Day 321: Baby-Poppin’ For The Geriatric Set

originally published November 16, 2012 Most experts would agree that the true joy in giving birth is being a guy so that you don’t have to give up drinking for nine months, nor must you experience the agony of childbirth. Speaking as a guy (and on behalf of all guys everywhere, since there’s no one […]

Day 320: Tony Pezsnecker – The Stockiest Stock Character Ever

originally published November 15, 2012 As a writer who specializes in essays about insubstantial trivia, I’m thinking it’s time I delve into the world of fiction. As such, I have decided to craft the perfect protagonist. Once that step is done, I expect the actual story will fall into place easily, hopefully while I’m asleep. […]

Day 319: The Gates Of Hell

originally published November 14, 2012 When construction began on a new quintet of buildings – three apartments, one office building and one hotel – in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington DC, no one had any idea just how much these structures would come to impact every political, media and sports scandal, ever. It all […]

Day 318: The Infamous, Notorious, And Dangerous Ned Kelly

originally published November 13, 2012 Many blips on the Wikipedian landscape are considered to be ‘stubs’. They lack substance and detail, either because nobody has gotten around to fleshing out the topic, or because there’s just nothing more to say than yes, this hill in Wales exists. Then you have the story of Ned Kelly, […]

Day 317: The Nastiest Of The Video Nasties

originally published November 12, 2012 Two fun-filled days ago, I told the story of the video nasty. These are the movies that were determined by some frightened old woman named Mary Whitehouse to be too harsh for the gentle British sensibilities in the early 1980s. Some of these movies – which bypassed theatres and went […]

Day 316: A Salute To The Ass-Whomping Good Guys

originally published November 11, 2012 In honor of this day, one of the most unexploited and truly genuine days of note on our calendar, I would like to take a few words (let’s say, a thousand or so) to reflect on some of the most ass-kickish Canadians in our military’s history. No one’s making movies […]

Day 315: So, So Nasty

originally published November 10, 2012 Back when VCR technology was a fresh-smelling infant, cooing lovingly and crawling its way into our living rooms to spit-up its offerings of pre-recorded fare onto our garishly large tube televisions, the laws around what could and could not be released on the medium had yet to be written. Needless […]

Day 314: The Weird Fate Of The Batavia

originally published November 9, 2012 Today we hear a tale of murder, treachery, and sopping wet Dutchmen. This is the story of the Batavia. In 1628, the Dutch East India Company strapped twenty-four cast-iron cannons and a mess o’ bronze guns to their new ship, a 186-foot beauty they called the Batavia. I think the […]

Day 313: The Robots Take Chess… Then The World!

originally published November 8, 2012 I have stated in the past that I am not tremendously knowledgeable about chess. I am, however, always on the lookout for evidence of the inevitable robot (or possibly super-monkey) uprising that will unseat humanity at the top of our planet’s hierarchy. Perhaps the most publicized such evidence just happens […]

Day 312: Sennett Kops Komedy

originally published November 7, 2012 There once was a time when this was the pinnacle of cinematic comedy: That’s the delightful 30-second family romp known as Cats Boxing, directed by Thomas Edison back in 1894, exactly a hundred years before our culture decided that the height of comedy was captured in Dumb And Dumber and […]