Quit trying to kill me, people who save money

American woman in perfect psychological health

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/science/24tier.html?ref=science
There are crazy people out there in the world. Some of them are schizophrenic, or sociopaths, or people with OCD, or people with OCD, or people with OCD. But no one can top the motherfuckers the nytimes recently unearthed in the name of public safety: people who can't stop not spending their money on crap.

As I need hardly point out, spending all your cash plus some other cash that AIG loaned you signifies to enemy combatants that you are an American with American values, ie. an inherent hatred for budgeting and soccer. But to some crazy people, living among us at this very moment, saving money is a growing, irresistable urge, an urge that can be attributed to nothing but: a psychological condition. Revel in the logic below:

The victims won’t evoke much sympathy — don’t expect any telethons — but their condition is real enough to merit a new label. Consumer psychologists call it hyperopia

Ah, yes. A term has been invented for it, therefore it is in no way completely made up. Sorry, did I say "invented"? The article goes on to explain that hyperopia is "the medical term for farsightedness." So by "new label," clearly they meant "label that already exists to describe a legitimate medical phenomenon and here is being used in a metaphorical and wholly unscientific manner." Got it.

Anyway, the reason these tragic victims suffering from "Farsighted Disease" are having so much trouble spending money like sane human beings is that they are trying to look at the trivial long-term benefits of holding onto a few bucks. You know, stupid shit like being able to send your kids to college eventually, or making sure your home isn't foreclosed on someday, or being able to bargain your way onto a Chinese Rescue Freighter when society collapses in like 6 months-ish.

In, "Oversaving: A Burden for our Times, " which I think might've been more appropriately titled "Oversaving: The Greatest Burden for our, or any Time," we learn that these are the kind of petty concerns you will one day regret as you lie dying,

When you’re on your deathbed, how much time will you spend wistfully thinking, “If only I’d bought the smaller plasma TV. . . .”?

Seriously, what a ridiculous thought. First of all, when I die, I certainly expect it to be on some sort of thatched flooring, since my bed will have been repossessed after my lifetime of glorious, worthwhile spending. Secondly, as I lie on my deathfloor, I will definitely be thinking "I'm so glad I bought a really huge plasma TV!"

Now someone please do the nation a favor and invent some kind of prescription pill, ideally an expensive one, to treat this terrible affliction. I don't want these people out roaming the streets, casually pretending to be Normal Brained, hoping no one notices that they are only window shopping.

Quit trying to kill me, First Lady guns

Michelle Obama threatens to crush a child

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08dowd.html?_r=1&scp=8&sq=michelle%20obama&st=cse
Thank you, Maureen Dowd, for shining the light of truth and hysteria on yet another great threat to our nation: Michelle Obama's refusal to wear cardigans. I really thought you were reclaiming your throne as a muckraking journalist with the Arm Expose of the Century until you do that shamefaced back-pedal thing toward the end of your article and are all like "But I mean..... I'm cool with it."

Apparently, according to Maureen, there are quite a few Silly, Prudish Old People on The Hill who, unlike Captain Dowd of Team Cool, who is totally hip to this new "arm-baring" trend, are foaming-at-the-mouth enraged because Michelle keeps parading around sleeveless and distracting the shit out of everyone with her sick arm muscles. People are trying to legislate around here! It is taking way longer to bankrupt everyone than originally expected! At this rate there will still be people eating in restaurants at the end of the year! Restaurants!

Dowd's article begins with a promising thumb of the nose at the so-called "establishment" with a very informative and news-worthy introduction explaining that, even though Good Writers who write the Rules of Good Writing claim you should never ever start an article with a taxi scene, I'M MAUREEN DOWD AND I'M STARTING WITH TAXIS. Basically, she is the mavarick of American journalism and will go down in history for boldly embracing cliches when everyone else said that it was lazy. However, it's all downhill after that because Dowd, intimidated into silence by the huge and murderous biceps of Michelle Obama, just sort of wishy-washes around about how some other people she knew were totally appalled by Michelle and her J. Crew
whoredom.

In the taxi, when I asked David Brooks about her amazing arms, he indicated it was time for her to cover up. “She’s made her point,” he said. “Now she should put away Thunder and Lightning.”
I’d seen the plaint echoed elsewhere. “Someone should tell Michelle to mix up her wardrobe and cover up from time to time,” Sandra McElwaine wrote last week on The Daily Beast.

However, unlike 2 of Maureen's VIP BFFs (who have oh-so-clever nicknames for the Death Appendages, by the way), plus probably like basically everyone else in the entire DC metro area, who quite rightly have their High-waist White Cotton Hanes in a twist about the obscene First Lady Strip Show, Maureen wants us all to know:

Her arms, and her complete confidence in her skin, are a reminder that Americans can do anything if they put their minds to it.

These days it kind of seems like everything remotely Obama-related reminds the press about Americans being able to work and do stuff. Barack attempting to do his job? Inspiring. Sasha and Malia being children? Inspiring. Michelle having arms that connect to her body? Inspiring. I doubt Maureen Dowd is going to find those arms so commendable when they are crushing the Op-Ed staff of the nytimes for publishing another article called "Obama's Complete Failure to Reverse Time and Undo Eight Years of Stuff that Already Happened."

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I'm guessing that, because President Edgy initiated the Slightly Less Overpriced Clothing Revolution by shopping at stores important people nevah evah used to shop at, he and the missus can afford a few blazers. Put those sculpted arm-beasts on lock, Obams, before she demands more education funding.

Quit trying to kill me, fetal shark conservationists

Note to animals that hate going extinct: don't make this face.

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http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=artificial-uterus-could-save-grey-n-2009-02-18
When Charles Darwin first published his theory of natural selection, public opinion was divided. At first, people were like "hey, so you're saying weaker things die, while stronger things pass on their traits to the generations that follow? Psh, seems kind of obvious." Then some other people got wind of it on perezhilton and were like, "I won't read or attempt to understand that paper but it is definitely wrong." Thus began a dispute that rages to this day between people who have taken high school biology, and people who dropped out of high school to study the biology of their second cousins.

However, whether you're an avid advocate of evolution education or a diehard disciple of divine design, we can all agree that, when a species can no longer hack it survival-wise, nature must take its course and allow some new, better species, like the Secretly Not a Ladybug or the chicken nugget, to take its place in the ecosystem. Now some bleeding heart conservationists, who apparently desire to have literal bleeding hearts, are fucking with the natural order of things by attempting to preserve the Grey Nurse Shark, otherwise known as the Craziest Motherfucking Shark. CMS is having slight population issues because, unlike all other unborn things ever, which concentrate on important shit such as Organ System Development, their delinquent embryos like to kill and eat each other prior to birth. It's basically Survivor: Shark Womb, except that basic cable would never show anything so horrific/entertaining.

Sound like a potential threat to humanity that will totally work itself out? Unfortunately, Deadly Animal Proliferation groups won't let sleeping sharks lie (and be killed minutes later by their siblings). Since the shark bebes refuse to give peace a chance, some dude whose resume presumably includes Executive Director of the Dennis Kucinich Presidential campaign and an internship at High Times, wants to spend a few million constructing artificial shark wombs where a sweet little homicidal shark fetus can grow huge and terrifyingly strong without fear of confrontation with anything as evil as itself. Now, I'm not saying Americans are known for making terrible, terrible investments that ultimately lead to the total collapse of the world economy, but does Project Love the Sharks sound like something that will end up paying off to anyone? Last I heard, there's no bailout package fix for 300 razor sharp teeth in your neckmeat.

Quit trying to kill me, Daylight Saving Time

Confused American, vulnerable to attack

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/health/10real.html?em
A few days ago, some friends of mine were discussing the origin of Daylight Saving Time, just after winning a Thick Glasses Competition and directly before penning a letter to the editor of Scientific American about poor grammar choices in the Energy Efficient Seed Distribution Methods article. Some quick googling revealed that DST (as it is termed by experts in the field of knowing what time it is) was first proposed by eminent nerd Benjamin Franklin. As wikipedia so eloquently puts it, Franklin was:

"A noted polymath...a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. "

I don't know what a "polymath" is, but from the rest of that sentence I'm going to infer that it means "person who needs a lot of goddamn attention plus maybe a nap and should probably calm the fuck down." I read the rest of/part of the rest of the article, and although I'm not a licensed historian yet, but I'm going to go ahead and try to provide a picture of the initial momentous Daylight Saving Time Invention:

BF: Hey! I think I just discovered electricity, using only a kite!
BF: Hey did you know I can play three instruments? Oh, also, I invented bifocals during lunch.
BF: Hey- over here! I just helped found a liberal democratic nation that will someday rise to become the world's only super power!
BF: Um, guys? I think I have another one of my great ideas, it's called Daylight-
Everyone else in the world: Shut the fuck up, Benjamin Franklin. We're not doing that.

So basically, Daylight Saving Time got put on the back burner for a couple hundred years because, seriously, we get it Ben. You're mad important. That doesn't mean the nation's clocks should revolve around some whackjob time travel madness you came up with on your last opium trip.

Following the Great American Shootdown of DST, everything was peachy for a while, until those World Wars happened. With the President distracted by Germany suddenly wanting to be Big Germany, he didn't have time to notice the traitorous introduction of DST, probably by the sneaky interred Japanese-Americans, or maybe the even sneakier non-interred Italian-Americans. Pretty soon the entire country had acquiesced to the demands of DST, winding their clocks forward and back haphazardly as though DeLoreans need not factor into the time travel equation, producing nationwide confusion, lethargy and crankiness. Unfortunately for Hitler and his Honey I Blew Up the Country plan, we still managed to invent nuclear weapons, which more or less counteracted the minus one hour of shut-eye. Good effort, though.

After the war, we were really busy getting crunk and celebrating how we blew up pretty much everyone in Japan, so we had to have the baby boom, and then hippies, and then Wall Street booms, and then a lot of Op Ed pieces about what it means to be the world's only important country and what are our responsibilities to the other, not important countries. So that brings us up to today, when we finally looked around and were like, dude. What's this Daylight Saving thing. I just lost an hour of sleep, and since I already lost my job, house, marriage, and sense of entitlement this week, I am really sensitive about losing shit right now. I mean, I don't know anyone who particularly liked the concept to begin with, but these days even the nytimes wants you to know DST is health hazardous. In their words:

Daylight saving time is associated with sleep disruptions and possibly more serious consequences.

Yeah, if that were an advertisement for Ambien or Valanoz or Somatron or Glazeymax, I'm pretty sure the FDA would slap them with an EXPLAIN YO' SIDE EFFECTS fine faster than you can say "erections lasting 4 hours or longer." Whatever these "more serious consequences" may be, I say we pre-emptively strike the shit out of them, as we Americans so enjoy doing, with a return to sanity, and to one hour ago. Although let's hold out until the weekend. I have a lot of seed distribution methods to try out this Friday night.

Quit trying to kill me, space rocks

DUDE. What part of "the astrophysicists are busy" do you not understand? Please put on a shirt.

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/the-lure-of-rocks-from-outer-space/?ref=science
The New York Times' mission to publish an ever-increasing amount of tasty, delicious filler surged forward today, when our intrepid paper posed the timeless question: why are big rocks in the sky interesting? Exhibiting the kind of efficiency one might expect from an institution on the verge of selling budget advertising space to the New York Post, nyt contacted six astrophysicists, all of whom replied, in various verbose and sciency ways, "cause that shit's scary, man." One went on to elaborate, "Dude, have you seen Armageddon?" Thanks, astrophysicists, for destroying my illusion that the Smartest People in World are protecting us from malicious comet/asteroid attacks, and confirming my fear that you too, are mere Ben Affleck fans.

This bring us to the subject of today's QTTKM: Space Rocks. Now I know there is some kind of difference between asteroids and comets that is supposedly important, just like there is some kind of snout-shape dissimilarity between alligators and crocodiles. However. I am also convinced that, when said crocogator is snapping my ankles off with its all powerful Barrymore freakjaw, I am not going to be concerned with the species issue, nor whipping out my tape measure for snout shape verification. So I'm going to stick with Space Rocks, and all the astrophysicists who read this blog daily between their Pearl Harbor and Jersey Girl fixes can just suck it.

I first became aware of the Space Rocks' desire to kill me (and everyone else, I guess, but let's stay focused) at the tender age of something, when mom took me to the Planetarium to see a movie called "Hey Kids, Science is Fun, and Can Scare the Crap out of you too!" According to Mufasa the narrator, giant rocks are whirling about the universe like they own the place, blatantly refusing to settle into a fixed orbit, contribute productively to spaciety and grow the fuck up. Even worse, sometimes these teenage dirtbags of the solar system take their authority issues out on responsible Earth-type planets full of chocolates and ducks and bubbles and babies, killing EVERYTHING. Like, remember those dino monster dealies from Jurassic Park? Space Rocks wouldn't quit trying to kill them. Now they are dead.

After the Planetarium successfully terrorized me into lobbying my congressman for "more money in the sciences, please", I stayed away for a while, but was finally coerced into a return trip when mom got us tickets to the deceptively titled "Don't Worry, Only About Constellations!" However, as might not be expected from the title, Space Rocks made a pretty sizable cameo in Only About Constellations, because, as it turns out, that is where they hide. Riiiight in the constellations. And apparently there are a lot of those, as evidenced by Mufasa's repeated claims that "we can only monitor .00000000001 percent of the sky with our current lack of funding. Ahem."

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to contact my congressman about the Planetarium Moviemaking Bailout Package, and propose an Astrophysicist Netflix Ban clause.

Quit trying to kill me, commercial lovers

Everybody loves a break from these things

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/health/03mind.html?_r=1&ref=science
Everyone has a guilty pleasure- the occasional cigarette, reality TV shows starring the Future Handbag Designers of America, one of those new weird Dorito flavors that are called things like "Bodacious Brackenroot" and "Xtreme Cheese Beef"- that they don't necessarily advertise to the world. We may even do everything in our power to keep our smoking habits and radioactive chip consumption to ourselves. But could it be that, behind closed doors, all of us share one such pleasure in common? We've been too ashamed to admit it, but in our heart of hearts, isn't it a relief to finally come clean: we love commercials, and find our television viewing experience drastically enhanced by their presence?

It seems the nytimes found two whole research studies, conducted by the type of Dr. Venkman-esque pseudo-scientist who'd devote his life's work to the question "Aren't people just pretending to hate commercials?", that unequivically prove our undying, subconscious love for creative catchphrases like "Solid as a rock" and "I'm lovin it." (Sidenote: Seriously McDonalds? You're going to get us to choose you over other, similar products, with the catchphrase "I like this"? Maybe later you can enter an Extremely Vague Guarantee contest and be outdone only by "It's all inside". Great Best Buy. Glad to hear you don't scatter your inventory across the parking lot. You are truly raising the bar for the electronics suppliers of America.)

Anyway. My point is, Rupert Murdoch's Fair and Balanced Research Institute can continue to report similar findings, but you'd have an easier time convincing me the StayPuft Marshmellow Man is descending on Manhattan this very instant than trying to tell me I get more enjoyment from a TV show interrupted by late-90s hair models raving about something called "Jared's", which apparently features expensive baubles designed by the teens who brought you "Claire's," but which always inexplicably results in a lot of implied ass being gotten. Perhaps these girls are secretly 13, a la Tom Hanks in Big, and would also be thrilled to receive a $50 Express gift certificate or an allusion that, given good behavior, there may be PONIES just around the corner. The subtext is hard to suss out.

In any case, I can say with some certainty that my enjoyment of a given TV show is inversely proportional to the number of Silver Foxes lying suggestively in bathtubs in an (ironically) flaccid attempt to push Manhood drugs on me. In fact, the last I checked, commercials like these are doing a lot for sales of another product, Tivo, that device invented for the express purpose of never having to watch Christina Aguilera trying to make us believe she shops at Target while wearing a square hectare of tranny make-up ever again.

Yet the New York Times insists:
“Listening to a song, watching a TV program, having a massage: these all start out very enjoyable, and within a few minutes we get used to it. Interruptions break that up.”

Ah, yes. I remember the last time I popped in the most recent Beyonce CD, I am....having an Identity Crisis, I stopped her mid-Putting a ring on it so I could listen to a man shouting at me about cheap cars. Then I whipped my videophone out of my Dereon jeans and called up my girl B to report how I'd drastically improved her music in five "limited time offers" or less, and wouldn't you know it? The day after she ditched the Tivo, Jay-Z knew what to do.

He went to Jared's.

Quit trying to kill me, giant blue horse at the Denver airport

Yeah, this guy seems pretty chill.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/arts/design/02hors.html?em
Listen, giant blue horse at the Denver airport. You are the offensive, unnatural color of a horsezombie. You are outfitted with creepy horse balls, glow-in-the-dark death eyes, and, from what I can see in this picture you are fully twice the size of the entire airport and possibly the entire city of Denver. However, you were not content to merely threaten destruction with your inappropriate anatomy and ungodly mass; instead you went for maximum street cred, crushing and killing your creator with a giant piece of your torso. Seriously??? You think there aren't enough obstacles facing modern-day artists, what with the economy, and the mean landlord from RENT, and Kanye West? You need to add "risk of being brutally murdered by your own evil horse sculpture" to the mix? Also, I don't know if you've been keeping up with the news lately, but murder/suicide in airports is generally frowned upon by the American public these days.

As might be expected, the Sophisticated Almost-European Airport Commission for Extremely High Art and Expensive Wine Appreciation is standing by its controversial decision to install Nightmare Pony smack dab on the landing strip, despite a growing number of travellers totally losing their shit. A spokesperson explains, "We don’t want the work to convey things that would make people uncomfortable about flying.” Well mission accomplished, because although "Cobalt Stallion", or whatever, makes me pretty fucking uncomfortable about ever coming to Denver, I'm still cool with planes, the one place I will be safe when Pony has finished digesting Pony Artist and needs to feed again.

Fortunately for the well-regarded Advocates of Art Murder group, Homocidal Horse's supernatural powers apparently extend to mind control; its most outspoken critic, former Airport Liberation Leader and creator of an anti-horse facebook page (opinions-they're for kids too!), now claims "I’ve shifted gears from, ‘I don’t think it’s appropriate,’ to ‘Let’s try and understand it.'" Um, understand....what it wants to tell us? I'm not a certified body-language expert a la those guy in US Weekly who can always tell Jennifer Aniston is SAD based on her hair-do and hair highlight patterns, but if I had to interpret "Blue Mustang's" general message I'd say it is something along the lines of "I am Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds, do my bidding."

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Two semesters-worth of intro psych: $5,000

Ability to tell when shit's trying to kill you: Priceless