Rightgoddamnnow!

The sexually unfulfilled finally
have their Lord of the Rings.

Check this out fans of instant gratification: If you have Amazon Prime, live in 'select areas' of Manhattan and are that seemingly contradictory combination of lazy and rich, Amazon will deliver to your door in an hour. It's called Amazon Now all it will cost you is $7.99 and your self-respect. I say self-respect because if you have Amazon Prime, you're already giving the company $100 a year for the privilege of buying things from them, but now you can cut out the interminable two-to-three business day wait and start reading your Fifty Shades Trilogy boxed set in just 60 minutes. Behold: the future is here!

But wait, it gets better: for impatient customers who are also cheap, the service is free if you're able to hold out for two full hours. Just two hours! See? America is all about choice.

Just how badly do you want your heart to resume beating?

These quality sanitary belts can be
on your doorstep by mid-June!

Sure, you'll spend that extra time cursing yourself for your misguided frugality, I mean, two hours? What is this, the 1800's? If you wanted to wait for your purchase, you'd have dusted off a copy of the Sears Roebuck catalogue and made yourself comfortable. You're a busy person goddamnit. What's a paltry $7.99 compared to the sense of satisfaction that comes with knowing that someone is risking life and limb weaving their way through deadly Manhattan traffic to sate your hunger for more crap? It's a good thing Amazon.com is looking out for you. Which, they are, right?

This could be you!
(Spoiler alert: it won't be).

Ehh...it may seem like they're selflessly coming up with new ways to improve your life, but it's possible they're just exploiting their customers' impatience. You see, when something you want is a day or two away, you might stop and ask yourself if you really need it. Sure, you tell yourself that once you buy that pedometer, you'll totally start jogging, but then a voice in your head steps in and reminds you that exercise is stupid and that in two days when it arrives you'll just hate yourself for buying it in the first place. 

Amazon knows this, that's why they want you to buy now and ask questions later. Their hope is to create a delivery system so fast, so efficient as get you your order faster than the neurons can fire and make you think twice about it. Once it's in your hands, you're much less likely to change your mind. Sure, you could send it back, but that's a lot of work and you'd have to wrap it back up and take it to UPS or something and just forget it...

Above: the part of the brain responsible for buyer's remorse.
Amazon hopes to have a drug that will deaden this sensation on the
market by 2021. Until then, just try not to think about what you're ordering.

That's close enough. Set the box on the
ground and back away, slowly... 

Oh, and in case you were wondering where the robots fit into all of this, allow me to disappoint you: this isn't the drone delivery service they've been teasing us with for months. This will still necessitate an actual delivery human showing up at your place and knocking on your door, you know, like it's the dark ages. I mean, you're paying Amazon precisely because you don't want to interact with people, why would you want someone judging you as you sign for your rushed copy of Gone Girl on Blu-ray, which you only ordered because you heard you can totally see Ben Affleck's junk in it. And they know it...

When a quadcopter rings your doorbell, there's no judgement, no accusing eyes, just cold, impersonal technology and really isn't that what we all want? Well, that and the exact time at which to pause freeze Gone Girl?

"I think the scene you're looking for is about
two hours, four minutes in, and, you're welcome." 

-Helpful Drone

Not OK, Oklahoma, not OK...

Crime: solved. That's right, Oklahoma, America's uh...something State...what is their thing anyway? Well, whatever it is, they've just come up with a way to prevent all crime forever. Either that or they've come up with another misguided knee-jerk law designed to make cranky old men feel safe in a world full of teens who wear their dungarees too low.

I don't know, if I were this guy I'd be more worried about the grim specter of my own mortality
and not the teenagers with their rap music and lack of respect for their elders.

Wha-what? A ski mask? You are in big
trouble mister! Also, please don't shoot me.

Oklahoma State Senator Don Barrington has proposed a bill that would make it illegal to wear a mask or hood during the commission of a crime or to intentionally conceal one's identity in a public place. Doing so could lead to a fine of $50-$500 or one year in jail. The first part sounds almost reasonable, although I feel like if you're knocking over the local Kum & Go (no really, these exist) with a shotgun, you might as well go all in and wear a ski mask or something. I mean, what's the worst that will happen, a five hour stand-off with police ending in a hail of bullets and a $50 fine?

Remember, remember the fifth
of Novemb-you know what?
I think it did say 'minstrel troupes.'

Critics are concerned that such a law would effectively ban wearing the hood on hooded sweatshirts entirely, and constitute a violation of people's rights to dress how they choose. Proponents on the other hand insist that the critics are only against the law because they love crime so much. Barrington's bill does contain exceptions for religious garb, Halloween costumes, parties, bad weather, circus performers and 'minstrel troupes.' So I guess if you're going to rob a bank, wait for Guy Fawkes Night or something...wait a minute, did that say 'minstrel troupes?'

Are you for goddamn kidding me Oklahoma State Senator Don Barrington? You stuck in an exception for minstrel shows? What the fuck is wrong with you?

Hey, I think we just found their thing.
Oklahoma: The 'we're still OK with blackface' State.

A veritable who's who of who's not!

What? Look, I'm sorry, but it's kind of true.

2014 is just about over which means it's time to put together another list of famous people who died in the last 365 days. I don't really know why we do this, maybe it's because New Year's is a time to look back and think about what we leave behind. Or maybe it's because rattling off a bunch of things without actually saying anything about them is an easy way to create the illusion of meaning without worrying about things like substance or thought which are, you know, hard. Sort of like We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel.

Anyway, to be clear, lots of people die in a given year, and just because we only talk about the famous ones, doesn't mean that the great many anonymous dead didn't live meaningful lives, it's just that so few of them were Poet Laureates or Ghost Busters, so who cares, right?

Show of hands anyone here who was nominated for a Pulitzer
or co-wrote Groundhog Day? Anyone? No? Psssch...nobodies...

Cloned dinosaurs: totally plausible. That
Attenborough's character wouldn't have been
sued into a fine paste: pure science fiction.

Speaking of which, can you believe we lost Maya Angelou and Harold Ramis this year? Also dead are comedians Robin Williams, Joan Rivers and Jan Hooks. Actors Philip Seymour Hoffman, Lauren Bacall, James Garner and Bob Hoskins are all gone along with musicians Joe Cocker and Tommy: last of the Ramones. Oh, and Sir Richard Attenborough died this year. Most people probably remember him as the kindly old industrialist who endangers dozens of lives, including those of his own grandchildren, with his dinosaur-themed murder resort in Jurassic Park.

Also dead: Elaine Stritch. She was a Broadway actress and singer from back in the day, and she was also goddamn hilarious. Behold:

Here's Elaine Stritch saying 'fuck' on the Today Show. Because yes.

Pictured: The despotic ruler of Carbombya.
Get it? Car-bomb-ya? These guys made
Michael Bay look like an amateur.

Indoor kids who remember the 1980's (or who shop at American Apparel and pretend they do) lost Glen A. Larson, the producer who gave us Knight Rider, Buck Rodgers and Battlestar Galactica (velour capes, not the sexy reboot), Ralph Bear the inventor of the video game console, and Casey Kasem: the voice of Shaggy from Scooby Doo! He also voiced some characters on The Transformers but quit when the writers decided that it was suddenly ok to start writing anti-Arab stereotypes into a children's show. You know because cocaine.

Look, I know death comes for us all eventually, but this year he seemed to go after a lot of the people who made the world a better place. I mean, Doc from Fraggel Rock? C'mon!

Thanks a lot, dick...

Like one of these, but with hate and poo.

Of course, he also took some who were, shall we say, less than beloved. Look, I genuinely believe that it's wrong to celebrate the passing of a fellow human, no matter how heinous, but let's just say that Fred Phelps is unlikely to be mourned by many. I mean, I'm sorry he's dead, um, theoretically. Like, I'm sure his family or his crazy church pals will miss him (or not), but what I'm not sorry about is that the unrelenting shit-fountain of hate-filled vitriol that spewed forth from his rage-hole for the last few decades has finally ceased.

In fictional dead people, Marvel killed off Wolverine this year in a move sure to be permanent and have a lasting repercussion throughout Marvel's narrative universe.

Above: The Death of Wolverine.
Next Month: The Triumphant Return of Wolverine!

Thanks a lot, dick...

In abstract concepts that left us this year, Scotland's hopes of casting off the brutal yoke of the Dread Queen Elizabeth II are dead have been brutally cut down by a narrow majority of votes (and cupcakes) in last fall's referendum. Whatever confidence anyone had left in the Supreme Court and its ability to deliver sound judgements passed away when it ruled that shouting 'Because Jesus!' was all the legal justification employers need to get out of Obamacare.

65% cotton 35% everything wrong
with consumerism. Machine wash warm. 

The last lingering shred of media credibility died quietly in its sleep when the internet was captivated by a toddler toddling. Public discourse died a slow, painful death as the world debated the pros and cons of Rene Zellweger's face. And finally, good taste and basic human decency were murdered back in September when Urban Outfitters sold bloodied Kent State sweatshirts and then called us idiots for having a problem with it.

Holy shit 2014, you were kind of an awful year and we will not miss you. Welcome 2015: it's a low bar, so please don't disappoint us.

If we can go the entire year without being threatened with nuclear annihilation
over a mediocre stoner movie, then 2015 will have succeeded in being better than 2014.

Let's slow clap for the FDA!

In a stunningly progressive move, the FDA has announced that it will be ending its decades-long ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men. Um, hurray? Now wait for it, because here comes the kick in the teeth: they'll accept donations from gay men assuming that they haven't had sex in the last year. Well what do you know? Beggars can be choosers.

Sure you're not getting laid, but look on
the bright side, you can donate blood again.

Pictured: Typical physician's garb, early-mid
1980's. The mask was used to ward off evil
spirits, while the stick kept the Soviets at bay.

In place since 1983, the ban disqualified any man who'd had sex with other man, even once, anytime after 1977 from donating blood, ever. Banned for life. It was an attempt to protect the blood supply from what we now call HIV, but was back then known as, I shit you not, GRID or gay-related immune deficiency. I guess this made sense to our primitive early 80's ancestors, since at the time no one knew what the hell it was they were dealing with and most diseases were assumed to be the work of sorcerers. But ever since the availability of reliable testing methods, the ban has been regarded as outdated and arbitrary, as well as completely unenforceable.

The take away here is that people
are a veritable grab-bag of STD's.

Under the ban, a man who has had sex with another man was disqualified, but a women who has had sex with a man was not. Unless of course that woman had sex with a man who has ever had sex with another man. That's assuming of course that he shared his entire sexual history with her. Also banned would be anyone who's used ever used nonprescription needle drugs, or had sex with someone who's used needle drugs (again, assuming they told their partner). Got all that?

Great. Because in addition to being blatantly homophobic, the rules are also dependent on people being honest about their history with sex and drugs. You know, the two things everyone lies about all the time. Since every unit of donated blood is tested for every disease ever, couldn't the FDA just stop being dicks about the whole thing and drop the anti-gay language altogether? Is that so hard?

"Needle drugs? No, never. Well, heroin, but they probably don't mean that..."

-The FDA's rigorous screening process

Pat Robertson: Reproductive Biologist

Holy shit does this man
love to talk about gay sex.

In a weird way, you kind of have to admire the almost super-human way Pat Robertson can take any ridiculous question his followers throw at him and make it about the gay sex. Take for example Crystal, a woman who wrote in to his show asking him for advice. She's frustrated, as in sexually frustrated, because the church she attends won't let its members date and her biological clock is ticking. Here's how he starts off:

"You know, those who are homosexual will die out because they don't reproduce, you know you have to have heterosexual sex to reproduce."

-Pat Robertson,

clearing a few things up

Above: Great herds of homosexuals once roamed the plains of North America,
but are today, due to their inability to reproduce, rarely seen outside of parade routes.

"You're a poofster, Harry."

-Hagrid in Harry Potter and 

the Douchey Televangelist

Wai-wah? What does this woman's impending spinsterism have to do with gay people? Nothing. But that didn't stop Robertson from taking the opportunity to throw an elbow at gays, lesbians and the many straight people who, for whatever reason, either don't choose to or can't have children. What a dick. Also, doesn't he realize that that's not how human sexual orientation works? Like, gay people don't necessarily come from a long line of gay people. It's not like wizards.

Robertson does go on to suggest that this woman should run screaming from her creepy, sexless, religious cult, which is a startlingly reasonable suggestion coming from a man whose usual advice to women is to just shut up.

"Oh, don't get me wrong, I still think Crystal should shut up,
but she should do so at a church that holds mixers."

-Pat Robertson,

sounding more like himself

Let's get Mars-curious!

Brace yourselves, because after decades of searching, NASA scientists may have finally discovered evidence of alien life!

"Well it's about goddamn time..."

-Everybody

NASA's other rover, Mild Interest,
stopped transmitting after realizing
that nobody was paying attention to it. 

Now un-brace yourself because this is science and we're going to have to walk it back a bit. Said evidence is methane gas which NASA's un-inspiringly named Curiosity rover picked up in the thin Martian atmosphere along with organic compounds in the planet's soil. Alright, so it's not exactly a towering alien obelisk, or a fleet of disc-shaped starships hovering over our major cites, but still...alien life? Maybe? I mean, this is something to get excited about, isn't it? Or maybe not. With typical scientific caution, NASA's Curiosity team has been quick to manage our expectations when it comes to earth-shattering news.

Space: it's really not all that interesting,
so like, don't get your hopes up.

Here's what team member John Grotzinger had to say about the find:

"That we detect methane in the atmosphere on Mars is not an argument that we have found evidence of life on Mars, but it's one of the few hypotheses that we can propose that we must consider..."

-John Grotzinger,

disappointing us with science 

Oh...so you've basically got nothing. Thanks NASA. And you wonder why you have to resort to shaking down billionaires just to get funding.

Pictured: An artist's rendering of NASA's new fundraising strategy.

Tremble puny Martians,
at our superior weaponry.

I don't want to tell NASA how to do its job, but-wait, yes I do. Hey NASA, here's how to do your job: instead of taking every mind-blowing discovery you make and sucking all the wonder and joy out of it like a bunch of fun-sucking space vampires, why not try and get the public excited about it? I'm not saying lie to us, I'm just suggesting that maybe instead of focusing on how it's too early to jump to conclusions (and it is), you could tell us all the things this could mean. You said that the presence of methane gas could mean that Mars is, or at least was, home to microbial life. That's kind of a big deal and it also means we could conquer Mars with a bottle of Purell. Run with that.

Look, if there's a chance of finding life on Mars, no matter how microbial and boring, we should totally go find it. Not because we're just curious about it, but because we have a burning desire to explore new frontiers. Of course we'll then probably exploit these new frontiers for financial gain, but hey, we're pretty noble up to a point...

Behold: the mighty herds of gassy Martian cows grazing on the crimson plains of the Red Planet.
Sure, it's not super-likely, but if it panned out the government would fund the shit out of NASA.

Dog Gone Shame

Hey everybody, it turns out that your pets are little more than animated meat puppets and they aren't going to heaven after all. Maybe. I really don't know anymore. The whole thing is more than a little confusing. What is clear is that journalists are really, really bad at their jobs.

"Kids, meet Paws McGee! Enjoy him while you can because he,
like your childhoods, will one day fade and die leaving a void
in your soul that you'll never be able to fill. Merry Christmas!"

-The Worst Parents Ever

"And that concludes my weekly address.
Now, who's up for gelato?" 

Catholics around the world were briefly given the impression that there's a hereafter for pets when Pope Francis said:

"The Holy Scripture teaches us that the fulfillment of this wonderful design also affects everything around us."

-Pope Francis, the cool Pope

The Italian word for 'of' is extremely
similar to 'Your pets have souls and
you'll see them again in heaven.'

If you didn't find that entirely clear, you're not alone. But some reporters at an Italian newspaper somehow misinterpreted his statement to mean that animals have souls and can get into heaven. This story then got conflated with the time Pope Paul VI told a sobbing child that his recently deceased dog will be waiting for him in the afterlife and suddenly every news outlet on the planet was saying that Pope Francis has just announced that Catholic heaven has a dog park. And that's when the Vatican stepped in and called 'merda taurorum.'

Above: the official Vatican response.

Or you know, whatever the Latin word for bullshit is. A spokespriest has clarified that Pope Francis said nothing about an afterlife for pets and that the journalists who ran with the story are terrible at journalism. Like Fox News terrible.

"There is a fundamental rule in journalism. That is double checking, and in this case it was not done."

-Father Ciro Benedettini,

crusher of dreams

"Goodbye Nemo, I'll miss you.
Say hi to grandma for me."

So much for doggie Valhalla then, right? Well, not necessarily. Leaving aside the irony inherent in a representative of one of the world's oldest religions calling out journalists for saying things that have no basis in fact, Father Benedettini didn't say that animals have no souls, he just said Pope Francis didn't say anything about it. And remember, Pope Paul VI did tell that kid that his dog was humping legs in next world, so if papal infallibility is to be believed, then maybe Catholic animal lovers can look forward to an eternity of picking up dog shit in heaven.

Of course if dogs and cats have souls, it stands to reason that other animals would to. Other animals like say chickens and cows, you know, the ones people tend to eat. Congratulations Catholics, you've just been given a whole new thing to feel guilty about. 

And that's why your home is haunted by
the restless spirits of a thousand hams.