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Alex is on vacation, don't bother her
Welcome back to "Ask Alex", where I answer all of your stupid questions with even dumber answers. Have a question you need answered? Tweet it, email it or submit it here and I will get to it (maybe) next week.
-------------------------------- Friday before a long weekend...I’m sure you are all working really hard and can use a little break, right? I’m probably working a half day before I head out for the next week or so, which means you probably won’t get an #AskAlex next week. I’m sure that makes you all very, very sad, but please don’t cry on America’s birthday, I would feel terrible! One possibility…much like we did “Alex asks the Misfits” last month, we could do something like “Alex asks the Readers” next week. I’m not sure I will even have time for that, but if there are a half dozen or so readers who are interested in answer a ridiculous question from me, it might work. So, let me know if you would want to play along and I will see if I can figure something out. I am still working through old questions from #MisfitMischief, so after one more question from Daryl, we’ll dive into that! Let’s get to it. Submitted by: Daryl Where do Bostonians like to go for the 4th of July? I like that “Daryl asks stuff about Boston” has become a regular feature here...I enjoy talking about my adopted home town:-) At first, I actually thought that this was one of Daryl’s great Dad Jokes (“To a tea party!” or “The Battle of BBQ Hill”) but it is in fact a legitimate question. Since there are about 650,000 people in Boston proper, and another four million or so who identify as living in Greater Boston, the answer is obviously kind of all over the place. This is an awfully big weekend for New Englanders, maybe even more so than other parts of the country. Since our public schools start and end later than a lot of places, the school year just ended within the last two weeks, and all of the associated spring activities (soccer, little league, etc) wrapped up as well. We have also finally reached the part of the year when we actually have consistently nice, warm weather...in other words, summer is here!!! And what better way to kick off our nine week summer than with a four-day weekend, right? Just judging by the traffic this afternoon, which will back up in a whole bunch of spots heading away from Boston, I can tell you that large numbers of people head to the coasts of Maine and New Hampshire, and lakes in both of those state and Vermont. Lots will also head south to Newport, the surrounding towns, or South County, RI. And a larger volume still will head to Cape Cod - “down the Cape” in New Englander (that’s where I am headed, more or less) - either for the long weekend of to kick off the most popular vacation week of the year. For people who stick around, or decide to come into the city on July 4th, though, the focus of the celebration is the Esplanade, a miles-long public park that runs along the Charles River through Back Bay. The Boston Pops will play their annual concert (and large numbers of people will, inexplicably, sit outside all fucking day long to get a good seat...like, 12-15 hours. It’s going to be a beautiful day, but c’mon people, the Pops play like 100 shows a year, they aren’t that hard to find.) Then they will set off a mother of a fireworks display as the band plays the 1812 Overture and they will use real cannons. The fireworks are visible from a lot of places, including a really great view from my roof:-). If I could stop for a second, though, let’s evaluate the choice of music here. Unquestionably, it is a monumentally great composition. It is very possibly Tchaikovsky’s greatest work, which is really saying something - I mean, he wrote the Nutcracker and Swan Lake, for chrissakes. {Digression: Russia has a disproportionate number of great artists - Tolstoy, Chekov, Repin, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Rachmaninoff. Possibly a testament to suffering making great art, but that is a subject for another day}. It’s also in the spirit of the event, it’s a celebration of a great national victory and it is upbeat and it has cannons. It is a historically important piece written by a historically important person (factoid: Tchaikovsky became the first major European composer of note to visit American when he personally conducted its playing at the dedication of Carnegie Hall in 1891). Did I mention the cannons? It is, however, written to celebrate Russia’s victory over Napoleon's invading Grand Armee in 1812 using the first ever weapon of mass destruction, “Russian Winter” (which, btw, I could write about at length...it is a fascinating conflict). Here, in the Cradle of Liberty, on a day that celebrate our nation’s independence from Great Britain, we celebrate by playing...a song that honors Russia’s Victory over France?!? It's Trump's America, people. Submitted by: Allen Ray Where does the white go when the snow melts? I dunno, Allen, this question seems pretty racist to me. It seems like you have created some kind of euphemism for the collapse of the social structure of inner cities as a cause and effect of Suburban White Flight throughout post-war America… Either that, or the melting water just washes all the color away, duh. (Real answer that is totally off the top of my head and not at all from howstuffworks.com: snow isn’t actually white. It is a bunch of tiny little crystals of ice, and ice is not transparent; it's actually translucent. This means that the light photons don't pass right through the material in a direct path -- the material's particles change the light's direction. This happens because the distances between some atoms in the ice's molecular structure are close to the height of light wavelengths, which means the light photons will interact with the structures. The result is that the light photon's path is altered and it exits the ice in a different direction than it entered the ice. Snow is a whole bunch of individual ice crystals arranged together. When a light photon enters a layer of snow, it goes through an ice crystal on the top, which changes its direction slightly and sends it on to a new ice crystal, which does the same thing. Basically, all the crystals bounce the light all around so that it comes right back out of the snow pile. It does the same thing to all the different light frequencies, so all colors of light are bounced back out. The "color" of all the frequencies in the visible spectrum combined in equal measure is white, so this is the color we see in snow, while it's not the color we see in the individual ice crystals that form snow. When snow melts and the water falls out of its crystalline structure and into its liquid structure, the light reacts very differently and it no longer appears white. Got it?) Submitted by: Fuzzy Chimp In Louise Mensch's mind, who between Mike Pence, King Neptune on Spongebob, and Joffrey is impeached first by the Marshal of the SCOTUS? See, you just don’t understand how this works, do you? Let me break it down. First, the Senate Pages vote for a Declaration of Impeachment. If that carries by a simple majority, then it is referred to the International Supreme Council of the Ordo Templi Orientis where it is voted upon after the sacrifice of four young chickens and a virgin sea otter (which they also eat after grilling it with a little salt, pepper and olive oil...it is really quite delicious!). Now, here is where it gets tricky...IF the first chicken flaps its wings an even number of times before its neck breaks, then the Supreme Council must vote by a ¾ super-majority to impeach, whereas an odd number of flaps requires only a ⅗ vote to impeach. Assuming the motion carries, then a carrier pigeon is given a message detailing the vote for delivery to LeBron James’ personal assistant, who must do 25 burpees and run seven laps around the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, collecting a single feather from a cockatoo on the third lap (this is important), kidnapping the Hairy Armadillo on the fourth lap, and extracting half-pint of blood from an adult female lion (note: this is dangerous) on the last lap. After packing all of these things into a vintage Charlie’s Angels lunchbox (which must feature Cheryl Ladd, who was the hottest angel, and don’t @ me), the assistant must approach Mr. James’ teammate Kryie Irving and ask him what shape the earth is. If his answer is “The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat. ... It's right in front of our faces. I'm telling you, it's right in front of our faces. They lie to us.” then you must know that THE PLAN IS ON, and Trump has exactly 133 days to live!!! That statement will also act as a cue for Eric Garland, who will appear at your side and take the lunchbox, announcing that it is “time for some game theory” (which, it turns out, it is not, but not everyone can know what game theory really is, I suppose). Garland will contact the Queen of Thorns, who will make sure that Tiffany Trump’s jeweled hair net will include the cyanide pill for tomorrow’s state dinner. MEANWHILE… The Bureau of Mines will enact their Article XI “gay prison camp” powers to strip Mike Pence of his office as VP, and the Army will draft Paul Ryan, forcing him to give up his Speaker’s role. With Orrin Hatch on NASA’s newly launched “Senators on Venus” mission (it’s super secret, and I am risking all of our lives by even mentioning it) and Rex Tillerson lost somewhere in Oman with no way to get home, BAM...President Mnuchin. This is why the NSC has already begin briefing Mnuchin on various national security issues. THEY KNOW IT IS HAPPENING. Submitted by: Ingenious Firebrand Why didn't Doc just make gasoline in Back to the Future 3? I feel like I have written about this basic idea a bunch in the past. Why do time travelers and people with other superpowers in books and movies do such stupid shit? At least Biff acted like a normal person would have...he used his knowledge of the future to get rich. So, I am with you on making gasoline, but not because he could have used it to drive the car (btw, I have never seen Back to the Future III, so I have no idea if that is what he was actually doing...I feel like Plutonium was important). No, he should have built a refinery and started selling refined petroleum products in the same way that John D. Rockefeller was doing at about the same time. Actually, fuck that, he should have just bet on Rockefeller and give him all of his money as equity capital in Standard Oil. Not like he would have been a better oil man than Rockefeller, even knowing the future. From there, a couple well-timed market moves (get out before the panic of 1893, back in a year later and out before 1896, then back in until McKinley’s assassination, etc. etc.) and Doc’s entire bloodline would be richer than he could ever imagine for all of eternity. But no...this allegedly smart dipshit has no interest in any of that, he is too focused on being a quack scientists and probably trying to impress some demure elementary school teacher or preacher’s daughter (I’m guessing) to make even the most simple of rational decisions. And while we are at it, why didn’t they ever go to the future just to see what it was like and whether they wanted to stay or go back? Why not, when they were in 2015, just take a quick peak at what real estate is hottest and then go back to 1985 knowing that. Do you have any idea how cheap Brooklyn was in the 1980’s!?!? Or how cheaply you could have picked up shares in Microsoft in 1985 or Apple in 2002? OR THE WINNING LOTTERY NUMBERS!!! I can’t write about this anymore, it is making me angry. Doc didn’t make gasoline because he is a fucking moron, which is why a guy who understands nuclear physics and can build time machines lives in a fucking garage. Pick better friends, Marty. Submitted by: Brian A. Who is going to bring me some mozzarella sticks?!? Have you tried Applebee’s? They will almost certainly bring you some, although you should be leery of crazy guys lurking in the bar who think that the waitresses are their girlfriends. On the plus side, I hear that the quality of servers has improved a lot lately...they must have cut some of the dead weight. But, what are you, like 12? Mozzarella sticks, really? Do you plan to wash that down with a chocolate milk before you tackle a bowl of Kraft Mac and Cheese? My kids are 7, and even they feel like Mozzarella sticks are kind of a little kid food, not nearly as sophisticated as chicken fingers or hot dogs… Really, though, outside of having to put forth a modicum of effort, getting mozzarella sticks is really pretty fucking easy. Dominoes or Pizza Hut will almost certainly deliver them, and I assume that you have a bunch of other options as well...Westchester County is hardly the end of the earth, you should have some people to bring you food around. Or, with just a little bit of planning, you could buy a giant bag of frozen mozzarella sticks at the grocery store and just toss them into the toaster whenever you need some. There are quite a few options here... Submitted by: Timothy E. Miller Under what circumstances is it appropriate to plot world domination while on a quest for the hand of a fair maiden? I have some questions first. How hot is she? Is she like “fair” in a plain and sort of cute way, or “fair” in a Charlize Theron kinda way? And why does it have to be a maiden...she’s not worth fighting for if you’re not her first? Man, guys have some seriously weird shit going on about their girls’ virginity...what if you get married and realize that you hate sex? Or that you just totally suck at it? That’s gonna be a long, miserable life for all of you. Well, maybe not for Rodrigo the pool boy… Actually, don’t answer because the answer is “Never”. If the quest for the maiden’s hand is grand enough to be called a quest in the first place, then you are going to need to be focused just on that objective. You’ve hear of a “Jack of all trades, master of none?” Well, that is what we are trying to avoid here...if you spend half your time trying to impress the girl and half the time trying to conquer the world, you will inevitably fail at both. That leaves you as a lonely, non-dominant and landless knight fighting insinuations about your failures as a world-conqueror and, quite frankly, a “confirmed bachelor” followed around by some pretty obvious rumors about your sexuality. Not that there’s anything wrong with that... Submitted by: Foxy Conservative Do the smug celebs lecturing us about the climate while flying on their jets have magic atmosphere scrubbers we don't know about? They do, in fact. It is much like the special animals that the celebrities have at their famous people zoos that us regulars don’t get to see. Like the Fantastapotomous...she only sings twice a day, you know! (How is there no video of this scene?!?! Looking at you, YouTube). So, to get a little serious for a bit...I haven’t really written much on climate change because it is a topic that is very hard to discuss rationally on Twitter. It is not quite as hard as trying to talk abortion (which I generally avoid entirely), but it is pretty difficult. The science is both much more convoluted than climate change alarmists would have you believe, and also much more convincing than absolute deniers would tell you. The earth is warming and the amount of greenhouse gases that we have pumped into the atmosphere are contributing to that. These things should be beyond dispute. Also beyond dispute is the absurdity of any idea that, globally, we are permanently going to produce less greenhouse gas emissions than we do right now. The middle class throughout Asia, Africa and South America is expanding rapidly, and all of those upwardly mobile people are consuming a lot more energy. Because electricity is really pretty awesome. Even as the developed world cuts its emissions through more efficient usage and though changes to our fuel mix (thank fracking) there is no reasonable scenario under which the world emits less greenhouse emissions than it does today in the long-run without simply telling ¾ of the world’s population that, sorry, they will simply have to remain poor. I also find it pretty silly to think that some international government consortium is going to figure this out in any kind of acceptable way. The UN has shown almost no ability to keep determined enemies from slaughtering each other, but we are going to allow them the authority to centrally plan the entire global economy? Other international consortiums are just as bad...FIFA is the most corrupt organization on the planet, except for maybe the International Olympic Committee. Long story short: sovereign nations will never (and really should never) cede the power necessary to any international body to implement a global carbon strategy, and there is absolutely no evidence that says such an organization would be even remotely effective. I could probably write a lot more about this, but it is Friday afternoon and I need to get to the beach, so I won’t bore you all...maybe some other time;-) Submitted by: Andrew Lynch If 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything... what's the question? What is 6 times 7? Or 14 times 3? Or 21 times 2? Or 84 times ½? It is also the number worn by Jackie Robinson, and the only number retired universally across an entire sport as a result. Which reminds me that I went to Mariano Rivera’s last game in Fenway Park, which was I think just before the Yankees returned home for his last three games. The Red Sox had a ceremony for him that paid tribute to his greatness, his very unique relationship with Red Sox fans (who genuinely loved him, which is really pretty unique among Yankees) and his status as the last player to ever wear #42 in the majors. That is a sort of wonderful accident of baseball history. When the league retired #42, they allowed any player who was already wearing the number to continue. Several, who had simply been assigned the number, gave it up right away as a sign of deference, but a handful of players who wore the number specifically because it had been Jackie Robinson’s, kept it. By 2003, when Mo Vaughn retired, only Mariano Rivera was left wearing the number, and in hindsight it is hard to think of a better representative to have worn it in its final years. Rivera was unquestionably great, universally respected by friend and foe alike, never sniffed even the tiniest bit of controversy and carried himself as a model citizen and baseball player at every moment of his career. For Jackie Robinson, who stands as so much more than a great baseball player, it seems fitting that such a man as Rivera would last wear his #42. The left field wall in Fenway Park has a gigantic manually operated scoreboard. On that scoreboard are places where the operator hangs the number of the pitcher currently in the game for both teams. After Jose Lima retired in 2002, the only person for whom the #42 was ever used was Rivera, and when he retired, they simply had no more use for a green placard with a big white #42 on it. So they gave it to him. This leads to two absurd baseball stats, courtesy of my best friend to whom I defer all sports questions:-) (I am giving away my secrets!). Baseballreference.com maintains stats for almost everything that has ever happened in baseball. One of them, for ERA+, measures a pitcher's effectiveness by comparing his Earned Run Average to the league average, adjusting for the park he pitches in. That is converted into a number that compares to a league average of 100, higher being better. Anything over 120 for a career gets you into the discussion for the Hall of Fame. The great Red Sox Right-hander Pedro Martinez has the third highest ERA+ in baseball history, at 154. Clayton Kershaw, the Dodgers current ace, sports an unfathomable 160. Mariano Rivera? 205. Second absurd stat, that is unrelated but that she just wanted to tell you, is that Rickey Henderson is second all-time and Joe Morgan fifth in walks. Every other player anywhere near the top of that list (Bonds, Ruth, Williams, Mantle, Ott, Thomas, Musial…) was a feared slugger who pitchers routinely pitched around rather than risk giving up a home run. But when Henderson or Morgan got to home plate, the primary thought from the pitcher, the catcher and the manager was “don’t walk him” and yet they still did it more than almost anyone else in the history of the game. Anyway, this is related to absolutely nothing, but Happy July 4th!!!
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Welcome to the #MisfitMemo, a rewind of some of our best (worst?) tweets and posts on a variety of topics from last week. Hope you enjoy!
The tragic death of Otto Warmbier, the former prisoner of North Korea returned to the U.S. in a coma, sparked a lot of awfulness on Twitter.
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in defense of the First Amendment and liberty lovers everywhere cheered.
The DNC spent the last few months throwing their full weight behind the special election in Georgia 6 for a single seat. They proclaimed it was an incredibly important election & would be a "referendum on Trump." But tens of millions of dollars, ringing celebrity endorsements, and all the publicity in the world couldn't bring home the trophy. Cue the narrative switch!
Of course, we can't keep our mouths shut and covered a lot more topics than just those above, here's a sampling of those!
Don't forget to check out all our latest posts!
Before you go...
If you're not following all of us, what is wrong with you? Go to Meet The Misfits and fix that, pronto. Also follow us @MisfitsPolitics to join the #MisfitGifChallenge on Wednesday nights & #MisfitMischief fun every Friday night! As always, keep checking back here for our latest writing endeavors!
Welcome back to "Ask Alex", where I answer all of your stupid questions with even dumber answers. Have a question you need answered? Tweet it, email it or submit it here and I will get to it (maybe) next week.
-------------------------------- Happy Friday, all, and Happy Summer!!! I am still working through old questions, so I have two this week from Daryl, one of which is about music from the 80’s, and one about Boston history. After that, I tackle a couple more from last month's #MisfitMischief (tonight around 7:30 EDT!) about food (common theme), coping mechanisms and Middle Eastern Fashion…spoiler: Alex hates underwear! Let’s get to it. Submitted by: Gringo Suave What is your favorite Culture Club song? Daryl, I have some bad news for you, and really for just about everyone who grew up and/or came of age during the British new wave/synth pop invasion of the 1980’s. Culture Club sucks. They sucked at the time, you should have all known it and you should all feel some sense of collective shame now at your oversight. Here is my biggest question about Culture Club: why do they have a drummer? Seriously, listen to anything they recorded and try to find an actual drum...it is a lot harder than you think. OK, that is an exaggeration, a whole bunch of their songs have actual drums. But an awful lot also rely on drum machines, that toxic ear-cancer that infects so much of the dreadful schlock that cursed popular airwaves between 1981 and 1987. The answer is that I don’t have a favorite Culture Club song (although my children do own a chameleon, so…) Their music is boring, poorly-produced, thin and not terribly interesting. As much as any other popular band I can think of, they are a case of style over substance, existing mostly because of the temporally outrageous dress and antics of their under-talented lead singer, antics that seem campy and quaint today. It’s like someone took The Cure, removed everything that was good about The Cure, and then replaced Robert Smith’s hair with a really stupid hat. I guess they are relevant because they are indicative of the times, but do we really need to spend a whole lot of time memorializing the half-decade long clown show that existed after Talking Heads and The Clash but before U2 and Guns N Roses? Culture Club isn’t more historically representative of the times than, say, The Backstreet Boys...and I don’t see Millennials holding on to the ridiculous notion that they are still worth listening to. N*Sync, on the other hand... Did you throw a chest of tea overboard into Boston Harbor? This may also come as a surprise, Daryl, but I am 34 years old, and was therefore not yet born in 1773 when the Boston Tea Party took place. I have, however, been to the museum, where they let your throw fake tea into the harbor, so I guess in that sense I have… That is, if you are coming to Boston, a surprisingly cool museum. It is over near the Boston Harbor Hotel and the Children’s Museum, and the whole tour takes maybe an hour, but it is really interactive and interesting. It is not worth scheduling a whole day around, but it is definitely a good take-in. Funniest part of the Tea Party...it is the most important single event in the lead-up to the Revolution, it is widely studied, broadly taught and well-understood by every school child in America. It was a super big deal at the time, and has been ever since...and yet no one thought to write down where it actually happened! It is broadly believed to have taken place at Griffin’s Wharf, although that fact is somewhat disputed. Which is only somewhat helpful anyway, as Griffin’s Wharf is long gone, torn down and filled in a hundred years ago as part of one of many landfill projects in Boston (fun fact: South Boston, East Boston, Charlestown, Back Back and the South End are all largely landfill. Watch this, it’s fascinating. Another fun fact: I live in a part that is NOT landfill, and there is your one clue to “Where’s Alex?” for the day.) To make matters even more fun, there doesn’t seem to be a great record of exactly where Griffin’s Wharf was, either, so modern historians are left with “It was probably near the foot of Pearl Street” (currently, a Thai restaurant and hair salon across The Greenway from the Intercontinental Hotel). So, yes, in a city that celebrate its history and still sports a number of buildings and other structures that have been standing for a couple hundred years, we seem to have lost our most noteworthy place. Also, the Battle of Bunker Hill wasn’t fought on Bunker Hill, but whatevs. Submitted by: Lady Catherine Why do people like caramel corn? Um...how about cuz it's delicious?!?! Have you no respect for State Fairs? Or for Crackerjack, which is so important to baseball that they put it right there in the Baseball Song and baseball is basically The Statue of Liberty’s favorite sport!?!? In a decade in which Salted Caramel has emerged as a key new flavor featured prominently in cookies, ice cream and various other confections, it seems apropos that we celebrate the salty, caramelly mother of that flavor. High end restaurants now sell salted caramel mousse, or creme brulee for like $18, but boardwalks and county fairs across America still churn out its inspiration by the $3 bucketful. Since I have already covered some Boston History today, let’s take a detour 1,000 miles west to my other favorite city, The Second City: Chicago, IL. WAIT...quick trivia!!! What is the windiest major city in North America? Answer: Boston, MA (I’m setting the definition of “major” as being “bigger than Lubbock, TX or Rochester, MN”.) Anyway, caramel corn, like a lot of really great things (including Ferris Wheels and Pabst Blue Ribbon!) was invented for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. While most great things in Illinois come from about two miles west of Jackson Park, the World’s Fair is a really remarkable achievement and a testament to the ability of pre-1900 Chicago to build magnificently grand things in almost impossibly short periods of time. In 1850, Chicago had 4,000 residents. 10 years later, it had exploded to 30,000 and by 1890, it had 1.1 million, despite nearly burning to the ground in 1871. The city would triple in size again over the next 40 years. America has seen nothing like that before or since. In this same spirit, organizers and builders of the fair, led by Daniel Burnham and Frederick Law Olmstead, took an empty parcel of lakefront and turned it into a 600 acre metropolis in less than two years, despite an abnormally cold and snowy winter. Like its host, The White City emerged from nothing to become the nation’s focal point in seemingly the blink of an eye. The fair took up residence in the summer of 1893 and entertained nearly 27 million people during its existence (US Population in 1893: probably a shade under 70 million). On October 9th alone, the fair counted 751,026 admissions, which made it America’s fifth largest city on that day, behind only New York, Chicago, Brooklyn and Philadelphia. Even in 2017, that would be America’s 18th largest city - bigger than Detroit, smaller than Charlotte. Today, the fair is probably most noted for its two most memorable subplots: the assassination of Mayor Carter Henry Harrison and the subsequent discovery of the activities of Henry Webster Mudgett, aka Dr. H. H. Holmes. All of this is pretty well narrated in Devil in The White City, the extraordinary historical work by Erik Larson that is today’s “Alex’s Book Recommendation”. Really, I promise...it’s an incredibly engrossing book about Chicago, the Fair, Holmes and the eventual assassination of Harrison. 11/10, highly recommended. Submitted by: Mike Out Yonder How many raisins does it take to make the best oatmeal raisin cookie? Show your work. Raisins are foul abominations of decrepit fruit made by people whose conscience is as black as a serial killer. I bet H. H. Holmes loved raisins. I’ve been over this like 100 times...there are at least a dozen great things to do with a grape - eat it, put it in a salad, freeze it and use it to chill wine, make jelly, jam, juice, wine...WINE!!! - why on earth would you dry it out until it is a rodent-turd sized piece of sour rubbery horror?! And if you have already accidentally ruined your grapes by leaving them out in the sun for a week, why on earth would you double down on your mistake by ruining a perfectly good cookie?!?! Frankly, adding oatmeal to a cookie is kinda stupid, but I can live with that if you get the rest of the recipe right (hint...yes chocolate chips, no raisins). But compounding your minor oatmeal mistake with a catastrophic raisin poisoning? You oughta be thrown out of the kitchen for that, and I am not entirely sure that the death penalty should be off the table. So the best oatmeal raisin cookie has zero raisins, no oatmeal and a whole bunch of chocolate chips. I can’t believe you would even ask me this...maybe you should sit in your corner and think about what you have done. Submitted by: Hoss Fuentes The best way of coping in these trying times: 1.) Demon rum 2.) Screaming goat videos 3.) Cheesing Hmm...I am not really sure what “cheesing” is, so I will Google it. Oh, look, Urban Dictionary has an entry this should help...OH HOLY HELL WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE TO ME YOU DERANGED BASTARD?!?!? OK, if I am being honest, I was a little disappointed because I actually expected the UD definition of cheesing to be a lot creepier than it was. I mean, part of the reason I do this is so people can ask me totally off-the-wall questions that make me cringe but demand my attention before I gasp in horror. You know, like following @nochiefs on Twitter. And cheesing is a pretty fun one that I am glad you asked about, but I was honestly hoping it would be something really, really off the wall. I actually can’t even figure out if cheesing is a real thing, or just something that Trey Parker and Matt Stone made up for an episode of South Park. I guess the brilliance of South Park is that it really could go either way...I mean, I don’t think you can get high by sniffing cat urine, but it probably wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that anyone ever got stoned off of (did you know that you can actually shoot cheese? If heroin has lost its effectiveness, an addict can mix it with a warm, soft-fat cheese like brie and shoot it for a much more intense high...it is pretty well covered in most biographies of Keith Richards). I think that you all know me well enough to know my answer to this...it’s always going to be the demon rum for me. Or, more specifically, the demon vodka, which I don’t really consider a demon at all, but rather an angelic force for good bestowed upon humanity by Bacchus at the benevolent request of Aphrodite in hopes that all humans would be able to see their potential mates as being as beautiful as she was. Also, whoever the god of dancing was probably helped out, too. But, as long as I have covered Keith Richards and the Demon Life (rum, whatever) let’s all take a minute to appreciate this non-famous Rolling Stones gem which is both a precursor to grunge, and contains the sublime “One day I woke up to find, lying in the bed next to mine, someone that broke me up with the corner of her smile...” Submitted by: Poochini Do those Saudi guys wear underwear under those togas? Well, if it is Prince Fahad Al Saud, I am going to choose to think that he doesn’t, because that guy is pretty hot. I know the King just reshuffled his household and named a new heir, but he should probably go back and make sure that Fahad has an appropriately prominent and hopefully shirtless role. The answer seems to be that guys wear pretty much what you wear under their Thobe...boxers, a T-shirt and possible shorts or pants. Women seem to vary a little more in what they wear under an Abaya, with the most conservative women wearing another full length dress on the off chance that their Abaya moves a bit in the wind and exposes a seductive ankle or a flirtatious wrist. A more open-minded woman may wear shorts or jeans or something equally comfortable, or maybe just her underwear. I’m not going anywhere that I have to wear a fucking potato sack by law, so we can rule that out right off the bat, but if I did, I’m not wearing anything under it. As long as I am being oppressed by a backwards culture of knuckle dragging woman-haters, I am at least going to be pretty comfortable while I do it, and that means letting my lady bits get as much air in that blast furnace as possible. While we are on the subject, underwear is totally overrated. It’s just an extra garment that I have to buy and wash and put away and remember to put on just so I can worry about making sure that it is not leaving annoying visible lines. Outside of its ornamental benefits in situations where the visual effect is a key part of a desired aesthetic;-), it is much more hassle than benefit. I know there are alleged hygiene benefits, but I am pretty dubious of the validity of that defense. If you really stop and think about it, what benefit exactly is your underwear providing? Is it dramatically more sanitary than the insides of your skirt? I find that hard to believe. I’ll admit that, even though I can rationally tell you it is not needed, I always wear underwear with pants because it seems like I should. But skirts? Meh...I mean, more often than not, yes, but if I don’t have any clean ones, or maybe they are all in the laundry and I don’t feel like walking down the hall to get one… Also I have a couple of dresses that show every tiny little underwear line. One is a very Asian silk/satin-looking, high-collared, floor-length dress with a very aggressive thigh slit that is an absolute knockout, and I also have a couple of snug jersey dresses that are super comfortable and adorable, but are a nightmare with any underwear at all. None of them are a threat to flash anybody anything that I don’t mean to flash them. So with those, I’m going to skip the underwear and not wear a bra either because wearing any underwear is just going to draw attention to the fact that I am wearing it, and what is the point of having no boobs if you can't eschew those wicked chest harnesses now and again? So, to wrap up this non-sequitur...Saudi guys are almost certainly wearing underwear. Your wife or girlfriend? Maybe not. |
MisfitsJust a gaggle of people from all over who have similar interests and loud opinions mixed with a dose of humor. We met on Twitter. Archives
January 2024
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