One Billion Friends

I'm thinking of a number between one and one billion. Can you guess what it is? Trick question: it was one billion, which isn't technically between one and one billion, but that doesn't matter now because I just wanted to get you thinking about numbers. So think about it. One billion. Or try it this way: ONE BILLION. Maybe like this: 1*10^9. Even 1,000,000,001 - 1 is a viable if annoying mathematical option. There's a lot of ways to say it, but they all mean the same thing, i.e. a really big number that fits in between one million and one trillion on the chart of "Numbers We Know Yet Can't Really Comprehend and Especially Can't Count To Without Using a Computer." While perhaps most famous for being Dr. Evil's ransom request, on Thursday that number took on an entirely new, completely un-Mike-Myers-related connotation: as of September 14th, it is also the number of active monthly users on Facebook.

Election Check-in: Yep, Still Not Pretty

Imagine with me, if you will, an early Thanksgiving at the Media Outlet house and everyone's coming home, whether they're wanted or not. Just your typical family affair, with every clichéd stereotype represented perfectly: you've got your angry old men of Fox News clasping tightly to their guns ("Grampa Chuck"), your doting middle-aged women of HGN bottling up their emotions ("Aunt Betsy"), your chipper twenty-something yuppies of MSNBC blithely unaware of the real world ("Cousins Susie and Nick"), and Anderson Cooper ("Anderson Cooper"). Everyone's chatting amicably among themselves about this or that, trivial things they don't bother covering in their airtime, like Kim Kardashian, or that new Starbucks around the corner, or Kim Kardashian's butt. Glenn Beck is introducing his plan to fight off Marxism bare-fisted to the lamp in the corner. Katie Couric takes a preening break in the hallway, checking her hair in the mirror before rejoining the crowd. Add a strong black transvestite matriarch and you've got a scene straight out of the ending of a Tyler Perry movie, the part right before the credits when all the shenanigans have died down and he's biding his time for a sequel. 

Suddenly, the idyll is broken. A frightened hush settles over the house, like an invisible scary cloud settling over a different but nevertheless similar-looking house. There's a knock at the door; when everyone pretends to not hear it, the door is knocked a second, harder time. The collected journalists and pundits jump at this "hello" in the violent dialect of sign-language, and all jump again --except George Stephanopoulos, who hasn't stepped off the ground since 2005-- when the hand responsible for the knocking creates and subsequently bursts through a splintered hole in the door. It feels around the door for a second, searching for the knob with its touch like a giant blind hand-spider. Upon finding the knob, the manual arachnid wrenches it right and unlocks the door. The hand withdraws and the door slowly opens with a creak, revealing the owner of the hand to be a monstrous, ginger hunchback with only one functioning eye. Joe Scarborough shits his pants.
For a good three seconds the cyclopean abomination surveys the huddled and glassy-eyed reporters, clearly savoring the theatricality of his entrance...but then the spell is broken. The assorted newspeople are no longer scared. They begin to whisper among themselves, pointing and giggling at the enormous, unfortunately red-headed person in the doorway. The phrases "needs to buy two plane tickets" and "can't donate sperm" are tossed around. Someone even throws in "poor depth perception," which is met with a hearty snicker. As the insults pile on, the behemoth with the spider-like hands simply stands in the doorway and accepts the barrage. A single tear rolls down its face (it would be two tears, one from each eye, but, you know, only one eye works).
Now, if that story were to be real or just a movie, that gigantic malformed human being would probably just be Wolf Blitzer's long-lost illegitimate child from a college affair with Diane Sawyer, and then the oeuvre would switch from Tyler Perry to more along the lines of Adam Sandler, who, in a shocking cinematic shakeup, would play both Wolf Blitzer AND Wolf Blitzer's facial hair. However, it is neither real nor an unwarranted sequel to That's My Boy; it's simply a story to drive home a point. 

The elephantine redheaded stepchild in the room is, to bring some closure to this extended metaphor, the 2012 Presidential Election. It's huge, it's ugly, it demands attention and no one really wants to talk about it.

RNDMTR: If Obama Fought Romney

When Ohio was seized by the Canadians, its representatives were removed from the total, leaving the electoral college split evenly Democratic-Republican down the middle. Then the Supreme Court all quit to become professional NFL referees. So it came to be that the only truly fair way to determine the 2012 Presidential Election was a best-of-five boxing match between the candidates, thus definitively proving once and for all that fighting really is the highest form of democracy.
Barack "Bear-Hugger" Obama lands the first punch, knocking Willard "R-Money" Romney over the Oval Office desk. Hot Mittens strikes back with a hook to the jaw that catches El Prez and sends him backpedaling into the wall, but instead of pressing his advantage, the Businessman of Steel makes the tactical error of backing off and letting the O-Man recover. This is all Barack the Rock needs to make a running tackle that carries the Bainster over and down into the couch, ending with them entangled in a compromising position that Michelle or Ann probably wouldn't approve of. An awkward silence reigns over the West Wing for a second, filled only with the heavy breathing of the dueling candidates as they quickly extricate themselves and return to the center of the room with red faces and heaving chests. Both men, not used to exerting so much energy in fighting, agree to take a mutual fiver to catch their breath. They're about to restart the fracas-ing when suddenly the Oval Office doors burst open, revealing Ron "Doctor Doctor" Paul on a tiger-pulled chariot. He has a trident. He only brandishes it twice before the tired combatants cede the fight. Ron Paul is declared the champion on account of tigers, and thus becomes the President. His first executive order is to march on Canada and take Ohio back for the cars; however, this plan quickly falls apart when Canada, laughing, gives Ohio back after it discovers Cleveland. Romney and Obama quit politics and join together as a WWE tag team called "ManiFist Destiny".

Randominator

The Reason All Those People Disappeared in The Swamp is The Alligators: A Response

To the Editor:

I am more than slightly aggrieved at your recent article titled “The Reason All Those People Disappeared In The Swamp is the Alligators,” published in the July edition of Cajun Quarterly. What a piece of utter nonsense. The author of this article, the so-called “Dr.” Harrison Saunders, has obviously never been close to the titular swamp, near Lake Okeechobee, and it is more than possible that he has never even been to the South in general. I am currently launching a full-scale investigation into this man to ensure that he's really who he says he is, because all signs point to a giant crocodilian NO. It pains me to see paginated real estate go to waste on such anti-reptile slander as that which this fraud has written. For the sake of clarity, I shall sum up my argument against the man and the piece in three (3) points. In this way he shall be reduced to a blubbering pile of idiotic tears and resurfaced daddy issues. If he is even a real person and not a sub-par automated word processor.

The Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich of Clothing

35 years ago, today, The King died at the tender young age of 42. It was an unexpected death that rocked the nation, specifically the middle-aged housewife demographic of the nation, who were devastated by the loss of their hunky mid-life crisis. Millions flocked to his ancestral Graceland to pay their respects and burgle the estate for heirlooms to pass onto their children. A couple dozen flocked to try and turn it into a tourist attraction before the hordes arrived. It was a real tragedy that, for once, everyone could agree to be sad about. Of course, he died on the crapper from what was likely a drug overdose, but that's not the point. The point is that he died on the crapper as a King of Rock'n'Roll. He could go no higher, no farther than what he was already. He was the pinnacle of musicianship with fancy hair and shiny shirts to boot.
So, to commemorate the passing of this legend, I've decided to open the pre-order queues for strickintees (uproarious applause). Now, before all you early adopters rush to your keyboards, I will warn you that these are the exact same pieces of art in t-shirt form as before. I mean, if you really want, you can get a second, but...you know what, if you want a second one, please get one. This grey and orange symphonic array of cotton will caress you with the soft touch of a beautiful woman who isn't your mother. It attracts members of the opposite sex like butterflies to a delicate flower. It smells like a delicate flower. It will get you into all the world's most exclusive clubs, including but not limited to the Mouseketeers, the Whiffenpoofs, and the Illuminati. It will be the best 13 bucks plus shipping and handling that you will ever spend, period.
As I said, it's just a pre-order, because I want to see the interest/collect orders before I actually get the shirts, so I don't order too few, like last time. Any questions, comments, or links to "Jailhouse Rock" may be directed to mah email.

strickintees: it's what Elvis would have worn.

(P.S. Happy Birthday Madonna!)

Farting on Art: The Perils of Too Much Fanciness

I like to consider myself one of the higher classes of life. Wherever I go I bear myself with the bearing of, like, royal blood. In another life I would no doubt have been probably a Duke, or a Baron, or maybe even a Queen, if it's that kind of "other-life" body-switching experience. Regardless of my pre-predestination gender, I definitely fall into the category of so-called Blue Bloods. Blue Blood, of course, comes from two Olde Englishe words, "bleu," meaning "fancy," and "blud," meaning "as the flippin' King of flippin' England, dammit, so get on my level, Uh." I rarely wear the same clothing twice, especially my hand-tailored silkworm-silk Alexander McQueen pajama pants, which were just made to be disposable. I eat only the finest custom-made Twinkies and Devil Dogs. My conditioner consists of just three things: infant skin follicles, microscopic robot hair-doctors, and two lemons. Four things, never mind. I don't have an iPod; instead, a formerly popular rock band follows me around and plays whatever I shout out. They do double duty as my harem. In short, to paraphrase myself: I'm, like, royalty.

It's a universal standard, very similar to Albert "Hairbrushes Are For Squares" Einstein's e=MC, squared formula. Except, unlike Berty's silly science-y formula for nerds, this one is actually usable in and applicable to everyday life. To be specific, my everyday life. It doesn't really work for, well, for anyone else's, but that's one me more than can be said for Al's string of letters and numbers and an equal sign drawn from a hat. This is the BH = Royalty, Squared, Uh, formula. In all my five minutes spent scouring the world wide web I was unable to find anything nearly on par with my Albert was not a Blue Blood, and thus was highly unprepared to deal with things like classiness. He was pretty good with science, I'll admit, so he wasn't a complete waste of time, space, or any other dimension. See, lower classes of people really are necessary, I promise. They're useful for more than just roadblocks and garnering sympathy points from supermodels. Well, some of them. Some of them seem to have no lifelong desire besides being a charity case, or even a case for several charities all at once. Ayn Rand was so right.

But being one of the few (and I say this in all possible kindness) actually cultured people on earth comes with a heavy price tag.