Dear Seattle Police Department,

I often hear people say that you cannot fully understand someone’s suffering until you have walked a mile in their shoes. I think this saying is true, because it is almost impossible to grasp the intensity of a situation until you are thrust into the middle of it with no way out.

I am writing this letter to tell you that I finally had my moment of true realization, my epiphany. The Seattle Police Department has faced massive amounts of criticism for the last few months due to uses of excessive force and possible police brutality. Communities of color have been especially angry that the police have seemingly targeted them with their use of excessive force. From the very beginning, I felt a sense of solidarity with the marginalized populations who had been victimized by overzealous law enforcement, but it wasn’t until this week that I felt fully motivated.

After passing through Tuesday’s protest outside of police headquarters, I finally “got it.” I finally felt true sympathy over the police situation. When I saw those protestors with their raw emotion, their feeling of betrayal by the system, and their blind rage against a government that did not do for them what they wanted, I knew that I had no choice but to throw my support behind the Seattle Police Department.

Look, I’m not one to condone police brutality. But my visceral reaction to the situation has almost nothing to do with the police and almost everything to do with the filthy street urchins protesting outside police headquarters. It’s like the Seattle WTO protests from 1999 swept all of its rejects under a rock and they have been waiting to come out, only they are 12 years dirtier, crazier, and angrier now than they were then.

[RIGHT- Stopping people from getting to Northgate via Greenwood is not going to end police brutality. Now get down from there.]

The protest itself was an unapologetic assault on all five senses. As I innocently walked to the bus stop, people brushed by me, coating my jacket with a combination of putrid sweat and grimy filth layered from weeks without bathing. I could feel the threads on my cloth gloves turning into dreadlocks as I hurried past. Their stench wafted over the block like a hovering cloud. Although the smell of urine and stale cigarettes wasn’t visible, you could smell it like the dust cloud that follows Pigpen around in Peanuts cartoons. The stench was so intense that anyone who hadn’t been incrementally acclimated to it beforehand immediately gagged violently or vomited slightly. Needless to say, I had not spent time at disgusting protest boot camp, so I suffered the latter fate. As if the stench wasn’t painful enough on its own, it combined with the taste of partially-digested falafel in the back of my throat in a medley that made me want to find the nearest shotgun for quick relief.

If this situation sounds oppressive to you so far, you may want to avert your eyes, because it became even more torturous. I had almost made it through the fray when my attention was diverted by a 5-foot tall woman of some Hispanic descent. She was possibly the most foul-smelling beast in this whole circus, like a bear that had shit on itself but didn’t know enough to clean it off. Being around this many people must have been a new experience for her. She was coated with a thick layer of grease that was either sweat that she had worked up during her frothing fervor or a dusting of Crisco left over from breakfast that morning. Either one would be realistic considering that she weighed at least 250 pounds. She had the center of gravity of a paperweight.

Now, I would simply look away, but she apparently thought that the protest uniform was an undersized black tank top with spaghetti straps and not enough fabric to cover the stretch marks on her stomach or chest. I hate to be shallow, but the sight was so appalling that I couldn’t help but become transfixed. She was a human car wreck, and I was not immune to rubbernecking. Unfortunately, she caught my gaze and unleashed a fury upon me that made me wonder if she was actually part dragon. The fire she spewed at me was consistent with my dragon hypothesis, and it came out as shouts of “FUCK YOU WHITE BOY!” over and over, like some bizarre eastern religion mantra. I tried to walk away, but I was stunned- I had gone into a stupor as my senses were not prepared to deal with this enormous dose of the anti-culture (I hesitate to call it the counter-culture when the orienting principle of these monsters appeared to be entropy, destruction, or some hybrid of the two).

Luckily, I came to my senses before she got the crowd to turn on me. I speed-walked past my bus stop and caught the next available cab before things got really sideways. What’s $10 when your life is on the line? I narrowly escaped that morass of humanity, and my life will never be the same again.

I understand that police brutality can be a problem, but there are sociopaths in every line of work. I guess you should probably try to figure out which ones are crazy before you hand out the guns. While this disgusting mob treated a reputable city block as a cross between a mosh pit and a public latrine, dozens of cops stood around calmly and prevented anyone from getting hurt. Of course some cops are bad. And those cops should be punished. But the people who are so disaffected with society that they show up to a pointless, all-day protest instead of going to work or doing something productive are, on balance, more messed up than the police who they are protesting. That’s why the police protest moved me off the fence and squarely on the side of the law.

Sincerely,

Terrance Verona

Charlie Sheen Is Righteously Depraved

Pleasure is the most basic human desire. Our predecessors struggled through a nasty and brutish, yet they still got their serotonin receptors firing through putting meat on fire and inventing sexual perversions. Today, our world is just as nasty and brutish, but we have refined the realm of pleasure so completely that we’re tempted never to leave. Soon, we will have nutrient rich cocaine and fully realistic sex robots. Until that time, booze, coke, porn, and hookers will do nicely. At least that’s the case if you ask Charlie Sheen.

Mr. Sheen is the ultimate heathen. He seizes pleasure at every opportunity. In and out of marriages, rehab, and career trouble, Mr. Sheen unapologetically comes back to the pleasure drug. You can call him a drug addict or a sex addict, but he is simply addicted to Pleasure. He is a Junkie. The Junkie finds something he likes and does it until he does not like it any more. Usually, he stops liking it because it trades off with something else and the high is not worth it any more. The rules of the tradeoff don’t apply to Mr. Sheen.

The Junkie may lose his family. Without a doubt, some junkies feel the Guilt and Shame of the penitent Old Testament sinner- the type of resonant fire in his brain extending up from Dante’s Third Circle- each time they satiate their gluttonous desires. If Mr. Sheen is indeed the garden variety junkie, then he should be susceptible to God’s double-barreled Guilt and Shame shotgun of repentance. But Mr. Sheen puts no stake in fidelity. His treatment of fidelity ranges from indifference to the type of scorn usually seen only in abortion clinic protests. Mr. Sheen has broken up with more women than most men have imagined while masturbating. He has ended relationships with threats of beatings, actual beatings, and Old West gunfire. He has five children in the custody of three women and exalts the fact that he doesn’t have to worry about tracking down a reliable and tight-lipped babysitter when he has the urge for a 36-hour bender. At a minimum, one could say that family life is not the anchor that will keep Mr. Sheen’s flighty spirit grounded.

[RIGHT- Stay gold, Ponyboy's brother.]

The Junkie may lose his career. Regular saps like us can’t get away with devoting our lives to the pursuit of pleasure because it gets in the way of the Daily Grind. If we spent our nights smoking crack and fucking hookers from dusk til dawn, our productivity would take a hit. Lindsay Lohan is a junkie with some of the same pleasure-seeking qualities as Mr. Sheen, but her career has been derailed. He has maintained a more successful career with a more ambitious pleasure addiction. His secret is that he has landed the perfect junkie gig. He plays himself on a mindless sitcom. Every week, the network turns over a bank vault worth of unmarked, non-consecutive $100 bills and returns to its blissful ignorance. Mr. Sheen can show up hungover and read his lines off cue cards one afternoon each Thursday. He gets a bankroll for his pleasure addiction, CBS gets ratings, and the mouth-breathers get season upon season of Two and a Half Men to serve as a soundtrack for their pathetic march to the grave. Everyone wins.

The Junkie may lose his health. Indeed, the Overdose is the Junkie’s Waterloo. Without it, John Belushi would have his own mindless sitcom. Adam Sandler wouldn’t have to dress Kevin James up like Chris Farley and pretend to laugh every time he shows his gut. But the Overdose is real. The problem is that the Overdose scares everyone other than the Junkie. The Junkie wants his next infusion of pleasure- he is not concerned with the opportunity cost of death. The Abyss is the natural end, after which there is no pleasure and therefore nothing to interest the Junkie. Mr. Sheen’s orienting principle is pleasure, so the complete absence of pleasure does not register. It is not his concern; it is ours.

Mr. Sheen cannot bottom out. He can keep drinking, smoking, and fucking his way to pleasure as long Angus Jones still looks young enough to play a kid on TV. The Junkie gets religion when he has lost everything and hits the low bottom. Mr. Sheen does not have a low bottom. He has days where E! News talks more shit about him and the Average Joe’s give water cooler high fives in his honor. He might even have to spend a weekend in a glamorous rehab facility on the beach, which is nothing less than an indulgent vacation. With his batteries recharged and nothing to lose, Mr. Sheen can jump back on the train and embark on his quintessential human pursuit of pleasure again and again.

Mr. Sheen is a Shimmering Monument to Hedonism. But we are pathologically unable to acknowledge his achievement. He has attained great heights in a domain that we are not allowed to enter. Non-golfers cannot appreciate the genius of Tiger Woods and we- sad sacks of mediocrity- cannot appreciate the genius of the greatest heathen alive. Mr. Sheen is a Pleasure Junkie, and nothing could be more righteous.

How to Blame Obama for Problems in Egypt

By Alphonse de Smith, Coordinator, Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy

WASHINGTON- After a successful State of the Union Address and an inspirational speech at the sight of the Tucson massacre, the political crisis in Egypt has dampened President Obama’s momentum. We at the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy see the silver lining in this global calamity cloud- we now have the opportunity to destabilize Obama’s base, scare independents back into the arms of Republican politicians, and make everyone believe that Obama somehow caused all of the problems.

You might be thinking to yourself that it sounds impossible to formulate a way to blame Obama for Egypt’s ongoing problems before we know what will come out of the protests. I will be the first to admit that crisis-creation is more art than science. You will see that demonizing both sides is a tightrope, and I will demonstrate how to ride a unicycle down the middle of it.

One of the problems in Egypt is that nobody really knows who is going to be in power a day, a month, or a year from now. Without that information, it is hard to start creating lies about how evil and anti-American that group or individual is, and fabricating ties between Obama and the leadership will be extremely risky.

Our policy analysts suggest that President Mubarak or Murabak or whatever has lost the support of his military, which makes it seem like the populist protesters will likely oust him from power. We have dispatched Glen Beck to commence character assassination on these protesters, and he has already planted the seeds that they are Marxist revolutionaries and Islamic Jihadists. Americans reflexively hate both of those things. They are the two most demonic enemies of the last 50 years, so combining them in one group should make any unthinking American immediately want to blow them up. I am aware that Marxism is not especially compatible with a Jihad, but the people who are going to think about the issue that deeply make up 3% of the population and aren’t going to be on our side anyway. We thought about making them child molesters, but we were worried that it might sound too far-fetched, so we stuck with Marxist Jihadists- I’m really happy with how that sounds.

[LEFT- Whatever. They look scary enough.]

That bit of enemy creation has the external benefit of creating great villains for action movies. The Hollywood Liberals don’t think it’s PC to depict stereotypical Arab terrorists, and the Russian commie bit is getting tired, so seeing Sylvester Stallone curb stomp a few dozen Egyptian Marxist Jihadists should be a breath of fresh air.

If the protesters take over, we have to be ready for several contingencies. If Obama does not fully endorse the revolution, we plan on changing course and portraying the protesters as sympathetic characters. Even though we have already called them Marxist Jihadists, if we change course and start talking about how they are freedom-loving patriots who want a democratic election, nobody will remember what we said a week before. Then, we will have the Tea Party take their lead and organize a “peaceful protest” in Washington, but we will make the protest about the Second Amendment and gun control, and we will pretend that’s what the Egyptians were actually protesting. Again, nobody that is listening will know the difference.

If Obama endorses the revolution, we already have the Marxist Jihadist ball up in the air, and then we can make the current President seem like a sympathetic character by pointing out that Egypt has not been involved in any wars in the last decade. We can also make up some figures that make it seem like they were prosperous. If we tether Obama to the Marxist Jihadists who unseated a peaceful and economically sound leader, it’s pretty easy to play the Barack Hussein Obama card and indict his loyalty. Questioning his country of origin might even get people thinking about his birth certificate again, then we can try to stretch out the residency fervor we had going against Rahm Emmanuel for a while. I realize that Obama’s citizenship has nothing to do with who rented Emmanuel’s house, but if we just say “citizenship” and “residency” enough times, there is bound to be some cognitive resonance somewhere.

We also recognize that there is a possibility that the existing Egyptian government squashes the protesters Tiananmen Square-style, so we want to cover all of our bases. We have started digging up old press releases from Obama’s presidency where he said lukewarm things about the Egyptian government in order to keep from getting angry at the United States. If we take a few quotes out of context, we can make it seem like Obama was in the President’s pocket the whole time. With a little bit of creative wording, we might be able to suggest that Obama knew that Egypt was planning to massacre thousands of citizens and did nothing to stop it. That’s really the ideal scenario for us because it makes Obama unsympathetic to the American people and props up a dictatorship in the Middle East that is going to hate Obama anyway. It’s a lose-lose for him, so I have my fingers crossed that the massacre takes place.

Another avenue to pursue would be interventionism. If Obama decides to send peacekeeping troops to Egypt to help conduct an election, we will decry the notion that America is the world’s babysitter and talk about how the Progressive movement got us involved in so many global entanglements that we eventually found ourselves in the middle of World War I. There really is no reasonable line of thinking that connects Egyptian protests to World War III, but it’s such a powerful rhetorical tool that we will probably just throw those words around anyway.

On the other hand, if Obama decides not to send any troops or aid to Egypt, we get to say that he has stretched the military dangerously thin in Afghanistan, that the Egyptians will run a corrupt election that will result in an anti-American fascist government, and that he is a coward who does not have America’s national security at heart. I’m just brain-storming here, but we might also run with the idea that there is some connection between repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the American military becoming too weak to provide a deterrent. Ooh, I like the sound of that. I’m going to get the Westboro Baptist Church on the phone immediately to work out the details.

[RIGHT- GOD HATES MARXIST JIHADISTS!]

If all else fails, we can always fall back on oil prices. Instability in the Middle East always results in higher oil prices, so we will just blame the Democratic President for gas prices this summer. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, but it still works. That’s why we have opposed every energy policy for the last 40 years. People think that we want to prop up American oil companies for private gain, but we really just don’t want to lose the “blame Democratic leadership for high oil prices” as an ace in the hole. T. Boone Pickens was with us for a while and flipped. Luckily, by the time he started exposing our secrets, he was already so senile that nobody would listen. The oil prices argument is a steady backup plan that has won us at least two presidential elections, so we’re not about to let it go now.

So you can see that we have plenty of irons in the fire, or so to speak. I tried turning these contingencies into a decision tree, but I’ll be damned if Excel Pivot Tables aren’t too complicated for even the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy to figure out. We should be fine without it, though, because all that hard work we put into making everyone so racist for the last 400 years has been paying off big time- getting people to turn against the black President is probably the easiest job we have had in a generation.

Proto-Hipster Music Critic Too Cool To Agree With Other Hipster Music Critics

Having to justify that you are a music fan, even though you don’t love Electric Light Orchestra, is bad. Gritting your teeth through a Titus Andronicus album because it made everybody’s top 10 list is worse. Hipster Music Critics will stop at nothing to make listening to music a joyless and soul-crushing experience as long as it reaffirms their holistic separation from whatever tropes dominate the mainstream at that time.

But you have not experienced the true agony of the Hipster Music Critic until you have seen one double back on itself like an all-consuming black hole. This never-ending vortex of music suck is called Ann Powers and it writes for Slate.com.

In Slate’s 2010 year in review roundtable on music, Powers’ colleagues provided the usual hipster fodder: Taylor Swift is a spoiled brat; Kanye West is a tortured genius; Arcade Fire and MIA deserve waaaaay more attention. Powers, though, was not content to beat that hipster drum. Powers longed so hopelessly for attention that she had to push even further away from the mainstream.

Some hipsters posit themselves as better than you by telling you that your taste is derivative and you can’t really enjoy Nirvana until you have listened to Leadbelly’s entire discography nine times. Others say that you favorite band is untalented and that you should check out Clap Your Hands Say Yeah for a more organic musical experience.

Powers is so consumed by her own self-righteousness that she is too cool for all the stuff that’s cool to the people who are too cool for everything else. To separate herself from even those other “cool kids,” Powers spent her “Best of 2010” space explaining that Katy Perry is actually a musical genius.

I have explained before that Katy Perry’s music is oppressively and insultingly bad. She is an adequate singer who is not good looking enough to be famous for her looks, but she markets herself relentlessly. It’s not her skill that makes her uniquely bad, though, it’s her atrociously manipulative song writing. She pulls out every cheap trick in the book. She switches from rhyming couplets to slant rhymes to non-rhymes in the same verse. She passionately belts out lyrics that make as much sense as Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, but without the irony or the drugs. She throws around popular locations and activities as a proxy for evoking actual emotion or intrigue. I don’t blame Katy Perry- she’s raking in money by being a publicity whore and many others have done far worse. I blame Powers because she has the credentials that suggest that she should know better. You can’t convict a child of murder because the law says that a child can’t have the necessary mindset to appreciate what murder is. Katy Perry is the child who either doesn’t understand how bad her music is or doesn’t care to find out. Ann Powers is the adult, but instead of murder, she’s committing journalistic atrocities on par with Pol Pot’s killing fields.

Powers thinks she can get away with it because the science behind being a Hipster Music Critic is so flimsy. Music is a highly individualized art and intelligent people can disagree on what makes a song good or bad. Powers metastasizes this lark to expose it for its true folly. Food is another highly personalized issue, but everyone knows that a McDonald’s hamburger sucks. If a food critic wrote a column explaining that everyone had been missing out on how McDonald’s hamburgers were secret culinary masterpieces, he would be exposed as a fraud or a liar trying to get attention. Katy Perry’s music caters to the lowest common denominator at least as egregiously McDonald’s, so Powers deserves the same treatment. So I will take that responsibility: Ann Powers is a fraud or she lies to get attention.

Powers writes, “What finally allowed me to come to terms with Perry—and it was the song ‘Teenage Dream’ that really did it—was realizing that the very point of Perry is the way her old-fashioned emotions rub up so provocatively against her right-now poses.” Of course, you have “realized” what the point is. It’s all so obvious to you, Ann Powers, while the rest of us dither away at our desks, you have the rational ability to strip the pretense away and see Katy Perry for what she really is. That is the blessing and the curse of having the supernatural abilities of being a Hipster Music Critic. She goes on:

"’You think I'm pretty without any makeup on,’ Perry whispers incredulously in the first line of 'Teenage Dream,' her voice leaning slightly stunned against a latticework-privacy-fence of kick drum. The plucked way Perry sings the lyric—as if what she's saying is just impossible—says so much about how far we all feel we've strayed from our genuine selves. That line is the most important one to make the Top 10 this year, I think: its tragic nostalgia, playing out the new version of the hard-soft dynamic that made 1990s alt-rock so shocking.”

Congratulations, Ann Powers, you just spent more time typing out that run-on sentence than Katy Perry did recording that song in the studio. If you think you have strayed so far from you genuine self, you can be reminded of it by just about any musician who has ever performed. Katy Perry is not some musical sage who bestows her wisdom through carefully crafted verses, intoned for maximum soul-searching effect. She’s a stripper with a five-head. And that line is not “the most important one.” It’s an age-old pillow talk cliché. What is tragic about the nostalgia? That doesn’t even make sense. Why am I wasting time trying to figure out the nonsense language that this bold deceiver used to throw everyone off her scent?

It’s not possible for a Hipster Music Critic to write an honestly flattering review of Katy Perry, so Ann Powers had to dip into Perry’s bag of tricks and play the “unintelligible gibberish” card. Please go back to telling us how great the Flaming Lips are live and drinking your PBR. Defending Katy Perry is not going to work, and you aren’t going to get hipster bonus points for trying.

Save Time and Money and Escape with a Bacation!

By Jeff Germane, Travel Agent at Quantum Travel Services

In times like these, we all have to tighten our belts and make the dollar stretch as far as possible. Whether it’s bringing lunch to work or turning down that thermostat, we are all saving money in our own way. In all likelihood, that savings account that you would like to use on a vacation to Tahiti or Hawaii is not as robust as you would like it to be. You might be starting to worry that you are going to have to ride out the winter doldrums without the valuable R&R to keep that Seasonal Affective Disorder at bay.

Well, my homebound friends, today is your lucky day. My colleagues at Quantum Travel Services have come up with a once in a lifetime opportunity for those who want a cheaper and easier way to recharge those batteries. It’s called a bacation, and let me tell you, it is delicious. The bacation is a lot like a typical vacation, but instead of packing your bags, flying to an exotic locale, sitting on the beach, drinking mai tais, and sitting in the sun, you eat bacon. It’s that simple!

Now, you are probably asking yourself, where did you come up with this brilliant idea? It’s really pretty simple. I was thinking of what people love so much about vacation, and it really boils down to having fun. You know what else is fun? Eating bacon. The name was the tricky part. What I ended up doing was taking part of the word bacon, and part of the word vacation, and putting them together into one word. Bacation. I’m sure you’d like to know which word the “c” came from, but that’s not the kind of information I’m going to give away for free!

Some people like to take vacations because they get to see and learn about foreign cultures. The bacation offers plenty of cultural exposure, too. You can drop in on our neighbors to the north and sample some Canadian Bacon. Sounds pretty good, eh? But seriously, it’s a short trip from bacon to get to the beautiful and romantic German Bratwurst, a favorite for young honeymooners. If you’re really up for an adventure, try salami or prosciutto! Although they’re a little pricier and technically not bacon, cured meats can be a delicious addition to a sandwich and they make a great appetizer. As they say in Italy, Vorrei cambiare dei soldi!

[LEFT- I shall call it... the BAKINI!]

The bacation is a great way for families to come together to bond. Young or old, anyone can appreciate some deliciously fried pig flesh. You can spice up you family slide show with pictures of BLTs, breakfast sandwiches, and omelets. There are only so many pictures of zoos and sunsets that your relatives will watch before they drift to sleep. Throw some pictures of bacon in there, and add some savory zest to the show.

These days, travel can be a real hassle. Would you rather spend an entire day slogging through crowded and dirty airports and sitting in a cramped plane, or eat bacon? Would you rather sleep in an uncomfortable bed in a hotel that is probably covered in several caked-on layers of years-old semen, or eat bacon? Would you rather go through the hassle of customs tell you that it’s “illegal” to bring drugs and live animals across international lines and get shoved in a Third World holding cell while you wait for your lawyer to bribe the banana republic government, or eat bacon? Would you rather pay hard earned cash for an underage hooker only to find out later that it’s a Ladyboy, or eat bacon? I rest my case.

Just because you don’t get a tan doesn’t mean your vacation can’t sizzle! Call to book your bacation today, and you will receive a complimentary fork to enjoy your bacation even

The Microwave Conundrum: Our Generation’s Greatest Test of Moral Rectitude

The microwave oven has become an indispensable part of everyday life. One would be shocked to walk into a kitchen without one. Their ubiquity is so prevalent that many Americans use them every day of the week for food preparation. I believe, though, that even such a repetitive and thoughtless activity reveals a great deal about human intelligence and morality.

The first question is how someone sets the timer on the microwave, and it speaks volumes about whether the microwave user is a mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal or the sort of reasonably competent member of society who knows how to turn right at a red light, flushes the toilet in public bathrooms, and has never voted for someone who is both stupid and arrogant enough to make up new words by accident then claim an intentional neologism.

Imagine you have to microwave something for a minute and a half. It’s a pretty common amount of time for something coming out of the refrigerator and it illustrates a point. Most people would probably hit the “1” key, the “3” key, the “0” key, then start the microwave. Most people are idiots. You might not personally know anyone who will go to see the new Nic Cage movie “Season of the Witch,” at least not seriously, but Hollywood producers decided enough people would see it to give him this movie on the heels of “Bangkok Dangerous,” “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call- New Orleans,” and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” That means that there is a huge number of insanely stupid people who are going to see abysmal Nic Cage movies, one after another. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call- New Orleans?!?! That must be the worst name for a movie of all time. It has two different punctuation marks and I still have no idea what the movie is about. Granted, “2 Fast 2 Furious” is a bad name, but at least I can figure out that it’s a sequel to “The Fast and the Furious.” The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call- New Orleans sounds like an over-budget gay Skinemax flop. And by the way, how does “Raising Arizona” not make it into the Nic Cage’s IMDB Top 4? His career includes so many movies that were so bad that they became cult hits that they have completely overwhelmed his really good breakout performance. That would be like Jefferson Airplane renaming itself and making such terrible music over decades that people forgot about White Rabbit, Somebody to Love, and the band's role in the Summer of Love because its subsequent music was such an abortion. Wait a minute, that also happened. At least nobody goes to see Jefferson Starship play to crowds of 200 at Indian Casinos. Cage has so many awful movies that people remember them for being awful at the expense of his good movies. AND PEOPLE STILL GO TO SEE HIS MOVIES!

[RIGHT- Okay, the mustache was a bad decision, but his career decisions make the mustache decision look brilliant.]

What does this have to do with microwaves, you ask? My point is that just because a lot of people press "1, 3, 0, start," that doesn’t make it the best way to start a microwave. If you’re going to press "1, 3, 0, start," you might as well be sentencing yourself to watching National Treasure 2 on loop for the rest of eternity. You realize that microwaves operate in seconds, right? Instead of "1, 3, 0, start," you can just press "9, 0, start" and get the exact same result. You’re saving seconds! You know what’s even better than that? Pressing "9, 9, start" and avoiding the clumsy process of moving your finger from the 9 to the 0. Who has time for that crap? The point of the microwave is to save time. If you’re going to go to the hassle of pressing extra keys and moving your hand around unnecessarily, you might as well preheat the oven and reheat your burrito the old fashioned way. In fact, if you have so much free time that you can waste it pressing extra microwave keys, you might as well get two sticks, rub them together, and cook your Lean Cuisine over an open flame.

The issues with microwave use do not end at startup. The questions at the end of the microwave cycle are equally dire. Everyone who has ever used a microwave has waited through those final, inconvenient seconds. If you have used a public microwave with people waiting to take their turns who are secretly annoyed that your dish is not already warm, then the waiting is even worse. The thing I don’t understand is why people wait for the final buzzer to sound. You are not waiting for the New Year’s ball to drop on Times Square or the door to open at Wal-Mart on black Friday- the door will open and the food will come out without warping you into a black hole even if you open the door three seconds early. Waiting for the buzzer is inane. Humans do not have to be so Pavlovian as to wait for the sound to eat, especially when the sound is grating and abrasive. Maybe if the microwave manufacturers had the machine play a few bars of Zeppelin at the end, there would be some reason to wait for it. If I ever made a microwave, God knows it would play the riff from Kashmir, and I'd be like "Hell yeah! Burrito time!"

What is the thought process that leads to not opening the microwave for those last few seconds while you wait with your hand on the door handle? Is it that the wrapper on your burrito said that it takes three minutes to heat up? I have news for you- the last three seconds are not going to make the difference between a perfectly warm burrito and an uncooked one. If it isn’t done, it’s going to take more than three seconds to finish it, so you might as well just open the door and check before you reset the timer for another thirty seconds (or 33 seconds, if you’ve been paying attention). In all likelihood, the burrito is going to be stale and burned on the outside but frozen on the inside no matter how closely you follow the instructions, so you might as well not burn any calories worrying or waste extra time on it.

Now you’re thinking to yourself, “yeah, microwaved food sucks!” And it does, but the point is to make it edible faster, and it accomplishes that goal. If you want good food, it’s going to take time. Whining about your microwave dinner is like telling Ernest Hemingway to write a book in 3 weeks then complaining that it isn’t a literary masterpiece. It’s like telling Pam Anderson that she has 5 minutes to do her hair and makeup before doing a TV appearance. Rushing things makes them worse. Microwaves are a way to rush things. So get it over with and stop complaining.

Gabrielle Giffords Set to Make Return in Zombie Flash Mob

By Martin West

TUCSON- Less than a week after being tragically shot in the head at a public meeting, Arizona’s Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is set to return to the public eye. But Giffords does not plan to come back with a bland press conference or public statement; she is slated to take part in the largest all-zombie flash mob in the history of the state of Arizona, according to her press secretary.

“We really think this kind of enthusiastic return will help breathe life into a constituency that has been dead on its feet for the last week, pardon the pun,” said press secretary Monica Gutierrez. “The zombie aspect was a natural because the surgeon realized that the bullet in Rep. Giffords’s brain could not be removed without turning her into a vegetable, and the only option was to inject her with the blood of the undead.”

Even though being a zombie will cause Rep. Giffords to badly slur her words, foam at the mouth, and try to eat the brains of those around her, the rest of her staff remains upbeat about the development. “Zombies are so hot right now, I think becoming one will be a big boost for her approval ratings,” Guttierez opined. She went on to say that a prominent political action committee in Arizona was considering doing a public exorcism of Zombie Giffords to raise money for her upcoming primary battle. Guttierez also noted that, “a zombie will probably do less damage than whatever Tea Party nutcase the governor would have appointed if she didn’t return.’

[RIGHT- Zombie Giffords joins a proud tradition of Zombie politicians from the Grand Canyon State.]

The transformation to undead life-form is not without its critics, as many Republican officials have questioned whether Rep. Giffords should keep her seat in Congress now that she is a zombie. They point out that the Constitution does not grant the right to serve in Congress to those who were once humans. Others have questioned whether Zombie Giffords is who she says she is, alleging that her death certificate is an elaborate forgery.

The decision for Zombie Giffords to make her first public appearance as part of a flash mob has also raised questions. Many have argued that a contrived song and dance routine will do little to assuage the public’s fear that she is more fit to eat the brains of her colleagues than to pick them. Others have pointed out that meticulously planned flash mobs miss out on the spontaneity that made them a popular sensation and that this one will inevitably suck. They also note that most of the people involved will have a background in dance or theater, so it will have undertones of being bitter that they weren’t better at sports or more popular. The flash mob will almost certainly also resent its parents’ insinuation that being a dancing zombie is a waste of four years’ tuition to NYU and it should consider looking for a real job.

As Zombie Giffords prepares choreography for her comeback, her staff is hard at work writing position papers to ease her transition back into Congress. Her top legislative aide, Carl Honda, has drafted a piece of legislation that would allow zombies to serve openly in the military. Supporters of the bill point out that zombies would make excellent soldiers because they are exceptionally hard to kill and have superhuman strength, both traits that are vitally important on the front lines. Honda was quick to note that there are other strategic advantages to allowing zombies to serve in the military, “If we do not allow zombies to serve in our military, which is the greatest military on the face of the earth, then you can be sure that the terrorists will be happy to recruit the disenchanted zombies to fight for them. That’s why repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell That You’re A Zombie is so important in protecting freedom.”

When reached for comment, President-elect-in-her-mind Sarah Palin spoke out against Zombie Giffords and flash mobs in general. She said that they are un-American, and promised that she was in the process of meticulously hunting down every member of the flash mob so she could rape them and crucify them on an upside-down cross. She also noted that she meant those threats figuratively, that she really just wants to beat them in a fair election, and that she is utterly shocked that anyone would interpret them differently.

Although public opinion on Zombie Giffords remains split, everyone seems to agree on one benefit to the situation: it will scare the piss out of that piece of shit Jared Loughner.