Quiz Question: Which country is the only country on earth to be condemned by the International Court of Justice (the judicial function of the U.N.) for its terrorist acts?

My roommates and I have been working on a new blog, Them. It came into being when I noticed that Guadalupe, Singular, and I were writing about the same stuff on three different sites, plus, we'd like to bring Brooklyn into our little blog community. Anyway, you're likely to find adventures and such there, and personal thoughts here. The blog isn't really finished yet, but I'm going to employ Microsoft's patented "consumer as beta tester" method and let the public tell us what doesn't work on it. Enjoy.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, I'm Johnny Payphone, and this... is Nerd News.

Our top story tonight: Scotty visits past, gives scientist the secret of transparent aluminum. (From fark.com)

Okay, it's transparent aluminum oxide, but so what? If he'd broken the story with a correct translation, it would still be cool. So it's a ceramic. So it's only strong in certain directions. It'll still hold a couple of whales in a Klingon cargo bay.

In equally geeky news, Amazon Auctions is auctioning off the first three Seqways. Be the first on the planet to own one! I like the "notify me by email when this product becomes available" feature. As if you won't know. Being a former member of a motorized scooter gang, I can't wait to get one.

You might not have noticed it, but I've added some pictures a few posts back to my tale of my visit to Oxford. I'm a terrible, terrible photographer, though, so excuse the quality.

This weekend, Cabuto was all about having a Brownies con la mota party. Piloto said he would cook dinner. E-D was even going to eat them, and she doesn't smoke. All they needed was a place to have it, since the last time they made Brownies con la mota at home, Cabuto's aunt ate some. ¡Sorpresa, Tia!

Well, I knew it was bad news when they said they'd come over at 10pm Friday night. That translates to 1AM Mexican time! Sure enough, by 10, Tejas hadn't shown up to pick them up, Piloto was asleep, and Guadalupe and Singular were heading to bed. I went to go get E-D and Cabuto, and while I was there, Piloto jumped out of bed to show me that he had rigged his guitar effects pedal to run his tattoo gun. I wonder if he can tattoo reverb now.

[aside: Piloto tattooed in Mexico City for four years. He just bought a gun here. I'm waiting to see his work on Tejas before I let him stick me with that thing. I'm almost hoping he's bad- having a friend who will tattoo at cost can be very dangerous to the whiteness of one's skin.]

Well, we finally made it back to my place by 11. The brownies took an hour to cook, and then another hour to take effect. Lupe and Singular were long gone. They were mighty tasty, I love the taste of la mota, and they were quite powerful as well. We ended up staying up until five or so, jibber-jabberin' like monkeys, higher than a giraffe's ass.

Coming back into work on Monday, we were all pleased (sarcasm here) to discover that an act of double-idiocy had allowed a horrible, racist email to be sent to the entire company. First the HR lady sent out a list of job postings to everyone. Standard practice, right? So then some racist motherraper made up a fake resume full of ethnic stereotypes, you can guess the content, it wasn't very imaginative. They sent it to a field manager, who didn't even look at it, but rather replied to the job posting with the resume- and of course, since the email was sent to everyone, the reply was sent to everyone. So now this nasty piece of hate-literature gets sent to every employee. The IT dept finally, FINALLY, set the email system so that replies to a group email will go by default to the sender, not to the whole group. I've bitched about that here before. Jeez. Does it take a federal hate crime just to keep my mailbox from being filled with "Who took my lunch from the seventh floor fridge" emails about crap that has nothing to do with me? Of course, the plan isn't foolproof. Never underestimate the ingenuity of fools, you know.

Saturday night, I drove to Springfield, Ohio, where my friend Bobby Michaels was announcing an Outlaw Championship Wrestling match. He explained to me that if you want to be a Pro Wrestler, you have to work for Vince McMahon, so this was sort of the underground, backyard, redneck version of the WWF. But this wasn't no "America's Funniest Fatal Stunts" submission- you could tell that these guys practiced hard at the art of fake wrestling. That's him to the right, with SinSational Satin, a gay wrestler, who of course got the shit kicked out of him. What's a sports event without some healthy gay-bashing?

There were about 50-60 people in the audience. Lots of kids. Bobby Michaels is a manager, but he was announcing this show. They had a real ring, a nice little chain-link-and-barbed-wire entrance (see photos), running commentary, and "Welcome to the Jungle"- everything a wrasslin' match needs. The wrestlers all talked trash before the match. They distracted the ref while their friends got in the ring and beat up on their opponent. There was the obligatory team of "bad" wrestlers, the CIA- ooh, those CIA boys, they always cheat! There was the pole match, the battle royale, the "ref gets injured so the guy who takes over is a former partner of one of the wrestlers, and lets him cheat" story, people getting hit with stop signs, people getting hit with folding chairs, people getting tossed out of the ring, and even a guy who emptied a bag of thumbtacks on the ground before body-slamming his opponent onto the pile. Ouch! At left, note "Mikehell Roberts", a teeny tiny little pimp who was the manager of Mr. Mayem and Big Jim. What you can't see in that picture is that the lil' pimp has a mullet down to his ass. He was a pretty despised fellow, and at one point, all the other managers kicked his ass.

In what other sport can a six-foot, 400-lb guy have a distinct advantage?

Stop sign to the face! That's gonna leave a mark!

They handcuffed the lil' pimp to the ring for his much-deserved beatin'.

All of these pictures except the first are from the photo page at the official website. Check it out for more. Oh yeah! There was also this sixty-year-old granny who sang along when they played that song "What would you do/If your son was at home/Crying all alone on the bedroom floor/'Cause he's hungry?/And the only way to feed him is ta/sleep wit' a man For a little bit of money..." I'd never seen a senior citizen bust rhymes about hookin' before.

From the FAQ at www.monkey.org:

1.2: how do i view monkey SSL-protected web pages?
1. go to the SSL-protected page you want to see. accept our server's remote mind-control implant ("certificate"). answer 'OK' to all the prompts. do as i say, human.

2. pee your pants, do a little dance. make that booty clap.

From www.neo.com:

"UltranetixTM, the Professional Services Division of Neo Ventures, Ltd., provides enterprise infrastructure planning, technical marketing, and Internet technology consulting to industry leading companies. "

Apparently, all this planning and consulting is to be based at stinky.com.

Tri-State Crematory: You Lost 'Em, We Tossed 'Em

So this creepy Georgia Crematory Story is giving everyone the heebie-jeebies, myself included. I think it's because it's so wrong, but it's not quite clear why. This is not a case of someone being crazy and mistreating corpses- the guy only inherited the place in '96, and the body-dumping has been going on for 15 years or so. It's more like a case of a family being extremely, extremely stupid.

How long did he think he could toss the bodies in the woods before someone walking their dog discovered them, like all bodies in the woods are discovered? "What's that you've got, Mister Snuffles? Did you find a bo-bo? Bring it here... OH MY GOD AHHHHHHH!!!!" And he was giving the families concrete dust, they said today on the news. It seems to me- and this is a stretch- don't you think that disposing of bodies in some way OTHER than cremating them would be more of a pain in the ass than actually cremating them? I can't imagine the smell. I was 15 miles away from that place a couple years back, when Singular and I were on a road trip- I'm surprised I couldn't smell it then.

I called him ((706) 764-1577 ) to ask why he did it but his voicemail box was full. I was hoping that the recording would say something like "I can't come to the phone right now, I'm facing 16 felony counts" or "If you've gotten this recording, I'm probably chucking somebody's beloved grammaw in the woods and handing them a jar of concrete dust." I looked the place up on Terraserver but I couldn't see any bodies from there.

I'm super-creeped-out by the thought of all those bodies scattered around the woods, but I'm also pretty amused by the degree of negligence here. It's like a company accountant taking all the company receipts and stuffing them under his desk and hoping nobody will notice, except we're dealing with human bodies, which people tend to get a little sentimental about. I mean, we always knew the post-life industry screws the bereaved at every turn, but I just never imagined.

The irony here is that I myself would love to be tossed in the woods when I die. But because of our culture's wacky believe in ghosts and goblins and deities, we're legally bound to be stuffed full of presswood glue and stuck in a box to be all nasty and manky forevermore. I want my earthly remains to be recycled, to become part of the great circle of life once again. Now I know where to request to be cremated.

Once in Dayton, a friend's boyfriend tried to tell us in all seriousness that a local restaurant, renowned for its dumplings with their secret ingredient, was discovered to be breaking into morgues and slicing- and he was serious- the buttocks off of corpses and putting them in the dumplings. He claimed that two mysteries had been solved at once- who was slicing the buttocks off of all the dead bodies around, and what the secret ingredient of those delicious dumplings was. "Butt-dumplings?!?!" I exclaimed, "You expect us to believe that some restauranteur got it in his head that he was going to serve butt-dumplings?!?!" I didn't believe him then, but now I'm thinking...

When we were in that part of Georgia, I stopped and got some boiled peanuts. Maybe this guy wasn't just chucking the bodies- maybe he needed them for something! Maybe he was slicing the tender buttocks off and using it to flavor some of those delicous boiled peanuts. Come to think of it, the packaging did say, "Tri-state Crematory Brand Soylent Boiled Butt-Nuts." Oh my goodness!

BOILED SOYLENT BUTT-NUTS ARE MADE OF PEOPLE! THEY'RE PEEEEEEEEEOOOPLLLLLLLLEEEEEE!!!

Driving on the open road alone can be dangerous. Deprived of the hustle and bustle of everyday life, the mind starts to clean house, picking at old scabs that have been allowed to heal due to distraction. Drive alone through an area where you grew up, and the crush of memories is overwhelming. I was wrong to think that living each year better than the last would protect me from painful nostalgia for good times past.

To keep my mind off of the issues that I usually rely on defensive mechanisms to keep my mind off of, I visited a Cracker Barrel and rented a copy of Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon Summer 1956. It's a tale of his sexual frustration as a 14-year-old Sanctified Brethren- and the teenage narrative brings sex to the forefront quite often in the book. Frankly I thought most of the crackers in the Barrel would have been appalled at the content. I myself don't patronize the restaurant, like any American without a walker or a GOD HATES FAGS license plate cover, but they're the only place you can rent books on tape. I suppose I've patronized worse, and I didn't stay long, you know- sizzle sizzle and all that.

Now, Garrison Keillor is not the individual that I think of most often in a sexual manner. I'm sure there's a website for people who do. The sex in the book was all in that imaginative fantasy of a person who's never had it. I wish I could write such a revealing book, but still... I don't think Garrison anticipated reading this stuff outloud.

I got a late start, which I'll bitch about later, but it meant I didn't make it into town until about 12:45. To get the most out of my visit, I had KC and his gang meet me at the bar along with my college buds, who knew KC through me and said, "I want to be involved in anything this guy is up to tonight." That's the way it is with KC, he must feel terrible pressure to get into trouble all the time.

We drank. I knew I was in podunk-ville when the bartender held up my five dollar tip and asked if I really meant to leave it. In Chicago you'd get dirty looks, or worse, if you left anything less after having three drinks. Pardon me for trying to take care of my bartender, though judging by the service this place is famous for, I wasn't surprised that he'd never seen Abe in the tip jar before.

One of Kasey's buds was a cop, which is quite surprising considering how often Kasey is in trouble with the law. It was not the last time that I drank with a cop that weekend. Another friend, who I'll call I. Will (cuz his name is I. Wilbur) kept asking throughout the night what I was doing on Saturday. Everytime we'd leave one place to go to the next, he'd ask, and every time I'd say, "You're calling my parents' house at four. We're going out to eat. And I'm going to see you in five minutes, when we get to where we're both headed." Then, when we left that place, sho' nuff, "What are you doing tomorrow?" The next day my parents received several phone calls, much earlier than four, asking what I was doing that day. When it was dinnertime, he said his hangover was too bad to meet for dinner. Oh, well, I can sympathize.

Driving was also a shock for me. I'm used to going as fast as the traffic and obstacles will allow me, which is never above 45 or so. I had to restrain myself, and at one point even had to honk at six deer to get 'em off the road. I'd rather dodge deer than bullets any day, I'd reckon.

At closin' time we adjourned to the bus, the same one featured at www.maximroadtrip.com. I hadn't seen it since he'd added some shwankification, including red carpeting on the floors and ceiling. Not to mention the train horn. Ah, the train horn. I've never come so close to having the shit shaken out of me. He got it off a decommissioned locomotive. Five bells, with an air compressor that he hasn't yet converted to DC, so we had to unplug an unsuspecting vending machine and charge up the horn for a few minutes. You can imagine what it sounds like- like standing right next to the tracks when the train blows its horn.

A late-late-nite at one of those college houses where I'm sure I went to a party five years and fifty residents ago, and I crashed at my parents' house as the sun was coming up.

A nice afternoon spent chatting with the parents and my brother, and visiting my family's pug. A much-needed fix of Cincinnati-style "chili", which for the uninitiated contains cocoa. It was a lucky visit to my hometown, where I didn't see anyone that I hoped I'd never see again. I can't even remember the names of all those people I'm trying to forget. ;)

Before I knew it, it was time to head to the wrasslin' match.

Last night, for shits and giggles, I called James. My parents always send me long-distance cards to bribe me to call them, and I am woefully neglect in that manner. So when James made the mistake of emailing me from work, I got his number off his sig and called him.

"What the hell are you doing still at work?" I yelled, "Go home!"

"It's only just past five!" he said, rather timidly. Then he said, "Pardon me, who is this again?"

I realized when putting in my archive links that this blog has passed its one-year mark. I made my first entry on January 11th, 2001. Most of the archives don't work at the moment, and as a matter of fact, they haven't worked all year! Click around, though, you might get lucky.

Pinch dey tails, suck dey heads

I knew I was in the right place when I walked into the Davis St. Fishmarket in Evanston and saw that the bar had a trough of ice full of oysters in it. SingularGirl, acting against her own wisdom, took me and Lupe there for their Mardi Gras celebration, particularly so that I could sample the Crawtini, which was Abby Peppar with a crawdad sitting in it. It was good and all (despite that it violated my friend and coworker Shaw's rule: "Drink no alcohol that contains seafood") but to me, a vodka martini is not a martini. It's a shot of vodka in a fancy glass. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it, for the day I become a martini snob I'll know it's time to start drinking nothing but Bud Light to bring me back down to earth.

My father's parents are from Foley, Alabama, right off the Gulf and across Mobile bay from Bayou le Batre, home of the fictional Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. So if you've seen Forest Gump, you know what the town used to be like when I was young, though it has suffered a ghastly period of crapification in the last decade or so. Spending my summers there growing up, I ate seafood for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and if you don't believe me, ask Singular or the Gintleman- they've been there and seen it firsthand.

Living in the midwest, I don't really eat seafood that much. Ya gotta go to the expensive places to feel safe about the freshness. That's why leaving the head on a fish that you order is such a delicacy- if the eyeballs are intact, you know it's fresh. Not to mention the delicious fish cheeks! However, I hadn't had a good batch of mudbugs since my last visit to Grandpa's, so I decided to treat myself, it being Mardi Gras and all.

They had a N'awlins-style jazz band, that tromped around the place like a little parade. They threw beads into the crowd. It was like a teeny enclave of Mardi Gras, celebrated by a hundred people sheltered from the bitter cold and far, far from the Big Easy. Singular got a shrimp cocktail, Lupe got some fried green maters, and I got myself two pounds of delicious, spicy, succulent crawdads.

Everytime I'd look at Lupe with a mudbug head hanging out of my mouth, she'd remind me of how "lucky" I was that she "allowed" me to eat them. Singular constantly lamented her judgement in even telling me about the place. See what I have to put up with? Just because I'm 'epicurious' and seek always food beyond the baloney sammich, I get shit from my best friends, whose idea of an adventurous meal is putting the mustard on the lettuce side. Although, Lupe tried a tail, and she receives mad props for doing so. I never ask that anyone enjoy the things that I eat, but I do hope they try it. Then they can genuinely say it sucks, rather than just presuming so.

Even though we were drinking, we got out of there for less than $60 combined. It's hard to find seasonal seafood that's cheap, supply and demand and all that. I was one happy Payphone. Like a crawdad-eating python, I can digest this meal for a year and not crave the lil' creepy-crawlies until my next visit to Foley.

There remains one seafood frontier that I have always yearned to experience. I've had soft-shell crab, but I hear tales of places that serve you hundreds of itty-bitty ones, that you can just pop into your mouth like nature's Ebirah-snack. I tell ya, once I find one of those places, I'll lie on the table and just have them dump the crabs in my mouth as fast as they can steam 'em. Maybe I'll use a funnel contraption of some sort. Mmmm, crab-bong.

Sigh... college contacts, and the contacts that have resulted from those contacts, have gotten me down. Y'see, I really regret going to college. At all. How the fuck was I supposed to know when I was 18 what I wanted out of life? My parents wanted me to take a year off, travel overseas, but I just went to the school that my dad worked for. I'm the type of person that derives the most fulfillment from tangible, solid tasks. Most things you can go to higher education for are very intangible. I recognize the value of education, of course... I just wish I'd educated myself for something I would be happy doing. Mechanic, or machinist. Something with a solid outcome. I would be so happy at my grandparent's farm, working with my hands, hard labor in the sun... good, honest work. I'm reasonably happy doing generic office chores and database maintenance, but I have this nagging guilt that I'm being paid for bullshit.

At any rate, I never felt like I fit in at school. Pampered, snobby rich kids, in this case filled with self-righteous idealism, whose ideals would never play out in the real world because they had no real understanding of how most Americans are. It's the same with Eminem. All my ivory tower queer friends are aghast at the thought of liking him, as if they've ever listened... but I love his music because I know far, far too many people that he is speaking for, and it makes me thankful for what I have. The kids at school certainly didn't pay their way through college working at a paper mill, or anywhere else... they flitted across Europe for the summer. Most of them had never worked, ever. I remember one guy, though, who paid his way through school with the G. I. Bill. He had killed folks in Panama to get to school. That guy was zero bullshit.

My feelings of disparity manifested as angst, and I would sent all kinds of bad vibes towards people who were simply frolicing in the luxury they didn't know they had. It wasn't their fault, where they came from. They were all good people. It was academia as a whole that pissed me off, this bizarro bubble where bullshit is rewarded. Where people don't have any real problems, so they make up their own. As shitty a town as Dayton, Ohio, is, I was so much happier there than at school... even though the people there didn't have any dreams, and got arrested for stupid stuff, and generally fucked up their lives... I wish I could explain it. I think I'd be a lot more at peace with myself if I could.

So, I've discovered, high school bullshit extends into college, and extends beyond it. The business world is not exempt. Again, people without problems will come up with problems to fill the void. It's like in The Matrix, how humans weren't happy unless there was misery in the world.

I hid myself from the high school bullshit for a long time, and now I'm only peeking back into that world to see that it's still going on. For one, all of these folks from college seem to move to cities and hang out with the same old people they went to school with. I mean, didn't I move to a city to meet several million other people? I like to have friends who are young and old, liberal and conservative, white and non-white, gay and straight, and so on. I feel trapped when everybody I know is the same. My friends, now, are from all walks of life, and have taught me a lot about who I am. A valued couple in Nebraska, a Lutheran preacher and his wife. I am as atheist as the day is long, but their lifestyle has taught me a lot about how to live mine. A crusty professor in New Zealand who has shown me how to keep my sense of humor until I'm 89, and to remember not to give too much of a shit about what others think. A kinkster in NYC who, while showing me more than I wanted to know about S&M, certainly helped me examine my own sexuality and needs. And shown me that no matter how busy my life gets, there are others who manage to keep even more balls in the air. Many, many more, from all over the globe, who I could never list completely. For those who read this, thank you for enriching my life.

Yet back in college land, folks are still using the same lingo and telling the same inside jokes as they were back in the day. Pulling the same cliquey bullshit. There's another curious phenomenon going on. Years after graduation, all of my college friends are dating other people from college. Now, if you met in school, and have dated since, that's normal. Heck, I'm doing it now. But if you didn't date them in college, the time where you had nothing to do but flirt and fuck, why now? Have they met no interesting people since then? Are they like, safe, because they can at least talk about old times together, instead of bearing the burden of coming up with new conversation topics? This has happened many, many more times than I can count. It's the latest trend. It's kind of scary- all these people move to far-off cities, and the only datable people they meet there are the ones they went to college with?

And oh, the passive-agressivism! Tried it, didn't work, made me miserable. For example, how passive-aggressive is it to trash someone on your website? Come on. As if they're not going to read it. It's especially funny when it's coming from someone who is always spoken of in terms of what a pain in the ass it is to be their friend, because of exactly the same things that they're accusing the other person of. I dipped my toe back into this drama, and while it hasn't hurt me any (as I have Photon Drama Sheilds in place at all times now), it's made me sick to my stomach that people I like haven't grown up any.

Then there are the ones who are good through and through, and you feel regret for not calling them enough. Or the ones you can pick up with right away as if years haven't passed. Or the ones who you were never that close to, but are interested in what you've been up to, just out of curiousity. If only I could apply a life filter, and leech all the crap out of that college crowd, and interact with each one of them directly, as friends, with good will, and wish them all the best. And leave it at that.

I'm going home this weekend. It's been too long since I've had a home-cooked meal at my parents'. I'll visit some folks from college, some folks from the hometown (as they are located in the same place), and my brother, who doesn't so much as have an email address and would rather be fishing in the rain than sitting inside doing anything. Friday night I'll pop in on the old roleplaying gang, as they'll be sitting around the poker table playing D&D, just like they have every Friday night since 1979. I'll visit some alums who are coming back in for the weekend, and some that never left, having been sucked into the black hole a college town can be. I'll look up the high school buddies who went the wife and kids route rather than the college route.

All of them have chosen their own path, and it's not a path that's for me. I don't hold it against them that they've set down roots. I feel sorry for them, sometimes, but then again, it can't be so bad. If it was, they woulda left. But by the time Sunday rolls round, I'll be yearning for my new life, where self-preservation is a full-time occupation, and nobody has enough free time to pull the drama shit. If I had a time machine, I'd love to go back in time: The past is a fun place to visit, but I wouldn't wanna live there.

Kira defines "dyke drama" as:

1) The phenomenon in a community which occurs when two lesbians break up. 2) Anything involving lesbians becoming unreasonably agitated due to stress. Usually associated with an overload of responsibilities. Has a tendancy to drive roommates insane.

I would add a third definition:

3) The cycle of lesbian relationships, i.e., meet, move in together, cheat on each other, break up but still live together, enter into relationship with the ex's ex, realize you're only together out of mutual spite for your share ex, break up, give up relationships, repeat the next week.

It's Friday! It's 5PM! See you folks later, I'm going into retox for the weekend.

That's it, I don't think I can possibly live another day without this.

51) wait four days for rep to call back
52) Call and ask to talk to appropriate department
53) be told they don't take calls, that they'll call me
54) Wait another day
55) Call and ask what's taking so long
56) Be told that no serviceability form will be entered because cable modem service is not available in my zip code
57) Call twenty different DSL providers
58) be told by each that I must be an Ameritech customer before I can get DSL
59) call Ameritech
60) Be told that I simply need to switch, pay my first month's bill, and then they can verify if service is available in my area, which would only take 2-4 weeks to hook up
61) burst a blood vessel in my forehead, splattering the screen with blood

to be continued...

Aha! I knew the Germans would have a word for it. I asked Conny (Mrs. Nosuch) and she said the word was "erbarmenswert". She defines it as "so embarrassing to watch, makes you feel pitiful," and babelfish translates it as "pity-worthy". I was looking for the word because yesterday I idly watched some network television.

All these reality shows, and the word reality is used very lightly, generate in me a strong sense of erbarmenswert. It used to just be Jerry Springer and The Real World. Now there's Elimidate, Temptation Island, and a host of other nauseating programming. I've attempted to tune in for some hearty old-fashioned schadenfreude, but all I get is erbarmenswert. I understand the basis of the shows- get idiots to behave idiotically so our voyeuristic society can delight at their pain- but most of the shows feature people so clueless, pitiful, petty, and stupid, that they eliminate the possibility of enjoyment at their expense and go deep into the realm of being embarrassed that you share a species with them.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised- anyone with smarts enough to stay off the show is going to stay off the show. Who with half a brain is going to fall for the "come to our show and get a makeover/surprise your spouse is sleeping with your mom" switcheroo? What person who can eat without a bib thinks that the fame they'll get from Elimidate will be the good kind? The Real World, in particular, searches very hard for people who are willing to lose all of their dignity in front of the nation. Fortunately for me, if you add up three minutes spent watching each of these shows, I've not wasted more than a quarter-hour of my life on them. And I've never paid for cable, unless you count the cost of a socket wrench, super-glue, and fixative. So I guess I can't complain. But still, I worry about living in a society that watches this shit enough for there to be a Temptation Island 2, even after the couple with the kid was on. I think things won't improve until they take it to its logical conclusion, which includes death sports, "Who Wants To Be A Laughingstock?", and a show where viewers can vote electronically on which contestant gets the shit smacked out of them.