Unless you’re in middle school, which I could foresee of some of the readers of this site are, you can recall that subtle territory wherein the “everybody’s equal” mentality of kindergarten started to dissolve in favor of, ”Wait now. That more popular kid is getting far more attention from the suddenly appealing females,” or, “Hold up now. That nerdy weakling is doing far better than I am with his grades,”  or, “That… that kid dressed in black that’s both unpopular and of medium intelligence – that kid with openly neglectful parents that seems to be getting really, really into satanism and buying a small army’s worth of assault rifles – seems to have an awful lot of maps of the school.”

At this point of your life you began to pick up on a sense of individuality, even if you chose to give up your burgeoning sense of independent thought in favor of more traditional or ‘normal’ ideas. You started developing your political ideals. Your sense of humor also blossomed. Humor that, if you’ve ever endured a conversation with me that was longer than 10 minutes, has become far more abstract than it was a few decades ago.

I wanted to cry when Bon Iver became mainstream, but crying is so mainstream.

Shit, I was in Williamsburg Brooklyn for the first time in my life last night, and if what I saw there wasn’t a dress code and lifestyle based on a maladapted sense of self-deprecating humor, then I have no idea what was going on. By some certain measure: ironic humor is clearly alive, if not unwell and malnourished there.

I’m digressing because I need to mention that I loathe hipsters, but it’s not completely off topic. This particular episode of Southpark really highlighted the desperate need to be recognized that seems to be present in the your average meme-er. [that's 'meme-ist,' fuckhead -ed.]

They’re funny, I know; and I love running gags and stuff, but has anyone else picked up on the downgrade from the Warhol 15 minutes to a 30 second prolonged fart clip or single shot of your buddy imitating an inanimate object? Do you know where memes come from? Well, Wikipedia sure does. And it’s easily the laziest way to get an answer across. It’s the desperate hope that something you’ve done will live on, and in this case it’s just in the form of a jpeg.

Yes, because when I invented Memetics, what I really wanted was for idiots to use it to graph My Little Ponies on D&D alignment charts.

Is it some small, morbid, concern that I have that the advent of memes, in the social media sense, is also the iconic sign that we’re finally hitting a point where an ever larger number of people are again realizing they’ll never be more than silly cogs in a malfunctioning machine? It’s like Billy Corrigan saw this shit coming in ’99, and dressed in an attention-gettingly-appropriate way for the video:

Let’s have a nice quick round of applause for musicians with unignorable substance abuse problems, and then I’ll get back to my point.

I’m constantly hearing people over 50 that I know comment that the world is in its all-time worst condition ever. It isn’t that I have a distrust of the opinions of most baby-boomers (though I might), it’s that there’s a very large percent of our population, born between ’46 and ’64 that doesn’t have a grasp on proportion. I’d far sooner say that bad news sells, and since every news corporation is in danger of closing down, they have to announce as much bad news as possible to stay afloat.

By proxy, with more news and information sources available on a daily basis, the people still under 25 have always grown up knowing a constant flow of information, much of which has been deflating their concept of individuality or importance. And thank GOD, because we just didn’t need another generation of boomers. There. I said it. I think we’re also finally hitting the turning point on Social Darwinism in the means of establishing the hierarchy in classroom vis a vis lateral evolution. I can go on a bullying in popular culture tirade another time.

What kind of faggot doesn't know basic C++? Gunk gunk.

What I’m seeing in all of this is a post-goth indifference to the world as expressed through a poorly understood grasp of humor and irony; it is exemplified in everything hipster, but iconified in the pan-sub-culture knack for memes to appeal to everyone. I’m not a cat person, but I’ll troll through cat memes for hours, just because the affectionate jokes appeal to my distaste of the creatures.

Me? I write articulate, verbose social commentary with complex puns, and I feel like I’ve left my mark on the universe. But I’m smarter than you are, so I don’t have to make a video of taking turns dry humping a sofa with my friends, or riding something precarious over, on top, or near something more precarious, and then post the video after something somehow goes wrong.

Is this a good thing? If you’ve ever seen the Darwin Awards, and then watched a video with someone overtly stupid, acting… stupidly, you’ll agree we’re at least thinning the herd. Do I need to experience another wave of the black background 6 framed ‘this is what ___ thinks ___ does’? No. No, I do not. However, if this helps keep nitwits in line and taper back the sense of entitlement and self importance that MTV has been so content to cater to since the first season of ‘Real World’ then I’m totally OK with it.

 

The guy had two choices. He could accept his position and hang out sewing Jordans for American kids during the day, and cap it off with a twelve hour shift of mining gold in Warcraft. OR, he could evade a bunch of 24/7 guards, scale a fucking wall, and hitch a ride to Beijing to get some sweet sweet asylum in the American embassy, single-handedly making Hilary Clinton’s life a million times more difficult than it already was, being a woman and all. Oh, yeah, and this one man pissed off the Chinese government so much he got a buttload of words banned from Chinese internet – - words like, I shit you not, ‘blind man’ and ‘The Shawshank Redemption.’ The guy is a super-hero.

Which begs the question, how bad must sighted prisoners all over the world feel that a blind guy was able to do what literally 99.5% of them are unable to accomplish? I mean, what is it about our prisoners that is keeping them from getting out of what is arguably the worst situation anyone can possibly be in?

I have never tried to hop a fence with my pants below my ass, but I imagine it presents some challenges.

Oh. I guess if they focused some of the attention they devote to having sex with each other to the pursuit of freedom, they might be able to do almost as much as one blind Chinese guy. But hey, if you care more about non-consensual gay sex than freedom…

These last couple of weeks I learned that one cannot live exclusively on the internet, that one must interact with human beings, maintain something resembling employment, and take legally mandatory vacations in Nicaragua. I shit you not. But it turns out that doesn’t really matter, because while I was gone, none of you motherfuckers did anything of any importance anyway. GOP Primaries, CISPA, John Edwards, Lindsay Lohan playing Liz Taylor (just because they both had addiction problems doesn’t mean a non-actress can play a great one) – - it’s all just one big holding pattern because for the last two weeks the world has been utterly uninteresting.

How do I know? Because instead of going out and tossing the pigskin around, you were all bitching about things nobody would ever care about otherwise:

No Tards On Facebook Didn’t think mental retardation was genetic? Check out this poor kid’s mom. Brought to my attention by my buddy Cait, there’s an actually retarded petition going around, which has already gotten more than its requisite signatures, demanding Facebook not censor pictures of children with disabilities. Seems some woman posted pictures of her 7 year old son, who has Down Syndrome and is participating in his first Special Olympics, and the pics got flagged and removed. Because ignorance of how the world works never seems to stop people from throwing drooling mongo-fits. This woman must envision some poor bastard sitting behind a FB super-computer, individually investigating each of the millions of flags received every week, and making moral judgment calls on behalf of the entire corporation. And not, you know, an algorithm built into the servers that, so as to not have yeasty twats all over Facebook, just aces most of the items flagged as offensive to be on the safe side. I’m sorry, young Cole, you may be able to long jump with the best of the Gumps, but you’ll probably drown in the tub before you leave your mom’s care.

Mitt Romney’s Idiot Wife I’ve only half been paying attention, so you must have heard that Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen said that single mother and professional millionaire Ann Romney has never worked a day in her life, implying that perhaps a woman with more money than a Jewish movie producer with a Bilderberg weekend pass that has never held a job in the public sphere may not be the ideal spokesperson for women in the workplace in these harsh economic times. A poor choice of words, perhaps, but one that can be easily deciphered by anyone with half a brain and a Dan Brown book. But since the average woman that votes Republican in the US doesn’t have half a brain, conservative media was able to convince stay-at-home moms that Rosen meant that raising kids isn’t hard, and they’ve birthing kittens all over my news feed ever since. They still won’t drop it, weeks later, clinging to it like Chris Christie to the last package of Double-Stuff Oreos in Road Warrior times. Because having a full time nanny and maid staff, not to mention money to hire the most responsible 15-year-old babysitter in Ripley’s, is exactly like what single mothers working two jobs go through. Ann Romney recently said, “I love the fact that there are also women out there that don’t have a choice and they must go to work and they still have to raise the kids.” Rosen was absolutely right, and if you don’t stfu about what Fox News wants you to get upset about, you might miss what they’re sneaking past you while you shit yourself over nothing. This is nothing but manufactured controversy, because the Republicans have nothing real to bitch about, as Obama is doing his fucking job for once.

Spiritual Affiliation and Porn We all know that fundamentalists hate on porn to such a frightening degree they are often able to do something about it. Now a couple of idiots over at American Humanist are insisting that secular humanists ought to hate on porn too, because it objectifies women, depicts them as things to use for gratification, blah blah blah bullshit spouted by people who don’t know what they are talking about. Now, this kind of argument has been debunked so many times I’m out of fingers and toes and penises to count them on. But I want to take issue with the idea that the viewer of porn, whilst focusing on the sexual act, is not taking the woman’s personality into account. On the contrary, I personally find pornography boring if the woman does not express any emotion or self in the scene. How does she feel about being double penetrated while hanging upside down with a piss funnel in her mouth, I’d like to know. If she doesn’t react, how can I tell if she is enjoying it or not, and adjust my self-ministrations accordingly? If anything, it is more often the man (in traditional porn) that is used as the anonymous stand-in, good only for his cock and grunts. And even if it were true that porn removes the woman’s self from the equation, must all art include every aspect of the subject? Wouldn’t that severely muddy the result and make it, in effect, not art? Would it make you happy if she wrote an treatise about her experience afterward (because they do that sometimes, in adorably terrible grammar)? Go read Jenna Jameson’s book about being rich, and ask her if she feels exploited.

Tim Tebow’s Penis Inexplicably demonized infidelity dating service Ashley Madison (Huffpost of all outlets calls it an “incredibly sleazy dating service… sinking to new lows) is offering a million clams to any woman that can factually disprove Tebow’s claim that he is a virgin, ignoring the real mystery of why anyone claiming to be a man would ever advertise the fact. Frankly, my boy R-Gronks has the right idea by offering to claim it for him. The only way to prove a dude is a mary is for a chick to give him a shot. When he has no idea what he’s doing and blows in her hand, we have a loser! Anyway, if Tebow’s myriad chokes on the field aren’t enough evidence he isn’t pumping his anxiety into a supermodel or pop star like a respectable NFL quarterback, you don’t know the definition of empirical. Easily solved, stfu about it.

Hey, for all we know, the lack of real news featuring real people I could have mocked is due to the fact that good things were happening. Alaska Airlines stopped serving bible passages with in-flight meals, and Kansas’ personhood bill failed because women live there. We’re not all pessimism and dick jokes here. Well done, you guys.

“Gosh, wasn’t the situation in the Chilean mines such a tragedy? I mean it was so tragic, you know? God, they were in my prayers and my Facebook status, one hundred and ten per cent. Really, I just thank GAWD they’re alright.”

Originally posted October, 2010

Wear a fucking rubber bracelet. Jeezus. I’m glad the miners are safe so I can stop listening to people be so fucking fake about it. I’ve never seen more Americans take credit for something they had nothing to do with in my life. Like it was Katie from Long Island’s prayers that rescued the trapped miners and not, you know, the people that got them out. And the Facebook statuses! “21 of 23 miners are out!” Thanks? We all have basic cable, we could know that if we cared. You act like you were personally Rapunzeling them up with a ladder made of your own pubic hair. Thanks for the societal contribution, Mary, get back to your Farmville. NASA can take it from here.

In its most devious trick yet, FOX News pissed me off more than usual by showing nothing else while the miners were being rescued. As if they might not make it out if the cameras weren’t catching every breathtaking moment of… people milling around. How am I supposed to bitch and whine about every word you say if you don’t say anything, FOX News? I hate you so much, FOX News.

Seriously, though? This was the emergency we’re all going to rally around and trend on Twitter? There are genocides and clitorectomies in Africa, pregnant women are being fucking stoned in the Middle East! People are getting stoned and paying for sex legally in Amsterdam, and we can’t! Mining is dangerous, that’s why poor people have to do it. If we gave a shit about them, we’d make it less dangerous, but we don’t. Pretending to give a shit about 30+ South Americans after the fact, at a convenient time so that your white guilt can be alleviated in time for the holidays, is why the rest of the world thinks we’re pieces of shit. You couldn’t locate Chile on a map, and you pronounce it like ‘chili,’ but you bought the bumper sticker because this is the safe, human interest, PG tragedy the media helped you latch onto like a malnourished newborn to a tit. I’m pretty sure if a miner can climb out and start parading around like a showboating idiot, after two months of having entertainment, food, cigarettes, and musical instruments piped down there like they were a fucking band of Bruce Waynes in a bat cave, life wasn’t exactly hell down there. So give it a rest.

Yes. Yes. And your shoes, too...

Where’s the “Are you out of your fucking mind?” button? That’s what I thought when I was directed to the first of many polls wondering if I would turn over my Facebook password to a potential employer, if asked to do so at an interview.

Forgetting for the moment that the average person uses the same three or four passwords for all of their crap online, from JDate to Bank of America, and is therefore vulnerable on multiple fronts when handing out their passwords, there is no conceivable way this is advisable.

Not only not advisable, it is straight up illegal.

The legality of the practice is questionable, and states such as Illinois and Maryland are considering legislation to forbid it. Giving someone your Facebook login information is a violation of the site’s terms of service, and the Department of Justice considers it a federal crime to enter social media sites in violation of terms of service — although recent congressional testimony indicates that such violations would not be prosecuted, AP noted. (HP)

Nope, just illegal. Jeezus, why do we have to have a semantic debate every time a piece of testicle-scrunching news reaches the general public? This isn’t your pathetic little Oprah worshipping book club where you can sit around and wonder whether some fictitious bitch from New Orleans was right to drown herself, leaving her kids orphaned. There are real, actual laws on the books about it. If you hand over your electronic passwords to an employer, you are both breaking the law. Just like if you hand over your little boy to a priest for some good Catholic rapin’, you are both breaking the law.

Just who the hell do these employers think they are? I’ll tell you who. They know the world of the comfortably employed has 12% of the country in a ball vice, and they are the only thing standing between gainful employment and your fucking kid starving to death. They know that, if you keep your head and say, “Go to hell,” the next candidate will be that much more desperate to work a seventy hour week for a $300 check. Might as well tack on, “Oh, and hey, you know you’re going to have to blow me, right?” to the end of the interview. The next candidate always walks out with rug burns.

 Ari Lightman, distinguished service professor, digital media and marketing, and director of the CIO Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, said the practice may be surprising but is in many ways understandable – - (information week thanks Michael Schenck)

- – Aaaaand we don’t need to hear any more from that guy. “Conceivable”? yes. “A nightmare scenario likely to come about because we are all just slightly more evolved predators in business suits”? absolutely. But “understandable”? Breeder, please. The Raiders signing Carson Palmer was an understandable mistake. Making the first Spider-Man movie with Tobey Maguire was an understandable attempt to exploit a cherished character for money. Making the next two was unforgivable. Asking for a person’s prívate information when you enjoy a position of power over them is called extortion. It is understandable like cancelling Arrested Development was understandable. Better break out your firing stick, Carnegie Mellon. One of your professors doesn’t know what understandable means.

Frost & Sullivan’s Wengroff suggests a middle ground: “I would agree to walk a recruiter through my Facebook page that I signed in to, but I would not hand over the password,” he said.

... and you must submit to anal cavity checks every morning at the security gates...

 

See, you are what we call “part of the problem,” Wengroff. Would you give your potential employer a guided tour of your bedroom if he asked you for an hour alone in there? Down to your wife’s panty drawer? Because that’s what we’re talking about here. Everything an employer needs to know about you he can find out by ‘friending’ you. What he wants is your personal correspondence. And the bullshit line he gives about making sure you’re not doing anything illegal is as transparently false as a lie a fat guy tells his bitch wife on a shitty sitcom. He wants to know who you’re fucking, who you’re worshipping, and if you tell dick jokes under an assumed name on a blog. I’ll tell an employer about Scumbag Style if he asks, right down to the fact that one day I hope my shitty writing will pay the bills so I don’t have to sit behind a desk under his asshole thumb. But he can sit on the business end of an electrified rake if he thinks he gets admin access to my Tumblr.

Bottom line is, we don’t have to treat these things delicately. We don’t have to lower our eyes and shuffle our toes in the dirt like a four year old girl in an Easter dress when someone demands we strip ourselves naked for the basic human dignity of employment. We don’t have to treat all opinion equally, because most opinions are wrong. Very many of those wrong opinions come from people who don’t believe them at all, but hide a not-so-hidden agenda behind them. This usually happens when things are illegal. Ask a Republican if he’d let his wife’s vagina miss a doctor’s appointment. Ask Nickelback, under the influence of some truth serum, if they would actually listen to their crap were they in our shoes. And ask these employers and college admission people if you can have their Facebook passwords, and see how they answer. Best case scenario, their sense of fairness overcomes them, and they agree. Then you can post links to gay porn all over his Wall and ask his wife nicely if she’ll let him give her a jelly doughnut.

Besides, everyone knows all the nasty shit happens on christiansingles.com.

I´m Taoist, and I practice Non-action. So hang tight and get better, cutie!

Western Christians refuse to admit it, but the idiot aphorism spouted relentlessly by bumper-sticker retards concerning atheists in foxholes has been thoroughly debunked, and they know it. So they have to come up with something else you can’t do as an atheist – - besides, of course, keep a straight face in church. A friend told me his cousin did it once, but it smacks of the whole “pink sock” story that everyone has a friend who knows somebody to whom it has happened.

Anyway, the meaningless drivel void needed filling, and the new article “No Nurse Is an Atheist” is just the caulk to do it. Author Christina Feist-Heilmeier, RN, a thirty-plus year veteran of nursing (if you’re so smart, how come you never became a doctor, huh?), posits that it is impossible to be an atheist and a nurse at the same time. Kind of like chewing gum and doing your mom from behind. Christina Hyphenation says she has known hundreds of nurses, and not one of them has been an atheist.

Perhaps it is because they’re scared shitless she’d have them killed to maintain her wildly unrealistic philosophy. Perhaps it is because she lives in Utah or Arkansas. Perhaps she’s one of those assholes that hands out fliers and tries to ‘save’ all those who don’t believe as she does, and nobody bothers discussing it with her. Speaking of which, who do you suggest a nurse pray to when she can’t find a vein, or accidentally put turkey gravy in the IV drip? (as if he didn’t smell the pew polish all over this…)

Nurses from any faith do better for themselves and for their patients by actively practicing their faith. The Muslim nurse strives to be a better Muslim. The Hindu nurse strives to be a better Hindu, etc.

Aw. That statement was so ingratiatingly accepting of brown people it could only have come from a Christian. Let me brush my teeth before they fall out, you’re so adorably progressive. “They’ll burn in hell, of course, but at least they are doing God’s work up here before they do.” That is the most loaded ‘etc.’ I have heard since Rush Limbaugh went to KFC and said, “I’ll have a salad, some corn, etc.” That ‘etc.’ means, “… but the Christian nurse has Jesus guiding her hand, so they generally save more lives. But God bless ‘em they try.” Go drink out of a bedpan, nutso.

Not to mention, Jesus is a pretty shitty doctor.

By far, my greatest role model has been Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

There you go. ‘Nuff said. Scumbag Style has covered this topic extensively already, but suffice it to say, Mother Teresa was the definition of a cunt: a sadist of epic proportions, an embezzler of charity money, and a friend of many fascist regimes. Christina the nurse is right when she says, “Her international impact continues across the world, even after her death, through the tremendous work of her Sisters of Charity,” but not in the way she imagines. If you’ve been paying attention at all, you know most of this, so I won’t say any more, except to include a personal aside.

I'm a wiccan nurse, so... you're good to wait on the moon right?

I automatically hate you if you say, “Mother Teresa of Calcutta.” As opposed to the other internationally famous celebrity nun named Teresa? We know, butt munch. The Vatican used all your charity money to pimp her to the world, along with all the stupid lies you seem to have absorbed about her. I promise, there will never be confusion if you abbreviate the name. I don’t know what the deal is here, but whatever reason these people have for tacking on the suffix ‘of Calcutta,’ have to have some ulterior motive. It may just be some chivalric pomposity, or maybe it is a placeholder for her real, unpronounceable, Indian name. Don’t worry, just because you gave her a white name for ease of the white man’s digestion, we know she was just some Mexican or whatever.

Of course, then the question has to be asked: Why disabuse these people of the lie? If you want to make the fictional Mother Teresa – the caring, selfless, nurturing, uber-nurse – your hero, well shit, there’re worse things. Captain Picard is no less a hero of mine because he is fictional – - I want to be just like him. Maybe, in our quest for ultimate truth, we miss the power of the lie. Like letting the Occupy protesters be when they imagined their Guy Fawkes masks stood for revolution and freedom and not the oppressive Catholic monarchy he actually advocated. It’s not like it’s a train we can stop, anyway, the PR is just too good. If it weren’t for all the poor sons and daughters of bitches suffering and dying needlessly in Missionaries of Charity death camps in the name of the Mother Teresa mythos, we could just chalk this up as the least odious product of revisionist history. Man, poor people can be such a pain in the ass.

Unless a nurse has a good system of coping and renewal, the emotional well-being is very much at stake.

She means going to church, by the way, not picking up a hooker on the way home from Yoga. There’s nothing so invigorating and refreshing than cramping up the knees on those dubiously padded wooden things in front of the pew.

The caring can be universal amongst many religions when everyone’s humanity and dignity are the goal.

Gosh, then I’d better get me some religion. You say any one will do? (Well, most, obviously. Everyone knows Unitarians don’t have hearts.) So, I can just choose one, and be a better nurse? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of religion? I mean, you have to believe, as a Christian, that the prayers of the Hindu nurse fall on deaf ears, right? Or does God just rake ‘em all up in one big prayer pile and listen to them all? Couldn’t I just concern myself with everyone’s humanity and dignity without resorting to mythology? My goodness, how do you wrap your mind around it all? All I know is, I love when theists talk about human dignity.

Are you done, lady? Good, because we have some retorts. Going to hang out for this?

Time for your Misogi harai enema! Hee hee

First a statistic. Infobarrel says Sweden is the most atheist country in the world, and Japan as the fifth most. Meanwhile, a Newsweek study finds Sweden to have the 3rd best quality healthcare on the planet (Japan is #1), and the United States (highly religious) to rank 26th, tied with the Czech Republic and friggin’ Chile.  Give the chart a quick looksee. You’ll find the most religious nations stacked like dead cheerleaders at the bottom.

In a predominantly atheist country, I’m going to go ahead and doubt they scoured the countryside for the dissenters to give sponge baths. Since the quality of healthcare in Sweden is considerably higher than yours, I’d put drinking money on their atheist nurses being better than you and Jesus.

There’s an excellent rebuttal, on the same nursing website, by an Air Force Captain who has the thankless job of filling the hole where there are supposedly both no atheists in foxholes or in the nursing profession. It’s wonderful and concise, and you should read it, but his closing remark is priceless:  “We atheists will fill in on Sunday morning if religious believers can at least respect us as fellow nurses.”

I leave you to study his work alone, because I wanted to show you something a little more personal. A very great friend of mine, an atheist and a nurse, had this to say:

I would say that as a nurse and an atheist that I am still able to support my patients’ spiritual health, and I view it as part of their care and recovery because I believe in holistic care. That is to say, I treat a patient’s mind, body, and spirit. It is not for me to judge a person’s belief system although I find mine constantly under scrutiny. I do not feel it is necessary for me to believe in God to understand the concept of faith. I have faith in many things one of them being myself and my abilities to take care of people. I do agree that nurses are subject to burn out and do need an outlet. For some nurses that is their faith. It is not easy to be surrounded everyday by the sick, and it is never easy to lose a patient. So some nurses may find comfort in that by believing those patients are in a better place. I also believe they are in a better place because there is no more illness for them or pain. I am also committed to having healthy outlets for my on the job stress and strain, and while my outlets may not be praying or going to church it does not mean that they are any less effective. I believe that open communication about my feelings, exercise, good nutrition, reading books I love, and being open to asking for help when I need it will keep me sane in this hectic career I have chosen for myself. Above all will be the fact that I love and am so proud to be a nurse.

Watch out, she’s probably lacing the IV with liquefied baby, a la The Matrix, so you have no choice but to be an atheist when you get better.

I am a Christian Scientist nurse. Would you care to engage in innuendo?

A decent, moderate Baptist who teaches at Baylor. Friends have told me that Baylor is no fun. Perhaps they did not hang with this dude.

Normally the Bitch Box is reserved for hate mail, corrections, terrible advice, death threats – the usual front-of-the-magazine fare. But in this special case, more discussion about Scumbag Style happened outside these epithet caked halls by strangers than ever happened within.

Over at Osler’s Razor, the proprietor made a point of linking to SBS, as we had apparently published a response to something he wrote… the wonderful, exhausting, endless blog chain that I happily add a link to with this edition of The Bitch Box. He directed his readers to my response, as he enjoyed my perspective, as well as one of another author. A good, open minded fellow is hard to find in our angry, stilted blogosphere, and I thank him heartily for the recognition, not to mention the traffic.

I wish to Christ I knew exactly what the debate concerned, but by the time I got there, the link to SBS was broken, so I could not find out what was said. It matters not, however, when you read his fans’ responses. Unreasonably interesting, says I.

By The Duchess

I felt like I was suffering for my own sins when reading the Scumbag article. Firstly the drawing of him scared me very badly. He had crazy angry eyes. Remind me never to invite him to tea.Or perhaps I should,to overcome the prejudice I have against crazy,angry eyes. As one who loves to write myself,I have to say,and he would hate this,his style is a combination of the divine and profane. And is original,which I count precious. Odd word. I know you don’t want me to discuss style. The article by and large made me sad. He sees no Love. To focus on the scapegoat metaphor instead of the Man,Jesus Christ,who he was and what he said is an astounding,cruel loss … [Blah Blah paragraph of Jesus suffering for my ungrateful ass]… Scumbag’s reasoning is human being reasoning and so it doesn’t make sense…

Many a woman, be she princess or lady or scullery maid, has fallen prey to those eyes, my dear. But worry not, I come not for your soul, but for your tea. Are we talkin’ the full Brit spread here, with the scones and the butler and your grandmother’s silver? Are you even British? A lot of British people are prejudiced, so it makes sense. Never fear, in time you will overcome your mistrust of perceived criminal psychosis in the outward ocular appearance, and learn to piss your pants over the Arkham inmate within.

By Scott Davis

From the tone of the author of “Scumbug Style”, I should not have guessed that he had read Ludwig Wittgenstein; my mistake though, he has probably also read Levi Struass. As for his anger, there is therapy for that.

Wait, am I being insulted? A lot of tone is lost in text, I can never tell. Did you just realize that dudes who like to tell poo jokes can also be hyper-literate? Or is having read these authors like some horrible proletariat faux-pas against God and the GOP? By being able to reference them so ably, you must have read some Wittgenstein and Strauss… so… I know you are but what am I?

Like Dear Abby, but hate mail is actually encouraged here.

By Lee

Love the cartoon on Scumbag! Says it all.

Thank you, brother. See? Class pay attention. This is called “constructive criticism.”

By Marta

I have to say that I appreciate the different perspective Scumbag Style offers with sarcastic aplomb. But then this opinion comes from someone baptized as a Greek Orthodox whose grandmother was deeply faithful, whose mother was agnostic, father a scientist and ambivalent in matters of faith and exposed to a steady dose of Bolshevik indoctrination up until early adulthood, the effect of all being that I am always open to see valid points from anyone able to articulate them in love, sarcasm or anger.

Now you’re getting the hang of it! Bonus points for the Scrabble word “aplomb.”

The Duchess Returns!

I want you to know, if you look anything like Keira Knightly, I will be happy to take all the shit you can dish out for an evening.

Perhaps it is exactly because I have seen those eyes somewhere before, that they disturb me so. Perhaps in my own mirror.I don’t think mine are angry,but I suppose they have been crazed from time to time. I struggle with being judgmental every day of my life,an inherited gene, along with occasional deep sadness.But at least I struggle. It is because I know what it is to think that you alone are spinning all the balls of the Universe, that I feel some pain in recognition when I see that face. I hope it came out that I think he is a talented writer and that he makes his points well.

I know, your grace. My eyes are haunting, and they insinuate themselves upon the female mind like an urgent whisper, a secret half forgotten, until to stave off madness you must return for another look. You imagine if you just look again, the effect will have been pure psychology, a trick of the monitor’s illumination, and like a portrait that seems to follow you with its painted eyes, you believe a second glace will reassure you of your own girlish timidity. But every time you lose yourself in the intensity of the gaze, and hours flee and are lost before you again recover your senses. But it is not to be, my sweet, for an image is just that: I am sweeter in person, and I often wear glasses.

By Christine

Wow Scumbag style. Unfortunately because I clicked the link and read Maestro Scum’s take I will probably be bombarded with strange ads on FB. C’est la vie….

I like it! “Maestro.” Kind of rolls off the tongue. “Maestro Scum! Conducting the orchestra of social media viral obscenity!” Yes. Yes. First you’re reading about social issues with a hint of phallic self-righteousness, next you try to poke somebody on Facebook and are quickly assaulted with the dregs of guerilla marketing. Bellissimo! (See? I can speak Spanish, too.)

Oh yeah. Our kind uses Microsoft Paint.

The discussion degenerates into swapping Dietrich Bonhoeffer quotes like bubblegum cards, and since that has nothing to do with me, it is not interesting. I have never felt so appreciated whilst under heavy semantic fire. Thanks for the entertainment, you crazy bastards. I sincerely hope I have read you all correctly, and you can indeed weather the fraternal ribbing. Really, thanks for the compliments, and realize that for lesser beings, I would never have considered including this disclaimer at all.

[EDIT: Upon further investigation, mine was an article entitled "Worse Than The OJ Verdict" which is now lost to the ether. I remember it concerned a mock capital punishment trial of Jesus, conducted by Osler and friends, wondering whether a modern jury would convict if the penalty was death. My argument, if I remember correctly, was that the trial was pretty much a waste of time, because without the scapegoating, slaying, and resurrection of Jesus, Christianity is nothing. Its very mythos hangs on the events of what we now call Holy Week, so not convicting Jesus would kill the religion.]

Man, this is the most boring pron ever.

Celebrity sex tapes can be a great time, especially when they are leaked, and the subjects don’t see it coming. We’re entertained for different reasons. We were so stoked to know that Paris Hilton was as shitty a lay as we knew in our hearts she would be. We tittered sympathetically at Tommy Lee’s massive belly rope and how it fit in the vagina we’d wanted to see for some time. We gasped in mock puritan disgust at what Martin Lawrence did to that tranny hooker – - what? You don’t have that one? Oh, snap, come over tomorrow night. We’ll have Cold Duck and pizza bagels.

Ok, now I want you to mentally picture the celebrities you would not want to see in a leaked sex tape. The list is shorter than you think, once you put your mind to the task. Celebrity does strange things to tolerance levels, and morbid curiosity covers everybody else from Tori Spelling up to, say, Jon Lovitz.

Now I want you to bump that list down by one. That’s right, Precious just made your maybe list, because life just hacked up what you didn’t want to know was your actual #1.

Maybe we should just make the list go to 11

A [recently filmed] sex tape featuring former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan has surfaced, according to TMZ. [Huffpost]

Now you can’t stop thinking about it either. Share in my pain! I have never heard of anything more unnecessary in my entire life. The homoerotic spectacle of 1990s WWF footage has been more than plenty for anyone who found him attractive when he wasn’t ninety years old. Any chick who was in her early twenties at the time had a 70% chance of firsthand knowledge, if they wanted it. The worst part isn’t the part that someone thought this tape should be shopped, the worst part is that they and the distributor are bound to make a shit ton of cash.

In the clip, Hogan sports a thong-shaped tan line and pulls off his shirt to inform his female friend, who is not his ex-wife, Linda Hogan [a twat, btw - ed], or his current wife, Jennifer McDaniel, that he started working out again.

Wachu gonna do when Hulkamania goes wild all over your face?

Gah! Stop! I know! I actually imagined that exact scenario when you told me there was a Hulk Hogan sex tape. Put ‘em away, bitch tits! No matter how you sculpt them, they’re still rotting orange-peel wrapped old eggplant pecks, because you’re ninety! “Check out my 24 centimeter pythons.” Shut up, man. If you want to tan, that’s between you and the skank, but decency calls for some board shorts or something. Christ, tell me – tell me, you pig fucker – you don’t go to the beach in a thong.

You know how you never could actually smell what The Rock was cooking? And how you were pretty thankful for that? It’s like that. Subconsciously, I knew he had sex at least two or three times because they shoved Hulk’s stupid, rich, untalented get in our faces relentlessly for a couple years. Not until now did I have to congeal that knowledge into anything resembling a cogent mental picture.

Wachu say?! No, seriously, your ears start going around the 50 year mark...

If you’ll allow me an anecdote: My folks were kind enough to hold my fifth birthday celebration at Chuck E Cheese’s. I remember distinctly getting a crapload of Hulk Hogan gear. Weird punker hats with “HULKAMANIA” emblazoned across the front. Bandannas, fake mustaches, glistening balm, the whole nine. For weeks I ran around yelling, “Eat your vitamins, brother!” and tackling the retarded kid down the street. Weeks! My birthday is in mid-June, I had two months of nothing to do but tackling retarded kids wearing ridiculous blue and red accoutrements.

Those blissful summer memories are now irretrievably tarnished. Can you imagine the conversation you would have with 5 year old me? Yeah, kid, wear the bandana, but in 1999 he turns into a bad guy, and in 2012 you are going to see his strapping, sixty year old, naked ass semi-rhythmically pounding some strange whore hoping to get on his reality show. “What’s a reality show?” I would have asked. “It’s kind of like a celebrity sex tape,” you would have replied, “only you don’t care about anybody that’s on it, and there’s less dignity.” Why the hell would you tell a kid that, you dick?

Hogan’s lawyer David Houston released a statement expressing that his client is “appalled at the unauthorized release of a secretly filmed video,” adding, “[Hogan] neither approved of the filming nor the release of the same. It is clearly an outrageous invasion of privacy and breach of trust if it is genuine.”

We’re all appalled, Hulk. More than you can possibly know, but thank you for granting that all the same. But an “outrageous breach of trust”? Come now. You’ve been having your way with bar whores and skanky hangers on for upwards of thirty years. What made you trust this one? Did she say you could while you were in your vinegar strokes, because I’ve been burned by that trick before, too. If I were him, I’d be searching hotel rooms for webcams and paparazzi every time I picked a bitch up, or bringing them back to my safe room every time. Hope you didn’t let any bank account numbers slip while you were busy making your tits dance, dummy. Any final words from a former hero?

To all my little Hulkamaniacs, say your prayers, take your vitamins and you too can pose naked in front of a half-interested prostitute.

... also, if you don´t like Ween, there´s something seriously wrong with you.

The big climax would come when he said, “Just because you have an opinion doesn’t mean it deserves any credence.” Just splooging rationalism all over the front rows of the gallery like the sexiest Gallagher show ever. Money shot. Sometimes, if I had trouble getting to philosophical nirvana, I’d have him throw in something about how European Socialism is pretty neat, and that, no, in fact, he’s not a Muslim, he’s an atheist. “Can’t do nothin’ about it now, sucka. I already got the keys!”

Since then, even though pundits love to call Obama a radical secular leftist with no concern for process, he’s been everything but what we elected him to be. If you seriously think Obama is radical, you should see the alternate universe where he actually did what we hired him to do. In the model we know, not so much as a stern admonishing, let alone the plethora of epithets he was supposed to spray our lesser officials with like a Tommy Gun with ´fucks´ for bullets. A relative failure for many of us godless liberals. Until this last glorious month.

‘Round about January 20^th, Obama unveiled a new spectacular plan. Opponents of the plan, in some of my favorite hyperbolic hyperventilating since the Kentucky Gaga scare of 2010, call it The Mandate, a tongue-in-cheek reference to some Ed Wood scandalizer schlock – - oh, wait, they’re serious. Even better.

In short, The Mandate required all employers with comprehensive health

In other words, FUCK YA, OBAMA!

care options, even those with spiritual affiliation, to offer actual comprehensive health care options. Meaning, of course, the Catholics would no longer be allowed to deny their women legal, scientifically proven, safe contraceptive and family planning care because of their silly superstitions. Also, they would have to offer “abortifacients,” which is one of those words that isn’t a real word that religious people use.

This was it! This was the kind of thing Obama supporters had been waiting almost four years for! Not only was a stunning blow struck for progressive ideals, the rights of workers and women, it was a very directed, very specific, very saucy “Fuck You Very Much” to a very vocal opponent of those rights. And, oh, how the bitches squealed!

“A violation of constitutionally granted religious freedoms!” They cried. “It is the difference between pluralism and anti-­clericalism,” they mentioned, rather cryptically. (Washington Post)

This is what you sound like.

No, it is the difference between subjectivity and entitlement. Trust us, you´ll know anti-clericalism when we express it. See, organizations that represent St. Mary’s Hospital and Notre Dame and the like think these places should be allowed to exist in the work-sphere without having to play by the rules any other employer, say Staples or NASA, would be subjected to. In no other place would that be tolerated. For example:

“Second grader Billy Hicks takes his dumps in the corner of the classroom, even though the rest of the class must use the toilets down the hall like civilized human beings. He is granted this unhygienic exception because he sincerely believes turd goblins will crawl up his poop chute if he poops anywhere else but the corner of the classroom. Nothing you can say will convince him otherwise, and the constitution grants religious freedom, so everyone has to watch him pop a squat and lives with the smell for the rest of the day. Every day.” (Me)

See, this is not a constitutional religious freedom issue by any stretch of the imagination, except those imaginations that can stretch so far as to think shitting in a corner is objectively crazy, but their religious ideas are rational to anyone but themselves. No, this is an issue of religious exceptionalism. To some people, the two concepts are entirely inseparable. Religious freedom, by any sane definition, means no one has the right to infringe on your personal ability to worship as you choose. Just so. But religious exceptionalism means thinking that Billy Hicks is being oppressed when teacher finally loses her shit and demands he crap in the toilet so the rest of the class isn’t subjected to his particular brand of disgusting crazy. How dare she? Get the lawyers!

Religious exceptionalism also means that your religious ideas – those with no basis in scientific fact or reason, because that is what makes them religious – should be imposed on those who do not share them. It is a huge problem in America now, but one the Catholics would like to see amplified. Like this quote:

“By its decision, the Obama administration has failed to show the same respect for the consciences of Catholics and others who object to treating pregnancy as a disease.”

Hyperbolically, this is a successful sentence. Babies as a disease? Perish the thought! Subjectively, by Catholic logic, those who work to avoid pregnancy are treating it like a disease, so again, a successful English sentence. Objectively – that is empirically – we are not, and so this quote is absolute bullshit. Scientifically, contraception does not even involve pregnancy, and most scientists agree next-day abortion cannot be considered murder. Pregnancy is not a disease, but it is often inconvenient, and sometimes incredibly dangerous, and there are ways to do away with it or avoid it altogether. I say “empirically,” because we can again prove the bullshit scientifically simply by your average Catholic’s reaction to a hypothetical scenario.

“You, Every Day Catholic, develop eyeball tumors, and modern medical science can get rid of them pretty easily. If you don’t get the surgery, you will die, and be dead for at least 18 years. But you work for a Cancerist company, and their religious belief states that those tumors are in their natural habitat and should be allowed to develop naturally.” (Me again)

Is there any scenario in which you would allow us to make you keep those tumors in your skull? If you think that is ridiculous, look in the mirror, you clown. Religious exceptionalists confuse their feelings of entitlement with religious freedom, because they can’t imagine something to be a “freedom” if it doesn’t come with perks that other people don’t have. In the case of the Billy Hicks and the Eyeball Tumors hypotheticals, these people would tell you that these things are unrealistic, silly, and not worth the effort of discussing. Which is exactly the way other people feel about their beliefs, so what they are really talking about is CHRISTIAN FREEDOM, not religious freedom.  Which of course equals Christian Exceptionalism. An appropriate quote from last night´s The Daily Show:

"You have confused a war on your religion with not always getting what you want."

Another example:

There would have been no controversy at all if President Obama had simply exempted religious institutions and ministries. But the administration insisted that the University of Notre Dame and St. Mary’s Hospital be forced to pay for the privilege of violating their convictions.

Super heady vocabulary, yet again. They use this kind of language to disguise the fact they have no point other than that they are more special than other Americans. All Obama had to do was make it completely unfair, and the Catholics wouldn´t feel so violated.

... but first call a doctor

See, the opposing arguments rely on different interpretations of the “freedom of religion” the poor oppressed Christians are bemoaning the loss of. One way of interpreting the clause in this context says that every woman should have the right to treat her “family way” by the dictates of her own spiritual beliefs. Or lack of beliefs concerning the issue. The other method of mangling “freedom of religion” is to blatantly say that a religious organization is free to infringe on the Constitutional rights of individuals. There’s no way every employee of massive organizations like Notre Dame is Catholic. What about their “freedom of religion,” which compared to your demands is pretty light? They just want freedom from your religion.

No, you are being “forced to pay for the privilege” of being an employer in the United States. You wouldn’t have to pay for shit if you didn’t want to operate as a legitimate US business, but since you do, you have to follow the rules. Your individual freedom to pray, eat magic crackers, and not have abortions is perfectly intact. Your ability to take others’ freedoms away is not.

“Obama chose to substantially burden a religious belief, by the most intrusive means, for a less-than-compelling state purpose — a marginal increase in access to contraceptives that are easily available elsewhere.”

Now you’re just pulling words out of your ass, and putting them together in a sentence.  Contraceptives aren’t easily available for the “marginal” people who are benefitting from The Mandate, are they? They can’t get them because they can’t afford them because you want to keep it from them. That “marginal” increase is for the “marginal” people you have chosen to oppress. We only made anti-slave laws to protect the margins of society that were slaves. “Well, if they want the pill, they don’t have to work for us,” you’ll say. We’ll get to that, keep your Scapulars on.

“[Under Obama´s administration] serving the poor and healing the sick are regarded as secular pursuits — a determination that would have surprised Christianity’s founder.”

Yeah, if Jesus Christ MD was a title earned after ten years of medical school and internships, you might squeak by with a point. But in The Gospel of Matthew: The Goblet of Magic Merlot, Jesus zapped the sick out of people with mutant god powers. Christ was many awesome things, but he was no scientist. Medicine is a secular pursuit because a priest can’t lay hands on a chick and cure her cold, let alone take care of her pregnancy problem. But way to throw “concern for the poor” in there. How, exactly, are you helping the poor by denying working women their rights, fuck stick? Sit the fuck down.

ANYWAY…

…go Obama, right?! Not only doing the rational, humanist thing for the benefit of all, and completely avoiding all constitutional quagmires, but giving the enemies of freedom the Finger In Chief in the deal? Genius!

Yeah, until Obama backed down, and made another of his fabled, pussy “compromises.”

Administration officials stated that a woman’s insurance company “will be required to reach out directly and offer her contraceptive care free of charge.  The religious institutions will not have to pay for it.

“Moreover, women will not have to opt in or out; contraceptive care will be part of the basic package of benefits offered to everyone. Contraceptive care will simply be “part of the bundle of services that all insurance companies are required to offer,” said a White House official.”  (Jill Stanek)

God. Dammit. You left in all the practical stuff, but took out the “Fuck You”? The “Fuck You In The Ass You Ignorant Cunts!” was the best part!

Still, the compromise is smart, I admit petulantly. Pretty much covers the bases. Insurance companies are required to offer free contraception to all employees, which works out for them, because the pill costs way less than covering every treatment a preggers woman needs. Women retain their basic liberties, and god nuts can rest easy knowing they have had no part in these women going straight to Hell. The uneasy peace can resume, the rumble can be postponed for another day, Riff.

No zip guns and no Egyptian scourges, you stinkin´ PR

Then again, just like all 1950s singing and dancing street gangs had a few loose cannons that made shit go all Shakespeare on everyone involved, the Catholics aren’t satisfied to not hate. See, Satan’s work is still being done, even if they have nothing to do with it, so their religious freedom is still somehow being trampled upon like the nuts of a foot-fetishist priest by an altar boy. Look at Jill Stanek’s headline:

 Contraceptive “compromise” worse than original mandate: Eliminates any exceptions

Let us stop mowing around the landing strip on this and move straight to mons town. I have a theory about what’s really going on around here, a theory we’ll call the “Homeless Man Shitting On His Own Half-Eaten Garbage Chalupa Hypothesis.” It can be illustrated by the following image:

Aw, yeah, that´s a big Chalupa grunter.

Say a hobo won the bum lottery and discovered half of a once-delicious Taco Bell Chalupa in a dumpster, but he already had a dead cat for breakfast at 6pm and he’s watching his weight, so he needs to save it for later. Tough challenge ever since the increase in homeless people since the banks started running the country. Animal instincts kick in, hordes of disenfranchised zombies sense a snack has been found, and they’re circling. Any moment now, the enemy will swarm down upon the hobo’s dumpster, and there’s no way he’ll be able to keep the crusty, flaky, slightly moldy deliciousness. Now imagine the hobo doesn’t particularly hate the taste of his own fecal matter. (Me, the last one, proimise)

The jackpot for many religious institutions would be the ability to only hire their own people. Makes sense. How can you keep a sterile Catholic hospital environment when you have a bunch of stinky Buddhists scurrying about, rummaging around inside of people? How can you teach kids about where we all came from six thousand years ago if you let a bunch of atheist scientists spew facts willy nilly all over your little Arian acolytes? Problem is, we have these seriously inconvenient anti-discrimination laws, and technically you’re not supposed to 86 a candidate from a job interview for being differently affiliated, spiritually speaking. The only way to get what you want is through the back door. Literally.

"Ah, so kind of like my episode "Galaxy´s Child" in which I "spoiled the milk" for the entity feeding off the Enterprise´s energy - -"

Shut up, LaForge! See, the Catholics won’t have to take part in any PR-damaging discrimination if they shit on their own Chalupa. If I were a woman, I wouldn’t take a job at, say, Notre Dame, because I’d want my health insurance to offer me all legal, effective medical treatments available in the US in some form or another. I wouldn´t want prayers to fix a treatable ailment. The Catholics wouldn’t want my heathen, fetus munching ass either. Outside of the shitty job market I’d be thrown into,* the only real losers in this scenario are the kids who miss out on the best candidate to be their professor, because I am a fucking genius, even as a woman.

Finish us off, Jill Stanek:

Furthermore, and just as importantly, it isn’t enough to (supposedly) exempt religious institutions from the contraception mandate. That is to say only people of faith are allowed to have, or are capable of, consciences. What about secular conscientious objectors?

Did anyone else just pitch a petit mal when they read that? What about the hell-bound godless heathens we can use to swell our numbers this one time? You know before we can gloat over their damned, worthless souls again. The godless fucks “capable of having consciences” about this one issue? Don’t count on them for allies after you just took a whiz on their pizza, you condescending taint munch.

*I don´t want to belabor the point, but think about our already crappy job market. Now, think about what would happen if the few remaining employers were allowed to make it completely uncomfortable for anyone but their own kind to work for them. Sound American to you?

I live live LIVE to see that face. Suck it, bitch. This is the NFL playoffs!

You guys, you guys. Either Jesus told Tebow to go screw himself this week or the inimitable New England Patriots are too awesome for God to handle. Perhaps both.  What we do know is that Tim Tebow was soundly Old Yellered by history’s greatest QB. But that’s not the wacky part!

Take a look at Tom Brady’s stats for this week’s Divisional Playoff game against The Broncos, Tim Tebow, and the pantheon of saints (not those Saints, dummy), angels, archangels, and lesser minions of God.

If you take his Completion % and multiply it by his AVG, then subtract  his total yards, then add his QB rating for the game, then add his TDs and (just to be fair) subtract one for his interception…

Guess. Just guess. Or do the math, but that would be stupid because I’m going to tell you.

596.* *

That is the very page Dumbledore died on in The Half-Blood Prince! (If that was a spoiler for you, well then maybe it shouldn’t take you 7 years to read a childrens’ book)

Holy fuck, I die??

Do you know what this means??? I mean, really?

Neither do I. It could mean Snape did some awesome dark magic and made Brady have his best game of the season in a must win against those smug internet Xtian bitches of the previous week; it could mean the richest woman in Great Britain had some money on the game and had inside men; or it could mean fucking nothing because, like the Bible, Harry Potter is a work of fantasy and has no bearing on  NFL games, or anything else that coincidentally shows a seemingly significant number. NFL fans think fantasy fans are dorks.

What we’re exploring here is  the Argument by Scenario. Otherwise known as the Texas Gunslinger argument. If you give a guy in Texas a gun, and he shoots a couple hundred times at the broadside of a barn, and THEN you paint a bullseye over the place he hit the most, it is going to look like he is a great gunslinger. The similarities between Lincoln and Kennedy fit this argument as well. Christians shit themselves when the Broncos won against the Steelers, and Tebow’s yardage happened to be 316, like the most common fucking New Testament verse referenced, especially in the arena of sports. When you expect  a certain, often eerie result, you’ll find a way to fulfill your own prophesy. Similarly, I took a look at Brady’s stats this week, knowing I would find some significance there.

The only part of this that matters is that Brady’s stats are consistently higher than Tebow’s, because Brady is the better quarterback, and he has a better team surrounding him. That is what matters in today’s professional football. Not superstition, not fantasy, and definitely not a douche who doesn’t even read his own holy book before flaunting it at others.   (Matthew 6:1-34)

Now the world can focus on the remaining four incredibly good teams. The Pats have a tough game against the Ravens this week, and shit are they good. I don’t know if I even want to watch the defensive bloodbath that will be San Fran v NY. What we won’t have to worry about is a subpar player with a prophet complex and a retard’s interest in numerology.

*Mark 13:6 “Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many.”

** I hereby claim this stat for Scumbag Style, 6PM central time, Monday, January 16. I don’t like to copyright memes, but if this gets big, I want the damned credit.