Harry Potter and the Comments of Retardedness

One of my most popular posts ever is Harry Potter and the Inevitable Slide into Satanism. It even made it into my book. The point of the post was to make fun of close-minded people who won't let their kids read Harry Potter books. I wrote:

Now that I'm a parent, I've realized the necessity of keeping certain books, movies and music away from my children. I don't like the idea of censorship, but no matter how much my kids beg they are not going to be allowed to listen to "Fergilicious" or read Eragon. I'm sorry, but I believe the children are our future.

Neither of my children (aged 5 and 7) have come home toting a Black Sabbath record yet, so I've dodged that bullet so far. But in anticipation of my seven-year-old bookworm eventually asking whether he may read Harry Potter and the Nominative Phrase, I decided to peruse one of these books to determine for myself whether there was any real danger.

I then expressed my shock and outrage at "finding" this signup form in the book (click to enlarge):

I was a young, naive blogger when I wrote that post. It honestly never occurred to me that anyone would take it seriously. I mean, go read the post and tell me how anyone with two brain cells to rub together would think that "signup form" was real. It's impossible, right?

Wrong. People continue to leave comments indicating that they've completely missed the point of the post. "Missed the point" is a generous phrase, in fact: these people were still shoeless at the security gate twenty minutes after the point touched down in Phoenix.

The surprising thing is that these commenters aren't the clueless Fundamentalists that you'd expect. No one has yet left a comment saying, "I KNEW those books were Satanic!!!" They're all people telling me how stupid I am for falling for the "Harry Potter is satanic" line. Two of them mentioned that they thought the signup form was a fake. No, really?!

I thought I'd post some of the favorite comments I've received. I've edited only for length. Trust me, I couldn't make up comments this stupid if I tried.

hmmm maybe it is important to keep certain things from kids at younger agesbuteventually theyre going to findtheyre own path. as a parent could you denyyour childs everlasting happiness just because you and your friends dont "approve". if your child or friend or even yourself find happiness in a less than reputable society but are happy trully being themselves AND DON HURT ANYONE, than how can this be bad? it is ones own pah that they must take into whaevr form ofascention they so choose. thats my opinion anyway.

-david age 16

Hi, David! It's great to hear from one of our younger readers! Did you know that Mozart wrote the opera Lucio Silla at age 16? It's true. Not only that, but by age 19 he knew the difference between their and they're, and by age 26 he had stopped appending his age to his signature to excuse his own stupidity.

you are out of your mind you crazy old bat

-Anonymous

That's redundant, you stupid retarded chicken.

you all are crazy people let the kids have fun and stop recking a good time

- Anonymous

Sorry, I don't recking we will.

I've been reading the potter series since Iwas I was 11 (currently 19),and I can assure you I'm not santanic in any way...and the whole add in the book, so never happened...I own several copies of the books and never seen this...Another point I would like to make is, the book is considered "Fantasy" for a reason...it's not REAL...Kids just don't go out into the yard, pick up a stick, and say Avava Kadvra...and you're worried about the song "Fergalicious"...Maybe you should be worried about other songs from more provocative artist such as Eminem or Trick Daddy...HARRY POTTER RULES

- Whitney

Wait... It's not real?

i think this post is a little ridiculous. i agree that harry potter in curriculum at school is controversial, but it having anything to do with satanism? i don't think it is akin or has anything to do with satan worship. if a kid does end up worshiping satan after reading this book, then it is the parents fault for raising a messed up kid not the books fault. an excellent read. its not about worshipping anything at all. i dont' really believe you people, i'd want my kids to get excited about reading something.

- Anonymous

A little ridiculous? Do you know how hard I worked on that?

Okay, listen here Diesel or Octane or whatever it is you call yourself, the Harry Potter stories are nothing more than stories about friendship and sticking together and learning how to overcome obstacles in one's life. The fact that there happens to be elements of an magical nature is entirely secondary. And furthermore, speaking as a pagan -- a proud to be one for the last 17 years since I began practicing -- I take great offense to having my faith -- yes, FAITH -- being referred to as devil worshipping. I'm all for free dom of speech but if you expect your beliefs to be respected, I suggest you return in kind.

- Jade Hawthorn

Jade or Topaz or whatever it is you call yourself, I'm sorry that I implied that the Harry Potter books had anything to do with your stupid made-up religion.

Fortunately, after Jade put an evil hex on me, I received some encouraging comments from a number of folks in the pharmaceutical industry:

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And then more from Anonymous...

I have read all the harry potter books and there is nothing wrong with them (like all u ppl think)

- Anonymous

Anonymous, did you read the one where there were some subtle points being made that went right over your head?

if you think harry potter is bad, your fucking stupid. and even if you did get that retarded harry potter 'sign up sheet' from one of their books, the book was a fake. and if you dont believe me.... then blow yourself.

- Anonymous

Anonymous, congratulations on being the dumbest person on the planet. What tipped you off that the sign-up sheet was a fake? Was it the fact that the other graphic in the post was a fake Satanism for Dummies book with the tagline "From the folks who brought you Harry Potter and Cancer?" Was it the part of the post where I said that I make my children wear helmets while doing difficult geometry problems? Was it the address on the bottom of the form that read, "Knights in Satan's Service, attn: Harry Potter Department, 666 Lucifer Way, Las Vegas, Nevada?"

So you think that form was a fake, eh? Anonymous, that wasn't even a real sheet of paper. I was too lazy to print the form out and scan it, so I just dummied something up in Paint Shop Pro. I made the "torn edge" by drawing a zig-zag line with my mouse. But I didn't fool you, did I, Anonymous? You figured out that it was a fake, probably torn from a counterfeit Harry Potter book. That's some solid deductive reasoning there, Sherlock. Do the human race a favor, would you? Go see Jurassic Park and have a fatal heart attack so that you can't reproduce.

Anyway, it's Monday, and you know what that means: A new issue of the Clay Pigeon humor magazine! If you want to read some writing by people who aren't polluting the gene pool, head over there now. Speaking of stupidity, the CP has a special report on which one is dumber, home improvement store employees or shopping carts. Plus, an article from the CP archives that takes us way back to 1990, when we were expressing our doubts about an upstart software company named Microsoft, and our first ever Letter to the Editor. Who knew there was no U.S. Department of Coffee?

And if that doesn't meet your ravenous hunger for humor, check out those wacky Satan-worshipers over at Humor-Blogs.com.

I'll be back tomorrow with the caption contest finalists.

Sarcasm, Harry Potter and Satanism, Oh My!

Bear with me while I conduct a little experiment.

I've noticed that the traffic on this site has taken a significant drop over the past week or so. Analyzing my stats, I see that I'm not getting nearly as many hits from Google image search any more. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; what I'm interested in is readers, not people looking for Britney Spears pics (and yes, in answer to yesterday's questions, I did actually post one picture of Britney before yesterday -- in my Britney/Paris Hilton caption contest).



Anyway, this discovery prompted me to do some experimenting with Google image search, and sure enough, I'm no longer the world's leading authority on sarcasm. If you look hard enough, you can find my sarcasm motivational poster, but on someone else's site. What's up with that?



Same thing with "Harry Potter Satanism." My "Satanism for Dummies" book cover pops up, but on someone else's site.



And the form that I tore out of the back of a Harry Potter book to request more information about Satanism is nowhere to be found (click to enlarge the picture).



(As a side note, if you really want a good laugh you should go back and read the comments that people keep leaving on my Harry Potter/Satanism post. How someone could read that post and not get that it was a joke is beyond me. It's sarcasm, people. Remember?)

Clearly these are pictures that need to be accessible to the general public, but they're nowhere to be found on Google. At first I thought maybe Google made some changes to their search algorithm (I know, you'd think I could just ask somebody at Google, right? Sadly, I don't even know what building those people work in. I think there may be a secret underground bunker somewhere). But then it occurred to me that maybe those images are just buried so far in my archives that Google is no longer indexing them.

And that's a shame, because people really need to be able to see what a Crack Whore Barbie might look like.



To test my theory, I thought I'd do a post filled with all of my most popular images. Which, in case you haven't figured that out yet, is what I'm doing right now. If I'm right, then my traffic should shoot back up again as a result of this post. By the way, if you're one of the people who, ahem, appropriated one of my images to use on your site -- don't worry, I don't mind. In fact, I love seeing my stuff on other people's sites. If you read the fine print over there on the bottom right, you'll see that you, as a blogger/webmaster/church newsletter editor/whatever, you are free to "copy, distribute and transmit" anything on this site. You can copy and paste entire blog posts if you want. All I ask is that you mention that you found it on my site.

Of course, if you want a picture of novelty testicles hanging off the back of a pickup, you'll have to ask these guys, because sadly I didn't fabricate this picture:




On the other hand, if you want a picture of something from the Scrotowear(TM) line of products, I can help you out.





I won't even bother to post my pictures of Air Force Sergeant Michelle Manhart nude except for some strategically placed body armor, or the USC song girl ass, because that's really not the kind of traffic I want.

Thanks for your patience. I'll be back with an all-new fabricated picture for the caption contest tomorrow.


Humor-blogs.com is your one stop shop for sarcasm and Satanism.

Books Etc.

Apologies to Beth for the title of this post....

Ok, I've upgraded Humor-Blogs.com from MySQL to SQL Server, and I think I've worked out most of the bugs. The commenting app on this site should be working now as well. Sorry if you had trouble posting a comment over the past few days, and sorrier if you're one of the people whose comments I accidentally deleted. Trust me, it hurt me more than it hurt you.

Let me know if you still have trouble posting a comment here, or if you experience any weirdness on Humor-Blogs.com. You can contact me by filling out the contact form on the H-B site or by emailing me at diesel - at - mattresspolice.com.

In other news, I've finished a few more books on my list. Sort of.

I read The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks suggested by Cindrarella of the famed Quill Driving Competition. I don't have the energy to write a full review (besides, my reviews of shitty books are way more entertaining), but it's a fascinating book. Oliver Sacks is a neurologist and the author of Awakenings, in case you didn't know. The book is comprised mainly of case studies of various brain damaged people, like the guy who couldn't remember anything for more than about 30 seconds, and the guy who work up one morning with an extremely heightened sense of smell. Sacks does some philosophical musing on the nature and ramifications of these disorders as well, but the best parts are the bizarre stories of individuals whose brains don't work quite right.

I gave up on Love in the Time of Cholera. I'm sorry, Pavel. I just couldn't get through it. Way too much atmosphere and descriptions and symbolism and people lolling about languidly trying to get the courage up to do one thing or other. I was going to cheat and watch the movie, but I hear it's even worse. And I feel pretty bad, considering that I already cheated by picking this Gabriel Garcia Marquez book instead of the whore one. But holy crap, Gabe, would it kill you to throw in an explosion or two?

And then there's The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver suggested by Al from Up the Hudson with Gun and Camera. First of all, Al already told me that I could watch the movie instead if I wanted. Second, my wife reminded me that I actually have already seen the movie (yes, it's that memorable). Third, Al seems to have disappeared into thin air, so unless he shows up here and tells me I still need to read this one, I'm crossing it off.

I do intend to read most if not all of the books remaining on my list, such as American Tabloid by James Ellroy suggested by Mr. Fabulous from Pointless Drivel. (Mr. Fabulous was kind enough to do a post about my book yesterday, so I thought I should mention him). By the way, I'm also reading the draft of Mr. Fabulous' own novel, which is hi-freaking-larious, in a sort of "what the hell is wrong with this guy" sort of way. Hopefully it will be published and available for purchase soon, then ya'll can read it too.

I was hoping to have gotten through more of the books on my list by this point, but as usual I have taken on way too much. Part of the reason I haven't been able to read as much as I hoped is that I've been busy working on my own novel. What, you didn't know I was working on a novel? Well, isn't everybody? The difference is that I actually have about 145 pages written. So when I say that I'm working on a novel, I don't mean the way that I've been "working on a novel" since I was 14. I mean that I actually have a good chunk of usable material written. And as of this morning on the way in to work, I think I even have an ending, which is a plus. You'd be surprised how hard it is to come up with an ending for a novel about the apocalypse. I don't want to say too much, but if you're interested maybe I'll do a post about it sometime in the future.

I think I'm going to take tomorrow off, but maybe I can get Grundir to sub.

My Laptop Bluescreened While I Was Trying to Think of a Title

So here's something you didn't know about me: I don't know jack about computers.

"Wait a minute," you say. "Aren't you, like, a computer programmer?"

Ok, first of all, I'm a software developer. "Computer programmer" is a term left over from when computers were the size of a Greyhound bus and packed as much computing power as your curling iron. "Computer programmers" were people who huddled in a dark room feeding punchcards to a giant steel behemoth made of spinning dynamos and vacuum tubes. If they were lucky, the programmers might be able to get the computer to beep or calculate half of 6, but in general they considered it a good day if the computer didn't go on a killing rampage and eat them.

Most people know that the first "bugs" in computers were literally bugs: Moths or whatever would get into the circuits and screw things up. Imagine how big a computer has to be for a moth to be able to get into the workings of the machine and cause 1 + 1 to intermittently equal 7. That's a big freaking computer. The very first computers were so gigantic, in fact, that computational errors were often blamed on stray cats stuck in the gears.

Ok, I made that last part up. It actually wasn't until the mid 90s that computers needed to be safeguarded against the threat of strange p*ssies.

The point is that when the term "computer programmer" originated, computers were nothing like they are now. Computers have gotten so much more powerful, more complicated, and more likely to be used by complete morons that the field of computer science, like human society in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, has fragmented into two completely distinct professions.

As you'll recall, Wells envisioned that in the future humanity would schism into two separate races -- and no, one of those races is not the one that thinks it's ok to use the word schism as a verb. The two races were the Morlocks, who were dark brutish creatures who lived underground and controlled the mysterious machinery that ran everything; and the Eloi, who were gentle, beautiful and vapid creatures who probably thought that Wal-Mart was a place to get "wall stuff."

In this analogy, the creepy guy who smells like Doritos and laughs at you because you tried to connect your printer with an RS-232 interface cable is a Morlock. He knows how all the hardware works. He knows the difference between Cat5 and Cat6, and no, it's notCat1. He knows whether his hard drive is SCSI or ATAPI, how much hard drive space he has down to the kilobyte, and whether he's going to need to dump the odd-numbered Star Trek movies to make room for the final season of Battlestar Galactica.

The software developers, on the other hand, are Eloi. They are beautiful, delicate creatures who use words like "elegant" to describe 300 lines of what, to any normal person, looks like the result of someone typing with his keyboard upside down. They can tell you the difference between a runtime error, a syntax error and a logic error, and may attempt to regale you with an account of the time that they crashed a production web server with an infinitely recursive Java function. A computer is to a software developer what a phone is to someone calling a 976 number: It allows him to do what he wants to do, but it's hard not to think of it as a somewhat limiting medium.

Roughly speaking, the Morlocks are the hardware guys and the Eloi are the software guys*, and there exists an uneasy symbiotic relationship between the two. The Eloi rely on the Morlocks to keep the machines running, and the Morlocks rely on the Eloi to make the machines actually do something other than beep or calculate half of 6.

As an Eloi, I resent my reliance on both the Morlocks and their crude machines. I feel about my laptop the same way I feel about my car: It takes me cool places and lets me do all kinds of fun things, but I don't give a crap how it works. I'm pretty sure both of them involve a wheel and some gerbils. When something breaks, I open up the hood, tug on a few wires, and then take the damn thing in to a Morlock, who might have a chance in hell of fixing it.**

I hate it when people come to me with computer problems. Not software problems, mind you. I don't mind answering questions about Blogger templates or XML feeds. But calling me when your motherboard is fried is like calling up your brother-in-law the architect when your plumbing is clogged. Sure, he might know the answer, but at best he's going to resent you for coming to him regarding such a plebeian matter, and at worst he's going to flood your house with sewage. For architects, sewage exists only as an abstract concept, something to be routed away from the house by some decisive lines on a sheet of paper. That's not going to help you when your basement smells like the wool seat covers in Britney Spears' convertible after a three day rain.

The other day my sister-in-law asked me for advice on buying a laptop. I gave her the same advice I give everybody who is buying a computer: All of the numbers should be big except for the price. That's as detailed as my hardware knowledge gets. If one PC had herpes simplex 2 and another had herpes simplex 5, I'd go with the 5.

The only other advice I have is this: for the love of all that's holy, buy the extended warranty. Extended warranties are the equivalent of the Geneva Convention treaties in the eternal enmity between Morlocks and the rest of humanity. Sure, you're going to get screwed, but you'll know exactly how badly you're getting screwed and for how long.

Plus, you won't have to call me and bother me while I'm dancing and singing with the rest of the Eloi, trying to ignore those ominous rumblings underground.


*I use the term "guys" because, well, I've never actually seen any women in either of these fields.

**These days, of course, there is an alternative to fixing your computer. It's called "USB ports." USB ports allow lazy, non-hardware oriented people to just plug in a new whatever-it-is when the old whatever-it-is inside the box stops working. I've got so many USB devices plugged into my laptop now that I actually have a USB splitter velcro'd to the lid of my laptop, with all kinds of gizmos and dohickeys sticking out of it. When software people see this, they say, "Wow, that's cool!" When hardware people see this, they say, "What the f--- is wrong with your laptop?"


Humor-blogs.com thinks you're an idiot for not knowing what an RS-232 cable is.

Our Wonderful Glands

These days we can be thankful that every primate with opposable thumbs, not to mention Tucker Max, has a blog. Today I can simply open the lid of my laptop and read no less than 800 million stories about absolutely adorable and completely interchangeable cats. I can also read sports commentary by armchair quarterbacks, navel-gazing by armchair philosophers and upholstery tips by the chair of the armchair armchair-makers society.

But what did people do in the Olden Dayes, back before armchair technology guru Al Gore invented the Interwebs? How did people find out that their cats were, in fact, no different from everyone else's cats? Where did they go to find throngs of like-minded idiots with whom to commiserate regarding the alarming decline of their own particular brand of idiocy?

Well, my friends, I have stumbled upon the answer. A few weeks ago I ran across a box of yellowed booklets at an estate sale, most of them written by one Joseph McCabe. Maybe you know the name; I didn't. Apparently he was a well-known "freethinker" back in the day, which is what they used to call people who were free to think anything except that there might be a God of some sort. If you stumbled across that particular belief, you were kicked out of the club. It was a very open-minded sort of club in that way.

In any case, this Joseph McCabe was what passed for a blogger in the 1930s-40s. He seems to have been a pretty smart guy, if a bit of a crank, and he wrote on EVERYTHING. The first booklet to catch my eye was something entitled "Our Wonderful Glands." It's about, well, our wonderful glands. Then there is "The Nature, History and Uses of Aphrodisiacs," "Television -- What It Is and How It Works" and "How the Talkies Talk." Despite his wide range of topics, Mr. McCabe did not, as far as I can tell, own a cat.

"Television and How it Works," penned in 1937, begins:

Thirteen years ago, I wrote a popular manual of physics in which I told my readers that when certain processes that were then in their crude infancy were perfected we should be able to sit an arm chair* at home and see what was at that moment happening in 42nd Street or at the baseball ground. A scientific weekly condescended to notice my book but warned me, on a note of high superiority, not to put such dreams before the public.

Joe's prognostication was so uncannily accurate that he can be forgiven for using the term "baseball ground."

Mostly old Joe seemed to be concerned with spreading the gospel of atheism and exposing the evils of the Catholic Church. (Joe spent ten years in a monastery, but it evidently didn't take). For a while there was even a Joseph McCabe Magazine (later modestly renamed to Appeal to Reason Library), which seems to have been written almost entirely by old Joe himself. One volume of Appeal to Reason Library is made up of articles like "Catholics and Crime, or Why the Catholics Fill the Jails," "How the Roman Catholic Church Gets Wealth and Power," and "Celibacy, an Unscrupulous Policy." In 1937 old Joe wrote a nice 32 page pamphlet entitled "Vice in German Monasteries," in which he unfortunately bases much of his case on the rantings of Goebbels. Tough luck, Joe.

Another issue of The Joseph McCabe Magazine promises In This Issue that "Science Conducts God to Its Frontier -- Atheism Advances Despite Absurd Cavortings of a Few Scientists Who Speak Up For God." Come on, Joe, tell us how you really feel. (By the way, is it just me, or does absurd cavorting sound like a pretty good time?)

Joe's disgust with the clerical bias of the editors of the Encyclopedia Brittanica prompted him to write "The Lies and Fallacies of the Encyclopedia Britannica -- How Powerful and Shameless Clerical Forces Castrated a Famous Work of Reference." (Castration being a particularly tragic fate once one has been schooled in the mysteries of Our Wonderful Glands.) Joe got so mad, in fact, that he beat Wikipedia by 60 years in writing his own alternative to the esteemed encyclopedia. That's right, I have in my hands Volume 2 of Joseph McCabe's The Encyclopedia of Essential Knowledge. Evidently there was a lot less to know in 1948, because all of Volume 2 (D to H) is slightly larger than the instruction booklet for the George Foreman grill.

In fact, it's significantly shorter than my book, Antisocial Commentary, which is currently on sale for the absurdly cavorting price of $9.95 with free shipping. To be fair, my book does not contain a section on Thomas Edison which reads, in its entirety:

Edison, Thomas Alva (1847-1941). The famous inventor read Gibbon and Hume before he was 10 and was an outspoken Agnostic all his life. In his later years he, like Lembroso, dabbled in spiritualism but does not seem to have gone beyond inquiry.

Sadly there are no illustrations, but I'm hopeful that a revised edition will soon be released with Thomas Edison thinking Great Agnostic Thoughts. If only there were some universally recognized symbol that could be used to indicate that Edison was thinking brilliant thoughts. Maybe a thought bubble with an oil lamp in it.

The Encyclopedia of Essential Knowledge also surprisingly omits Novelty Testicles and The Incredible Hulk -- mistakes I was careful not to repeat in my own book.

Some of you, I suspect, are still agnostic regarding my thesis that the cranky pamphleteers of the mid-20th century were the bloggers of their time. To you, I submit the fact that the final pages of the Josesph McCabe Magazine are filled with letters -- which is to say comments -- by readers on previous essays, and ads for other booklets (cough, cough, blogroll) that the reader might enjoy. Finally, there are the somewhat questionable ads for various products filling out the remainder of the pamphlets.



In case you can't read it, there are ads for pamphlets titled "The Treatment of Impotence in Man and Woman," "The Latest So-Called Miracle Cures for Gonorrhea" and (my personal favorite): "When are Girls Promiscuous? Love's Physiology for the Virgin and Her Sister." (Original Title: "Frank Talk About Sex for the Virgin and Her Sister, the Filthy, Filthy Whore.")

It is a tragedy that these valuable writings have virtually disappeared, surviving only in a few dog-eared and yellowing copies ignominiously offered for sale for a few pennies at an estate sale. I am proud to have done my part to immortalize these works by blogging about them. At least this very small fraction of Joseph McCabe's works will be accessible for eternity to all of humanity via the miracle of the internet. Along with 800 million posts about cats.


*I swear I didn't know the "arm chair" reference was in there when I started writing this post.

The virgin and her sister hang out at humor-blogs.com.

The Tooth Machine

I've always wanted to write a novel, and now that I've gotten over the hurdle of publishing my first book (a little semi-fictional collection of nonsense entitled Antisocial Commentary), I decided that I was finally going to do it. It's a lot of work, but I'm steadily making progress. I've got about 100 pages written so far, and the feedback that I've gotten from the few people with whom I've shared the manuscript has been very positive. One guy* even went to the trouble of suggesting some great jokes to incorporate into the book. (What, you thought I was going to write a serious novel?)

Recently, however, my friend Snuppy (aka Crazy Aunt Beatrice) from Central Snark recommended a novel called The Truth Machine. This novel is, not to mince words, a steaming pile of bantha dung. I wrote a review of it which I excerpted in my last post. Snuppy pretended to love the book, but now I realize that she was trying to tell me that I was working too hard on my novel. "Look at this piece of crap," she was saying. "This was a bestseller, and it reads like the guy wrote it in 7th grade study hall."

Having learned my lesson, I'm thinking about scrapping my novel and writing something in the vein of Halperin's book. Here's what I have so far.

The Tooth Machine
by Diesel

Pete Strongman, who was the in vitro product of Marie Curie's best looking egg and Stephen Hawking's most robust sperm, was pretty much the smartest guy ever. He had some quirks that made him relatable, though. For example, there was the bed-wetting that continued into his late thirties -- which wouldn't have been so bad if he had confined it to his own bed. Also, his little brother Leonard had died when he was eight from a freak gum infection that had resulted from an undiagnosed cavity in his upper left molar.

It was this tragedy that inevitably -- not to say predictably -- propelled Pete Strongman, World's Smartest Man (he had the business cards made up when he hit puberty), on his quest to build the Tooth Machine, a device that could unerringly detect even the smallest cavities in even the most insignificant tooth.

Pete happened to mention the concept of the Tooth Machine to his Smartology Professor at Harvard, Dr. Plato Socrates, who will be played in the movie by Morgan Freeman. Socrates mentioned the idea to his best friend Tom Powers, which wouldn't be a big deal except that Tom Powers just happened to be the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. One thing led to another, and President Powers convinced Congress that the nation's Number One Priority should be developing a perfect Tooth Machine. The convincing was pretty easy, because by 2009 invisible cars and jetpacks that run on pollution had already been invented. Congress established a one hundred trillion dollar prize for anyone who could develop such a machine, and that's a lot of money, even for 2009.

It was also at Harvard that Pete met his nemesis, Tad Skeemer. Tad had, by the age of 18, already invented such insidious confectionaries as Chewy Gewies and Chocolate Thumb. Tad knew that if people ever discovered how dangerous his candies were, he'd be ruined. He vowed to prevent the Tooth Machine from ever being invented.

Tad convinced Pete that they should go into business together, and they spent the next twenty years developing groundbreaking devices such as the Earlobe Machine, the Little Toe Machine, and -- their most difficult challenge to date -- the Uvula Machine. Every body part got them a little closer to their ultimate goal, the fabled Tooth Machine. But, unbeknownst to Pete, World's Smartest and Coincidentally Most Gullible Man, all the while Tad was scheming to undermine the Tooth Machine at its roots.

As the Tooth Machine neared completion, Tad secretly programmed it so that if it ever detected a cavity caused by one of Tad's candies, Pete Strongman, World's Smartest Man, would be hit with the World's Worst Toothache. The day before the unveiling of the machine, Tad told Pete what he had done.

As much as Pete wanted to see a world free of tooth decay, he really didn't want to have to deal with that toothache. Because if that toothache was as painful as he was smart, then it was very painful, because he was very smart. Very, VERY smart.

Did I mention how smart he is? Like, it would blow your mind if you knew how smart he was.

So Pete kidnapped Tad, made him reprogram the machine, and then shot and incinerated him.

The machine was launched on schedule. Eventually people found out what Pete had done, but they forgave him because of all the cavities he had prevented.

THE END.


*Yes, it was our good friend, the ever-witty Joel Bezaire, proprietor of Crummy Church Signs and author of Crummy Church Signs Volume 1. Have you bought your signed, discounted copy yet? Tomorrow is the last day! Do it now!


Humor-blogs.com prevents cavities AND runs on pollution.

Grumpy Book Reviews

Okay, I think I've fixed most of the template and commenting issues. If you're still experiencing any weirdness (above the ordinary levels), send me an email at diesel -at- mattresspolice.com

The launch of this new look coincides with the end of an era. A rather short, relatively insignificant era, but still, it's the end of it. I'm going back to work.

Yes, my retirement was fun while it lasted, but you know what would be even more fun? Being able to pay for all the materials I'm going to need to finish my house. Also, not getting foreclosed on.

So I'm going back to work -- nothing too serious or permanent, but I'm going to be doing some contract work. (And yes, the company that I'm going to be subcontracting for is that rather large, well known, oddly named company that owns a certain blogging platform and, I think, French Polynesia. Hint: It starts with a 'G'.)

Hopefully this won't impact my posting schedule, but my posts may be a little less ambitious for a while. Take, for example, this post.

Back in the heady early days of my retirement, I challenged my readers to suggest books for me to read. Based on these suggestions, I put together a reading list and have been working my way through it. I'm not going to make it through all of them by the deadline (which I believe was the end of November), but I've made some solid progress. I'm going to keep working my way through the list over the coming months.

For your reading pleasure and erudition, here are some highlights from the reviews I've written over the past year. The complete review blog is here, if you want to read more.

---------------------------

Eragon by Christopher Paolini

...The prose is hackneyed and tiresome. Paolini seems unaware that phrases like "for what seemed like hours" are both cliched and unhelpful for communicating anything to the reader. At one point a character speaks "in a language known only to him," which probably sounds ominous to a middle-schooler, but only made me laugh. His parents must be kicking themselves for paying for those lessons.
...

So far my favorite line in the book is "I fear that we will all wake up one morning with our throats slashed." Man, do I wish I knew whether the author was joking when he wrote that.
...

The main thing holding my interest at this point is the emerging sexual subtext:

"And I have outlived my youth; I'm not as strong as I used to be. Every time I reach for magic, it gets a little harder."
Eragon dropped his eyes, abashed. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," said Brom as he shifted his arm. "It happens to everyone."

...

The good news is that around page 300 the author finally breaks free from George Lucas' Jedi death grip and starts to tell a semi-interesting story. Paolini had the good sense to borrow the elements of his climax equally from Tolkien, Star Wars and the last of the Matrix movies, so that while originality remains beyond him, at least the narrative no longer felt like it was going to collapse from the weight of its own redundancy. Eragon remained utterly predictable throughout, of course. About 5 pages into meeting a particular character I turned to my 12 year old nephew (Everybody's 12 year old nephew has read Eragon) and said, "_____ is Eragon's brother, isn't he?" My nephew, who has read the sequel as well (in which this "secret" is evidently revealed), replied, "Yeah." Shocker!

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

Fast Food Nation is a well written, fascinating, and well-researched book.... Schlosser has a very engaging prose style. However, his goal seems to be to shock people into rethinking their affinity for fast food, and in that, he failed, at least in my case.

First of all, I'm a heartless conservative bastard, so his anecdotes about low-paying non-union meatpacking jobs and teenagers slaving away for minimum wage at stultifying, unskilled jobs have no effect on me. Does it bother me that unions can't seem to get any traction at fast food restaurants? Not really. Am I troubled that fast food workers get paid beans for making fries? Again, no. Ditto for the fact that McDonald's is putting traditional restaurants out of business in Germany. Good for them.
...

Yeah, yeah, the workers are illiterate and unskilled, don't speak English, and may not even be legally allowed to work in the U.S., so I should feel really bad for them. And yet... they're pouring over the border looking for meatpacking jobs. Sounds more like a problem with the Mexican economy than with the U.S. meatpacking industry.
...

To me, the only really troubling revelations in the book were regarding hamburger meat. Basically what I learned from this book is: Don't eat hamburgers from a fast food place. And for the love of all that's holy, don't eat hamburgers from a school cafeteria. And if you buy hamburger from the store, make sure you cook it really well. Because, well, there's a lot of shit in hamburger.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

You're probably at least a little familiar with the travails of Afghanistan: First the Russians invaded, which was bad enough. But when the Russians left the Taliban took over. The Taliban makes the Russians look like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. After reading this book, I am hard pressed to think of a group that embodies evil more purely than the Taliban. Honestly, I don't think even the Nazis measure up. Occasionally I hear people use the term "American Taliban" to refer to the religious right in this country. People who use the term in this way are f***ing retards. Read this book. If you think Pat Robertson measures up to this level of depravity, then you should be in therapy.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

My expectations for Haroun and the Sea of Stories were pretty high -- as they would be for any author who has been both knighted and targeted for assassination for his writing. Maybe unfairly high. It's an easy read and an engaging story. I suppose it's not fair to expect anything more, although it irritates me when a book jacket is covered with hyperbole and superlatives that the book can't possibly live up to:

"In telling his tale, Rushdie borrows from sources as disparate as the conventions of the Bombay cinema; the films of Satyajit Ray; comic books and cartoons; Star Wars; and even the jingles on signboards along the highways of Kashmir... It is a performance that dazzles the eye as it erupts triumphantly out of the dark in a display of fireworks."

I mean, seriously? Fireworks? I don't know about all that other stuff, but I've seen Star Wars about a gajillion times and the only reference to it I could find was when one character utters a string of gobbledygook which includes the name "Obi." To me, that review sounds like an exercise in "How can I illustrate my cosmopolitan sensibility and broad liberal arts education?"

The Truth Machine by James Halperin

Rarely when reading a book do I have the urge to hurl it against a wall.

I'm used to reading sci-fi books that make outlandish and inaccurate predictions about the future, but I think The Truth Machine takes the cake. Supposedly the author interviewed a lot of really smart people about what was going to happen in the coming decades, which just goes to show how much smart people know.

His predictions veer wildly off track almost immediately, to the point of being humorously absurd. To give you an idea: In 2003 Al Gore is President, most people drive electric cars, oil is selling for $4 a barrel, the war in Bosnia is still going on, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not. Things get more and more absurd as the years go by.
...

The central idea of the book is the construction of a glorified lie detector, which comes into being through a series of contrivances reminiscent of the founding of Apple Computers, the creation of the Human Genome Project and the establishment of the X-Prize. Never in human history has any project been undertaken in this way, because none of it makes any freaking sense. The author manages to communicate his ignorance of corporate finance, computer programming, scientific research, and pretty much every other field he touches on.
...

The Truth Machine is a mildly interesting murder mystery drowning in giant sickening globs of technology porn.

New Rules by Bill Maher

Ironically, I don't really like humor books.* Also, I can't stand Bill Maher. I think he's an ugly, mean-spirited, whiny, self-righteous jerk.

So I will fully admit to being prejudiced against New Rules. I read about a third of this book -- enough, I would think, to have encountered something funny if there were anything funny to be found in it. I didn't laugh. Not once. I didn't even smile.

There were some parts where I was tempted to smile, like this:

No more TV gambling. First there was Celebrity Poker. Then there was Celebrity Blackjack. I saw one show that was just Cammryn Mannheim scratching lottery tickets.

Or this:



Actually, I can't find another one. I know there was something else that almost made me smile, but I just spent five minutes wading through tired jokes about Paris Hilton, tired jokes about George W. Bush, tired jokes about Pat Robertson, and copious use of the the f-word word in place of a punchline. I feel like I've wasted enough of my life on this crap.

Good job, Bill. You succeeded in publishing a book and getting fired from a TV show. Now go away.

---------------------------

In case you're wondering, right now I'm reading Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (sorry, Pavel, I substituted it for the book you suggested, because I already had a copy of this one). I'll let you know how it goes.


*You should still buy my book, though, because it's way better than most humor books. Seriously. Ask this guy, or this guy, or these ladies, or this chick, this dude, or several other of the fine folks at humor-blogs.com.

Crummy Church Signs: The Book!

The caption contest poll has been pre-empted for something even more exciting this week: Joel from Crummy Church Signs has written a book!

I've said before that I think that Crummy Church Signs has the highest laugh-to-word count ratio of any website I've come across. I think it helps to have grown up with a church background to appreciate some of the confused theology and Sunday school cheesiness, but how can you not laugh at a sign that reads "The size of the tool doesn't matter in The Master's hand" ? (Joel's commentary: "But it's a whole different story if you ask Mrs. The Master.")

For a limited time the book is only $10.99 with FREE shipping, and Joel will autograph it for you! This offer is only available until Nov. 6 at the Humor-Blogs.com store. After that, the price will go up to the regular price of $12.99 PLUS shipping (and no signature...).

Joel sent me a draft a few weeks ago, and Mrs. Diesel and I were laughing ourselves silly over these signs.

Still not convinced? How about this: Joel is giving all the proceeds to charity. As Joel says:

With all the psychological damage that these crummy signs have inflicted upon the world, it's time for them to start doing some good. That is why I am donating 100% of my proceeds from the sale of this book to Compassion, a Christian advocacy group for underprivileged kids in third world countries.

Come on, how cool is that? You get a signed copy of a hilarious book at a phenomenal price, you get to support a blogger who provides endless entertainment both on his site and here (Joel is a perennial finalist in the caption contests), and you get to help poor kids. What are you waiting for? Buy your copy today!


I'll post the caption contest poll tomorrow. If you buy the book.

Compassion is our middle name at humor-blogs.com. That's what the "-" stands for.

Thursday Shout-Out: New Adjutant Inspectors!

I was just informed by my son that this is NOT a finger.

As promised, I have updated the Adjutant Inspector roll. The new Inspectors are:

• BooksEtc.
• Dorky Dad
• Life On Manitoulin
• Queen of Dysfunction
• The Chrysalis Stage
• The Frog Bog
• UNCIVIL
• Variant E's Fantastical Nonsense

I know you've probably got a thousand questions about this. What does it mean to be an Adjutant Inspector? How does one get picked? What does "adjutant" mean?

All I can tell you is that it wouldn't hurt to buy my book, Antisocial Commentary. Beyond that, you'll just have to visit the other Adjutant Inspectors and try to get them to tell you what the secret is.

I expect to be sending the book orders out on Saturday. I've gotten payment from almost all of you. If you pre-ordered a copy and haven't paid yet, please email me for payment instructions (Don't worry, I won't yell at you).

Speaking of books, I have posted my thoughts on Haroun and the Sea of Stories at my Central Booking blog. Yeah, remember that? I'm still slogging through my reading list, believe it or not.

That's about it for today. Come back tomorrow for this week's caption contest!

Diesel out.


P.S.: It's my daughter's leg, you sick bastards.

A Publishing Revoltution

Only a few years ago, getting a book published was an arduous, demanding process that often dragged on for years. Back then, many aspiring authors were turned away merely because their writing didn't fit into one of a few narrowly defined "genres," or because they didn't have any "talent."

Fortunately, the Dark Ages of Publishing, during which only a few real geniuses like Herman Melville or Sidney Sheldon could get their works published, are over. Thanks to a technological revolution, getting published no longer means having to meticulously "set type," pore over "galleys," or have your writing "proofread." Today anybody can get published.

As evidence of this, I present to you Antisocial Commentary: From the Secret Files of the Mattress Police, now available through Lulu.com. It's true that I'm also in talks with a "real" publisher, but the problem with "real" publishers is that they seem to be only interested in one of two things:

1. Authors that people have heard of.
2. Books that have a "point."

I try to tell them that guys like Melville and Sheldon didn't become famous until after they were published (although I understand that Melville was pretty well known at the local pub for his dead-on Andrew Jackson impression), but they just don't get it. That means that to get published by a "real" publisher, I have to try to write a book focusing on a single topic. If you've read any of my posts, you know how hard that would be for me, as I often deal with as many as sixteen topics within a single paragraph.

My solution was to self-publish my book through Lulu.com. I received the first published copy of my book about a week ago, and I was thoroughly impressed. Who is this spirited young author, who writes like the unholy lovechild of Melville and Sheldon? I thought. Also, the print quality is top-notch. May I be stabbed in the eye with a rusty harpoon if it isn't indistinguishable from the type of book you would find at your local Megabookseller and Coffee Shop.

At first I was concerned about the "stigma" attached to self-publishing. But then I spent some time perusing the Lulu.com catalog, and my fears were allayed. These are some of the more promising titles I found:

The Laws of Paws and Claws - Numerology for Cats

by beryl nozedar

A book written about Numerology for Cats with humor but with information about how to change your cat's name to improve his/her personality.

Is one of the recommended names "Free to a Good Home?"

A Life in a Day: A Course in Amateur Traumatics

by Victor Rust

Do you have visions of being perfect? Have you ever been frustrated by the welter of self-help books, which are too lazy or lack crystallisation to actually help you directly? Do you want a quick fix to achieve that desired perfection? Do you always have so many questions running through your head when considering whether to buy a book or not? Then this is the book for you. In easy to understand – sort of – steps, the book guides you through the stages of a day (any day) and the issues that might impact on you and how you might best use them to your advantage. What is it about the self-help books that elevate this one to the top of the pile – even if what constitutes that pile is highly unpleasant? Well, you just don’t have to try too hard with this one and it is guaranteed effective (unless it isn’t, in which case, the guarantee is instantly null and void)!

As bad as you feel right now, at least you didn't write this.

ONE WAR

by John Scott Ridgway

Slane is based on a Navy Seal who was ordered to rape women to death in Vietnam. He takes up a third of the book; the other novellas concern a poet and a scientist in a think tank. Somehow, there are a few laughs as well. Seriously. Not sicko laughs, either... really.

Stop me if you've heard the one about the Navy Seal who was ordered to rape women to death in Vietnam.

The Revenge of Resident Virus

by Denis Sadoshenko

…When the ingeniously devised operation to destroy the 586th computer, led by the resident with the tabel number K-817, failed, the heads could not recover for a long time. To make such an elementary error! This was inexcusable. And so, with the help of a bestial genetic engineering, a virus of the new generation was created – resident, incorruptible and cruel. Even more invulnerable and insidious than the previous versions. Without much thinking directors dubbed it K-818 – they had no strength left to devise a name for their new child. The operation, in principle, could not fail – they have envisaged all the possible and impossible attacks and withdrawals. All the errors have been taken into account and eliminated. The virus could have been called a zetta-version with pride, had he not been a simple program. Unfortunately, he had not…

Well, we're in agreement on one thing: Whatever it is, it needs to be stopped.


So obviously I'm in good company at Lulu.com. In fact, I'm wondering if anything in my book can top the sheer comic genius of cat numerology.

Anyway, thanks to everybody who took a chance on an unknown kid by pre-ordering Antisocial Commentary! I'll send you an email shortly with payment instructions, and you should get your copy/copies in a week or two. If you haven't ordered your copy yet, you can now order it directly from Lulu.com.

And maybe get a copy of that wacky death-rape book while you're at it.

Also, even if you've already ordered the book, I would be much obliged if you would go to the Lulu site and click the stars next to where it says "Rate this Item." The higher my rating, the more prominently my book will be displayed on the Lulu site. You don't even have to order it to rate it. You can also write a review if you want. Thanks!

Update 9:23 am: I just realized that you do have to create an account to rate the book. There isn't much to it though, and it's worth it to help out your old pal Diesel, right? Right.

I'll post the poll for the caption contest tomorrow. You have until tonight to get your captions in. Make me proud!


Humor-blogs.com once had an inauspicious number of kittens, but it drowned one in a burlap sack in the river and has had good luck ever since.

Book 'Em!

I think Barnes and Noble is on to me.

I think they've figured out that I'm one of those people who just browses through books for an hour, leaves them on the wrong shelf, and then walks out without buying anything. How else can you explain the fact that the alarm goes off every time I enter the store?

I've gotten into the habit of holding up my hands and shouting "It's just me!" whenever I walk into the store, which is usually pretty effective at negating suspicions. Except, of course, on those rare occasions when the alarm doesn't go off for some reason, in which case it has precisely the opposite effect. Funny how a preemptive declaration of harmlessness freaks people right out.

One time I carried a book from Barnes and Noble into Starbucks next door, picked up a coffee, then brought the book back into the store, at which point the alarm went off. An employee shot me an accusatory look. I sheepishly held up the book, demonstrating my willingness to cooperate.

"You can't take books out of the store," she said.

"Apparently I can take books out of the store," I replied. "What I can't do, at least without getting a lot of unwanted attention, is to bring books back into the store."

She clearly wanted to punish me in some way, but couldn't settle on her next course of action.

"Do you... want me to take the book back into Starbucks?" I said. "I promise not to bring it back into the store this time."

She grumbled something and walked off. You just can't satisfy some people.

I don't know how Barnes and Noble makes any money. Actually, I have my suspicions. I think they make all their money on those "bargain items" at the front of the store. You know the stuff I'm talking about: those oversized books and boxed "kits" that promise to teach you everything you need to know to get started with Feng Shui or drawing manga characters or mastering the art of the tarot.

I find these displays fascinating, because they're like a smörgåsbord* of lifestyle options. I like how they are always marked down from $19.95 to $14.95 or something. I imagine a young woman walking out of the store with her girlfriend, clutching one of those boxes.

Woman 1: I thought you were going to convert to Buddhism.

Woman 2: I was, but Calligraphy was on sale.

Barnes and Noble has something for everybody, including people who hate to read. The last time I was there I saw an audio book of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Now that's niche marketing. It's the book for people who want to hear someone read a movie to them.

Guy 1: You know what I really loved about Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines?

Guy 2: The hot chick terminator?

Guy 1: No...

Guy 2: Arnold Schwarzenegger kicking ass?

Guy 1: No...

Guy 2: The awesome effects?

Guy 1: No...

Guy 2: The ever perky Claire Daines, in her best role since My So-Called Life?

Guy 1: No...

Guy 2: Okay, I give up. What did you love about Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines?

Guy 1: The lyrical dialogue and rich thematic subtext. It's too bad I never learned how to read.

Guy 2: Ooh, have I got a book for you!

Every time I go to Barnes and Noble I have to spend half an hour browsing through the "humor" section. As a humor writer, this is therapeutic for me. Just when I start to feel a little guilty about shamelessly hawking my own book in every one of my posts, I pick up a book that is made up of 80 pages of "lessons" gleaned from Napoleon Dynamite -- one per page. The book was priced at $9.95, even though it looked like it had been written over a long weekend by a hungover middle schooler. Most of the books in the "humor" section are so painfully unfunny that they made me want to go to the literature section to take in a few pages of The Brothers Karamazov just to lighten my mood a bit. Not that there aren't any funny books there -- This book made me chuckle, and the Deep Thoughts collections are always good for some laughs. And of course there are books by the old pros, like Dave Barry and Woody Allen. But generally speaking, if you want to see something funny, you're better off browsing through some of the books they're trying to pawn off as "serious."

For example, I always find the "...for Dummies" books amusing. Well, mostly what I find amusing is the ambiguity of the titles. Fishing for Dummies, for example, sounds pretty cool. I have to admit that catching a dummy would be more exciting than landing a trout. Plus, dummies are way easier to gut. And when you're done cleaning your dummy, you can rely on your trusty copy of Sewing for Dummies to help you stitch your dummy back up so that it's suitable for hanging in your den.

And if the Dummies books are too advanced for you, there are also books for Complete Idiots. There's The Complete Idiot's Guide to Sex, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Accounting, and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Astrology -- which, now that I think about it, is redundant.

Some day I'm going to launch a line of books for people who are too dumb for the Complete Idiot books. I'm going to call them ________ for Total F---ing Retards Who Can't Even Read So they Don't Know this Book is Filled Entirely With Lyrics from Def Leppard Songs. I'm not even going to bother to fill in the blank in the title, because what difference is it going to make? I'll just change the color of the cover once a month to indicate that a new edition has been released.

I'd love to write more, but I've got to go smuggle some more copies of Antisocial Commentary into the "summer reading" section.



*I'd like to thank the developers of the Firefox web browser for "correcting" my spelling by adding those funky alien symbols to that word.

Humor-blogs.com is like an online version of the Barnes and Noble "humor" section. Except it's funny.

Vote!

Ok, folks. It's time to vote for your favorite caption. The winners will be posted on Saturday. I'll be back tomorrow with a post that won't suck nearly as much as yesterday's did.

Here are the finalists, as selected by the lovely and infallible Mrs. Diesel:

Remember this: you are playing a kid, not some ne'er do well Brit who shags every girl who doesn't scream out "Oh, Harry Potter, you snog me so well" in the throes of passion. And... ACTION!
- Sornie


Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten! A KITTEN, Daniel... a kitten.
- crazy aunt beatrice


What I'm trying to say is that I want you to be shorter in this scene, right? But also taller.
- tina


Watch my hand. Look, I'm pointing. What am I pointing at? It's a mystery. And then BAM! here's the other hand, slapping you on the head. What did I say, Daniel? I said 'watch my hand.' Let's try it again.
- Diesel


Now This time I want you to think, 'clown', 'happiness', got it?"
- MyUtopia


"You say 'One for the money' and then give me sassy jazz hands. Then, directly into Camera Two, give us a 'Two to go' followed by a step-ball-change. Quickly, then, everso quickly, rapid fire out 'Three to get ready/Four to go' while hopping on your broom and leaning in front of the blue screen as though flying onto the field. This Buzzby Berkley-like Quidditch match finale will have audiences lining up for next year's Harry Potter Follies weeks ahead of time."
- Jocelyn


"Toying with Death's scythe again, aye, Harry? How many times do I have to tell you most accidents happen at home?"
- Glacial Spain


Don't glower at me you cash cow.
- Michelle


Diesel: Enough with the Strong Man gag already. I KNOW the statue's only styrofoam, but we need it to LOOK heavy Dammit!
- Candace


Dont' look now, but I must shield you from the creepy John Mayer guy who is giving you the eye.
- Erica AP

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Listed on humor-blogs.com.

Vote!

Man, it was tough picking my ten favorites this time. I had to exclude some really good captions to keep it down to ten. Cast your vote and then check back this Saturday to see the final results. Hopefully I've got the poll settings configured so you can actually see the damn voting button this time. Let me know if you have any trouble voting.

One housekeeping item before I get to the finalists: I have FINALLY finished reading Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstader suggested by