turned out that she hadn’t been able to afford dental care for three years, and one of her front teeth was rotting. Daniel, a construction worker, pulled out his bad teeth with pliers. Then, there was Loretta, who worked nights at a university research center in Mississippi, and was missing most of her teeth. "They’ll break off after a while, and then you just grab a hold of them, and they work their way out," she explained to Sered and Fernandopulle. "It hurts so bad, because the tooth aches. Then it’s a relief just to get it out of there. The hole closes up itself anyway. So it’s so much better."

It goes on to point a few of the teeny-tiny shortcomings of our "makeshift system of increasing complexity and dysfunction" [bullet-listing added]:

Americans spend $5,267 per capita on health care every year, almost two and half times the industrialized world’s median of $2,193; the extra spending comes to hundreds of billions of dollars a year. What does that extra spending buy us?

• Americans have fewer doctors per capita than most Western countries.
  
• We go to the doctor less than people in other Western countries.
  
• We get admitted to the hospital less frequently than people in other Western countries.
  
• We are less satisfied with our health care than our counterparts in other countries.
  
• American life expectancy is lower than the Western average.
  
• Childhood-immunization rates in the United States are lower than average.
  
• Infant-mortality rates are in the nineteenth percentile of industrialized nations.

...And, of course, every other country in the industrialized world insures all its citizens; despite those extra hundreds of billions of dollars we spend each year, we leave forty-five million people without any insurance. A country that displays an almost ruthless commitment to efficiency and performance in every aspect of its economy—a country that switched to Japanese cars the moment they were more reliable, and to Chinese T-shirts the moment they were five cents cheaper—has loyally stuck with a health-care system that leaves its citizenry pulling out their teeth with pliers.

Tube Gossip

Via The Phantom Professor, from Lesson 2 - Dialogue of her Online Writing Workshop, a list of random bits of conversation overheard on the London Underground: Tube Gossip.

• Cut the crap Chris, and tell me what happened when you got to the petrol station.
  
• I'm gonna have a word with my bitches.
  
• I can still taste yesterday's prawn toast.
  
• He promises to bury his books and break his staff once he regains power. So he's not all bad.
  
• From now on you're going to be eating a lot of pork.
  
• A brontosaurus could kill a stegasaurus... easily.
  
• I don't want to hear another sob story about a man with no head.
  
• I heard your fart on the stairs. I bet it launched you up them.
  

And those are just selected from the last seven weeks - the page goes back to the beginning of 2003!

Btw, in The Phantom Professor's first lesson she assigned the task of writing a compelling first sentence of a story. About half of the quotes there would be perfect for that.

Onion Vol. 41 #34

Get your ice cold Onion here!

• Dave Matthews Not That Into Himself Anymore
  "Me and my band are still okay, but I feel like I've grown out of us," Matthews said. "Back when I was in the college charts, we were about all I listened to, but I guess I'm at the point in my life where my music just doesn't speak to me."
  
  
• U.S. Blowjobless Rate At All-Time High
  "Cutbacks in oral services have left 55 million Americans unsatisfied," Chao said. "Although June saw a promising jump in the age 15-19 demographic, with many teenagers finding summer blowjobs, almost 82 percent of married men are completely blowjobless."
  
  
• German Luftwaffle Chain Offers Waffles, Overwhelming Air Superiority
  "Soon, customers will fall under the sway of my lightning-quick, piping-hot Blintzkreig," said Hans Kreuzen, Luftwaffle's founder and oberstmanager-general. "All will know the sweet, buttery taste of fear and waffles from above."
  
  
• What Do You Think?, on the Gaza Pullout
  "Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, just tell me if it's good or bad this is happening, because I'm too goddamned confused by the last 30 years of Middle East history."
  

Why Cats Really Want To Be Outdoor Cats

Via a Red State Son post titled Even Lower. It defends against nasty attacks on Cindy Sheehan's motives by Christopher Hitchens on Slate. Don't get me wrong, it's a fine essay (the Red State Son response, not the original), but all I really wanted to share here was the picture, so there's no need to read it. Laugh, click the image to get the full-sized effect if you so desire, and move along.

Onion Vol. 41 #33

Bush Does 360 On
Abortion Stance

The Onion is back in season.

• What Do You Think? on the Jackson Jurors
  "If these jurors make a lot of money, the jury for the next Jackson molestation trial will be filled with opportunists."
  
  
• Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory
  "Traditional scientists admit that they cannot explain how gravitation is supposed to work," Carson said. "What the gravity-agenda scientists need to realize is that 'gravity waves' and 'gravitons' are just secular words for 'God can do whatever He wants.'"
  
  
• County Fair Judges Blown Away By Heifer
  "My fellow judges and I agree that we are unworthy of assaying such transcendent cowflesh. Our paltry ribbons and trinkets make meager tribute to this demigoddess, who should assume her place beside mighty Taurus in the heavens."
  
  
• New Pepsi Negative-220 Burns Twice The Calories It Contains
  "You'll love PN-220 for the super-slimming rush of thyrotropin, PC1 enzymes, and that zesty hint of lemony leptin that zaps away fat, muscle tissue, and some nerve sheathing," PepsiCo spokesperson Ned Caen said. "But you'll drink it for that refreshing cola taste."
  

The Album Formerly Known As Sean Hannity’s Phone Number ... Currently Sean Hannity Is a Democracy Subverting Douche Bag

Via jwz, the story of the band Kids Against Combs, who'd given their new album a title that used the private phone number of Fox News loudmouth Sean Hannity: Sean Hannity (631) 673-8003.

But the band and their label, 10-34 Records, were threatened with a lawsuit by Hannity's attorneys.

The band also alleges that spies from the Hannity camp — or at least some people who "looked extremely conservative Republican" and "not the type of folk that would be at any sort of live performance, except for maybe Paul Anka or Wayne Newton" — arrived to scope out a KAC performance the next day. Luckily, the band had freshly printed copies of the album for sale, sans home address and retitled The Album Formerly Known As Sean Hannity’s Phone Number ... Currently Sean Hannity Is a Democracy Subverting Douche Bag.

The Dark Side of Dark Chocolate

You know those delicious, delectable and addicting little bite-size Dove Promises?

You know how the inside of the wrapper has sweet, heart-warming little sayings? (One kind soul has collected them all for your review. Or maybe it's a checklist that you must eat your way through!)

Well, when I first saw the inside of this wrapper, I thought maybe I'd overdone it a little with my dark master, the cocoa bean. But I managed, while of course obeying the little tinfoil-printed command, to snap a picture of it! Proof!



And yes, of course it's real. How could a digital picture possibly be altered? By using Photoshop? Get real.

Junket Whores, Real and Imagined

You may have seen the news yesterday about Sony's fictitious critic ("A judge has finalised a settlement in which film studio Sony will pay $1.5m to film fans after using a fake critic to praise its movies."). But the really sad part is that the movie studios hardly have to resort to imaginary friends, when they already have plenty of junket whores. Check out this long but fascinating interview on Hollywood Bitchslap: Diary Of A Mad Trailer Editor (Part Two - The Quote Whores).

Included are a bunch of apparently real quotes that quote whore Earl Dittman had ready to go in praise of the passable-at-best animated movie "Robots".

"You've never laughed this much at a movie before ... It's absolutely one of the most hysterical and heart-warming comedies ever conceived."

"Although there's still nine months to go in 2005, 'Robots' is such a spectacular animated film that it already deserves the Number One spot on every critic's year-end Top Ten list ..."

"You'll never laugh so much and so hard at a big screen comedy ever again!"

I especially like that last one - claiming that this movie is so funny that there will never be a funnier movie, ever. (That'd actually be pretty bad news for movie critics, wouldn't it?)

Dan Otumba (the interviewee) sums up the cause-and-effect behind this whole phenomenon:

In a perfect world, the quote would be the last resort, the kicker to give smaller films that extra boost. But the reality is that its bad movies that need the most boost, so that's where the demand for quotes comes in, and the demand breeds the supply: the junket whores.

My advice: always ignore every single soundbite and critic quote. Rely on a combination of Metacritic (for the distilled opinion of the "professional" critics) and Hollywood Bitchslap (for no-punches-pulled ratings by regular people who love movies).

Touched By His Noodly Appendage

full-size image

Via Bob Harris, the new religion of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and efforts by one proponent to get it recognized by the Kansas School Board, along with the theories of Evolution and Intelligent Design.

We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power. Also, you may be surprised to hear that there are over 10 million of us, and growing. We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people don’t understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 10,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease.

I’m sure you now realize how important it is that your students are taught this alternate theory. It is absolutely imperative that they realize that observable evidence is at the discretion of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Furthermore, it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia. I cannot stress the importance of this, and unfortunately cannot describe in detail why this must be done as I fear this letter is already becoming too long. The concise explanation is that He becomes angry if we don’t.

Also, reasons why you should convert to Flying Spaghetti Monsterism:

• Flimsy moral standards.
  
• Every friday is a relgious holiday. If your work/school objects to that, demand your religious beliefs are respected and threaten to call the ACLU.
  
• Our heaven is WAY better. We've got a Stripper Factory AND a Beer Volcano.

Onion Vol. 41 #31

A nice big slice of Onion today.

• White House Denies Existence Of Karl Rove
  "This is a very clever fiction concocted by those on the other side of the aisle," Vice President Dick Cheney said. "It's preposterous at its core."
  
  ..."There is no such organization as the CIA," McClellan said. "This is tinfoil-hat stuff."
  
  
• Report: Our High Schools May Not Adequately Prepare Dropouts For Unemployment
  "Our public high schools place too much focus on preparing kids for professional careers," Chao said. "This waste of resources leaves our dropouts, the majority of whom have no chance of ever finding a job, wholly unprepared to sleep till 1 p.m., or watch daytime television while eating ramen noodles out of an upturned Frisbee."
  
  
• Bush Acquired By Martian Zoo
  "He shall have his Oval Office, his baseball, and simulated humans from his natural habitat, and we shall watch him most closely, for he is adorable sitting at his desk."
  
  
• Fundamentalist Aesopians Interpret Fox-Grapes Parable Literally (From The Vault, 7/99)
  "The Holy Writ of Aesop makes it plain that the fox, in his anger at the unreachable grapes, cursed the offending fruit and made all grapes sour forever," Bray said. "It is common sense—and a core belief of the Church Of Aesop—that this is a directive from Aesop Himself against grape consumption. Grapes are plainly exposed as a foul, sour-tasting fruit which dirties both body and soul, and this is a strict tenet of our dietary code."
  

The World We've Made

On the road today, I saw a bumper sticker that said, "It's Not Left Vs. Right, It's The State Vs. Us".

I thought maybe that guy driving that car might be a misguided fool.

Then I read What Does Toyota Have to Do with A Prisoner Dying of AIDS?, The World We've Made, The World We've Lost over at Democrappy, and now know I he is.

We try to deny the public costs necessary to a civilized society. We let those with money and power encourage us to ignore them, to hide them, and then they pop up elsewhere in the form of corruption, poor schools, overburdened emergency rooms filled with people who have no insurance, and crisis-ridden Medicare and Medicaid programs - all of which end up costing us more money than a rational tax system and national health insurance would.

Twisty Faster

Via Pandagon (which pointed to this post on O Magazine), a new weblog added to the daily list: I Blame The Patriacrchy. It's written by Twisty Faster, "a gentleman farmer and spinster aunt eating dinner in Austin, Texas," so you know it's good.

In particular, allow me to point out her thoughts on gay marriage. She started (last Dec.) with Homos Need To Grow A Pair, "And I Don't Mean Cottonballs: Why The Establishment Should Throw a Debutante Ball for Gay Marriage, and Why Gay America Should Suddenly Remember It Has To Wash Its Hair That Night".

[Anti-gay forces] should be happy as clams that so many gays want to subject themselves to the disadvantageous, anachronistic, vive la patriarchie enterprise that is marriage. They should be handing out cigars and composing lyric odes to this ideological victory over queer iconoclasm. At last, the unruly homos are jumping on the patriarchal bandwagon! They're embracing Conservative Family Values! They're flushing feminism down the crapper! They're consigning themselves to bourgeois domestic slavery for the sake of the market economy!

And more recently (Saturday), she continues with Sisters Ordaining It For Themselves, in which she analyzes the news of some women who got themselves ordained as Catholic priests:

I mean, you go girl and all that, but Jesus Christ, why-o-why? To paraphrase the brilliant René Spencer Saller, a chick priest is like a Log Cabin Republican. Who are they kidding? Why do they think that if they infiltrate the church they won’t absorb its patriarchal toxins, become drunk with power, and turn into gasbag ideologues who get all up in everyone’s shit? That’s what church is for.