Jacked.

So I know y'all have been waiting on pins and needles for my 5,000-word dissertation on why Georgia's narrow, hideously sloppy win over Georgia Tech last week symbolizes the beginning of the end of hope for the Georgia program in much the same way that Sonny Corleone's assassination marked the beginning of the end of Michael's soul in the first "Godfather" movie, and I was really (not really) looking forward to getting right on that, but lo and behold, when I came home from lunch on Tuesday I looked to my right and saw a big dust-outlined square where my 42" plasma TV used to be. And there was an empty cubbyhole where my DVD player used to be, and an empty box where the Wii I'd just bought and hadn't even hooked up yet used to be . . . and absolutely nothing where my laptop used to be. Long story short, I got robbed, and it sucks.

The real shit of the deal is that just about everything I've ever written was on my laptop, which, barring a miracle, I'm never getting back. (Hope the crackheads enjoy the porn I had saved on there, at least.) But the other stuff can easily be replaced -- and will be, since I had renter's insurance with the full-replacement-cost rider. Right now this is a major pain in the ass, but in the grand scheme of things it's going to prove to be a minor annoyance.

All that said, I'm computer-less for the near future, so you're not gonna find a lot on here until that situation is rectified. Holly and I are fixing to do some computer shopping on Sunday -- she's trying to draw me over to the Apple side, and she may just succeed -- so I'm hoping this hiatus won't last too long. But a hiatus it is. Hang tight for a bit, and for God's sake keep y'all shit locked down. And if you come across a Dell Inspiron 6000 with the serial number DZYXS81, kick the guy who sold it to you in the balls, if you wouldn't mind.

Thiiiiiiiiinks.

OK, but seriously, whoever invented that should be shot.

Construction of the Friday Random Ten+5 has been delayed by technical issues (and a plate full of writing assignments that turned out to be a lot fuller than I anticipated), but in the meantime, here's a funny for your Friday morning:



Now, here's the part where you stop laughing: That "Cami Secret" thing is a real product. Whose sole purpose appears to be hiding cleavage. And not in any kind of straightforward way, either, but in the cruelest manner possible: "Oh, look at my low-cut top! You like these? WELL, TOUGH LUCK, ASSHOLE, because look at this lacy pin-on bra dickey I'm about to put on." Seriously, that's the kind of thing Mormons would look at and go, "OK, now that is a weird undergarment."

Also available from this same company: the Countertop Coffee De-Caffeinator and the Air Ferry basketball shoe, which is specially weighted to keep you from jumping too high.

I weep for our future.

"The witness asked not to be identified so that he does not anger the juggalos."

When the Juggalos came for the Eminem fans,
I remained silent;
I was not an Eminem fan.

When they came for the Osbournes,
I remained silent;
I was not an Osbourne.

When they came for the scientists,
I did not protest;
I was not a scientist.



When they came for the bisexual Asian strippers,
I remained silent;
I was not a bisexual Asian stripper.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to protest.

The Friday Random Ten+5 takes this job and shoves it.

By now I'm sure y'all have heard about the strange case of the JetBlue flight attendant who quit his job in dramatic fashion by throwing open one of the plane's rear doors, inflating the emergency escape slide, and sliding the fuck on out of there. There have been conflicting reports about what exactly transpired after Steven Slater's flight from Pittsburgh landed in New York, but from what I've heard, this dude is my god. First of all, if you've ever flown on a plane in your life you know that you're not supposed to get up and start yanking stuff out of the overhead compartment until the plane has "come to a full and complete stop," and if you're willing to start a fight with a flight attendant over said rule, you pretty much deserve whatever's coming to you.

Second, it was an awesome way to quit a job; I've had some jobs I wish I could've unloaded with one-tenth the flair that Slater demonstrated. I've never had a job in which I had immediate access to an inflatable escape slide, but still, I'm sure I could've improvised something, if I'd really had the balls to go through with it. Mental Floss magazine posted a list earlier this week of other panache-filled ways to tell your boss to pound sand; I thought I'd take this opportunity to add a few of my own with this week's +5: Five Other Awesome Ways To Quit Your Job Even If You're Not A Flight Attendant.



Get a bunch of your friends to dress up as FBI agents, storm into your office, and drag you out of there kicking and screaming. This is a good choice if you actually like some of your soon-to-be-former co-workers, because it'll give them the entertainment of endless speculation with one another about what the hell you actually did.



Hire a stripper to jump out of a cake in your boss's office holding a sign that says "[Your name here] quits." Again, fun for everyone in the office. Plus there's cake!



In the middle of a staff meeting, start shaking, and yell "I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" and run right through a window, then pull the ripcord on a parachute you've concealed underneath your clothing. (Note: You should probably wear bulky clothing. Also this only works if your boardroom is at least 50 floors up.)



Call a press conference and say that the best way you can accomplish your job is by not actually having it anymore.



Nail your boss's daughter (or son), write your resignation letter on his/her underwear, and send it to your boss. If you've got any photos of the act that you can sneak into your boss's next PowerPoint presentation, that might be even better.

If I ever quit doing this blog for good, rest assured I'll come up with a killer way of letting you jagbags know. Until then, here's the Ten:

1. Nouvelle Vague, "Human Fly"
2. The Beastie Boys, "Tough Guy"
3. Notorious B.I.G., "Get Money"
4. A Tribe Called Quest, "The Hop"
5. Gnarls Barkley, "The Boogie Monster"
6. The Clash, "Atom Tan"
7. Beck, "Tropicalia"
8. KRS-One, "Real Hip-Hop -- Part II"
9. Stereolab, "Rainbo Conversation"
10. Gorillaz, "M1A1"

Share with us, won't you, your own job-unloading fantasies, and your Random Tens, too, while you're at it.

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Admonishing Tiger, demolishing "Twilight," and wrapping up the week in hotness.

· I know it's been talked about endlessly over the past week, but I think it bears repeating: The above individual is what Tiger Woods cheated on. Tiger Woods looked at her, thought to himself, "You know, I'm Tiger Woods and that's not good enough for me, I should get to bang other ridiculously hot women besides her." So what I'm saying is that after Elin finishes working her dear hubby over with a nine-iron, every guy in America who's ever had to beg for nookie from even an average-looking chick should get in line behind her to give Tiger a boot to the nuts themselves, because . . . well, that's just being greedy in addition to being adulterous. To say nothing of stupid. Tiger, here's hoping she rips you for every last Escalade-crashin' dollar you have.

Maybe next time he should consult this.

· Apparently the Twilight book series goes off in directions even more fakakta than I could've ever imagined. A Twilight book so godawful that they don't even think they can film it? God deliver us. Seriously, if you're a woman under the age of 30 who's read any of those books as anything other than a goof or a dare from one of your friends, please e-mail me so that I can give you some suggestions as to actual works of literature you might un-rot your brain with. And if you're a human being over the age of 30 who's gone to see any of the movies in an un-ironic context, please kill yourself now. You're only going to mess up humanity's chances for survival when the "2012" apocalypse comes.

· All right, it was bad enough when the asinine Salahi couple attention-whored their way into a White House dinner to which they weren't actually invited. But lying about being a Washington Redskins cheerleader? Now you're messing with the integrity of one of the greatest cheerleading squads in the history of professional sport, ma'am, and that just isn't gonna sit with me. (Seriously, if you want to be an NFL cheerleader that bad, go be one of the Dallas Cowboys cage dancers.)


White House Party Crasher Lady, whatever the hell your name is, trust me, you can't roll with this.

· A season of unrelentingly awful handicapping at EDSBS comes to a merciful end with my final picks column of the regular season, which involved me bending the laws of time and space just so that I could punt the responsibility of picking games onto someone else -- in this case, my 2002 self, fresh-faced and (hopefully) clear-headed enough to not make any worse a hash of the job than I already have.

· You may be surprised to know that I didn't actually watch any of the Victoria's Secret fashion show on CBS the other night. Seriously, if I want to see scantily clad women, why would I settle for viewing them through the PG-rated filter of a major TV network's censorbots? I did come across this, though:



I'm as outraged by that clip as anything I've seen on the Internet. Listen, I'm all for free speech and everything, but there is no reason that the words "too tall" or "boobs too big" should ever be uttered, either to this poor girl or anyone else. Shame on you, People In Charge Of Model Selection. This will not stand!

· One last video, also from Warming Glow, concerning a TV show that looks way too awesome to ever see the light of day in the U.S. -- and indeed, it's actually being produced for BBC4. Herewith, "The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret" (put those headphones on, especially if you're at work, because the audio is highly NSFW):



Let me get this straight: I and millions of other people have been clamoring for the return of "Arrested Development" in some kind of form -- revival of the series, feature film, Internet shorts, anything -- ever since that show was cruelly killed off before its time a few years ago. So now they put Will Arnett and David Cross in a show together -- woohoo! -- and I can only watch it if I'm in Great Britain?

Not cool, TV gods. Y'all still owe me for the series finale of "Seinfeld" and the mere existence of "The Hills," and you're gonna pull this crap? I'm calling shenanigans. Shenanigans!

Monday Morning Cage Match XIX:Bubbles, balloons, and buffoons.

By now we've all heard about the little boy whom everyone thought had flown halfway across Colorado in a homemade balloon, only to find that the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by the kid's cravenly self-promoting dicklick of a father. Thus the "Balloon Boy" is almost sure to become a punchline or "Jeopardy!" answer lasting for the next, oh, seven minutes. But Balloon Boy's got to get in line behind a bunch of other kids who've been confined to similarly ungainly contraptions, and I can think of one right off the bat from a much-beloved "Seinfeld" episode. Get ready, America, for the brawl for it all -- Balloon Boy vs. Bubble Boy.

	Balloon Boy (Falcon Heene)	Bubble Boy (Donald Sanger)
Father's occupation	Reality-TV whore	Yoo-Hoo truck driver
WINNER: Bubble Boy
Mortal peril	Runaway homemade helium balloon flying as high as 15,000 feet	Immune deficiency in his blood
WINNER: Balloon Boy
Eponymous confinement most resembles	A flying Jiffy Pop tin	A clear plastic shower curtain
WINNER: Balloon Boy
First sign that something might be amiss	Dad called local TV stations before he called 911	Ordered George Costanza's girlfriend to take her top off
WINNER: Bubble Boy
Instrument of final downfall	Larry King	Misprinted Trivial Pursuit card
WINNER: Balloon Boy
Lasting quote	"You guys said that, um, we did this for the show."	"It doesn't matter. It's MOORS! THERE'S NO 'MOOPS'!"
WINNER: Bubble Boy
What have we learned?	Don't exploit children to promote your own fakakta endeavors	Don't try to take advantage of people at board games
WINNER: Balloon Boy

FINAL SCORE: Balloon Boy 4, Bubble Boy 3. I guess there's more romance to a giant fucking Jiffy-Pop-looking silver balloon than a plastic bubble.

The Friday Random Ten+5 would like to streamline your vocabulary just a bit.

While driving to Atlanta yesterday to spend the evening with the usual gang of miscreants, I heard a segment on NPR in which they talked about the word "whatever" being chosen as the most annoying term/phrase currently in use in the English language. I can see why people would be annoyed by it, but it doesn't really affect me that much. Probably because there are any number of other things that people say that drive me fucking crazy. "Like what?" you ask. Well, I'll tell you. This week's +5 is Five Things People Say All The Time That Are Way More Annoying Than "Whatever" And Make Me Want To Punch Them.



"a myriad of"
Since this word has been misused by a multitude of people who should know better, from college professors to CNN analysts, let me state unequivocally, for the record: You can't have a myriad of anything. Myriad is not a collective noun like a gaggle of geese or a flock of seagulls. It's an adjective. If you want to talk about Barack Obama facing myriad issues overseas or your corporation being involved in myriad research projects, that's fine, but referring to "a myriad" only makes me want to stab you. A lot of times.



"outside the box," "paradigm," "modalities," and all those other meaningless bullshit corporate words
I know I'm not revealing any deep, dark secrets by pointing out that the use of terms like "thinking outside the box" or "paradigm" or whatever basically signifies someone as a brain-dead corporate douchebag who's using utterly meaningless phrases to paper over the fact that he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. But it's not just corporate America anymore; this type of crap is trickling down to academia as well. I can't tell you how many times I, in my work at UAB, came across some researcher or physician who liked to talk about the new "modalities" of this, that, or the other thing he was working on. And I wanted to just stop them short and tell them, "Look, you're a top-level biomedical researcher. You have a doctorate degree. I already know you're smart; you don't have to whip out those bullshit words on me." I have never, ever come across an instance in which "modality" was used where "technique," "method," or even just a simple "way" would be perfectly acceptable. So cool it with the ten-dollar words, Lumbergh; you're not getting your money's worth.



"sexting"
This is one of many words that has been bandied about by everyone from panicky TV-news shows to NPR over the last year despite there being nary a shred of tangible evidence that any of the teenagers in question actually use it. Not that I'm somehow deeply in tune with current high-school lingo, but a 16-year-old guy is never going to say something like, "Dude, Jane just sexted me." He'd just say, "Hold on, I got a text from Jane, I'll be right back," leave, and rejoin his friends 15 or 20 minutes later with a big shit-eating grin and Jane's stank all over him. At least, that's how I usually handle it.



"gay agenda"
As much as broadening acceptance of homosexuality has stricken some of the really brainless, paranoid terminology out of even the radical right wing's lexicon of scare words, you still see this one tossed out there from time to time. Look, as a straight guy I realize I can only have so much insight into the gay lifestyle, but at any given time since my sophomore year of college or so, 1/4 to 1/2 of my friends have probably been gay or at least a little bi-curious, and not one of them ever had a copy of the "gay agenda" sitting around their houses. And believe me, if they did, I'd have found it: Anytime I go to someone's house for the first time, I pretty much go through that place with a fine-toothed comb. At the homes of my gay friends, I've found dozens of different varieties of hair product, equally numerous brands of self-tanner, copies of The Advocate, several cock rings, and a seven-disc special edition of "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" with 18 hours of additional footage and commentary, but never anything that looked like a "gay agenda." And if they were really going to infiltrate our schools and sell gayness to our kids, doesn't it seem like they'd need to have something like that, just to make sure everything's on the same page? (Not that you need to sell the "gay lifestyle," anyway. Terrific skin, superior fashion sense, and all the appletinis you can drink? That shit sells itself, son.)



"Totes," "natch," "ridic," or any of those other arbitrarily shortened words
If Paul Rudd's almost painfully awkward character in "I Love You, Man," didn't make it clear, let me do so myself: Guys don't shorten words like this. Hell, adults shouldn't shorten words like this. If your day is so overscheduled that you can't even spit out a couple extra syllables, it's time to sit down with a calendar and really start examining some of your time commitments. That weekly scrapbooking group you've been going to? Might be time to let it go, friend.

Got a problem with that list? Whatever, dude. Now, the Ten:

1. David Holmes, "Drexler's Apt -- Aftermath, Afternoon"
2. Orbital, "Acid Pants" (JDS mix)
3. Sting, "We'll Be Together"
4. Orbital, "Way Out"
5. U2, "Running to Stand Still"
6. Prodigy, "Everybody Is in the Place"
7. Underworld, "Born Slippy/.NUXX" (live)
8. Thom Yorke, "Cymbal Rush"
9. Rinôçérôse, "La Guitaristic House Organisation"
10. A Tribe Called Quest, "Scenario" (remix)

Your turn, English nerds: your most hated terms and phrases in the comments along with your Random Tens, plz kthxbai.

FML, Inc.

When last I took the unusual-for-me step of introducing you to some deep details of what was going on in my personal life, I had just gotten laid off from my job and was coming out of my fourth back surgery in two years. Well, sit the fuck down a minute, because the story's only gotten more exasperating from there.

I went in for my fifth and, God willing, final back surgery a couple weeks ago. Backing up a ways, I had some stainless-steel rods installed on my spine when I was 16 years old to treat my scoliosis, and in surgery #4 the docs discovered what they figured was probably the reason I'd been growing all these cysts one after another on my back: a little bracket connecting the rods had come loose and was wiggling around just enough to carve out a spot where bacteria could collect and my back could get all inflamed. Surgery #5 was to remove that little bracket, which I will take home and shoot repeatedly with a .45 whenever the pathologists get done with it, and I had my follow-up appointment earlier today; the neurosurgeon took my sutures out and said everything looked pretty healthy.

In between the two surgeries, though, I did manage to incur nearly $3,000 in car-repair bills on my 10-year-old Volkswagen from various parts randomly failing, breaking, or snapping off and flying into another part of the engine. Fortunately, my parents were kind enough to cover those for my still-unemployed ass. But, the day I came home from surgery #5, I arrived to find a summons jammed in my door: I'm being taken to small-claims court for nearly another three grand by a company in South Carolina I'd never even heard of.

Backing up some more: Two years ago my identity information somehow got stolen by some jagoff in southern California who proceeded to open more than a dozen accounts in my name, ranging from minor charge accounts with Target and Wal-Mart all the way up to a line of credit with CarMax, from whom he bought -- and I'm not making this up -- a Range Rover and a Mercedes-Benz CLK500. I only found out about it when companies started sending me letters asking me to clarify some of my identity information because some stuff I'd put on "my" credit application didn't match up with what was on my credit report; I promptly filed a police report and was even matched up with a detective in the Financial Crimes Unit of the Pasadena Police Department who was trying to track down the perpetrator. A few months later, the detective called to tell me the guy had been caught and the cars had been impounded, and I filed what I thought were all the proper reports and claims with the credit bureaus to start getting the fraudulent shit taken off my credit report.

Only it turns out that quite a lot of stuff didn't get taken off. One of the CarMax accounts, unbelievably, was still on there when I checked up on it again a few weeks ago. And apparently Wells Fargo was still trying to collect on the debt that the California miscreant had rung up even after he'd been arrested. When those efforts failed for obvious reasons, they sold the debt to an outfit in South Carolina called LVNV Funding LLC -- the company now trying to drag me into court.

Not long after getting the summons, I did a little research into LVNV Funding, and all it took me was five minutes of Googling to conclude that LVNV is about as sleazy a bunch of ripoff artists and extortionists as are allowed to operate legally in this country. Basically, companies like Wells Fargo take old debts they've given up on trying to collect and sell them to LVNV, who incurs minimal risk by purchasing the debt for pennies on the dollar but can reap a pretty nice reward if they can get the debtor to pay the amount in full. This they accomplish by siccing any one of a number of vaguely named subsidiaries (Resurgent, Astra, Venta, etc. etc. etc.) on the debtor through phone calls, letters, and, evidently, lawsuits designed to intimidate the debtor into paying up. Their M.O. appears to be sitting back and hoping that either a) the debtor is so scared he pays up right away or b) he ignores the eventual court summons, fails to show up for court and thus has summary judgment found against him, and then LVNV gets to go in and start taking his money or his stuff. Worse, while all this is going on they somehow manage to "re-age" your debt on your credit report, which basically means resetting the "last account activity" date so that the statute of limitations can't run out. As long as that bad debt is sitting on there, it's killing your credit record, so they're basically holding your formerly good credit score hostage until you pay up. (My own credit score has plummeted more than 70 points just in the last year.)

I've already done what apparently few people bother to do and responded to the lawsuit through the proper channels here in Birmingham. I gave LVNV's law firm here in Birmingham a full description of the identity-theft case and why I'm not responsible for the debt their client says I owe, and they say they're investigating it. But at least at the moment, I'm still scheduled to go into small-claims court three weeks from now and hope I can get this thrown out. We'll just have to see.

Meanwhile, I'm seeing a therapist for depression -- a condition that I'm realizing started many months before all this other shit started going down -- and that's been promising so far, but I still don't have a job. I've applied for more than 30 positions at universities, media outlets, and corporations all over the East Coast, and so far have received about a half-dozen definite rejections but no invitations for any interviews. I've managed to budget things out to where I can make it to the end of the year without starving even if I don't find a job during that time, but the latest wrinkle is that the company that purchased my apartment building a few months ago has been ramping up renovations, and there's a very good chance that I'm going to have to vacate my old, drafty, but beloved old apartment sometime in the next few months so that they can continue that process. Should that happen, I'm probably going to have to move in with my parents; between my unemployed status and the disaster area that people like LVNV have made of my credit rating, there's no way in hell any reputable real-estate company would lease an apartment to me.

Anyway, as ludicrous as this might sound, I didn't reveal all of this in an effort to seek anyone's pity; pity's nice every once in a while, I guess, but it doesn't accomplish a whole lot in actual practice. And in spite of the fact that these past two months have without a doubt been the worst two months of my life, I know I'm still better off than probably 99.999% of the people on the planet. (Would I rather be unemployed and getting sued, or having my limbs hacked off by the Taliban just because I tried to send my daughters to school? I'll take the lawsuit, thanks.) Rather, I make only two requests of anyone who might be reading this. First is that you keep me in your prayers -- doesn't have to be anything fancy, just something like "Please let Doug get an interview for one of those jobs he applied for at UGA" or "Please let Doug run into Erin Andrews at a bar and have her be just tipsy enough to think that going home with him is a good idea, that'd probably lift his spirits right about now" (because yes, it would). I know I'm a loathsome commie pinko leftist, but I do subscribe to the Judeo-Christian religious tradition and believe very fervently in the power of prayer, so if you've got any more pull with God than I do, it would not make me feel the least bit uncomfortable for you to use some of that on my behalf.

Second thing I ask is this: If any of you have had any run-ins with collection agencies or junk-debt collectors like LVNV Funding, NCO Financial, Fred Hanna, Unifund, or any of the numerous others who purchase old debt and then hound people into paying them off, or if you know of anyone who has, please e-mail me and tell me your story. I can already name two different federal credit laws LVNV has broken in their dealings with me so far, and from what I've gathered, they don't seem to be the least bit scrupulous about following those laws with anyone else, either. And once I've gotten LVNV off my back for good, I'd like to start talking with my state legislators, my state attorney general, maybe even my representative to Congress about the hell that these companies cause people and how badly we need some kind of additional legislative safeguards to ensure that they aren't permitted to basically extort money from people who don't owe them a dime to begin with. Maybe this will be the kind of crusade through which I'll find my life's greater purpose or something, but even if it's not, something still needs to be done about these junk-debt collectors, and I'd be happy to listen to anything you want to tell me that might help.

Anyway. I'm sorry if all this has bored you half to death, but if my presence on this blog has seemed a little sparse lately, this is pretty much why. I'm going to dig my way out of this one way or another, so just bear with me here and join me in hoping and praying for the best. And when all this is over, and I have a new job and a new apartment and a patched-up credit score, you're all invited to come over and get stinking-ass drunk with me. I'll keep you posted on when that shindig is going to go down.

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Illicit affairs, meth-cooking Vikings, and other examples of people being s%$#ty to one another.

· Courtesy of a Twitter (a Tweet? I've been doing Twitter since before Christmas and I still don't know what the fuck these things are called) from the illustrious Dawgter Feelgood (a/k/a DAve), World War III propaganda posters:



· EDSBS's Orson Swindle became Public Enemy No. 1 for a while in the greater Shreveport-Bossier City metropolitan area for this column on Shreveport and the Independence Bowl. (Seriously, peruse that comments thread for a spell. I'm pretty sure there are a couple thinly veiled death threats in there somewhere.) Today, though, he gets at least a small measure of vindication:

In a mother-daughter fight that included pushing, shoving, wrestling, biting and wielding a pan, a woman kicked her mother unconscious and then defecated on her while she was lying on the floor, Bossier Parish sheriff's deputies said.

"It was a donnybrook," Lt. Ed Baswell said of the Tuesday morning brawl at a residence on Chelsy Drive in Benton.

The women -- Destinie Rechelle Duvall, 37, of Willis, Texas, and Patricia Ann Hacker, 62, of Benton were treated at LSU Hospital and then booked into jail.

Sheriff's deputies went to the house after Hacker's 12-year-old granddaughter called 911.

Deputies said they weren't sure what started the fight, but they said the daughter knocked her mother out of a chair and then kicked her in the head, causing her to lose consciousness. While Hacker was unconscious, Duvall defecated on her back, Baswell said.

OK, on the one hand -- and clearly the bigger of the two hands in this situation -- that's unspeakably horrible. But on the other hand, it kind of makes sense as a strategic move. Go big or go home, right? I mean, you're committed enough to this fistfight that you know you're probably ending up in jail one way or the other, you might as well go in there with a story that lets the rest of the inmates know you're not to be trifled with. "What are you in for?" "Robbed a guy at knifepoint." "What are you in for?" "Broke into someone's car and stole a purse and an iPod." "How about you?" "Beat my mom unconscious and then took a shit on her." "Whooooaaaa." That's a woman who doesn't have to watch her back in the prison cafeteria line.

· Yours Truly has two contributions to Dr. Saturday this week: a new installment in the Better Know an Embattled Coach series, this one focusing on Colorado's Dan "GO PLAY INNERMURALS, BROTHER!" Hawkins, and a rumination on bowl games' cockroach-like ability to survive economic catastrophe, nuclear armageddon, what have you. But I don't think Holly will mind if I point out my contributions to her preview of the 2009 UAB Blazers. In particular, I would like to claim credit for directing the Dr. Saturday readership to our UAB Magazine feature on the strange, random history of UAB's mascot.

Personally, I think our dragon mascot is teh r0xx0rz -- the raging-ass fire-breathing helmet/midfield logo more so than the cuter, kid-friendlier fuzzy sideline version -- but even if you don't share that opinion, you have to admit it's a step up from Blaze the Viking:



Supposedly this iteration of the mascot got the ax because he scared little kids. I don't personally find him that frightening at first glance; I think he looks more like Burger King's ne'er-do-well younger brother who's been in and out of jail for a string of petty assaults and public-intoxication charges, finally got a steady job on a construction site but got hurt and has been cocooning in his trailer ever since, collecting workers' comp and brewing up the occasional batch of crystal meth with his good buddy Purdue Pete. In that sense, though, I guess there's a sense of incipient murderousness about him, like if you were taking a walk in the woods and stumbled across his meth lab he'd really fuck you up. Nevertheless, I think we're doing fine with the dragon right now, thanks.

· Finally, we have South Carolina governor Mark Sanford. This is the guy, you'll recall, whose most recent political claim to fame was wanting to refuse hundreds of millions of dollars in stimulus money that had been tagged for his state. Now he admits an extramarital affair with a chick from Argentina, and it's been one full day since this revelation and nobody's made a "stimulus package" joke yet? Come on, people. You disappoint me.

Shut it down.

We're done, people. It's over. We had a good run, but after 233 mostly inspiring years, American culture, exceptionalism, and society are over. And it didn't happen because of Barack Obama, it didn't happen because of the Iraq War, it didn't even happen because of the Hummer H2 -- it happened because of this.



I know I've made fun of the Snuggie before, but compared to this little invention, the Snuggie is movable type; it is the fucking internal-combustion engine. That's right, America -- when the sarcastic question is posed "What, you need someone to help wipe your ass for you?", our answer is now apparently "Yes." We have become so lazy and disconnected that the act of wiping now requires a middleman. Coming soon, the Comfort Pee! Because nobody should have to endure something as icky and undignified as holding one's own penis while trying to urinate!

That's my favorite part of the ad, by the way, the part where the older lady talks about maintaining one's "dignity." Yes, because if there's one concept I associate with an ass-wiping wand, it's dignity.

So anyway, last person out of the country, turn out the lights. And please, please, let's all promise never to tell David Cross about this.

Let he who has not employed an underage exotic dancer cast the first . . .

Yeah, uh, remember all the times I made fun of Akron for not knowing how to run a strip club?

Well, it looks like my home state has its own problems:

A man and woman were charged with contributing to the deliquency of a minor Friday night after Gwinnett County police busted an alleged illegal strip club operating out of a Lilburn bar with dancers as young as 15 years old.

The owner of Lucky Billiards on Indian Trail-Lilburn Road, Jay Young Kim, was arrested, along with a dancer, Whitney Faith Blackburn.

Good job, Gwinnett County, good fucking job indeed: You've brought yourself down to Akron's level.

My sister's been telling me about this show where celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay swoops in at a failing restaurant and helps them figure out what they're doing wrong and how to improve. Maybe the Beeb needs to start up a similar program for strip clubs. Pamela Anderson or Joe Redner could go in, take stock of the establishment, and offer critiques like "Your girls' costumes are rather cumbersome for dancing" or "The chairs around your stage aren't positioned for optimum tipping" or "Hey, genius, there's a FUCKING FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD giving lap dances by the cigarette machine."

Or, hell, I could host it. I like to think I know a thing or two about this stuff.

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN AKRON?!?!

Remember this story I linked to about the 52-year-old stripper in Akron who got jumped by one of her co-workers? Looking for a story from the complete opposite end of the spectrum? Have I got a deal for you!

AKRON -- Police say a 14-year-old girl was dancing topless at an Akron strip club when they raided the bar and arrested four exotic dancers.

The girl has been placed in protective custody. . . .

Police Lt. Rick Edwards says officers saw some dancers have contact with customers, but not the 14-year-old. He says the club is not licensed as a sexually oriented business.

The girl has been placed with Summit County Children Services.

Ahem.

ATTENTION, STRIP-CLUB OWNERS OF AKRON, OHIO: THE APPROPRIATE AGE FOR A STRIPPER IS EIGHTEEN (18) TO THIRTY-FIVE (35). THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO FEATURE ANY EXOTIC DANCERS WHO FALL OUTSIDE THAT AGE RANGE. IT CAN ONLY LEAD TO LEGAL PROBLEMS, PHYSICAL HARM, AND/OR PUBLIC HUMILIATION. REPEAT: EXOTIC DANCERS SHOULD BE AGED 18 TO 35. NO EXCEPTIONS. THANK YOU.

OK, I'm done now.

(Hat tip: With Leather.)

What happens in Akron . . .

Some stories make me sad because there are so many jokes and I can never make them all . . .

AKRON, Ohio — Ohio police say a 52-year-old woman was attacked on her first day as an exotic dancer by a jealous co-worker wielding a stiletto heel.

Akron police Lt. Rick Edwards says the woman was assailed Friday night by a co-worker who didn't think the club needed more dancers. Police say one of the dancers took her stiletto and repeatedly struck the woman in the face as she walked into the basement dressing room.

The woman was treated at a hospital and received seven staples.

. . . so I'll simply say this: If you are so insecure in the continued stability of your exotic-dancing job that the presence of a 52-year-old on your club's payroll threatens you, maybe you should be the one to quit.

A million thanks to my college friend Andrea, who's getting a basket of mini-muffins for Twittering this.

Hey, that's great! I'm thinking about running for attorney general of pancakes.

Once a badass, Chuck Norris finally takes one too many roundhouse kicks to the head.

(Hat tip: Sullivan.)

The Friday Random Ten+5 embarks on its latest futile enterprise: trying to make sense of the Catholic church.

This may not be of interest to anyone but us Catholics, and even then it may not be interesting to Catholics in the United States, but last week Pope Benedict XVI rescinded the excommunication of four ultraconservative bishops. And at least one of them, Richard Williamson, is a bit of a head-scratcher. He's vehemently anti-woman and anti-gay, which sadly are not the least bit rare in the modern church hierarchy, but he's so anti-female he doesn't even think women should wear pants, he's a 9/11 Truther, and -- the piece de resistance -- he's a Holocaust denier. Yahtzee!

Now why, pray tell, would the Pope go out of his way to bring a douche like that back into the church? The NYT article says it was to "[reach] out to the far-right" of the church, but there have to be less embarrassing ways of doing that. No, there's got to be some deeper (or perhaps not-all-that-deep-at-all) motive here, and I'm gonna find out what it is. Thus this week's +5 is Five Reasons Pope Benedict Might've Lifted Richard Williamson's Excommunication:



Williamson has a PlayStation 3 and Benedict wants to use it
The Vatican has a Wii, which is pretty awesome, but you can't play Guitar Hero or Guitar Hero II on it, and Benedict doesn't have the instrument attachments anyway. But Williamson has all that stuff, and as someone who's played Rock Band with all the peripherals, I can attest that it's pretty awesome. And I can see how it would be tempting, even to a spiritual leader who's supposed to be above all that stuff.



Williamson has a hot cousin
Again, I can see the temptation here, celibacy notwithstanding. This has been a staple of sitcom plots since the beginning of time, and it's not like anyone in North America cares what the Pope does in his private life to begin with, as long as he's not molesting kids. But she better be real hot to let a Holocaust denier back into the fold is all I'm saying.



Benedict likes Williamson's British accent
Say "I believe there were no gas chambers." Now say it in a British accent. Still sounds crazy and anti-Semitic, but now at least you sound like you were well-bred before you went off the deep end, doesn't it? Maybe that's what reeled Benedict in. If that's all he was after, though, I'd still rather he just start hanging out with Keira Knightley or Catherine Zeta-Jones or something.



Williamson works at a Starbucks so he has an employee discount and he promised Benedict free Starbucks
I dated a Starbucks barista for a (very brief) little while, and during that time I could walk into my local store and get a cafe mocha for fifty cents. A venti mocha, son. So again, I can see the temptation here. Supposedly you can't get a decent cup of coffee in the Vatican to save your life, and this is smack in the middle of espresso country, for crying out loud.

Williamson has pictures of Benedict doing something embarrassing
This is the obvious explanation, of course. But what would be embarrassing enough to warrant something like this? I mean, we already know Benedict was in a Nazi youth organization when he was a little kid and that he favors bright-red Gucci shoes. But what could it be? Certainly with all the controversy over pedophile priests in the last few years, if Benedict had been caught with a boy, we'd know about it. Maybe it was with a girl? Maybe . . . no.



Williamson caught Pope Benedict with Sarah Silverman. It all makes so much sense now.

As Denis Leary once said, "I'm goin' to hell for that bit. And you're allll comin' with me." On that note, the Ten:

1. Dr. Octagon, "Dr. Octagon"
2. Nancy Griffith, "Lookin' for the Time (Working Girl)"
3. OMD, "Electricity"
4. David Holmes, "My Mate Paul"
5. Sting, "All This Time"
6. Dead Milkmen, "Takin' Retards to the Zoo"
7. Pet Shop Boys, "West End Girls" (DJ Hell remix)
8. Richard Cheese, "Sunday Bloody Sunday"
9. OMD, "If You Leave"
10. Pet Shop Boys, "Psychological" (Ewan Pearson vocal remix)

I believe that's the first recorded instance in Internet history of a Friday Random Ten with two OMD songs in it -- mark it down in your diary, folks. But first, throw your own Random Tens (and Pope Benedict conspiracy theories, if you have any) in the comments.

"I'm a Slave 4 U," we hardly knew ye.

Oh, Britney. Everything was going so well for you -- hair was all grown back, you were wearing a bra again, you'd lost some weight, you actually managed to go an entire holiday season without anyone making a tearful phone call to DFACS or getting put on an indefinite 5150 hold . . . and then you had to go and release this stupid thing:

. . . what will [radio stations] do with a new single from a major artist that doesn't actually contain a four-letter word, but rather spells it out in a not-so-subtle way? That dilemma is beginning to dawn on top-40 radio programmers across the country as the third single from Britney Spears' latest album, "If U Seek Amy" starts to make its way to the airwaves. . . .

Like several programmers we talked to, Patti Marshall, program director at Cincinnati's Q102, said she had not yet been told that "Amy" was the next single from Circus...Asked if she would play "Amy" if it came to her as a single, Marshall said likely wouldn't. She likened its chorus (which she has not heard) to "a little boy in sixth grade doing arm farts."

The first thing I thought of after reading this story was that old joke: What's the mating call of the sorority girl? "I am sooo drunk!" What's the mating call of the ugly sorority girl? "I said, I am sooooo drunk!" Just as there's a certain type of girl who feels the need to wear a Bedazzled "Hottie" T-shirt to the mall -- uggos -- there's a certain type of pop starlet who feels the need to release a song called "If U Seek Amy": a played-out has-been who ranks just below Lindsay Lohan and just above LaToya Jackson on the average 17-year-old's list of famous people he wants to do. I mean, I'm about the most tasteless person I know -- by way of example, I bristled at the above radio programmer's insinuation that arm farts weren't funny -- and even I don't think "If U Seek Amy" is clever. (Also, I've slept with Amy, and trust me, she's an absolute corpse in the sack.)

Time for Britney to hang up the mic, buy a matronly but tasteful pants suit, and get a syndicated daytime talk show before someone releases an "answer song" titled "Dee, I See Kay," as in "No, not even with Kevin Federline's."

Back in the saddle, the Friday Random Ten+5 is kicking names and taking ass. Wait . . .

After hitting the wall a little while back, the Friday Random Ten+5 is back with a vengeance with Five Things That Have Been Annoying The Crap Out Of Me At Multiple Instances Over The Last Few Weeks. Enjoy.



"Pundants"
This one has been going on for nearly the entirety of the presidential campaign season -- people saying "pundants" when they really mean "pundit." Even pundits themselves, supposedly intelligent people who are brought on TV to say trenchant things, are doing it. Note to everybody both on TV and off: There is no such thing as a "pundant," just as there is no such thing as a "nuke-you-ler" weapon or the word "irregardless." Stop mumbling.



Internet video that automatically starts when you open a page
When it comes to Internet video, I'm staunchly pro-choice: I want to choose whether I want to watch a certain video, rather than the site automatically starting it for me and shoving it in my face the minute I open the page. I can't tell you how many times, over the course of football season, I've opened up a game recap or something on ESPN.com to research something for the blog, and all of a sudden I start hearing voices and music that aren't coming from the TV and I'm like, "DAMMIT, WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!?" And it turns out it's another one of those little ESPN highlight videos, starting right up without letting me get a word in edgewise. Seriously, guys, enough. I'm a savvy Internet user, I know how to push the "play" button. And don't even get me started on the porn sites that do the same thing.



Joe the Plumber
OK, we get it, you're a plumber. Well, you're not a licensed plumber, but we can't find anything else about you to hang your hat on, and you're built and live in Ohio and kind of have that tough-guy Vic Mackey look about you, so we'll turn you into our symbol of what "Joe Six-Pack" looks like and trot you out like a show dog all over the country without first bothering to check whether you have anything even remotely original or insightful to say. (Actually, that's pretty much the same level of thought that went into the selection of Sarah Palin as VP, so it's starting to make a little more sense.) And now it turns out Joe's just a big political pussy, throwing out accusations like how Obama will bring about "the death of Israel" and then punting when asked to explain exactly why he feels that way. I'm no more interested in what Joe the Not-Actually-Plumbing-Anything-At-The-Moment Plumber has to say than I am in anything Paris Hilton has to say, although in its own way, I guess that's a valuable lesson right there: that salt-of-the-earth blue-collar workers from Middle America can be every bit as vapid and worthless as airheaded blond Hollywood heiresses. I'm really glad we finally got that straightened out.



Unflushed toilets
I can't tell you how many times I've walked into the public restroom on my own floor in my own office building and found a big ol' nasty brown trout or the unflushed remnants of same in one of the commodes. Flushing a toilet is not a lengthy, involved process, people. If you can open a car door, click a mouse, or masturbate for five seconds, congratulations, you've mastered the dexterity necessary to operate a modern-day flush toilet. The people who annoy me the most are the ones who are afraid of touching any part of a public commode because "It's gross and I'll get my hands dirty" -- the only reason that would be a concern for you is if you weren't planning on washing your hands before you left the restroom anyway, in which case you're the dirty, disgusting restroom user, not anyone else. It's almost enough to make me wish people had to sign in to use a bathroom stall so that if someone walks in and sees a floater, they could just check the last name on the list and then put a reprimand in that guy's personnel file.



These shoes
A couple weeks ago my sister sent me a link to the atrocities pictured above, which combine the two dumbest recent trends in footwear -- Crocs and furry mukluk-style boots -- into one ass-ugly pair of shoes. So what would you call them? Mukluk Crocs? Or Croc mukluks? Either way, I can only hope that they're aimed at airhead pre-teens who are too dumb to know better, because if I see anyone over the age of majority wearing these, I might have to take 'em down. Just long enough to pull their shoes off and burn them, of course.

Hooray, I'm glad I got all that off my chest. And now the Ten:

1. Pet Shop Boys, "Flamboyant" (Scissor Sisters silhouettes & shadows mix)
2. David Holmes, "Radio 7"
3. Talk Talk, "Talk Talk"
4. Gorillaz, "19-2000"
5. The Chemical Brothers, "The Sunshine Underground"
6. Genesis, "Throwing It All Away"
7. Crystal Waters, "Gypsy Woman (She's Homeless)"
8. Sting, "This Cowboy Song"
9. R.E.M., "Let Me In"
10. The Roots, "The Spark"

Put your own Random Tens and/or list of grievances in the comments, folks, and enjoy the weekend.

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Billboard semiotics, the spread of the "douchewattage" meme, inappropriate T-shirts, and TV FAIL.

· OK, I got the satire behind the Barack Obama New Yorker cover, but can somebody 'splain this to me?



Don't vote for a Democrat . . . why, exactly? Because then we might not have any more of those awesome nation-unifying events like 9/11?

(Actually, the song he's hawking on his Web site might actually be more offensive -- not to my sense of decency, but to my musical sensibilities.)

· Ostensibly, this quiz is to determine how close you are to being "that guy," but let's call a spade a spade and describe it as it really is: a quiz to determine how much of a douche you are. It even gives your results in terms of temperature, as if to convey how much douche-energy you're giving off . . . hmmmm, where have I heard that one before? My temperature, in case you were wondering, is regrettably "hot"; I don't use a sleep mask or noise-cancelling headphones on planes and I don't describe things as "sick," but I do quote movies obsessively, and as for the thinking-Hayden-Panettiere-is-hot question, well, I think we all know where I stand on that one.

· That said, at least I'm not this guy:



It just so happens that that picture was taken at a police station -- where its subject, Daniel Allen Everett, was taken after attempting to set up a sexual tryst online with someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl. My only regret is that Chris Hansen evidently wasn't there to comment on his shirt. (Which, given the circumstances, shouldn't it have read "World's Greatest Daddy" instead?)

· I'm with Blutarsky on this one -- you do a list of Georgia's top 10 athletes of all time and you don't put my boy Champ Bailey on it?


Pimping: As a general rule, not easy, but easier for some than for others.

· First Bill O'Reilly, now Laura Ingraham . . . man, you right-wingers seem to have some problems with what we call "the TV." After watching the linked video, you can kind of see why her show was cancelled after a run of only three weeks; it was probably for her own safety -- some of her "handlers" you can see in the background there look as if they're compiling mental lists of where they might hide her body.

But what's even funnier is the fact that when she's not complaining about something or grouching at a producer, she spends the rest of the video looking like this:



Close your mouth, Laura. This is national television, not special ed.

But still, you're a treasure. Don't ever change.

· As for conservatives who don't come off like complete 'tards, my Tent City homeboy Josh has gotten some major linkage for his "explosion-by-explosion account" of "Die Hard," which celebrated its 20th anniversary this week. All things considered, if you've got to be obsessed with a particular movie, that's not a bad one to be obsessed with.

Which reminds me: Just when I'd gotten done pissing my pants with anticipation over my iPhone, I get to piss my pants all over again with anticipation for "The Dark Knight," which opens this weekend. If you're in Birmingham and want to join a big group of grown men and women who have been reduced to giggling pre-teens when we go see it on Sunday, holler.

The inevitable.

You read a headline like this and you're like, "Oh, good lord, I can't believe . . . " And then you stop yourself, think for a second, and you're like, "No, on second thought, I totally can."

Not that I'm judging, but it just seems like, at a time when gas is up to $4 a gallon, one of my first orders of business would be to find a free way to look at titties on the Internets. You look hard enough, I'm sure you can find one.

In which I feel better about myself (and come up with a new unit of measurement).

My record of failure with women is long and rich enough that ascribing it to just one or two root causes would be facile and denial-riffic, but I'm fairly confident that my inability to leave good voice-mail messages is a contributing factor. When you're calling a woman whose phone number you've just recently procured, that first voice-mail message is like a 30-second sales pitch that has to be delivered every bit as carefully as any political campaign ad, because even the slightest misstep or false note can convince her that she doesn't really need to call you back. And given that it's just you talking, as opposed to an actual conversation between the two of you, you're kind of on the spot. That pressure has caused me to make just about every mistake in the book when it comes to leaving messages -- i.e. rambling along with unnecessary information, desperate tone, coming up with bad ideas for things to do, awkward attempts at self-deprecating humor, and the like; basically, it's kind of like a 30-second version of this blog, only not funny.

But not even on my worst, crankiest, and/or most nervous day have I ever been as godawful as this guy (no video, audio SFW, though not SFFIH, or Safe For Faith In Humanity):



There are actually two explanations for this behavior, with the first and most obvious being that, as the title of the YouTube suggests, this guy is simply a titanic douche. Such a douche, in fact, that the sheer intensity of his douchiness could theoretically be harnessed to provide an alternate energy source, which of course would be a great boon in this era of $4-a-gallon gas; maybe you'd attach his douche-spew to a turbine and take advantage of it hydroelectric-style, or maybe you'd simply use the energy from his ego to heat water and harness the kinetic energy from the resulting steam, more like a nuclear power plant. I'm not a scientist so I don't know which of those would be more efficient. But either way, in theory the douchewattage (DW) from these two phone messages alone would be considerable. If, say, a popped collar creates 1 DW of energy, and ownership of a Hummer H2 is 1,000 DW (or 1 kilodouchewatt), then these messages combined would create something on the order of 500 kDW.

The other explanation, though, is that he's straight-up mentally ill -- which, if the info on the YouTube page is true and this guy is indeed the now-infamous "Dimitri," might actually be more accurate.

Either way, I'm feeling a lot better about myself today.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)