Depressing Tests I Can Ace: Pew's Political News IQ Test

Wow. I don't remember the last time I made a 100 on a test. (Myers-Briggs?) Sadly, the fact that I correctly answered every single one of the 12 questions on the Pew Research Center's Political News IQ Quiz doesn't garner me anything tangible like an island vacation or a lifetime supply of tape. No, I only get to lie back and enjoy feeling superior to 98% of other general public humans in my grasp of random factoid knowledge, yay! (This is scary because one of the questions was "How many fingers is President Nancy Pelosi holding up in this picture?") Click the above snapshot for evidence of intelligent life in my head.

My show on MSNBC will be called Over Here, Dummies with Tim Anderson. Sarah Palin will be my Andy Richter until we're cancelled by Jay Leno.

Been and Gone: Zelda Rubenstein

Oh, Zelda. Everything I've ever learned about poltergeists, bringing rubbers to the gay bar, not going into the light, and dealing with Craig T. Nelson I learned from you. RIP, baby.



Y'all hang back. You're jamming her frequencies.

Terrified Squirrel Prays to Almighty God That He Never Has to See the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter Sex Tape

This squirrel has the right idea. These days you never know what you're going to be inadvertently exposed to. Remember "Two Girls One Cup"? I didn't know what I was getting ready to watch because I was so far ahead of the curve! That short filthy film ruined chocolate milkshakes for me forever and I'll never get over that.

So, yes, we should all pray to our loving heavenly Father that we are never ever ever EVER forced to sit and watch a grainy home movie of terrible John Edwards checking his hair in the mirror while going balls deep into oblivion (aka Rielle Hunter's muff).

In Jesus' name we pray,

Amen.

Jukebox: Goldfrapp

Listen up, fanboys and -girls. Goldfrapp is coming out with a new album in March called "Head First," and you know what that means: more dancing girls with sparkling horse heads, yay! I must say, I wasn't terribly swoony over the 'frapp's last album Seventh Tree. Too much toothless hippy-harlequin balladry and not enough songs about fucking robots. But the word on the street is that the new one is a return to the glittery Goldfrapp of old, and to celebrate the reemergence of our Alison in the queue for the club, sitting atop a wispy white horse and holding a riding crop in her teeth, let's revisit the first time we ever saw her on the teevee.

It was, what, 2002? Conan O'Brien still had a show, and Jay Leno was easily ignored. It was a time when one could turn on the television after 12:30 and be assured of seeing a masturbating bear, a horny manatee, or at least Max Weinberg. Into this late-night circus dropped Goldfrapp from Bath, England, dressed for Halloween. When I first saw the band I thought, who are these Swiss Miss weirdos who've just been beamed in from a Weimar-era opium free-for-all? Then Alison opened her mouth and I thought, wow, that's a great Maria Callas sample. But it 'twasn't! 'Twas actual singing! I spent the next five minutes melting. Jimmy and I saw the band play a few years ago here in NYC and that bitch hit Every. Single. Note.

Watch until the end when those high notes just fly out of her open mouth like a flock of seagulls escaping an awful 80's hairstyle.

Fun fact: It was this guy on the violin who inspired me to always wear my lederhosen when playing my viola in public. (To distract the public from my playing, duh.)

One Good Reason for Google to Stay in China: Beijing's World Chocolate Wonderland Theme Park

Communist dictatorship has never looked so delicious! I just wanna take every one of them terracotta warriors, dip 'em in a big ole glass a whole milk, and then eat 'em.

Apparently this theme park, which opens on January 29, also has chocolate versions of the Great Wall, luxury bags, and sports cars, so you can get some exercise, be fashionable, and be a douchebag while enjoying your chocolate. Also on hand is a chocolate toilet you can hurl into to make room for the giant, five-story chocolate Mao Zedong heads.

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Everything this woman is wearing is made of chocolate, except for the nipples.
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When does NYC get one of these? I wanna eat a big chocolate Pauly D.

Trucks Will Save Our Democracy

With all the Democratic hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing over Republican pin-up Scott Brown’s win in the Massachusetts Senate race, I think we have lost sight of something incredibly important for our democracy that Brown’s victory brings to American politics: he drives a truck. This cannot be overemphasized. Indeed, these were the first words out of his mouth in his campaign commercials, because he is wise and knows that the electorate is reductive and desperate: “My name is Scott Brown and I drive a truck.” You’re hired!

I mean, he drives a truck, you guys. Martha Coakley doesn’t. That’s just a fact, elitists. (Sure, it's the least of her sins, but whatever, she obviously isn't ready for higher office like Sarah Palin is.) Imagine the damage she could do in Washington with her single engine car. She’s probably never even popped a hood. And if she did, she'd probably try to use a curling iron! Scott Brown has no doubt popped dozens of hoods. Dozens of hot, young, tight hoods. (His daughters probably have, too.)

Yes, it’s amazing our nation’s capital has survived as long as it has without more GM truck drivers at the controls. They are inherently qualified, just like my brother is, to run the country. (I was once just as qualified, but only to be prime minister of Japan--I drove a red Nissan pickup during the 90s.) Luckily we are blessed with politicians and a voting public who understand which issues really matter during these times when our public morale, infrastructure, trust in governmental competence, and individual sense of entitlement are under constant siege. On top of that list of issues? Trucks!

Number 2 is Truck Nutz, obvs.

Anals Annals of Pour Copyediting,

Oh my God, I've finally done it for reel, y'aul, and done it real good. While reading the latest collection of words by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker last night between sets of squat thrusts at my gym—an article in which he once again turns conventional wisdom on its head, then concludes by saying "That's right, I said it"—I discovered the Holy Grail of bitter, unrequited authors everywhere: a copyediting error in the New F**king Yorker, ha!

This feet of eagle-eyed apprehension has rarely been accomplished in the history of this magazine, because the tyrants at the New Yorker send anyone on their staff who makes such an error against humanity to Gitmo to be "reeducated" by E. B. White and William Strunk Jr., the stylists behind English grammar/writing bible The Elements of Style. Sure, both men are sadly dead, but they left behind them a powerful series of books on tape. (Twisted Sister provides the "enhanced" incidental music.)

The mangled passage is rendered thusly on page 27 of the January 18, 2010 edition (also click on the above image for the photographic proof):

In 2008, his firm made five billion dollars. Rarely in human history has anyone made so much money is so short a time.

Correction: rarely in human history has there been such a frightful and unseemly mangling of the English language in such an august publication. As Stephen Doocy on Fox and Friends might put it in his powerful falsetto, "This is HUGE!" The sentence should obviously read "in so short a time." (Or "is so short of dimes"? Who knows!)

Did Sarah Palin edit this article?

In conclusion, the New Yorker can no longer be trusted with prepositions and the verb to be.

My (New) Camera Phone Will Not Be Denied: Stella in Her Chair

Folks, this past Sunday I officially became Mr. Fancy Pants. That's right, I got a smart phone. It's the Verizon HTC Droid phone thing, and it's kinda awesome. As a young space nerd, I always dreamed of one day going shopping for a droid, though in the dream I was always shopping with shirtless Han Solo in a landspeeder. But whatever, I now have a droid of my own and now can just sit back and wait for the imbedded message from Princess Leia to activate when I clean it.

One thing I was concerned about, though, was that if I indeed sold my Swatch watch collection to get a decent phone, the camera would take pictures that were way too high in quality. Because that wouldn't do. Thankfully, as you can see from the above picture of my cat looking like a bored gargoyle, the quality of my camera phone pictures will remain low, hooray!

Because blog consistency is important.

Shootin' It, In Which Jimmy and Tim Discuss the Issues of Our Times. Tonight: The Golden Globes

Jimmy: Wow, Jennifer Aniston looks great.

Tim: You think so? Me too! I'm so glad to hear you say that. You know, she's my best friend in this recurring dream I have.

Jimmy: Yeah, I know that dream.

Tim: I'm surprised. I always took you for an Angelina queen.

Jimmy: Her? God no. She's fucking scary looking.

Tim: Right?! Don't you wish Brad Pitt would dump her for Monique?

Jimmy: Hmmm. Monique wouldn't be my first choice.

Tim: But at least second or third, right? But back to Jennifer. She's totally getting fucked by that dude.

Jimmy: We don't know that.

Tim: That is the look of a woman who is getting fucked and good. She knows she's probably going on the Worst Dressed List in the morning because of that slit in her dress, but she doesn't care because 'fuck all y'all, I'm getting a deep dickin' from Gerard Butler."

Jimmy: Or from Monique.

Fox's Expanding Brains Trust

I'm surprised there's been no mention, in the aftermath of the Bill O'Reilly reacharound with Sarah Palin (is that sexist? Towards O'Reilly?), of the fact that, when they started chattin' about North and South Korea over there, namely her alleged lack of understanding of why they are separate countries, Palin didn't offer any nuggets of stone cold knowledge learnin' about the Korean peninsula in her defense. She could have smirked 'n rolled her eyes (as she does), brought on the "high school bitchy" that Tina Fey famously referenced, and made some statement about how of COURSE she knows about the history of the DMZ and whatnot, proving forever that she can at least make an effort to Know Things. But she didn't and O'Reilly didn't even ask her to, deferentially. It was a gaping hole in the conversation.

Bill: You know about North and South Korea, right?
Sarah: Of course.
Bill: Good enough. Now, tell me this: why are you so gorgeous?

And how much do you wanna bet that Palin's answer to the question "Which of the Koreas is your favorite" would be: "All of 'em."

Gmail Used to Have Standards

Ha, ha, I had an Internet experience over the holiday that really took me back to the olden days of web-based email, an era when I was known in Dirty Muppet chatrooms as Dipst1ck75. I had just signed up with Hotmail and was sending out messages to anyone whose email I had in hopes of receiving a message back, thereby validating myself in this Brave New World. It was so fast, this form of communication! I sent out my inaugural message one afternoon and by the next morning I had several messages in response! One from a college friend. Another from Best Buy. And yet another from a girl named Tracy, who wrote in her subject line "Hey! Why did you leave so early last night?"

Hmmmmm, I thought. I didn't go out last night. I was watching "Last Exit to Brooklyn" with my cat and my boyfriend.

I clicked on the message and it was brief: "Contact me through my webpage!" And there was a link.

Naive Interweb monkey that I was, I felt the need to correct this woman for her mistake. After all, the guy she was really trying to contact was still out there. She should find him!

"Hi Tracy," I typed in my response. "I think you may have gotten the wrong email address. I wasn't out last night. Just wanted to let you know."

I clicked 'send,' feeling like I'd accomplished a selfless act of kindness that could reap dividends of pure goodwill all across the Internet.


Me checking my email back in 1997.

In the ensuing weeks I came to understand how much of a bonehead I was for not realizing that the message from Tracy was actually email spam--a recent invention--and that it was probably sent to a million people at once by some dude named Terry. Because once I had foolishly clicked on that link, Terry/Tracy and his/her many aliaseses (Darla, Carla, Shawanda, Bercleeta, Pam, etc) proceeded to carpet bomb me with any number of disgusting missives touching on topics ranging from sex with loose blondes to sex with loose other types.

So why did this story of Innocence Shattered suddenly reemerge into my 21st century humanoid cranium? Well, on December 27 I received a message in my Gmail account (subject line: Help!!) from a girl named Candice (click on the photo up top to see) that was hilariously desperate and also stupid. Candice, you see, was visiting London and while there she was mugged at "Knife point," which I think is just south of Spitalfields Market on the East End. Anyway, she sent the email "with tears in [her] eyes," which is so brave. And she asked for money because she's lost everything and the hotel guy won't let her leave until she pays him. (To which I say, "you've got a mouth and fingers, don't you?" Trust me, I've been there.) She promised to refund my money as soon as she gets "home," a place that remained unnamed, though it's probably Nigeria. Why had this woman chosen me, out of all the dumb assholes out there?

For the slightest of seconds, the minutest of minutes, I thought that this must be someone I know. Because Gmail used to have standards. They wouldn't let any old Tom, Dick, or Terry join up. You had to be invited. If a message landed in your inbox it was from another human. But now? Well, Gmail isn't a spam parade just yet, but I can see it coming. Luckily I'm a wise old Internet troll now and can't be so easily tricked by oily online charlatans named Candice, unless they're promising me access to a video of David Beckham and Brad Pitt doing the Electric Slide naked, with chubs.

Because I would still totally click on that link.

Easy Joke Dept: Ann Coulter Interrupts Hellmouth Hibernation to Check Mail

She needs more Netflix.

2010 Already Suxxx

Dearest Readers,

You know how sometimes at work you have an impossible deadline to meet, one that plagued you throughout the holidays and even compelled you to work on New Year's Day? A deadline that visits you in your sleep and has caused you to start sweating profusely out of just your left armpit? A deadline that could wreak bloody havoc on the world's trade winds if it is not satisfied? Yeah, that's the kind of deadline I'm currently in a cage match with. And after it's over I never want to see the printed word ever again. (A bummer for my doomed writing career.)

All this by way of saying: no new posts for the foreseeable future (at least Friday)! To console yourself, just watch a terrible youtube.

With regrets and erratic blood sugar levels,

seetimblog

Happy 2010, Earthlings

Get grabby.