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Billy Graham Off to Fight Final CrusadeJune 27, 2005
Flushing Meadows, NY
Sloe Lorenzo
Billy Graham, golden-clad warrior of God, may or may not be in this armor and mail… though we’re leaning toward may not.
T
he scent of blood was thick in the air when withering mouthpiece for the Christian God Billy Graham met his legion followers in New York’s Flushing Meadows-Corona Park to bid them good-bye as he departed for the Middle East on this, his Final Crusade. Graham, long suffering from the many afflictions from God’s magic bag, vowed not to return alive until he had successfully converted the doomed to the one true faith.

“They will be saved, or their blood will stain their heathen streets,” said Graham, his voice failing and his body frail as the 70,000 true believers in attendance rained their approval down on him.

It marks Graham’s final attempt to convert the world’s worshippers of false idols, as the 86-year-old scion of the Lord, who started as a si...Read more...


Women have advanced enough to drive around in circles

Text-messaging helps degenerate spelling in a new, fun way

Iran divided by election into two America-hating factions

Canadian "Cannabis spray" may be gateway drug to pepper spray



December 22, 2003

Click for Biography

Imperial Weights and Measures

Last issue's tome on the metric system inspired more reader mail than any column since the My Friend Polio where Omar Bricks offered to sell naked pictures of my sister to the highest bidder. This time, however, readers weren't asking if I could beat Omar's price. They wanted to know how in the hell we came up with our current non-metric system of weights and measures in the first place. Good question.

Imperial weights and measures (known in modest England as "English weights and measures") range from the feet, gallons and pounds we're all familiar with to hundreds of freakish and forgotten variations that sound like whimsy straight out of Lord of the Rings. The next time somebody asks you for a chalder of coal or wants to know if you can spare a groat, you'll know you've either time-tripped into some medieval hell or else you're at the Renaissance Fair. Either way you're screwed. Likewise if someone offers you a minim of soy sauce or four roods of swampland. And if some wiseacre tells you you're twelve scruples overweight or uglier than a perch of limestone, punch him in the face first and ask questions about his outdated terminology later.

The system of Imperial weights and measures is not one defined by cold logic or mathematical nonsense, rather it's an innately human system based on how one innate human, King Edward I of England, thought things should be measured. Having grown up poor, Edward was the kind of insecure nuevo-rich king that...Read more...


º Last Column: Fuck the Metric System
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May 30, 2005

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Abducted by Beatniks

Good people, I have had one of those experiences that only happens to other people. I have been abducted! And not by aliens, as you might first suspect, and even hope. I was abducted by beatniks!

It starts like any other story of abduction. I found my car stalled, by myself out on a rural road, away from the bright lights of the city—even the stars themselves seemed dim that far out. I tried to start my car once again and only got that whiny "enh-enh" sound going. Immediately, I got out and began walking, naturally fearing a UFO would show up and give me a super-suit to fight crime with. I don't have that kind of time, bossy Neptunians. But something more incredible happened!

Beatniks, tooling around in their convertible jalopy, motored alongside me like something out of a Ginsberg dream. They chatted me up and asked me if I wanted a ride. Of course, I never take a ride with beatniks, like mama Finger always said. But they wouldn't take no for an answer. I found myself soon bound and gagged, tossed into the back of the jalopy like a sack of potatoes.

I couldn't imagine what they wanted with me. For a short time, I even imagined they were aliens disguised as beatniks, in order to draw slightly less attention to themselves—but that made no sense. I invited them to probe me, and though one of them mulled it over for a long time, none of them took me up on it. They instead seemed to concentrate on writing poems about me, asking me...Read more...


º Last Column: Marry All the Way
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Quote of the Day
“Fortune is a fickle bitch. No, wait… I'm thinking of my wife. That's right, my wife's the fickle bitch. Fortune is some transcendentalist concept.”

-Martoon Romeo
Fortune 500 Cookie
Quick, put these shoes on—walk around in them to get comfortable, if you need to. This week, fasten your seatbelt for the ride of your life. Straight over the goddamn cliff and everything. Sure, when you say a dog talks to you, everybody believes you, but make it a rhesus monkey and all of a sudden you're "crazy." Now here's Trip with the sports.


Try again later.
Top Reasons for Increased U.S. Ladder-Associated Deaths
1."Up/Down" directions never specified
2.Reckless Generation Y refuses to wear protective equipment
3.Ladder-deaths portrayed so glamorously in the movies
4.Frequent union strikes by staircases leaving human helpless to descend to higher landings except by already overcrowded ladders
5.Direct correlation to 50% increase in all-blind-cast productions of Our Town
Last IssueLast Issue’s Lead News Story

North Korea Pissed Their Real-Life Hunger Games Nowhere Near as Popular as Movie

View Past Columns
BY Peyton Hofschwitz
6/23/2003
D.M.Z.
"Your problem, Private Crunch," yelled the sergeant, "is that you think war is glory. That war is a game. Well, I've got news for you, and it's going to tickle you right down to your big fat cockles—war is hellish!"

Private Benji Hammond Krunk was not, however, surprised by the bold declaration by the screaming sergeant. He knew war was… hellish. He had not signed up for Viet Nam with any delusions about what he was getting into. He couldn't say why he signed up at all, which is to say he did not know.

Sgt. Vice insisted on yelling at all his new recruits the same way. He was the commanding officer now that everybody over him had been killed off by snipers, late-night machine gun fire, and occasional bear attacks. Vice was not really unlikable, despite what...Read more...

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