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January 30, 2005IF YOU SMELL WHAT THE ROCK IS COOKINGJeff: A ten pound meteorite landed in Cambodia, lighting a few hundred hectares of farmland on fire. Some locals called it "a divine omen of peace," while we in the western world prefer to call it "a rock from space." Those on the divine omen side want to build a shrine over it while the farmer wants them to shut the fuck up and help him replant his fields. I think I'm with the farmer on this one. Even if you're a religious freak and think the meteorite is some kind of divine sign, the explosive, fire-starting rock doesn't scream out "peace" to me. Rob: The dinosaurs also attached religious significance to rocks from space, except they called them "apocalyptic enders of all life." Okay, well, they would've if they were intelligent. While the Cambodians dodged the tsunami bullet that fucked up a good lot of their Southeast Asian neighbors, you'd think their proximity to the disaster would make them not so sure that crazy "acts of God" are all that great for humanity. John: Imagine you're an average Cambodian. What do you do all they long besides try to survive? A meteor falling from the sky is probably the biggest thing that's happened in years. It's the cause for a lot of excitement. Homer Simpson: It's more exciting than ten Superbowls! John: Actually, a meteor falling from the sky would create a lot of excitement anywhere. Especially in a small town in Kansas, where the fallout would mean hordes of teenagers becoming superpowered, with one special teenager having more powers than anyone else, including the power to not get laid by the scores of hot chicks looking to ride his jock. SAN FRANCISCO, PROVINCETOWN, BIKINI BOTTOMJeff: As we've mentioned in this space before, there's a group of people out there who believe the biggest threat to America is gays trying to homo-ify of our nation's children. It's almost like the old anti-Jew propaganda that claimed they drank babies' blood. Or the robot planet in Futurama that believed humans ate robots. Their latest target is Spongebob Squarepants. Sure, Squidward's totally gay, but I never really got that vibe from Spongebob and Patrick's relationship. Maybe the director's cuts of the episodes have all the shopping for breadmakers, trips to Key West, and sponge on starfish ass sex I've been missing. Rob: I remember when I was a kid, the population of the Earth was about five billion people. Right now, it's 6.4 billion people. That's 28% population growth just within my lifetime. It leads me to believe that heterosexuality is not in nearly as much danger as the religious right would have us believe. I always wonder about these religious types who see every piece of entertainment as homoerotic. Makes me wonder if they're just seeing what they want to see, if you know what I mean. If you don't know what I mean, I think these religious moralists who are always raising these stinks are actually colossally flaming gay. John: For Christ's sake, Jesus did not and does not hate gays and never told anyone else to either. Jesus didn't write the Bible and the Bible has been translated so many times by so many different assholes with different sticks up their asses for two millennia. Its credibility beyond the broad strokes and the basic lessons it contains is questionable at best. I don't have to quote chapter and verse to know what common sense dictates about the Son of God. Jesus went around preaching "love thy neighbor". He didn't commonly end that sentence with, "except those fags next door. Don't let them at your kids." Let your kids watch their gay little cartoons and leave them be. AND THE NATIVES LIKE BUILDINGS ON THEIR GRAVESJeff: One of the most hilariously absurd commercials I've ever seen is airing on MSNBC. It's a Walmart spot where they claim that having a Walmart in your town actually increases business for all the smaller shops in the area. You see, all the traffic created by people going to the Walmart increases the number of shoppers passing by the smaller shops and some of them will actually stop in instead of continuing to the Walmart. My gut feeling says those shops would probably be doing better if the shoppers had their businesses in mind as their original destination rather than Walmart, but I guess it could work the other way. Wayne Campbell: Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt. Jeff: Wow. Are you looking for the record for stalest pop culture reference? Arnold Drummond: Whatchu talkin' about? Rob: Can we get some order in here? No one wants to read this crap. Steve Martin: Well, excuuuuuuse me! Rob: Those Walmart commercials remind me of those studies funded by Phillip Morris that find cigarette smoking isn't so bad for your health after all. When exactly are these people passing by the smaller shops anyway? When they're driving by on the way to the isolated Walmart parking lot on the edge of town? I guess all those people stopping at other stores must be the reason Walmart has to sell their products below cost. How is Walmart supposed to compete with all those enticing storefronts people have to pass by before they even get to Walmart? John: Now see here, I won't tolerate any negative comments about Walmart! How can anyone hate a superstore with such incredible bargains? My God, there were DVDs for only $5.77! I can't believe such a low price for Carl Weathers and Tom Berenger movies! And the sneakers I bought were only $15. Sure, they made my feet bleed but I can use the money I saved to go to the doctor, or better yet, buy some home remedies at Walmart's low, low priced pharmacy! Look, they have a funnel cake maker for only $11! Now, I can have fried dough three meals a day. I've never been so happy. I owe it all to you, Walmart! God, I love you. IRAQ THE VOTEThe Rock: Finally, democracy has come back to Iraq! Jeff: Iraq's long awaited election happens on Sunday. So the people will pick their representative parties, the losers and their supporters will go away quietly, and everything will be fine, right? I still don't understand how this election's going to work. I mean aside from all the polling places that are going to be car bombed. How do the voters even know the difference between the 200 parties listed on the gigantic ballot? Were there ads? Debates? Rallies? Pundits? It seems like the only guy trying to get his name out there is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but he's not so big a fan of the election, or even the voters themselves. Rob: I haven't seen the latest polling data from Iraq, but I'm willing to bet the winner of the election will be a very US friendly candidate. We didn't go and knock over their last government just to replace him with a mullah, imam or ayatollah. Once we're gone though, I have a feeling that the next leader of Iraq could actually be a bigger pain in the ass than Saddam Hussein. Hussein was a huge douche, but at least you could do business with him, as the US well knows, having got along with him pretty well while he was fighting a war against Iran. What exactly about the rest of the Muslim world makes us think that an Islamic country would choose for themselves a government that's friendly to America? John: I was watching some footage of the voter turnout on the news and nearly every person voting was being personally instructed by someone as to what to actually physically do to in order to cast your vote. It's kind of funny that the Iraqis voting might actually end up doing a better job than half the population of Florida did in 2000. Is it too late to make a hanging chad joke? Krusty the Clown: Not if you work in Judge Ito. IT WAS PROBABLY HER TIME OF THE MONTHJeff: Harvard President Lawrence Summers recently made a speech where he suggested research be put into the idea that men have better innate math and science skills than women. MIT biologist Nancy Hopkins left in the middle of the speech, claiming she was disgusted by Summers's gender bias. She might not like gender bias, but she sure seems to like irony. The fact is there are more men than women in math and science fields. That could be due to societal or biological factors. Not even considering there may be innate aptitude differences between the genders shows a lack of ability to tackle a problem logically. If Hopkins were a man she might understand. Rob: The women who are protesting Summers's remarks are doing themselves and their gender an amazing disservice. Summers was trying to open up a dialogue on the lack of women in the sciences, and not only did they shut him down, but they effectively stopped anyone else of any stature from bringing it up again. The real losers though, are all the science majors in universities across the country. I'm willing to bet you could a very enthusiastic response from engineering, physics, and math students if you asked them to dedicate their collective brain power to convincing more women to sign up for engineering, physics, and math classes. John: If you go into math or engineering as career fields, you'd probably end up working at some sort of laboratory, which means every day, you'd use the lab's lunch room or mess hall. And every single day, people bring in their lunches, usually Chinese food, soups, or whatever meal they made at home and they heat them up. I remember from when I worked at Biomedical Enginnering at BU that the combined smells of all those lunches would permeate every corner of the floor and make me want to lose my lunch. The smells of Chinese and Indian food should never be combined. It was absolutely disgusting to have to endure smelling every day. I want to wretch just remembering it. I didn't want to deal with shit like that, so I totally understand most women wouldn't either. THE KING IS DEADJeff: Johnny Carson, who spent 30 years as the king of late night television, died this week. Imagine that. 30 years doing the same nightly show, over 4,500 episodes total. I'm sure Back of the Head will be around 30 years from now, beamed directly into the back of your head via the Internet 3, but most entertainers can't keep their stuff fresh or even stay interested in their job for nearly that long. Hell, Jay Leno was never fresh or interesting. Karnak the Magnificent: The NHL, me, and entertaining late night television...Things that are dead. Ed McMahon: Hi-yo! Rob: That's not fair to Conan O'Brien, but with Leno and Letterman, the 11:30 spot is pretty bad. Letterman is like one of those NFL players who sign a big contract and then pretty much retire without telling anybody. I don't think he's expended much of an effort in years. 30 years of fresh late night comedy is pretty amazing. You know who else impresses me in the same way? Bob Barker. All those years and he's still excited for every single Plinko game he sees. Do you think he even needs to look at price tags when he goes to the store? He has to have developed a sixth sense for that by now. John: Johnny Carson admirably stayed out of the spotlight after his retirement and was rarely seen or heard from. The coincidental timing was kind of odd that Carson died just days after major news networks made a big deal that he occasionally sent David Letterman jokes for his monologue. He was fresh on many people's minds when the news broke he died last week. I was too young to really appreciate Carson in his heyday. I really only watched him roughly around the time before he left the Tonight Show, but he really was the absolute best in his field. I'll always remember him as the guy who picked up and juggled the car on Krusty's Komeback Special. Now, how is Ed McMahon still alive? What, did he cut a deal with the Devil or something? Ed McMahon: You are correct, sir!
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