What Stupid Thing Is Trending Now? (9/24/2017)

What stupid thing is trending now? Well...

It's unclear whether the jarring audio played during the emergency broadcast was a prank, or a bumbling intern who got "normal broadcast tone" with "alien apocalypse" mixed up. Either way, these broadcasts are no War of the Worlds in terms of quality. There are a few problems with the narrative that really need to be addressed.

First, there's the alien plot arc, which honestly left me a bit underwhelmed. The script reads, "The space program made contact with... They are not what they claim to be. They have infiltrated a lot of, uh, a lot of aspects of military establishment, particularly Area 51. The disasters that are coming-the military-I'm sorry the government knows about them..." Aliens infiltrating the military is a solid premise, but one we've seen before. So there needs to be a bit of extra spice to really bring this hoax dish to life. Maybe the aliens look like human babies? Or it could turn out that we were the aliens all along? Just something a little extra. And I rolled my eyes at the "Area 51" comment. I mean really, do you think aliens would make a beeline for Area 51? No, their first steps would be to assume control of Tinder and the popular restaurant franchise Applebees. With the mating habits of the young, and the dining habits of the old squarely under their control, the aliens would be able to both stymy our ability to reproduce, and our ability to keep our elderly non-cranky and somewhat tolerable. We'd be doomed within hours.

The biblical apocalypse plot must also be addressed. First of all, you can't just layer aliens and bible End Times on top of each other like some kind of misery parfait. You have to mix them together with skillful writing, such as "God was an alien all along." Also you can't just handwave the events of the apocalypse by saying, "in the last days extremely violent times will come." That's lazy writing. You've got to show, not tell, your audience. What kind of hell violence is this exactly? Everyone's skin is now fire? Our skeletons come out of our bodies and attack us? You've got to use details to paint a scene. So the next time you startle Californians with hoax emergency broadcasts, put some effort into your art. And if you really want to scare Californians, tell us the end times means drought, and drought means no avocados.

I'm not some sort of fancy "historian." But I'm almost 80% sure that Yoda did not meet with King Faisal at the UN. Maybe he's be willing to chat foreign policy in some kind of foggy swamp area, but not the UN. That's not Yoda's scene at all. The man (alien?) can't even stand to wear anything but the lone bathrobe in his possession, the one with all the cream of wheat stains. He's an old, cranky, green retiree. He gave up being on the Jedi council just so he didn't have to deal with the long speeches and underwhelming cafeteria food. Why would he come out of retirement just to sit and list to more long, boring speeches, when he could be giving whiny Jedi vague, indirect lessons? Also, I think Yoda died at some point or something, so that would make it hard to get in to the UN.

Maybe the editors of this textbook mistook Yoda for Alan Greenspan. But even then, why would Alan Greenspan be at the UN? He's also a retiree who only hangs out in foggy swamps and gives indirect advice to young economists. "Adjust interest rates to all-time lows, you shall."

I'm as big a fan of learning new vocab as any other pretentious dweeb. For instance, did you know "borborygmus" means that rumbling noise in your stomach (and it's also probably a Pokemon)? But there's a time and a place for everything. As president Trump and Kim Jong Un trade insults, it feels as if we creep ever closer to military escalation. Which really makes me want to borborygmus in my pants. But despite our perilous situation, the one fact we took away from all this was that Kim Jong Un used a funny word, "dotard," which means "old an senile," and is also probably a Pokemon.

It's great we're learning new vocabulary, but even the fanciest GRE words aren't going to do much for us once we're all a smoldering piles of ash. Here's a neat word: internecine, which means "destruction on both sides of a conflict," and used in a sentence is, "The potential internecine war between the U.S and North Korea means everyone is super duper boned."

Money is objectively disgusting. And not just in the sense that greed is the root of all evil: the paper money itself is covered in inconceivable amounts of filth. It's honestly better not to think about where your money has been, whose nose it's been up to vacuum cocaine, whose g-string it's been tucked into, what rich person has used it to wipe their ass while laughing about the poors. The only way our monetary system can go on is to maintain a flimsy veneer of willful ignorance about the dark places and unspeakable stygian horrors our paper bills have gone through.

That's what makes the story of this liquor store's problems all the more harrowing. Instead of using pockets, purses, or a folksy bindle, some customers insisted upon storing their cash in the sweaty crevices of their body. It's an unspeakable crime against the social contract to reach into the dank recesses of your own body to fish out a slightly moist bill, and to hand that into the trembling hand of a hapless cashier. And as soon as one of these customers goes, "Oh hang on, I think I have exact change in my butt crack," the cashier will let out a primal scream, the carefully maintained illusion of civil money will crumble, and all of society will soon follow.

Oh come on, what barely visible smudge in the background of a cartoon are parents complaining about now-- oh. Oh dear. That is actually very clearly a drawing of a penis. And Snopes has confirmed it.

This was clearly done by the hands of a very disgruntled animator/texture artist. Day after day of slaving away in the animation mines has probably turned the culprit into a hardened, bitter individual, with no other tools to fight back against his corporate overlords but a pen and a vague understanding of what a penis looks like. Or perhaps this required the cooperation of multiple animators and graphic designers, who staged a coup in the only way they knew how. "Help, we're being held for days on end while we must carefully render all these goddamn stupid cartoon bees," would probably not get past QC, but a subtle penis would. This isn't just any dick. This is a cry for help.

Have you ever seen an exposed, hairy man belly in public and thought to yourself, "If only I could surgically remove his gut and sew it into a pouch that can be used to hold my iPhone and keys?" First let me say, getting therapy is nothing to be ashamed of these days. Secondly, you need wish no more! You can now buy mass produced hairy man belly fanny packs. They come in a variety of flavors: first off, there's "The Allen," a tasteful, vanilla version that has a modest amount of hair and protrusion. "The Derek" is similar to "The Allen," except it acknowledges that "pasty white" isn't the only existing skin tone. "The Bobby" is completely hairless, somehow placing it squarely in the uncanny valley of beer bellies. In contrast, "The Sherman" is thickly forested with coarse, bear-like hair that surrounds a yawning abyssal belly button. "The Magnus" is a photoshopped cascade of belly folds that seem anatomically improbable.

So if you'd like to attain the mystical aura that is the "dad bod," slap on one of these beauties. As an added bonus, you'll have a handy pouch to store all the phone numbers you're totally going to collect while wearing these.

Finally, a victory for the common man. If FedEx says they'll do overnight delivery, and you trust in them that they'll honor what they advertise and deliver your horse sperm to your doorstep within a timely manner, it's critical that the courts hold them to their word. FedEx tried to weasel their way out of their sticky legal situation by arguing the fine print clarified they made no guarantee of overnight delivery, even though it's called "priority overnight," with a slogan of, "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight." And that promise is important when you order horse sperm.

It's not like horse sperm grows on trees. High quality horse sperm does not run cheap, and you don't want to impregnate your mare with low-grade budget horse sperm. You can't hop down to Costco and get plus-sized gallons of horse sperm for $25, and black market horse sperm is often cut with glass and encourages cartels. So for many buyers of horse sperm, delivery is the only option. And by god, if you pay for your horse sperm to be delivered overnight, you should get that horse sperm delivered overnight.

Sure, you might be thinking, "Well I never have needed nor can see any possible reason I will ever need horse sperm delivered to me overnight," but this court decision affects us all (as long as you happen to live in Nova Scotia, Canada). This is a win for the consumer, whether you're trying to get priority shipping on a gift for your grandma, or a pint of fresh horse sperm.

There are many, ordinary reasons you might poop in someone's yard. You could be drunk, there may be no public restrooms, you could have eaten 2 pounds of prunes, or you might be cosplaying as a dog. What makes this story so compelling is that none of these reasons seem to apply to the jogger serial-pooping in residents' yards. The woman doesn't appear to be mentally ill or unable to access public restrooms, and her actions seem calculated. She brings toilet paper and poops at the same houses, and shifts her schedule based on when she's been caught in the act. It seems too coldly premeditated to be a result of a gastrointestinal medical issue. And when she is confronted she apologizes, but never stops, nor cleans up after herself.

It's a crime spree that seems completely unsolvable. You could tie heroin to the end of a stick and set Sherlock to work, and he'd come away defeated. Is there a personal vendetta involved? Has this jogger finally snapped after dog owners have left countless poops in her yard? Perhaps she's living by the timeless adage, "When life hands you lemons, you eat those lemons, turn them into poop, and leave those poops on the yards of the innocent."

This is one of those cases where we just have to accept we'll never know the definitive answer. Like the Chupacabra or Bigfoot, she will forever capture our imaginations, but we will never capture her.

Photoshop is like a hammer. When used delicately, it can be used to construct beautiful cabinets. But when abused it can pulverize a human body. In this instance, the Tomb Raider poster has been Photoshopped with such wanton abandon, Lara Croft's neck has gained altitude and flexibility not found in the normal range of human anatomy. Due to this graphic designer's overabundance of enthusiasm, the writers of the movie will have to change the plot to Lara Croft mixing her DNA with that of a giraffe and an owl, thus becoming the greatest artifact hunter in the history of archaeology.

Can't see above a pile of rubble? No problem for Lara Giraowlff, she can use her seven extra vertebra to peer over obstacles like a periscope. Are there bad guys trying to ambush the protagonists? Lara Giraowlff's uncannily perceptive hearing can pick up the sound of a mouse scurrying a mile away, she can definitely hear human footsteps. She can then swivel her head like a lazy Susan, much to the horror of anyone trying to sneak up behind her. "Hoo's there?" she quips, before unloading her pistols into the body of some hapless henchman, her unblinking owl-giraffe hybrid eyes cold and uncaring as she watches the corpse fall to the ground. This remake is going to be awesome.