Tom Vilsack 2008: At Least I'm Not Black

First off, sorry about the long break. I never quite got a post together two weeks ago, and then I left on Spring Break. In an attempt at penance, I'll be posting this tonight (a post I started before break) and another post later this week. Moving on.

For those of you who don't obsessively check Google News in search of material for the humor blog that you keep, you may not have heard that Governor Tom Vilsack has withdrawn his name from the race for the Deomocratic nomination for president.

I'm sure many of you share a common question: Who the fuck is Tom Vilsack?

Fair question. Tom Vilsack is the Governor of Iowa. He officially declared that he would be running about three months ago, but everyone had already assumed as much. As near as I can tell he was running solely on home court advantage, hoping that he could do well enough in the Iowa primary that everyone would forget they had no idea who he was.

Astonishingly, this plan didn't work out so well. Governor Visack apparently withdrew because he was finding it too hard to amass campaign funds against Obama and Clinton.

Which leads me to my question: Shouldn't that have occured to his advisors three months ago? Cause if Governor Vilsack had called me, I could have told him that the various NGOs across the country were going to be slightly more likely to give money to the new Golden Boy of the Democratic Party or the wife of the last Democrat people actually liked than some guy from Iowa nobody's ever heard of. And if he had called most of you, you would have asked who the fuck he was, and that probably would have given him basically the same message.

Incidentally, I think at least one candidate for the Democratic nomination should have the slogan indicated in the title of this post. I'm pretty sure a slight modification could actually work for John Edwards. John Edwards 2008: He's White and Has a Penis.

Earlier today, the following headline was posted on Google News: "Protests after US Troops Kill 16 Afghans". Now look, I realize that Afghan is the technically correct term from a person from Afghanistan, but would it really be the end of the world if we changed it? Cause I read a tragic headline like that, and I should be upset, and instead I giggle, because I can't get the image of soldiers mowing down blankets out of my head.

Cause French people don't call themselves French right? It's Francais or something. But we go right ahead and call them French. So why can't we change Afghan to something less silly?

Finally, I considered writing a post about the following website, but I decided I wouldn't be able to write anything funnier than the site itself, so check this out (oh and this isn't safe for work): Teddy Babes.

Al Franken: Why Not Me?

Since I didn't put together a post at all last week, I figured I should pull double duty this week, so here's your second dosing of the FMRC.

First up, Al Franken announced that he will be campaigning for the Democractic nomination for the Senate in Minnesota in 2008. For those unfamiliar with Al Franken, he wrote for SNL for years, and is most famous for his character Stuart Smalley.

Franken in 2008: Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.

Over/under on when that joke becomes old: 2 days.

Anyway, much has been made about the fact that as a comedy writer, Franken's experience in politics extends only to a SNL sketch in which he played Senator Paul Tsongas appearing at a Star Trek conventon during the 1992 presidential campaign (if you haven't seen this sketch, find it, it's fantastic).

But what nobody seems to be bringing up is Al Franken's book Why Not Me? Personally, I find it bizarre that nobody is mentioning it.

The book is a fictionalizied account of Franken running for President in 2000, winning through an amazing series of coincidences, and the horrible mess that electing a comedy writer as president leads to. (If you haven't read it, and you enjoy politics, I highly recommend it, while outdated at this point, it's still pretty fucking funny).

Anyway, I just find it strange that a man who once wrote about killing hookers while on the campaign trail is now going to be running for Senate.

Meanwhile in another state nobody gives a damn about (Washington in this case), a most interesting ballot intiative is being ciruclated. Basically the initiative says that any marriage that does not produce children within three years would be annulled.

It probably sounds a little too wacky to be true, and it is. The initiative is being pushed by a group that calls itself the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance as a sort of back-door defense of gay marriage (pun completely intended).

See, a Washington Court recently ruled against gay marriage largely on the grounds that marriage is an institution intended to further procreation. So the WDMA (which is in fact a group of only about a dozen or so gay rights activists) figured that if that's the case, why not make it the law? If you aren't going to make babies, you shouldn't be getting married.

The group publicly admits that it doesn't want to see the intiative pass and that it's only trying to make a point about the constitutionality of the court's decision. Which is unfortunate, because I just love the idea of some right-wing fundamentalist nutjob finding out that she's barren and being forced to get her marriage annulled.

Yeah that's right, I'm taking joy in the damaged reproductive system of a hypothetical woman. That's how bitter and cynical I've become folks. And she's being legally forced to leave her hypothetical husband too, so she's doomed to die alone. That's some funny shit.

Speaking of annulments, I recently learned that in Michigan it is a felony to commit adultery. Now this is one of those laws that never actually gets enforced, but it raises some interesting questions.

The law defines adultery as sex between two persons, one of whom is married to a third person. Further, it states that if the sex is between a married woman and an unmarried man, then both the man and the woman are guilty of adultery. (As opposed to if a married man has sex with an unmarried woman, in which case only the man is guilty of adultery).

So here's my first question: What if a married woman sleeps with an unmarried woman? Is the unmarried woman guilty of adultery? Or what if a married man sleeps with an umarried man?

Or how about if a married person has sex with a dolphin? Is that adultery? How about a chimpanzee?

And pretty soon we'll probably have robots? What if you have sex with one of them? Is that adulter? How about if the robot has artificial intelligence?

What about if the unmarried person is dead? Is that adultery? And if so, does it depend on whether the orifice in question is natural or man-made?

So many quesitons.

Birth Control is Funny

As many of you know, tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and so I think it's pretty obvious what I'd like to talk about first today at the FMRC: Birth Control.

I was watching television earlier today, when I saw a commercial for the NuvaRing, a relatively recent method of birth control that involves a woman placing a flexible ring inside herself once a month.

Two thing struck me about this commercial: (1) The device is not recommended for women with diabetes, heart conditions, or women who are pregnant. Umm...maybe I'm missing something here, but if you're pregnant, I think it's a little late for the NuvaRing.

(2) They called the device a "vaginal ring". Now, accuracy of description aside, I'm not sure this is the best possible advertising. "Vaginal ring" is not exactly the most appealing phrase I've ever heard. But that might just be because I'm remarkably immature. For example, the following portions of their website FAQ made me giggle:

"Will my partner feel NuvaRing? In a survey among thousands of NuvaRing users, 8 out of 10 partners did not feel NuvaRing, and those who did generally did not mind." Well, yes actually I did feel a little piece of plastic in there, but I just figured it was a lego or something. Those little things get everywhere.

"What should I do if I forget to put a new contraceptive ring in?" Umm, don't have sex?

"Will NuvaRing cause an infection if used as directed?" Yes, yes it will. But ask yourself what's worse: having to deal with taking a pill every day, or having a vaginal infection?

"Will NuvaRing fall out? The muscles of your vagina will keep NuvaRing securely in place, even during exercise or sex. You can check the contraceptive ring periodically with your finger." Just reach in there every so often while at work, home, or even on the subway.

"How do I stop using NuvaRing® if I want to get pregnant?" Don't put it in your vagina?

But none of that made me giggle anywhere near as hard as this cartoon of How to Insert and Remove NuvaRing

Long story short: I'm twelve years old.

Behold the Quad-Laser!

As many of you no doubt read, this past Wednesday, electronic circuit boards with LED lights in the shape of Inignot from the cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force were found all around Boston as part of an advertising campaign. The campaign backfired when the devices were mistaken for bombs. I can't find a good picture of it, but suffice to say the "device" looks very much like a Lite Brite. Anyway, the Boston authorities actually arrested the two men who put up the boards, and are currently debating pressing charges.

Now this is from CNN: "Assistant Attorney General John Grossman called the light boards "bomblike" devices and said that if they had been explosive they could have damaged infrastructure and transportation in the city."

Couldn't that be said about pretty much anything? IF mailboxes were explosive they could have damaged the city. IF number two pencils were explosive they could have damaged the city.

IF they were explosive? What sort of fucked up imaginary law enforcement notion is that?

"Your honor, I realize no one was hurt during the encounter, but IF the man's twinkie had in fact been an AK-47 he could have killed them all."

"If the Irish Setter the gentleman was walking had been a mountain lion, people could have seriously been hurt."

"If the young man had chosen not to hug the girl, and instead raped her, she would have suffered years of distress."

So what does he mean by bomblike, you ask? Well, I'll let Attorney General Coakley explain: "It had a very sinister apperance. It had a battery behind it, and wires."

Sounds like a bomb to me. Either that or an alarm clock. But hey, better safe than sorry. That's why I use a sundial at home. I don't trust them wires.

In other news, Defense Secretary Robert Gates gave a press conference and stated, flat out, "We are not planning for a war with Iran."

At first that made me feel a lot better, but then it occured to me that it doesn't really seem like we did any planning for a war with Iraq either.

(Get it? Get it? Cause the war has been mismanaged, you see. It hasn't gone well. Many things have gone wrong. And we can't seem to figure out how to make it work. Almost as if no planning was done beforehand. Ahh, I kill myself.)