I Wub You

If I may label myself (with the accuracy of a laser guided bloodhound, barracuda, or heat seeking missile) I would say that I'm probably the most romantic, soft hearted, open minded, lovey dovey, fancy pants, least bitter, most appropriately emotional individual wandering the face of the Earth today. Ask my friends and family. They would certainly agree.  But even I'm not falling for this Valentine's day bullshit. Now don't get me wrong, I always appreciated the chalky taste of conversation hearts, especially if they were given to me by one of the girls in my class who "developed" early.  Don't look at me like that.  It's not pedophilia if you're also 12 years old.  That night my mom would make heart shaped meat loaf.  It was always delicious. I would cover it with ketchup.  She probably thought I was making it red in the spirit of the holiday.  Little did she know I was pretending that I was partaking in the forbidden delicacy of human heart.  The ketchup obviously... oxygen rich blood.  What do you expect?  I went to Catholic school.  Themes of violence and horror were frequent.  I wonder how she would have felt about Valentine's Day meatloaf if she knew that she was actually fostering my juvenile fascination with cannibalism.  Suck on that Esther A. Howland.

But Valentine's Day was, from it's very inception, nothing more than federally mandated affection.  And while it is a boon for the fine people at Applebee's because it's the only night of the year where every other restaurant is so booked up that people are forced to go there, as an official American holiday it's still the illegitimate creation of some of the biggest bastard sons o' bitches to wandering the face of the Earth today, politicians (Was that a run on sentence? Grammar police, get at me).  Admittedly, I'm skipping a few steps.  There was of course the decree of a pope back in like late 400 something A.D. celebrating the life and death of one of several possible martyrs.  But ultimately, Valentine's Day was created to fill the consumer gap between Christmas and Easter.  In short, people weren't buying enough shit.  Well, people in the U.S. weren't buying enough shit.  We don't care what Iraqis or Portugese are buying.  Probably sand.

I'm not lobbying against love.  I'm just saying that if you participate in a corporate holiday then you're indisputably a sheep and you're giving into the man.  You might as well just line up at the post office and get on the next bus to the federal internment camp.  Because that's what's coming next.  That's right.  If you celebrate Valentine's Day, you hate freedom.  Quite a moral conundrum, isn't it you right wing neconservative whack jobs?  If you love someone, I've read somewhere that it's probably a great idea to express it daily in some form.  Tell them.  Give them a hug.  Make them an egg sandwich for breakfast.  Don't read into that.  I literally mean an egg sandwich.  To my knowledge it's not the name of an elaborate sex move.  And then every once in a while make a big celebration of your love.  Write a letter.  Hug them twice.  Make them an Egg Sandwich for Dinner.  That one is what you think it is.  But it shouldn't be forced.  If your major concern is that grocery stores don't sell a large selection of red candy year round, your fears have been addressed. Everyone loves Starburst. Even Iraqis.

Truth is, all this corporate stuff just casts a shadow over the otherwise honest and sincere acts of love that might be taking place anyway.  And that's a shame.  I have to protect the identities of the innocent.  But I know a guy who wrote a Valentine card to his wife after he died in which he threatened to haunt her by switching lights on and off and rubbing her butt.  Just another in a long life of loving actions.  Take notes Hallmark.  If you're not willing to become a "goast" to prove it, it just isn't love.

If Fashion Were Puke, It's in My Mouth a Little Bit Now

WTF?

When I first saw these, I panicked worse than in the first grade when I thought I could save time by taking my pants off without taking my shoes off, botched the procedure, and had to waddle back to class, pants strangling my shoes, for faculty assistance.  But after two Xanax, a Valium, and half a bottle of Jack Daniel's (presently, not in the first grade) I was able to recenter myself, get my wits about me, and process what I was seeing.  I realized, just before jabbing a complimentary spork from Taco Bell into my eyeballs, that it didn't matter if they were selling these pajamajeans as long as no one on earth buys them.  "We'll let the free market solve this little problem."  That's what I confidently said to myself with patriotism in my heart and the pride of capitalism coursing through my veins.  But just to cover my bases I also went ahead and prayed to several hundred gods from any religious tradition or cult about which I could find an entry on Wikipedia.  Three short months later, I've lost all hope in the free market, humanity, religion (except Scientology), and the future.  I'm a shell of the man I once was.  I haven't slept in weeks.  Every time I close my eyes... I see them.

I just have a few points of consideration I would like to offer the 26 adult women and 1 adult male that I've seen wearing these things, as well as the cross section of people that these 27 messengers of the apocalypse represent.  Seeing them in person, in clear view of the general public, was exponentially more upsetting than seeing them as a digital image on TV.  I don't remember exactly where I was on 9/11.  But I do remember, to my unending horror, the first time I saw these denim colored sweatpants in all their faux-riveted glory.  Since the unapologetic wearers of these atrocities are essentially the face of an epidemic, I feel it only right to give them a cohesive identity.  Something catchy, accurate, and descriptive.  I learned from TV that the key to making a memorable label is alliteration.  Thus, they will be called The Teratoma 27.


1.  If they're that comfortable, wear them at home.  Exclusively.  And preferably only in an emergency.  Like if your washer and dryer break, all the laundromats in your town have been burnt to the ground due to their unfortunate proximity to exploding meth labs, and you've worn all your other clothes to the point that they are literally no longer wearable (Science has shown that a pair of normal jeans can be worn 15 months without washing).  And you've also torn down the curtains, cut swatches of fabric from the couches, and humanely "processed" the coats of house pets to cover the essentials.  Then, and only then should you even begin to think about wearing your pajama jeans.  Even these thoughts should be accompanied by great trepidation.

2.  There are some things on this planet that just should not be combined.  Jeans and sweatpants have been on this list since time immemorial.  It's baffling to me that this natural law was violated.  And not only violated but marketed.  And not only marketed but purchased.  And worse, worn.  I can only assume that whoever invented these enjoys a nice sheltered life somewhere upon the Autism spectrum.  And not the good kind of autism either.  Other examples of things that should not be mixed: canned tuna in olive oil and ice cream.  The gamete of anyone from the cast of Jersey Shore and any other substance that might potentially yield life especially other gamete.  Women and professional basketball.  But I have heard that the best way to clean pajamajeans is to combine ammonia and bleach.  Don't worry.  That sensation that feels like your lungs are melting and drowning you in your own blood... that just means it's working.  (Disclaimer:  Mixing ammonia and bleach will probably be the last thing you ever do, so don't.  And if you do, you can't sue me.  I'm pretty sure that counts as a legally bulletproof disclaimer.)

3.  Wearing of this blight upon human existence calls into serious question one's quality of character.  People who wear these jeans lack integrity.  In short, they are liars.  How can someone who isn't even honest about their rivets and/or jean pockets be trusted in any capacity at any point in the future.  I'm a person who believes that even a murderer can be reformed.  But for The Teratoma 27 and like minded individuals, there is no absolution.  No one will marry you.  Ever.  Not even with a prenup.  And if any part of you believes that you're fooling anyone, you're also lying to yourself.  This inevitably irritates the hell out of the famous pirate Shakesbeard who said, "To thine own self, be true."  If Liz Lemmon has taught us anything, it's that you can't have it all.  Just as you can not simultaneously have a raging methamphetamine addiction and a normal sleep schedule, you also can not be that comfortable and trick people into believing that you're a rational human being.  The Romans spent the entirety of their empire trying to figure out how to be stylish slobs as well as trying to discover new holes in which to make sex after they, as a society, grew bored with the traditional 9 points of penetration.  Look where it got them.  Why must mankind always ignore the lessons of history in favor of their own peril?  When will we stop trying to fly so close to the sun on wings of wax?

4.  Finally, I have a short list of things you could buy for $39.95 + $7.95 that aren't total abominations in the biblical sense of the word.

1/6 of a stuffed armadillo.  It's a small price to pay to have to have in your living room the animal most often splattered across Texas highways.  It's a great conversation piece and could probably be used as an object of meditation... something about evidence of the impermanence of life, even if your whole body was covered in fancy pants armor loosely modeled after the dimples of a golf ball.

A couple of these wolf shirts.  as far as levels of awesome and social appropriateness are concerned, this fine garment is the quintessential opposite of pajama jeans.  If you buy two shirts you get 6 wolves and two moons.  We don't even have two moons on earth.  But you could have two in your top drawer.  How have you not already entered your credit card info?

A nice claw hammer.  To be used on oneself in the event of pajamajean sighting.  With any luck, the resulting head injury will leave you with a case of one of the good kinds of autism.  Experiment with both sides of hammer, striking cranium until desired effect is achieved.

Attack of the 50 Foot Pig Bacteria: An Imprecise Perspective

Below is an article from a major news outlet regarding the always looming, death dealing, mild head cold with perhaps a bit of nausea known as swine flu. As many of you know, swine flu is no longer an issue as Calen and I cured it while traveling through Central America. But they continue to have fear mongering reports about the disease in all different forms of media. And since my readership is roughly the same size as the BBC news outlet, I have no choice but to do my part to combat ignorance and enlighten the masses.

So the Article is below, in its entirety. Except it has been edited for accuracy and I've added a series of facts, most of which I've made up on the spot, but some of which are kind of true. If you scour with a fine tooth comb, between me and the original author, you might even find one or two things that are completely true. Objectivity in reporting however, is out of the question.

US swine flu deaths 'near 4,000'

Swine flu has killed nearly 4,000 people in the US, including 540 children, officials said after devising a new counting method. The new counting method involved putting a 3rd grade public school student in an examination room, seeing how high he could count before he got distracted by cotton balls and tongue depressors and lost track. The resulting number was the new US death toll. The number for the child death toll was arrived at in the same fashion, except the count was performed by a 2nd year medical student.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the new system is based on more precise figures provided by 10 states. They failed to realize that there are 50 states in the nation prior to this article going to print. When asked to comment on the issue, an official from the CDC who spoke on the condition of anonymity said, "eh, whatever."

The previous estimated death toll from the H1N1 virus in the US was 672. This number is also the international dialing code for Antarctica, the place where penguin researchers were asked to guess how many people had died from swine flu. After responding, "Is that real?" Most of them said 672 and returned to watching penguins throw up in each other's mouths. It was highly scientific. The statistical analysis, not the puke. Well, the puke, too.

Latest figures show about 22 million Americans contracted the virus in six months with some 98,000 hospitalised. This figure is also suspect, since both the CDC and the WHO have stated (admitted) that there is no distinguishable difference in the symptoms between H1N1 and any other type of flu. The only way to tell is to have blood samples sent in for testing. At the time of writing of this article, 0% of Americans had functioning medical coverage, so further testing would have been impossible. The 98,000 who have been hospitalised existed in the scope of what is referred to as immunocompromised individuals. Their hospitalisation was the result of aggravation of preexisting conditions, not necessarily the H1N1 virus.

"This is just the first six months and I am expecting all of these numbers, unfortunately, to continue to rise," said Dr Anne Schuchat of the CDC. She speculates that as the medical students and 3rd graders are fed more and more Ritalin, their ability to "count high will increase, resulting in greater death tolls." They have considered adding a counting chimpanzee to the tests as sort of a bonus statistic. Actual details regarding the bonus statistic have not yet been released. But it has been stated that it will be "fun and exciting."

She said that, although still imprecise, the new statistics provide "a bigger picture of what has been going on in the first six months of the pandemic". The bubonic plague caused by the amazingly resilient vector, rattus rattus, and different strains of the bacterium plasmodium was a pandemic. During that outbreak, Mongols hurled the diseased bodies of the dead over city walls during sieges. Until someone catapults a dead body (confirmed to have died from H1N1, which is impossible) over someone's fence, the swine flu outbreak should be downgraded to a hyped-up annoyance/profiteer's fairy tale. It is a bitter commentary on journalistic and scientific society when a sentence can start with the sentiment that this stuff is "imprecise" and then end with something like but we're gonna release the statistics anyway to give everyone an imprecise view "of the bigger picture." We must be the stupidest people on Earth if this passes as a statement of substance. Go ahead, read the first sentence of the paragraph again. It's like saying "virtually spotless." It means nothing.

The CDC now estimates that 3,900 people in the US have died from the virus in the past six months. We've repeated the number, a different number just to be a little clearer and to make sure that you get the idea that people are fucking dying left and right. It's like Hiroshima out there. Writing "almost 4000" instead of 3900 as an estimation makes the fake disease seem like a bigger killer. Plus 4000 is easier to remember than 3900. And as we've demonstrated amply, objectivity and accuracy are not really primary concerns.

Four times higher

Dr Schuchat said that in children under 18, an estimated eight million have had swine flu, with 36,000 hospitalised and 540 deaths. If you're 18 and you have lost all your baby teeth, the disease has a harder time binding to your cells. So you shouldn't worry about the disease and just continue to focus on the order of TRL's countdown and purchase whatever items you see on The Hills. Unless you have child onset diabetes from all this "food" we've been selling you over the years. Then you should probably just OD on insulin before the big bad swine flu can get you.

The new estimated death toll for children is four times higher than the previous estimate. Breaking news: We have just learned that this is the bonus count. the chimps figures act as multipliers. It's like biological Plinko, and everyone's a winner. Everyone who doesn't die of an imaginary disease.

"We will be updating the toll that the pandemic has taken... about every three to four weeks," she said. These updates will be slightly reminiscent of the ambiguous terror level alerts instituted by the Bush administration. If there is a just and loving God these constant and unnecessary updates will fade similarly into the background. They will be utilizing a new bi-color system where the substrate color will represent the total death toll, while the color of the overlay pattern will represent the child death toll, and the type of overlay will convey how many doses of swine flu vaccine are currently available in the U.S. For example, a chartruese warning with pink polka dots indicates that the death rate is between 16 thousand and 47 billion with between 14 thousand and 29 billion of those being persons who have not yet seen the onset of armpit hair and awkward feelings about their bodies. The polka dots indicate that there are only 15 doses of swine flu left in the U.S. Pink stripes however, would indicate a similar risk to children with an availability of 97 doses of swine flu vaccine. The system is admittedly "imprecise," except for the number of vaccines available, which is inventoried and controlled without error by a team of supercomputers working in conjunction with robots working in conjunction with humans. Commodity must be watched carefully.

Dr Schuchat added that 41.6 million more doses of swine flu vaccine had been made available on Thursday for distribution around the country. Finally, the point of any good article. There is something you need to purchase. Not to be in fashion, but to be alive. Well, to be in fashion also.

However, delivery remained far below initial estimates and expectations, she said. Sales are suffering. Hence, this brilliantly composed article of pertinent facts. Scientists have found that swine flu, it turns out, was caused by low sales of avian influenza (H5N1) vaccine. If the swine flu trend flops, there is a rare strain of gecko flu ready to nail North America next summer. The vaccine has already been discovered.

The global death toll from the flu pandemic passed the 6,000 mark last week according to figures from the World Health Organization. Which is to say that the disease has far and away decided to affect U.S. citizens with expendable income at a greater rate than the rest of the world where the average person lives on $2 a day. What an economically minded strain of flu! It's almost as if it knows those other people won't be able to afford the vaccine after the company that manufactures it finishes their expensive marketing campaign. So it doesn't bother to infect them at all. Besides, they already have their hands full with deaths as a result of cured and treatable diseases. Let's put this in perspective. There are more or less 200 countries in the world. A single country, the U.S., has cornered the market on swine flu deaths at an "imprecise" rate of almost 67%. Historically, the U.S. has always maintained an unequal share of the world's resources. Why should a deadly fake disease be any different?

The virus emerged in Mexico in April and was declared a global flu pandemic on 11 June. Two months to pandemic. One country south of the U.S. Sounds like marketing. The other country with initial cases was Canada. It's like there was a disease sandwich and the U.S. was the meat. The healthy meat, that would in short time catch the flu and die at a disproportionate rate.

Cases are currently surging in the northern hemisphere with the onset of colder weather. And why wouldn't they. Remember the last time the U.S. had a surge? I think a lot of people died in that one as well. Only they were Iraqi and weren't buying, so it was OK.