Gigantic Duck Penis and Burritos in Superheros Pants

This may be the most important news item of the century: Ducks are developing gigantic penises. Yes, gigantic penises. And nothing sums up the mission of this groundbreaking investigation better than how the researcher stumbled upon this field:

Dr. Brennan was oblivious to bird phalluses until 1999. While working in a Costa Rican forest, she observed a pair of birds called tinamous mating. “They became unattached, and I saw this huge thing hanging off of him,” she said. “I could not believe it. It became one of those questions I wrote down: why do these males have this huge phallus?”

Basically what you have is a scientist checking out a big floppy bird cock, and says, I want to know more about this — I… I want that inside ME!! (OK I made the last part up, but let’s just assume). But seriously, how lonely do you have to be to have so much interest in bird dick? Answer: very lonely.

Second most important news? To celebrate the 4th year anniversary of Mission Accomplished, a 50-foot ‘Mission Accomplished?’ banner was unfurled in front of White House last week (yessss).

And while we’re all pandering to our various constituents, how about Hilldog getting on her knees for some delicious Israel money? “Democratic presidential candidate and New York Senator Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that it might be necessary for America to confront Iran militarily, addressing that possibility more directly than any of the other presidential candidates who spoke this week to the National Jewish Democratic Council.” Lets hope she doesn’t get too tired carrying all that gold from New York to Washington!

And on a final note, Captain America was arrested with a burrito in his pants:

A Brevard County doctor dressed up in a Captain America outfit was arrested with a burrito in his tights. What he allegedly did at the police station got him into more trouble.

Doctor Raymond Adamcik, 54, would probably rather forget about the weekend when he was arrested on charges of battery, disorderly conduct, drug possession and trying to destroy evidence. It’s not what you would expect from a doctor or Captain America.

The Palm Bay family physician was at On Tap bar as part of a pub-crawl with other medical professionals. It was a sort of costume party on a bus that would take them around from bar to bar.

Everything was fine until, witnesses said, Captain America started getting too forward with a burrito he kept tucked inside his blue tights, a burrito that ultimately landed him in jail…

On Saturday night, when a costume party full of medical professionals stopped at On Tap Cafe, police said Adamcik had a burrito stuffed below the waistband of his costume and was asking women if they want to touch it. When one refused, he allegedly took out the burrito and groped her.

The woman called police and, when they arrived, the officers wrote in their report “there were so many cartoon characters in the bar at the time, all Captain America’s were asked to go outside for a possible identification.”

The woman pointed out Adamcik and the burrito was found in his boot. He was taken to the police station. There, while in a holding cell, police said, he asked to use the bathroom and tried to flush a joint, also hidden in his blue tights, down the toilet.

Oh America, how I love thee.

Thoughts of the Average American

As Imagined By Network Executives:

“If I cannot see sports scores, stock reports, and weather forecasts scrolling across the bottom of the screen at all times, I will kill myself.”

“I can’t wait to see this overweight middle aged comic and his disproportionately attractive wife deal with their adolescent children in a humorously unorthodox, though ultimately conservative manner.”

“I don’t see enough petty, selfish individuals in my daily life. Therefore, I will tune in to tonight’s scheduled reality television show.”

“You cannot make a television show too stupid for me to watch.”

“I was going to change the channel until the network reminded me, halfway through the first commercial break, that the program would ‘be right back.’ I had previously been under the impression that the program was lost and would never return.”

“I find this sitcom intellectually challenging.”

“I am completely unaware of the fact that the corporation being investigated by the FBI in this news segment owns this news station. Even if I were aware of this fact, I would put great faith in the objectivity and journalistic integrity of this enormous media conglomerate.”

“Becker is not on TV enough.”

As Imagined by a Music Executive:

“I’m glad this rock band has a limited repertoire of similarly progressing power chords. If their songs were more creative, it would confuse me, and I would not buy their album.”

“As a member of the African-American community, I readily identify with this hip-hop artist’s misogynistic views and propensity towards crime.”

“That beautiful and scantily clad young woman, whose name escapes me at the moment, is my favorite musical artist of all time.”

“It’s a good thing my carbonated soft-drink came with one free music download, for I would have felt uncomfortable downloading free music on the internet.”

“Finally a halftime show that combines my love of hard-nosed championship football and pre-pubescent teen-pop!”

“I will buy any CD that produces sound.”

As Imagined by Politicians:

“I am upset that I work full time and still fall below the poverty line. I blame queers and people of another race.”

“Clearly, the best way to reduce crime is to build more prisons. Evidence linking poverty and crime is flimsy at best.”

“At least both candidates favor education initiatives with humanitarian names that direct money towards arbitrary and biased standardized tests. Hiring more qualified teachers and rebuilding crumbling inner-city schools would yield questionable results.”

“The rich do enough for this country. They should not have to pay higher taxes than the rest of us.”

“I fear that we might one day be attacked by a country whose economy is based almost entirely on trade with the United States. Therefore, we must spend more on our military than every other nation combined. This will make other countries feel more secure, and they will whore their underclass to us rather than initiate an arms race.”

“Morality is derived from creatively interpreting apocryphal texts, not the desire to reduce human suffering.”

“If we give free health care to poor people by taxing the super-rich, the economy, and quite possibly the universe, will collapse.”

“I see many distinct differences between these two courageous candidates.”

“Congratulations on successfully side-stepping another important question and leaving me lost in forest of vague rhetoric and empty catch-phrases. You’ve got my vote.”

“One American life is worth approximately ten European lives, four hundred thousand African lives, and fifteen million Arab lives.”

“A presidential candidate’s war record is the deciding factor in his ability to oversee the American economy.”

“The rich white liberal cares about me more than the rich white conservative, though they both care about me very much.”

As Imagined By a Marketing Executive:

“I prefer the product with the attractive salespeople.”

“I was heretofore unaware of the maximum safe duration for a chemically induced erection.”

“That recognizable athlete scores all those points because of his brand-name sports beverage, right?”

“This song reminds me of my youth. Therefore, I will buy.”

“I can only afford $74.99 on a new pair of old looking blue jeans; $75 is just too much.”

“I would have gone to an amateur poetry reading rather than the monster truck rally had the gentleman on the radio commercial not been yelling.”

“Wow. I had no idea smoking was so bad for you.”

“If I buy this face cream, I will be as beautiful as the actress endorsing it.”

“After hearing rap music on their commercial, I can now trust this giant white-owned corporation to fulfill all my consumer needs. It no longer bothers me that the CEO eliminated all employee benefits to build his own country club.”

“There is very likely buried treasure somewhere in the backyard of my suburban Chicago home. If only there were a way of detecting the presence of metal underground.”

“Yes, I have been injured recently. And, no, I hadn’t considered litigation until this trustworthy family man suggested it.”

“I can’t believe I voted for a politician so soft on crime. I will not make the same mistake this election. I am also far more likely to vote for the smiling candidate in the color photograph.”

“This electronics super store has so many things I need at such great prices that I might just kill myself.”

“With that many explosions, how could the movie not be good?”

“I will enjoy your inexpensive, highly potent alcohol responsibly.”

”This celebrity who appears to be in good physical shape must be an expert on health and nutrition.”

“When passing a car dealership with a catchy jingle, I will remember that they have fair prices and know that I am a busy man. When I finally have some free time, I will buy the first safe, reliable, and easily financed automobile I see.”

Via Cracked, a step above soliloquy from anonymous middle american.

ive lost my ability to converse with original thought, its all blog roundup for me

In one of the more hilarious blogs I’ve read in a while is a ‘4/29 Truth’ website (referring to the bridge in California that was supposedly melted and destroyed on April 29th). Check out this choice quote:

Unlike the World Trade Center, the 580/980/880/80 overpass was reinforced against earthquakes and was not under the enormous compressive load that the towers were when they fell. The overpass was designed to support gridlocked traffic in an earthquake, but it collapsed without even a single car on it. The fire consumed only 8,600 gallons of fuel, whereas the WTC was allegedly brought down by 24,000 gallons of fuel. Does Governor Schwarzenegger really expect us to believe a story even more preposterous than the already-discredited official story about 9/11?To answer the question “Who is responsible for this terrible tragedy?” we must ask who stood to gain the most. George Soros? The California Department of Transportation? The Jews?

Of course, I’m not that silly — I blame a whole contingent of amorphous, ambiguous shadow groups from the liberal jew atheist media to the conservative oil corporate tycoons. Speaking of anti-Semitism, check out this wonderful clip of teflan racist/opportunist Al Sharpton talking about ‘jewing up numbers’ (what the hell does that even mean and who listens to Al Sharpton in the first place?).

Time for good news/bad news. Good news: there is a delicious Asian rip-off of Starbucks that will soon saturate the market and hopefully poison your pets. Bad News: Mitt Romney’s favorite novel is a Ron L. Hubbard book (Scientology and Mormonism combined?!?!). Good news: of 500 terrorist attacks in Europe in 2006, only 1 was carried out by Islamists. Bad News: Cops Admit To Planting Marijuana on 92 Year Old Woman Killed in Botched Drug Raid. Good News: there are plenty of rich women around that you can marry if you’re too much of a slob to make your own wealth. Bad News: trying to bomb an abortion clinic isn’t terrorism, it’s just a political movement.

Ultra-best good news: we got in our first blog scuffle with a bunch of uptight and unruly Democrats (because supporting Dennis Kucinich makes sense, RIGHT?).

PS. I still hate Bill O’Reilly (ignorant fans included), from Think Progress: A new study by Indiana University media researchers finds that Fox News host Bill O’Reilly calls “a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night.” I wonder if they’re guilty of quoting him accurately?

Don’t Judge A Blog By Its Logo

This is effectively the third part of a series on ‘What is PBH’. See Alec and Kit’s entries for more discussion on the topic.

Recently, we at PBH have come under fire for our name and our logo. After Liberally Mirth cross-posted my post from Peace Tree (it was here, but has since been removed), the owner of the site sent me an email regarding her hesitations with our site, particularly our title and logo:

Alec,
I want to feature your blog at LM, but its title and, especially, its logo of a woman being spanked make me hesitant. I’m sure I simply don’t understand their meaning. When you have time and nothing better to do, could you tell me your thinking about them?
Thanks,
mirth/Elizabeth

Which was interesting because Kit and I had discussed clarifying what PBH was about as we anticipated as we became more popular, people would be more speculative about the site. We both fired off essays regarding our positions and why PBH was not intended to offend. I sent the following back to Mirth:

Elizabeth:

No problem, you actually sparked something that needed to happen for a long time — which is an explanation of our site, its name, and its purpose. There are two extensive entries dealing with both of your questions:

http://www.prosebeforehos.com/alec/04/30/what-is-pbh-part-1/
http://www.prosebeforehos.com/kit/04/30/what-is-pbh-part-2/

Thanks again, and if you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,
Alec

This was followed by a quick response from Mirth:

Alec,
Thanks for the reply. I read your posts. Ok here it is, straightup. I have a couple of friends who are into the deconstructionist thing. They express, much as you, wanting to avoid a bleak future as if they have no choice in how they will live their lives! I find their talk sorta interesting but obscure and a little fuzzy and, thus, I don’t get much from it.
In the case of your blog logo, why would would choose to go back to a 50s stereotypical and degrading image? You seem to reject one set of standards, yet choose another even more oppressive.

I’m not going to link pbh because 1) I find a woman being spanked by a man offensive and 2) my readers will find a woman being spanked by a man offensive. I don’t mean to be insulting, but it’s just a little too frat boy for us.

But, judging by the one poem of yours that I have read, I dig your work and I’ll be looking for more at The Peace Tree.

Best,
m/E

To which I replied:

Elizabeth:

Best addressed by a paragraph in Kit’s post — “The sharpest tool for rendering the sacred ordinary is humor and wit. The image of the superhero spanking the woman attacks both traditional and Modern sensibilities. It mocks the idea that a woman could be treated as a petulant child while also mocking the idea that these images are verboten. While the traditional interpretation may be that the superhero represents all men and the woman all women, in a postmodern world couldn’t the superhero represent the abstract ideal of the written word, and the woman represent all mankind?”

Thanks again for the link and I enjoy your blog as well! Keep up the good work.

Always,
Alec

Followed by the last email communication.

Alec,
Here’s what a nearly 20-year age difference will do to opinions:
I don’t think your logo mocks anything. I think it perpetuates stereotype and oppression and isn’t females alone that are degraded by it. And I’m guessing Kit is not female, so add in gender to the difference thing. I also think the logo cheapens what I’ve seen of your work. But that just me, being all blunt & stuff.
m/E

Fair enough — I wouldn’t agree with any of her assertions, but it was a normal, clean conversation. Frankly, her point of ‘I don’t think your logo mocks anything’ is wrong — we created this image and this blog, and we know the reasoning behind it. We didn’t come up with convenient excuses because we are secretly misogynists in waiting, we sincerely created a logo with a superhero hitting a woman in the butt with a newspaper because it is nonsensical, non-traditional, and funny (because superheros don’t exist, and if they did, I presume they wouldn’t spend time hitting woman in the rear with newspapers). Though the irony of bringing up the sex of the author as a means to attack the idea as sexist was apparently lost on her, I would like to point out that two of our five regular contributors are females, and I don’t think any of our viewership had yet to explicitly find issue with our content.

Then I decided to comment on one of her blog posts dealing with a woman who thought she got sick from electrical appliances — nothing too controversial, just a typical comment spewing from me — “Mirth: Nice find. I need that headgear so I can finally get a full nights sleep without having to worry Dick Cheney will swoop through my window and suck my blood”, which included my avatar (the same image as the logo) and a link to my WordPress blog. And that’s when the floodgates opened (for a PDF with the whole transcripts of the thread, click here:

She wants a public debate on my ideas about PBH. Not a problem, someone already elicits support for our “everything goes” mentality. This is when the debate turns into a disagreement before I’m even given a chance to respond with Mirth beating the drum for our supposed misogyny (and by the way, before we even could get to this point, there were ten comments by the blog frequenters relating to hitting each other in the ass and who would like what):

And here you have it, we are of a 1950’s attitude and secret Republicans, and if you don’t see what’s terribly wrong with PBH, you probably are too. And, I’m not comfortable with women having power, or comfortable with women in general. All of this easily assumed by looking at the logo for our website. This is when I enter with a nice bit of sarcasm that pervades on PBH in attempt to get others to understand our brand of humor:

So, in a free and permissive society, we are free and permissive to do what we want as long as my expression doesn’t step on your sensibilities. Yet, everyone’s evidence of our supposed ignorance and offense is my avatar and our website name. Not once do they find any posts on our site that propose or encourage violence against women (or anyone else for that matter as we are all pacifists).

And now, we are down the full path of enlightened discourse. You see, it’s only taken a little bit of bullying and eye-opening to jump to the conclusion that YES, PBH is in fact secret women-hating Republicans who harken back to their grandfathers days when a woman would be perpetually making dinner. And from the preacher comes the final gospel:

So in one thread, we went to a reasoned discussion on the merits of having a SUPERHERO hit a woman in 50’s get up as a logo to discussions about how we were frat boys making light of child abuse and posting jokes about 9/11. In fact, the only post that came after mine was from Kit, who wrote an excellent rebuttal to the arguments presented by the LM crew:

The fact of the matter is that it is a superhero hitting a woman in the behind with a newspaper. Let me repeat that just because I think that is hilarious, maybe if you say it out loud you will hear it. It’s a superhero hitting a woman in the behind with a newspaper.

Why do you relate to the woman being hit with the newspaper? Has a superhero hit you in the behind with a newspaper? Because if I ever saw that, that would be hilarious to me. Also hilarious to me:

* Men being hit in the behind by superheros
* Dogs being hit in the behind by superheros
* Inanimate objects being hit in the behind by superheros

Basically any cartoon which involves a superhero paddling something with a newspaper, I would find funny. Honestly, a superhero hitting something with a newspaper?

Now to the point. Obviously domestic abuse is not funny. No one should live in fear of someone who supposedly loves them. That’s bullshit.

But really, if my dad were wearing a superhero costume and paddling my mom (dressed in a 1950s dress) with a newspaper, domestic abuse is not the first thing that would come to mind.

This comic is pure patriarchal kitsch, just like Soviet kitsch. Unless they hate Jews, nobody really wants to live under Stalin. But Soviet stuff is just a funny reminder of a bygone era of false ideals and failed dreams.

The white picket fence. The home cooked meal waiting for the man returning home from a long day at the office. The Ozzie and Harriet spotlessly clean and modern home.

“What did you do at work today honey?”

“I oppressed you and millions of other women dear, simply by conforming to our traditional way of life.”

“That’s nice, the kids are playing baseball down at the field.”

This is as false of a past as the glorious triumph of global Communism. People don’t really want that shit. People want true equality, the ability to make a life of their own. But what does that mean?

Where is the women’s right movement today? Burning bras? Struggling to escape the kitchen? The truth is that the clear cut discrimination of the past is over with. No one should disrespect a woman for any choice she makes. And for the most part, no one will.

As I mentioned in my post on PBH, in order to properly understand the present and coming future, we must reexamine the baggage of the past. Why does the superhero represent all men? Why does the woman represent all women?

So the question Prose Before Hos asks is, are you a prose writin pro? or a ho-baggin ho? I identify with prose, and I hope you do to. The answer has nothing to do with sex.

A wise man once said do not trust anyone over 30, and with reason. But a wiser man would say, don’t trust anyone to laugh at something when they are consumed with taking out their personal problems on others, because a superhero hitting a woman with a newspaper is fucking funny.

FIRST EVER PBH AWARD FOR VALOR IN THE FACE OF COURAGE

Congratulations to the winner of the first ever Prose Before Hos Award for Valor in the Face of Courage, Greg StiflyStiferson. Let us recount the story of Greg’s story before we lubricate his body with praise and store-brand massage oil.

It was a fine Spring day working as an Americorp volunteer as Greg trudged through hours of thankless work in post-Katrina New Orleans. As a white European colonizer in this foreign land, Greg expected booty and treasure, including but not limited to access to local colored women and raiding the medicine cabinets of abandoned houses.

But alas, he was wrong, as his politically correct overlords demanded he respect local customs and transform the once majestic city into a chocolate utopia. Finally, he decided to speak up against his oppression in what truly became an act of dignity and courage.

While painting a barn that would later serve as a halfway house for Sudanese war criminals, Greg became splattered with red paint. In a triumphant political move, Greg announced to the group ‘Look at me! I’m like an abortion doctor!’

With that act, he had risen against his liberal oppressors, an act which was quickly met with public reprimand and an order to complete a ten page paper on women’s rights. This award is for you, Stifly McGreg, a true public servant and hero from all of us at Prose Before Hos:

For your hard work and decency, we have donated 10 live chickens and 50 yards of barbed wire to a Chinese sweatshop. Thank you, dear sir, you are a hero to all of us (and everyone at the Nike factory).