U2, but not Me2

Fecal Matters

[Editor's Note: The following may be strictly too much information, or "TMI", for some people's sensitivities. I'd advise those people to take a mild sedative, spend several hours on ratemypoo.com, and come back here when they feel properly jaded.]

I found out tonight that, for Rachel's family anyway, the height of strangeness is people who fold toilet paper so as to get more than one wipe from a given length. I wish I could tell you exactly how we arrived at this topic, but it's one of those "you had to be there" kind of things. So I'm now a multi-wiper in a single-wipe world. Here's the thing: I've done that my entire life (the part of my life spent wiping, that is), so long that I can't remember if it was learned or instinctual. I didn't know this method was weird at all. It doesn't strike me as any more or less wasteful or unclean than the other way. Hell, if pressed, I would have guesstimated that everyone did it that way. But Rachel and her brother were looking at me like I just beamed in from Planet Mongo.

So as far as I can tell, there's four distinct wiping methods (unless there's some sort of fifth option I haven't taken into account, possibly involving the ancient Hindu art of Prana):

1. Tear off a given length of TP. Wipe once, throw in toilet.
2. Tear off a longer length than option 1. Wipe once, fold, and repeat until usable surface area of paper is too small to handle in a sanitary fashion or until it resembles a swan or airplane.
3. Bidets, or that magical Japanese toilet that cleans you automatically while you sit there.
4. Poo in hand. Fling at unsuspecting tourists.

Which one do you use? Does this decision say anything about you as a person? Are single-users the sort of bold, Wall Street Journal-reading go-getters that made this country great, whereas multis are prone to sitting in cafes while reading Proust and discussing their favorite kinetic sculptors? Are single-users better lovers? Was Kennedy a multi-wiper, and if so, was Lincoln as well?

"Lost" Boy

This just in: two new "Lost" tribute videos by trained chimp Jake Leenerts. The first one, uploaded a few weeks ago, focused on Jack to the dulcet tones of the Eels's "I Need Some Sleep". The new ones spotlight Locke with the Eels's "My Beloved Monster and Me" (heh), and Charlie's pretty little number "It's A Motherfucker", by, uh, the Eels. What, is E Jake's cousin or something?

Locke.
Charlie.
Jack.

UPDATE: As Jake now has his own site at walkingcandyapple.com, he no longer needs to freeload bandwidth off my cheap ass. So the links above now point to the files on his domain, which you should all go visit and pester him for updates.

Grab Bag Column of the Damned

This has been a bad week for conservative douchebags. First, Armstrong Williams was outed as the Alan Freed of punditry for accepting $240,000 from the White House to flog No Child Left Behind. Then my good ol' buddy, serial corpse-raper Tucker Carlson was handed his walking papers by CNN, and to top it off CNN's cancelling the whole Crossfire shitfest! Will this turn out to be the best year ever? Only if we can get Robert Novak drunk and have him play chicken with a train.

Pursuant to a U.N. resolution calling for a 50% reduction in me, I've purchased a Weider home gym. I knew the world community was serious when the Security Council threatened to get violently snippy with me. Anyway, it's a sweet little system with computer-controlled resistance and exercises with giggle-inducing names like the kneeling abdominal crunch and the one-armed preacher curl.

(Of course, I made sure that this one had computer controls just like everything else I own, in the hopes that someday one of my appliances will become sentient and attempt to exterminate me.)

I've been listening to a lot of "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross on NPR lately. I never thought I'd become one of those NPR listeners, but que sera sera. She was interviewing Ice Cube the other day, out promoting some family comedy bullshit, when Terry asked him what the Ice Cube of 1990 would think of where he is today. I badly wanted Cube to tell her that if 1990's Cube was in his neighborhood, he better duck, 'cause 1990 Cube was crazy as fuck.

Then, today, Fresh Air proudly announced that they were sponsored by a book whose title I can't recall, but was described as "a New Jersey woman's struggle to find herself". Incidentally, I have a recurring night terror about finding myself in New Jersey.

I'm going to say two things I noticed during the Lost/Alias bloc that aired tonight - one will be standard viewer kinda info, the second will be highly geeky in nature. 1. It was so obvious that Boone was hallucinating. And his stepsister, eeew. 2. They were totally listening to Driveshaft during the birthday party on Alias! That means Alias and Lost occupy the same universe! I mean, the ramifications...