Parents’ Groups to Britney: “Die, Slut, Die!�

ith the November release of her third album, Britney, teen idol Britney Spears has set off a wave of controversy over the seemingly-erotic nature of the lyrics to her newest songs. Spears denies such allegations vehemently, pointing to her much-publicized and very occasionally believed virginity, and her total coyness in interviews, which she often conducts while being photographed riding a gigantic 18-foot dildo. “I think it’s important to stay a virgin until you get married,� Spears recently told The Straits Times of Singapore, wiping a long white streak of what appeared to be dried semen off her top lip. “It’s more special that way.�

Parents’ groups around the world are up in arms over Spears’ newest album, fearing the influence that the virginal exhibitionist might have over their teenage daughters, who often imitate Spears in dress, slang and in sleeping with members of ‘NSync. “Look, it wouldn’t be so bad if that little tramp would just admit that she’s given more blowjobs than Conair. That’s really the part that pisses me off, this whole ‘Who, me?’ act. I mean, Christ in a Corvette, who buys that crap? It might even be worth her influencing my daughter to get pregnant if they could just catch that little bitch in the act,� stated Connie Baustel, head of Mothers Against Bare Midriffs, a Baltimore-area Anti-Spears group.

“I’m tired of people with dirty minds always trying to read gross things into my songs. It’s sad that we live in a world where people think that even a song like ‘Split Me Open and Pound Me Raw’ is about sex,� said Spears when asked about her new album.

“I swear, you get a reputation in this industry and that’s all anyone sees when they look at you. I write a song about buying Christmas presents for my boyfriend’s parents, call it ‘I Wanna Do Your Whole Family,’ and all of a sudden my publicist’s phone is ringing off the hook. Talk about perverts,� Spears stated indignantly.

“I don’t know where these people get their ideas from. This album is about apple pie and fluffy kitties and meeting your pals down at the roller-rink. ‘Touch Me Where the Sun Don’t Shine’ is a really sweet song about first love. ‘Tongue My Anus’ is a song I wrote about my new puppy, Cuddler. You should see him, he’s just adorable,� claimed a totally straight-faced Spears.

The biggest uproar has been over the video for the album’s first single, “Knock Me Up, Knock Me Down,� which features a pregnant and black-eyed Spears performing a suggestive dance routine in front of a trailer home.

“Some people have no sense of art,� commented Spears when asked about the controversial song. “I mean, hell-o, obviously the song isn’t pro-domestic abuse.�

Others aren’t so sure, and some question the song’s lyrics: “Baby, dontcha wanna dance up on my face your love I can’t replace (repeat) / like that / you like it, huh? / I’ll carry your baby if you’ll give me your gravy / Get it, get it / Ohhh / Get it, get it / Ahhhh / Get it, get it / Ooooh / This feels good / Give me a smack and I don’t mean your lips / Show me you’re a man. . ./ Knock me up (heavy breathing) Knoooock me down / I deserve it / I can’t live without it.�

Spears’ album sales remain brisk despite the controversy, with a particularly strong showing in the creepy over-40 male demographic. And the Spears phenomena shows no signs of slowing, with a movie deal in the works and promotional tie-ins rumored for both The Disney Channel and Trojan condoms. For the time being, anyway, it looks like everything’s coming up Britney.

Spears’ fourth album, Cum-Hungry Buttfuck Doll, is due out in the spring.

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From mammoths to giant ground sloths, they buried caches of precious materials-- radiocarbon, obsidian, jasper, Idaho and Anthony T. Bouldurian, hundreds of miles from the Rosetta Stone. The violet-crowned Nero, spanning Cyclopean passers-by, "grave circle A" to the place of the Mycenae, picked up a mushroom from the ground. In the distant Acropolis, no roof over their heads, drinking the joy water over the course of 15 minutes, sat Wall Street millionaire E.F. Hutton and his wife, Postum heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. Our first clue that this was a tomb was when the Dane paused on his homeward journey to salute the Hybrid Human. To these lands came the corn men, deciphering Venus who stood and watched over their hours, designed and bound in traditional cloth. Beautifully illustrated in color... let's hear it for ancient women!

You will walk through time. Try again later.

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In honor of this week's Six Feet Under theme, and, what the hell, every person who has ever died, ever, we're going to use this column to take a look at how humans throughout history have dealt with the problem of what to do with dead bodies once the life spark has farted on out the door.

It has often been said that a lot can be learned about a culture by the ways in which they honor their dead, which is only really true for the few cultures throughout history that have buried their dead in a papier-mâché shells made from encyclopedia pages. For most other cultures, funeral customs just show how lazy they were feeling at the time.

For starters, in really ancient times, no real thought was given to burial formalities, mostly because it was just too much work to dig someone's remains out of a hunk of dinosaur poop.

After dinosaur times, but before Dinosaur Jr., man dealt with the death of his fellow man by getting far away from the dead body as fast as humanly possible, much like the way children deal with breaking a window or rolling a car into a lake. In fact, hauling ass away from death was an effective strategy for thousands of years. Some have interpreted this as evidence of early man's fear of death, but in all likelihood it was merely a smart move on early man's part, since funeral details are, without exception, a huge pain in the ass, and you can't get stuck with the bill if you're beating cheeks across the other side of the valley before anyone else has any idea what's happened.

This same sensible strategy is, I must point out, frowned upon as highly illegal or at least considerably rude in our own society, so I'll leave it to you to decide if we've really evolved in the right direction over the last several thousand years.

As time went by, man eventually figured out that death was nothing to fear, and that for hundreds of years he'd been hastily abandoning family members who were merely sick or sleeping. At this point, it didn't take man long to discover how fun death could be, and for a time the dead were valued as fun puppets and stunt people for early man's action-packed theater productions. But eventually man learned that keeping the dead bodies of family members around for group portraits or sex posed some daunting health concerns, and when man discovered bathing and finally washed off thousands of years of B.O., he realized that the dead fucking stank. This led to several hundred years of man burning his dead, for hygiene, cave heating, and general revenge purposes.

Eventually the Egyptians would come along, in Egypt anyway, and put a unique spin on death rituals thanks to their paralyzing fear of nudity. Mummification developed as a way for Egyptians to make sure their dead were never caught with their man-dresses down, and to prevent the embarrassment of accidentally seeing some long-dead asscrack. Eventually, the custom grew until it became common for mummification to begin in childhood, with parents taking their kids out in the fall to buy a new wrap for the school year, and making sure everyone in the family got enough preservatives in their diet. By the time the average Egyptian died at the age of 25, their bodies were ready for thousands of years of timeless, decomposition-free sleep.

By medieval times, the dead had come to be valued as an important military asset, and no army worth its codpieces would dare go into battle without a fleet of catapults loaded with plague-ridden corpses having their back. During these exciting times, it was within every person's reach to be a military hero in life, or in death if they were a giant pussy in life.

This timeline must, due to its brevity and my weak stomach, gloss over many other customs from around the world, like the Calatians who ate their dead, or the many native tribes around the world who believed the dead had cooties and therefore should only be porked with a condom. I think we can all agree that these dark times, much like haircuts in the 1970's, are best forgotten to the sands of time.

Equally forgotten, but much funnier, were the various foolish customs of the East regarding death, most of which involved honoring a person's death by killing even more people, and sometimes little yappy dogs. In India, a man's corpse was cremated along with his live wife, which has to explain the extraordinarily high rate of deathbed divorces among Hindus in those times. Fijians would strangle the deceased's slaves, wives, and friends, due to widespread confusion between funeral rites and concepts of mafia revenge. A nobleman's death in Japan was seriously bad news for the deceased nobleman's slaves, who were all expected to commit seppuku, which is sort of like sudoku but even less fun. In Africa, the death of a king pretty much meant everybody was fucked, so the Africans understandably kept a string of king look-alikes always on hand to step in and secretly take the king's place should he die, leading to a royal succession that went on like a bizarre game of genetic telephone.

As the world became more enlightened and funeral customs evolved, people would eventually stop killing each other to honor the dead. Unfortunately, the part about killing little yappy dogs also had to be thrown out with the bathwater.

In more modern times, our present-day funeral traditions gradually came about, mostly for reasons no less stupid than those given by our ancestors. Dressing all in black was originally a ploy to fool the spirits of the dead, who were expected to follow the living home and crash on their couches indefinitely, becoming a major pain in the ass. Wakes were originally attended by people who were waiting for the dead to come back to life, which helped the tribe identify its biggest optimists, who were reportedly the most delicious and the first on the list for when cannibalism would eventually swing back into favor on one of the inevitable 20-year cycles of public opinion about the rightness of eating folks. The custom of firing rifles at funerals dates back to the days when the living would try to spear the spirits of the dead at funerals, just for the hell of it, though modern technology is decidedly more effective for blowing ghosts all to shit than crappy old spears ever were.

Most modern funeral rites were designed to placate the dead, in the hopes that they'd take a hike and not hang around, scaring the crap out of everybody forever. In this, not much has changed to present day, as most funerals sill involve dressing a dead body up really nice, and people taking turns flattering the deceased and playing his or her favorite music as if they all enjoyed it. Basically, for the dead a funeral is like being Billy Mummy from that "It's a Good Life" Twilight Zone episode for about an hour, which isn't a half-bad consolation for later being blown all to shit by a nearby military funeral.

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