Sadly, No!

ABOVE: Travis Kavulla

Travis Kavulla, America’s Shittiest Website™
Avatar’s Central Fallacy

• Avatar was nothing more than Pocahantas in 3-D, except that the Iroquois¹ were blue people who rode around on flying dragons. I only got through the movie because I brought my own liquor, which helps me through lots of other things too, like early mornings and hangovers and long afternoons and winter nights. Anywhoo, the myth perpetrated by Avatar is that indigenous people like the environment when, in fact, the Indians liked to start forest fires for no reason at all.² Put that in your peace pipe, libs, and smoke it. What Douthat said, also.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

²And, woot, there it is. The wholly-anticipated and inevitable slander of Native Americans as crazed arsonists who burned forests for the fun of it. In fact, it is generally believed that Native Americans, although they did set fires, did so in a controlled fashion to increase habitat diversity and to provide security.

We want in on the end-of-the-decade list pr0n, thank you very much:

10. 2001: The year started ominously with a peasant blouse revival and only got worse with the worst thing that ever happened ever. Thankfully, a new generation of wiser heads with larger nutsacks would prevail in the cauldron of the very next year, and both transgressions would be avenged to this very day.

9. 2009: Some say that 2003 was worse. You know who also said 2003 was worse? Hitler, that’s who.

8. 2007: Historians will remember this year as the calm before the storm, but also as the unending nightmare two years after the hurricane. And how many Olympic gold medals did America win in what is now regarded as a nebish of a year? Hint: Just three, and they were in rhythmic gymnastics.

7. 2003: On the one hand, 2003 saw the end of a tyrant who cut off people’s hands. On the other hand, the hand just referred to was blown off in the effort to topple that same hand-cutting tyrant.

6. 2000: In 2000, it was still possible to trick non-Dilbert readers into paying you to fix their Y2K bugs. But not really. Fitting for a year that was confused as to whether it even belonged in the decade under review at all.

5. 2006: Dick Cheney shot this year in the face. Can’t say we blame him.

4. 2002: Ahh, those innocent days of 2002, as yet unspoiled by the alarming realization that you just took a massive dump on every principle you ever held out of simple, shorts-staining cowardice.

3. 2005: Goldman Sachs gave the GNP of this year to a junior trader as a year-end bonus, some of which eventually trickled down to a coke dealer we know.

2. 2004: In 2004, the American people set an example for the world in their remarkable tolerance for four-year assfuckings.

1. 2008: An energetic young politician was poised to replace an aging failure. A corrupt financial system came tumbling down to make way for a new era of reform. In the distance, if you squinted your eyes just so, the rainbow coats of the gathering ponies could be glimpsed by the pure of heart. And as the whisper of their whinnies came to you on winds of change, you swore they formed the words, ‘You betcha.’

Over at Nate Silver’s joint (we’re on first-name-plus-surname terms, me n’ Nate Silver), Nate Silver says we all need to state our preferences on health care reform ‘explicitly’. Nate Silver then provides a handy graph of his own preferences.

Nate Silver is smart.

Anyway, I can’t do graphs unless they are somehow related to shit, so here’s my effort:

Shorter Msgr. Ross Xavier Pius Douthat, S.J., O.P., O.F.M., S.S.J., Th.D+, The New York Times Pope-Ed Page
Heaven and Nature

• Each time Hollywood hugs a tree, the Baby Jesus cries.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

John J. Miller reads a story to his children and gets stumped by a fourth grader:

I read [“The Gift of the Magi”] to my kids last night. My daughter (fourth grade) noticed something funny about how it starts. Here are the first three sentences …:

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies.

This can’t be correct. If sixty cents of it was in pennies, that would leave $1.27. Wouldn’t there have to be 62 pennies? Or maybe 57 pennies?

Even though Miller’s self-published historical novel takes place in the 1860s, he apparently is completely unaware that two-cent and three-cent pieces were circulated during that period. I wonder if he has one of the characters in his literary chef d’oeuvre ordering a Coke Zero at the Marriott at 14th and Pennsylvania.

The Techno Chicken provides the perfect excuse to put and end to the YouTube War with Thers once and for all. We will not entertain a plea for a peace treaty without obtaining a massive indemnity from the defeated party.

So here comes Techno Chicken:

ABOVE LEFT: Velasquez, Portrait of the Dwarf Little Person Marco Kricoricano (c. 1636-1646)
ABOVE RIGHT: Bernardo Strozzi (attr.), Man in Full, Portrait of Jonassandro del Oroburro (17th cent.)

Shorter Mark Krikorian, America’s Shittiest Website™
‘There Went Out a Decree from Caesar Augustus …’

• Liberals, who hate Jesus, are sneakily using the Nativity story to convince Mexicans to be counted by the U.S. census rather than, like Joseph and Mary, going back home to Mexico to be counted there.

Slightly Shorter Jonah “The Whale” Goldberg, America’s Shittiest Website™
The Census, Do it For Baby Jesus: Update

• Whoa, do you see what I see? (“Hey, hit me with some more of that eggnog. Goes great with brownies!”). It’s a Census Bureau poster about the Baby Jesus. (“Who made the fudge?”) It’s apparently okay for the Obama administration to print up a big-ass poster about the Nativity when it suits the Democrats’ purposes but it’s not okay for a Republican administration even to whisper the name of the Baby Jesus. (Licks fudge from fingers.) Hypocrites! (Burp.)

Shorter Jonah “The Whale” Goldberg, America’s Shittiest Website™
The Census, Do it For Baby Jesus: Update II

• Okay, the poster was printed by a private group, not the government, and it says so right on the poster, but only in really teeny-tiny type. Central to my point, etc., etc.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Aïda Hammond-Gackett: Illustration for McArdle’s Adventures
in Wonderland (1907)

Megan McArdle, The Atlantic:
More Snow in Copenhagen

• No, but wherever you stand, you have to admit it’s kind of funny that, okay, Al Gore, because global warming with the snow. Hahahaha! [poop] Uh, liberals often soil themselves. [grabs gym bag, pedals chair backwards out of room]

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Let Lieberman and his obstructionist pals filibuster the goddamn bill with a full public option in it. I don’t know what the Senate rules are, but make all these assholes sit there reading the dictionary through Christmas. Have cloture votes every single day and twice on High Holy Days just for Lieberman. Give them all 15 seconds of floor time a jillion times a day. Have whole weeks of debate where Senators must make their arguments through hand puppets. Make it a staring contest played out in front of the American voter.

Then again, that’s probably why I’m not a Senator. Also because I’m lazy, a crappy public speaker and nobody would ever vote for me. And I have anal string warts.