No. 97 - Life's an Itch

Nature has waged a jihad against our skin and sense of harmony with the outdoors. This proverbial flaming bag of poo delivered to your doorstep from Mother Nature herself is an evil that lurks on the fringe, hiding along your fences and property lines. It's called poison ivy, also known as the devil's toilet paper, or poison oak's asshole cousin.

One minute you're playing catch with the kids in the backyard, and the next moment your extremities are burning like a homesick sailor on shore leave with a bad case of chlamydia.

We know there are some mutants out there who boast an immunity from the poison ivy leaf, but this is more than counterbalanced by those poor souls who are afflicted by something as minuscule as poison ivy particles floating in the air.

Poison ivy is characterized by three leaves, with the middle leaf being the longest; fitting, as the dastardly plant appears to be hoisting a big ol' middle finger to the human race.

We're told poison ivy is tolerant to shade, but its intolerance of human skin borders on nothing short of a hate crime. The operative ingredient in this green, leafy dirty bomb is a chemical called urushiol, whose name sounds a little too uncomfortably similar to a Russian Bond villain.

Urushiol adheres to the skin and can lead to blisters and lesions (!). These oozing blisters, though not exactly attractive, are not contagious. Rather, it's the plant's oils that spread across your skin in blistery wildfire-like glory.

And if you think the skin infection is uncomfortable, try burning this stuff. The smoke from smoldering poison ivy can damage the lining of the lungs, leading to respiratory infections, so please keep this out of your bong (unless it's absolutely necessary or you're unable to score elsewhere).

For those planning on ingesting poison ivy to absorb the plant's sinister soul like an ancient South American warrior, please note that this can lead to damaged digestive tracts, airways and kidneys, a veritable cocktail of pain, shaken not stirred.

The pernicious plant also protects butterflies, as many of them can fly onto a poison ivy leaf as a home base, avoiding a fate as a colorful lunch for birds and cats. Why butterflies? When did they strike this special deal with poison ivy, and why wasn't anyone else notified? Butterflies are in on this weedy conspiracy.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of poison ivy illustrates the ultimate finger jab into the seeping wound of humanity: immortality. That's right, even when we pull this wretched being out of the ground, effectively killing the plant, the operative oils can live on for years afterward, even carrying its life out on other materials like tools and clothes.

So, basically, poison ivy is a total dick.

No. 336 - Holy Shit! When Martens Attack!

Weasels have never been lucky enough to earn a favorable reputation with human beings, but the marten has worked its way up to Public Enemy No. 1, passing up John Dillinger and the crazy dancing old guy from the Six Flags commercials.

A relative of the weasel, mink and wolverine, the marten is apparently a lot more ferocious than its cousins, according to those who have declared war on this feral beast, some by manufacturing "marten-repelling" devices for automobiles. They're a solitary animal, which explains their need for rebelliousness and their recent placement on the Terrible List.

Exhibit A is former aspiring "First Dude" Todd Palin, who lines his cozy Alaskan home with marten pelts, partly for the high yield the furs bring about, and partly due to his desire to surround himself with the sweet smell of death. Many a rugged Alaskan has braved subzero temperatures and risked their mortality hunting down this cunning creature.

The marten has been imposing its malevolent will on homes and cars, friends and foes, and people have had enough. Many overseas drivers are installing electronic devices into their vehicles in an attempt to keep martens (and other bothersome pests, like wild boars (!)) away from their finely engineered sports cars.

We have it on good authority that martens, indeed, cause a nuisance, often by way of borrowing the vehicle without permission and leaving the car in neutral without engaging the emergency brake.

They also eat an abundance of crumb-causing snacks, never to even clean up after themselves.

If a marten does visit your car, it is sure to return, states an animal repellent manufacturer. And the vile creature will leave its marks, likely by hanging a pair of personalized dice in the rearview mirror.

The anti-marten repellent emits ultrasonic sounds that frighten the animal by means of "small high-voltage plates charged electrically to approx. 200 to 300 volts." The creatures find these sonic waves "unbearable," in much the same way that a Celine Dion CD makes our ears bleed profusely.

We're pretty sure martens are not fans of those effeminate smart cars, either, so when parking these vehicles, it might be a good idea to just carry them inside with you.

But it's clear that no beast is exempt from our vehicles' protection systems, whether it's boar, marten or leprechaun.

Note to martens: welcome to our present-day taser-style enforcement. Oh, and stay the fuck away from our cars.

No. 423 - Mickey Louse

Perhaps no cultural icon is more heinous than the big-eared antichrist himself, a rodent who's perpetrated nothing short of crimes against humanity, and along the way burnishing his three-circled symbol that gleams like a proud pentagram.

On the surface, the culture spawned from the Happiest Place on Earth is sunshine and rainbows, a utopian playland where everyone lives happily ever after, but the drivel spewed from this company's sundry TV stations, music label, movie production company, and all of the other pawns in its multi-media empire, is nothing short of toxic.

Disney Corp. is a prime example of a far-reaching enterprise gone awry, one that places a stranglehold on childrens' psyches at a time when their reality is still being shaped. The company's eponymous founder has long since passed, but his ideals live on in a mutated manner that was likely never intended by the Walt-astic forebear of all that is mouse; that aside, it's only fitting that Disney's current iteration, which has always been touted as "kid friendly," actually plays a large part in the deterioration of pre-teen culture.

Children are essentially instructed who to worship as the next tween celebrity -- Hannah, Jonas, Cody, Zach or Cheetah, or whoever else is instantly thrust into the kleig lights with shaggy hair and a winning smile.

This enterprise takes advantage of young minds during their most susceptible years, and that alone is not necessarily a vile act, although this demographic should be developing their imaginations throughout these years, not staring into the TV screen like zombies as they're spoon-fed pop culture junk food. They'll have their adult lives to indulge in mindless entertainment.

The real transgression lies in the way these pre-teen stars are hyper-sexualized and thrown into adult situations. Many of the current celeb icons are trust fund kids or silver spoon adolescents with stage parents, most of them with nothing better to do than answer their hormonal whims and party like it's 2099. And the message to pre-teenagers is to be innocent yet look like tarts, to consume but be moderate, to pursue intellect but villify the geeks of the world.

And parents worldwide are in turn subject to horribly written jokes and plot lines that couldn't even live up to the quality of a Mad Lib. Current Disney sitcoms reveal a theatrical and literary mastery that only Shakespeare himself could have created -- if Shakespeare had a full frontal lobotomy, that is.

Then there are the movies, revisionist propaganda at its finest, along with the historical dark skeletons that the Mouse Mafia itself can't even spin into profits, so they remain locked away like a bad drug habit. (Song of the South, anyone? How about the black handmaiden centaur in Fantasia? Get the blackface ready for the Disney on Ice rendition of these and other cultural embarrassments.)

Princesses and frail women weaken at the knees until the uber-male heroes come to their aid. Animals give life to the most deplorable of racial stereotypes, whether it's rasta lobsters, jive crows, Asian cats or derelict hyenas. Generations of bigotry, chauvenism and repressed dreams rolled up into one cute, castrato-esque, pants-less mouse.

This mouse must be stopped, or at least ignored into irrelevance. Might we suggest a lollipop laced with rat poison, sprinkled with a tad of pixie dust and arsenic?

No. 355 - It's Square to be Hip

Are you drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon with your ill-earned trust fund money, a flannel shirt tied around your waist, blabbing about your latest philanthropic cause and your vegan lifestyle astride a fixed-gear bicycle, or perhaps a scooter? Are you wearing an ironic trucker hat and an American Apparel long sleeved shirt? Do you look down your nose at anything anyone else likes, but secretly covet it?

Does your second-hand-esque wardrobe clash with your $100 haircut that gives you a permanent disheveled bedhead? In your strenuous attemps to look "thrown together" and act like you don't give a damn, do you actually take heavy stock in what people think about you?

Yes to all the above, you say? Well then, you, friend, are a hipster douchebag. That's correct: it's a scientific fact and a well researched topic, from the mouths of culture's greatest thinkers; they say hipsters, who don't really have an identity, are destroying our very idea of a counter culture. It's a manufactured, prefabricated personality, as insincere as it is strangely appealing.

Hipsters have strangled some of the finer things in our society and mashed them into a two-dimensional self-caricature, cannibalizing bits and pieces from longstanding counter cultures into one disingenuous identity that makes hipsters more like uniformed drones than intellectual outsiders who have the "in" on every cool style, movie or band.

In fact, if you happen to be a hipster, you are most definitely too cool to be reading this. Your coolness meter is so in the red that even if you do think something is cool, you'll go to your grave never admitting it.

One exception we'll make in our skewering of hipsters is Wes Anderson, whom, we feel is more pre-hipster. In fact, hipsters likely attached themselves to this master of cinema regardless of how he felt about the assimilation. Wes Anderson is genuine, swept up in the hipster movement in the same manner that Kurt Cobain shunned the grunge moniker. Same goes for indy rock. And PETA. And Greenpeace. And scarves.

We must be rid of hipsters at once; inaction is tantamount to guilt for being a part of hipsterism's growing influence. Hipsters are infesting our best restaurants and nightclubs, even overruning Salvation Armys across this great land. They're ruining literature and art, blurring the lines between brilliance and crap, kitschy and just plain dumb. They're yuppies in vintage clothing.

We shall not be overcome by this societal scourge. We are burning our horn-rimmed glasses in effigy. And then we'll burn all of our Decemberists albums and cook a big steak over the fire.

No. 65 - Advertising Rage

Ads Hole

There's a giant eye in the sky, sinister and all-knowing, watching every one of us -- kind of like Sauron's eye in "Lord of the Rings," but not nearly as kick-ass (and a lot less friendly). This omniscient being sees what you do in your most private of moments, and yes, even watches you when you do that...thing that you do with the shampoo bottle and the cocoa butter. You know.

This eye is searching for something intangible, something no one can pinpoint. It's looking for coolness, and how to sell this coolness to you with lots of plastic and twistie ties and limited warranties.

There may not be a literal eye watching you at all times (notwithstanding those PCP users reading this right now), but we are being watched and communicated with via the thousands of messages that lurk everywhere we look. Execs in starched shirts and khakis are plotting our psychological futures, what we will think we need tomorrow, or in ten years.

What we see in ads are beautiful people having fun, more bliss than we'll ever imagine, the equivalent to approximately two million drunk circus clowns. Wow, does holding a candy bar really make someone that happy? We want in on that action. Is it possible that buying anything will make me this cool?

And then you think, if I open this bottle of beer, will a party spontaneously erupt in my tiny hole of an apartment with strobe lights and hundreds of people? If I buy this car, will hot models throw their panties at me while I'm driving by?

Messages are at every turn, swatches of rural highways lit up and animated like Times Square. We have enough personal distractions to begin with, yet we're bombarded with these messages every single day.

Even a trip to the most rural areas of this expansive nation are not exempt from advertising's evil grip. Just the other day, we were in the deep woods of Minnesota and witnessed a deer carrying a giant sign for Crazy Fanny's Furniture Factory, and nearby, a raccoon ran by with a Nike symbol shaved into its side. Shame.

Let's digress and be realistic: we would not turn down advertising of any sort, because we could abandon our desk jobs if advertising were generous enough. The point is, those creating advertising are not bad. It's the repercussions, the smiley mascots that take on lives of their own -- the babies who recognize McDonald's and Walt Disney characters before they even utter a word.

Bless the advertising gurus, some of whom are brilliant and funny, but damn them on the other hand for studying us and waging war on our psyches. But like Patton, we fight back. We record our television, only to skip the commericals, and what do they do? Infiltrate the shows themselves. Case in point: "The Office," a brilliant program, but also a blatant shill for HP and Cisco, among other products. But we tolerate this because the show is that good.

We would let advertisers tattoo messages inside of our eyelids if that's what it took to watch our favorite television shows or movies. Yes, this particular entry is inspired by Adbusters (http://www.adbusters.org/) for whom we thank graciously for opening our eyes to many new ideas and for introducing us to Culture Jamming.

No. 39 - Oversized, undersized

We've long been a country of extremes, desiring the most lascivious of luxuries, yet condemning them at the next turn. As Americans, our vices identify us and shape how people perceive us. This imbalance is most evident when you look at what we consume.

In our need for consumption, the word moderation doesn't even enter the equation.

We love the monstrous portions of food, but with a diet drink. Our sisters and daughters wear next to nothing to school, yet the strongest voices are clamoring for abstinence (just thinking about sex will burn your retinas from your eye sockets!).

First, the oversized: king-size beds, giant pickup trucks and SUVs and trough-like syrupy buckets of "Biggie" drinks, not to mention oversized backsides that women owners like to display all too prominently in all its rippling cottage cheese-esque glory.

And then there's the other end of the spectrum: undersized. Again, these same ladies with oversized backsides tend to throw undersized clothes over their gelatinous mounds of flesh, creating a three-dimensional map that's way too vivid and leaves nothing to the imagination.

Food makers are now giving us 100 calorie diet portions of our favorite food. In actuality, they're reducing the portion sizes and charging the same price, then slapping a "healthy" sticker on the box, and voila! Instant health. Amazing. It's like we're all infants and will keep eating until we explode were it not for the rations that these food makers are so generous to mete out to us.

And while we're on the topic of undersized, our culture has an obsession with tiny things. Little salt-shakers, miniature tubes of toothpaste, those tiny bottles of ketchup that are ridiculously difficult to empty, tiny burgers, palm-sized computers: it's as if there's some little person conspiracy afoot. Their master plan is to miniaturize the entire world.

My phone's better because it's tinier. This iPod is so small, it's awesome, you can't even see me holding it right now, you can only see it with a microscope. The earbuds actually fell into my ear canals, so the iPod is now part of my nervous system. My dog is cool because I can fit it in my pocket. That's not a dog - that's a keychain, genius. And while you're at it, quit putting clothes on the little furry beast.

Maybe the big girl holding the dog can use the poodle tutu as a hankie, or a patch for when she sits down and rips her ....

No. 178 - Move Your Ass!

When flying the "friendly" skies, it's very easy to understand the motives behind "air rage." Especially when discussing the slow moving flyers we often encounter.

These slow movers aren't a deliberately nefarious species, but through sheer ignorance or arrogance they manage to slow down the flow of every aspect of a flight -- they're like the aerial equivalent of those who drive too slowly in the passing lane.

If we were cavepeople, they would be the first ones left behind as treats for the saber tooth tigers.

It starts at the security screening, when the SMF in question stands there dazed, as if on a permanent thorazine drip, and the line bottlenecks behind him or her, their sluggishness eventually earning them a date with a wand and a body search -- these activities performed with cold, uncaring hands. Then, in the concourse of the airport, the slow mover lingers near the line to give the appearance that they're in line, yet their seat number hasn't been called yet, so they're yet another obstacle to getting quickly and effortlessly to your seat.

When they do enter the plane, the SMF is the one who has a suitcase that's much too big for overhead storage, so as the feeble old man or woman tries hoisting the bag over head, it looks like a baby trying to pick up an elephant. Meanwhile, the line has stopped and is backed up through the tunnel and almost back into the airport. It's the sweatiest traffic jam you'll ever be a part of.

And as the passengers get off of the plane, this slow mover is, without fail, trying half-heartedly to get his or her bag back onto the floor, as the rest of us pack into a line with very little personal space, cramped and grouchy, breathing the rancid sickness emanating from the gaping mouths of the other passengers, and this is mixed with the playground for germs that is the inside of a passenger plane. Ahhh. Smell that? It's like breathing into an old sneaker that your dog's peed on. And we wait. And we keep waiting.

These SMFs are burdensome whichever way you look at it: if they're in the back, they're holding up the boarding process; if they sit up front, they delay the deplaning process. Maybe these slow movers should be stored below with the luggage, or strapped to the wall to be used as a flotation device in case of emergency.

One thing's for certain: if a catastrophic event does go down, these meandering dunces are sure to be the first ones trampled, their bones crunched like a bag of stale airline pretzels.