Largely due to his reputation, some reporters appeared hesitant to repeat word of his death out of fear that it may have been a hoax.

That really brings up an interesting point. Why haven’t we seen a death certificate? I can not accept that Breitbart is dead until someone shows me a long form death certificate that has been notarized by a caretaker in the Reagan library.

But just in case he is dead… Andrew Breitbart, how should we eulogize thee? Should we treat you with the respect we normally set aside for the dead, honoring the person and temporarily forgetting politics and personal views?

Well, actually yes.

Of course, we cant discount things like this…

Andrew Breitbart, a Washington Times columnist who oversees Breitbart.com and BigHollywood.com, tapped into the anti-Kennedy vein in the hours after the senator’s death was announced, posting a series of Twitter messages in which he called Kennedy a “villain,” a “duplicitous bastard” and a “prick.”

“I’m more than willing to go off decorum to ensure THIS MAN is not beatified,” Breitbart wrote. “Sorry, he destroyed lives. And he knew it.”

(From Politico.com, regarding Breitbart after Ted Kennedy’s death)

Huh. Ironic, no? But still, no sense in taking a grade school mentality about this. I can hardly call him names just because he did it first.

Unless he isn’t dead. I haven’t seen proof yet.

I found that night soil is the soil recovered from places outhouses used to (or still currently) stand. During the period of time that outhouses were in use, they had to be cleaned frequently (or moved to a new location). Cleaning became more common as the ‘night soil’ was found to be valuable for crops. Even more valuable once they started to compost or treat it before application so that disease and worms stopped spreading through the food

It was supposedly called night soil because the workers collecting it would do so at night. Basically it was a polite reference to a product that may not always have been completely composted when it was collected.

As more and more houses got plumbing through the 1960′s, the pits were sometimes cleaned one last time…and sometimes they weren’t.

So, that led me to find that there is a whole culture in ‘privy digging’. Who knew there were so many young bottle collectors digging up old outhouse pits?

My first though was that its strange what people will do for an off chance at finding some old bottles. My second thought was that they must not find much since I had just read about how valuable ‘night soil’ was for a period in history. My third thought was wondering if they could still find any kernels of corn. Heh. Corn.

Well, it turns out even the emptied privy pits had a lot of bottles… someone picked out the bottles from the (sometimes soupy) mess when they emptied them, and frequently threw them back in. Plus of course, even when there was a market for night soil it doesn’t mean that a family didn’t still just dig a new hole and move the outhouse, particularly if they were in the country and lined their pit with wood rather than stone/brick.

Finally, let me just say for the record: It is crazy how many websites are dedicated to outhouses, pit toilets, and privy digging. Holy Crap (pun intended).

At first I’m just confused because I seem to be fully dressed, and still wearing my shoes. But then I notice that the walls are pink, and that the bed I am laying in is not long enough. In addition, there is a computer in the corner with a screensaver of SpongeBob SquarePants, and the floor is littered with art supplies. After absorbing the décor for a moment more, I suddenly come to the conclusion that this room must belong to a grade school aged female. I manage to suppress a panic attack, and refocus on finding the alarm clock. As soon as I do however, a hangover headache decides to stop by and visit.

Hangover headaches are very rude. They barge in without calling or knocking first, and they wont leave when you ask them too. This one not only ran around my brain roughing up the place, it went right up to my frontal lobe, turned around, and announced to the rest of my brain that every portion was going to suffer for what I did the night before. This did not go over well, and much of my brain decided to call in sick for the remainder of the headache visit.

At some point during this inner monologue I manage to step out of the room. First on my agenda is to find some Excedrin. Second thing on my agenda is to remember who’s house I’m in. Third thing on my agenda is to stop making lists because its only making my head hurt more.

Thankfully the nearest bathroom yields pain-reliever gold, and I gulp down three Excedrin with a few handfuls of water. I leave the bathroom and continue down the hallway, only to step in something slippery.

It looks like puke. It smells like puke.

…Yep, its puke.

So, I remove my shoes and continue walking out into the kitchen, where I manage to step into something wet.

It looks like water. It doesn’t smell like water.

…Its not water.

I leave my dog-urine covered socks where they are, and continue out past the kitchen into the living room.

Looking out the living room windows I notice that it is already getting light. The distant view is beautiful, full of trees and bluffs. The nearby view is more sobering, consisting of mud, dirty snow, and suburban housing. Turning around, I see my wife laying on the couch. She is in her pajamas and is sound asleep. There is a suitcase on the floor and a bottle of beer next to her. She has a content smile on her face.

There is no way in hell I am going to wake her up at 6:30am. Death narrowly averted, I decide to rifle through the suitcase and find some different clothes. Thats when I step in a pile of dog feces with bare feet.

Of course, at this moment my memory decides to return and hit me full force.

Oh fuck…
…I’m in Missouri again.

I also apparently need to apologize to some people.

Its going to be a long weekend.

So I was a little confused when I saw an article stating that the show had caused a 15 hour standoff between an elderly drunk man and the police:
Click here for the story.

Steven N. Cowan, 66, railed at the television as the daughter of former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin appeared on the ABC program, his wife told police Monday after she fled from the town of Vermont house, according to a criminal complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court.

[...]

According to the complaint, Cowan and his wife were watching “Dancing with the Stars” when Cowan jumped up and swore as Bristol Palin appeared, saying something about “the (expletive) politics.” Cowan was upset that a political figure’s daughter was on the show when he didn’t think she was a good dancer, the complaint states.

According to the complaint:
Cowan went upstairs for about 20 minutes and returned, demanding his pistols, which had been taken by his daughter about a month ago for safety reasons. He was carrying a single-shot shotgun, which he loaded and fired into the television.

Now I see that the opinion-news shows this morning are full of stories that Bristol Palin was due to be kicked off the show, but that the cell phone vote brought her back in with an overwhelming majority.

So I’m left thinking: Maybe this guy had the right idea. Or maybe its a sign that our television shows have become so focused on profits that they’ve lost any artistic merit. Maybe its a sign that news has become nothing but entertainment. But maybe, just maybe, its a sign that I need to turn off my fucking television and find something productive to do.

Right after this episode of NCIS.

However, even with the good ones, occasionally the attempts to teach their young demon-vessel some civilized manners can backfire. Take the case of a friend of mine, who had spent time teaching his three year old daughter that giving compliments is a good thing.

Most of the time the compliments had been harmless. “I like your shirt Mommy” or “I like your cooking Nana” was the order of the day, and was always reinforced with a “thank you” or a “that’s very nice!” At least until the day my friend was in the bathroom when his three year old came in behind him. He’s not shy, and potty training was only recently taking hold so he let it fly. Unfortunately for him, he had no sooner started to go when he heard her say five words:
“I like your penis daddy”
I don’t know about you, but that would be enough to make me stop mid-stream and reconsider my life choices.

Still… how do you respond to that? You have to be very careful with your reactions around a three year old. If you say “NO, don’t say that!” then they will wonder why and it will come out at the wrong time. If you laugh, it will be the only thing they say for a week. You can just imagine what would happen if a child were to start yelling “I like your penis daddy” at Wal-Mart hoping for a quick laugh from passers-by.

But thankfully he opted to just say “thank you” and let it drop. At least until his wife came home. His wife thought it was hilarious and cracked up about it for quite some time. Then she told all of her friends, and suddenly he has a new nickname. He is now known as “Daddy” whenever her and her friends get together.

But hey, it could be worse…

I mean, seriously, have you ever had problems with animals coming out of your pipes? Have you ever seen a place that had pipes just strewn about randomly outdoors where they would do no good at all? Have you ever just suspended a pipe from your ceiling for the hell of it? Plus, I’m sure the EPA would be damn interested to hear about all the pipes just randomly gorging their contents into the water reservoirs. No wonder some of the fish can fly there.

Even going back to the original 1983 Mario bros… crabs coming out of the pipes? I mean, I know some of you have crabs going into your pipes (you know who you are) but has anyone ever seen crabs coming out of them? No wonder Mario spits fire.

I lose faith in humanity somewhere between the discharge and the Indian smelling.

If you’re interested in how the “Google Suggest” feature works, check out this page on Google for more information.

For the record, Google Suggest has helped many on the Pen forum realize that they hate people too! I finally have some people that agree with me that people suck.

Its too bad I hate them all.

Dr. Washington, What Would Minnie Think?

Characters

• Socrates, a Greek
• Dr. Ellis Washington, professor of law and political science at Savannah State University
• God, a god (mute part)
• Ghost of Stephen Douglass, a ghost (mute part)

~ Dialog ~

Socrates: Welcome, professor Washington. We are gathered here today to examine your life, and find out whether you feel remorse for what you have done.

Dr. Washington: {confident} I believe that I have done nothing to feel remorse for.

Socrates: Did you not write a dramatic dialog in which you put words into the mouth of a dead person? Words which any child knows he obviously would not have said?

Dr. Washington: Yes, I did.

Socrates: Do you feel no remorse for so cheap a rhetorical gimmick?

Dr. Washington: {remorsefully} Yes, I feel profoundly remorseful. It was the disputative equivalent of finding a picture of the man, and drawing on a Hitler mustache.

Socrates: Do you have anything to say in your defense?

Dr. Washington: {defensively} I often gratify myself sexually with a stuffed Mickey Mouse doll, to which I have attached a dildo.

God: {raises eyebrows}

Dr. Washington: Well I say a dildo, but it’s really more a kind of an arrangement of dildos. Its construction was quite involved.

Socrates: Let’s stick to the rhetorical issues. Pretty grade-school, isn’t it? Putting words into the mouths of those you disagree with and then responding?

Dr. Washington: {weeping} Oh, God! I’m sorry, so very, very sorry. Is there no redemption for me!?

God: {examines fingernails of left hand}

Socrates: Let you now submit to your judgment.

Ghost of Stephen Douglass: {teabags Washington vigorously}

Dr. Washington: It may a bit late to bring this up, but perhaps I should mention that I also gratify myself sexually by having short men put their…

Socrates: Thank you Dr. Washington, I think we’re finished.

Dr. Washington: {resignation, utter despair, profound silence, facial expression belying douchebaggishness}

FIN

One is practically driven to lament: O tempora o mores! (Oh Times, oh Daily Mirror!)

I had high hopes though. Not only were we seated immediately when every restaurant nearby was busy, but the waitress gave the six of us a single menu to share amongst us. I remember thinking to myself “How much more perfect can this place get?”

That’s when it happened… that’s when a woman left the kitchen and started to clean a booth nearby.

She was a vision, sashaying around in blue hair and support hose. This beauty couldn’t have been a day over 95. After teasing us all by bending over the table and ineffectually wiping parts of it off, she looked over her shoulder and her eyes caught mine. She lifted her face up to the ceiling and said in a husky voice that reached the ceiling tiles “We have Pepsi products” before knocking a piece of lettuce to the floor and moving on to the next booth. Off in the distance, tomorrow’s special barked.

I was smitten. I knew at that moment that I was in love with Pepsi. This woman proclaiming that her establishment was not only carrying Pepsi products, but doing so exclusively, well that only drove my desire that much more.

Suddenly one of my companions turned to me and asked me what was wrong. My reply was simple: “How can anything be wrong? We have Pepsi products”.

What a perfect day.

I come to you with a fresh warning:
Do not watch the Disney channel immediately after viewing a large quantity internet pornography.

Kim Possible and The Emporer’s New School may take on subtexts that get kind of creepy. Its even creepier than a 30 year old man watching them to begin with…

I’d make an excuse about the remote being across the room, but I’d be lying. That shit is engrossing.

My question is this: Has anyone that was proposed to over Twitter actually accepted?

Related: How many homicides have occurred thanks to Twitter marriage proposals?

Wait, let me start over.

People these days. No respect. We’re a species of spoiled brats. I often bitch about this indirectly when I see anyone start exhibiting behavior that personifies a complete lack of acknowledgment about how privileged a person is or how retarded it is that they are bitching about a specific [noun]. Louis CK recently did a better job at this when he bitched about it, essentially because I usually start berating someone in an effort to make them feel bad rather than make them laugh.

As much as I bitch about this, though, I do it as well. Last week, I was complaining about my slow, 3-year-old cell phone. Here I am, holding a computer that is much more powerful than the one that first landed on the moon, and I am bitching because it sometimes takes a few seconds to respond to a keypress.

I am slowly growing more and more convinced that, as time passes, the human race is getting soft.

There appeared to be two coarse, curly hairs growing out of my ear. Upon closer examination I found that their roots were based on my ear lobe, but the effect was disturbing. My ear was growing pubes. Not Isaac Asimov style ear pube/mutton chops, but full-on pubes on the ear lobe itself.

Suddenly images jumped into my mind of my grandfather decomposing on his recliner with fistfuls of hair growing out of his ears. Then suddenly my face was superimposed on that image, with fistfuls of ear-pubes instead of gray old-man hair.

Two minutes with tweezers eliminated the threat for now, but I know that the ear-pubes will be back. I have a feeling that this was a colonization party from the hair on my back.

My back hair has adopted its own manifest destiny, and vows to take over my entire body. It has slowly been climbing my shoulders and waging war with the hair on my chest. Its been moving south, clearcutting the forest of hair on my legs and replacing it with its own scraggly high-rises. The mountaintops of my ass are too cold and barren for the hair now, but it has found a valley where it has integrated with the natives, growing strong hybrids that will some day terraform the high altitude areas.

I have been conquered, and the hair on my head knows it. There are signs that some areas have begun to emigrate, leaving behind nothing but my scarred and dented pate. The fuckers are salting the earth as they go though, so even the ear pubes and back hair wont be able to move there in the future.

Such is my fate… I shall become a Sasquatch by the time I’m 50, except for my battle-scarred head. Some trick of my mutt-genetics has managed to combine all of the various undesirable hair features of my lineage into a single tidy package.

Thats all for now. I need to finish combing my knuckles before my hair dries.

“You know, some people’s lives hit their peak in high school. Those are the people that will repeat any High School story they can think of to anyone that will listen. Whenever they recognize someone from their High School past these people will automatically pounce on them because they can relive High School moments. They will never leave their home town. They’ll always be yearning for the glory days of High School all over again.

“Then, there are the people who absolutely hated High School. Those are the people at this party tonight. Most of us lost track of all but a few High School friends, and we generally dont recognize or dont like the other people when they pounce on us to tell their stories.

At first I just kind of shrugged them off politely and tried to find something non-alcoholic to drink since I had to drive home. Mostly I shrugged them off because I didn’t completely hate High School… Certainly I hated parts of it, and I definitely hate people in general. However, by my Junior year I had learned which classes I could skip without getting marked absent and that made the rest seem downright tolerable.

But then a few nights ago I got good and drunk and had some time to think about that statement again. Suddenly I hated this stranger for making me dwell on the past. It was irrational, sure… but using drunk logic it made perfect sense. Yes, I hated High School. I dont mind admitting that, but something about the implications the stranger tied to hating High School made it sound elitist and stupid.

Then I realized that the stranger was using drunk logic as well. This made it even out… in fact two wrongs made a right!

I finally let the statement go and began to focus on figuring out which brand of diet cola went best with my rum.

I started out taking notes and attempting to apply the scientific method to my drinking, so that the process could be replicated for additional tests. Unfortunately after a few experiments I cant read my notes. Obviously my methods are flawed, and I need to find someone to dictate to.

Heh. I said dictate.