“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself …  Picture all experts as if they were mammals.” Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens is dying, but then, as he points out, so are we all — it’s just that he might be “leaving the party” earlier than he had hoped. His Vanity Fair column discussing his cancer diagnosis and the early stages of his struggle with “the blind, emotionless alien” inside him showed a remarkable and laudable consistency with much of what he’s written over the years — it was intellectually honest, and railed against cliche and the maudlin (even at a time when most would have forgiven him for both). It was also not without humor — indeed, if he hadn’t from an early age looked at the world in terms of grand political struggles and ideologies, he may have been one of the great humor writers of his time, and in many ways he is, regardless of the subject matter.

Back to consistency. Hitchens’ Vanity Fair piece was as deeply personal as anything he’s ever written, and as would be expected at such a time, he begins to ruminate on all that an early death will rob him of: “Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read—if not indeed write—the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?”

It’s a cold man, or possibly the prospective father-in-law of Mel Gibson, who wouldn’t want to see his children get married, and the reconstruction of the WTC would to Hitchens be a symbolic rebuke of the spirit of nihilistic religious zealoutry that brought the towers down in the first place — the type of fanaticism he deplores, and about which he cautions constant vigilance.  What those who aren’t familiar with Hitchens may have found surprising was his ruing of the fact, even at this dark hour, that he may not be there to raise his hand when the tributes roll in for Kissinger and the Pope — he wrote a book damning the former, and his screeds against the latter could likely be collected into a similarly long form — and say, “On the contrary.”

For Hitch fans, the lament was fitting. Hitchens has made a sideline of offering some of the most delicious skewerings of people in the public sphere to appear in print over the past 20+ years, and he has no problem putting revered feet into the fire. On the Penn and Teller episode devoted to questioning the accepted saintliness of Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama and Gandhi, Hitch was a natural choice as a guest as he was probably the only mainstream pundit who had bashed all three in print.

Here then is a collection of excerpts from Hitchens’ columns in Slate, Vanity Fair and some of his books that shows the Crown Prince of Pillorying  at work. These are Christopher Hitchens’ greatest hits!

(Note: All text below the name of the target is excerpted from Hitch’s writings [name linked to source where possible]. Notes in itals are the authors’.)

According to Hitch, a contender for worst president ever, with Hugo Chavez (see below).

Jimmy Carter

Almost always, when former President Jimmy Carter opens his big, smug mouth, he has already made the psychological mistake that is going to reduce his words to absurdity.

Hitch does not often agree with the foreign policy critiques of the peanut farmer from Plains, GA.

Prince Charles (on him becoming king)

From the aesthetic point of view it will matter a bit, because the prospect of a morose bat-eared and chinless man, prematurely aged, and with the most abysmal taste in royal consorts, is a distinctly lowering one.

Bill Clinton

Then the big white whale, Clinton. What about someone who is a war criminal, a taker of bribes from foreign dictatorships, almost certainly a rapist [plausibly accused, anyway, by three believable women, of rape], executed a black man [Ricky Ray Rector] who was so mentally retarded  that he was unable to plead or to understand the charges — You’re against all that, right? But you’re for it when it’s someone who you think is a ‘New Democrat’.

From  “Conversations with History: A Dissenting Voice”

Hitchens despised Clinton to the extent that he wrote a book condemning him. Even now, addled with cancer, Hitchens loathing for Clinton remains strong. In an interview with Charlie Rose, he seemed slightly stunned by the suggestion that it possibly could.

On the prospect of Hillary Clinton becoming president:

What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House and is again in a position to rent the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign donors and to employ the Oval Office as a massage parlor?

Hugo Chavez:

[Hugo] Chávez, in other words, is very close to the climactic moment when he will announce that he is a poached egg and that he requires a very large piece of buttered toast so that he can lie down and take a soothing nap.

Hitchens, after a trip to Venezuela with Sean Penn that left him questioning the mental fitness of that country’s leader. Hitch obviously enjoys the poached egg analogy, having used it more than once in his writings.

The Dalai Lama

In exactly the same way as a medieval princeling, he makes the claim not just that Tibet should be independent from Chinese hegemony — a “perfectly good” demand, if I may reder it into everyday English — but that he himself is a hereditary king appointed by heaven itself. How convenient! Dissenting sects within his faith are persecuted; his one-man rule in an Indian enclave is absolute; he makes absurd pronouncements about sex and diet and, when on his trips to Hollywood fund-raisers, anoints major donors like Steven Segal and Richard Gere as holy.

An excerpt from the “There is no eastern solution” chapter of Hitch’s book “God is Not Great”.

Jerry Falwell

Like many fanatical preachers, Falwell was especially disgusting in exuding an almost sexless personality while railing from dawn to dusk about the sex lives of others. His obsession with homosexuality was on a par with his lip-smacking evocations of hellfire. From his wobbly base of opportunist fund raising and degree-mill money-spinning in Lynchburg, Va., he set out to puddle his sausage-sized fingers into the intimate arrangements of people who had done no harm.

While Hitch may miss out on writing obits for Kissinger and the current pontiff, he can take some consolation in having been around to write the above, part of a Slate column after the “Reverend’s” death, and to make statements such as the following to counter some of the tributes rolling in:

“If you gave Falwell an enema, he could be buried in a matchbox.”

“Hannity and Colmes”, Fox News

Gandhi

To state the matter shortly: he wanted India to revert to a village-dominated and primitive “spiritual” society, he made power-sharing with Muslims much harder, and he was quite prepared to make hypocritical use of violence when he thought it might suit him … [Gandhi] rhapsodized about the Indian village, where the millennial rhythms of animals and crops would determine how human life was lived. Millions of people would have mindlessly starved to death if his advice had been followed, and would have continued to worship cows.

From the “There is no Eastern Solution” chapter of Hitchens’ book “God Is Not Great”.

Mel Gibson

One does not abruptly decide, between the first and second vodka, or the ticks of the indicator of velocity, that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are valid after all … He has told interviewers that his wife, the mother of his children, is going to hell because she subscribes to the wrong Christian sect (a view that he justifies as “a pronouncement from the chair”). And it has been obvious for some time to the most meager intelligence that he is sick to his empty core with Jew-hatred.

From a column following after Gibson’s DUI arrest and anti-Semitic tirade, which he later blamed on the effects of drink.

Jesse Helms

I make no apology for calling him a provincial redneck, because that, to be fair to him once more, was how he thought of himself and even described himself. It was a scandal that a man with so little knowledge of the outside world should have had such a stranglehold on American foreign policy for so long … The way to mark Helms’ passing is to recognize that he prolonged the life of the old segregated South and the Dixiecrat ascendancy and that in his own person, not unlike Strom Thurmond, he personified much of its absurdity and redundancy.

In probably the only obit about Helms titled, “Goodbye to a provincial redneck”.

Bob Hope

The sexlessness of Hope’s routines, however, was just another clue to their essential conformism and cowardice. Eye-rolling and wolf-whistling are among the weakest forms of crowd pleasing that we possess. And Hope never stretched or challenged an audience in his life. For him, the safe and antique moves were the best, if not the only. The smirk was principally one of risk-free self-congratulation … A Bob Hope joke was no laughing matter: It was a bland attempt at what we would now yawningly call inclusiveness.

Written shortly after the passing of the English-born comedian. Includes a hilarious excerpt taken from the New York Times obit in which Hope’s laugh-defying jokes are quoted. The above quote can also apply to Jay Leno.

Mike Huckabee

But when real political racism rears its head, our easily upset media fall oddly silent. Can you guess why? Of course you can. Gov. Huckabee is the self-anointed candidate of the simple and traditional Christian folk who hate smart-ass, educated, big-city types, and if you dare to attack him for his vulgarity and stupidity and bigotry, he will accuse you of prejudice in return.

On Mike Huckabee’s comments alluding to support for the confederate flag.

The Kennedy “dynasty”

It must take some ingenuity at the networks, even so, to simply airbrush the fascist sympathies and bootlegging background of Joseph Kennedy Sr., his sons’ murder campaigns in Cuba, the recruitment of the mafia for same, the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem  in Vietnam, the increasingly frantic and pathetic narco-addictions of JFK, the exploitation of unstable broads like Marilyn Monroe, and so much else besides.

The above was included in Ted Kennedy’s obituary, which was surprisingly kind to the last of the Kennedy brothers. Hitch was not so charitable when it came to the memory of JFK:

John F. Kennedy

“If this vulgar hoodlum president had not been survived by a widow of exceptional bearing and grace, his reputation would probably now be dirt.”

Henry Kissinger

A good liar must have a good memory. Kissinger is a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory.

In the realm of American politics, only Henry Kissinger rivaled Bill Clinton as a target for Hitchens’ contempt. Quote from Hitchens book, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger”.

Michael Moore

Europeans  think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they’ve taken as their own, as their representative American, someone (Michael Moore) who actually embodies all of those qualities.

“Scarborough Country” on MSNBC. Hitchens lost what respect he had for Michael Moore with the making of Farhenheit 9/11, which he critiqued on Slate.

New York

I never expected to see a day when it would become a plastic-imitation Disneyland, with the mirthless smirk of the uniformed attendant making sure that everyone had a boring and wholesome time and was tucked up in bed before two in the morning.

In the above piece, Hitchens had fun going around NYC and racking up all of the infractions he could against the city’s innumerable by-laws. He also had a chance to offer his opinion on that city’s mayor:

Michael Bloomberg

This current Niagara of pettiness and random victimization may well be Bloomberg’s attempt at a wannabe reputation as heroic crime-fighter and disciplinarian. Who knows what goes on in the tiny, constipated chambers of his mind? All we know for certain is that one of the world’s most broad-minded and open cities is now in the hands of a picknose control freak.

Sarah Palin

What price the courageous frontier huntress now—an empty-headed echo chamber for rumor-mongers and freaks who shoots from ambush and then runs away? Some condescending right-wing intellectuals are calling her style “populist” and comparing it with Andrew Jackson and William Jennings Bryan. The true name for it is demagogy, descending from Joseph McCarthy, Robert Welch, and the nastier elements of the old Nixon gang—people to whom slander and defamation was second nature.

Hitchens lambasted Palin in more than one Slate column as she continued to give offense during her vice-presidential bid.

Ronald Reagan

The fox, as has been pointed out by more than one philosopher, knows many small things, whereas the hedgehog knows one big thing. Ronald Reagan was neither a fox nor a hedgehog. He was as dumb as a stump. He could have had anyone in the world to dinner, any night of the week, but took most of his meals on a White House TV tray. He had no friends, only cronies. His children didn’t like him all that much.

Hitchens strays from the pack again in this write-up following the death of the former president and Bedtime for Bonzo star.

Cindy Sheehan

As well as being a vulgar producer of her own spectacle, and an embarrassment to her family, Cindy Sheehan is at best a shifty fantasist.

Hitchens here was writing about Sheehan’s denial of anti-Israeli statements in a letter she had written (which she later claimed had been doctored).

Mother Teresa

[Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. …Many more people are poor and sick because of the life of MT: Even more will be poor and sick if her example is followed. She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud…

Hitchens also wrote a book-length critique of the woman he dubbed the “ghoul of Calcutta”, a book that would likely win the prize for more gasps induced at a bookstore by its title alone: “The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice”.

Gore Vidal

Vidal in his decline has fans like David Letterman’s, who laugh in all the wrong places lest they suspect themselves of not having a good time.

Hitchens rues some of the more crackpot notions of his one-time mentor.

FOLLOW THE SHARK GUYS ON TWITTER!!!

Happy Canada Day everyone.

The Shark Guys are replacing the broken window panes at our headquarters in the aftermath of the G20 Summit and wish everyone a lazy, fun-filled Canada Day. Unfortunately, whoever organizes these things didn’t take into account that most people have to work tomorrow and that this puts the kibosh on what would’ve otherwise been a long weekend. We hope employers are lenient in dealing with those inevitable Friday absences and that everyone managed to stock up on booze.

Happy 143rd birthday to the Great White North.

As children, neither of us went to the type of schools where every kid goes home with a trophy on track and field day and even if you don’t win the 100-meter dash, you still get to go home with a “compos mentis” ribbon affixed to your shirt. It’s probably because of these rough childhoods full of recognition only won in principals’ offices that we place such a premium on awards of any type, even those for which we have little respect or any hope of winning, such as the Shorty Awards.

The Shorty Awards have nothing to do with the hip hop use of the term to refer to women, including, we would assume, some who are taller than the speakers. Presumably they have their awards show sometime around the Oscars. The Shortys recognize Twitter users for the “Best producers of short, real time content 140 characters or less”, or, what you’d rather not hear when haggling with your insurance company and they hang up on you.

We are now, like a bird that’s flown into a bay window, tweeting more than ever, (click here for our Twitter page) but we still see the whole enterprise as a kind of never-ending Facebook status update purgatory. That said, we welcome your Shorty votes for us in the humor category –  Here is the link. We promise to bring it down from the inside if we take home a plaque and if we win, to Frisbee-style, hurl it off the balcony. We also vow to shout 140-character-plus  obscenities over the band trying to play us off. (Note: You can also vote for us in the “year’s best egocentric person” category too, even though there are technically [and by any other measure of reality] two of us).

The following is our Interview with the Shorty Awards, in true Twitter form, restricted to 140 characters or less (we weren’t being curt with the interviewer).

What’s your best tweet?
Don’t know, but it would take a disreputable pet store’s worth of dead budgies to replicate.

What are six things you could never do without?
blood flow to the brain, water, food, a toothbrush, pliers and a fake passport.

How do you use Twitter in your professional life?
To shamelessly promote ourselves, our writing, our website and our proven way to lose inches off your waist

What’s your favorite Twitter app?
The term ‘app’ is enough to make anyone throw app

Twitter or Facebook?
That is like choosing among your children, if one of them wasn’t dead… so Twitter.

What was the funniest trend you’ve seen?
The overwhelming juggernaut that is thesharkguys.com. The internet is the levee to our ‘Hurricane Katrina of comedy’ website

What feature should Twitter add?
The ability to become self-aware.

Who do you wish had a Twitter feed but doesn’t?
God. Example Tweet:  Currently prepping the next tsunami.

What are some words or phrases you refuse to shorten for brevity?
Quotes from Sir Winston Churchill. “It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations” but he was not referring to Twitter

Is there someone you want to follow you who doesn’t already? If so, who?
We don’t know but they better undergo a criminal background check first.

Have you ever unfollowed someone? Who and why?
You cannot ‘unfollow’ someone. The opposite of following is running in random directions and there is no word for that.

Why should we vote for you?
Because The Shark Guys are unquestionably the finest thing to hit Twitter since JD Salinger hit the floor

Terms you wish would start trending on Twitter right now?
The phrase ‘A hematoma is characterized by swelling of the injured area’

What’s the most interesting connection you’ve made through Twitter?
That it counters Camus’ ‘passionate world of indifference’—sort of

Hashtag you created that you wish everyone used?
We don’t know what that is, but it’s illegal to be caught with it in Singapore.

How do you make your tweets unique?
By liberally misquoting the Book of Mormon

What inspires you to tweet?
A neural impulse traveling from the brain (generally a good place for neural impulses to generate) makes our fingers type out things.

Ever get called out for tweeting too much?
Yes, but bear repellent is equally effective on humans.

140 characters of advice for a new user?
Do not hesitate to post incriminating photos of people in powerful positions in various positions.

How long can you go without a tweet?
Depends on whether the facility is medium or minimum security

What question are we not asking here that we should?
Will Tweets eventually bring about World Peace or cast the yoke of oppression off the people of Tibet? In a word, yes.

Who do you admire most for his or her use of Twitter?
Michael McKean because This is Spinal Tap is possibly the greatest movie ever and he Tweeted one of our posts.

Why’d you start tweeting?
The more important question remains, when are we going to stop?

Has Twitter changed your life? If yes, how?
It’s irrevocably altered the way we view the color ‘teal’.

What do you wish people would do more of on Twitter?
Tweet during minor surgical procedures or better yet, from the electric chair

How will the world change in 2010?
Average global temperatures will either rise or fall.

What are some big Twitter faux pas?
Describing bowel movements using forlorn adjectives

What will the world be like 10 years from now?
Nostalgic for 2010 when Tweets were 140 characters instead of 63 a decade into the future

VOTE FOR THE SHARK GUYS HERE

2. I resolve to approach desired weight loss like a Global Warming cap-and-trade system where my gym membership is the carbon credit.

3. I resolve to return all DVDs to Blockbuster on time—so that Season Six, Episode Nine of Entourage is available for one more completist before that movie chain buys the pine condo mid-way through 2010.

4. Since quitting cigarettes is difficult, I resolve not to set any accidental fires while smoking

5. I resolve to quit drinking—at a maximum one-hour after last call or whenever impatient bar staff ushers me out the door, whichever comes first.

6. I resolve to register to vote, then take a pass when polling stations open, comforted in knowing that I could’ve exercised my democratic duty should the situation have called for it when people in other, less fortunate countries cannot.

7. I resolve to report a small portion of my gambling winnings to the proper authorities, should these earnings be high enough to noticeably influence my lifestyle or as part of a plea bargain.

8. I resolve to continue not watching most sporting events, but making impassioned arguments for how some team can improve their pitching should all other topics of bar conversation be exhausted.

9. I shall continue to run up a massive credit card debt, especially if the card is not my own, or spending is only on essential items whose essential-ness is based in large part on loyalty reward points that can be accrued at a liquor store.

10. I shall resolve not to make any New Year’s resolutions that could conceivably be broken by the time a week has passed, which is to say all of ‘em.

Happy New Year

All the best in 2010.

We thank you and look forward to bringing you more raucous fun in the new year. See you then.

The Shark Guys

We will return to our regularly scheduled programming on Monday.

a certain pride here

Charles Bukowski (Open All Night)

I don’t care to have my writing

praised too often:

it’s dangerous for the writing and

for me.

Writing is what one does,

it’s like a spider spinning its

web.

you do what you have

to do.

yet, regarding praise, I sometimes

weaken,

say when they write me

from the prisons that they

like my stuff.

or I like it better yet

when they write me

from the madhouse that they

like my stuff.

the bit I liked best, though,

was when the

madam of a Nevada whorehouse

wrote me

that she and the girls

liked my stuff

and anytime

I was in the neighborhood

I could have all of it I wanted
for free.

that beats

any notice I might get

in the N.Y. Times

hands

down.

As some of you are no doubt aware (we’ve spent the better part of a year and a half intermittently shilling for it), this is the official blog for our humor book, which comprises a Great White’s snaggle-toothed mouthful of a title:  “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery” (to be known henceforth as ‘The Shark Book’, in the interest of energy conservation and somehow reducing our environmental impact on the high seas).

That we are known as ‘The Shark Guys’, should come as no surprise either, not because we’re fond of the phrase ‘We’re gonna need a bigger boat’ (though we are) or slurp enough fin soup to risk endangering them;’ rather, this is what marketing genius gurus refer to as ‘branding’. We sincerely hope you like it, as it’s far too late to change it now and it’s preferable to, though not as accurate as, ‘The Drunken Debauched Guys’.

This site is updated thrice weekly. Why three you ask? Well, some really good things come in threes: threesomes, celebrity deaths, a Bronze medal (we’re Canadian, it’s the best we can hope for), jazz trios, six-man tag-team matches, [Please See our Worst Masked Wrestling Gimmicks] and it’s the atomic number of Lithium. [August 3rd is also auspicious in our home province as it's a holiday]

Along with our notable  Top 10 Lists, product reviews, travelogues, beer tastings, movie reviews and reasons why you should not bring the Turbo Jam DVD set to the office,  The Shark Guys site will provide information about the authors: freelance journalism, radio appearances, press, readings, outstanding arrest warrants, and of course news on the next book. Speaking of which, we are currently working on that book. Some of you might have noticed the posts have been getting shorter lately: this is not to reflect people’s diminished attention spans or laziness on our part, but rather, diligent toiling toward our deadline.

Heads up: Next week, we will be in New York City for matters relating to said book and perhaps updating research on our post ‘New York City Versus Toronto’, though we believe it’s entirely accurate and in no way misleading. As a result, expect a Monday post and then a short hiatus as we take the Staten Island ferry out for a joyride, scale Lady Liberty’s heights and get some R&R in the East Village and Brooklyn. The last time both of us were in NYC together, it was the week of September 11.

This mini vacation could not come at a better time, especially if the Toronto City Council votes down the strike resolution and those of us in the downtown core continue to be overcome by the fumes emitted by the garbage.

Thank you to our growing readership and feel free to spam as many friends and acquaintances with links to this site.

Have a great weekend and on a related note, enjoy Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.

The Shark Guys

Michael Jackson was the king of the tabloids (who until yesterday were referring to him as “The Self-Proclaimed King of Pop” – get ready for more shameless post-mortem backstepping than after Diana’s death), the wellspring of more checkout-aisle drivel than anyone who has ever lived – yes, we stand by what would be hyperbole about anyone else – and the punchline to more late-night monologue jokes than OJ Simpson and any two American presidents you got combined. Hell as recently as Monday, we were pulling out of the gift-that-keeps-giving Jacko joke bag.

But we’re also children’ of the 1980s, a decade that thankfully preceded the YouTube generation. Had somebody’s mobile phone camera been trained on us back in those days you might have seen one or both of us in those leather jackets with zippers, pitting a Michael Jackson doll in an uneven fight with a Mr. T action figure, or wearing one glove (doing so and coming through Canadian winters with all fingers accounted for was just good luck). Neither of us would ever own up to behind-closed-doors moonwalking, but let’s just say that Michael Jackson was as much a part of 80s childhoods as He-Man, bad cinema, and insatiable yuppie greed that shat on the hopes and ideals of the two decades that preceded it.

Chris remembers hearing Thriller for the first time at his cousin’s house and it blowing his mind. Noel remembers a running feud with an older neighbor kid who ridiculed him for saying (in the chirpish voice of youth) that Thriller and Bad were awesome. The neighbor insisted that Michael Jackson was just a poor man’s Lionel Richie and was not afraid of doling out a noogie to get his point across. (If that guy’s reading today, let’s just say that, Thriller, the best-selling album of all time – which in effect is an untouchable record because computer piracy has killed the album – well, it wasn’t put out by Lionel.) What we both remember are sounds that will forever be there in our minds. We think back to our childhoods and remember this music and – unlike the majority of 80s television and the second Terminator film – it stands the test of time, and we give ourselves credit for not having tin ears at that age.

Of course, then there were the 1990s. Michael Jackson’s musical output deteriorated and things got from cute weird – who wouldn’t want a pet chimpanzee (though maybe not to hang around with an aged Liz Taylor) – to the kind of weird that made liking him as a musician an awkward thing to admit.

It seems that if you’re a celebrity from a humble start, that included in the welcome gift bag you get upon entry into the club of the super fabulous is a posse of bloodsuckers incapable of giving advice other than “I think it’s time you sign the monthly pay slips, boss.” Throw in a mind that is not exactly a specimen of sound health and the results are inevitable – Howard Hughes insane and pissing in specimen bottles while his fortune crumbles, Mike Tyson boxing tomato cans for the minimal cash that’s in it, Michael Jackson building the Neverland Ranch, and inviting children into a world that screamed, “We find on behalf of the plaintiff”.

The charges against him lose some steam when you look at those making them.  What manner of person sends their kids for pajama parties at the home of a pop star who is, at best, a troubled middle-aged man who thinks cotton candy should be available on demand?

We’re not the types to look back on Annie Hall or Hannah and Her Sisters with a perspective skewed by the Soon-Yi affair – they remain classics… though we will drop Woody like a turd from a tall horse if he does another film with Scarlett Johansson. (Some things are just unforgivable). A creative work of merit stands above and apart from the personal shortcomings of its creator. Thank the pharaohs for that or we’d be in trouble.

For those of us who grew up with his sounds causing us early ear drum damage, his music gets the first two or three tracks of our life soundtracks.

Michael Jackson produced more great music between the ages of six and eight than any of the Idol programs will produce in their entire run. R.I.P.

For those of the “God must’ve been angry at New Orleans” natural variety, some folks choose to hunker down, stay vigilant and throw their weight behind and on top of whatever neighbor is still defying gravity, while others find that defying death is just the moment to seduce the missus.

In a bit of inspired writing that doesn’t normally grace newspapers unless freelancers bust through union restrictions limiting their use, a scribe at the Houston Chronicle noted that there’s been “a curious bump in the number of women who are rounding out their third trimesters of pregnancy”. This two time double entendre turn of phrase is much preferable to the ‘throwing the baby out with the bath /flood waters’ that might’ve otherwise passed the tired eyes of copy editors.

Yes, it seems that doctors who work in Houston’s busiest maternity ward say they’re expecting an especially hectic June, due either to the big storm or spouses’ attempts at wresting husbands away from the onset of the NFL season.

Apparently, it’s been eight months since Ike blasted the region, knocking out electricity and leaving many with no television, Internet access or stash of pharmaceutical distractions that would otherwise pass the time.

It seems obstetrical practices like The Woman’s Hospital of Texas (word on the street has it that it’s a great place to pick up chicks) are doing double duty these days and that this baby boom could be the result of diminished pharmacy hours during which time you’d normally replenish a batch of expired condoms.

This leaves us with one inescapable conclusion: People left to their own devices, when there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do, practice unprotected sex.

As one Houstonian put it, who is much more given to cynicism than we are: “Anyone can procreate. Actually, stupidity and vanity rule in the ‘I can make a baby’ department. Oh, wow, people had sex during a hurricane, stop the presses. There was the “I need to party and screw” mentality, and there were others who got out and helped their neighbors.”

“You are like a hurricane
There’s calm in your eye.
And I’m gettin’ blown away”

Like a Hurricane, Neil Young.

Well, despite what you are reading here, this is typically a non posting day. Yes, in the interests of keeping things fresh, like produce brought to market before being unloaded to the nearest foodbank, we maintain a strict posting regimen of three times a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Of course, in the event of an occurrence so momentous it requires our immediate attention—the Obama inauguration, the air strike in Gaza, shortlist for best Lowland Terrier at the Westminster Dog Show, rest assured we’ll be at our keyboards, in our respective home bases of Toronto and Bangkok, bringing you the funny.

As depicted in the artwork above, today is a day devoted solely to research, not of the type that determines what makes the human genome tick, muscle density loss in outer space or how to build a better fuel cell, but researching what we’ve become known for: our very unique Lists. [For our previous lists, click here].

Since then, we’ve amassed the Top 20 Worst Masked Wrestling Gimmicks of All Time, Top 10 Exploding Animals, Psychic Predictions that were Hilariously off the Mark, Top 5 Moments in Junk Science, Top 10 Drinking and Driving Songs, Top 10 Psychic Predictions, Top 10 Songs about Gin and 20 Worst Christmas Ornaments Found on Ebay. These can be found here.

If there are any lists you’d like to see here, we’re open to suggestion and welcome using other people’s ideas on occasion rather than generating our own. Feel free to email us at admin@thesharkguys.com

That’s all for now, join us tomorrow for more merriment.

Cheers,

The Shark Guys