So I was doing my morning search of the internets for news stories I could make funny-ish comments on when I saw a story on MSNBC with the headline “Mom dives out 5th-floor window to save falling toddler.”

That’s a badass headline. I clicked on the link and fully prepared for a story where a toddler somehow opens a window and falls out. The mother, seeing this, immediately dives out after him. She straightens out her body and pulls her limbs in close to catch up with the falling child, grabs him and does one of those parkour rolls onto the ground. Having absorbed all the impact, she lays there with several broken bones and when the somebody runs up to help she looks at them and the first thing she says would be “is my baby alright? Before she passes out the child crawls up and says his first word. That word is ‘mama'”.

Badass.

Also, not the case.

Once I read the story I found out that when the baby fell out, he fell down to the 4th floor balcony (just one floor below). The mom then jumped down to help her baby because running down the stairs and knocking on your neighbor’s door and saying “Oh hey my baby’s out on your balcony because I like to keep windows open on my 5th floor apartment with toddlers running around” takes way too much time. She broke her ankle and the baby bruised his head. Both are currently being treated for a hereditary strain of stupidity.

Not what I was expecting at all with that headline but I guess “Mom, child fall 8 feet. Slightly hurt. Very stupid.” just doesn’t pop.

Hey folks! I have to go to the county courthouse today to retrieve my car from the evil clutches of the impound lot so here’s a blog I wrote 50 years ago on myspace! Enjoy!

The glint of flash bulbs dotted my blurring vision. The ring of the bell still hung in my ears as I fell down on to the stool in the corner of the ring. Doc wrenched out my mouthguard, stuck in a straw and squeezed in a shot of warm water. I spit a mess of pink into the bucket held in front of my face and gulped down as much air as I could.
The crowd roared. Heads bobbing up and down, fists pumping. The arena got their first taste of blood tonight. They wanted more. Piston Honda spent the first two rounds tenderizing me like a plate of Kobe beef and the fire in his eyes only seemed to intensify. He obviously hasn’t forgotten about when I stole the minor title from him early in my career. He’s been training since then. Getting better, faster. The time spent between when he blinks his eyes 3 times and throws a jab has halved. He won’t stop.
If there’s three things I know about the Japanese, honor is everything to them, they’re 7 feet tall and you get a star punch if you hit them in the face right before they throw an uppercut.
Time was running short. I needed my trainer to tell me something, anything to get me through the third and final round. I take in as much air as I can and gasp “He’s hurt me, Doc!”.
Doc pats me on the shoulder, looks across the ring and says “Dodge his punch, then counter-punch!”.
“Really? That’s like, the first thing you learn in boxing. Help me, Doc. Please!”. Doc swung me around, jammed my mouthguard back in and looked straight into my eyes. “Join the Nintendo Fun Club today, Mac!” I get shoved back out into the middle of the ring. I crane my neck up to make eye contact with Piston because he is literally three feet taller than me. He looks down and hisses through his mouthguard “I’m going to give you a T.K.O… from Tokyo!”. The bell rings.
I’m a dead man.

In what’s actually considered a news story in Bemidji MN, MSNBC reports that the town is considering changing the name of Stoner Avenue due to the fact that it’s street signs are stolen several times a year. In an actual quote from the article, it states “It’s believed the thieves are likely teens or young people who use the term stoner to describe someone who smokes marijuana” leading me to believe the article was written by a 60 year old man in a brown suit who uses words like “doobie” without irony.

The city is considering changing the name to something that is less likely to be stolen, forcing the young doobie tokers of Bemidji to show their love of marijuana other ways like listening to Sublime or shopping at Spencer Gifts. I don’t know if they’re accepting submissions but here are some of my ideas for the new street name.

Bongwater Trail
420th St.
Bob Marley Memorial Highway
Synching Up Dark Side of the Moon and Wizard of Oz Avenue
Cypress Hill
Woody Harrelson Way

I don’t know who to submit to but I’m sure I’ll find some email address on http://www.ci.bemidji.mn.us/ . Wish me luck!

Please tell me old people don’t get zits.

When I was going through puberty, I was told that although zits can be a pain in the ass, it’s all a part of growing up and I’d be over them. The fact that my parents and health teachers could just lie to me like that with a straight face is sickening. What they should have said, if they had any balls or respect for me, was that I’ll still get zits, just not as many on my face. I’ll get them in exciting new places like on my back and inside my nose.

“Inside my nose?”, I’ll ask in confusion.

“Yes, inside your goddamn nose” they’ll reply. “You’ll never know exactly where it is but every time you touch one side of your nose it will hurt like a bitch. You can’t exactly shove a Cearasil pad up there so you just leave it be until it grows so much that you accidentally pop it blowing your nose or something. By the way, nothing’s more gross than the feeling of a zit pop inside your nose but at least it’s over”. I’ll ask them when the pimples will ever end and they’ll just look at me and shrug.

Why yes I do have a pimple in my nose right now and it’s driving me fucking insane, how did you know?

In this crazy political climate where people like Michele Bachmann are taken seriously as a presidential candidate and the state government in MN has shut down because it can’t come to a budget agreement, it’s nice to know that on the local level you still have some honest, good, not crazy stupid politicians that just want to work to make their town a better place.

Or, the local politicians are even fucking crazier than anybody.

Case in point, a city council member in St. Francis drove to Chicago and mailed a fake Grenade to himself. Once he received the package, he called the cops and said he received a suspicious looking package in the mail. He insisted the police open it for him, stating that it could be a bomb because he’s in politics and has a lot of enemies.

I don’t know how many enemies a city council member can have, much less a city council member in St. Francis, MN (located on the corner of “where the fuck are we?” and “holy shit is that a Casey’s General Store? We are really off the beaten path here.”) and the police shared the same thought because they refused to open it. Frustrated at the police’s utter disregard for a crazy person’s ramblings, he opened the package himself in front of the officers to reveal a fake hand grenade with a note that said “the next one will be real”.

The cops called him out on his bullshit and he admitted he mailed it to himself to get sympathy from the public. Which leaves me with a few questions.

1. Why a hand grenade? Don’t you have to pull a pin to make those work? Mailing somebody a hand grenade is more like a weird gift than a threat. Was he going to mail himself a fake time bomb but worried that a bunch of hot dogs taped to an alarm clock might spoil?

2. Why go all the way to Chicago? Nobody in Chicago knows that St. Francis, MN is an actual town. He would have been better off mailing it from Elk River. It’s close enough to be plausable and nobody trusts those shady Elk River bastards anyway.

3. How was that supposed to garner sympathy from the public? Was he going to have yard signs made that said “Leroy Shaffer: Survived a truly piss poor attempt at assasination!”

4. Why did he need sympathy from the public? It’s not an election year. Do you even vote for city council in small towns? I thought those jobs just went to any grown up who owned more than two suits.

Thank you, Concilman Shaffer, for proving that elected officials on any level can be completely fucking bananas.

The San Fermin festival occurs this weekend in Pamplona, Spain and it’s famous 8 day “Running of the Bulls” is already underway.  MSNBC reports that on day 2, an Australian man was gored in the leg. While injury isn’t uncommon in the dumbest sport in the world, this guy got gored at the end of the sprint by taunting the bull in the bullring and then slipping and falling down. I think at this point the bull gored him merely on principal.

The man will, thankfully, live and sadly, probably not learn from his mistake and be one of those idiots that isn’t going to let this stop him from coming back next year. While I’m glad the guy won’t die, I’m also glad that the bull was able to get in it’s licks. What some people don’t know is that the bulls that run are the same bulls in the bullfights that night. Anybody feeling sorry for the guy who got gored can rest assured that the bull was sentenced to death buy multiple sword stabbings in an arena surrounded by thousands of screaming bullfighting fans. Supporters say it’s cool, though because it’s, like, totally artful and cultural and stuff.

While I’m no fan of bullfighting, I do like the idea of the running of the bulls. It’s like giving them a shot at revenge. Like if you had a bunch of turkeys have a cagematch with a farmer on Thanksgiving or a chicken got to hide some babies on Easter. Sure, turkeys are notoriously bad wrestlers and babies are a lot easier to find than eggs because of all that crying but it’s the gesture that counts.

PETA, however, does not seem to care for the bullfighting or the running. In fact, they’ve set up a yearly protest for the two days before the festival called The Running of the Nudes. I immediately looked up their website… out of journalistic curiousity alone. While I was expecting this

Hey, Billophiliacs! I’ll be featuring at the Joke Joint Comedy Club(click for location, show times, recipes etc.) all weekend and this weekend is extra special because I have merchandise to sell! Stand Up! Records put together a compilation album to be released at CONvergence and I’m on along with the likes of Andy Brynildson, Pat Bauer, Mike Brody, Bryan Miller, Andy Erickson, Amber Preston, Pat Susmilch, Gus Lynch, James Moore, Brandi Brown, Chris Knutson and Nate Abshire! 

I was hoping to do a blog today on some random news piece because those are pretty easy but it’s hard to find any news today that doesn’t have to do with the Casey Anthony trial.   I can’t really do much with that because it’s a little hard (not impossible) to mine comedy from dead children.  Also, I know nothing about the whole Casey Anthony trial. 

Seriously.  I can’t be sure what happened.  I wasn’t present when it happened and I’m not one of the police who investigated the crime.  I didn’t hear everybody’s testimony and didn’t see all of the evidence.  The only real information I have is fed to me through media outlets which, this is going to sound really paranoid of me, seem to be sensaionalizing the whole thing for some reason. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to join in the chorous of “Fry the bitch!” but I just don’t feel that I’m well enough informed on the issue.  Oh, how I wish I was standing outside the courtroom with hand painted posterboard or on facebook, posting that I hope she gets shivved in prison but I don’t have enough information to form an honest opinion. 

If only I was Nancy Grace I could say things like “As the defense sits by and has their champagne toast after that not guilty verdict, somewhere out there the devil is dancing tonight.” when in all reality I can’t be sure on what happened. 

The only thing I can be certain of is that we, as a naiton, need to put all this behind us so news stories like those steaks made of poop can get some headline space becuse I have a blog to write, people.

I spent three nights camped out in the Stand Up! Records party room at CONvergence performing, checking out other shows and parties, hanging out with friends and seeing costumes that ranged from amazing to downright disturbing.

Gonna get so much pussy this weekend with my sweet Gollum costume!

One thing I’m glad I checked out was the vendor room.  Vendors from all over the country were selling nerdy stuff like games, books, comics and weapons.  There were two different weapons vendors in the room selling stuff like ninja swords, knives and brass knuckles.  After seeing these, I decided that I’m going to ask Con to let me run a panel next year called “Why You Nerds Don’t Need Brass Knuckles”.  Here’s a few of the topics I’ll touch on.

1:  Brass Knuckles are for people who get into fights.  You’re an adult and, more specifically, a nerd.  You’re probably not going to get into a fight on your smartcar drive from your job at Geek Squad to the game shop.

2.:  Nerds are the last people on Earth who should be wearing brass knuckles.  Nerds are socially inept, have short tempers and love to play games with complicated rules.  This would normally be a volatile combination but most nerds are physically  unintimidating.   Now, with Brass Knuckles, a rules lawyering argument about D&D has now turned to a trip to  the ER with a broken jaw.

3.  Brass Knuckles are shitty weapons anyway.  They require you to know how to throw a punch to begin with, they extend your reach by half and inch and the pointy ones probably hurt to carry around in your pocket. The only weapon brass knuckles beats is no weapon. If you’re getting mugged by a guy with a gun you’re not going to be glad you have your trusty knuckle dusters on you. Hell, even in River City Ransom the only use for them was to throw at somebody with a better weapon.

Cory's barfing because he thought his Brass Knuckles were any match for Dragon Feet

4:  They’re probably illegal anyway.  weaponsuniverse.com has over 19 minutes of instructional videos that start with the disclaimer “You should not use Brass Knuckles because most likely you could have problems with law enforcement” and then go on for nearly twenty minutes about why you should and how you can use them as weapons. They even go as far to say how they disguise them as belt buckles and paperweights just so they can sell them to you.

Look for my panel next year!