richardcahill.net

"We Can Do Anything Better Than You, Obama!"

1/31/2013

Skeet-shooter-in Chief

US Representative Marsha Blackburn

As pundits chime in on President Obama's claim to "shoot skeet all the time" at Camp David and Tennessee Representative Marsha Blackburn made headlines for publicly challenging Obama to a skeet-shooting contest, other notable Republicans have sprang up to challenge Obama's abilities in a plethora of tests of skill and strength. Below, just a sampling of the gloves thrown down to the shotgun-wielding Prez:

CONGRESSMAN PAUL RYAN--ALTAR BOY CONTEST: "I'll have finished the whole Mass and be back in the sacristy taking surreptitious slugs of the Communion wine before he's figured out which end of the robe goes over his head. I can kiss more old Catholic ladies any day of the week, too. Take your pick, O-dog."

ANN ROMNEY, WIFE OF DEFEATED CANDIDATE MITT ROMNEY--DRESSAGE: "I, of course, was an Olympic competitor in this pastime of the horsey set. I'll leave Obama looking like that broken, helpless lawn jockey some vandals knocked over in our driveway one Halloween at our house in New Hampshire. Or was it the place in Michigan?"

DICK CHENEY, EX VICE-PRESIDENT--WATER BOARDING: "I get to go first."

DONALD TRUMP, REPUBLICAN ABOUT TOWN--TWEETING AND DRINKING MATCH: "First, we do a shot. Then we tweet something. Then we do another shot. Then we tweet. First one to pass out or get his Twitter account closed loses."

JOHN MCCAIN, US SENATOR--RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT: —" I'll pick a middle-aged broad with decent gams for my VP and we'll kick his ass." When reminded he had already done that, the Senator said, "I don't know then. Parcheesi, I guess."

CLARENCE THOMAS, SUPREME COURT JUSTICE--BARBECUE COOK-OFF: "His Hawaiian ass can't barbecue for squat is what I'm guessing. The meat on my famous ribs will be levitating off the bones while he's still trying to get his pig wrapped in banana leaves. If I win, we get to swap wives."

CONGRESSWOMAN MICHELE BACHMANN--ICE-FISHING IN MINNESOTA:"That, or having more blood relatives that know how to cook crystal meth. Either way, you're going down, Obongo!"

CHRIS CHRISTIE, GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY--EATING PIZZA WITH WEIRD TOPPINGS DUEL: "You name it. Calamari. Water chestnuts. Scrapple. Seaweed. Mulch. Dead hummingbirds. Put it on a pizza and I can eat it. I'll even let him make his pizza Chicago style. I'll take him out like Sandy took out Asbury Park."

ANN COULTER, PUNDIT, WITCH--BEING FLAT OUT MEAN, VICIOUS AND COMPLETELY INDIFFERENT TO HUMAN LIFE COMPETITION: "To anybody we want to. And we both get to use armed Predator drones, not just him."

MITCH MCCONNELL, US SENATOR--MICHELIN MAN LOOK-ALIKE CONTEST: "I got the round specs, I got the multiple chins, I got the fat rolls. I got the pasty complexion. Bring it on, you skinny dark bastard."

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North Korea Joins NRA

1/29/2013

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NRA's Newest Member?

In what observers described as a brilliant diplomatic stroke, North Korea eliminated most of its foreign relations problems today by joining the National Rifle Association (NRA).

The People's Republic, previously regarded as an unstable, dangerous international pariah, was welcomed into the NRA by executive director Wayne LaPierre.

"We welcome North Korea as an NRA member," LaPierre said in prepared remarks. "I'd like to point out that this nation already exemplifies several NRA ideals. First, they have armed guards at every school. In North Korea's case, it's to keep the kids from escaping, but it's the same principle. Also, the People's Republic is a clear example of the ridiculousness of limiting arm sales. They have a million-man army—how are they going to keep those soldiers battle-ready if they can only buy three guns a day?

"Plus, North Korea always take the blame from liberals when they capture US Navy vessels or invade South Korean islands, like we always feel the heat when some nut job whose gun rights we have painstakingly protected shoots up a school or a mall or something. It's not like we never felt their pain."

The move to join the NRA was led by North Korea's Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, known affectionately to his fellow countrymen as "that fat kid."

"This is a move that really works for Kim," a State Department spokesman admitted. "This is a guy who didn't have a friend in the world. Even the Chinese were ready to cut him loose. Now he's found a mother lode of fellow heavily-armed paranoids to pal around with. Plus if you've ever watched any reality shows featuring gun collectors or been to a Gun Appreciation Day, you know there are plenty of overweight guys in the NRA. Jong-un doesn't have that in Korea, where everyone but him is mostly starving. Now he has bros to chill with when he digs into a plate of loaded nachos and starts bitching about Obama."

North Korea also picked up immediate allies among American politicians. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explained "Sure, I was all in favor of attacking North Korea when they were a tiny, primitive, nuclear-armed Communist nation. But now attacking them puts us on a slippery slope. Once you take away one NRA member's weapons of mass destruction, where does it end?"

Kim Jong-un himself spoke only briefly about his diplomatic coup. "You can have my unreliable, hard-to-aim ICBMs that tend to blow up mid-air and aren't powerful enough to carry my primitive nukes anyway when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers." he crowed, as he flashed his NRA patch.

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Will You Marry Me for a Hundred Thousand Dollars?

1/24/2013

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I spent all last weekend plotting to win the Plenty of Fish $100,000 Wedding Contest. This was a sharp departure from my usual weekend routines, like sampling microbrews, maybe getting in some fishing and deciding whether to shave or not.

But that's me. Every time I hear about a hundred thousand dollars, it occurs to me that I would be a worthy recipient of it. Unlike many activities that can be rewarded with a hundred grand or more (Nobel Prize receiving, lottery winning, getting a signing bonus) I was qualified to win the Plenty of Fish $100,000 Wedding Contest.

My Significant Other and I met on Plenty of Fish, which is a computer dating site. That was one condition of winning the hundred big ones. Four pictures together had to be submitted. Easy, although I noticed that all of our couple pictures were either taken in Mexico or at baseball games. A sweet, witty account of our courtship had to be composed. Had it done before lunch. Only one obstacle had to be overcome. I had to get on my knee, my eyes misted over with ardor, and say those words I hoped she was longing to hear:

"My only love, will you marry me for a hundred grand?"

Currently we have no plans that lead to the altar. This is more her idea than mine. I served two years of marital duty a while back. It was a black hole of unrelieved misery, but it was long enough ago that I could be excused for giving matrimony another shot. She spent twelve years in the connubial trenches. She is violently opposed to going back. It is one of the things I find so attractive about her. Through my years of singlehood, I met many women who wanted to be married, several of them to me. I have finally found a woman who loves me and is unalterably opposed to making me her husband. Perfect.

The Plenty of Fish people were threatening the fragile ecology of our relationship by polluting it with big bucks. When I hit her up on the subject of winning the contest, she was enthusiastic about it. "Write something nice," she said.

"It's going to be voted on by everyone who belongs to Plenty of Fish, but I imagine it will be the girls that vote, mostly. That's where we scoop up votes big-time. Young women think that people in our age group who are in love are unbearably cute. They think, wow, their lives are over, except for the inhaling and exhaling part, and they still have romance."

"Good analysis," she said, "but you're missing something."

"Guys will vote for you because you're a major hottie. And a sociology professor. You got the Hot for Teacher demographic sewn up."

That scenario satisfied her. "What do you want to spend the money on?"

"Well, I think we have to spend at least part of it on the wedding."

She looked at me as if I had suggested spending it on black-market kidneys.

"We're not getting married," she said.

"I think we have to if we want to collect the cheese. I'm sure Plenty of Fish is on the watch for people trying to win without getting hitched. They're going to want a marriage license."

"Can't you forge one on the computer?" Life is full of challenges you don't really anticipate, I thought. There's one of them. "And you have a friend who's a minister," she added.

"He's a Dudeist priest. He's not quite as legit as your average pastor. We could get divorced afterwards."

"Well, that's just pointless," she snapped, and left it at that. Fortunately, I got the flu and missed the Plenty of Fish deadline.

The pressure's off.

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Guns Don't Appreciate Gun Appreciation Day

1/21/2013

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I'm writing this on Gun Appreciation Day. This newly-minted celebration is being promoted by pro-gun activists on the theory that their beloved guns need a bit of bracing up after their brother guns came under a heavy dose of criticism after being used in several recent pointless murder sprees.

I had my doubts about the fest from the start. Other Appreciation Days might have some use, like Nurse Appreciation Day or Secretary Appreciation Day, in the sense that your nurse might not pick that particular day to be a half-hour late with your pain meds or your secretary would find another day to quit, marry your most hated business competitor and take all your customers with her.

Gun Appreciation Day would be like having Drill Press Appreciation Day, or Embarrassing Little Emergency Tire Appreciation Day. What's the point?

But I was willing to go along with the program. I borrowed a gun from a friend because I had gotten rid of mine years ago, after my wife at the time tried to shoot an earthquake with it. The way that marriage was progressing, I figured I was next, so I sold it to that friend. He still doesn't live that far away, so it was my own ex-gun I borrowed.

We drove out to a local canyon. My ex-gun didn't show any particular emotion at our reunion. It just sat there in its holster, like it had for most of the years I'd owned it. A ride to that canyon with my ex-wife would have been much livelier.

I set a couple of melons on stumps and had a little talk with the gun. In the interests of science, I tried to think of things my gun would appreciate.

"Just because I look at other guns doesn't mean I don't love you," I said.

No reaction from the gun, but it had to be listening.

"I dream of combating the forces of evil with you. It would be nice if these melons were the heads of Somali pirates. I wish that had been a nest of jihadis under the barn instead of raccoons because shooting them would have been more fulfilling."

I leaned in close and laid it on thick. "It's like you've always heard. You're an extension of my penis, only bigger and more reliable."

Then I picked up that gun and put a hollow point through the melon dead center. I'm not bragging about my aim—I had the foresight to make the melons the water variety. The melon exploded into juicy bits.

Then, so it would be a controlled experiment, I tried some gun abuse.

"You were a mistake," I said. "I meant to buy a Glock."

"That blued steel finish is all we could afford after buyin' enough ammo to keep you full," I added. I could feel the rage building inside of me. Once I figured I was getting to the gun, I couldn't stop.

"Cry all you want. You really think anybody can hear you, locked up in my nightstand drawer?"

"You're adopted. Your real dad's in prison."

"You want to go to a gun show? Get a job first."

"You're just like your momma. Anybody can put their hands on you."

After chastising the piece, I fired at the second watermelon. It disappeared just as thoroughly as the first.

The conclusion? No matter what you say to a gun, if you pick it up and shoot it afterwards it will work fine. Whether you're doing something sober and responsible with it, like locking it up, or even if you just want to let fly with a couple double-action blasts in the air because it's New Years Eve or sharpshoot your initials into your neighbor's aluminum siding, the gun will work just as well whether it's been appreciated or abused.

It's a stupid holiday. You might as well have Microsoft Appreciation Day.

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Lance Armstrong Stripped of Remaining Testicle

1/17/2013

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In a routine procedure at Johns Hopkins Hospital, disgraced former Tour de France and Olympic champion Lance Armstrong was stripped of his remaining testicle.

"He cheated when he beat everyone in France. He cheated when he won in the Olympics. He cheated when he won every medal in US cycling. He probably cheated on Sheryl Crowe. Why should he be allowed to cheat cancer, too?" a spokesman for the International Bicycle Seat Union (IBSU) was quoted as saying after the operation was complete.

The testicle will be donated to the needy. The New York Jets have been suggested as a possible recipient.

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Quitting Football Cold Turkey

1/17/2013

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I decided to quit watching football this year. It wasn't as if it was a real bad habit. I figure I only spent about three full days a week watching and reading about football. Other guys were more craven addicts, I knew. They followed college ball. I could always ignore that, since I went to an Ivy League school. The Ivy League plays a game that is like football, only it is played by smaller, slower, smarter people than real football.

And I never played fantasy football, except for once, when I was ordered to by my then boss at the club I worked at, even though I explained I was completely uninterested in the fantasy game. I picked my team and kept it for the season, never making a single personnel move. By the time December rolled around, I had players on my fantasy team that had formally retired. I finished dead last. The boss never made me play again.

I just watched football. And shows about football. I read about football. I even read Sports Illustrated, whose featured football pundit is Peter King. SI apparently likes it writers blissfully, un-self-consciously fatuous. Peter King once wrote, upon the passing of Pope John Paul II, that JP2 "was a good guy and a great Pope."

He might have said "a great guy and a good Pope." In any case, Peter King sounded like he showered off in the locker room under the Pope Arena every day with the guy. I realized then that I could spend most of the week artificially inseminating yaks in the Himalayas and still churn out better football reporting than Peter King without even taking off my inseminating gloves. But I continued to read him anyway.

My path towards getting the football monkey off my back started with last year's Super Bowl, which featured two teams I couldn't stand. I refused to watch it because they both couldn't lose. Then came the bounty scandal, which featured members of the New Orleans Saints getting paid cash by their coaches to deliberately injure guys on the other team. The guy who was coaching that team just got a five-year contract extension worth millions.

Wow, I thought. If I paid someone to break someone else's leg, I'd get five years in prison.

Then Andy Reid, coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, the objects of my original football fanhood, lost his son to a drug overdose while he was in football camp. There are no more fanatical football fans than Eagles fans, who throw snowballs at Santa Claus and cheer wildly when opposition players lie crumpled and possibly dead on the field. They especially hate the Dallas Cowboys. When passing another Eagles fan on the street, it is considered at least as proper as a cheery wave or a fist bump to say in passing "F*ck Dallas."

"F*ck Dallas," your fellow Eagles fan replies and for a moment, the world glows with friendship.

When Andy's son died, the coach did not take a leave of absence from his job. He did not pause to reflect on the frailty of life, or ponder the twists of circumstance that only seem to make tragedy inevitable after tragedy occurs. Nope, he just went to the funeral and got back to coaching football the next day. Not as well as he had before, because he just got fired. He'll get another coaching job, though. Not that I care about anything the guy does anymore. Me and him are through.

San Diego is my adopted home team and right before the Reid tragedy, one of the greatest Chargers of all time, Junior Seau, put a bullet through his own head. Seau played football for what seemed like thirty years. I thought he was in his early fifties when he finally retired. Turns out, he had been hit on the head so many times that he had permanent brain damage. His last years were spent in a psychotically paranoid funk. If he hadn't shot himself, he would probably have shot somebody else. Lots of ex-football players suffer from the same mental problems for the same reason.

So I quit. Cold turkey. Sure, I catch a glimpse of the crawl once in a while on ESPN, so I'm not totally ignorant of football developments. But I try not to watch. I have Sundays off now, along with Monday and Thursday nights. Sometimes I'm tempted. I was in a home electronics store the other day while a game was on. It was the Chargers. "Hey, how they doing this year?" I asked a fellow shopper.

"They suck," he replied. Then his eyes widened, as he realized I was also a San Diego male, heterosexual resident but somehow ignorant of the Charger's current fates.

"I quit watching," I said.

Another emotion passed over his face. I'm sure it was envy.

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Fake Poop--Not Just for Parties Anymore

1/14/2013

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Regular fake poo still only costs $2

In yet another explosive leap forward for American medical technology, researchers at the University of Guelph have developed fake poop.

"What are you talking about?" you may ask. "Fake poop has been around for years. Why, I still giggle when I remember leaving a lump of plastic crap in the nave of the church my cousin Caroline was getting married in. The pastor spotted it right before the I-do's and had a mild heart attack right on the spot. He had to finish the ceremony strapped to an oxygen tank. Caroline hasn't spoken to me since. Best dollar-ninety-eight I ever spent."

No, not that kind of fake poop. This is fake poop with serious medical uses. Once again, it has to do with fecal transplant technology, which admittedly this column follows with scatological intensity. A fecal transplant, which consists of the patient consuming the feces of a healthy individual, restores the patient's intestinal function by replacing bacteria that the patient lacks in his own colon. Patients have been brought back from near-death by diarrhea by the technique.

The fact that this works brilliantly threatens the entire gastroenterological medical field. Extremely expensive drugs and complicated medical procedures were used to treat these patients prior to the discovery of the fecal transplant, but the patients sickened and sometimes died anyway. Now, after a quick snort of liquefied crap, they are up eating chili dogs and engaging in farting contests in no time.

American medical scientists quickly located the critical problem with fecal transplants—they couldn't make much money from them. Patients could be injected with crap in a simple office procedure and the therapeutic substance was free and abundant. From a certain point of view, the existence of the entire animal kingdom can be seen as a united effort to cover the earth with poop, from great whales gushing waste into the tranquil seas to a fruit fly speckling that apple you plan to have after lunch. Sources of human waste suitable for transplanting are equally plentiful, from your brother-in-law to your attorney to giant bloviating factories of poop like Rush Limbaugh or Kanye West. The cure for all intestinal disorders could be had on the cheap.

To the rescue come the researchers at Guelph University (coincidentally, "guelph" is the exact noise your throat wants to make if you think about their work very hard). They have cultured fake poop in an artificial colon. Their poop, they say, smells and tastes better than real poop. Not that they claim it smells and tastes good—minty fresh poop is still in the distant future, apparently. And manufacturing a substance that smells and tastes better than feces is not that much of an accomplishment anyway.

But the main thing is they can charge you for it. These artificial logs come with a serious price tag. Thus is the natural balance of American medicine restored—you give all your money to doctors, pharmacists and insurance companies and you get better, sometimes. You can't just indulge in freelance crap consumption and get well on the cheap. What are we, a bunch of German Shepherds?

I don't mean to make fun of these people that are seriously ill. I wish them well. When their dysenteric bowels are finally cured and they sit without worry on the toilets of America and produce their own flawless fecal specimens again, no one will be happier than I.

I just want to warn them—when that happens, there may be a co-pay.

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Papal Gaiety

1/10/2013

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Pope Benedict, last seen in this space celebrating the production of a new Papal perfume, has announced that gay marriage poses a "threat to peace and justice in the world."

Strong words from the vicar of Rome, and strongly puzzling, too. Gays have always had a place in the Church, especially in its Irish-American branch, in which tradition I was raised. If one of your little Seans or Patricks showed a propensity to play with his sister's dolls or clomp about in high heels, off he went to the seminary, where he could serve the Church, wear dresses and beads as his daily uniform and enjoy the company of other young Catholic boys with similar tastes. It was a win-win-win.

Of course, some of them retained their taste for young Catholic boys when they became old Catholic boys, which resulted in some trouble for the Church and caused this otherwise successful program to be de-emphasized.

The Pope also recently blasted "intolerant agnosticism," whatever that is. All the agnostics I know are fairly tolerant. We've never burned a Pope at the stake, for example, in spite of the Church incinerating any number of us back in the day.

I don't know why the Pope would open his big can of infallibility over gay marriage at all. According to the Church, if you're not married by a priest in the Church, you're not married anyway, and His Holiness is not about to start presiding over gay weddings. Yep, if you've been married by a rabbi, a minister, an imam, a justice of the peace, a ship captain or just a friend that has a fake divinity degree, you're just fornicating away and doomed to hell, according to the Catholic tradition. If you're not Catholic, you're probably doomed to Hell, anyway. The Catholics pioneered this concept of eternal intolerance, which has been embraced by many other religions worldwide ever since.

But I don't see where gays are a threat to world peace. They only gather in vast numbers for gay pride parades, in which the participants can be a bit rowdy and colorfully if somewhat lightly clothed, but are obviously unarmed. When gays start parading with tanks and missiles like North Korea or enriching uranium instead of sushi bars, then we can start worrying.

But when it comes to justice, Benedict has a point. The unfair thing about gay marriage is that in gay marriages, you have can have nice things. Hetero marriage more often results in children. Children are not nice things. They keep you from having nice things. They start off in diapers. That's not nice. When you try and get them to wear clothes, they use the clothes to wipe up stuff they've excreted or spilled, then wad them under furniture or put them on the dog. Not nice. Eventually, you will spend a lot of money for a car your child will wreck and a college he or she will get D's in, or pregnant in, or both.

In the meantime, gay couples are assembling art or antique collections and sending each other postcards from exotic locales in which they are taking separate vacations because they are getting on each other's nerves, not spending seventy-five bucks an hour on marriage counseling like you have to because you can't find someone to sit the kids while you go off to Machu Picchu. They are driving new cars and making smart real estate investments, not changing their own oil and putting in a swimming pool because their kids are begging them for one, a pool which the kids will never clean and eventually will invite one of their friends over to injure himself in and have a lawsuit over.

When gay couples get tired of each other, they will each find some boy-toy and send each other pictures of him. When the glow is gone for you and your wife, she will suddenly find herself unable to live without drinking a lot of wine and following a dozen reality TV shows. You will get busted and probably divorced when she discovers AshleyMadison.com in your browser history.

So gay marriage is unfair. The Church, however, has presided over a lot of things that were unfair, including the Dark Ages, the Spanish Inquisition, the trial of Galileo and the grade school playground I got smacked around in. Sponsoring a few gay weddings wouldn't be that bad. The Pope is probably just worried that if he promoted gay marriage, gays wouldn't want to get married anywhere else. A Church wedding, with its robes, incense and freshly-scrubbed altar boys, just screams "GAY!" and gay couples might abandon city halls and Vegas wedding chapels for the nave at Our Lady of Wherever Some Peasant Children Spotted Her Last in such numbers that the parish could barely squeeze in a bake sale.

And that just wouldn't be fair.

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Not Dead Yet, Ted Speaks Out Against Gun, Vagina Control

1/8/2013

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Despite a solemn vow to be "dead or in jail" by spring of this year if Obama was re-elected, Ted Nugent doesn't even seem sick. At last report, he was penning editorials for the Washington Times, in which he sought to shift the blame for recent mass murders away from mentally ill people with assault weapons to society itself:

“The ugly and dangerous truth is that we live in an embarrassing, politically correct culture that exalts and rejoices in the bizarre; aggressively promotes an ‘anything goes’ value system; and vilifies, condemns and mocks traditional societal values and customs at every opportunity,” Nugent wrote.

I caught up with Ted by phone to congratulate him on the editorial. "Ted," I said, "aren't those the longest sentences you've ever written?"

"Damn right, dude," the guitar-gunmeister replied. "I lost sleep over where to stick that semicolon. Ain't no semicolons in Cat Scratch Fever."

"Or your other unblushing salute to backstage vagina, Wang Dang Sweet Poontang. Some of your fans want to know how their teenage daughters giving sex to aging rock stars is a traditional societal value?"

"Vagina is an American value, dude. Strong vaginas are a symbol of our nation's values and a national resource second to none."

"What about all the drugs and alcohol these young vagina owners consume before they decide that giving away their vaginas to a sixty-something guitarist whose long locks and tiny gray beard make him look like a cartoon goat is a good idea? Aren't these evidence of moral decay?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. All I know is that American vagina is the finest on the planet."

"You are aware that vagina is a worldwide phenomenon?"

"Like most liberal wimps, you don't believe in American exceptionalism! That includes vagina! Unwashed French vagina, cold Canadian vagina, spicy Mexican vagina—none of them compare to American vagina! God bless it! And that's why we have to overcome these liberals that want us to have vagina control! Right now, 50% of the American people control 100% of America's vaginas! A liberal minority, trying to limit my access to their vaginas! Sounds like socialism to me."

"Umm…fifty percent isn't a minority, Ted."

"You intellectuals and your statistics! All I know is that as an American, I've got a right to have my gun and your vagina! And my new Republican buddies agree with me. Real Americans all agree—we've got a right to poke around in your vagina."

"That makes me glad I don't have a vagina."

"Well, we're going to get you one, buddy. These vagina-hoarding socialists with their politically correct poontang…you think I need another semicolon here?"

"No, Ted, you're doing fine."

"Or whatever you want to call them…"

"Girls is a popular choice."

"When Americans find out what they're really up to, all vagina restrictions will be abolished! Every dude will be able to freely access any kind of vagina they want! Restrictions on clip sizes will be abolished, if you know what I mean. And the only part of vagina that most of us hate will be eliminated."

"What part is that, Ted?"

"Dude! The three-date waiting period!"

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Feeling Gay? Talk to Mr. Ed!

1/2/2013

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Straightened Wilbur out

A news item concerning the Reverend Raymond Bell, of the Cowboy Church of Virginia, from the Gay Star News:

Bell claims that the use of Equine Assisted Psychotherapy, or sessions involving the stroking of horses, can aid in the "curing" of maladies and "addictions" like homosexuality.

"EAP can help any person who is living the homosexual lifestyle or involved in it in any way," Bell says.

Though it isn't clear exactly how EAP works to rid a gay person of their "affliction," it can supposedly make gay men more masculine and that it is used to "identify how a person got 'involved' in homosexuality to begin with... for example, because of rape, abandonment, lacking a male role model, abuse and having low self-esteem."

The Reverend believes that stroking horses results in a cessation of same-sex attraction. He does not say for how long, or perhaps more to the point, where the horses are to be stroked, but, details aside, the Cowboy Church has obviously added a powerful weapon to the arsenal of religions determined to wipe out homosexuality. Previously, these efforts had been limited to three main processes:

Catholic Church—STOW THE GAY AWAY, meaning put the gay individual in a monastery or convent, swear him or her to celibacy and turn out the lights.

Mainstream Evangelicalism--PRAY THE GAY AWAY, meaning constantly harassing the gay person into begging the Almighty to change his or her essential nature, until that person finally breaks down and marries a person of the opposite sex, rendering both of them miserable until one of them bolts away for a large, anonymous metropolis.

Westboro Baptist Church—SLAY THE GAY AWAY. Pretty obvious, except that like all Americans in this spoiled and whiny century, they expect the government to do their work for them.

Now we have STROKE THE GAY AWAY. Just the name is bound to inspire gays who want to be cured.

The history of horses and human sexuality is a short but tormented one. Alexander the Great's preferred lover was said to be his horse Bucephalus, and it is also said he mourned the death of this magnificent steed more than the passing of any other man, woman or livestock item he ever had sex with. Which were a lot. Apparently, Alexander set out to conquer the world in more ways than one. Then there was Catherine the Great, who was rumored to have passed away by the unfortunate accident of being crushed to death by the weight of a stallion that she had ordered suspended over her for recreational purposes.

The lesson here is that horses are attracted to people who have abandoned their regular surnames in favor of 'the Great,” so keep that in mind when selecting an alias.

The good work that equines have done in maintaining heterosexuality in the modern age is only apparent in the light of the Reverend Bell's discovery. Roy Roger's steadfast marriage to Dale Evans, never once marred by Roy romping in the paddock with some sinewy young stablehand, was no doubt made possible by his manly affection for Trigger. The presence of his beloved Silver was enough to keep the Lone Ranger from whispering "Hi Ho Tonto," in his sleeping Indian companion's ear on all the lonely nights they camped together under the West's starry skies.

And what of the most celebrated horse of this or any other century, the famous Mr. Ed? A mere glance at Wilbur by a trained psychologist would be enough for him or her to see that rape, abandonment, abuse and lacking a male role model were prominent features of his character. Yet he and Connie maintained a lusty heterosexual relationship, thanks to the continuous counsel of Ed.

It's just too bad Gomer Pyle didn't have a horse.