Monthly Archives: January 2013

The First Annual Minneapolis Winter Carnival!

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Long ago King Boreas, lord of the four winds, stumbled on a charming little town in Minnesota. The street layout made no sense and almost everything shut down at 8PM. Their downtown was a barren wasteland, devoid of any activity which was probably a blessing because if more than 12 people were there it was almost impossible to find parking.

Boreas took pity upon the little hamlet, with it’s statues of Snoopy and pathetic attempt to make LaCrosse look like a professional sport people care about. “I shall make a carnival in Old Saint Paul!” Boreas exclaimed. “There will be ice carvings and a parade and buttons. People like buttons, right?”

Year after year Saint Paul was temporarily revitalized by Boreas’ generosity. The streets were filled with dozens of people as they frolicked in a winter wonderland and all was good. There were two parades! One during the day and one at night but not too late because people still had to get to bed. A giant ice palace was erected! People hunted all over parks searching for buried treasure! For ten days out of the year the streets of Saint paul were not ruled by the wandering homeless but merry revelers! King Boreas looked down on the celebration he created and called it good.

Eventually, though, Boreas grew bored at the late hour of 8 PM when everybody would go to sleep. The residents of Saint Paul were not used to such merriment and all this activity tuckered them out even earlier than usual. King Boreas looked around for anybody to join him in winter fun but all the residents slumped away, mumbling something about having to get up at like 7:00 for work. He wandered up to St. Paul’s highest hill and cried “Isn’t there anything to do around here?!?” He then looked to the west for the first time and saw a bustling metropolis filled with skycrapers, lights and activity. He crossed the river into Minneapolis and declared “THIS! This shall be the site of my new Winter Carnival! The Minneapolis Winter Carnival!”

King Boreas planted his flag into the frozen ground and proclaimed “and Denson & Young shall headline our first carnival!”

Come see the show that made Boreas cross the Mississippi. Come see Denson and Young present The First Minneapolis Winter Carnival Opening Ceremonies (on ice)!

Urquhart

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This is Kate.



kate1



Kate’s a buddy of mine. She’s a stand up comic and has a couple of podcasts, The Podcast of Comedy and Waiting for the Pizza. I’d usually see Kate at open mics and I’ve been on Waiting for the Pizza a couple of times (check out the episodes here!). She’s nice. I like her.



Kate and her partner Barb have been having a bit of trouble lately. Kate was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She went through a round of treatments, all documented about on her blog and seemed to beat it but cancer is a sneaky little fucker and found a new home in her liver. Shit went south for the treatments for that and she’s now in the hospital clinging to life. Barb has been updating all their friends via facebook and while she may turn around and recover, she may not.



All this time Barb has been at Kate’s side she hasn’t been able to work much and money was going to become a concern. To help out, some comics around town started a online charity drive to help her out. When I first thought about doing a post about this last night I thought I could help out by pimping the campaign on the site here but when I woke up this morning they were already less than $100 away from their goal.



The campaign was posted less than 48 hours ago. How fucking cool is that?



On top of that, the House of Comedy is putting on a benefit show for Kate and Barb next Tuesday and Maria Bamford is headlining!



They deserve no less. This site actually owes some of it’s readership to Barb since she emailed my “It Gets Better” letter to Phil Hinkle to Savage Love and they reposted it on their blog. I hate seeing shitty things happen to good people but it’s wonderful to see so many people rally around them in their time of need.



That’s really all this post is about today. Showing support to people who have brightened our lives. Jena and I are pulling for Kate and I invite anybody reading this to pray to their preferred god if they have one (I’m currently placing burnt offerings before a Voltron made from Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Buddha and Krishna) to get Kate through this. You can also donate to the campaign and attend the benefit show with Maria Bamford next Tuesday. The Comedy Corner Underground is having a charity show this Friday as well and I’m sure more events will pop up the next week or so because Twin Cities comics are the fucking best.


Rural Urban Legends

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Cow tipping. You’ve all heard the stories about some southern rural yokels, drunk and bored, going out late at night to tip over some poor, unsuspecting cow for their amusement. In fact, it’s such a well-known story that Pixar did a parody of it with a pick-up truck and a bunch of tractors in their tear-jerker “Cars.”

Tear jerker? Well, *I* cried. I mean, I had just gotten back from either the doctor or the dentist and was on some very good medication, but I bawled like a baby. Don’t judge me.

I asked a friend of mine who grew up on a farm if he’d ever been cow tipping before, and here’s his response:

Never tried myself. Only folks I know firsthand who claim to have witnessed or participated are not folks whose stories I trust. The physics always seemed dubious to me. Cows ain’t particularly precarious. If they really slept that deeply, and if their physical response to such startling was to either lock up or buckle… then okay, sure, it’s at least feasible. But none of my experience with cows inclines me to expect any of those conditions.

And he’s right. Turns out that cow tipping isn’t a real thing. According to the article, some scientists at a Canadian University did the math, and it is impossible for one person to tip over a cow. In fact, it’s incredibly unlikely that you could find *three* people who could do it. Four incredibly well built people could conceivably do it, *if* the cow didn’t move for some reason.

Cows

And even if 4 people could somehow sneak up on a cow without their knowing it and tip it over, it would just get right back up again. Don’t believe me? Here’s a video of a truck full of cows tipping over. Watch as the cows spill out onto the road, and, totally unfazed, get up right and start wandering around.

All those stories about people tipping cows? Made up by rural folk to make us city folk look dumb.

But just because you can’t tip over a live cow, doesn’t mean you can’t tip over a fake cow. Two students from University of North Carolina tipped over a cow sculpture. The art piece entitled “Cow House” for the house the cow was carrying on its back (to show how cows support humanity, according to the artist) was anchored to the ground by a 400 pound concrete block.

But these two art critics tipped that sculpture over. They tipped the hell out of it. They showed that cow who’s boss. Proving that you can do anything you put your mind to.

As long as your standards are low enough.

New Year’s Resolution Update #2: Now With 60% Less Failure!

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As some of you may know, last week I started tracking the progress of my New Year’s Resolutions. It had a bit of a “>rocky start but this week I had no cold to keep me down so I only broke three of my resolutions instead of seven!



With no illness as an excuse, I can really look at last week as an indicator of which of these resolutions will be the hardest to overcome. These are the ones that will take the most willpower and work on my part. These are the mountains I have to climb, the demons I have to slay. These are –



* quit biting my fingernails.
* work out every day I’m not at my day job
* stop playing flash games



Wow. I get having a hard time with the workout thing. That’s pretty common. You tell somebody that you’re having a hard time getting to the gym everyday and they’ll probably nod in agreement or provide emotional support or whatever. Tell somebody you can’t stop biting your nails and you don’t get quite the warm reception. It’s just harder to explain because you really gain nothing from it. It doesn’t make you feel good, it’s not a drug, it’s just a thing some people do for some reason. Half the time I don’t even notice I’m doing it until the nail is in my mouth. My friend Brody once bought some clear nail polish that tasted like ass to stop biting his cuticles. Maybe I’ll get some of that.



The flash game addiction is slightly different. People get why you’d play stupid games on the internet but they just think you’re a loser. Nobody gives a shit if you give up playing free online games.



Thinking about it, I really should have started some serious addictions before the New Year to make it more interesting. Quitting heroin and prostitutes would have been a lot more compelling than “throwing my hands up in the air and saying ‘YES’ when I fart in the living room.”



By the way, I’m proud to report I haven’t done that all week. It’s been really hard.

Oh, Republicans! Volume #5,360,285

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Move over, already way too overcrowded group of Republican politicians that have said horrible things in the last year, there’s a new Republican saying horrible things about rape and he’s here to defend your honor!



Georgia Rep. (they’re not always southern but they’re usually sothern) Phil Gingrey stepped up to the plate to defend Todd Akin’s awful “Legitimate Rape” comments.



In case you missed it, Todd Akin was running for Senate this summer and he said this on a news show –



“From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment. But the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”



Now granted, this was in Missouri so he may have actually heard that from doctors but it was wrong.



Akin lost the election just like a half dozen other Republicans who said awful things about rape over the summer. It was actually pretty disturbing to see so many people in or trying to get into political office have such backwards views but it all mercifully died down once the election was over. OR DID IT?



Rep Gingrey felt poor Akin needed to be defended so he up and told the Marietta Journal that Todd Akin wasn’t completely off with his statement. Here’s the full quote.



“In Missouri, Todd Akin … was asked by a local news source about rape and he said, “Look, in a legitimate rape situation” — what he meant by legitimate rape was just look, someone can say I was raped: a scared-to-death 15-year-old that becomes impregnated by her boyfriend and then has to tell her parents, that’s pretty tough and might on some occasion say, “Hey, I was raped.” That’s what he meant when he said legitimate rape versus non-legitimate rape. I don’t find anything so horrible about that. But then he went on and said that in a situation of rape, of a legitimate rape, a woman’s body has a way of shutting down so the pregnancy would not occur. He’s partly right on that. …
And I’ve delivered lots of babies, and I know about these things. It is true. We tell infertile couples all the time that are having trouble conceiving because of the woman not ovulating, “Just relax. Drink a glass of wine. And don’t be so tense and uptight because all that adrenaline can cause you not to ovulate.” So he was partially right wasn’t he? But the fact that a woman may have already ovulated 12 hours before she is raped, you’re not going to prevent a pregnancy there by a woman’s body shutting anything down because the horse has already left the barn, so to speak. And yet the media took that and tore it apart.



Gingrey’s comment may have a little medical know-how than Akin’s but has the same fundamental flaw. These two are basically stating that the problem isn’t rape, it’s girls “crying rape” or using rape as an excuse.



See, the only real bulletproof defense in the abortion debate the pro choice side has is the whole “in instances of rape an incest” so Republicans have taken to trying to poke holes in that by trying to introduce the idea that rape doesn’t happen as much as you’d think it would when the exact opposite is true.



Frankly, I love these guys. I can’t tell you how glad I am that people like Phil Gingrey are out there speaking out for what they believe. With people like him, the republicans can purge every woman voter from the party by 2016.

Flu Season Survival Guide

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The U.S. is in the middle of a flu epidemic. CNN is saying this is the worst flu season we’ve had in over a decade and many hospitals across the country are feeling the strain of the increase of flu related hospitalizations. Here’s some helpful tips to get you through the nasty flu season.



* Flu shots are one of the easiest ways to prevent the flu and there is no shortage of vaccine this year. The shot is about 60% effective so remember to get two. After two weeks of receiving the shots your blood will be 120% immunized so make sure to bleed indiscriminately wherever you think there might be flu virus.



* Wearing a surgical mask in public is a good way to keep the flu virus at arm’s length as nobody wants to be around a weirdo who wears surgical masks in public.



* If a friend or loved one is infected, limit their contact with other people as much as possible. Spread a rumor that the infected person is a pedophile.



* Don’t trust those cheap condoms the hooker brings with her. Bring your own condoms.



* Wash your hands after going to the bathroom. You should be doing that anyway. No wonder you got the flu, you pedo.



*Alcohol kills germs so be sure to keep yourself and everybody in your family at a minimum Blood-Alcohol Content of at least 0.17 at all times. Young children and the elderly are more susceptible to the flu so keep them at a higher BAC of about 0.20.



* If infected, make sure to infect 3 or 4 people as soon as possible. Each time you infect somebody else that’s half the virus leaving your body.



* Chicken soup is one of the oldest flu remedies known to man. Increase the effectiveness by bypassing the soup and just eating a whole fried chicken. Eat as much fried chicken as you can until you feel better.



* The flu virus can’t infect a dead man. When it comes down to it the only way to completely beat this thing is via suicide. This is only to be used as a last resort so don’t kill yourself unless you think you’re exhibiting flu-like symptoms.


THE ALEX JONES CONSPIRACY.

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Radio host, conspiracy theorist and professional mouth-foam producer Alex Jones made a lot of headlines this week when he went on Piers Morgan’s CNN show to talk about gun control. Piers asked Alex Jones why he started an online petition to have Mr. Morgan deported and Alex Jones just started yelling for like five minutes. Watch the whole thing here.



He then started yelling about a bunch of other things like “one world government” and “prescription drugs are causing all suicides and mass murders”. After getting kicked off the show for being a lunatic he retreated back to the internet where his “news websites” infowars.com and prisonplanet.com (don’t know why he has two. They have all the same articles but different layouts) declared victory in their debate and subsequently published a half dozen articles with the sole purpose of making Piers Morgan look bad via ad-hominem attacks.



Seriously, here’s an article that says Piers is “best buddies” with President Obama and then just starts talking about the innocent deaths caused by drone strikes.



So there you go. Alex Jones is just some psycho conspiracy theorist gun nut who started yelling on TV about guns because he thinks the government is coming to take them away. At least that’s what Alex Jones wants you to think



This story has gone viral. The video I shared already has over a million hits after a day and is on the front page of youtube. CNN has brought up the whole interview incident multiple times on it’s shows. infowars.com and prisonplanet.com have more than likely seen a huge spike in hits. More hits means more ad revenue. But who exactly is paying Alex Jones to advertise on his site?



infowarsgunad

gunads2



That’s right! It’s the gun industry! Alex Jones stands to make a lot more in advertising revenue if he can drive traffic to his sites via television rants and the gun companies can pay him a lot more if they’re selling more guns. What better way to kill two birds with one bullet than to use fear to get people to buy guns with a crazy rant?



What about the whole “prescription drugs are causing suicides and murders” rant? Why would he yell about that stuff? What does he have to gain?



WHAT INDEED!

WHAT INDEED!





Alex Jones is peddling herbal remedies on his website! Those are a little hard to sell because they don’t really work so what better way to sell them than to drag prescription drugs’ name through the mud?



WAKE UP SHEEPLE, ALEX JONES IS JUST AFTER YOUR WALLET. HE WON’T BE SATISFIED UNTIL HE’S BUILT AN EMPIRE OFF OF PROFITS FROM FOOD HOARDING WEBSITES AND GUIDES TO RELOCATING TO GET AWAY FROM THE NEW WORLD ORDER.



What better way to hid his conspiracy by wrapping it around other conspiracy theories? It’s the perfect conspiracy. Hiding in plain conspiracy. Conspiraception.



Don’t believe me? It’s all in my new book “The Alex Jones Conspiracy” available in hard cover on Amazon for $24.95 or you can buy it direct from our website here.



EDUCATE YOURSELVES AND BUY MY STUFF.

How to Stop Facebook Game Invites

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It’s happened to all of us. You see this –



Oh boy!

Oh boy!





and your hopes are raised. It’s a facebook notification! What could it be? Did somebody like a hilariously witty post of yours or comment about how handsome you are on one of your photos? You click on it and –



Goddamnit!

Goddamnit!



It’s a stupid game invite.



I get about a half dozen of these a day. People on my friends list inviting me to play some dumbass game on facebook. What really pisses me off is that I know they don’t care. It’s not like they’re playing Frontierville or Mafia Wars and suddenly think “OMG this game is so fun! My friend Bill would probably love to play this! I should let him know!” These games are nothing more than straight up pyramid schemes and players get rewards for spamming their friends. I know this because I totally used to play those games all the time.



I’m not proud but I used to be one of those people that sent out game requests all the time. I eventually realized what I was doing (or just became bored) and stopped playing them. In my experience facebook games can be separated into two categories: THE SPAM MACHINE and THE KINDA ACTUAL GAME.



THE SPAM MACHINE is the text based RPG like Mafia Wars or Superhero Wars or War Wars. The model is loosely based off games like Hobowars and Kindom of Loathing but they’ve taken out all the story, dialog, puzzle solving and fun. In these games you basically “go on missions” (click a button) until you level up. You belong to a guild that is nothing more than the number of people on your friends list who have started an account with the game. The bigger your guild is, more missions you can complete. You can also fight other guilds. If your guild is bigger, you win the fight.



Most of the SPAM MACHINE games only allow you to complete so many “missions” in a given hour but will give our extra missions or other in game bonuses simply for inviting friends every day. These games are turning people into Nigerian Princes every day.



THE KINDA ACTUAL GAME are flash games that actually have a little bit of entertainment merit, depending on your taste. These are Angry Birds, Bejewled, Farmville (although Farmville does have some SPAM MACHINE qualities) etc. These games don’t require you to have a bunch of friends play but still offer plenty of in game bonuses for having friends play.



Either way, if you receive an invite to play any of these games. Your friend doesn’t give a shit about you or actually think you might like it. You’re just another brick in their Castleville. If you want to stop these invites from flooding your notifications bar, here’s what you need to do.



Call them out on their shit.



Yes, I know that you can block certain game requests but this attacks the problem at it’s source.



The next time you receive a game request on facebook. Just write a message on that person’s wall. Something like –



“Thanks but really don’t want to play Bubble Blitz.” A little too polite. Might not drive the message home.



“I DO NOT WANT TO PLAY BUBBLE BLITZ” or “STOP SENDING ME GAME REQUESTS”. Assertive. To the point.



“FUCK YOU I DON’T WANT TO PLAY BUBBLE SHITS OR WHATEVER. IF YOU SEND ME ANY MORE GAME REQUESTS I WILL EAT YOUR FUCKING SOUL.” A little too agressive. Will probably result in that person unfriending you.



Sending the person who sent you the game request a mesage could also stop the game requests from coming but by posting it on their wall you’ve made it public. They know that these requests aren’t wanted. If they did, they’d post on your wall about it instead of sending you a private notification. If they get four, five or more posts on their walls from different people telling them to stop then they’ll just stop sending requests all together. Every farmville will wither and every Mafia will be gunned down.

New Year’s Resolution Update #1: Uh… Mulligan?

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I knew when I decided to take on 10 resolutions (11, actually. Totally forgot to put “floss every day” in there) that it wasn’t going to be easy. I knew that a couple were going to be broken and I told myself that when that happened, I would keep trying. One of the biggest problems with New Year resolutions for myself and a lot of other people is that once you have that one cigarette, that one cupcake, that one spoonful of heroin, you throw your arms up in the air and say “well, better luck next year!” People give up after the first shot not realizing that failure is an important part of the process of improvement.



I’m proud to report that I really mastered the “failure” part of the improvement process last week completely.



Seven. Fucking seven. I broke seven of my resolutions in less than seven goddamn days. Again, I knew that this wasn’t going to be easy but seven? What the fuck?



Granted, a few of those were due to the fact that I got a terrible cold on January 2nd. I had the whole fever/chills/dizzyness/sore throat/stuffy nose package and I had to work. I missed a blog, really didn’t feel like working out and just ate whatever was in front of me. Just sitting around and sniffling was boring so I played some flash games on my laptop.


That’s four right there.



Some of the stuff was just unconscious. Sitting in a training class at work I didn’t even realize that I was biting my thumbnail until I was halfway through the damn thing.



There’s five.



Haven’t called my parents since New Year’s eve. Gonna do that today and really, once a week’s not bad but I’m still counting that as six.



Finally, some things are just Pavlovian. A conditioned response. You’ve trained yourself to do it so much that it’s not even a reaction so much as a reflex. Like yesterday when I was sitting on the couch with my wife and I farted. Didn’t try to fart, one just kind of sneaked up on me. I did what I had done a million times before and pumped my fist up in the air in victory and said “yeah!” when Jena gave me a look and said “really? it hasn’t even been a week?”



She probably couldn’t tell you my other resolutions to save her life but she remembered this one. It’s burned into her mind. She’s got a personal stake in this one. And that was seven.



This is all fine. Failure’s an important part of the process. I’m learning. Master Bruce is falling down. I’m getting over the cold now and fully aware of the things I do without realizing it. I am totally going to do all of these.



Or at least just break six or fewer resolutions this week.

Are You Smarter Than The Onion?

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Pop quiz, kiddos! Below is a series of quotes from Vice President Joe Biden. Your job is to find out if you can tell which ones are actual quotes and which ones are quotes from The Onion. Answers at the bottom of the page!



1: “Signing the Affordable Care Act is a big fucking deal.”

2: “I’ve sure as shit made my fair share of mistakes.”

3: “One babe caught a glimpse of those rims after a Cinderella concert in ’86 and she couldn’t get into that backseat fast enough.”

4: “If you need any help on your pecs, let me know.”

5: “Spread your legs! You’re gonna be frisked!”

6: “Relaxation of Wall Street regulations will put y’all back in chains!”

7: I’ve been dying to hit Tijuana and check out a donkey show, I haven’t seen one since Teddy [Kennedy] and the guys took me down there when I was a freshman senator.”


Answers:
1: Real
2: Onion
3: Onion
4: Real
5: Real
6: Real
7: Both, actually. Huh.