He’s thinking about girls in knee high boots and the theme to Iron Chef

“They’re among us,”  I say.

“Who’s among us?” says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat.

“Mind readers,” I say.  “People who can hear your thoughts.”

“Cat minds cannot be read,” says Bernie.  “Our thoughts are too complex for humans to comprehend.”

“That may be true, but they’re out there, those mind readers,” I say.  “And I figured out a way to find them.”

“Does it involve fire?”  says Bernie.

“No, it requires thinking really hard about skullfucking,” I say. “Horrific, violent, rapeful skullfucking.”

“How does that ferret out mind readers?”  says Bernie.

“I look for a reaction,” I say.  “Imagine you’re a mind reader and you’re just going about your business, hearing everyone’s thoughts and then someone pretty pointedly is telepathically telling you they’re going gouge out your eye and fuck your skull.  I don’t think you would take that notion with a stoic stiff upper lip.  You’re going to react in someway, probably horrified.”

“But what if someone has a really good poker face about this sort of thing?”  says Bernie.

“I have a back-up plan,”  I say.  “I just say pussypussypussypussypussypussypussypussypussypussypussypussypussypussypussy and wait for them to crack a smile or laugh.”

“If horror doesn’t work, break ‘em with funny,”  says Bernie.  “They won’t be prepared for such a dramatic shift in strategy.”

“Indeed, mind readers are a tricky bunch,” I say.  “But I’m ready for them.”

“And they probably already know that,” says Bernie.  “They’re mind readers.”

“They can know, but are they prepared?”  I say.  “I contend that they are not and will have trouble becoming prepared because they don’t have time to prepare when they’re being bombarded with other people’s thoughts.”

“Pretty shrewd for a human,” says Bernie.  “So what do you have planned for people who can move stuff with their minds?”

“That’s something I’m still researching,” I say.  “Right now, all I got is kicking them in the groin, but that’s my defense against everything.”

“So how much time do you have on your hands to conceive of rooting out mind readers?”  says Bernie.

“Less than you think,”  I say.  “My wild speculation time has been eaten into big time by the bullshit of life.  I barely have time to scrape out a half-baked blog post and still maintain my schedule of drinking binges and cat video viewings.  But you carve out what you can when you can.”

Maybe in the future my calendar will clear up and I can find myself a telepath girlfriend, which you think might be a bad idea but then again she’ll never ask the question “What are you thinking?” after sex, because she will damn right know that I’m thinking about nothing.

Shut off your brain and take off your pants

If I had a time machine, I’d want to go find the person who created pornography. Not to tell him thanks or shake his hand because he probably won’t speak my language and will find my clothing from the future threatening and frightening. I just want to witness how he came to the conclusion that it would be awesome to have some sort of visual record of people fucking so we can enjoy it at our convenience.

NOTE: Yes, I’m presuming the creator of pornography is male, because I’m seeing pornography being created as the solution to a problem, that problem being how to witness sexual acts  and hot pieces of ass when no one’s around.  Just like how men invented weapons out of the problem of how to kill people more better-like.

The above only tangentially leads into this article I read about porn that states that when you watch porn – and we’re talking the explicit stuff, not that soft-core bullshit – part of your brain shuts down.  Apparently when watching graphic sexual acts, the part of your brain that handles visual stimuli goes for a little coffee break.

To Holstege, those results suggest that the brain is focusing on sexual arousal as more important than visual processing during these erotic films.

“You have to realize that the brain wants to spare as much energy as possible, so if some part of the brain is not necessary at a high level of functioning, it immediately goes down,” Holstege said.

“Then my brain must be really lazy as fuck because it keeps telling me it’s a good idea to go porn-hunting on the Internet,” I say. “It keeps saying ‘Hey, you’re not doing anything important, have yourself a good wank,’ and sometimes it’s a very compelling case.”

“Some activities you do just so you can shut your brain off for a while,” says Tina the Lesbian.  “Some people do it with reality TV, other people need some hot fuck action.  Whatever works.”

“There’s the old joke about how there’s only enough blood in the body to properly work your brain or your genitals,” says Mikka.  “And now science is telling me that might be right?  Awesome.”

“The less attention your brain spends on a porno, the better off you are,” says Bernie the Half Cyborg Cat.  “You don’t want to be cognizant of plot holes or continuity errors when you’re just trying to get yourself off.”

The article also has this cool little nugget…

The brain can either be anxious or aroused (or neither), Holstege said, but not both. During orgasm, he has found, activity in brain regions associated with anxiety plummets. This phenomenon may explain why women with low levels of sexual desire often have high levels of anxiety, Holstege said.

“So wanking off is just as good as Zoloft?”  says Ninja Vicki.  “Too bad that does nothing for my pathological urge to steal stuff. I can steal pills from your medicine cabinet. I can’t steal your wanking.  Well, maybe your spank bank of magazines, or your porno tapes, or your laptop.  But wanking always finds a way.”

“One good orgasm and all is right with the world,” says Avonia the Wiccan Pimp.  “You don’t care about anything after that.  I’m surprised more parts of your brain don’t switch off after an orgasm, like it goes into low power sleep mode or something.

This last quote is notable…

“If you want to have sex, as a man, you need to produce a safe situation for the woman,” Holstege said. “That is what you want, that is the most important thing.”

“This guy hasn’t seen my bedroom,” says Anonymous Doug.  “Ropes, handcuffs, shackles, tape, ballgags, bridles, chains, saddles, that harness hanging above the bed… it’s the most unsafe-looking place on Earth.  And some chicks get off on that.”

“I don’t make love until I’ve made a full inspection of the room,” says Samurai Cathy.  “Only after the area is secured will allow my lover to get to second base, which will then allow me to frisk him for hidden weapons before we either go all the way or I stab him with my secondary knife for his treachery. Luckily, Mikka is not a treacherous bastard, so he lives when we make love.”

So porn gives the brain a much-needed break, keeping it from taxing itself too much from trying to recognize threats and figuring shit out.  Because there ain’t nothing to figure out when you see a girl taking it in the ass while sucking off another guy. That’s as simple as it gets for your brain.

If I hold your hand, I’m halfway to getting a handjob and anal

We almost forgot that April is Confederate History Month, a glorious month in which certain southern states of the Union celebrate that one time 160 years ago when they decided not to be American anymore rather than stop owning black people. It’s like sticking your genitals in a bear trap, having the ripped from your body, and then throwing a party every year proclaiming that you’re going to get new genitals some day and when you do they’re going to right back in that bear trap to show it what’s what.  To us fast-talking Yankee bastards, it reminds us to mock the South.

Now to be fair, Tennessee does not celebrate Confederate History Month, but they were still part of the Confederacy and still do some pants-on-head retarded shit, like bring up a bill in their Senate that updates their abstinence-only sexual education law that prohibits teachers from discussing “gateway sexual activities” such as “holding hands.”

Ah… just when I think there’s nothing in the news to skewer, the South never fails verify my abysmal opinion of it. It’s Happy Hour at the Failure, and we’ve got half-off specials on ridicule and snark.

“I don’t remember holding hands being talked about in my sex ed class,” says Anonymous Doug.  “I remember the whole penis goes into the vagina and ejaculates part, but apparently they’re not that far advanced in Tennessee to get to that point.  That knowledge only gets unlocked by the minister presiding over your wedding.”

“Do you know what’s really a gateway sexual activity?  Having genitals,” says Tina the Lesbian.  “Either seal up your cooch or lop off your twig and berries because as long as you have those, the gate’s always open.”

“Well, what are fingers but bony penises, right?”  says Mikka.  “The symbolism is there if you just look hard enough, and breathe in a lot of ammonia fumes in a small enclosed space.”

“I would think zealous repression of sexual knowledge is more of a gateway sexual activity than holding hands or kissing,” says Avonia the Wiccan Pimp.  “All this is going to do is eliminate foreplay and have teens go straight for awkward, unlubricated penetration.”

“I want to see what else is a gateway sexual activity according to these people,” says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat.  “Skirts above the knee?  Skinny jeans? Tetris?  We need to know what innocuous behavior will trigger a teen fuckfest according to the greatest minds the Volunteer State could assemble!”

“In Saudi Arabia, men holding hands in a sign of friendship and respect,” says Ninja Vicki.  “But in Tennessee it’s a sign that sexual passion is brewing.  How the hell are the Saudis more reasonable than Americans on this?”

Samurai Cathy found this passage interesting…

According to a 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Study, 61 percent of Memphis City high school students and 27 percent of middle school students have had sex.  That’s higher than the national average.

“So they already have abstinence-only education, their teen sex rate is still higher than average, and their answer to this problem is to reduce what little their teens can be taught about anything peripheral of sex?” says Samurai Cathy.  “So if this doesn’t work, what’s next?  Not telling children how to go to the bathroom for fear they will touch their own genitals?”

I have no doubt there are people in non-Confederate states here in the north that think that this would be a good idea, but the difference is that it’s harder to make that idiotic notion into law up here.  Not impossible, mind you (in fact it’s still quite probable), but you have to put a little more effort to turn lunacy into legislation outside of Dixie. We can’t rid the world of stupidity but could we at least do a better job of not letting stupidity gain the means to inflict itself on a large scale?

EXTRA SPECIAL NOTE: We noticed that we got over 200 hits on Wednesday of this week because Rick Santorum dropped out of the Presidential race because  any time Santorum is big in the news we get a lot of hits because of this picture we posted about five years ago commemorating the time he lost his Senate seat by a landslide and dragged his unwilling family on stage to be the backdrop for his concession speech.

Now that he quit trying to be president, we’re probably not going to see those Santorum traffic spikes anymore, but that’s a small price to pay for knowing that people still find it unpalatable for him to hold political office.  It’s a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day.

This hoodie attracts bullets

We’ve been keeping a close eye on the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida, in which a hyper-paranoid neighborhood watch lunatic decided that a 17-year old black kid walking to his dad’s house whilst carrying an iced tea and a bag of Skittles was such a threat that, by the power vested in by the voices in his head, he just had to confront this kid and ultimately shoot him to death.  Why this George Zimmerman guy is not in jail can be attributed to the “Stand Your Ground” law in Florida which pretty much allows you to shoot whomever you want if you feel threatened by them, whether or not your feeling is genuine  or the product of irrational fears whispered to you by the Virgin Mary wearing a horse mask.

Now, in a case such as this that’s charged with serious-as-cancer racial and gun issues, it is inevitable that someone will say something so brutally stupid that it causes an intellectual concussion.  And sure enough our patience was rewarded by Geraldo Rivera who was on FOXNews to opine about this grave story and spewed forth this retarded gem:

But I am urging the parents of black and Latino youngsters particularly to not let their children go out wearing hoodies. I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was.

“So I can’t wear a low-cut top and mini-skirt because I’ll get raped, but I can’t wear a hoodie because I’ll get shot,” says Tina the Lesbian.  “I had no idea there was so much danger in my wardrobe! I hope khaki pants don’t get you set on fire because I would be in deep shit.”

“I went through all the trouble of getting myself an anti-rape hoodie, and now it’s going to get me shot?” says Ninja Vicki.  “That’s a fucked up choice to make: getting raped or getting shot.  When did choosing something to wear turn into one of the goddamn Saw movies?”

“Well, right now only blacks and Latinos in hoodies are in danger of being shot on principle,” says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat.  “But you know soon enough that white people will appropriate that trend just like they did rap music and Cinco de Mayo.”

“I hope Geraldo isn’t saying that hooded cloaks will get you shot too,” says Avonia the Wiccan Pimp.  “I don’t want my Beltane to end in a hail of bullets by armed idiots who think we were trying to raise Chthulu when we dance around the maypole.”

“So Geraldo thinks any dark-skinned person wearing a hoodie is asking to be shot,” says Mikka.  “Funny, I happen to think anyone I see on Fox News drinks paint and strangles puppies for sexual gratification. Everyone has their preconceptions, some people just have more evidence for theirs.”

Geraldo continued drinking paint with a petulant defense of his statement about how Trayvon Martin would be alive if not for his hoodie, as well as snide derision of a Million Hoodie March (kind of like the Slutwalk) to protest the shooter not being arrested:

…thinking that a million hoodie march is going to change the image of a hoodie is like thinking that a chorus singing Koombayah is going to change the way people think about burkas.

“So pretty much unless you’re wearing a suit and tie, Geraldo is afraid of you,” says Anonymous Doug.  “Funny, because the people who can fuck over your life the most are assholes in suits.  That’s why I don’t listen to people in suits.  Or pants.”

“I don’t know what Kumbaya has to do with burkas, but you know you’ve got some high-quality stupidity happening when the person who spouts idiocy decides to double-down instead of retreating,” I say.  “So on the Geraldo Wardrobe of Doom Scoreboard please note that hoodies get you shot and burkas make people think you are going to blow them up.  We’re still awaiting word on whether leather jackets will get you stabbed or if sweater vests will get you beaten to death with baseball bats.”

“I take solace that Geraldo’s son is ashamed of his father’s idiocy,” says Samurai Cathy.  “Bringing that sort of shame upon your family used to be grounds for ritual self-disembowelment, but I doubt Geraldo has the wherewithal to know which end of the knife to stick in his belly, let alone any semblance of honor to consider such a path.”

Now Geraldo didn’t mention the Footie Hoodie or the Forever Lazy, but so far I haven’t had to shoot anyone wearing them because I limit my right to do so to my home.  If someone shows up to your door wearing one of them, they’re obviously in a cult and mean to do you irreparable harm. But you wait until they’re on your property to shoot them, because that’s the American Dream: shootin’ people who be trespassin’ yer prop’ty.

Invisible Knuckle Children

When I don’t have time for bullshit, I let an angry British man give me a synopsis…

I’m one of the few people who hasn’t watched that KONY 2012 video online about that guy in Uganda who looks like Rudy Ray Moore recruiting children into his genocidal army (which, I’m surprised to find, is the not the plot of any Rudy Ray Moore movie).  I mean, 30 minutes?  I could watch about 20 Maru videos in that time.  So I didn’t get swept up in KONY-mania, which I have distilled into one sentence: “White people just found out something really bad happened in Africa!”  I’m just glad our musical artists didn’t gather together to belt out a 2012 version of “We are the World” or “Do They Know It’s Christmas.”

I don’t tell you that to beam with unwarranted pride about the effectiveness of my early-warning bullshit detector, I tell you this so I can bring up that the guy in charge of KONY-MANIA! just got caught jacking off in public, or as I like to say: KONY THE BONY (and he’s really going at it too)!

Jason Russell, 33, was taken into custody after he was found masturbating in public, vandalizing cars and possibly under the influence of something, according to Lt. Andra Brown. He was detained at the intersection of Ingraham Street and Riviera Road.

And the funny thing… Bernie the Half Cyborg Cat is relieved to hear this. So I ask him why.

“Because now people won’t give a shit about Joseph Kony and they won’t go find him,”  says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat.  “He’s my fall guy.”

“Fall guy for what?”  I say.

“For the army of children I raised to romp through Uganda,”  says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat.

“Why would you need an army of children?”  I say.

“Because I hate children,”  says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat.  “None of them know how to properly pet a cat.  And they chase you around, pull your tail, make too much noise when you’re trying to get some quality nap time… so I figured let’s put all that energy to good use and have them kill people.  Win/win for the felines.”

“Okay, so why Uganda?”  I say.

“Test run,” says Bernie.  “Plus it was much easier to raise a child army than in some other place, like Sweden.  Fuckin’ Swedes… give a country universal health care and awesome internet access and their children don’t feel like taking arms against whomever I point them at.”

“And you were worried that KONY 2012 video would make people find Kony and then he’d tell everyone you were the brains behind the child army operation in Uganda,”  I say.

“But now that Mr. Invisible Children guy got picked up by the cops for raising awareness of his penis, I can keep people blaming Kony,” says Bernie.

“This is like when you were running that illegal dog fighting ring with Michael Vick,” I say.  “You seem to have a knack for getting people to blame the black guy for things you do.  Are you a racist kitty?”

“No, but I know how to wrangle the souls of Americans,”  says Bernie with a purr.  “Half of them have been blaming a black guy for almost four years for shit he hasn’t done.  Obama’s taking away all our guns.  Obama’s feeding old, sick people to the death panel wood-chipper.  Obama’s setting fire to all the Catholic churches.  Fuck, the Screaming Head on the Radio hit his funny bone on his desk and blamed it on Obama.  In the southern states of this country, blaming black people is the third most-popular pastime behind passive-aggression and warding off cognitive dissonance*.  So don’t you dare look down on me just because I can skillfully speak the hateful language of you primitive beasts and manipulate your feeble wills like you were marionettes dangling from my skillful paws.  I’m not the monster, I’m just holding up the mirror.”

“So you’re saying your racism has a point to it,”  I say.  “But the child army was just for shits and giggles?  That kind of sounds awful, Bernie.”

Bernie shrugs his kitty shoulders.  “Probably.  But at least I don’t make propaganda movies and choke the custard-chucker in public.  Now let’s find some boxes to play in.”

Sometimes hanging out with a half-cyborg cat that has a high level of contempt for humanity can be a trying ordeal.

* The fourth-most favorite pastime is living vicariously through high school football.

This brain has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down

We here at Renal Failure have a keen interest in the spokespeople/press secretaries who work for political candidates or government agencies because they often represent the worst in humanity in that they have evolved past the need to be tethered to rationality, tactile reality, and any sense of shame or discomfort for the actions they take in servitude to the person who signs their paychecks. And their weapon of choice in this putrid duty is word-smithing, which is something we at Renal Failure also take a keen interest in.

Allow us to digress into our vast Renal archives to bring forth our Hall of Political Press Bullshitterance…

1)There was Homeland Security Adviser Francis Townsend back in 2007 telling us that their failure to kill Osama bin Laden at the time was “a success that hadn’t occurred yet.” We deemed this the dumbest thing ever said in the 21st century (and had some fun with it too), up until Sherri Shepherd on “The View” opened her mouth a few months later about not knowing that the world wasn’t flat.

2) It took until 2011 for the next big advance in pants-on-head retarditity in the spokesperson realm when Senator Jon Kyl’s said that the Senator’s outlandish claim that 90 percent of Planned Parenthood’s business was abortions “was not intended to be a factual statement.” This opened our minds to brazen lies we had never even conceived of telling, for with this phrase we could absolve ourselves of having no relationship to truth whatsoever.

3) Shortly after came Newt Gingrich’s press secretary who, in defense of his boss claiming that anyone quoting him from the previous week was lying, penned such a grandiose screed against reality that we dubbed it the Beowulf of political wanking.”

The latest entry into this pantheon of bullshit is Rick Santorum’s press lackey Alice Stewart.  See, her boss came up with the wild claim out of the deep recesses of his lower GI tract that the Dutch involuntary euthanize their elderly, accounting for five percent of all deaths in the Netherlands.  Well, Word got back to Holland and they took being called a nation of murderers by a US Presidential candidate better than I would have, most likely because “Americans Saying Stupid Shit” is probably their favorite drinking game over in the Netherlands and most of Europe.  Anyway, the Dutch sent a reporter to a Santorum event to get some answers… and here’s where the fun begins.  Or ends.

“She’s like one of those Mattel See n’ Says where you put the arrow on the picture on a cow, pull the string, and it tell you the cow goes moo or the rooster says cock-a-doodle-do,”  I say.  “Except everything on her See n’ Say says ‘He is a strong pro-life person.’”

“So being ‘strong pro-life’ means being fucking retarded,”  says Tina the Lesbian.  “That makes a lot of sense.  More sense than I expected, actually.  Wow…”

“I wonder what the Catholic Church’s position on replicants is,” says Mikka.  “Because Rick Santorum is obviously employing one as a spokesperson in his campaign.  And a badly-programmed replicant who doesn’t quite grasp human interaction at that.”

“When faced with an actual reporter, the Politi-Bot 3000 malfunctions and gets stuck in a feedback loop,” says Ninja Vicki.  “We should be lucky she didn’t activate her self-destruct module in an attempt to escape the conversation.”

“I like how she says ‘it’s a matter of ‘what’s in his heart’ when trying to explain his boss’s bullshit,”  says Anonymous Doug.  “That’s like the touchy-feely way of saying that’s ‘not intended to be a factual statement.’”

“It’s a variation on when Ronald Reagan had to come out and tell everyone that they did sell arms to Iran for hostages,” says Avonia the Wiccan Pimp.  That quote being:

“A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.”

“The facts and evidence are irrelevant to what your heart tells you,”  Avonia continues.  “Which makes me distrust the heart as a decision-making organ because it is really is not working in the best interests of anyone.”

“I know in my heart I didn’t spray my urine by the front the door of my house to keep other cats away,”  says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat.  “But Marlie and everyone else with a nose tell me differently.  So I ignore them and listen to my kitty heart that tells me the things I want to hear, regardless of whether they make sense or not.”

“Why must reporters be so polite in the face of such contempt?”  says Samurai Cathy.   “I would take being told such bullshit as a personal insult to my honor, an insult that must be repaid with gushing amounts of blood.”

With this egregious affront to objective reality, among Santorum’s other hideous transgressions upon the universe, I won’t feel bad when he eventually loses and drags his mortified, crying kids on stage with him again when he gives his concession speech.

Am I pretty yet, mama? No, you overshot and ended up hot, you tarted-up harlot.

This article from the National Catholic Register found its way to our eyeballs recently, and from its title we knew we had a live one on our hands:  “The Death of Pretty.”

So we got this creepy, dead-eyed author guy putting finger to keyboard to lament the death of “pretty” in society.  Luckily, or maybe unluckily, he defines his parameters for “pretty.”

People will define pretty differently.  For the purposes of this piece, I define pretty as a mutually enriching balanced combination of beauty and projected innocence.

Once upon a time, women wanted to project an innocence.  I am not idealizing another age and I have no illusions about the virtues of our grandparents, concupiscence being what it is.  But some things were different in the back then.  First and foremost, many beautiful women, whatever the state of their souls, still wished to project a public innocence and virtue.  And that combination of beauty and innocence is what I define as pretty.

“And back then men wore jackets and ties to everything!”  says Tina the Lesbian.  “And women had to douse their vaginas in Lysol or bear full responsibility for the dissolution of their marriage.  All of this before blue jeans and rock music and hula hoops.”

“So he’s okay with women being slutty whores if he doesn’t know about it?”  says Ninja Vicki.  “Pristine virginity on the outside, nasty cum dumpster on the inside, but that’s fine in his book because it perpetuates his delusions.  Yup… he’s a Catholic all right.”

Our creepy writer guy continues…

By nature, generally when men see this combination in women it brings out their better qualities, their best in fact.  That special combination of beauty and innocence, the pretty inspires men to protect and defend it.

“Those with the combination of ugliness and innocence, well you’re shit out of luck,” says Avonia the Wiccan Pimp.  “Let the wolves tear you limb from limb while the men escape with the women prettier than you.”

“By nature when I hear someone say something this stupid, I can feel my brain try to fold itself in an attempt to escape the dumb,” says Mikka.  “Just gotta love how he talks about women like their a piece of territory.  WE MUST PROTECT OUR LAND OUR BOUNCY, BUXOM LAND!”

And it gets worse…

Young women today do not seem to aspire to pretty, they prefer to be regarded as hot. Hotness is something altogether different.  When women want to be hot instead of pretty, they must view themselves in a certain way and consequently men view them differently as well.

As I said, pretty inspires men’s nobler instincts to protect and defend.  Pretty is cherished. Hotness, on the other hand, is a commodity.  Its value is temporary and must be used.  It is a consumable.

“I usually use the term ‘pretty’ when I see a girl who’s okay but not quite in fuckable range,” says Anonymous Doug.  “Like she’s a 4 or a 5… yeah, she’s okay but my dick’s just not going for it and I feel like being a little magnanimous in my rejection.”

“The inadvertent lesson I’m hearing is that you should be more than just looks,”  says Samurai Cathy. “Being pretty or being hot… it doesn’t last, so you’d better have a personality and some brains and a career backing you up.”

And it’s at this point that we’ve struck oil… if oil was inane “get-off-my-lawn” blather that had the intellectual nourishment of a Styrofoam peanut.

The stars of the fifties surely suffered from the same sin as do stars of today.  Stars of the fifties weren’t ideal but they pursued a public ideal different from today.

The merits of hotness over pretty is easy enough to understand, they made an entire musical about it.  Who can forget how pretty Olivia Newton John was at the beginning of Grease.  Beautiful and innocent.  But her desire to be desired leads her to throw away all that is valuable in herself in the vain hopes of getting the attention of a boy.  In the process, she destroys her innocence and thus destroys the pretty.  What we are left with is hotness.

“Again, he just wants to be lied to, to live in a fantasy world,” says Tina the Lesbian.  “The stars back then were doing so much fucking and drugs that if they explained to you in great detail all of the debauchery they indulged in, you’d say they were bullshitting you.  I’d say point this guy to Nursemyra’s blog for some history lessons, but his lamentable constitution probably wouldn’t be able to take it.”

“If you want to blame Grease for something, blame it for ruining karaoke nights,”  says Mikka.  “Seeing a group of drunks screech their way through Summer Nights… that’s a crime against music.  It’s certainly more serious than this alleged prettiness extinction.”

You must make a friend of horrible writing… poorly thought-out ideas and soupy dreck are your friends, for if they are not then they are enemies to be feared.

Most girls don’t want to be pretty anymore even if they understand what it is.  It is ironic that 40 years of women’s liberation has succeeded only in turning women into a commodity.  Something to be used up and thrown out.

“As opposed to back when women actually were a commodity and could be given away for some oxen and a parcel of land,” says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat, who is married to an Irish-Catholic who hasn’t listened to a thing the Church has said since her Confirmation.  “And oh how you used to be able to beat them with sticks no wider than your thumb.  Good times, I’m sure our author friend would say.  Good times indeed.”

“Oh no… women don’t aspire to fulfill my wants and desires,”  says Samurai Cathy.  “Clearly this means societal ruin and damnation before the Lord.”

Did you know if you read something really smart and then right away read something really dumb, it’s like an intellectual speedball?

Our problem is that society doesn’t value innocence anymore, real or imagined.  Nobody aspires to innocence anymore.  Nobody wants to be thought of as innocent, the good girl.  They want to be hot, not pretty.

“If innocence is not in vogue, there’s a pretty good reason for it,”  says Ninja Vicki.  “Innocence gets preyed upon.  That’s what child molesters go after.  That’s what gets them going.  And it really gets their rocks off when they can prey on innocence and have a giant institution of men in funny hats stand behind them because they’re more concerned with maintaining ancient authority than with children having their worlds shattered by a padre’s wandering hands.”

“I think he just wants to be able to call women he doesn’t like whores without people getting on his case about it,” says Avonia the Wiccan Pimp, who works with actual whores.  “Perhaps we should be glad that he doesn’t blame immodestly dressed women for getting themselves raped because of their hotness.”

“Is this guy saying he wants a lady on the street but a freak in the bed?”  says Anonymous Doug.  “Because Creepy Von Douchenozzle could have just said that and saved us a whole lot of time.  Virginal whores… good in concept, not so good in real life.  I mean, yeah, they’ll suck your cock but they’re really bad it.   It’s almost like, why bother.  Almost.”

Of course, none of this addresses the claim by Justin Timberlake that he was bringing sexy back, suggesting that it had gone away at some point prior to 2006.

There is no honesty in your vicious violation of my person

We’ve realized at this late stage of the Republican primaries that we’ve taken a swing at all the remaining candidates at one point or another.  Mitt Romney got smacked down by Tag Larkin back in 2008.  We recently slapped Newt Gringich around for that time his press secretary wrote something out of a bargain-bin fantasy novel (and then there was the time in ’09 when he claimed good Christians like him were surrounded by paganism because he didn’t know how math worked)  Rick Santorum’s been getting the business from us since 2006 when he marched his mortified family to the stage when he lost his senatorial race in an embarrassing landslide (and now this post has become our most popular post ever – EDIT: Correction, second-most popular behind Historical Porn).  But one candidate has eluded our pimp hand until now… Ron Paul.

That is, until he went on the Piers Morgan show on CNN and made the unforgivable mistake of making Piers Morgan look like the likable one on TV.  Well, actually, Ron Paul’s fuck-up was this snippet:

MORGAN: But it’s a dilemma that I am going to put to you. You have two daughters. You have many granddaughters. If one of them was raped — and I accept it’s a very unlikely thing to happen. But if they were, would you honestly look at them in the eye and say they had to have that child if they were impregnated?

PAUL: No. If it’s an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room. I would give them a shot of estrogen or give them –

And the elevator doors at the Overlook open and the blood rushes out…

“I’m not familiar with these honest rapes he speaks of,”  says Tina the Lesbian.  “Nor am I familiar with the necessary flip-side of that concept, the dishonest rape.”

“I think he’s saying that if you get raped by a guy, and he tells you he’s raping you, then that’s an honest rape,” says Anonymous Doug.  “Whereas if you’re being raped by a guy and he tells you he’s not raping you, then that’s a dishonest rape.  It’s a subtle distinction, full of rich cerebral nuance and deep intestinal bullshit.”

“So what would passing out and being raped while unconscious be classified as?”  says Samurai Cathy.  “Just sneaky rape?  That sounds kind of dishonest to me.”

“So how do the hospitals figure out if you’ve been honestly raped?”  says Mikka.  “I didn’t know rape kits had polygraph machines in them.”

“Obviously there are ways to discern in a hospital whether your rape was honest,”  says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat.  “Perhaps some sort of mystical gem you can dangle over a vagina that glows when it picks the lingering rape-o-gen particles from your violated genitals.”

“I don’t want the first thing my emergency room doctor to say to me when I tell him I was raped is ‘Did you?  Did you really?’ in a rudely skeptical voice,”  says Avonia the Wiccan Pimp.  “They don’t say that kind of incredulous shit to gunshot victims, that’s for sure.”

“At least Rick Santorum has the balls to tell women to suck it up and thank the Lord for the gift of their rape babies,”   says Ninja Vicki.  “Ron Paul’s trying to weasel his daughters and granddaughters out of having rape babies while still trying to strike an anti-abortion stand.  Yeah, Santorum’s batshit crazy, but at least he’s consistent at being batshit crazy.  I have no doubt he would tell his daughter straight to her face that when life gives you rape lemons, little missy, you make rape lemonade.  Ron Paul… not so much.”

Psycho Dave informed me by text message that his rape lemonade is 100% honest, which I guess would make it the Snapple of drug-spiked drinks.  Raped by the best stuff on Earth… that what it would say on the label if Psycho Dave labeled his sexual-assault victim drinks.  Well, if that’s what the capitalist free market wants…

I never knew comfort was synonymous with not having a sense of personal shame

Last year, Regular Renal reader and member of the Trent Lott Posse Daisyfae came up with a line of clothing called “The Lazy Cougar,” consisting of, in her words, ” …crotchless sweatpants? Bulky, fuzzy boots – left unzipped.  Velour tops that zip up the front – with a built in front-hook bra.”  This is the outfit for the experienced woman who isn’t going to bother gussying herself up for your benefit. In fact, you’re lucky if she’ll get off the couch for you, big boy. So come on over and get yourself some lazy sex. Just not while Real Housewifes of Wherever is on.

I bring this up because it looks like someone may have beaten Daisyfae to market with inactive wear for adults.  As if the Snuggie wasn’t lazy enough for people, now we have FOREVER LAZY.

“If you wear a Forever Lazy to my house, I will stop being your friend,”  I say.  “And if you wear a Forever Lazy to my house with flip-flops or sandals I get to shoot you.  It’s part of the Castle Doctrine. I have the right to defend myself in my house and a person in a flip-flops and a fleece onesy obviously wants to do me harm.”

“If there was ever a metaphor for America that could be found on commercial television, it’s Forever Lazy,”  says Mikka, who is no stranger to just sitting around playing video games for hours on end, but at least he will throw a hockey jersey on.  “Feety pajamas merged with a hoodie with the explicit suggestion of ‘Be as unproductive as possible today.’  It’s so American I’m almost surprised it doesn’t come in an American Flag pattern, but that would have been too much work.”

“This will be uniform of the lap slaves after the cat revolution,”  says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat, who has been participating in his own protest movement called #OccupyThisBox, where Bernie protests against Wall Street fucking up America by napping in the cardboard box his wife’s liquor gets delivered in.  “The lap slaves will be lashed to couches for their feline betters to sit upon, and these fleece one-pieces will guarantee that every where we sit on these lap slaves will be a warm comfy spot OR THERE WILL BE SUMMARY EXECUTIONS!”

“You know, you can just buy adult-sized feety pajamas,” says Tina the Lesbian, who as a lesbian is stereotyped as having lazy fashion sense.  “You don’t need to look like you’re with the Heaven’s Gate cult on Casual Suicide Friday.”

“I don’t like the implication that this should be worn outside of the house,” says Ninja Vicki, who takes the easy way out when it comes to clothes and dresses in black because she’s a ninja.  “Being lazy in your house is one thing, being lazy in public is just nasty.  I hate people who wear those flannel pajama bottoms to the mall enough as it is. I can barely justify wasting a shuriken on them.”

“If you’re going to wear a jumpsuit, it better be form fitting, like Erin Gray in Buck Rogers,” says Anonymous Doug, who know all about being lazy and women in jumpsuits.  “This Forever Lazy bullshit is just mocking her hot memory and I won’t be a part of it.”

“I think there should be a rule for that People of Wal-Mart website that all pictures of people in Forever Lazies should be disqualified on the grounds that it’s too easy a target,” says Samurai Cathy, who walks around town in a silk samurai kimono.  “It should be it’s own website… ForeverLazyatWalMart.com.”

“I could see the Forever Lazy being something you wear when you’re sick,” says Avonia the Wiccan Pimp, who doesn’t have time to be lazy because she’s making sure her ho’s are working those streets to make her mad stacks of paper.  “It’s your flu-recovery outfit, not your I’m sad-and-lonely-with-nothing-to-do-on-a-Friday-night-outfit.  Because then the Forever Lazy becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“Lazy Tag Larkin does not want zippered hatches!”  says Tag Larkin, who we’re guessing calls himself Lazy Tag Larkin when he’s feeling really lazy. We take that to mean when he’s too lazy to throw furniture at people.  “Lazy Tag Larkin needs to be able to whip his turgid cock out with ease!  Lazy Tag Larkin wants a dick flap! Lazy Tag Larkin is displeased by this design flaw, also shared by the Snuggie!”

Still, the Forever Lazy may have one purpose: it might be the world’s first rape-repellant outfit. This is based on the hypothesis that there is a rapist social network and if you rape a girl wearing a Forever Lazy you get looked down upon by your fellow rapists. Even the pedophiles will be like “Hey, at least the kid I touched wasn’t wearing a Forever Lazy.  Even we’ve got some fucking standards here!”

A beer that neither gender will particularly like

It’s no secret that we like beer here at Renal Failure. I consider myself a beer snob with a predilection toward darker beers, though I don’t care for IPA’s because I don’t care for overly hoppy beers. I enjoy finding weird little beers and giving them a try, most of it depending on how clever the beer’s name is. Because when you craft a beer, you’d best do it the great service of naming it something cool.

With that in mind, you can see how we’re already put off by this new beer called “Chick.”  Further putting us off is the fact that is “Chick” is a beer that is directly marketed to women, as seen with its cliched pink color scheme, the slinky dress on the label, and its festive font that’s more suited for a party invitation than a beer label.

Now we haven’t tasted a Chick yet… wait, start over… we haven’t put our lips around… wait, start over… we haven’t had a Chick yet and… damn it!  We have yet to sample one of these beers yet, but this Village Voice interview with its brewer Shazz Lewis has our Renal Failure players sharpening their mockery claws.

My husband owns a wine and spirits store in Easton, Maryland. One day, I was looking at the beer cooler — and we have over 400 beers — but there was nothing that shouted out “female.” As a woman and mother of five daughters, I’m focused on that sort of thing. [That notion] kept kind of festering and then I did the research. Women consume 25 percent of all the beer in the United States. That’s 700 million cases a year. I thought, “This is really interesting, and why hasn’t this segment of the market been addressed?”

“I wasn’t aware my beer was gender specific,”  says Mikka.  “Well, maybe beers like Samuel Adams are, but what is the criteria for a beer to be considered male? I like Arrogant Bastard Ale and it has a gargoyle on the bottle. Does that make it a male beer?  Is my Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale male or female?  Who is the governing body on this?”

“This isn’t a bad idea considering most beer commercials are about men being overly manly or men gawking at women,” says Tina the Lesbian.  “The solution to that problem, however, is making better beer commercials that don’t play into these eye-rolling hyper-masculine stereotypes. It isn’t making a beer that plays into trite female cliches.”

I knew I needed it not to be a gimmick. The beer had to be good. I looked at who was drinking most of the beer and the target market is really 21- to 35-year-old women. The ones who were out at night partying and getting together with friends. What they were drinking was American light lagers. We looked for brewers and tasted lots of beer and went with Minhas in Wisconsin. The beer they brew for us has 97 calories and 3.5 carbs but also a very mellow beer flavor. It has a very rounded, full flavor. People say, “I can’t believe this is a light beer.”

“Oh Goddess forbid women drink something with calories in it,”  says Avonia the Wiccan Pimp.  “Wouldn’t want women to actually enjoy themselves with a full-fledged beer. They have figures to maintain to please their men.”

“I’m willing to bet straight shots of whiskey have less calories than beer,” says Anonymous Doug.  “They certainly will get you drunk quicker and you won’t have to piss as much either.  I love a girl who tastes like Jack Daniels and desperation.”

“Ladies, if you desire a beer with a small amount of calories, go with Guinness,”  says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat.  “It’s only 126 calories per 12-oz. bottle and it will show that you are  a woman of taste and of class. Drinking Chick beer will do none of things. It will make men think you are high maintenance and live in a Sex in the City fantasy world. I think you can dance a little harder that night to burn off those 29 extra calories of Guinness.”

It’s funny, too, though — men love the beer. They just say, “We’ll pour it in a glass.”

“Strong enough for a man, but brewed for a woman,”  says Ninja Vicki.  “How was that not the slogan for this beer?”

“Men will pour it into a glass because they don’t want some drunk asshole in the mood for some gay-bashing coming up to them at the bar and picking a fight,” says Samurai Cathy.  “Bars and pubs are not beacons of enlightenment or social evolution.”

So are you a beer drinker yourself?

Oh, yes, I love all kinds of beers. I’m a craft-beer drinker. And American light lagers. One favorite of mine is Guinness. But what I wanted to do is give women a choice.

What exactly is that choice? What makes Chick specifically girlie?

It’s very mellow. It has a little less carbonation so it doesn’t make you burp. There’s no bitterness, and I think that was the big appeal for women.

“I like my women belching loud and proud,” says Anonymous Doug.  “Mainly so she won’t be put off by my belching either.  Your body makes funny noises, embrace it.”

“If a girl doesn’t burp, that’s a sign she’s either a Cylon, a replicant, or a Terminator,” says Mikka.  “She will eventually try to kill you.  Get away while you can.”

I have daughters who are so powerful and so unconcerned that a labeling has anything to do with who they are or represent. That’s one reason why I used the word “chick.” That’s actually what men used to call subpar or light beer. I happen to think all things chick are terrific.

“I’m all for removing the negative connotations on words regarding femininity like ‘chick,’ but you’ve already admitted toning down your beer for women to drink,” says Tina the Lesbian.  “You’re pretty much saying that ‘chick’ still means weaker and watered down, just not as much as it used to be.  It’s just a slightly better mediocre.”

“You want chick to be used seen in a more favorable light, add more explosions,” says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat.  “You see a ‘guy’ movie, you’re going to see shit blowing up.  You see a ‘chick’ movie, you’re going to see women crying.  It’s pretty clear which is more awesome.”

“I don’t want chick to mean ‘better than piss-water Miller Lite,’” says Ninja Vicki.  “I want chick to mean bad-ass.  Like me.  I’m going to steal the word ‘chick’ and make it mean bad-ass sword-swinging ninja girl.”

One woman said to me that [Chick] will set women back 70 years and I said, “Really, a beer brand? I think women have come farther than that.”

“It doesn’t set back women any amount of years, but it doesn’t necessarily pull us forward any amount of time either,”  says Avonia the Wiccan Pimp.  “And that’s what I find disappointing, that this opportunity to advance women in the beer field was squandered on a pink bottle with a low-cut dress on it.”

“I was going to say maybe she should have done what the Samuel Adams people did and base their beer off an American historical figure, but use a female figure like Susan B. Anthony,” says Samurai Cathy.  “But then I remembered she was involved in the temperance movement that got alcohol outlawed in the early 20th century.  Was Betsy Ross a beer drinker?  Use her for your next beer creation designed for women.”

There is no word yet if the next step for woman-centric beers from Shazz Lewis is a “Babe” IPA, or a “Ovarian” Stout, or a “Cunt” Pale Ale.  I’d like to see a beer marketed directly to lesbians.  They deserve a drink of their own. Gay men have had Zima for years.