“Well, Martina Navratilova’s been out of the closet for years, and college basketball standout/future WNBA Number One draft pick Brittney Griner came out recently too,” says Tina the Lesbian.  “But yes, I’ll concede the obvious point that few people pay attention to tennis or women’s basketball in this country.”

“So how big is this for your people?” I say.

“To be honest, I’m not feeling all that jazzed about it,”  says Tina the Lesbian.  “This Jason Collins guy… he’s not that good at basketball.”

“You were wishing for a better player to come out of the closet,” I say.

“Look, I wasn’t expecting LeBron James or Kobe Bryant or some other all-star to say they’re gay,” says Tina the Lesbian.  “But couldn’t we in the gay community get someone better than an underperforming journeyman center?  Maybe someone who’s a good 6th man off the bench, or a really good role player.”

“Is this to combat the stereotype that gay men are bad at basketball?”  I say.

“Is that a real stereotype?” says Tina the Lesbian.

“I don’t know, I might have invented that one,” I say.

“Maybe now that he doesn’t have to worry about being gay he can be a better player,” says Tina the Lesbian.  “But he’s already 34, so he’s well into the downswing of his less than notable career.  Maybe if someone coming out of the NBA draft, like a high-rated prospect, came out just before draft day I’d be more excited about it.”

“Perhaps it opens the doors for other athletes in the other major sports to come out of the closet,” I say.

“Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t,” Tina the Lesbian says with a shrug.  “If it does, I’ll give this Collins guy his props for being the first to do it. But it takes a little more than a below-average center whose less-than-notable career is almost done coming out of the closet to get me excited.  There’s a reason they picked Jackie Robinson to be the first black player in the Major Leagues of baseball: because he was fucking awesome.”

“You’ve become jaded in your older years,” I say.  “When this blog began you probably would have been doing backflips in the street from news like this.”

“Back then I didn’t need a nap on the weekends, and I could finish off a box of Franzia by myself and still have the wherewithal to hit the after hours bars,” says Tina the Lesbian.  “I’ll leave the excitement of progress to the under-25 crowd. They have the energy to ride those drama waves.”

Strangely it seems like a significant step forward in society that gay people can be this unimpressed about such events.  Not giving a shit is usually the domain of us straight white males.  Welcome to the club!  The “meh” club, but the club nonetheless.

“Yes?” says Tina the Lesbian.

“Does this make me a bad person?” I say.

“Depends on what ‘this’ is,” says Tina the Lesbian.

“Well, I found out about the Boston Marathon bombing in the late afternoon while I was out of my house,” I say.

“Right…” says Tina the Lesbian, nervous.

“And when I got home, I took a nap,” I say. “I didn’t turn on the TV, didn’t check the Internet, nothing.  Just sat my ass on the couch and went to sleep for a few hours.  I don’t think I was even tired.”

“So why did you take a nap then?” says Tina the Lesbian.

“Because I wanted to miss all the bullshit coverage of the bombing,” I say.  “You know what news networks get right in the initial rush of a tragedy like this?  Nothing.  You know what they get right after that?  Still nothing.”

“And you’d certainly miss the rush of Facebook and Twitter posts wildly speculating on things too,” says Tina the Lesbian.

“By the time I woke up from my nap is when the news reached the human interest part of the tragedy,” I say.  “When they start interviewing anyone and everyone who was around when the bombs went off.  They really have nothing much to add to the story.  I forgot how much time a newscast can cover by just getting someone to talk about something being loud and then people screamed.  The first couple people you hear it from, yeah, it’s a harrowing tale.  Seventh and eighth people… now you’re just padding out the broadcast because you don’t know fuck-all about what happened.”

“You didn’t miss much by sleeping through the initial coverage,” says Tina.  “I had just as much correct information about the bombing at the end of the day then I did at the beginning.”

“And whatever was going to happen next didn’t require me to watch it,” I say.

“Wake you when it’s over,” says Tina the Lesbian.

“Pretty much,” I say.  “Because any distress I was feeling over the bombing would have been compounded by hours upon bullshit news coverage.  They found someone, they didn’t find someone. There’s more bombs, they’re not bombs. I don’t need that shit making things worse for me.”

“So you’re asking me if you sleeping through the direct aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing makes you a bad person?” says Tina the Lesbian.

“In the interest of missing bullshit news coverage and Internet hysteria over events I have no control over, yes,” I say.

“Actually, you probably did the best thing possible,” says Tina the Lesbian.  “You don’t know anyone in Boston so you didn’t have to check if they were okay.  You weren’t going to be informed by the news so why bother watching it like a hawk?  And you have no one who would need comforting or consoling so your lack of availability isn’t an issue.  Fuck, now I wished I slept through it.”

So I sleepily stumbled into something mentally healthy.  Not many people can say they’ve done that.

My essential belief is that we need to treat gun owners with more respect while also demanding a higher level of responsibility.

When I read that quote I hear Fredo from The Godfather Part II: “I can handle things!  I’m smart! And I want respect!”  We just have to tweak it a little to get the gist of this gun guy’s jib: “Respect me, I have a gun!  Why don’t you respect me?”  If the source of your respect stems solely because of the weapon you carry, you’re a douchenozzle.  We don’t respect soldiers and cops because they carry guns, we respect them because they have sworn to serve to protect others with their lives.

The NRA likes to blame violent movies and video games for gun violence, but if someone from those industries said that movie makers or video game makers or the fans of those media needed to be treated with more respect, they’d be laughed out of the damn room. But Mr. Gun Guy seems to believe this is an entirely reasonable thing to declare, and most likely for one sole reason: he has a gun. And when you have a gun, you don’t have to make sense.

At this point I want to redefine the term “responsible gun owner” as someone who not only safely and responsibly handles, stores, uses, and keeps firearms but also doesn’t use those firearms to boost their self-esteem, mask their insecurities, and act like an emotionally-stunted cockwasher. Those are the gun owners who are under-represented, not the cockwashers. But like with everything, it’s the douchey cockwashers that ruin it for everyone.  That’s why all toy guns sold over the past 20 some-odd years all have those orange caps in the front of them.

This quote from Mr. Gun Guy pisses me off too:

A lot of gun owners are perfectly fine, for instance, with universal background checks. I know I am. They are fine with it so long as it doesn’t lead to a database and de facto registration.

Technically most gun owners are already in a database – it’s called the Cabela’s mailing list.  If you own a gun, I’m betting there’s a 90 percent chance you’ve bought ammo, guns, or gear from Cabela’s. The government already taps our phones, how hard would it be for them get that mailing list, as tyrannical and diabolical as we are led to believe by the heavily-armed people who wear the Don’t Tread On Me flag like a Superman cape?  Hell, knowing how cozy the corporate world and government are to each other, Cabela’s would probably freely give that info up in exchange for some favors and wheel-greasing in Congress.

And these are the same people who want a database for mentally-ill people, because when you have a gun it makes perfect sense to believe that the government knowing you own firearms is tyranny but the government knowing you visit a therapist for depression is fine.  If only our Founding Fathers were on Valium…

I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it here: it’s easier to own a gun in American than a vagina. This would change, in my glib opinion, if vaginas could shoot bullets.  Then you might see some real push for gun control because I’m pretty sure men don’t want anything to do with a vagina that can hold a 30-round extended magazine.  Well, maybe in a spectator sense they would, like in a Thailand bar show, but not regarding coitus.  Then we’d be asking women what caliber their vagina is.  Does she have a .45 cooter?  A .357 beaver? Semi-automatic va-jay-jay? Is that an assault pussy?

Hold up, I got distracted by vagina there… no, actually vagina is exactly what should be in mind because Mr. Gun Guy is being a weepy vagina/drippy penis/blubbering urogenital opening because of this exchange:

JOE: Once again, your argument seems to be, we’re going to treat gun owners differently from everyone else.

DAN: Well, maybe we have to, because guns are so dangerous.

JOE: Why, because they’re going to shoot us?

DAN: No, no! Because we need the gun guys. You won’t get there by vilifying them or treating them like children. I think most of what happens with guns that is bad in this country could be solved by the gun guys themselves.

How adorable! Dan the Gun Guy thinks people who own guns are special snowflakes, or at least more special than those non-gun owners or even those people who have actually been shot by guns or have had loved ones killed by guns.  We must be careful not to hurt their delicate feelings for they are fragile little glass unicorns.  Hey fuck-tart, news bulletin here, we are all equally worthless, and our worth only increases or decreases because of the things we do, not because of the things we own.  Fuck, he sounds like a moody teenager who says “I was gonna take out the trash but you kept nagging me to do it so I’m not gonna.”  Go ahead and feel that way, but if you pull this shit as part of a national debate I’m going to ignore whatever comes out of your cryhole.

In conclusion, vaginas. Also, owning a gun or guns does not turn you into an insecure genital scrap.  You were already an insecure genital scrap, you’re just using guns to overcompensate for it, and you’re fucking up guns for everyone else.

It gave me the feeling of KONY 2012, which I summed up “White people just found out something really bad happened in Africa!”  But it wasn’t as bad because at least the people putting up the equality signs actually know gay people and have been in favor of gay marriage for a while, which if you were truly friends with this person you’d already know.  I’m pretty sure no one looked on the Facebook feed, saw someone who changed their profile pic to the red equal sign, and exclaimed “Oh, I didn’t know he supported gay marriage!”  You don’t know everything about your friends, but you do know where they stand on most things, that’s why you’re friends with them. I don’t need to promote awareness that I’m for gay marriage – you can just ask me.

The thought occurred to me that this could be a way to pick a fight with your non-gay marriage supporting friends on your Facebook, but this seemed like a really passive bullshit way of doing it. At least your anti gay marriage people will tell you outright you’re destroying America and your gay friends are hellbound.  They’re fucking wrong but at least they’re direct.

Then as the day went on and more people switched over their profile pic I had the thought that this equality sign thing was turning into a popularity game where it became less about the cause that you favor and more about not being the only person to not have an equality sign, as if that would be held against you by your gay friends.  Like you were going to be relegated to the B-list of the gay wedding invites. But if your friends are that petty, then you need to rethink your relationship with them.

As the week went on, most people switched back to their usual profile pics of them being happy or drunk somewhere, which gave me a chuckle because it was like saying “All right, we’ve had a enough of that.” Then the prevailing thought became “Oh sure, you can support gay marriage when it gets up in front of the Supreme Court, but what about some random Wednesday.”  It was similar to what I was thinking on St. Patrick’s Day, seeing hordes of drunk people going from bar to bar. “Oh sure, you can get belligerently and uncontrollably drunk on St. Patrick’s Day, but let’s see you do that on a random Wednesday morning.  Those are the drunks I can respect.”

No one thinks about the precedent that using your profile pic as a political statement sets. Gay marriage gets a pic change, but other causes don’t?  Perhaps those causes don’t have convenient graphics or logos to post, but does that make them any less important?  Oh, to be privileged enough to have graphic designers attached to your cause, or a ribbon color pattern no one else has claimed yet. Congratulations, you’ve just prioritized your issues by what you have a .jpg of.

Let’s keep Facebook to what’s supposed to be for: pictures of cats, drunk pictures of yourself, and vague cries for help.

Three of five dolphins taught by the Ukrainian navy to attack enemy combatants are reported missing after failing to return to a Crimean port following a training exercise earlier this month, the local media reports. The dolphins are believed to be out chasing tails.

Okay, not the first time we’ve heard about the military using dolphins.  The US has been using them to detect mines in the ocean. Why are these dolphins different?

But last year, RIA Novosti reported, the Ukrainian Navy restarted the program, training the dolphins to attack enemies with knives and guns attached to their heads. Photos showing the military-trained dolphins have frequently appeared in the Ukrainian press, but the country’s defense department has consistently denied the reports.

“We’re arming dolphins???”  says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat, who is a weaponized feline.  “Why would you give something with a prehensile penis a gun?  This is unacceptable, arming seafood like this, and I will not stand for it!  Fetch me my harpoon gun attachment!”

“So not only will dolphins rape you, they will now rape you at knife point,” says Tina the Lesbian.  “Great, now SeaWorld’s going to need a Special Victims Unit.”

“Armed dolphins on the loose, looking for female dolphins to mate with,” says Ninja Vicki.  “Sounds like some crazy B-movie.  Sex-Crazed Military Dolphins From the Ukraine – a watery romp of violence and animal passion.  A perfect Russ Meyer vehicle.”

And interesting note in the story…

“Control over dolphins was quite common in the 1980′s,” Yury Plyachenko, a former Soviet naval anti-sabotage officer, told RIA Novosti, a Russian news source. “If a male dolphin saw a female dolphin during the mating season, then he would immediately set off after her. But they came back in a week or so.”

“At least these dolphins have their priorities straight,” says Anonymous Doug.  “I’ve ditched work a few time to go fuck a chick.  That’s a much better use of my day and I’m glad there’s a mammal that agrees with me.  In fact, tomorrow I think I’ll call out horny to work in tribute to our Ukrainian dolphin friends.”

“So the male dolphin mates with the female dolphin then tells her, ‘Hey baby, that was fun but I gotta get to work,’” says Mikka.  “Then swims on back to the humans like he wasn’t gone.  Dolphins are fucking smooth – except for all the raping they do.”

“So why doesn’t the Ukraine use female dolphins as part of their killer dolphin program?”says Avonia the Wiccan Pimp.  “They don’t say that female dolphins just up and leave when they spot a male dolphin go by.  Perhaps female dolphins don’t like knives and guns like the males do.”

“Do the weapons help the dolphin score a mate?” asks Samurai Cathy.  “Does the male dolphin swim up to the female and say ‘Hey baby, I’ve mastered the use of weapons, does that get you hot?’  Does that line work?  Because it would work on me if I were a dolphin.”

We heard about this story on the same day word got to us about the dolphin that’s swimming around in the East River in New York.  This particular dolphin hasn’t sexually assaulted anyone yet, nor is it armed like his horny Ukranian brethren, but we must stay vigilant against the dolphin menace. And also I enjoy saying “dolphin rape cave.”

Hey, what’s this story over here… Cannibal Cop?

“Cannibal cop” Gilberto Valle is looking at the possibility of life in prison after a Manhattan federal jury found him guilty of conspiring to kidnap women, then cook, kill and eat them.

White smoke has been spotted at Renal Failure headquarters, a worthy news story has been chosen!

“Cannibal Cop needed to use his craving for human flesh for good,” says Mikka.  “You’re not going to jail, punk!  You’re going in my belly!”

“He has a peculiar taste… FOR JUSTICE!” I say.  “Cannibal Cop!  Because to uphold the law in this city, you need to be hungry!”

“I don’t like the wording in that sentence,” says Tina the Lesbian.  “Kidnap, then cook, kill, and eat them.  Makes it sound like he was going to cook the women before killing them, like how you drop live lobsters into boiling water.  I guess Cannibal Cop liked his human flesh done rare.  Obviously he wasn’t into free-range humans.”

Prosecutors contended the city cop was “a sexual sadist” who had been seeking guidance online for how to abduct, torture, rape, cook, kill and eat women, including his wife, two old college friends and an Archbishop Molloy High School softball star.

Their key piece of evidence was Valle’s family computer, which had been handed over to the feds by Valle’s wife of three months, Kathleen Mangan-Valle, after she discovered his horrifying plans.

“There’s his problem right there – talking about this stuff online,” says Anonymous Doug.  “And not wiping his browser history.  How does a cop not know do that?  How does anyone not know to do that?  That’s basic Internet operating law: don’t click on weird Russian links, most girls on the internet are actually guys, and always wipe your browser history.”

“He’s going online to figure out how to do criminal acts?” says Ninja Vicki.  “You work in a police station, dude!  Go read some case files and figure out how the real criminals did their shit!  How do I kidnap someone? You’re a fucking cop!  You have handcuffs and taser.  Put two and two together, you fucktard.”

“You go online to figure out little shit, like how to change a headlight bulb or how to make your sneakers stop squeaking,” says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat.  “Not how to start your own dungeon of horrors.  Gary Heidnik, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy… they all did fine doing sick shit without the benefit of the Internet.”

In July, Valle had emailed one of his creepy co-conspirators pictures of his friend Kimberly Sauer in the days before he and his wife were having brunch with her in Maryland — along with a document called “Abduction and Cooking of Kimberly: A Blueprint.”

“Sadly, he probably wouldn’t have been found guilty if his kidnap-and-cannibalize manual had been in the form of Internet fan-fiction,” says Avonia the Wiccan Pimp.  “Twilight, Buffy, anything anime… he would have been just another creep on the Internet instead of a ticking cannibal time bomb.”

“I’m wondering how many drafts it took before Cannibal Cop felt comfortable letting someone else read his wank fantasy book,” says Samurai Cathy.  “Probably less than the amount of drafts O.J. Simpson did when he wrote ‘If I Did It.’  That’s what separates talented writers from the rest of the Internet pack – editing.”

The line between fantasy and reality is crossed when you start substantially investing in your fantasy in the real world, which is why no one can ever know about my basement laboratory where I’m building my secret army of Kylie Minogue-bots dressed as Catholic school girls.  NO ONE!

“Do you have any frequent flyer miles I can steal?” says Ninja Vicki.

“No, I don’t go anywhere,” I say.  “Where are you flying to?”

“Saudi Arabia,” says Ninja Vicki.  “I might be moving there for good for a job.”

“I thought ninjaneering was your job,” I say.

“This new job seems more secure and viable long-term,” says Ninja Vicki.  “I’m going to be a beheader for the government.”

Ninja Vicki shows me this story about how the government of Saudi Arabia may switch from beheadings to firing squads as their method of capital punishment because of a lack of swordsmen in their population.

“You’ve got the sword and you know how to swing it,” I say.  “But I always saw you as more of a stabber than a slicer.  I kind of see Samurai Cathy as more suited for beheading.”

“But she won’t wear the head covering and mask,” says Ninja Vicki.  “I’ve already got the mask ’cause I’m a ninja.”

“It doesn’t matter because they’re not going to let you do the beheadings anyway,” I say.  “They don’t let women drive, let alone wield a weapon to carry out the will of Allah on criminals.”

“Maybe I can be the first,” says Ninja Vicki.  “I could be the Rosa Parks of beheading over in Saudi Arabia.”

“Yeah… here’s a Pro-Tip: anytime a white person has the notion of saying they’re going to be the Rosa Parks of something, they need to slam their hand with a hammer,” I say.  “Anything to stop themselves from saying something that fucking stupid.”

“Should I have used Jackie Robinson instead?” says Ninja Vicki.  “That might be more apropos, because I would be tearing down the barrier of Saudis not letting women behead criminals with my superior beheading skills.”

“Sure, that works,” I say.  “But you’re never going there because it’s 500 degrees over there and no matter how hot it gets they’re going to stone you for being an immodest whore as soon as you walk out in your lycra tanktop because we all know you stop wearing sleeves once the temperature goes over 70.”

“But I would be such a great beheader,” pouts Ninja Vicki.  “Where else am I going to get such an awesome job?  Where else are they taking heads on behalf of the state?”

“I’m sure the Taliban will still cut off heads if given the chance,” I say.  “But you’re going to run into the same problems of being an immodest whore to them.”

“Damn it, I just want to chop people’s heads off for money and maybe some healthcare benefits and perhaps a pension too!”  says Ninja Vicki.  “Why can’t get I that in America?”

“Surprisingly beheading isn’t really that American,” I say.  “The closest we had was scalping.  Or when they fucked up a hanging and the guy’s head would snap off.  I guess shooting people in the head is close too, but it’s not the same as cutting someone’s head off.  Unless we teach the drones how to decapitate people.”

That’s America. We will electrocute you, gas you, lethal inject you, shoot you… but for the most part we won’t chop your head off.

Our friend and regular Renal Reader Kate saw fit to give us one of those blog awards that function must like the chain surveys you used to get in your email box during the glory days of America Online.  Back then we didn’t have YouTube or Maru or Facebook or most other Internet distractions that we take for granted today, so yeah we had a lot of time to fill out 60-question surveys and send them back to all the friends we knew who owned computers.  But Kate’s interested in our answers, has three kids to chase around all day, and is probably the one person who knows us from before we started Renal Failure who still reads this blog regularly so let’s do her a solid and read the rules:

To be eligible you must have under 200 followers(check!) and follow the rules of answering the 11 questions asked by your nominator, add in 11 random facts*, choose people to award it on to (no repeats, share the love), and make 11 new questions for them.

Ugh… this is a lot of work but we said we would so let’s go to the questions:

1. What is your favorite hairstyle?

This.

2. How did you meet your partner, if you don’t have one yet, how would you dream to meet one?

When it comes to attached members of the Renal Failure family: 1) Samurai Cathy and Mikka met on the Internet.  2) Avonia the Wiccan Pimp and her husband Arawn met in the same coven, which disbanded soon after their coupling because it seems like Wiccan covens last about as long as high school garage bands. 3) Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat is said to have met Marlie at a whiskey drinking contest and they were the last competitors alive. It was sort of like Casino Royale as Marlie had entered the contest to win money for explosives for the IRA and Bernie had entered on behalf of Portuguese Intelligence so we could buy a classic 4-player NBA Jam arcade machine for the Portuguese Intelligence break room.  There was a bit of mission creep and, well, now they’re married.

As for myself, how would I dream to meet my partner?  Three words: BITCHES WITH SWORDS!

3. What are you too old for but still do anyway?

“14-year old girls,” says Anonymous Doug.

4. Are you mad at anyone for an irrational reason?

Ninja Vicki hates Meatloaf solely because “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights” ruins every karaoke night she’s ever been to.  Strangely, she does not hate the composer of the song Jim Steinman because of his work with Bonnie Tyler.

Everyone I’m currently mad at has been targeted for very tangible reasons.

5. What books have you read more then once?  If none, what would you read again?

I have probably read Mick Foley’s “Have a Nice Day” ten times over, because it’s the book I keep in the bathroom and every time I have a sit-down I read a random chapter.

6. Favorite beverage and why?

Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Lattes – they are like legalized crack and they make everything better.

7. Who cooks best in your family?

Jennifer the Straight is the better cook in Tina the Lesbian’s family.  Maybe if their brother Patrick the Thrice-Divorced was a better cook he’d only be Twice or Once-Divorced.

8. What is the last thing you took a picture of?

Tag Larkin only takes photos of himself, because Tag Larkin is the only thing worth photographing.

9. If you were a flower what would you be?

The silk ones that don’t set off my allergies.

10. Where are you in your birth order?

Tina the Lesbian is 2nd ahead of her younger sister Jennifer the Straight and behind the eldest brother Patrick the Thrice-Divorced. Mikka is the 1st-born over his older sister Riikka.  Anonymous Doug has a younger sister named Pseudonymous Liz.  Avonia is said to have a younger sister and brother who we never hear about.  Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat was born in a litter of 6 – the other kittens whereabouts are unknown.  Bernie’s wife Marlie was 5th out of 10 siblings from her Irish-Catholic home.  Ninja Vicki, Samurai Cathy, myself, and Tag Larkin are only children.

11. What is your dream job?

Getting paid to create whatever feel like making.

All right, and that will do it for that part… now, the 11 random facts about us…

FACTS:

1. Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat is an American Shorthair, but he wants to be portrayed as a Scottish Fold whenever Hollywood decides to make a Renal Failure motion picture because he wants some of that Maru the Cat swag.

2. Samurai Cathy can open champagne bottles with her sword.  In fact, she opens pretty much everything with her sword.

3. Ninja Vicki enjoys 90′s Euro dance but cannot stand dub-step because she needs a consistent, fast beat to kill multiple targets effectively.  If you hear La Bouche’s Be My Lover or Le Click’s Tonight is the Night and you’re not in a dance club, it’s already too late.

4. Tina the Lesbian lettered in both softball and tennis during her senior year of high school.

5. Mikka still knows by memory how to find all three warp whistles in Super Mario Bros. 3, as well as the password code to go straight to Mike Tyson in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out.

6. Anonymous Doug has type AB blood, meaning he can accept any blood type on the off-chance someone remembers to take him to the hospital.

7. Avonia the Wiccan Pimp is certified in CPR.

8. Samurai Cathy did not watch Star Wars until her late 20′s.  She has still not watched any of the Godfather films.

9. When not fighting crime, local superhero Crimson Paraplegic’s regular person alter-ego works as a library assistant because all libraries are handicapped accessible.

10. Tag Larkin does not use forks or spoons to eat.  The only utensil he uses are knives.  Even with soup.

11. I throw left handed but write right-handed.  Apparently anything that needs power I do with my left hand, and anything that needs precision I do with my right hand.

And now, the last part… choose some blogs to pass this award onto, along with 11 new questions for them to answer. We’re giving this to one person, because we know she’ll hate it the most but will have the most fun with its trite, contrived nature anyway: Rassles.

QUESTIONS:

1. What do you like for the sole reason of everyone else hating it?

2. Worst illness or injury?

3. What language do you wish you were fluent in?

4. Stout or IPA?

5. Favorite holiday that isn’t widely celebrated?

6. Are you in a current blood feud with anyone and why?

7. Which Renal Failure player are you dressing up as for your next costume-required social event?

8. Your weapon of choice?

9. Who are bigger rapists? Football players or lacrosse players? Show your work.

10. Most hated karaoke song that other people sing regularly?

11. Which Renal Failure player would you want as your eternal roommate and why?

And we are done!  Damn that took a while, but it was a good distraction from our usual venomous pursuits.  Sometimes the stupid of the world just hurts too much…

By the end of December, the stock market will suffer a major crash as people pull their money out to beat the new taxes taking effect in 2013. Businesses who cannot afford to cover their employees with health insurance will immediately begin either cutting jobs entirely or dropping most of their employees down to part-time to avoid the heavy fines that will levied against them otherwise. Gas prices will spike back up above $4 a gallon, heading up to $5. Be prepared for this to happen – and I don’t expect to hear any complaints from those who are celebrating this evening.

Even spotting her an extra month, none of this happened. The Dow Jones, NASDAQ and S&P500 are all up over 6 percent since the election. Job numbers for December and January are up.  Gas still isn’t 4 bucks but the idea that oil companies would raise prices just because they have a sad that Obama got reelected is a golden idea, in that it pisses over the image of capitalists as rugged captains of industry and makes them look more like the awful human beings featured on MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen.  So let’s all remember this lesson: don’t make predictions when you’re angry.

We’re also behind on doing the blog award stuff for our friend Kate, who awarded us the Liebster Award that had been passed on to her.  Hopefully we’ll get to that this weekend, considering we’ve blown off pretty much every other one of these blog award things over the years.

What else got past us… oh, it was Valentine’s Day, which I spent coming down with flu-like symptoms and I tried fighting them with a steady stream of rum and cokes to unsatisfactory effects.  Usually we have something bitter for Valentine’s Day, so let’s make up for it with something dumb we saw over at FoxNews.com regarding love: “Four Things Jane Austen Teaches Us About Love:”

1. Play hard to get. Don’t be so aggressive. When women make themselves so available to men, the thrill of the chase is gone. The harder you are to “catch,” the more interesting you become.

“I don’t want to chase your dumb ass,”  says Anonymous Doug.  “I ain’t got time for that shit. You know who’s interesting? A bitch that doesn’t play bullshit games like this.  Thrill of the chase is lie. Ever see a high-speed police chase? Yeah, that shit is thrilling until ends, then that shirtless meth-head gets dragged out of his overturned pick-up truck and beaten retarded by six pissed-off cops.  Fuck the chase – give it up early or don’t give it up at all. Save all of us some time and misery.”

“Seeing the picture of the woman who wrote this article, her definition of interesting probably consists of what popped up on her Dilbert calendar that day,” says Tina the Lesbian.  “And considering her previous article written for FoxNews.com was titled “To Be Happy, We Must Admit That Women and Men Aren’t ‘Equal,” I’m pretty sure she doesn’t mind making less money than her male counterparts for writing dreck just as long as every now and then one of her male bosses pats her on the head and tells her she’s a good patriarchal tool.”

2. Wait for sex. I know it’s chic to think of yourself as a sex goddess. And maybe you are. But the truth is, if you present yourself this way to a man—in the way you dress and behave—he’ll respond in kind. If you want to be the one he brings home to mom, make him earn your love. And your body.

“If you’re truly a sex goddess, he will respond by worshiping your sensual form,” says Avonia the Wiccan Pimp.  “She makes the phrase ‘earn your love’ sound like it’s something you do on a game show rather than through getting to know your partner in whatever ways you consent.”

“Why wouldn’t mom want you to bring home a sex goddess?” says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat.  “Maybe mom wants to see her son happy with a decent looking woman rather than some dour frump who will suck the life out of him until he inevitably cheats on her with his secretary or puts a bullet in his brain to end the misery.”

3. Make your guy feel important. Sure, you’re self-sufficient. And he is, too. But everybody wants to feel valued. Men in particular. What’s wrong with letting him take care of things every once and a while? After all, why would he keep coming around if you give him the impression he has nothing to offer?

“Yeah, the male psyche can be fragile, but it can be easily repaired,” says Mikka.  “But you’re already trying to take sex out of the game, which is like playing hockey constantly shorthanded.  Yeah, you can do it, but you’d do so much better with a full complement of players on the ice.  Fuck him, feed him, let him watch the game, dress up like She-Ra ever now and again… it’s not hard to make a guy feel important.”

4. Put down your sword. Despite what you’ve heard, men don’t love b*tches. They like nice women. Strong and confident women, yes. But nice. They can go hand in hand. Really.

“Fuck you, my sword is awesome!”  says Ninja Vicki.  “Men love women with swords.  If you’re a woman and you can’t think of an accessory to pull your outfit together, pick up a sword and be a bad-ass.  Don’t see that in any dusty-vag Jane Austen novel, do ya?”

“I’m very nice, and my sword makes sure everything stays nice,” says Samurai Cathy.  “And though it pains me to echo the sentiments of my blood enemy – fuck you, my sword is awesome too!”

I believe one time I tried an online dating site and it asked me what kind of woman I was looking for, so I typed in “BITCHES WITH SWORDS!”  Surprisingly they wouldn’t let me keep that, but I fully stand by the sentiment: bitches with swords – those are the ladies I’m giving my attention to.  Oh, you studied Romantic Literature and crochet things on Etsy?  How nice.  See that woman over there?  She’s ready to fight the Kurgan from Highlander.  Enjoy your mojito. Swords are like boots, in that they can up a girl on the 10-point hotness meter by at least two points.  It’s worked for years on the covers of fantasy novels – I’m just bringing it out of Narnia and into the singles bar.

Jane Austen novels would have been a lot more readable if they had more bitches with swords in them.  I know I got halfway through Pride, Prejudice and Zombies before getting bored with it, which is a lot more than I was able to stomach of the original Pride & Prejudice in high school.

BITCHES WITH SWORDS!  That’s what 2013 should be the year of.

Then it occurred to me that it’s kind of fucked up that God would choose you as the Pope and then make you unable to do your job.  And if God didn’t do that to the Pope then the Almighty dropped the damn ball – and dropped it hard – on protecting his top representative on his planet.  Or the cardinals cocked up selecting you to lead the Church, in that case it’s still God’s fault for not making his will clearly known to the people who represent his holy will.

Really, they’re just making shit up.

And the newest exhibit to back up that assertion was found on the Facebooks recently.  This letter from the Archdiocese of New Orleans regarding whether you can eat alligator during Lent:

“alligator is considered in the fish family”

Look, we already know the Church will totally ditch the entire “no meat on Fridays” deal for a bitching party, but you can’t go calling an alligator a fish.  If you called an alligator a fish in your kindergarten class, you would not get a gold star that day.  You would not even get a silver star.  You would not get a happy face sticker either.  Fuck, I wouldn’t even give you a juice box either because I’d be afraid you’d hurt yourself with the straw.  Put on your helmet and try not to eat all of the glue.

“alligator is considered in the fish family”

But this is Louisiana, where gator is good eatin’, and that’s fine.  But if you want to sell me on the idea of the Lenten season being one of solemn sacrifice, you can’t make outrageous loopholes for its most basic rules, especially ones that completely ignore established biology.  I know the Church ain’t too big on science, but now we’re getting into “There are four lights” territory here.  No wonder most members of the Catholic Church use birth control despite the Church’s negative position on it.  You have ranking members of its hierarchy thinking reptiles are fish.

We already know the Church is in the pocket of Big Seafood (which is why Lent exists in the first place, but now they’re bowing to the local gator lobby now?  Have the lawsuits for all the child buggery reduced local archdioceses to do the bidding of lesser industries now?

Reptiles are fish, sure!  Women should have autonomy over their reproductive organs?  FUCK NO!  You broads can’t even become priests!  Go sit in the convent and hang back while the men make the important decisions for the Church, like what is a fish.  Shit, it’s like you’re not even trying to hide that you’re just making shit up, like you’re saying it’s not worth the effort to try and trick people anymore. Forget justifying our archaic stances with two millenia of doctrines, scripture, and theological debate – we’re just going to do a bunch of arbitrary shit now.

This has lodged in my brain because it’s a much easier thing to wrap my head around than institutionalized concealment of decades of child molestations.  The callousness and detachment by Church officials to cover up child molestations takes a lot of effort to imagine and comprehend, let alone to begin to fathom all of the resources put to work to hide these deeds.  But alligator is a fish – that’s an easier devil to understand because it’s just fucking retarded.  It’s like this archbishop decided to give up knowing what shit is called for Lent.

I’m going to eat a Baconator on Ash Wednesday, and it’s going to be delicious.  And Lent is bullshit.