A geographical survey

In the game Monopoly, there are four railroads: Reading, Pennsylvania, B&O, and Short Line. How did you pronounce the first one: ree'-ding or reh'-ding? Growing up in California, we said Reeding, but my girlfriend grew up in Pennsylvania saying Rehding. I've always felt the likelihood of calling it Rehding Railroad depended on the proximity to the actual town of Reading (reh'-ding), Pennsylvania.

The Slappy Platform: Energy

My guiding principle for energy policy is a variation on the Clinton triangulation, except I will position myself between the left and right wings so that I piss everyone off. As long as no one is very happy with what I'm proposing, then I feel I'm very close to the right answer.

I will end subsidies for extracting fossil fuels, thus annoying the pro-business conservatives.

I will push for next-generation nuclear power plants to replace coal and gas-fired plants and reduce our carbon emissions, which will make the environmental left confused and angry.

I will provide large subsidies for farmers who produce ethanol from switchgrass, so people who hate subsidized farming will hate me.

Then I'll phase out corn-ethanol subsidies, causing the farmers to turn on me, the fickle corn-loving bastards.

My administration will put a plan in place to reduce carbon emissions, but at a reasonable enough pace that it doesn't reduce our GDP, angering both conservatives who think that global warming is a UN conspiracy and upper-middle class idle youth who wear dreadlocks and play hackey sack and blame every problem in their lives on corporations.

Right after I sign legislation supporting solar home power systems and the construction of wind turbine farms and doubling the budget of the National Renewable Energy Lab, I will go to the San Diego Zoo and bitch-slap a panda. Why? Because fuck him, that's why.

And as I lie in traction, recovering from my panda-mauling, I will bask in the satisfaction of cleaning the environment without letting any of the annoying interest groups be happy about it.

A new benchmark in degeneracy

One of the things I take pride in is my degenerate gambling. Usually that's poker, but I do enjoy making small bets on sporting events. Usually $1US (although once I made a bet of 1 euro against a guy who was on business travel in France), because it's about the love of the gamble, not the money. I've bet on Arena football, little league baseball, the NCAA basketball play-in game, and the first college football bowl game of the year (go North Texas Mean Green!). It's how I get in touch with my Asian cultural roots. We loves us some gambling.

But today I've hit a new high, and by high I mean low. I've bet on the Cricket World Cup - that's one-day cricket, where they speed up the game, giving each team a set number of pitches. That way it only lasts a crackling 8 hours instead of the traditional 5 days. Cricket is one of those games that makes me think that England colonized a quarter of the globe just so they could teach their subjects arcane sporting events and have someone to play against.

The Irish squeaked into the second round, so I'm backing the plucky underdogs against England, plus 62 runs. We made a game called "Bet on those Irish" which in format is a lot like "Name that tune". We may have to use the Duckworth-Lewis chart to project what the final score would have been in case of rain, or England beating Ireland without using all of their pitches. I just like the sound of that. Duckworth-Lewis. It sounds so scientific, so final. I hope to someday use that name to weasel out of a question at a technical talk. "How did you correct for electronic cross-talk?" "Oh, we used the Duckworth-Lewis method." "....... um, okay then."

War for dummies - A reference for the rest of us!

There's a song that goes "War! War! What is it good for?" The song then goes on to assert that war is good for "absolutely nothing." This seems like an extreme oversight on the part of the lyricist, and if I had written that song, the suggested answer would have been "plenty!"

The thing that war is good for is killing people. Clearly, it makes life much more pleasant as it leaves you free from the hassle of a bunch of irritating people bothering you as you try to enjoy your stuff; which brings me to the other good reason for war: taking other people's stuff. Of course, taking other people's stuff also opens up the opportunity of giving you more stuff to enjoy in your new irritation free existence.

Many of you are probably wondering what the best stuff to take is, and while that is a matter of personal preference, I have always been privy to things made of gold, like watches, jewelry and earmuffs.

But war isn't all free stuff and good cheer. One of the few downsides to war is the content of the editorial pages in your local newspaper. Whenever a war is brewing, Noam Chomsky wannabes come out of the woodwork to bring up useless moral ideals like "justice" and "peace." Don't despair, though, as these weak-willed poindexters always fall into line when ordered to do so by a man with an assault rifle. Let me suggest an M-16.

There are three key players in a war. First there are the pacifists. This group, primarily made up by women and homosexuals, is also known as the whiners. The aforementioned editorials are all written by pacifists.

The group that you and I belong to is known as the hypocrites. We're in favor of the war, but there's no way in hell we would go out there to fight as that would prevent us from enjoying our stuff.

The third important group in a war is the military. The military is made up by soldiers. These soldiers are also known as the poor. Thus this brings me to another positive aspect of war: lowering unemployment.

Each of these groups plays an important role in the dynamics of war. The pacifists gather in large groups, put their whiney signs in your face, and get their asses kicked.

The soldiers do the fighting during a war. To be honest, I don't really know what this entails, but I think it has a lot to do with marching and getting yelled at. Also, apparently there's some shooting involved.

The most rewarding role in a war, though, is that of the hypocrite. Hypocrites get to sit in high-back leather chairs and sip brandy while sympathetically discussing how our boys are doing out there in the shit. And after that, it's time for a quick dip in a vault filled with gold.

I know what you're thinking: "War sounds great! Where can I sign up?" You're lucky in that there is no paperwork. When you were born into the American middle or upper class, you automatically became a hypocrite. So just sit back, relax, and wait for the shooting to start!

Beyond Dianetics

Next stop: tax-exempt status!




Direct link here.

We loves the sexy ladies!

There have been some complaints that we're not doing enough to attract the ladies on jiggscasey.com. Well starting with this post, we're going to change that. All you beautiful ladies just sit back and enjoy our magic:

Hi there ladies. How was your day? I hope work wasn't too draining. Did you get your hair done? It really looks great. I got you roses. I just want you to know how much I love and respect you. Lay down and let me rub your feet. Every single one of your bunions is more beautiful than the next. I have our dinner in the oven. I made your favorite: lean hot pockets. And for desert, I got you a whole bag of doritos and cream cheese. If you're feeling up to it, I'll put on some soft, sexy music, lie down in bed with you and watch you fall asleep in my arms.

At Jiggscasey.com, we loves all the sexy ladies.

A quiet Monday morning

I spent about 60% of my waking hours this weekend watching the regionals in the college hockey tournament, or as the marketing folks dubbed it, the Road to the Frozen Four. My bracket got submarined by Maine - I had St. Cloud State winning it all, but those Black Bears from Maine knocked them out in the first round. It's like Wesley Snipes said in Passenger 57, "Always bet on the Black Bears."

I'm still alive in the bracket challenge thanks to the North Dakota Fighting Sioux. I was pleased this year when the NCAA told them they'd have to change their mascot if they wanted to be able to host an NCAA tournament event. Their response was that they had the approval of the Sioux nations. Turns out they didn't, and pissed off the Sioux even more by trying that weakass move. I think they assumed that the Sioux don't have access to newspapers or telephones. At any rate, now they can't host events, and no one gets to go to hockey tournaments in Grand Forks, North Dakota. And as always, the people who suffer from the fighting are college hockey fans.

What does hockey mean?

This is why people who search for toothless hockey players (and their king, Mike Ricci) find jiggscasey.com. This is from the 2000 playoffs.

With the hockey playoffs in full swing, I thought I'd take some time to look at the significance of hockey. Given the speed with which I usually write, this piece will be up on Jiggs sometime around preseason next year. But hey, we can always hope. We'll start off like this, with a word to get you thinking at home about this sport of really big guys skating around a really big rink chasing after a really small puck.

Canada.

When we examine what a sport means, we look first at where it came from. Ice hockey comes from back when ancient Canadians would fight fierce battles on frozen lakes, skating around each other with furious speed and hacking at the flesh with wooden axes. The first hockey game is thought to have started when a small rock was accidentally struck by one of the warriors trying to remove the foot of one of his enemies. This first slap shot theory is currently taken to be gospel truth.

Canada is a clean, polite nation. Understandably, they have a lot of pent up violence that they have to get rid of. This violence entered the culture in the form of hockey, which through mutual evolution with their socialized health care system produced this brutal sport. As a result they have fine state run hospitals to treat the victims of a sport that declares such penalties as "spearing," "hooking," and "slashing" as minor penalties. Incidentally, I have never understood why this sport that allows skating at full speed into an opponent, slamming him up against the boards, has a category of match penalty called "attempt to injure." As far as I can tell, just getting out on to the ice is an attempt to injure.

And of course these minor penalties mean spending two minutes in the box. But why the box? Most sports just give possession of the ball to the other team, maybe give one team better field position, but in hockey the assailant is placed in a little plastic box and his team must skate short handed. The penalty box is reminiscent of the place where the defendant stands in the British courtroom. Although this may seem like an odd connection, remember that Canada was a Crown possession until 1867, and even after that they became independent in a real half-assed way. Separating the guilty party in this way allows the common man in the stands to jeer at him like our forefathers did at criminals locked up in the stockade. However, at the same time, the penalty box lifts the player above the game, elevating him to public spectacle. It lets him drink a bit of water and be admired by the fans for his devious behavior. It harkens back to the outlaws of the American Old West, at the same time condemned and worshipped by morally ambivalent and eternally stupid people. The player is a celebrity, and the high walled plastic box is like his own personal Popemobile.

I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I was entirely opposed to the 1993 move to realign the divisions. That was the one thing hockey had over every sport on earth. The two leagues were named after Clarence Campbell and the Prince of Wales. The divisions? Adams, Norris, Patrick, Smythe. You people with your American and National leagues, West, East, Central divisions? Hockey had so much character. Speaking of funny names, there are about fifteen trophies awarded annually in hockey, for the most valuable player and normal stuff, but eventually it just gets random. The Lady Byng Memorial Trophy is given to the player that most embodies excellent play and gentlemanly conduct. Gentlemanly conduct. Did I mention this is a sport that considers hitting someone in the face with a sharp wooden stick a minor penalty? A sport that only will consider a major penalty in that situation if the victim is bleeding profusely has a trophy for gentlemen.

As with all great things, Americans felt the need to take it and distort it to fit our own particular dementia. Hockey is no different, as it has ruthlessly expanded from the Original Six to 28 teams (for now), it has also begun a steady march south. Only 6 of 28 teams currently reside in Canada, many of those remaining threatening to move to America. Now towns like Tampa Bay, Los Angeles, San Jose and Phoenix have teams they don't at all deserve or even understand. How on earth can we have hockey in the desert? Yes, with air conditioning, but on a more cultural level, the Americanization of hockey has changed the sport in many subtle ways. Just as Disney Americanized fascism, hockey has been similarly warped in these warm weather towns.

It is no accident that as hockey expanded south from the Original Six cities of Montreal, Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, Boston and New York, safety equipment became more prevalent. In 1959 Jacques Plante became the first goalie to use a mask, just because a shot had broken his face in the previous game. As the sport started needing two leagues and four divisions, players started wearing helmets. In 1979 players forced to wear helmets by league rule. Now the league is starting to talk about face shields for players. Absolute madness. But as always, we have to look at this on the level of causation. The cause of this shift is from the Americanization of a Canadian sport. In America, we praise beauty and style over anything resembling substance. Hence, through minor and major changes to the sport, Americans without even realizing it are creating a monster heretofore unseen in the sport: The beautiful hockey player. How else can you explain the great Wayne Gretzky, graceful, frail and beautiful, playing in Los Angeles?

The best examples of the invasion of beauty into hockey today are Peter Forsberg and the brothers Bure. Granted, Forsberg is growing this shaggy beard that's giving him a Michigan militia look right now, but prior to that the guy looked like a lost Baldwin brother for Christ sake. Then there's Pavel Bure, the Russian Rocket, whose boyish good looks and impish pug nose captured the heart of the lovely Anna Kournikova, at least for a few weeks. A few years later his younger brother Valeri entered the league, confirming fears that the NHL is indeed breeding for prettiness. I only ask, what happened to players like Mike Ricci? Ugly, ugly people with multiple broken noses, none of which seem to have ever been set properly if at all, missing the majority of the front teeth, greasy stringy nasty hair - now that's hockey. What happened? America happened, baby. Now we seem to be importing players from Europe to satisfy the quest to turn hockey into a photogenic sport. We're dressing them up in helmets and face shields to prevent the hits, high sticks and pucks to the face from gradually turning them into ogres, or in other words, turning them into hockey players.

I mean, what's happening to the sport? FOX started putting a blue halo around the puck because American TV audiences couldn't find it. They actually programmed it to show a red comet tail when a player made a slap shot. Plans to give Nielsen families game pads to remotely control star players fell through at the last minute. No FOX execs were forced to commit ritual suicide or anything.

But what can we do? Write your congressperson. Tell him or her to support the Howe-Orr bill to invade Canada. If we invade Canada we can then set aside the nation as a hockey refuge. Move teams back to Winnipeg and Quebec. Allow hockey players to skate free on frozen lakes in their natural habitat. At the rate we're going, Americans will destroy a great sport and Canadians will have nothing to watch except Canadian football. Don't let that happen: Invade Canada.

Campaign 2008: Debates

As the campaigns of the more "mainstream" candidates discover blogs and MySpace and whatnot, I thought I'd launch the first blog-based debate. My first opponent will be Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton, you are a polarizing character. Republicans believe you tried to impose a health care system cribbed from Stalin and personally shot Vince Foster in the face. Your 1992 one-liner about baking cookies continues to echo in the political arena because many Americans love the traditional family arrangement, and many more love cookies. In fact, polling experts believe that most of your supporters only want to vote for you because it would piss off Republicans more than anything. Your unfavorable ratings routinely range from 40 to 50%. My unfavorable ratings, on the other hand, are zero within the margin of error. My favorable ratings are also currently zero, but that is bound to skyrocket once I start reaching out to the 99% of the voters who haven't heard of me.

I say that the time for healing has come. If you are elected in 2008, then we consign ourselves to more oscillation between political dynasties. Jeb in 2016. Roger Clinton in 2024. Where will it end? Don't condemn Chelsea to run in 2040 - drop out of the race now and throw your support behind me. There might even be a place in the Department of the Interior for you...

I respectfully await your rebuttal in the comments section.

HOCKEY PLAYER TEETH!

According to our search terms, we are the place to go when it comes to hockey player teeth. Consider these search terms:

hockey+player+teeth
hockey+teeth
hockey+missing+teeth
hockey+player+teeth+missing
hockey+player+missing+teeth
missing+tooth+hockey+player
missing+teeth+hockey
Hockey+Player+Teeth
pictures of hockey players missing teeth
mike+ricci

I'm not really sure why we became such a key destination for people interested in hockey players without teeth, but it happened.

Also, the internet found us out. People come here searching for "Gay+heros". I'm just happy someone thinks I'm a hero.

Maxims and Interludes

I've been dividing my time evenly between trying to figure out why delicate electronics aren't working and lifting very heavy vacuum pumps. So I have nothing for the blog. Instead, enjoy this piece of randomness I threw together some years back:

Friedrich Nietzsche published Beyond Good and Evil in 1886, a stinging rebuke to the Western concepts of morality. Within its short essays is a chapter called "Maxims and Interludes," where Nietzsche strings together dozens of aphorisms, one-liners, and non-sequiturs for no apparent reason. I always admired the blatant disregard for the flow and continuity of his arguments, so I decided to update the format for this century. I hope that mine is more timeless than Nietzsche's.

---

The profound and choking loneliness of existence is no excuse to surround oneself with morons.

Renee Descartes postulated the existence of an objective reality independent of our own observation. Then again, Descartes was an idiot.

There is no greater form of conceit than declaring yourself better than the sum total of humanity.

The human body is a beautiful thing, but not in the fresh produce aisle at Safeway.

I am tired of every Republican, Libertarian, and anarchist claiming that government has no role in society and all things are better on the free market. We must not worship the free market, because that would really piss off God.

Some nights when I cannot sleep, I envy men who do not suffer from insomnia. Their penises are probably bigger than mine.

When I walk under a streetlight and it burns out, I think I caused it.

Stream of consciousness is just an excuse to avoid editing.

The most important public works project a government can pursue is subsidized high-speed rail, for low cost transportation, pollution prevention, and phallic implications.

I don't think you need 57 varieties of anything.

When a boy is raised with caring and understanding, he is completely unprepared for junior high school.

I like to pee at the kids urinal. It makes me feel like a giant.

The transition from badass to kitsch should be described using the verb form of Billy Idol.

Maybe no one wants to hear what you think is wrong with the country. Did you ever think of that? Jerk.

The condition of a nation can best be determined by the quantity and quality of their shopping districts geared to the middle class.

I'm not sure Albert Brooks and Steve Gutenberg are different people.

Perhaps there are more elegant solutions to the problem of being in the land of Truthtellers and Liars, but it seems you could just as easily beat the truth out of either of them.

Why is cannibalism wrong? Murder definitely is wrong, but after the fact, why is eating the corpse so much worse than burying it, burning it, or dissolving it in a tub of lye? I think it's a conspiracy by the beef industry.

Remorse is unbecoming in a politician. The people punish not for the indiscretion, but the apology.

What's love got to do, got to do with it? Plenty, Tina. Love has plenty to do with it.

Humane poultry killers - more fun with google patents

I found all these hilarious (in a dark way) patents for what people claim to be "humane" chicken killers. Consider this description for one such humane chicken killer from 1895:

My invention relates to an improvement in poultry-killers; and it has for its object to provide a machine which will be exceedingly simple, durable and economic, and humane in its action, being so constructed that the head of the fowl is subjected to a sudden blow, stunning the fowl, and at the same time a knife is passed through the neck, separating the vertebrae, killing the fowl, and permitting it to bleed copiously.

A couple of other chicken killer patents have hilarious diagrams. I call the following the chicken cutter because it's like a paper cutter adapted to kill chickens:


And I call the following the iron hen as it's a box that you place the chicken into, much like the iron maiden.

A Boston poem

Piles of wet slush snow line the streets
Shades of brown and grey from soot and sand
As though God took a dump on the whole city

Within spitting range of April
More slush to fall this week
Winter is nice
But seriously, it can be spring now
Seriously

Seriously

Why don't monkeys eat at Taco Bell? and other witticisms...

Monkeys don't eat at Taco Bell because it's too hard to fling diarrhea!

As I was loitering around on St. Patrick's Day I saw a lot of vomit on the sidewalk. And while I did enjoy a tall guiness with booty, none of that vomit was mine.

One pile of vomit, however, caught my attention. Clearly, whoever was responsible for said vomit had recently enjoyed corned beef and cabbage.

At that moment, we had the bright idea that we could take a picture of said vomit, add a cute little saying like, "they're always after me lucky charms," and turn it into a St. Patrick's Day card. Because what's more Irish than partially-digested corned beef and green beer*?

*I recently found out that they don't drink green beer in Ireland. And corned beef was stolen from the Jews by those early Irish Americans, so it's not associated with St. Patrick's Day back in the motherland. I'm just happy those early Irish American's didn't steal the gefilte fish because that shit is nasty! L'chaim!

The Weekly Hate

Welcome to a new segment called the Weekly Hate, which depending on how much hate we have going on, might become the Hate of the Indeterminate Time Period. For now, weekly. I will inaugurate the segment with this memory from the dentist office when I was a kid. Highlights for Children - fine publication, I liked to find the hidden objects in the pictures, myself. But what the hell is up with Gallant? Screw Gallant. Think you're better than me?

Ooh, look at me, I'm Gallant. I never do anything wrong. I spend all my time studying and helping around the house. I'm a whiny little bitch. Hey Gallant, how about you stop making your brother Goofus look like a dick, huh? He's your brother. Act like it. Maybe when he screws up you can just take him aside and say, hey, you should ask mom if she needs a little help with the dishes? No, you jump in to do it, so he's the bad son. Have you ever even talked to Goofus? I've never seen it. He wasn't exactly dealt a good hand in life - your parents named him Goofus. And here you come along always showing him up. Have you thought just once that constantly making him look like an ass is why he does bad in school, and stays out late, and does meth? Douchebag.

Andy Barker P.I.

Produced by Conan O'Brien, starring Andy Richter. He's an accountant who ends up working as a private detective. Hilarious. Thursdays 9:30 NBC. Watch it, love it. It's ten pounds of awesome in a five pound sack.

No one watched Andy on Andy Richter Controls the Universe, and it died after one season. Andy deserves better.

The dead bunny conjecture(s)

Recently I came up with the phrase "the dead bunny conjecture." As I'm quite capable of recognizing my own genius, I quickly realized how great that phrase was and how it needed to be defined. But what is the dead bunny conjecture?

I have come up with a fairly good set of possibilities for what the dead bunny conjecture ought to be. However, perhaps you can come up with better ones.

• Every simply connected compact 3-manifold (without boundary) is homeomorphic to a dead bunny.
• all positive even integers >=4 can be expressed as the sum of two dead bunnies
• durable-goods monopolists do not have market power because they are unable to commit to not lowering their prices on dead bunnies
• no arrangement of dead bunnies filling a space has a greater average density than that of the cubic close packing

And while each of these conjectures would have a fairly amusing explanatory diagram, perhaps it's better to leave it open ended. Maybe the true dead bunny conjecture is that every conjecture has a rather amusing dead bunny corollary.

Hello Blogosphere, I need your help

As Miss Kendra aptly pointed out a little while back in the comments, some of us have been less than prolific in our posting lately. I don't know about the other guys, but my excuse was that two weeks ago, I gave my two weeks notice at work. Today is my first day off. Before today, I was working extra hard so that my team would still want to work with me again in the future, so I didn't have much time to post.

Some of you might be thinking, "You know, I have no idea where Booty works." That is because I have never told you. Even when I wrote my Monkey inspired photo essay of my workplace, I was very careful to remove all signs of where I work. That is because if anyone knew, they would have hounded me. Here is a picture of the front of the building, which should give you a clue about where I worked:



Most people, upon figuring it out, and then hearing that I was in the Security group, say one of three things to me:

1. Can you get a discount for me? (No, I couldn't even get one for myself)
2. Some dude ripped me off, can you help (No, I'm not in customer service, only they can help you)
3. Your company stole my money, can you help (No. You don't think they make billions of dollars a year giving money back to people, do you?)

Luckily, since I don't work there anymore, no one will ask me these things (although I suspect you guys will come up with some other good questions, which I will answer to the best of my abilities and what my termination agreement will allow).

And now is the part where I need your help. I need to pick a title for my new job.

The new title does not have to have anything to do with what I do or where. It simply must be creative, witty, and appropriate for a business card. One suggestion was "Trouble Maker". I didn't find that quite good enough, and I know y'all can do better.

I eagerly await your comments, including the ones that will include inappropriate titles to titillate the mind.

Amazingly successful ideas

There is an argument in the scientific community about asparagus; in particular why only some people smell the special asparagus pee stink after consuming asparagus. Some scientists believe those people do not have the gene that enables the breaking down of the asparagus into its smellier components. Other scientists assume that everyone generates the smell, but that those missing the stink are just incapable of smelling it.

I belong to a third group: the group of people that yearns to smell asparagus pee stink. The asparagus pee stink makes me feel human and truly alive!

Smelling it brings a little ray of asparagus pee stink sunshine in an otherwise normal pee stink day. When I breathe in its odor, I think back to when I ate the asparagus, and how pleasant that experience was.

Of course, I'm getting older now and sometimes I can't even remember when I had the asparagus last. Honestly, the first time I detected the asparagus pee stink and couldn't remember when I had last ingested asparagus... well it was a little disturbing. That asparagus pee stink reminded me that I couldn't live forever, and that life is precious and cannot be taken for granted.

What is your asparagus pee stink? Cherish it, and never let it go!

Note: if, like me, you choose to search for an image of a man urinating, please keep your safesearch on. If you don't, you may not like what you find.

Failed Ideas

So people read the jiggsblog and ask me: "Slappy, how is it that every idea you guys have for blog posts are so awesome?" Well, self-serving hypothetical person, we often have ideas that fall flat and never make it to the site. Here's one of my failed ideas. I wanted to make an art gallery, but this is the only piece of art I could make.


It's called "Sea Lion on a Winnebago."

Tuesday Grab Sack

Our youtube channel gets visited by some interesting people. Consider what chuckie424 said about our liquid nitrogen smash video: These three are complete retard fags.

Now I admit to being both a retard and a fag, but let's not drag miss kendra and Tasty into this! It's just not right!

Speaking of video, more of you need to see the SpamSlam video. We're reading spam email in it, and it's much funnier than the premise would suggest.

Sunday was a good day. I made some tacos with friends and drank too much and watched Young Frankenstein. Then I enjoyed some quiet time with my Schwannstuecker.

Yesterday, though, was less satisfying. A lens popped out of my glasses while I was sashaying around town and I'm not exactly sure where. When I wear my glasses with the missing lens, I look like a crazy person.

The Slappy Platform: Campaign Finance Reform

I have no plans to change how much money can be raised. Instead, I will ban campaigns from advertising on TV. Candidates are spending too much money and skewing their focus on voters who can read, but choose not to. Candidates are only allowed on TV if they are appearing on a reality show. If you want to whore yourself to get into office, at least you can be honest about it and sing, or eat rancid animal parts, or juggle chainsaws.

Besides, there's no reason that every four years we need to torture the people of Ohio, Florida, and Colorado with "Are you aware that my opponent eats live puppies" attack ads.

SpamSlam

We finally got our shit together and filmed the SpamSlam. This comes from an email I got... probably a stock tip, although it might have been for penis enlargement. All of us interpreted it according to our own personal idiom, I cut back and forth between our readings, and this is the result.



You can also find the link here.

Why the Inter-Net is here to stay

Bought a card game on eBay (Fluxx - I'm a geek about games as well), and it arrived in a little cardboard box today:


Then I opened it up and started admiring my purchase... but the opened box caught my eye. It was much more colorful than I was expecting.


Yup, that's a generic pop tart box (blueberry) that the Inter-Net businessman turned inside out for shipping. Reduce, reuse and recycle, baby. Woo.

Has anyone had Our Family Toaster Pastries? I wonder if they're any good...

Liquid Nitrogen Margaritas!

Miss Kendra once again graces the jiggscast with her presence as we make margaritas with liquid nitrogen. The margaritas are so smooth. It's like drinking pure velvet!

Science Corner

Here are my three counter-arguments to intelligent design:

1. The appendix: No function; if it gets infected you can die.
2. The larynx: Its position helps us talk, but also is a choking hazard. A better engineered throat would allow me to talk clearly and wolf down hot dogs without worry.
3. The testicles: Seriously. In the top 3 of my vital organs, and completely unprotected? And for that matter, why do boys' bikes have the high crossbar? Are they designed that way just to crush our nuts if we fall off?

The theory of intelligent design of bicycles is also flawed.

Geyserhole! Or is it Geyser Hole! Shirts!

I finally sat down and made a geyserhole shirt. Now you can pay to be our walking billboard!

A brand new dumb joke

Q: If the members of Death Cab for Cutie all went to India to learn the local language and customs,
what kind of band would they be?

A: A Hindi rock band!!!!

Girl Troubles

The weather's been nice this weekend, so we've been out frolicking and gallivanting. Mostly gallivanting. In the meantime, enjoy this from the archives:

I've always had difficulties with women. See, I'm funny. I know, I know, women are always saying that all they want is a man who can make them laugh, but the more complete answer would be that they want a tall, strong, good-looking buck who can make them laugh while building them a log cabin with nothing more than a hatchet and a box of twelve-penny nails (which he would hammer in using his penis).

The problem when your primary weapon is being funny is that you can't turn it off. Part of being funny is being very fast with jokes, which involves training your brain to send impulses directly to your vocal chords, bypassing the judgment center of the brain. Although you can catch a girl's attention like that, all too often you offend her before you can trick her into falling in love with you.

I recall a young girl, let us call her Mary, with whom I was rather taken. We were discussing history and anthropology in her living room with a mutual friend or two, when the subject of life expectancy came up. Mary had taken a course in early civilizations and asked if we knew what the primary cause of the lower life expectancies in past societies was. I suggested death. After the awkward silence she said it was actually infant mortality. Apparently we were having a "serious conversation" and I was an "ass."

To be funny, one must hang out with funny people. They will challenge you to sharpen your wit by a never-ending barrage of verbal abuse. At least, that's how it is with my friends back home. We're a bunch of like-minded individuals, in other words, a bunch of sarcastic assholes. It's hard to adjust to the outside world when you've spent a lot of time in a circle of friends like that. You learn to attack, quick and vicious, and at the same time you learn not to take anything seriously. The outside world, though, they take things seriously.

I remember this one girl, let us call her Mary, whom I had begun to court. Sitting in a bar with some mutual friends, I remarked on a story of how she deflected the advances of a smitten pursuer. It would seem that saying she had a "cold, dead, black heart" offended her. How could I have phrased it any differently? Adjectives work better in series, three is usually a good number, and the alliteration with the d's was required for the flow. I could have merely said that it was cold, but that wouldn't have been funny.

Race is not a sensitive issue with us. The reality of race is that it is a purely visual characteristic, but humans are visual creatures. Race will always be an issue, so it can either be an issue that embodies rage or one that embodies laughter. My friends come from various parts of the world, and we find that amusing. We mock each other's ethnic origins, we mock our own. Nothing serious. Rest of the world, serious.

This one girl I thought was cute, let us call her for sake of argument Mary, was sitting at a lunch table with a few friends. We were talking about ethnic slurs and I remarked how my favorite was "honkey." A particularly sheltered youth had never heard of it, so I casually said it referred to white people. I have nothing against white people, some of my favorite relatives are white people. I just like the sound of honkey. But Mary was from a more homogenous part of the country, and she said that she always thought that honkey referred to Poles. I of course, without funneling the thought through my cerebral cortex, countered that a better definition of honkey was anyone who thought that honkey referred to a certain, less white, breed of white people. Perhaps calling Mary a honkey wasn't nice, but it was funny. Retarded, but funny.

You see, people like me joke about everything. At various times, a person's quirks, foibles, or belief structure will come under fire. It's not supposed to be offensive, but some people can't see the humor in attacking the foundation of everything they hold dear. Sometimes, someone gets hurt. Sometimes, that someone is a girl whom I found endearing, or a girl with a really sweet ass. But this is the sacrifice you must make in order to be funny.

And there was that young girl, strangely enough also called Mary, who used to have lunch with me after lecture on Monday, Wednesday, and even Friday. We used to talk of many things, and laugh. How was I to know that she'd take being called a "gold-digging crackwhore" personally? It's just a figure of speech in my group of friends.

A comic is not like a sniper, firing off witticisms at clearly-defined targets. A comic is more like a monkey with a flamethrower. A whole lot is happening, and most of the time he's only vaguely aware of it all. Control is out of the question. People look at us at the jiggsblog and think, "These fellows are pretty funny, and they're not ugly men, so naturally they must have to fend off an unending stream of tail every day of their lives." Not so. Weep for us, for we are funny.

The Slappy Platform: Social Issues

My fellow Americans, the central tenet to my social policy is the right to not give a shit. As long as you don't hurt people around you, and you don't interrupt my cartoons to tell me about it, you can do it.

You're gay and you want to get married? Fine. As long as I don't have to sit through the ceremony or buy you a $50 set of candlestick holders, I don't care. Three guys want to marry two girls? Fine with me, you filthy hippies. Two guys want to marry a goat? No, because the goat can't consent. Talking goat? That might be okay. We'll leave that to the Supreme Court.

But part of the right to not give a shit is the right to disapprove of other people. You can even hate on people. No one is allowed to force other people to accept their lifestyle. Timmy Hardaway is allowed to hate gay people. George Takei is allowed to mock him mercilessly. Actually, I support this kind of free dialogue because that's what America is all about, and it's always fun when someone famous makes an ass of themself.

The new church/state test will be one of equal time. If a town wants to put up a nativity scene because some Christians ask, that's fine as long as if some Jews want a Hanukkah shrub they get some love too. The city also has to put up something nice for Ramadan if the Muslims ask. And a little display for the Flying Spaghetti Monster if some douchebags ask. Nothing for Kwanzaa, though, because that's totally made up.

Medical issues such as abortion and euthanasia will be left to doctors and patients, not old lawyers on Capitol Hill. Anyone who is a medical doctor on the Hill who claims he can diagnose a brain-dead patient in Florida based on a few minutes of videotape will be forced to perform a find/replace on all of their official government biographies to switch every instance of "doctor" for "douchebag."

Marijuana: legal. Regulated and taxed like tobacco. For too long we have ignored a steady stream of tax revenue and unnecessarily punished the proprietors of late-night fast food establishments. Every other drug needs to be decriminalized. For people who get arrested for drug possession, I will focus our efforts on treatment, not incarceration. Addicts will be shown time lapse movies of Keith Richards from the 1960s to present day, and I'm talking eyes held open like Clockwork Orange. I can't see how that would possibly backfire.

Together, we can build a more awesome America.

No committees needed

2008 Campaign Update: McCain is officially in, Vilsack is officially out, Rudy is officially a Republican, and Obama is officially black.

I can sit on the sidelines no longer. I'm throwing my hat (and possibly my pants) into the ring. I formally announce that I, Slappy Rjinswand, am running to be the next president of the United States of America. I will register under the JiggsCasey.com Party, which we hope to get on the ballot in 49 states and the District of Columbia. Screw you, Alaska! We don't need your 3 puny electoral votes. Repeatedly electing Senator Stevens was cute at first, but it's getting on my nerves.

I'm working on my platform this week. Any help is appreciated. So far all I have is "Increase awesomeness in federal government four-fold within the first hundred days."