You Might Be a Moron if...

Divination - the occultic practice of ascertaining information by supernatural means.

Most people know what the word “divination” means, and many would even be able to give a few techniques used by practitioners of this ancient “art.” Predicting the future by interpreting the shapes in steeped tea leaves, casting various animal bones to the ground, and examining the entrails of freshly killed chickens top the list. What many people don’t know, however, is that virtually every culture, in almost every place at sometime, someone with either deep delusionary tendencies or a really twisted sense of humor, decided to do something, examine the results of that something, and then predict the future based solely on how that particular pile of dog poo smelled, or something as equally ridiculous.

Fact – If you believe in divination, or any human ability to predict the future with any more accuracy than a statistical guess, you’re a moron and you need to have mommy put your helmet back on before two o’clock pudding.



I’ve compiled a short, and very incomplete, list of the various types of divination known throughout human history, each one being more ridiculous, incredulous and amusing than the last. Many end in 'mancy', from the ancient Greek manteia meaning “divination or fortune-telling”, or 'scopy', from the Greek skopein meaning “to look into or to behold.”

aeluromancy - dropping wheatcakes into water and interpreting the result
aeromancy - divination by examining what the air does to certain things (like a kite?)
alectoromancy - divination by a chicken: grains of wheat are placed on letters and the chicken "spells" the message by selecting grains
alphitomancy - dropping barleycakes in water and interpreting the result (for years there was a white-hot debate over which kind of cake most effectively told the future, we can only hope most of those people were too busy arguing and throwing cakes into buckets of water to get around to breeding.)
anthropomancy - divination by interpreting the organs of newly sacrificed humans
astragalomancy – casting, like dice, knucklebones marked with letters of the alphabet (Come, on! Daddy needs a new Psionic Manifesting Capsule!!)
axinomancy - divination by the hatchet: interpreting the way it quivers when whacked into a table
belomancy - divination by the flight path of arrows
bronchiomancy - divination by studying the lungs of sacrificed white llamas
capnomancy- divination by interpreting the smoke of an altar or sacrificial incense
catoptromancy – divination by interpreting images in a mirror
cleidomancy - divination by interpreting the movements of a key suspended by a thread from the nail of the third finger on a young virgin's hand while one of the Psalms was recited (okay, seriously, what the fuck. Somebody had a laugh with this one…)
coscinomancy - divination by a balanced sieve
cromniomancy - divination by onions (onions?!?!?)
dactylomancy- divination by means of rings put on the fingernails or the number of whorls and loops on the fingers
daphnomancy - divination by burning a laurel branch and interpreting the crackles of the flames
extispicy - divination by examining entrails
fractomancy - interpreting the structures of fractal geometric patterns
gyromancy - divination by walking around a circle of letters until dizzy and one falls down on the letters or in the direction to take (this one is a personal favorite…)


hydromancy - divination by examining what certain things do in water or when taken out of water, such as coffee grounds or tea leaves; hydatoscopy - if rainwater is used; pegomancy - if spring-water is used (BillCosbyscopy – if chocolate Jello pudding is used.)
hepatoscopy- divination by examining the liver of sacrificed animals
kephalonomancy - burning carbon on the head of a mule while reciting the names of suspected criminals; a crackling sound will be heard when the name of the guilty party is spoken (How the fuck do you get a mule to sit still for this?)
lampadomancy- interpreting the movements of the flame of a lamp
libanomancy - interpreting the smoke of incense
lithomancy - divination using precious stones
lecanomancy - dropping precious stones into water and listening for whistles (I don’t get this one either, but I’m also not in the habit of dropping precious stones into water and waiting to hear them scream…)
metoposcopy - interpreting frontal wrinkles
molybdomanc - (divination by melted lead: interpreting its noises and hisses when dropped into water
myrmomancy - divination by watching ants eating (okay, seriously, this is just getting ridiculous…)
oinomancy - divination by wine (I’ve been told I can predict the future after I drink too much whiskey, “I’m think I’m gonna hurl..”)


omphalomancy - interpretation of the belly button (My father-in-law used to tell my wife that, not only was the belly button installed into the human form to act as a reservoir for ranch dip while eating carrot sticks, he also warned her that if she unscrewed it, her butt would fall off. He is a very powerful wizard.)
oneiromancy - interpretation of dreams
onychomancy - interpreting the reflection of sun rays off fingernails (I used to know some guys that did that all the time, “whoa… Dude, check out my fingernails… they’re, like, glowing…”)
ornithomancy - interpreting the flights of birds (They’re all going south, that means the Broncos will win the Superbowl.)
ovomancy - breaking eggs into a container of water and interpreting the shape of the egg white
papyromancy - divination by folding paper
pyromancy - divination by fire
rhabdomancy - using the divining rod or magic wand
rhapsodmancy - divination by a line in a sacred book that strikes the eye when the book is opened after the diviner prays, meditates or invokes the help of spirits
sideromancy - interpreting straws of hay thrown on a red-hot iron (what about interpreting wads of watermelon jello thrown at the exposed scrotum-sack of a guy dressed like Hitler?)
skatharomancy- interpreting the tracks of a beetle crawling over the grave of a murder victim
splanchnomancy - reading cut sections of a goat liver (these people sure like cut open animals…)
tasseography - interpreting tea leaves
tiromancy- interpreting the holes or mold in cheese (that’s right, divination through cheese, and you thought it was just a tasty snack. By the way, what does cheese say when it’s picture gets taken?)
urim v'tumim - reading sacred stones attached to the breastplate of the high priest in ancient Judaism
uromancy - divination by reading bubbles made by urinating in a pot



Okay, that’s enough. All the rest were in good fun, but interpreting the bubbles in your pee is about as preposterous as it gets. The lesson here today, folks, is that divination is stupid and anyone that believes in it is equally so. Here at On The Rocks, we are committed to exposing sham and flim-flam at every possible opportunity and plan on taking down this behemoth of ignorance one brick at a time.

Next week: audiobooks.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

The first revolution took place on November 29, 1877, when Thomas Alva Edison made the first public demonstration. At the time, few people saw the potential of the contraption he’d designed, mostly because he described his “talking machine” as a means for businessmen to record their own dictations with the ability to play them back at will. The secretaries of America (at least the ones that weren’t being schtupped at the time) paused for a collective shudder. Like any great invention that escapes into the pristine wilderness that is capitalism, evolution takes over as busy-fingered tinkerers strive to offer bigger, better, faster and more at low, low warehouse clearance prices. The phonograph, literally meaning “writing sound” in Greek, underwent numerous incarnations in the hands of manufacturers worldwide, such as the “Gramophone, “ “Zon-o-phone,” “Graphonola,” and the most successful, “Victrola.”



The second, and most important, revolution occurred in 1892. It was this year that a company called Berliner patented the disc recording media, which they successfully argued was so different from Edison’s cylinder technology, they needn’t pay royalties. With the recording discs being easier to manufacture and ship, and by avoiding the costs of royalties, they were cheaper than cylinder recordings. In addition to the cost benefits, consumers found it much easier to store and catalogue their collections as thin discs as opposed to the cumbersome cylinders, and with the affluence that typified the late nineteenth century in America, the home stereo system was born.

For the first time in history, music could be enjoyed without the need for live musicians.

Many minor improvements were made on the design over the course of the following years, but no great changes took place for a very long time. The record was the standard in almost every American home, but as we all know, technology builds upon itself exponentially and the next revolution was inevitable.

The next occurrence that most closely resembles revolution, ignoring the strange but very important 1956 invention by Bill Lear called the 8-track cartridge, was the reel-to-reel cassette tape, or the compact audiocassette. Introduced by Philips in 1963, this little technological wonder not only boasted the “not-terribly-crappy” sound quality guarantee, but its miniscule size shot off the next great leap forward in audio technology: portable audio.

Dass right, I’m talkin’ about the muhfuckin’ ghetto blaster!




It’s revolution left and right, because as soon as the boom box hit its peak in the early eighties, Sony’s 1979 invention, the Walkman, was flying off the shelves like so much volleyball. The portable audio revolution was taken a step further into personal portable audio. The only problem was that it was terribly difficult to break dance with headphones on.

The “Big Bang” of digital audio took place in 1983, when Philips introduced the compact disc. Suddenly, as a consumer, you could have it all: inexpensive, compact and portable media with flawless, truly digital audio quality. While many folks still hold dear to their boxes of vinyl Dylan albums, the compact disc was the high mark of audio fidelity.

We find ourselves currently in the midst of another audio revolution, and it’s no surprise it’s related to computers. MP3 is an audio compression format, known as “lossy compression,” which allows the large “WAV” tracks of a compact disc to be compressed at about 10:1 without losing significant audio quality. This medium became greatly popularized with the transmission of data over the Internet, allowing people to rip, store, trade and play audio files over their limited bandwidth. According to Wikipedia, the sound quality of MP3 can be described thusly:

[MP3] provides a representation of pulse-code modulation-encoded (PCM) audio data in a much smaller size by discarding portions that are considered "less important" to human hearing.

It is here, in the gap between CD and MP3, in the concept of “less important to human hearing” that the debate occurs. As MP3 technology grows more and more standardized, as more and more people rip their audio CDs into MP3, or simply download them from the internet onto their iPods and other devices, will audio quality standards drop as well? Will anyone ever come to know the rich, full, dense sound that can only be achieved on a vinyl recording? If the CD is the benchmark, are the differences between CD and MP3 so great, that audio recordings at large will suffer because someone has deemed huge sections of data “unimportant to human hearing?”

Until now, every worthwhile revolution in audio technology has been in the arena of better quality, less degradation, smaller media and more portable technology. MP3 seems to be an exception because, even to an untrained ear, the quality of an CD significantly outpaces that of MP3, but the MP3 format grows each and every day, backed up by the smallest, coolest and best technology available on the market.

Will there be a time when a young music aficionado will have gone his whole life without ever setting his ears to a compact disc, much as many our age have never heard a vinyl record? Will MP3 destroy not just music industry, but music fidelity as well?

I love capitalism. Capitalism is the fairest, most successful and equitable economic structure ever devised by mankind, and until socialism can shake its association with Soviet gulags, Chinese re-education facilities and Nazi concentration camps, it will remain so. Capitalism’s global success is attributed to the primal human need to achieve and create, and then the primal human need to sell things for fantastic profits, and then the primal human need for the new Resident Evil game, and maybe one of those cool wireless controllers with the built-in fan that keeps your hands from getting sweaty.

It began with the barter system, a chicken for a bag of flour, a few squirrel pelts for a sack of potatoes, a handmade chair for a new pair of pants. The barter system proved so successful, and with the growing acceptance of coin money, the open market was born. Many major cities around the world can attribute their growth and success because their location was a successful marketplace in years gone by.

The modern marketplace, much as it is tied directly to the technology of transportation and communication, is constantly changing and fluxing, building upon itself exponentially in order to bring you, the consumer, bigger, better, faster, more, and all for less. There is no place on earth that better exemplifies the core principles of the perfectly chaotic and beautifully unregulated marketplace as the ubiquitous “Internet”. The Internet, cyberspace, the worldwide web, it has many names, but only one function: the transmission of information, mainly pornography and stock quotes.

When the twisted world of capitalism collides with the information superhighway, only good things can happen. What we see now is an explosion of every imaginable market, cars, boats, houses all the way to bikes, garden hoses, ballpoint pens, jeans, scotch tape and multitudes of live creatures are bought online, sold online, and sodomized live online by perverts with web cams for the enjoyment (and subscription fees) of the quivering masses. The only thing I love more than capitalism is chicken-fucking for a low monthly fee.

The old adage goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” While this may have applied to the automobile, the light bulb and the double-headed, jelly dong, the free market no longer bends to the will of market demand, mostly because in the civilized world, virtually all our needs have been met. What the producers in every major economy want is to be ability to stay one step ahead of their competition (the defining and most virtuous aspect of capitalism) by staying one step ahead of the consumer. Instead of “what does the consumer want today?” the question that burns in the mouths of the many is “what will the consumer want tomorrow?” In an effort to meet demand that has essentially been conjured, manifested or simply prayed for in board rooms and basements across the country, we the consumers are bombarded with products that no longer strive to meet our needs, but to create for us new needs that must be filled.

“There are many different ways of being alive -- at least ten million different ways if we count the number of distinct species alive today -- but, however many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead!” – Richard Dawkins

Inevitably, when anyone makes the leap of faith to manufacture a product that no one yet wants, just like the brilliance of evolution, you get more flops than home runs. When the worlds of capitalism and cyberspace collided, a new hinterland was created, and that is where these creatures live. These unwanted flops, bizarre products conceived by the insane and purchased only by those with too much money. These oddities of free market evolution are like the bizarre creatures fashioned by geographic isolation, like the wallabies of Australia, the lemurs of Madagascar and Jeanine Garafolo of New Jersey.

Bowel Buddy



This one instantly takes the prize for the most revolting product name. We can all breathe a sigh of relief that they’re bran “cookies” and not some sadistic, wire bottlebrush, or worse, a Russian dwarf hamster.

Best line in product description: “If you suffer from constipation, chances are you know it!”

Shower Shock Caffienated Soap



Is one cup of coffee really that time consuming? Between coffee, tea, soda, caffienated water, and caffienated malt beverages, I don’t see why anyone has to look to soap for their morning fix. Alcohol and nicotine soap, I could understand, but this is just silly.

Best line in product description: “Have smelly co-workers that sleep in too much? Give them the gift of Shower Shock!”

The Nap Cap



What better way to advertise to everyone in sight that you’re a blithering, drooling, “time for your two o’clock applesauce” drain on your family’s funds? Imagine yourself walking into an airport and seeing hundreds of chubby tourists from Florida in the terminal sleeping with their heads strapped to the chairs like an army of autistic short-bussers. Disturbing.

Best line in the product description: “Tell a friend and get free shipping!”

Location Earth Dog Tags



At first, you may think this is a gag. Perhaps the creator of these things is laughing all the way to the bank (the “money back guarantee” would certainly support that contention), but many people that purchase these things think that they are making simple investment in their own safety. These things sell like crazy at UFO conventions and whack-job storefronts across the globe. I’m thinking I’ll get one that has Lindsey Lohan’s address on it so at least I’ll have something to look forward to if I ever get abducted. I figure it’s the only way I’m getting over that fence and through those attack dogs. Stupid attack dogs.

Best line in product description: “Engraved with several methods of locating Earth in the galaxy, an alien pilot does not need to understand any human language to use this information.”

Octodog: the Frankenfurter Converter



Is the default shape of a hot dog so offensive that it requires a special tool to liven it up? And of all the shapes into which one can carve a chopped, pressed wad of meat scraps, why an octopus? My only response to this product is: what the fuck?

Best line in product description: “Surprise your guests, serve Octodogs!”

Squirrel Liquor Decanter



Okay, seriously, would you drink anything that came of this thing’s neck? I didn’t think so.

Best line in the product description: “The artist has a deep respect and appreciation for animals and the natural world.”

Talking TP



This nifty little gadget lets you record a short audio message that will play every time someone reaches for a wad of bathroom tissue. If I was in a friend’s home, doing my business, and when I grabbed a few squares of tissue heard the roll say, “please stay seated during the performance,” I would just exit the bathroom, find the nearest living thing and kill it.

Best line in product description: “Be the first on your block to have bathroom voicemail!”

“Sizzling Bacon” flavored Rolling Papers



I had two contenders in the “bacon-flavored” category, but the bacon flavored dog bubbles just weren’t as funny, mainly because dogs are stupid and pretty much love anything, bacon-flavored or not. Potheads, however, like to pretend they’re not stupid, that they can really play the guitar, and that Darkstar is actually a good band. In case you needed another bit of evidence that potheads need to have all the sharp objects in their homes confiscated, it got to be the bacon flavored rolling papers.

Best line in product description: “Toke it easy.”

There were many products that didn’t make the cut. The “Flightsuit” pet bird diapers, the “Executive Laptop Steering-Wheel Mount,” the dog umbrella, and many others.



The point is that there are countless people, from the industrial design mogul in a high-rise in New York, to the retired mail carrier in his basement in Peoria toiling away hour after hour to make some dumb thing you might buy. These people are making stupid products just for you! Bask in the beauty that is capitalism!

Ten Things to do in North Carolina When Your Wedding Tackle Doesn't Work

Would anyone like to make the case AGAINST immediate chemical castration?



I think it's a safe bet that a young man who can't control his urges to FUCK THE NEIGHBOR'S DOG, needs to have his pillypacker privileges taken away.

I know a place where the Sun never sets.

It's a mountain, and it's on the Moon. It sticks up so high that even as the Moon spins, it's in perpetual daylight. Radiation from the Sun pours down on there day and night, 24 hours a day — well, the Moon's day is actually about 4 weeks long, so the sunlight pours down there 708 hours a day.

I know a place where the Sun never shines. It's at the bottom of the ocean. A crack in the crust there exudes nasty chemicals and heats the water to the boiling point. This would kill a human instantly, but there are creatures there, bacteria, that thrive. They eat the sulfur from the vent, and excrete sulfuric acid.

I know a place where the temperature is 15 million degrees, and the pressure would crush you to a microscopic dot. That place is the core of the Sun.

I know a place where the magnetic fields would rip you apart, atom by atom: the surface of a neutron star, a magnetar.

I know a place where life began billions of years ago. That place is here, the Earth.



I know these places because I'm a scientist.

Science is a way of finding things out. It's a way of testing what's real. It's what Richard Feynman called "A way of not fooling ourselves."

No astrologer ever predicted the existence of Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto. No modern astrologer had a clue about Sedna, a ball of ice half the size of Pluto that orbits even farther out. No astrologer predicted the more than 150 planets now known to orbit other suns.

But scientists did.

No psychic, despite their claims, has ever helped the police solve a crime. But forensic scientists have, all the time.

It wasn't someone who practices homeopathy who found a cure for smallpox, or polio. Scientists did, medical scientists.

No creationist ever cracked the genetic code. Chemists did. Molecular biologists did.

They used physics. They used math. They used chemistry, biology, astronomy, engineering.

They used science.

These are all the things you discovered doing your projects. All the things that brought you here today.

Computers? Cell phones? Rockets to Saturn, probes to the ocean floor, PSP, gamecubes, gameboys, X-boxes?

All by scientists.

Those places I talked about before — you can get to know them too. You can experience the wonder of seeing them for the first time, the thrill of discovery, the incredible, visceral feeling of doing something no one has ever done before, seen things no one has seen before, know something no one else has ever known.

No crystal balls, no tarot cards, no horoscopes. Just you, your brain, and your ability to think.

Welcome to science. You're gonna like it here.

- Phil Plait, author of Bad Astronomy addressing an eighth grade class of science fair participants in June 2005.

The Shiny, Red, Candy-Like Button...

Reading as much news as I do will go a great length in diminishing even the greatest faith in the human race. It seems far too often, I will finish a story off the lines of the AP or Reuters, clasp my hands over my face and start humming to drown out the voices in my head that tell me none of us deserve our place at the top of the food chain. This morning was particularly gruesome, not just because of the subject matter of the stories I encountered, but because I’ve just spent the last twenty minutes curled into the fetal position, sucking my thumb, visions of sweet, sweet nuclear halocaust dancing in my head.

The Goat for Coke Scandal

Four men, ages 20 to 38, are currently being held and charged with theft, cruelty to animals and other charges in Bullskin Township, PA. It seems the “ringleader” James W. Albright (I shudder to apply such a flattering title to the type of guy that yells at the television during the Montel Williams show, but “drooling, mouth-breathing sack of pig excrement” does very little to betray his status in this group of vacuous pus-bags) developed a plan of fiendish mastery, and convinced his fellow idiot savants on the virtues of a greatly underestimated avenue of extraneous income: goat-napping.



Albright stole his neighbor’s daughter’s pet pygmy goat and tied it to a tree in his back yard, where he and his friends proceeded to beat it to death with sticks. While the image of four drunken hillbillies beating a miniature goat to death with some two-by-fours they found under the house may seem funny as hell, I assure you little Kimmy next door found it none too amusing. They then took the corpse of the goat to Albright’s father and aided him in skinning and butchering it with the intent of selling the meat FOR COCAINE.

In all seriousness, if you’ve got a coke habit that you need to feed, what kind of a person (scratch that, four persons) decide the most likely bargaining chip in the seedy underworld of the drug market would be goat flesh?

The Chicken for Sex Scandal

Our next tale brings us to Stoddard, NH, and into the life of Ryan Park, a door-to-door meat salesman and recalcitrant lover of the fairer sex. Mr. Park is currently in custody, charged with assault after he offered a potential customer an uncooked chicken in exchange for sexual favors. When his advances, and his uncooked chicken, were rejected, he forced himself upon the woman and “forcefully kissed” her. While we can be happy that the poor woman’s sanctity was violated no further than a forceful kiss from a meat salesman, we can only hope he washed up after touching the raw chicken.



I just get fed up sometimes. I wonder about the future of the human race when some skinhead nutter saws off an old guy’s head over a property line dispute, and then makes it into this country with the bloody chainsaw in the trunk of his car. I get distraught when an abortion doctor is accused of devouring human fetuses. I start to worry when Sean Penn decides to become a reporter and go to Iran to cover their sham elections.

Although, the new Pope-Mobile sounds pretty cool...

Wall of Hair: The Legacy of Phil Spector

The world loves celebrity. Here in America, we especially love the formulaic story of rise to fame through hard work and perseverance, and making success from meager beginnings. The only thing the world enjoys watching more than the rise of a star, is its inevitable fall. With the trial of Michael Jackson at a close, the media in the United States is in a blind panic. “Wacko Jacko” has been acquitted, and Robert Blake is out walking the streets again, a proposition that keeps many of us up at night. The folks that decide what’s going to be important to you have nothing left to report, especially in New Jersey. What celebrity court debacle will the nation fawn over for the next six months? Sure, Russell Crow will be going to court soon, but he’s already admitted to assault on The Late Show and will probably plead no contest, not much to report there. Phil Spector’s trial is scheduled to start soon, but who the hell knows who Phil Spector is?

The answer: You should.

It’s very likely that you don’t know who Phil Spector is, or if you recognize his name, don’t realize how fundamental he was in the shaping of American music, and by “American music,” I mean all music. Spector has been a huge figure in innovation of the music industry in the last thirty-five years, and has made millions developing recording technology and techniques, and has created some of the biggest names in music history, and the media can’t even justify following the proceedings of his murder trial.

Spector’s life, like most folks that fight the current in an industry as unforgiving as music, has been marred with turmoil and struggle, leaving him eccentric and, some would say, dangerous. If one examines the evidence, it becomes clear that Spector’s career, which peaked in 1970, can be said to have gone downhill in perfect ratio to the increasing circumference of his hair.




In 1958, and the age of 19, Phil’s first band, The Teddy Bears, release their million-selling hit, “To Know Him is to Love Him.” This was to be the beginning of an illustrious career in music, and as you can see, is marked with cute, short, wavy hair typical for the time. Phil and his hair are destined for big things.




Armed with the reputation garnished from the success of The Teddy Bears, and gifted with perfect pitch, I might add, Spector went on to his first independent production success in 1961 with “Pretty Little Angel Eyes” but Curtis Lee. That same year, before he even turned 21, Spector started his own label, Philles Records, with music great Lester Sill. With complete creative control, Spector went on to produce numerous hits from his tiny Gold Star Studio in Fontana, CA.




During this time, 1965-1969, Phil introduced names like The Ronnettes, The Crystals and many others, developing for the first time the concept of the “girl group.” Unfortunately, as you can see, his hair had started its journey skyward, marking the beginning of the end. The real breakthrough, however, was Spector’s “Wall of Sound” recording technique that used numerous musicians in the tiny studio playing orchestrated parts on top of one another, lending the recording a rich, dense sound that was especially enjoyable on jukeboxes of the day. The song usually credited with popularizing Spector’s technique of layering music was “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling” by The Righteous Brothers.




In 1970 both Phil and his hair exploded in terms of recognition, success and density. John Lennon, a great fan of Spector’s work, approached him that year and asked him to lend a hand in completing the abandoned recordings of the Beatles’ “Let it Be.” Already on the rocks, the relationship between Lennon and McCartney became even more strained after Spector completely reworked the album, and fundamentally changed McCartney’s “The Long and Winding Road,” applying his signature “Wall of Sound” techniques and added an entire orchestra to McCartney’s sparse piano ballad.




The 70’s and 80’s were tumultuous years for Phil and his hair. There were some significant gains, but also some real setbacks. His name was as well-known as it had ever been, but his eccentricity and need for complete control over the projects he produced gave him a reputation as a tyrant at the boards, and he was even said to have discharged a firearm in the studio while John Lennon was recording and forced Leonard Cohen to record “Death of a Ladies’ Man” at gunpoint. Despite these bizarre occurrences, this time was greeted with the success of albums he produced for John Lennon, George Harrison, The Ramones, Dusty Springfield, Harry Nilsson and The Beach Boys.




In the early 90’s, it seems Phil realized what a danger his hair had become and for the first time, he was trying to fight it. He had retreated into relative obscurity, probably brought on by the epic battle he had incited with the mass of tangles and curls that had nested on his head, bent on world domination. Unfortunately for us all, Phil was not to win this battle.





Holy fucking Christ on a crutch! I never knew it would get this bad. By now, the roots have sunk deep within his brain and he is no longer in control of his actions. He is utterly at the tender mecries of that horrible creature, coiled on top of his head, ready to strike at any moment at anyone who dares stand in its' way.

In February 2003, Harry Phillip Spector and his hair were arrested as part of the investigation into the murder of Lana Clarkson, an actress whose body was found in Spector’s home in Alhambra, California. It would seem Phil’s hair won the struggle that kept him for the public’s eye throughout the 90’s, and now we shall all suffer.

Phil Spector has been responsible for the success of acts like Tina Turner, Cher, Darlene Love, The Righteous Brothers and has greatly influenced musicians and producers like Brian Wilson and Bruce Springsteen. Spector’s imprint will always be felt in music, and the fact that most people are unaware of his legacy is unfortunate. So next time you pop in “Let it Be” and marvel at the genius of those four chaps from Liverpool, think about Phil and his life long battle with the maniacal tendencies of his hair, and how great success is always tainted with great struggle.

Poor Guy, He's Got Bandwidth Issues...

Proof positive that, on average, we all have far too much free time on our hands. I might also add that I can't believe I (or Luke) didn't think of this first.

Cats + Stuff = Awesome.

Paying Someone to Punch You in the Nuts: Priceless

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The Tesla Purple Energy Shield™ has been anodized with the color Violet, which is the healing ray of the rainbow spectrum. Their atomic structure has been altered, so that they are in resonance with a high-frequency vibration of the life energy force, in a complex way, connected with the known energy of negative ions. The Tesla Purple Energy Shield™ possesses a field of energy capable of penetrating any living thing - plant, animal or human.

Measurable effects of The Tesla Purple Energy Shield™
The life force energy, or Prana, can be measured in several ways. One of them is through radionic equipment. Using this measurement, the energy level of an individual man or woman not yet fully illuminated might register, say, 20 on the scale. When this person is handed The Tesla Purple Energy Shield™ the reading will instantly increase to 90 or 95. It won't remain at that level, but continual use of The Tesla Purple Energy Shield™ will gradually bring the person's energy to 100 permanently, Enlightenment. And higher than 100, since the life force energy cannot be completely measured by any device presently known. And so, the use of this New Age "magic" will eventually raise your frequency rate of angstrom units per second.

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This keychain features a small, watertight capsule to store something important.

Top unscrews for access
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Also available in purple and red at REI.com

Reaping What You Sow: Federalism, Not Wacky Tobacky

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 6-3 that state allowances of marijuana usage and possession for medicinal purposes do not trump the federal ban and these patients and their doctors can be prosecuted under these restrictions.

Boy, howdy, ya’ll stepped in it this time, but iss ya own damn fault.

News flash: The War on Drugs has been an unmitigated failure since day one. The prohibition of drugs themselves has created the very crime you’re attempting to stamp out and the black market you created is the only reason drug prices remain high. Your bans are the very reason there is a drug problem!!




Unfortunately, I have no sympathy for pot smokers. I don’t smoke pot, but have always respected someone’s right to ingest whatever they see fit, either for recreational, medicinal, suicidal or “sitting on the couch watching Caddyshack” purposes. I have routinely signed petitions to strengthen Oregon’s medical marijuana laws, and the outright legalize the stuff. But you people get no sympathy from me regarding the decision of the Supreme Court because it’s mostly your fault. Your typical pot smoker, at least here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, can be safely described as a smelly, dread-ridden, pinko, bike-riding, protesting, tree-hugging, vegan, dirt worshipping Commie. Commensurate with this description, these folks are the kind of people that empower their government to step in and make activist decisions on their behalf, such as Roe v. Wade and the Assisted Suicide Act here in Oregon. While these things are fundamental rights under “physical sovereignty,” these activists have gone about it all wrong.

If you believe in the Constitutionality of Roe v. Wade, you cannot complain about Ashcroft v. Raich. Roe v. Wade, contrary to popular belief, does not guarantee the right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy. Roe v. Wade simply states that, according to the opinions of the justices of the Supreme Court, the state governments in the U.S. do not have the right to ban the practice of abortion, even if the majority of citizens in that state wish for a ban. Roe v. Wade is a perfect example of the Federal government over stepping its’ bounds and sticking its’ fat nose into the business of the states, and Ashcroft v. Raich is simply an extension of that situation. You Commie bastards, you’re the one’s that have empowered the Federal government to solve your problems for you in the first place, and now you’re pissed that they shot you in the foot with the gun you gave them!

To all you pot smokers out there, I feel for you. I feel even worse for the folks that really need the stuff to deal with chronic pain or the effects of chemotherapy. The answer lies not with demanding the government solve your problems, but with stripping the government of the ability to change these rules without your permission. Do you see why conservatives are always so up in arms about “activist courts?” There is nothing more enraging than a bunch of self-important, gown-clad, busybodies up on an oak bench declaring to the country what rights you do or do not have, especially when they’re dictating to sovereign states.

As an aside, I just want to point out that pot would most likely be legal if it weren’t for pot smokers. When you step in front of someone, wearing a giant plastic marijuana leaf necklace braided through your dreads, a Bob Marley t-shirt, giant, stinky corduroy pants, clay beads and wittled driftwood strung around your neck, your gross Rasta beard just crawling with parasites, reeking of patchouli and butt, and ask them to sign a petition to help legalize your favorite recreational drug... they’re not going to help you.

You want pot to be legal within your lifetime? Get a haircut, get a job, put on a tie and vote Libertarian.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - He just wanted his colleagues in the government’s legislative arm to discuss the possibility of conducting a study into the feasibility of reversing the ban on women drivers — the only prohibition of its kind in the world.

But Consultative Council member Mohammad al-Zulfa’s proposal has unleashed a storm in this conservative country [Conservative? A better word would be "Medieval," but that's the Associated Press for you. -ed.] where the subject of women drivers remains taboo.

Al-Zulfa’s cell phone now constantly rings with furious Saudis accusing him of encouraging women to commit the double sins of discarding their veils and mixing with men. He gets phone text messages calling on Allah to freeze his blood. Chat rooms bristle with insulting accusations that al-Zulfa is “driven by carnal instincts with 454 horsepower.”

There even have been calls to kick al-Zulfa from the council and strip him of his Saudi nationality.

The uproar may be astounding to outsiders. But in Saudi Arabia, where the religious establishment has the upper hand in defining women’s freedoms, the issue touches on the kingdom’s strict Islamic lifestyle.

Conservatives, who believe women should be shielded from strange men, say driving will allow a woman to leave home whenever she pleases and go wherever she wishes. Some say it will present her with opportunities to violate Islamic law, such as exposing her eyes while driving or interacting with strange men, like police officers or mechanics.

“Driving by women leads to evil,” Munir al-Shahrani wrote in a letter to the editor of the Al-Watan daily. “Can you imagine what it will be like if her car broke down? She would have to seek help from men.”

Courtesy of The Associated Press and Yahoo News

Finally, a region of the world they recognize the utter inability of women to drive. If only we had such forward-thinking rulers in this decadent country we'd take our women out of their cars, off their cell phones, slap on a burka (onto them, not us) and put 'em back in the kitchen where they belong. Sans shoes, I might add.

I specifically like the quote, "Driving by women leads to evil." When I first got my license, my buddies and I were always driving by women, and I nearly got a few accidents because of their wanton displays of flesh and debauchery, you know, when they looked at me. The evil is real.




Is it just me, or does it seem like Sharia law was designed by bunch of six-year-old boys on one side that think girls are icky and have cooties, and bunch of sad thirty-five year olds on the other side that just got spurned by some floozy at the highway bar and think all women should be stuffed into burlap sacks and beat with belts?

A few days ago, I received an email from my pal Suzie in Boston. Normally, her emailing me would not be worthy of mention in this sanctimonious forum, but the email she sent was a forward called “HOW CAN YOU LIVE WITHOUT KNOWING THESE THINGS?” Basically, the email was like many others you and I have gotten from many people, listing interesting and cute facts like the origin of the fountain pen or how Joe DiMaggio collected toads and named them all “Stevie.” Most of the “facts” included in these emails are totally untrue, while many contain grains of truth, which make them seem believable. Lies like these are perpetuated by morons and half-wits that like to pretend they’ve read a book, when really all they did was buy the tape.

Here’s the email I was sent, each falsehood exposed for what it is: total, unadulterated, and unmitigated bullshit.

Many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented. It was ruled

"Gentlemen Only...Ladies Forbidden"

...and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.

The origins of golf are murky at best. The Scots claim invention because of two laws from the 15th century, interestingly enough, banning a game called “gowf,” which is believed by some to be the earliest incarnation of the game. Others contend that “gowf” was another game altogether, more closely resembling field hockey than modern golf, and some cite evidence suggesting that in the 17th century, people in The Netherlands were putting balls into holes in the ground using wooden “clubs”, giving them the coveted rank of inventors. The word “golf” has its origins in the Germanic word for “club or cudgel” and has nothing to do with sex discrimination.

Source

The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV were:

Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

The first time a couple was shown in bed together in America was 1947, it was Mary Kay and Johnny from their short-lived program, “Mary Kay and Johnny.” While not terrifically well received, the show was ground breaking in many other ways as well. “Mary Kay and Johnny” was technically the first situation comedy ever broadcast, although the term was not be coined for many years, and was also the first show to feature a pregnant woman. I think the only reason they were able to get away with showing a couple in bed together was they were married in real life and she was seven odd months pregnant.

Source

Coca-Cola was originally green.

This is just plain not true. Coca-Cola has always been that deep brown color and probably always tasted like malted battery acid. Some “Coke Historians”(I did not make that up, that’s what they call themselves) contend that the original formula, intended as a medicinal, coca-based elixir, was made brown to hide any impurities in the drink.

Source

Something about the Coca-Cola empire has made it a prime target for bizarre, unfounded and downright retarded rumors, lies and urban legends. Performing a cursory search online reveals a hefty list of falsehoods perpetrated against Coca-Cola:

· The modern image of Santa Claus was created by Coca-Cola
· Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide.
· A tooth left in Coca-Cola will dissolve overnight.
· The phrase “Coca-Cola” in Chinese is means “bite the wax tadpole.”
· Combining aspirin and Coca-Cola will make you high (oh, brother).
· Only two people know the Coca-Cola formula, each one knows only half of it.
· Mormons own Coca-Cola
· The cursive script of the Coca-Cola label includes an image of someone snorting cocaine.
· “Little Mikey” from the LIFE cereal box died from the ingesting the explosive mixture of Coca-Cola and Pop Rocks candy.
· Coca-Cola’s script logo reveals anti-Islamic messages when viewed in a mirror.
· The Coca-Cola Corporation once donated four days worth of income to the nation of Israel.
· A university freshman once died from carbon dioxide poisoning from drinking too much Coca-Cola
· Fanta was invented by the Nazis.
· Al-Queda terrorists have poisoned one in five cans of Coca-Cola with anthrax.

…and the list goes on and on. My favorite is definitely the one about Mikey from LIFE cereal. Mr. John Gilchrist is quite alive and well and is currently an advertising executive for a New York radio station. Who the fuck comes up with this crap!?

It is impossible to lick your elbow.

At first, I thought this might actually be true. After five solid minutes of trying, I failed to lick my own elbow. Needless to say, it was the shortest amount of time I’ve ever spent trying to lick a part of my own anatomy. I was ready to concede defeat and admit the statement’s truth when I decided to run a google search. Turns out many people have gotten this stupid email and apparently many of these people can lick their own elbows. So many, in fact, that Guinness World Records receives about five emails a day from folks claiming the ability to taste their arm joint, some including photos. Guinness would like me to reiterate the statement that the ability to lick one’s elbow does not constitute a world record in any sense, and would you all please stop emailing them.

Please leave us alone.

The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28% (now get this...)

The percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%


Not if you count deserts, asshole.

Source

Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

This has got be the stupidest thing I’ve ever read, and I sometimes read Newsweek. Firstly, isn’t “intelligence” somewhat subjective? I mean, we like to say that dolphins are intelligent, but even my stupid six year old cousin can make himself a bowl of cereal in the morning. I’ve never seen a dolphin do that. Okay, what about IQ and standardized test scores? When you took your SATs, did anyone get a hair sample from you? Not likely. And what is the insinuation here? Are people smart because of the copper and zinc in their hair, or do smart people absorb more of these minerals? Pure idiocy. I’ve heard of universities and government agencies paying to have some pretty retarded studies undertaken, but this one’s up there with that political candidate I once met in Kenmore Square that was convinced the only way to achieve world peace was to build a highway over the ocean between the U.S. and France.

The first novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.

This seems to have a grain of truth, but the fact is misstated. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain was the first published novel that was written entirely on a typewriter. This fact seems to have been based on Mark Twain’s own aged recollections. Some historians, however, seem to think the first was actually Life on the Mississippi which he wrote eight years later. I’ve also found evidence of several medical journals, trade publications and catalogs that featured articles and chapters that were composed on a typewriter a few years before Tom Sawyer’s publish date. I’ve also heard claims that the distinction went to Fanny Kemble, an actress and writer from London. There is no solid data on the matter.

Source

The San Francisco Cable Cars are the only mobile National Monuments.

Not if you count boats, asshole.

The term “National Monument” is usually only used in reference to forests or geographic formations like Mt. St. Helens or Crater Lake. You can apply it to things like cable cars (depending on what country you’re in), but if you did, you’d have to apply it to the USS Kidd in Baton Rouge.

USS Kidd

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history:

Spades - King David

Hearts - Charlemagne

Clubs -Alexander The Great

Diamonds - Julius Caesar

The origin of playing cards is even more crepuscular than that of golf, mostly because there have been countless similar incarnations in China, Persia, India and several other regions. The fact is, however, is that card manufacturers in France, in an effort to differentiate their products from English and German competitors, started putting names of great historic monarchs, queens and knights on the face cards. Unfortunately, the different makers all used different names like Constantine, Solomon, Clovis and many others, including semi-fictitious characters like King Arthur and Sir Lancelot. The French stopped naming the cards in the mid 1700s.

Source

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

This one is actually true, but why it’s interesting is beyond me. Of course, why men wear black denim shorts is also beyond me.

If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle. If the horse has one front leg in the air the person died as a result of wounds received in battle. If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

I’ve been hearing this one for years, and I always doubted it because of the many examples I’ve seen that don’t fit with this assertion. Here in Portland, we’ve got a huge statue of Joan of Arc in the Laurelhurst area. The horse’s front left hoof is up, as is it’s back right hoof. What the hell does that mean? Does that mean Joan of Arc was run over by a combine? Perhaps it means she ate a bad pork taco on the beach in Mexico City and contracted a brain parasite. In fact, she was burned at the stake in 1431, so I think the horse should be lying on a bed of ballpoint pens, eating a watercress sandwich and playing scrabble with Pope Pious XIV.



No other city in the world has more equestrian related statues than Washington D.C., and very few of them actually fit that paradigm.

"To the best of anyone's knowledge, the position and pose of the statue do not signify anything," said Frances Pollard, curator at the Virginia Historical Society.

Source

Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776 : John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.

The original document was signed by all on July 4, 1776, give or take a day or two. The calligraphy version, the one we all know and love, was completed on August 2, 1776 and featured all appropriate signatures by November of that year.

Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of what?

Their birthplace.

I’ve looked everywhere but can find nothing to support or refute this assertion. I do know, however, that the only way one could arrive at the evidence to support this would be to mill through the U.S. Census information. Unfortunately, the census does not expressly include info on this subject. One could, I suppose, go through every person on the census (295,734,134 by latest estimate) and calculate the percentage of Americans that live within fifty miles of their birthplace. Needless to say, if this data has been obtained, I can’t find it. Also, anyone stupid enough to actually figure that out, or worse, pay someone else to do it, needs to have the zinc and copper levels in their hair tested.

If you were to spell out numbers, how far would you have to go until you would find the letter "A"?

One thousand.

This one’s actually true, unless you count “one hundred and one.”

Whoopty fucking doo.

What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laser printers all have in common?

All were invented by women.

Windshield wipers were, in fact, patented by a woman named Mary Anderson in 1905. I think the writer saw this fact alone as pretty thin, so he threw in a couple of half-truths and a steaming pile of bullshit there at the end.

The U.S. military invented the “bullet-resistant vest” around World War I, but even that was based on earlier silk vests available in Europe. Ironically, Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, was wearing one of these silk vests when he was shot, his assassination sparking the First World War. Obviously they needed a woman’s touch. Stephanie Kwolek, a chemist from Pennsylvania, did discover liquid-crystalline polymers, which were used to develop Kevlar in the 60’s.

The fire escape? Congratulations, you are a testament to womankind, you figured out that when a building is on fire, you should get out. Hear you roar. Unfortunately, “the fire escape” is not a patented invention, especially since their have been hundreds of variations on the theme. The closest thing I could find was an 1897 patent by Daniel McCree, a black man from Chicago, for a bundled escape ladder made from rope.

Represent, fool.

Finally, the laser printer was invented by Gary Starkweather, a researcher for Xerox, in 1971.

Source #1
Source #2

Okay, this thing could go on and on. While I was searching, I discovered countless incarnation of the same email, each claim more ridiculous than the last.

There is falsehood everywhere, and it’s your responsibility to sort through all that crap, demand evidence, reject unsubstantiated claims, and stop believing everything you read. Be a skeptic! Feel the power of your own brain! Just because some email that your Aunt Patty sent you says Pepsi is run by Nazi sympathizers from Argentina, that does not make it so.

I think, therefore I am.

In closing, I would just like to summarize the truths I have discovered while researching this blog:

· The phrase “rule of thumb” has nothing to do with the width of the stick one would use to beat his wife.
· Donald Duck cartoons were never banned in Finland.
· Marilyn Monroe had five toes on each foot.
· If you flush toilet on a plane you won’t get sucked into it.
· If you drop a penny from the Empire State Building and hit someone, you most likely won’t kill them.
· Cow farts are not the largest source of atmospheric methane.
· Two-thirds of the world’s eggplants are not grown in New Jersey.
· Winston Churchill was not born in the ladies room of a dance hall.
· Bill gates/Microsoft/AOL will never pay you anything for forwarding emails.
· There is no “E-mail Tax” being mulled by Congress.
· Alf really was a puppet.
· Acupuncture is a total scam, the same with Feng Shui, Tarot cards and Dignity Village.
· If you delete a file on your hard drive just because an email tells you to, you’re a fucking moron.
· Recycling accomplishes nothing in terms of environmental welfare.
· Reading a book is way better than hearing it.

I am a skeptic. While I dislike pigeonholing myself with such an effusive label, the true definition of the word is a fair characterization. Many people misunderstand the meaning and assume that a skeptic is someone that instantly rejects everything, and believes nothing. That is descriptive if a Nihilist, not a skeptic. The word itself comes from “skeptikos” in Greek, meaning “thoughtful or reflective.”

I think, therefore I am.

Charlene Dorcy is not a skeptic. Charlene is willing to accept anything anyone says as truth without evidence, either clinical or otherwise, to support their claims. Charlene believes in “natural medicine,” herbal cures, homeopathic treatments, reiki healing, psychic touch, “intuitive medicine” and who knows what else. Charlene is a moron, or rather, was a moron. These days, Charlene is something else.

Normally, your run of the mill moron, into tea therapy and chakra alignment and getting needles put into their skin, is not a real danger to anyone but themselves. They spend millions collectively to buy pills filled with water, pay unqualified people to jab them with steel, “crack” their bones and wave their hands around their aura going “woo-woo” and all it proves is that they’re assholes that are easily impressed and more easily relieved of their money. But Charlene is a beast of a different color.

Charlene is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. Her doctors prescribed a cocktail of anti-psychotic and anti-depressant medications to control her violent hallucinatory tendencies, and allow her to live as close to a ”normal” life as someone with such a disability could. This was not good enough for Charlene. Charlene believed that “natural” medicine had the answer she needed. After all, the people who sell these callogen pills filled with grass, claim on their websites to cure what ails me and guarantee no side effects, right?

The “woo-woo” crowd strikes again.

Charlene stopped taking the medicine prescribed by the trained and educated healthcare professionals in favor of several “herbal cures” manufactured by Chinese kelp farmers with third grade educations. I only wish the consequences were as amusing as he stupidity.

In June of 2004, four years after abandoning the medication she’d been prescribed, Charlene took her two young daughters, Brittney and Jessica, age 2 and 4 respectively, to the bottom of the rock quarry in Pinchot National Forest in Washington State, and murdered them with a hunting rifle. Yesterday, she was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to a paltry 63 years in prison for the deaths of her own children.



During the court session, Charlene delivered a rambling and unfocused speech to the courtroom, never mentioning her children, but lambasting anyone that might judge her for her crimes. In her words, “Unless you’re vegetarian, every time you eat meat, you’re a murderer.”

…
An open letter to Charlene Dorcy and the hippies of the Pacific Northwest,

You worthless, murderous, psychotic, pathetic, evil, twisted hippy fuck. Even without a scrap of faith in the myth of extra-worldy justice, I find great solace and comfort imagining you slowly roasting in hell, screaming in agonizing pain, in the company of the demonic hordes and their blunt and rusty tools of eternal torture. You should be publicly flayed, doused in salt, flayed again, tarred, feathered, toothed, drawn and quartered.

And you, you hippy fucks, this is what you have begat. A woman who feels more remorse for the death of chickens and cows than the brutal and senseless murders of her own young children, a death she herself wreaked upon them with an old rifle at the bottom of a filthy rock quarry. A woman whose acceptance of your comfortable distrust for “western medicine” and embrace of your ridiculous claims of “natural health” and “herbal purity” came at the cost of two beautiful and innocent lives.




You miserable, worthless, asinine, self-important, “can you pass the organic, non-gmo, macrobiotic, homeopathic soybeans” pieces of shit. You and your monstrous ilk care more for fish and birds than for men and women. Your quaint faith in the claims of charlatans is exposed as fashionable idiocy. Your lives are exposed as privileged hypocrisy, and you have blood on your hands.

It happens again and again, the questions comes to “what harm can it do?”

The “woo-woo” crowd strikes again, but this time they’ve shown us how dangerous they really are. They care more about your cat than they do about you. They care more about “feelings” than results.

But after all, what harm can it do?

Well, we’re gettin’ international up in this bitch!

While recently scanning the stats for On The Rocks, I noticed that not only are we achieving higher visits than ever, our international audience has nearly doubled!

That’s right, two!

Someone from Cincinatti, OH found his way here with the Yahoo search term, “hummer driving republicans.” Someone from San Francisco, CA ended up at this site while searching Google for “nude naked Malcolm in the middle reese hair.” A neighbor to the north, landed his sick, Canadian ass at On The Rocks searching Yahoo for, “frankie muniz shirtless.”



My favorite however, is the guy from York, England who logged onto the site with the search term, “anally retarded fucking idiots.” Number three on Google.

On The Rocks, a progressive blog.

My older brother used to do things to me. No, not in that “show me on the doll where he touched you,” kind of way, the sort of cruel jokes you would play on a sibling that seem way over the top at the time, but you just know you’ll remember with fondness in the coming years, as you gaze lovingly at the scars, both physical and psychological. The first thing I can remember really setting the tone for my childhood was the fishing lure. I had the top bunk; my youngest brother had the bottom, and the oldest, a.k.a. Torquemada, had his own room across the hall. While it was generally an “every man for himself” war fought on several fronts, occasionally the oldest would call a truce with one of us if he needed to accomplish a particularly devious prank. He had commissioned the malleable youngest for this endeavor.

Our summers were spent sleeping late and trying to quietly avoid yard work, and on this particular morning, I must certainly have had visions of Optimus Prime dancing in my eight-year-old head as I slept soundly, in spite of the sun blazing through the curtains. He stole into my room and placed a jelly-like fishing lure on the exposed flesh of my inner thigh, sans hook, I’m glad to report, and fastened it with a few pieces of scotch tape. Normally, if one were to awaken with a plastic worm cello-taped to your leg, you probably wouldn’t scream like you’d found a horse’s head or anything, but my brother, the devious little bastard he was, saw much more promise in the artificial leech. I was shaken into consciousness, roused by the motion and my brother’s screams of, “Wake up! You’ve got a leech on your leg!” and promptly began to scream like a little girl at a tarantula convention. In my half-asleep stupor, I began to try to kick it off with my foot, being completely unwilling to touch it with my hands, all the time huffing and squealing. I must have been kicking and jumping more than I had intended, because my gyrations promptly launched me over the retainer bar and smack on my ass, four feet below. Of course, my loving siblings are also down on the floor at this point, only they were rolling around clutching their sides and trying not to swallow their tongues.



The routine was for him to break into the bathroom as I was filling the tub, snatch me up in all my nude glory, and throw me out the front door, an act punctuated with the comically loud click of the door’s lock. Perhaps once or twice a month, I found myself naked, sitting on the front porch, waiting for my brother to get bored of my humiliation and let me back in the house, warning of the consequences should I tell our parents, shaking his fist at me, middle knuckle raised in the painful “pig knuckle,” already responsible for countless bruises on my young body.

I wasn’t the only victim of this insipid abuse, as the youngest often found himself in the crosshairs when it was decided I’d had enough. Although, I must admit a certain disappointment in the ingenuity of the torment exacted on the youngest, as he usually simply found himself locked in the dryer for a few hours, sometimes even quietly napping there. I got the A material.

The “Summer of Pain,” as I’ve come to remember it, reached a pinnacle of abuse one day as, once again, I sat waiting for the tub to fill, expecting him to burst through either of the indefensible entrances to the bathroom. As a precaution, I would keep my underwear on almost until the moment I slipped into the water, trying to cling to the little dignity I had left. As expected he opened the door, swatted away my feeble attempts at self-defense, lifted me under his arm, and made way to the front door. This time, however, he continued into the yard and around to the back. A sense of dread began to build, and I knew there was something particularly devious in mind for me, causing me to fight even harder, but to no avail. As we turned the corner, I saw, near a decaying pile of lumber and the remnants of our father’s failed attempts at gardening, a crudely fashioned cross made from desiccated pieces of wood. Certainly, this did not bode well, but I was so perplexed, and fatigued from my previous escape attempts, I could not raise a finger in my own defense. I was roughly placed against the cross and brutally lashed there with nylon rope around my ankles, wrists and neck. He double checked the bindings, smiled at me evilly, and returned to the house with a spring in his hoof.

There I was, stiffly tied to a splintery cross, clad only my BVDs, in the middle of the Louisiana June. It sucked. It sucked a lot.

I was abandoned there for, as best I can remember, close to three hours. The uniquely flat landscape of Louisiana allows one to see for miles on a clear day, and as soon as my brother saw our mother’s car returning home, he exploded out of the back door and sprinted the distance to my pre-teen Golgotha, snatched me under his arm, sprinted back into the house, and dumped me into a tub of freezing cold water.

To this day, I can’t imagine why he did any of that stuff. Even when I ask him, I never get anything other than “I don’t know,” or “It seemed like it would be fun.” That’s good enough for me, though. I don’t carry any permanent scars, except for a few from the chicken pox he gave me; I have yet to prove that was intentional. I do, however, have this wealth of memories, most involving me being semi-naked in the front lawn or baking under the midday sun like that guy in Shogun when the Jappos bury him up to his neck and let the ants pick at him for a few days.

I got him back once, though. I don’t remember the circumstances well, but I was just getting out of the tub, with a towel wrapped around me. Somehow I managed to corner him, drop the towel and urinate all over him. He still claims that was worse than anything he ever did to me.

You be the judge.

Last Friday night, I went to see a rapper named MC Chris. He's one of my favorites, and if you haven't heard it, his album "Life's a Bitch and I'm Her Pimp" is available to freely download from his website. If you like good hip-hop, good humor, Star Wars, or any combination of the above, I highly recommend his music. At the show, I got his new record "Eating's not Cheating" (which is conspicuously unsigned...) and I'm enjoying it immensely.

The show was in a moderately large venue, the same place I’d seen Mr. Quintron and Miss Pussycat a few months earlier, and was sold out at five hundred people. The room was less oppressive than the other times I’d been there because due to Mc Chris’s extreme asthma, there was no smoking allowed in the venue. When you hear his voice you’ll understand. And yes, he is a full-grown man.

MC Chris walked onto the stage with a Rebel Alliance t-shirt and a wireless mic, DJ Fewell plugged in his Powerbook and a wonderful show commenced. The crowd was in motion and MC Chris’s high-pitched rhymes were in full effect. He even graced us with “I Want Candy” from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. For those not in the know, MC Chris does the voice for MC P Pants (you know, the eight-foot spider with the diaper and the hairnet) on Adult Swim’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

At one point during the show, those four Rebels I’d consumed (Czech beer, not to be confused with the alliance) had made the rounds and were ready for deploy. I really couldn’t hold it, so I quickly made my way to the men’s room. I stepped to the urinal, and as I was draining the snake, I couldn’t help but notice the guy at the next station. He was about 5’5’’, maybe 110 pounds and was dressed like Jon Bon Jovi. His pants were so tight, you could almost make out the numbers on the credit card he had in his back pocket, and his medium-length, and carefully disheveled hair was dyed blue-black. He looked ridiculous.

I’m trying to finish my business and get back to the show when another guy walks into the bathroom and makes for the stall. He takes one look at the little rock star and says in this great, bellowing, drunken frat-boy tone, “How long it take you to squeeze into those jeans, Stamos?”

My first assumption was that this frat- guy was a friend of mini-Stamos here and was just giving him a hard time, but mini-Stamos turned to me with this perplexed look on his face and I realize that he was waiting for me to acknowledge this frat- guy as one of my friends. I’m fighting the urge to laugh at this point, which is made worse but the fact that the frat-guy is now in the stall, peeing very loudly and making noises like “aaaaahhh” and “oooooooooh.”

Drunk people are funny.

I don't wanna sound gay or nothin', but I think unicorns are totally sweet.

In 1796, the heyday of bloodletting and leeches as medical panaceas, a Saxon doctor named Samuel Hahnemann developed a theory as ridiculous and far-fetched as Greedo shooting first. He postulated that, in order to restore the balance of the body’s delicate “humors,” one should utilize the principle of “like cures like.” For example, in the case of a high fever, instead of fighting the body’s natural mechanism to heat up when fighting disease, one should work with the body’s “humors” and make the patient even warmer. Keep in mind, this is the same period in history when malaria was assumed to be caused either by the “bad airs” of sub-tropical regions or casual exposure to “dark-skinned savages.”

Unfortunately, unlike bloodletting, leech therapy and the model of “internal humors,” Dr. Hahnemann’s theories were not thrown onto the dung heap of history where they belonged. Like any good snake-oil salesman, the good doctor found some anti-establishment squish-head hippies, too lazy to come up with any good ideas themselves, to preach his mystical and “holistic” approach to health and made a bunch of money without ever having to prove a damned thing.

Welcome to the world of “homeopathic medicine.”

Another principle behind homeopathic medicine is called “the theory if infinitesimals.” According to this theory, applied under the concept of “like cures like,” the more you dilute a specific drug or treatment, the more potent it becomes. This theory is executed to the most extreme of degrees resulting in solutions that are diluted with distilled water one part per hundred million and up, to the point where there are no longer any identifiable molecules of the original solution present in the water. You read that last sentence correctly. It’s the water.

Both of the aforementioned “spread buttocks, insert head” concepts combine to form the basis for homeopathy. Over the counter homeopathic “sleep-aids” list caffeine as one of the “active ingredients.” Any buck-toothed loon, even your average naturopath, can tell you caffeine is a stimulant and won’t help your insomnia one whit. Ah, but “like cures like,” remember? So, we must administer a solution that contains a chemical that would create the same symptoms as you are experiencing, in order to cure your insomnia. But the secret is, we’re going to dilute the chemical in distilled water to such a degree that you would need to consume SIXTEEN SWIMMING POOLS FULL OF PILLS IN ORDER TO INGEST ONE MOLECULE OF THE MIRACULOUS HEALING ELIXIR.

Every year, the International Skeptics Society hosts a “mass suicide” where the participants consume hundred of these “sleeping pills” en masse, thousands more by the end of the cocktail party. I’ve heard stories about these parties, and if there’s one thing these people aren’t, it’s tired.

If you believe in homeopathic medicine, you are a moron. In that statement, you can also substitute the words “homeopathic medicine” with “fairies,” “leprechauns,” “unicorns,” or “Pat Roberts.” You should have your driver’s license and right to vote taken away immediately. You should have all sharp objects in your home confiscated, protective rubber nipples glued to all dangerous corners of furniture in the house and those annoying child-proof cabinet springs placed under the sink. You can’t be trusted.




Homeopathic remedies are sold over the counter in the United States, not because the Food and Drug Administration has tested and approved these gullibility supplements, but since there is almost literally NOTHING in the damned things, the FDA can’t exactly disapprove. The Wikipedia entry on homeopathy reads, “Homeopathic remedies have their own imprints that, unlike conventional drugs, do not have to identify their active ingredients on the grounds that they have few or no active ingredients.”

A few years ago, someone with a sense of humor, and perhaps a bit too much time on his hands, concocted this chain email that made the rounds of the inboxes of the nation’s paranoid mothers. I found it rather amusing and emailed it to a few people to get their reactions. I have to admit, I was disappointed that only one person instantly realized it was a gag, but at least none of them took it seriously. Mostly what I got was, “Is this a joke?” Yes, it’s a joke. The joke, however, is if the principles of homeopathy actually worked, this would be one unforseen consequence. I’d also be putting a bit more water in my blended scotch. While chatting over the unmitigated idiocy of the subject with my brother, he made a good point when he asked, “But Scott, didn’t you think, at one time, that Zicam, a popular homeopathic treatment, would cure your cold?” Why yes, I did. And there was also a time when I thought babies were made when a man urinated into a woman’s vagina. It’s amazing how we get to change our minds after a little research and critical analysis.

Homeopathic “medicine” accounts for over $200 million in sales each year, not because it works, and not because people actually believe this tripe, but because most people have no idea what the fuck heomeopathy is. It just gets jumbled in with all the other nonsense, holistic, natural, herbal, stick-tea and dirt pie “remedies” that people love just because savages with no shoes on the other side of the globe have been doing it for a few thousand years for lack of penicillin.

The greatest rule of the Hippocratic Oath is “Above all, do no harm.” This is a fundamental concept to modern medical treatment because it accepts the fact that something that holds the potential to cure, carries potential to do great harm. Treatments like homeopathy are called “alternative” because they are built on the crux that there are no side effects, no ill-efects, and cannot possibly do harm to the patient. This is a violation of basic logic because to wield the ability change something for the better, inheirently harbors the ability to change for the worse.

Next time you feel inclined to waste some of your hard-earned money on a homeopathic cure in the drug store, walk two aisles over and get yourself a gallon of distilled water. It’s the same stuff and it’s a whole lot cheaper.

[This message has been brought to you by the Distilled Water Manufacturers of America.]

Darth Vader has a blog, and it's really funny. For a few more Star Wars-induced chuckles, I whole-heartedly recommend this short film by Imitation Milk.

My favorite part is, "Warn you, we tried. Now, screwed, we all will be."

I suck at basketball, I always have. My feet are terrible, my dribble is lackluster and I’m fairly certain I have issues with depth perception. My lay ups are lousy and my jump shots definitely leave something to be desired. However, I don’t lose sleep over that fact that I suck at basketball, or that I don’t “gotz no mad skillz.” I still play basketball, I just don’t feel bad about losing because, while I enjoy the game, basketball is simply not my thing. I also don’t hold anything against the people that beat me at basketball simply because they’re faster, taller, or have functional depth perception.

Debating is no different than playing basketball, or tennis, or golf, or rummy, or Judo, or stock car racing: if you’re no good at it, stop playing. If you don’t want to stop playing, get better. If you don’t intend on getting better, don’t get pissed off when you lose.

Let’s debate the best rock n’ roll band in history. Let’s discuss which period of time was most influential on modern art theory. Let’s talk PCs vs. Macs.

Let’s intelligently and thoughtfully disagree on politics. That’s right, that’s all I’m asking. Let’s discuss our differing opinions on responsibility of government, rule of law, social engineering, taxation, the pros and cons of representative republicanism, and whatever else you have in mind. Let’s just talk, but don’t get pissed off at me when I soundly smoke your sorry, whiney, commie ass. I don’t whine when I lose at basketball, you don’t get to whine when you lose the debate.

Understandably, someone getting soundly smoked in the realm of politics and philosophy is different than getting their asses handed to them on the basketball court. If I lose at one-on-one, I don’t have to face the reality that my deepest held beliefs might be wrong, or face the possibility of abandoning all I hold dear and true. I just have to come to grips with the fact that no pair of shoes is going to fix my alley-oop. But on the other side, much like I suck at basketball, there are more than a few people out there that suck at debating. Frankly, most of these sniveling pinkos can’t carry a cohesive thought in that filthy canvas bag they use to transport over-priced, “organic” vegetables.

Then why, oh why, do they feel the need to constantly challenge me to proverbial rounds of basketball?

I’m not saying there are no talented debaters on that side of the aisle, I’m just saying they don’t live in Portland. At a cocktail party, I overheard someone call someone else a fascist. When I asked the offending person what they thought the word “fascist” meant, they said it was a Czech word for “Nazi.” I was once told that all Americans should be Democrats because the Democrat party founded our "Democracy." I know a girl that thought both blacks and women achieved the right to vote with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and she’s currently taking a college course on minority rights. I once had someone tell me, in the same sitting, that the human soul’s existence had been unequivocally proven mathematically (though he couldn’t remember how) and that god “had” to exist because of Aristotle’s “Unmoved Mover” theory.

There is perhaps no subject of debate more contentious than philosophy, and no more heated area of philosophy than that involving god. Brahma, Jehovah, Zues, Odin, Buddha, The Unmoved Mover, Mario, Luigi, call “him” whatever you want, there will always be believers, and there will always be detractors. By way of adding my own unimportant opinion to the debate, I’ve discovered an excellent source of information in the infinite void of the Internet. It’s a resource so well researched and brimming with common sense, it’s almost impossible not to sway to the author’s way of thinking. It’s thought provoking, intuitive, and cuts directly to the core of the discussion. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Official God FAQ.

To you, my loyal readers, whom I’ve culled to a select group of none this last year, I ask this: chill the fuck out. Not only should you be able to provide sound evidence of your contentions, you should be able to discuss god, politics, cars, movies and footwear without breaking down and crying. News flash: no matter what you think, there’s someone else in the world that feels differently, and that person is not necessarily an idiot, an asshole or a combination of the two. If you can’t discuss your opinions with people that disagree with you, maybe you should stay off the court.

I tell you what, next time we play basketball and you trounce my ass, I won’t take my ball home.

Time and time again, the most common stonewall I reach when debating the value of "alternative healthcare" with those idealist of thought and squish of head, is the colloquial phrase "what harm can it do?"

This harm.

The true danger of these "healing methods" lies not in the sugar pills, or the needles, or the stick tea, or the candles, or the stench of the burning rosemary. The true danger lies in the inherent negligence. The impossible claims made by the quacks and charlatans that sustain themselves with such nonsense, make prey of desperate people, who neglect the legitimate medicine or procedures that could save their lives. These crimes are made all the more heinous when the victim is a child who is not capable of making these decisions on her own.

See the reaction of James Randi (of the James Randi Institute).
See the follow-up here.

Why is it that everyone that’s been to Burning Man always says it started to suck, or got too big, or too corporate, immediately after the last time they attended?

If fuel efficiency, not fashion, is really the singular reason behind their purchase, why is the Toyota Prius, with its goofy, futuristic stylings, outselling the Honda Civic Hybrid, which looks identical to the conventional Civic, two to one?

If a tree fell in the woods, and then got right back up again, would the squirrels freak out?

Why is it when a human face emerges from two dots and a line :) it’s cute chat speak, but when a human face emerges from a crusty salt stain, it’s the miraculous work of God Almighty?

Why does the Post Office open an hour after I start my workday, close the minute I get off work, and still complain to the budget committee about dwindling usage, shrinking income and the need to raise postal rates?

Why do hippies and busybodies constantly complain that Americans don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables and then try to push for %100 “organic” farming’s %40 yield compared to conventional methods?

Why do some people revile the pharmaceutical industry, the most heavily regulated and controlled industry in the world, but celebrate the herbal supplement and “alternative medicine” industry that not only doesn’t have to prove that Ginko Biloba makes you any smarter, they don’t even have to prove that there’s any actual Ginko Biloba in the fucking bottle?

Why do hippies and busybodies march in the streets, sit in traffic lanes, and throw jars of peanut butter at police officers, and expect Mr. John Q. Public, who’s stuck in the traffic jam they caused, to pull the lever for their philosophy in the voting booth?

Why do men have nipples?

If Daylight Savings Time was introduced to counteract the daylight-sapping effect of our season changes, wouldn’t Arizona, which does not participate, be several years behind the rest of us by now?

Does anyone believe a statement that has the words “fresh,” “pastry,” and “7-11” in it?

Does cheese float? If so, even Swiss?