Equality through kicks to the crotch

We came across an awesome blog post/article recently called “What Pregnant Women Won’t Tell You.  Ever.”  There’s a wealth of information in there, but one thing in particular got our attention.  And surprisingly it wasn’t the part where women shit the bed while giving birth.

As Skepchick puts it: “That crazy sudden pain that almost made you collapse? That feeling that someone just sent an electric fireball down your vagina and through your legs? That, my dear, was your sweet little baby kicking you in the cervix.”

My question: Is it possible to kick a woman in the cervix from the outside?

When it comes to fighting and self-defense, my strength is destroying groins because I am a dirty fighter.  The groin shot is great equalizer against men, but there is not a lot of research about its effectiveness on women.  Sure, it doesn’t tickle getting kicked in the cooch, but it doesn’t have the same debilitating effect that it does when a man gets slammed in the yam bag. 

The cervix kick, if possible from outside the womb, is a game changer to a game we haven’t even invented yet.  I don’t even know why or when I would perform a cervix kick, but I’m excited just to have it as an option.  It’s like why people are so giddy about the iPad. They don’t have a clue what they’d do with it but damned if they won’t be the first in line to buy one.

Maybe if some crazy Jersey Shore broad came flying at me with harmful intentions, I could subdue her with a cervix kick instead of punching her in the face or hitting her with a chair.  Doesn’t leave a mark and I doubt she’d get up from it, thus effectively neutralizing the threat without spilling any blood.

I’m not sure if cervix kick works as a good name for the move though.  Doesn’t roll off the tongue like “nut shot” does.  Maybe Boot to the Babymaker, or the Abortinator, or the Miscarrier.

We would like government funds to continue our important kick-to-the-cervix research, because we can tell that volunteers are going to be hard to come by.

Do these pants make Skynet look fat?

A friend of mine in the flesh world made me aware of a project to make robots that can keep itself fueled and energized by eating.

“It can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable.”

Now some people may panic over the prospect of robots being able to eat organic material or fuel itself autonomously, free of any human dependency.  They may be fearful that these are the first steps toward the robots rising up and exterminating humanity.  But I am not one of those people, and it’s not just because my drinking buddy is a half-cyborg cat who’s married to a nice Irish girl. 

If we can program robots to eat, we can program them to feel shameful about how much they eat, just like how we do to humans.  Well, mostly women.  We can give the robots bad body images and low self esteem by calling them fatties.  And the crushing realization that they cannot live up to the unreasonable aesthetic expectations of society will depress them enough to where they will excessively exercise and stop eating, thus canceling out their genocidal urge to purge the Earth of humanity.  Or they’ll commit suicide.  Whatever.  The point is, digital anorexia will be our best weapon against the eater robots.

Note: Digital bulimia will not work, as it requires the robot to binge and purge, meaning robots will still eat people but then throw them up.  Unacceptable. 

Yes, I came up with this plan with the help of Lance Patriarchy, the living embodiment of male dominance and oppression, because unattainable standards of beauty and shaming people who don’t meet them is one of his favorite things to do.  So when the robots don’t eat you and your family because you will all go right to their mechanical thighs and then no one will love them and they’ll be sad flabby worthless sacks of lard, I would hope you have the decency to send a thank you card to Lance Patriarchy for saving your life, even though it’s by the same means he uses to make your life miserable.  He finds that sort of irony delicious, but you can’t have any of it Fattison Square Garden! 

Now all we have to do is hope no one teaches the robots how to generate self-esteem and self-worth on their own and we’ll be good…

Punctuation and not being creepy

“I figured something out the other day on Facebook,”  says Ninja Vicki.  “You cannot type the phrase “happy birthday” onto one of your friends’ comment boxes without using an exclamation point at the end of it.”

“You’re on Facebook?”  I say.  “That’s a rather non-ninja thing to do.”

“I stole someone else’s Facebook profile,” says Ninja Vicki.  “I use it to stalk people like Samurai Cathy.”

“So why is the exclamation point the only suitable punctuation for the phrase Happy Birthday?”  I say.

“Because if you just use a period, it comes across as either really cold or really creepy,”  says Ninja Vicki.  “There’s supposed to be some enthusiasm when you declare Happy Birthday to someone, which the exclamation point provides.  Just putting a period in gives it the same inflection as something like ‘This hat is blue.’”

“I see what you’re saying,”  I say.  “There are too many ways a sentence with a period can be taken.  Is it happy?  Sad? Sarcastic even?  Is there an undercurrent of menace to it?  A bit of low-simmering anger or cold vengeance running through it?  Whereas the exclamation point makes it clear what your intentions are in saying Happy Birthday.”

“If I were to just write ‘Happy Birthday.’ on Samurai Cathy’s Facebook page, you would be inclined to read it like some sort of action movie one-liner right before killing someone, right?”  says Ninja Vicki.  “With an exclamation point, that threat isn’t there.”

“What about multiple exclamation points?”  I say.

“Anymore than three and it’s a sign of mental illness,”  says Ninja Vicki.  “And the use of the triple exclamation point set should be rare and allocated for only the most exclamation-worthy declarations.”

“Like ‘I’m not the father!!!’”  I say.  “Or ‘the AIDS test is negative!!!’”

“I ‘d have to do more research to see if using a period instead of an exclamation point is just as creepy when when used to wish someone a Merry Christmas or a Happy New Year, but I’m pretty sure it is,”  says Ninja Vicki.  “But that research will have to wait until December.”

“Well, there’s one thing we can test right now to see if it’s creepy,”  I say.

Happy Valentine’s Day. 

Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat’s Video Jukebox 02/06/10

Only cats can produce something so brilliant.  Try wrapping your pathetic human brains around this…

“Bag of Holding” means something different in prison

In a recent court ruling, it was decided that it was not a constitutional violation for prisons to ban the playing of Dungeons and Dragons in their correctional institutions.  From the New York Times article…

Dungeons & Dragons could “foster an inmate’s obsession with escaping from the real-life correctional environment, fostering hostility, violence and escape behavior,” prison officials said in court. That could make it more difficult to rehabilitate prisoners and could endanger public safety, they said.

“Now from what I know about D&D, isn’t it that the adventurers are going into the dungeon, rather than trying to escape from it?”  I say.  “Because that’s where all the treasure and adventure is?”

“True, but they eventually come out of the dungeon, unless slain by a basilisk or bear owl,”  says Psycho Dave.  I had to consult him for this story as my usual expert on such matters Mikka is out with his girlfriend Samurai Cathy again.  Plus Psycho Dave was in my kitchen trying to mate bacon with brocolli to create the greatest vegetable ever: bacolli.

“I would think prison officials would be happy to have their inmates doing something peaceful like Dungeons and Dragons,”  I say.  “Instead of all the other stuff that inmates do in prison to pass the time, like raping and stabbing each other.”

“You can make a shiv out of a 20-sided die,”  says Psycho Dave.  “Real easy.  Hell, you can slit a man’s throat with a coin.  I did it when I was in the can with Andy Dufresne.  And Red.”

“That’s the Shawshank Redemption,”  I say.  “You never went to prison.”

“But I did kill a man with a 20-sided die,”  says Psycho Dave.  “I was all, “oh, did I fail my saving throw?’ And then it was all, wham! And I slit your throat, and now there’s a new Dungeon Master in town.”

“Do you think they’d let that Magic the Gathering card game into prison instead?”  I say. 

“Depends on their policy of playing cards,”  says Psycho Dave.  “I cut a man’s head off with the Nine of Spades once.”

“No you didn’t,”  I say.

“This was at the other prison I was in, when I was in that gang, the Securities and Exchange Crips.”  says Psycho Dave.  “We only raped white collar criminals.  Some guy took my little embezzler bitch and I had to regulate.  And his friends were all ‘Hey, you you’re gonna pay for cutting off Tyrone’s head,” and I was all “Oh yeah, well I got a Six of Clubs, a Queen of Hearts, a Two of Diamonds, and a Four of Hearts waiting for your asses.  Oh, and by the way, I fold because this is the shittiest poker hand I’ve ever seen.’”

“You’ve never been to prison,”  I say again.

“Used to have to sleep with an UNO deck under my pillow in those days,”  says Psycho Dave.  “Never knew when some punk ass trying to make a name for himself would come at you with the thimble from Monopoly.  You’d get a Draw Four Wild in your neck for that.   Rich Uncle Pennybags ain’t got shit on me.”

“It’s like you went to Milton Bradley Penitentiary,”  I say.

“And that’s probably why they banned Dungeons and Dragons,”  says Psycho Dave.  “Big Board Game owns our prison system.  Their dominance will not be challenged by elven rogues, ice wyverns,  and +5 charisma-granting Rings of Charm.”

“But Hasbro owns Wizards of the Coast, which owns Dungeons and Dragons,”  I say.  “And Hasbro owns Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers.”

“You are like AIDS at a wedding,”  says Psycho Dave.  “Do you like crushing people’s dreams?  Did you ever think that maybe it helps me get through the day if I believe  the self-constructed fable that board game manufacuturers run our prison system?”

“Your fragile grasp of sanity is not dependant on the belief that prisons are run by the manufacturers of Jenga,”  I say.

“I shoved a Jenga block through a man’s skull once,”  says Psycho Dave.  “That was when I was in that POW camp in Vietnam with Robert DeNiro and Christopher Walken.”

We all need a fantasy world to escape to for a few minutes, or hours, or every waking second.

He-Man and the Masters of the West Bank

So lots of people were watching the season premiere of the last season of Lost this week.  I wasn’t because to me there’s really only one thing on television that’s worth watching, and that’s Palestinian children’s programming courtesy of Hamas.

We’ve already reveled in the jaunty fun of Farfour the mouse (who was beaten to death by the Israeli police), the joyous escapades of Nahoul the bee (who died of an illness because Israeli blockades wouldn’t allow him to get the medicine he needed), and Assud the jew-eating rabbit (who according to Wikipedia was killed in some sort of Israeli bombing run).  Now we’re getting actual Palestinian cartoons.  Apparently Hamas stole themselves a copy of Flash.

Again, Mikka wasn’t around to watch with me, because why watch Palestinian cartoons when you’re dating a samurai?  So I got Tina the Lesbian to come over and see what Hamas has been doing with their animation department.

“So it’s just Israelis killing Palestinian children?”  says Tina the Lesbian.

“No, it’s Israeli children killing Palestinian children,”  I say.  “This is a kids’ show, remember.”

“This is some fucked up shit,”  says Tina the Lesbian, jaw hanging open as more Palestinian kids get gunned down in animated form.

“It’s certainly not up to the low standards of 1970’s Hanna-Barbera cartoons, that’s for sure,”  I say.  “This makes Scooby-Doo look like Beauty and the Beast.  But I will say, it’s better than Clutch Cargo.”

“I don’t care if it looks better than a damn Pixar movie,”  says Tina the Lesbian.  “This is horrible, horrible stuff.”

“You’re right, they need to make it look more like anime,”  I say.  “Giant robots and women in impossibly skimpy outfits.”

“I was talking about the children getting shot,”  says Tina the Lesbian.  “This is awful.”

“Maybe the Hamas artists can at least use the anime style of drawing,”  I say.  “The Na’vi in Avatar all have those big anime eyes and people felt bad when they got shot up.”

“They’re not trying to drum up sympathy, they’re trying to create a new generation of martyrs for their anti-semetic cause,”  says Tina the Lesbian.

“Yeah, I’d probably blow myself up too if I were a child and this was the height of animation where I lived,”  I say.  “But I will say they’re way beyond the 80’s G.I. Joe cartoon.   No one ever got shot on that show, and you’d always see people in vehicles jump out just before their plane or tank or jeep got blown up.  Come on, a show about an American military group fighting an international terrorist organization and no one gets killed?  These Palestinian kids are way ahead of us when it comes to introducing the concepts of life and death in cartoons.  We had to wait for the Transformers movie.”

“They don’t need cartoons for that in Gaza,” says Tina the Lesbian.  “They can just walk outside and see it.”

“So you’re saying if America had decades of rampant sectarian violence in our streets then we would have had better cartoons growing up?”  I say.

Tina the Lesbian excuses herself from my living room and walks back to her house.  Apparently lesbians do not like cartoons, or discussions about them.

Groundhogs on a Plane

Turns out it was the pagans who started Groundhog Day, except they used snakes.  From Wicca. com…

Brighid’s snake emerges from the womb of the Earth Mother to test the weather, (the origin of Ground Hog Day), and in many places the first Crocus flowers began to spring forth from the frozen earth. 

But you can’t have large ceremonies where some jackass in a top hat and sash drags a snake out of its hole to see if it sees its shadow, at least not without some anti-venom on standby.  Because if you’re going to go through the trouble of gathering a whole bunch of people outside on a cold February morning just to grab a snake, it’d better be a cool-ass snake.  Like a cobra.  Or an anaconda.  Or a black mamba.

Also few people seem to notice that Groundhog Day coincides with the pagan sabbat of Imbolc, celebrating the coming spring and Avonia the Wiccan Pimp’s favorite goddess Brighid (or Brigid or Bridget depending on how Gaelic you want to go).  Brigid is a triple goddess, which explains why she’s the goddess of a lot of things like fire, poetry, childbirth, blacksmithing, wisdom, and leather pants (I may have made that last one up, but then again nine times out of ten if you don’t know who the god or goddess of something is, it’s probably Brigid). 

Avonia finds it funny that Halloween gets all the attention from religious types who say it’s satanic because of its pagan roots, however the only people protesting Groundhog Day is PETA. 

“Come on,”  Avonia says.  “We’re asking an animal whether the remaining weeks of winter will be mild or not.  It doesn’t get much more pagan than that.  Where are the stories of people claiming Groundhog Day is a gateway to hellbound paganism?”

“I think it’s because Halloween/Samhain has proven to be such a commercial success that the god-heads find it threatening,”  I say.  “Whereas the only people making anything off Groundhog Day/Imbolc is a tiny town in Pennsylvania that no one gives a shit about the other 364 days of the year.”

“What about Easter?”  Avonia say.  “What the heck do painted eggs hidden by a rabbit have to do with the resurrection of Jesus?  Companies make a lot of money on candy and eggs and dye based on our pagan springtime symbol of fertility.  Where are the crazy protests and books against the pagan bunny stealing Jesus’s thunder?”

“Because denouncement and condemnation are not butter,”  I say.  “They do not spread evenly over the toast of outrage.”

“Does that come from an outrage toaster?”  says Avonia.

“Yes, and it cooks unevenly,”  I say.  “Can Brigid fix it?  It’s screwing up my English muffins.”

I also have a crock pot of shame.  I will have yummy pot roast for these six more weeks of winter.

Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat’s Video Jukebox 01/30/10

Maru will make everything better with his magic trick…

And for good measure… business cat!

Surviving a Ninja Encounter Merit Badge

This is the time of year when they sell Girl Scout Cookies.  Ninja Vicki looks forward to this, as she has a scary affinity for the Peanut Butter Patties (aka Tag-a-longs).  And I have to agree with her, they’re like crack, heroin, and crystal meth all wrapped up into a yummy cookie.  So I have to make sure I get to the Girl Scouts selling them before Ninja Vicki does because she will take those Girl Scouts for every last box.  And woe to the Girl Scout who doesn’t have any Peanut Butter Patties on her when Vicki finds her.

“Where the fuck are those Peanut Butter Patties?”  Ninja Vicki yells at a pigtailed Girl Scout while holding her at sword point.

“I’m out of them,” says the frightened Girl Scout.  “I have Samoas though.”

Ninja Vicki swats the box of Samoas out of the Girl Scout’s hand.  “Samoas?  Fucking Samoas?  Is this some sort of sick joke?  I want chocolate and peanut butter, not fucking coconut, you cookie-peddling future stripper of America.  Coconut is bullshit.  Piss on coconut and piss on you for thinking I’d settle for that.”

In the face of great difficulty and mortal danger, The Girl Scout perserveres.  “I also have-”

“Thin Mints?”  Ninja Vicki says, holding her blade on the Girl’s Scout neck.  “Go on.  Say it.  Say Thin Mints.  Say fucking Thin Mints.  I dare you.  I double-dog-fucking dare you mother cock fucker!   Let me hear you say Thin Mints.”

The Girl Scout goes silent.

“Thin Mints can suck a cheetah’s ass,”  Ninja Vicki continues.  “I don’t want mint with my fucking chocolate.  Get this throughyour  beret, you syphilitic whore of tomorrow, I want peanut butter with my chocolate.  Fuck mint.  Fuck mint in its eye with a razor-wire cock.  You try to push Thin Mints on me and you’re going to find out what your gall bladder taste like.”

“But I’m out of Tag-a-Longs.”  The Girl Scout has now begun to cry.

“Well, fucking crying about it isn’t going to put those yummy cookies in my belly now is it?”  Ninja Vicki says.  “You march your ass back to your Girl Scout superiors and you get me a goddamn pallet of Peanut Butter Patties or you’re going to find out how hard getting your archery badge is when you don’t have any fucking arms.  Savvy?”

As I watch the Girl Scout run away, I ponder whether I should have intervened and given Ninja Vicki a few of the ten boxes of Peanut Butter Patties I had bought to hold her over.  But the only way anyone is getting my Peanut Butter Patties is to pry them out of my cold dead mouth. 

Placeholder age

“Does anything interesting happen when you turn 31?”  I ask, because today is my birthday and that’s my age.

“Not really, no,” says Anonymous Doug.  Today we are drinking some pints of Pants on the Ground Porter.  It’s 15% alcohol and guaranteed to have you looking like a fool with your pants on the ground.  “But you can’t reach the next age of significance without going through 31, so it’s just there to be stepped on.”

“It’s a minor character who gets killed off to move the story along for the major characters,”  I say.

“Yeah, 31 is the dead body that’s found at the beginning of Law and Order, or CSI, or Everybody Loves Raymond,”  says Anonymous Doug.  “And that sets everything else in motion for the next hour.”

“They didn’t kill people on Everybody Loves Raymond,”  I say.

“They did when I was watching it,” says Anonymous Doug.  “I was on peyote and mushrooms at the time, but I distinctly remember seeing Ray Romano murder someone to start every episode.  Except for that one time when Peter Boyle strangled a boy scout to begin the show.  Oh, how we laughed.” 

“So I shouldn’t be disappointed if nothing of note happens while I’m 31?”  I say.

“Well, you’re alive, that’s notable considering you thought you wouldn’t live to see 30,”  says Anonymous Doug. 

“Yeah, I was sure something would have gotten me by now,”  I say.  “Some sort of rare cancer, a car accident, a bloody armed standoff with the police…”

“A flash flood, someone stabbing you in the midst of a heated argument, breaking the lonely weight of unbearable depression and swallowing a bunch of pills…”  Anonymous Doug continues my line of thought.  “Yeah, I would have thought one of them would have gotten you before now.”

“You remember that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where there was that time anomaly and that alternate timeline where Tasha Yar who had been killed off a couple seasons back was still alive but everything else was fucked up for the Federation?”  I say.   “And the only one who knows everything’s fucked up is Whoopi Goldberg?”

“No, because I get laid,”  says Anonymous Doug.

“Regardless, Tasha has this cool line where she tells Captain Picard  ‘I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be dead,’”  I say.  “And then she goes back in time to the point everything got fucked up to get killed and everything goes back to how it was before.”

“Your point?” says Anonymous Doug.

“Ever get that feeling?  That you’re not supposed to be here?”  I say.

“All the time,”  says Anonymous Doug.  “Which is why I don’t feel bad doing whatever I do.  Like putting that webcam in my hot neighbor’s bathroom.  Or getting a blumpkin in a bus station bathroom from a teenage runaway trying to get herself enough cash to get a ticket to Oregon.  Whatever.  If I’m not supposed to be here, I might as well have fun trespassing.”

I think that’s what I’ll call 31… the trespassing year.