Six Degrees of Expatriation

So let's take a second and give nod to Matching Tie and Handkerchief by playing a little news-cycle word association football.

Let's start with a random story from our neighbors to the north - Canadian sex toy parties are on the rise! (There's apparently a reason the CFL featured both the Rough Riders and the Roughriders!) From there we launch to another kind of party...the Cuddle Party!

At a Cuddle Party, erections become Mother Nature's way of giving us the thumbs-up sign. Nothing's wrong. Nothing's dirty. Nothing's suspect. And as long as you're not dry humping anyone (Rule #7), it's completely okay. Really.

-cuddleparty.com's FAQ section on erection

It's through cuddleparty.com we quickly make our way to an article on CNN.com about Public Displays of Affection (PDAs) - the site is referenced in the article. The most delightful bit of this piece is a quote from Charles Purdy, an etiquette columnist, who says:

Assuming that one half of the couple isn't leaving for a two-year deep-space mission, I'll say that any PDA beyond the hand-holding, arm-around-the-waist, closed-mouth-kiss type is out of order.

So apparently astronauts at cuddle parties are given a free pass. Nice. This article features a bit about Dicky Gere and his virtual live-sex show when he planted a big fatty on the cheek of Bollywood starlet Shilpa Shetty. Long story short, India flipped out...big time! No slobber-knockin' on the sub-continent...at least in the outdoors. For you see if we venture on a bit we find out that India is a veritable porn-cliche unto themselves. A sultry school marm, or perhaps a latently lustful librarian. It turns out that prudie India is poised to take the reigns as the most populous nation in the world. To quote Kenny O'Dell's Behind Closed Doors

'Cause when we get behind closed doors
Then she lets her hair hang down
And she makes me glad that I'm a man
Oh, no-one knows what goes on behind closed doors
Behind closed doors.

Or, to quote Sean Waltman, "Suck it, Chyna[sic]!"

But fear not, dear American readerate, for the US shant be outshined! For as we speak, babies is bustin' out all over Denver - a bi-product of Ol' Man Winter's benumbing tempest which ravaged the mile high metropolis about 9 months ago. Boo-yah! Welcome to Babytown; population: logarithmically exponential! And from this expansion in denizenry through parturition (aka Birth in a Nation), we segue into the newest means by which we fuel the fires of American Plutocracy, I mean Democracy: a new nationalization test! Yay! As a concerned citizen, I also feel that it is my duty to report according to CNN.com's simulated test I could indeed be naturalized if it weren't for my jus soli/sanguinis status. For those of you who found difficulty with this - here are the answers to the tests for becoming an American citizen: both old and new. And here is a crazy banana.

rock.
m$

Money Talks, Orphans Stutter

So among other things, I've been reading a lot recently about advertising to children - in terms of both the ethical issues as well as the approaches taken. While staring into the dubious abyss that is Kidscreen Magazine I came across this wacky little cartoon from June of '07:Awesome.

Also feel free to peruse one of the reasons that universities have Institutional Review Boards - Wendell Johnson's 1939 stuttering research, affectionately dubbed the Monster Study. A study that sparked a court battle that was just recently settled.

rock.
m$

Der Uber Autobahn

I recently decided to venture into the realm of Buckaroo Bonzai, a delightfully cultish cinematic experience from days gone by. One of the major plot points involves traveling through a mountain via the use of The Oscillation Overthruster. Essentially this is what two supra-adequately named germane German scientists, Günter Nimtz and Alfons Stahlhofen (from the University of Koblenz! Koblenz! That's twice within the span of a gee-dee month! Sweet effin' see! El em en oh pee!), purportedly accomplished recently...more or less (I mean check out the balls-out-wicked to-scale diagram! Science in action, Jackson!). If you're so inclined, you can gator-wrestle with the full-board scientific scrawlings. Or take a peek at some other potentialities for quantum livin'. And if you want to read more on this here science crap check out Alan Boyle's garbanzory of scientificalities.

Or just get straight up fuckin' freaked out by a baby vampire puppet. Whatev'.

rock.
m$

G-funk: Where Rhythm is Life and Life is Rhythm

I was out and about in a local purveyor of media media, as in entertainment in more than one medium, where I began to wander through the CD section. I chanced upon Art Garfunkel's latest attempt at avoiding a 9 to 5. Now whether or not the album is even any good matters not to me, although I will say this; while Artie-baby may have the chops to carry a tune, I equate his solo vocalizings to a lone man riding a tandem bicycle- it can be done, but why?

No, my major concern was more cover-centric, primarily in the fact that as a hexagenarian he's still got the same doof-wad haircut, or lack thereof, as he did forty years ago. Far be it from me to tell a grown man to get a haircut, but when you're shooting for this rat-packish urbane look...the waning Gar'fro has to go.

A. Garf's own website is even more depressing, a veritable ego buttress; a stanchion to try to combat decades of overshadowing by a man much shorter in stature then he. Plus the fact that the site is genuinely corny. At one point it cites the A-bomb's opinings, "In this nervous world I want to soothe." And then displays a labyrinthian wisdom when our boy placates the masses and answers the burning question everyone wants to know, but is too afraid to ask...

Do you ever play Sudoku and do you find it difficult or easy?
(Submitted by Marcia from Ireland)

• Don't play.

Oh snap! You read it here first, Artie G and the Sudoku go together like guerrillas and gorillas...they're homophonous! Wait, what?!?

rock.
m$