E-readers can only help in this regard. In the past, one might have slipped a Michael Ondaatje book cover over “Goat Love: One Man’s Highland Yearnings” in order to avoid causing a titter on the subway. E-readers now mean that one’s terrible taste in books can be kept as safely hidden as one’s risible taste in music – unless your summer library reading list is subpoenaed, in which case you might suddenly find yourself with a whole lot of free time for reading.

Some titles are utterly benign: Nobody will construe Eat, Pray Love as an injunction to follow literal scripture and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance isn’t going to run afoul of devout Buddhists with bus passes. As it says in The Secret—curiously titled as secrets are not meant to be divulged, especially when they read like bathroom graffiti at Hallmark — “Choose your thoughts carefully… you are a masterpiece of your life!” One would assume these titles were all carefully chosen for effect, and when it comes to ability to turn heads at a bookstore, we’d rate them up there with a streaker running through the botanical plants section. Here is our list of the Top 10 Most Controversial Book Titles released by major publishers — self-published screeds read only by authorities in the wake of a terrible crime have been excluded. 

10.  The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly.

Easterly makes a case for cheapskates in this anti-humanitarian aid polemic, which won’t see him passing breadrolls to Bono at an $8000/ plate buffet. While some may agree with his stance that poverty is best overcome through grass-roots, indigenous movements, the loaded title garnered more attention than, “Save your money for a cup of coffee a day: Arguments against humanitarian aid” would have.

Alternate Title: They Know It’s Christmas. Band Aids don’t Work.

Honorable Mention: Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the 17th Century Caribbean by B.R. Burg

Had the Epcot Centre’s Pirates of the Carribean ride been based on this tome it would have a distinctly different tenor and be less attractive as a mainstream movie franchise.  What, the author asks, did these men, often on the high seas for years at a time, do for sexual fulfillment? Well, the poor cabin boy has some stories to tell.

9.  White Slave: The Autobiography of Chef Marco Pierre White.

Chef White, who famously once reduced Chef Gordon Ramsay to tears— and not because he rubbed a scotch bonnet in his face — had his chef’s whites/surname/Caucasian triple entendre excised for the US release, The Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness, and the Making of a Great Chef. Not surprisingly, slavery doesn’t sell on these shores when it applies to those who can’t jump.

Alternate Title: Little White Truths.

8.  The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens.

In this cheery tome, Hitch unleashes a stinging exposition of the world’s most famous Albanian. [The second being Adil Hoxha, Bart's student exchange on The Simpsons, the third, possibly Albanian Canadian former hockey goon Tie Domi].

Hitch writes [Mother Teresa] “was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God.” [Editors' note: As an aside, a joke Christopher is fond of telling "Why don't Jews drink? Because it numbs the pain."]

Alternate Title: Missionary Impossible.

7.  That Bitch: Protect Yourself Against Women with Malicious Intent by Roy Sheppard and Mary Cleary.

According to its Amazon description, “The book explores the lying, cheating, conniving and manipulation of women with malicious intent.”

Probably not a good one to whip out for a quick check during a speed-dating event or to be seen carrying on a bus when a cute coed steps on. Going out in public with this title slung under your arm will nearly guarantee a wider berth than most body odours or swining a machete. If the Amazon description is anything to go by, it may, however, prove to be an invaluable tool in a person’s quest to cling to bitterness and let one negative experience inform your opinion of huge sections of the population.

Alternate Title: It’s a Man’s World: Inside My Lonely Bachelor Existence.

6.  Smart Girls Marry Money: How Women Have Been Duped Into the Romantic Dream by Elizabeth Ford and Daniela Drake

When it comes to gold digging, only a Newmont Mining exploration would come close  to this effort, which asks “why does society applaud a girl who falls for a guy’s ‘big blue eyes’ (one-half of the Shark Guys applauds along with society) yet denounces one who chooses a man with a ‘big green bankroll’”?

As one reviewer says “I could see this as a great book club choice”, but for our money, if we were to wield a book like a club, we would select something of Proustian length.

Alternate Title: Not Without Dinner and a Show First: The Price of a Smart Girl’s Company.

5.  Why Do I Vomit? and Other Questions about Digestion by Angela Royston

We’ve delved into this issue earlier in our list of the Top 10 Worst Cookbooks (Cooking with Balls for example, is unfortunately not a euphemism). This book, How long does food stay in your body? Why does your stomach rumble when you’re hungry? Why should you eat vegetables? Why is pizza overwhelmingly the most common food stuff vomited late at night in alleys? (ok, we made up that last one).

The ideal gag gift. Get it!?

Alternate Title: Beer Before Liquor, Never Sicker: Tales from the porcelain throne.

Honorable Mention:

God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens

Hitchens again with this condemnation of “celestial dictatorships” and call for a new age of enlightenment to move beyond the worship of a deity who shares much in common with Santa Claus or a really dedicated stalker — knows when you’re sleeping, knows when you’re awake…

4.  Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete by William C. Rhoden

The ‘slave’ analogy is hard so swallow when pro athletes can use Ben Franklins to snort cocaine and then leave the bills as tips—The Miami Heat’s two newest superstars, for example, LeBron James and Chris Bosh signed matching six-year, $110.1 million contracts recently, so it’s safe to say they won’t be availing themselves of a bus pass any time over the next 5 decades.

Alternate Title: When I Shoot Freethrows I Earn as Much as you do in a Week

3.  The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Dawkins, the most arrogant member of the so-called New Atheist movement, famously suggested that critically thinking people should, to differentiate themselves from the dullard hoi polloi, call themselves “brights”, which, in one  sense at least, is not a very bright at idea at all.

2.  The Trouble with Islam by Irshad Manji

As journalist Johann Hari put it, “it would be hard for anybody to guess that [Manji] is the star attraction on jihadist death-lists. She has the small, slender body of a ballet-dancer, and a Concorde-speed Canadian voice that makes her sound more like a character in a Woody Allen movie than an enemy of Osama Bin Laden’s.”

Suggested title: I Slam Islam.

Honorable Mention: Semen For Sale. All About Artificial Insemination.
by D.O. Cauldwell

This is not a sequel to the aforementioned book on pirates. It is important to note the missing ‘a’ in the first word.

Alternate Title: O Cum, all Ye Fertile.

1.   N*gger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word

by Randall Kennedy.

Yep, this wins the prize for ability to cause the greatest offense using the fewest letters. Much like you should not shout “fire” in a crowded theater, unless it was at a live finale taping of The Apprentice, shouting “n*gger” in one, tests the limits of free speech and one’s ability to run from large groups of people wishing to imprint your face in the sidewalk.

[Editors' note: We chose to, of course, focus solely on English language works. We're almost certain something penned in one of India's 16 vernacular languages or books of dirty German limericks feature titles as flinch-worthy as any described  here.]

“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!!!

Chavo Guerrero rakes the eyes of the Undertaker, while the ref, in almost existentialist futility, is preoccupied elsewhere

[A slightly altered version of this list first appeared over at the fun Camel Clutch Blog]

The WWE has yet to induct a WWE referee into its hall-less Hall of Fame, and that is in the words of the late, great Gorilla Monsoon, “a miscarriage of justice”.

As fans of 80s pro-wrestling, we grew up with the likes of Earl Hebner and Joey Marella, who were the third, oft-abused men in the ring for some of the decade’s classic wrestling matches. They would run around the ring, pass signals to wrestlers, and all the while be on the receiving end of a never-ending stream of abuse from the broadcasters who would constantly question their credentials for the job. [As far as the latter goes, this is not altogether different from what happens in the world of professional boxing]

Along with being an integral part of the pro-wrestling show, the referee gives your average fan with an interest in joining the business more realistic goals: 1) It’s pretty unlikely that someone whose genetics point him towards the bench rather than the field will be able to become a pro-wrestler, no matter how many scraps he’s won on a mattress at the local city dump and 2) it’s also a chance to adjudicate the outcome of something important even if your GPA excludes you from all but Caribbean-based lawschools.

Yes, becoming a referee should be within the grasp of most mobile fans of the sport. (See Point No. 2 – qualifications appear to be minimal).

We have compiled the following as a tribute to the formerly bow-tied arbiters of justice in the squared circle and as a guide of key points to the job for aspiring refs:

1. The referee will never disqualify someone for not breaking on the count of five unless the wrestler plans to hold on to it for a full five minutes to injure his opponent and establish himself as a psychopath.

2. Unlike referees in other sports who often simply look like they could be replaced by just about anyone, in wrestling it is actually often the case: the pin-head stripers can be replaced at any juncture by a celebrity, old wrestler, or even some guy who runs into the ring from the stands to count three after they’ve been knocked out.

3. The ref will usually draw out the count of three like a reality show cliff-hanger unless a roll-up pinning combination is involved. When that happens, the ref will count the three as if the building is on fire and every second saved is precious.

4. With more chairs being thrown around than your average concert riot, it’s not uncommon for wrestlers to take one off the nogin (it’s always a folding chair, as modernist furniture contains more sharp edges). Refs, however, have a considerably weaker constitution. Regardless of the severity of the impact, “accidentally” being bumped will send the referee flying to the mat or outside the ring and knock him unconscious for as long as required for someone to pull something underhanded. His miraculous recovery will automatically coincide with the heel going for the pin.

5. On a related point, when a ref takes a fall, he will land in such a way that his vision of the chicanery going on behind him is obscured as he stands up.

Here, Doink—number 9 in our list of the Worst Masked Wrestling Gimmicks of all Time, prepares to level a hapless Crush, who sadly, does not have eyes in the back of his mulleted head. The ref of course, is occupying a not uncommon position—often attributed to horizontal British boxers.

Also the ref bizarrely chooses not to look around as he comes to, but rather stares straight ahead or at the mat, thus giving the villain a few extra seconds to do something dastardly. (A common scenario: the heel partner outside the ring, with the ref turned 180 degrees, wails the baby-face with a championship belt—which carries considerable heft as its knockout power is greater than George Foreman clobbering someone with his grill)

8. When wrestlers are battling on the outside of the ring and the ref begins the count of 10, an epoch in human history will often pass before he completes the count in an important match. People will do somersault planchas into pile-drivers through tables, return to the dressing room to get their buddies’ impressions of the move, hold a press conference detailing the media’s exaggerated impressions of steroids in pro wrestling… Then they’ll stop for a late night snack, before finally getting gas and returning to the ring. The ref will be at 4.

10. If the ref is in any way athletic or larger than, say, Jimmy Mouth of the South Hart, he will probably make a biased call in a match and find himself embroiled in the classic “heel referee” skit that pro-wrestling likes to trot out whenever the creative well runs dry. (The greatest of these was, of course, Dangerous Danny Davis).

Of course, Facebook allows you to stay current with people you’d otherwise see coming down the street 10 years hence, slow down your walk as you think of how familiar the person seems, and then stare at the pavement and hoof it out of there as you begin to get paranoid that the person is actually a stranger who now thinks a public accosting is about to take place. It is also ready-made for procrastination. Even on the quietest days, hitting the refresh browser button will always bring up something in your news feed, even if it is just a mention of a particularly tasty breakfast waffle or how someone’s chicken coop in Farmville had to be gassed by government officials due to an outbreak of H1N1.

It takes time, and a series of angry private messages  from people you’ve offended to learn the finer points of Facebook etiquette — when to send friend requests, when to block someone who sends too many app invitations your way (answer, immediately is not quick enough), etc. Here we outline 10 points of Facebook etiquette that will make you the most popular of the 274 friends on your Facebook list, including the 10 with whom you’ve actually spoken in the past 5 years.

1. Treat a person’s wall like it’s a private forum invisible to other users and let fly with inside jokes and follow-ups to private conversations. “Great talking with you the other night, Bill. Be sure to let me know how that doctor’s visit turns out. Chin up mate!”

2. When choosing a profile pic, don’t make the mistake of choosing one of yourself in front of a mountain – nobody likes that kind of grandstanding – or of you at your buddy’s wedding because it’s the only time you’ve been photographed in a suit. Opt instead for ones that show a bit of your gregarious personality – cross-eyed from drink and flashing an obscene hand gesture, perhaps.

3. It’s important to keep a copy of your friends list handy – writing out the names by hand is the most efficient method we’ve found of compiling this information – to ensure that you can seek reprisals in the event of a “defriending”.

4. Surprise your significant other by changing your relationship status to single without warning.

Facebook sounds like goat's ass in French.

5. If you’ve just met someone, it is best to send a Facebook friend request to them immediately. If you can use your mobile phone or blackberry to do this on the drive home, do so. If not, pop into a nearby internet café. It’s not creepy to show you care.

5b. Or wait about eight months after meeting someone only once and then send them a Friend request. Failure to respond here indicates that the person in question really never had much interest in knowing you from the get-go.

6. Set your privacy settings to such a high level that even your closest friends are unable to glimpse your Facebook wall (which would be empty, but they don’t know that). This will leave them questioning whether they have caused offence and will encourage them to be even better friends.

7. Never go into detail when describing your current, negative mental state in a status update. Keep it as “Chuck is plain fed up” rather than “Chuck failed to stand up for himself as a manager once again demeaned him in front of colleagues.”

8. Keep libel laws in mind when settling personal scores on Facebook, but don’t forget the retributive power of uploading an unflattering pic of someone and tagging it from your account.

9. Don’t be charitable when it comes to using the “rate my friends” app. Let ‘em have it. A person who really is your 117th best looking friend, and has the 190th best personality should really know this information and use it as a tool for self-betterment.

10. There is no statute of limitations when it comes to sending friend requests to people. This is the case even if you are in your 40s and your last exchange with the person in question occurred in high school and consisted of, “Hey, you got an extra pen?” and the retort, “Uh, yeah, here.”

Unless they have a documentary crew waiting for them in the cruiser, cops will not hesitate to counter the finer points of your impassioned plea for civil liberties with the business end of a club. If you pose more of a threat than the combined intake of pastries and all that sitting around in a patrol car, get ready for a tasering.

The Taser has become a popular tool in the police arsenal, partly because a) its efficacy in rendering individuals cataleptic is comparable to the Sex and The City film franchise, and b) its use doesn’t require all the annoying paperwork that pumping someone full of hot lead does. A two-year Canadian study, found Tasers compared favourably from a safety standpoint to a baton, which, depending on one’s fondness for classical music or parades (and comprehensiveness of dental plan), doesn’t sound like a fun option either.

Of course, while some policemen enter law enforcement to serve and protect – others are just bullies with badges in the tradition of the cops David Cross was talking about. Here are some – wait for it – shocking reminders of the dangers of Tasers and why they should perhaps be abandoned in favor of macing, or those nets from the days of gladiatorial Rome. Here are our Top 10 Absurd Taserings!

 10. Tased For Taunting Tiger (The Profligate Pro Golf Player not the comparatively undersexed cat).

A few years ago, a heckler would have had a difficult time trying to come up with good material to use at a Tiger Woods game. His corporation-approved seemingly soulless personality just did not lend itself to a good heckle — a boring chant would be redundant while watching golf anyway. Fortunately, the revelations about his impressive score card off the golf course — par if you’re setting that standard on the exploits of an adult film star at his retirement shoot — made Tiger a hell of a lot more interesting, and gave the game’s hecklers some needed ammunition.

Recently, a fan at the Players Championship in Florida was tased after he allegedly refused to stop heckling Tiger Woods at the 11th hole of the game. Being that for the most part a mild electrical shock would be required to keep someone awake during a golf tournament, we can only protest this action against a man who was only trying to liven things up.

 DISHONOURABLE MENTION. Teen Tased at Phillies Game

Baseball is another game in which fisticuffs in the stands are often a welcome diversion from the tedium playing out on the field. A 17-year-old ran onto the field during the eighth inning of a Phillies game. As is the case with many of the people who do this, he didn’t seem to have any clear goal in mind when he took to the field, choosing to run in circles in the outfield. A police officer, who looks like he might have previously made the acquaintance of more than one cheese steak, gave chase. The teen could not have run forever, would have found escape difficult and wasn’t posing a threat. Nonetheless, the officer, perhaps sensing that there was no quick end to this slapstick scene in sight, fired a stun gun probe at the teen.

 

Step aside kids. Mom's been texting at stop lights again.

9. Mom Tased in Front of Kiddies

There are situations in which it would seem reasonable to lay down the voltage on a generally law-abiding mother of small children — perhaps when one hogs the floor at a PTA meeting. Pulling a mother over for speeding while talking on her cellphone and then zapping her when she insists that she doesn’t own a cellphone and wasn’t speeding is probably not going to stand up in court. It didn’t in this case as all charges were dropped against the mother and the officer’s use of the Taser was under investigation.

Given that in almost all of the other cases on this list, the police departments involved issuing statements supporting their officers’ use of force, this one must have been featured on Good Morning America, and so it was: 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Actual taser victim did not near the mass of individual pictured.

8. Woman, Eight Months Pregnant

Tasing a woman while her kids are in the minivan — bad form. Tasing a woman while the offspring is in utero: well, it’s harder to imagine worse form. An officer stopped a woman for speeding. She reportedly accepted the ticket, but refused to sign for it, thinking that it meant she was admitting guilt. The officer then called in for backup and, when the woman still wouldn’t sign for the ticket, the decision was made to arrest her. Officers tried to haul her out of the vehicle, but this defiant bearer of human beings grasped the steering wheel and couldn’t be budged. Rather than, say, waiting for her to need to exit the vehicle to pee — which mothers that far along apparently feel the need to do quite often — they tased her.

If this were a comic book, the unborn child could have been expected to have been born with a superpower, but she wasn’t, nor was she harmed — the woman delivered a healthy baby girl a month later.

7. Elderly Woman, 87, hooked up to oxygen tank

We hereby recommend that tasers not be used in a situation where the person getting tazed could reasonably be expected to lapse off to sleep within about five or 10 minutes. Such was the case here when police were called in to tend to a troubled 87-year-old woman who needed an oxygen tank to breathe. We don’t have this at number one, because Granny did pull a kitchen knife out from under her pillow and wave it at the officer saying that she had “killed four Japs” in WWII and she wouldn’t a bit adding his name to her shit-list. But again, stepping back from the bed and counting to 100, or maybe giving a non-fatal fiddle of the controls on the oxygen tank, could have resolved this situation in a much more face-saving way for the force than zapping someone who lived long enough to be able to make age-appropriate World War II racism-laced threats.

6. Elderly Woman, 72

A septuagenarian Texan was clocked going 60mph in a 45 construction zone,and instead of rewarding her for defying stereotypes, she was stopped by police. Ordered out of the vehicle, under threat of a Tasing she replied, “I dare you”, which, as we’ve seen in shows like Law & Order SVU, is license for someone flashing a badge to take you down to the dockyard and make an example of you. The Texas judicial system apparently operates like most schoolyards in that daring someone to do something completely justifies that person’s actions. The cop was cleared of wrongdoing and one commentator actually agreed with the decision: “Her age doesn’t give her a free pass on speeding.”

5. 68-year-old Half-Blind Stroke Victim

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are mostly depicted in either positive or benign terms in popular culture — some guy and his deaf pet wolf on a second-rate TV show;  the one exception being an ill-fated wrestling gimmick in the 1990s. They “always get their man”, so the saying goes (though one wonders how “their man” never sees them coming with those garish red coats they wear). But lately the Mounties have acquired a dismal reputation —accused of incompetence in the Air India Bombing and Tasering a mentally challenged Polish immigrant to death at Vancouver Airport.

They made it even more difficult to reconcile the image of Dudley Do-Right with reality when they tasered a guy who checked all the boxes of someone unlikely to pose a threat to anybody but an overworked nurse: he was blind in one eye, hard of hearing, had a neurological problem that affected his speech. Did we mention the guy was 68 and a stroke victim?

Well someone has to enforce the rules against double parking and that’s what the officer did here.

Editor’s Note: Between this and number 10, can we propose an upper age limit for Tasering? Say physically fit late 50s? Perhaps it should be a badge-stripping offense if an officer needs weaponry to get the better out of a subject carrying more prescriptions than weapons.

4. 10 Year Old Arkansas Girl

We could also use an age limit on the low side. Let’s say 13, but only if the suspect is one of those 13-yaer-olds who smokes cigarettes, gets five o’clock shadow and looks like he’s been working at an auto mechanic’s shop for the past five years.

An officer was sent to collect a 10-year-old girl upon her mother’s request. This seems an unnecessary waste of an officer’s time when psychotropic drugs dropped down the gullet of overly rambunctious youngsters seem to work for so many parents, but we’re not experts on this sort of thing. The officer showed up at the house and found the girl on the floor kicking and screaming. The mother told the officer to break out the Taser, which he did. Defending his officer’s actions, a supervisor said the Tasering was “very, very brief”, a half-Tase, perhaps? Maybe even a quarter-shocker? We don’t want to test out this theory, but we’re guessing that even the briefest Tasing is far more unpleasant than a static shock from clothing.

3. Not so Sweet Ohm Alabama for Deaf Mentally-challenged Man

Having to crap in public is never pleasant, but it’s made less so when you have to wait to do it, as you know that barely any time has elapsed between defecations. Police had received a complaint that a man was taking so long in the washroom of a Dollar Store that he should have been slipped a fibre supplement under the stall door. They were called in to haul him out, however he didn’t respond to their knocking on the door, and, calls of “Hey buddy, you stuck?”, or whatever it was they said.  If he had responded, it would likely have been coincidental — request for extra bog roll perhaps — as the man was deaf. Cops nonetheless used pepper spray and Taser to haul him out.

2. Cops Taser Unarmed, legless Guy in wheelchair

Please read the description carefully, it says “unarmed, legless” guy. We were unable to find a case of a cop tasering an armless, legless guy, but our lives are too rich to fritter away by paying such slavish attention to thoroughness. Still one would think that a man being legless — in the amputee, rather than drunken sense, although maybe he was that too — would have been enough to prevent his number from coming up in the “You Just got TASED” sweepstakes, but then again, who are we to question the actions of law enforcements? Well, The Shark Guys, of course! In their report, officers wrote about a hostile crowd forming as they were trying to get the suspect into custody, presumably in an attempt to justify their actions.  If a crowd witnessing a legless man getting on-the-spot electroshock therapy isn’t somewhere on the emotional spectrum between “sickened” and “enraged”, then that is not a crowd of which we would want any part.

1. Blind Woman with Cancer Tasered

We’ve brought you the elderly, children, a stroke victim, a deaf guy and a man without legs. Next on our countdown of Disabled People Dazed By The Taze, we go all the way to Dayton Ohio to bring you a woman who not only had cancer but was blind too yet still got the zap.

Officers knocked on the woman’s door, looking for her son who had an outstanding warrant. She opened the door and when they announced they were police, she freaked out, as apparently someone had tried that on her before in a robbery. In what sounds like some bad police spin, a spokesman said, “She was able to force herself down on to the floor and not be cooperative.”  How do you force yourself to the floor? And is any mobile person without this ability? After that she apparently grabbed on to the leg of the officer and that’s when the tasing happened.

So, without further ado, we’re going to raise Catholic school girl kilts on the phenomenon of jailbait minstrelsy with this our Top 17 Jailbait Songs of all Time.

17. Seventeen by Winger

Choice Lyrics: I’ll show you love like you’ve never seen. She’s only seventeen (seventeen). Daddy says she’s too young, but she’s old enough for me.”

Moral relativism in verse. While it’s fashionable to dump on rap for sexism and pairing of gaudy jewellery with athletic-attire (ok, that’s more us), people forget that in the late 80s, people punched air to leering hair metal, which often expressed sentiments not unlike those said to an officer of the court by a registered sex offender.

16. Christine Sixteen by KISS

Choice Lyrics: “I don’t usually say things like this to girls your age, but when I saw you coming out of the school that day, that day I knew, I knew, I’ve got to have you, I’ve got to have you”

Again, lyrical sentiments that sound like something jotted down in a police report.

From the “slowly circling the elementary school parking lot in a tinted van” school of songwriting.

15. All in the Name Of…by Motley Crue

Choice Lyrics: “She’s only fifteen, she’s the reason, the reason that I can’t sleep. You say illegal, I say legal’s never been my scene.

Not exactly a GPS when it comes to moral compasses, Motley Crue weigh in. If you’re female, came of age in the late 80s, and procured a fake driver’s license for a state a few time zones away from wherever the bouncer grew up, you might’ve crossed paths with and (hopefully) given a fake phone number to, these metal reprobates.  

14. Dead Wrong by Biggie Smalls

Choice Lyrics: “I like ‘em young, fresh and green with no hair in between, know what I mean?”

Arguably one of the most offensive songs in the entire hip hop canon (and that’s saying something).  We’d reproduce the rest here, but this snippet is the most uplifting verse.  

Dishonorable Mention: “Catholic Girls” by Frank Zappa
Choice lyrics: In a little white dress/Catholic girls/They never confess/Catholic girls/I got one for a cousin/I love how they go/So send me a dozen

Zappa riffs on the wellspring of many a an underage-baiting rock tune with this one which also includes lyrics about a priest using the confessional to hand out more than Hail Marys.

13. 13 and Good by Boogie Down Productions

Choice Lyrics: “I’m twenty five. She shucked and kinda (indecipherable)
And said, “hee, hee, hee I’m only 13. 13!! I need a quick escape. That’s statutory rape”.

KRS-One, as evidenced by the last line—perhaps the only member of this list fit to offer legal counsel—that is, unless the judge instructed the jury to disregard his “Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone” acronym.

12. Hey Nineteen by Steely Dan

Choice Lyrics: “No we got nothing in common, no we can’t talk at all, please take me along/When you slide on down”.

The title: wishful thinking?

Honorable Mention: What’s your Name? by Lynyrd Skynyrd

Choice Lyrics: “The police said we can’t drink in the bar, what a shame.”

11. You’ve Never Been This Far Before by Conway Twitty

Choice Lyrics: “I can feel your body tremble as you wonder what this moment holds in store”.

These days, if you lose your virginity past 21 it’s probably a result of overactive sweat glands or the mental chains of religion. While this song is not explicitly about an underage girl, it could very well be and besides, its overall creepiness, possibly the worst romance song you could ever play in the boudoir, lands it a slot in our, fittingly, 17-and-under list.  

10. Jailbait by Motorhead

Choice Lyrics: “Hey baby you’re a sweet young thing, still tied to mommy’s apron strings, I don’t even dare to ask your age, it’s enough to know you’re here backstage.”

“A lady never tells her age.”

Tell that to the gavel-banger. If there are people who know a thing or two about sneaking into clubs underage—it’s musicians—who, at a young age, often snuck in to see favorite performers so they could emulate the carefree/occasionally illegal sex/copious amounts of cocaine lifestyle they would be rewarded with if they ever got famous themselves.

9. Francine by ZZ Top.

Choice Lyrics: “My Francine just turned thirteen, she’s my angelic teenage queen.”

A fitting entry in the BP gulf containment cap standards set by the rest of the  songs on this list. Another interesting line: “If I caught her with my mother’s son, I’ll call her daddy and get my gun”.

8. Stray Cat Blues by the Rolling Stones

Choice Lyrics: “I can see that you’re fifteen years old, no I don’t want your I.D.”

The fake I.D. opened lots of legs and doors and was a little bit of plastic and ingenuity that turned seedy bars into multi-generational social mixers. As far as the Stones in their heyday, it seems I.D.s, fake or otherwise, weren’t required. Back when Jagger wasn’t leather and newt, you could imagine Stones security/T-shirt vendors/sound-check guys ushering girls of indeterminate age backstage.

7. The New Style by the Beastie Boys

Choice Lyrics: “If I played guitar I’d be Jimmy Page, the girlies I like are underage.”

A more tongue-in-cheek song than the prededing one, where Jagger put the “ick” in “Mick” (unless of course, you are Jimmy Page).

Dishonorable Mention: Brown Shoes Don’t Make It by Zappa
Choice Lyrics: “Only thirteen, and she knows how to NASTY. She’s a dirty young mind, corrupted, corroded…Well she’s thirteen today, and I hear she gets loaded.”

6. She Got To Move Me by Grand Funk Railroad

Choice Lyrics: “Never should have told me she was only fourteen years old. How was I to know?”

Grand Funk, as a point of interest, one of Homer J. Simpson’s favorite bands: ”The wild, shirtless lyrics of Mark Farner; the bone-crushing bass of Mel Schacher; the competent drum work of Don Brewer?!” There is not a station marked “personal responsibility” on this railroad.

Honorable Mention: Tonight I’m Gonna Rock you Tonight by Spinal Tap
Choice Lyrics: “You’re sweet but you’re just four feet, and you still got your baby teeth, you’re too young and I’m too well hung”

5. 13 by Brian Jonestown Massacre

Choice Lyrics: “Well I know you’re only thirteen honey, but I hoped you’d understand.”

Reach out and touch someone to foster understanding.

4. Jennifer by Styx

Choice Lyrics: “She’s seventeen, barely old enough to cry. A child in her father’s eyes. A woman every night.”

Styx, who earned an honorary place in our list of Awful Bands Named after Geographical Locales (honorary only on a technicality because Styx is a mythical place) certainly cement their status as terrible with this icky bit of verse to which we’re quite averse.

3. Jailbait by Ted Nugent

Choice Lyrics: “Well I don’t care if you’re just thirteen, you look too good to be true. I just know that you’re probably clean, there’s one lil’ thing I got do to you.”

We’re guessing the Motor City Madman is not substitute teaching sex-ed class while the school nurse is away.

2. Alabama Song  by The Doors/Kurt Weill/Brecht

Choice Lyrics: “Show me the way to the next little girl/Show me the way to the next pretty boy”

Jim Morrison could’ve altered the “pretty boy” 1927 original with “show me the way to the next Rotary Club so we could raise funds for the new nursing home”, but elected instead to go with “show me the way to the next little girl”. Incidentally, this is probably what Polanski said at Jack Nicholson’s mansion.

Dishonorable Mention: Jailbait by Aerosmith/Jailbait by Wishbone Ash
Choice Lyrics: “Whatchya see in daddy’s eyes, check the voice, ain’t no surprise / “I’m wondering why your face no longer shines, I’m wondering why your face no longer shines”. For the latter, we”ll give you three guesses. A list could’ve been comprised solely of songs called “Jailbait”.

1. Jailbait by Andre Williams

Choice Lyrics: “Trying to get away, from that jail bait…It’s a rough temptation, but a common invitation.”

RSVP a “thanks, but no thanks.”

2. Bourne Again: Jason Finds Christ

3. The Year of Living Vicariously

4. License to Grill

5. Conan the Contrarian

6. The Replacement Seat Fillers

8. The World Will Do For Now

9.  The Fasting and the Curious

10. Iron-Deficient Man

11. Ong Bak III: Thai Backpacker

12. Das Paddle Boot

13.  Johnny Anemic

14. The Texas Chainsaw Ice Sculpting Competition

15. Live and Let Live

Some jobs are just more important than others and we include ourselves in that assessment. Writers give people things to read in the bathroom and balance out the pictures in pornography, but they cannot be called upon to, say, remove a gall bladder (posthumously doesn’t count). Writers block means insomnia and Exedrine hangovers — surgeon’s block means a malpractice suit.

Here we offer 10 professions that could be eliminated and the aftereffects would be less severe than a night on non-alcoholic beer. These are our Top 10 Useless Jobs!

10. Life Coach
Considerably more useless than a psychologist (many of whom can be replaced by bartenders in a place that does poor business), a life coach is for those who really need a financial planner to tell them to stop wasting money on a life coach.

Qualifications: None. In fact, the defining trait of the life coach is that he or she has never been successful at anything other than being a life coach.

Ideal for: Those who have previously made no contribution to society or former consultants looking to add a few more syllables to their business cards.

9. Nutritionist
Registered dietitians go to school and learn complex food chemistry as part of a rigorous four-year degree program. Anyone with regular bowel movements who ingests organic oatmeal can call themselves a ‘nutritionist’.

Qualifications: An ability to find out which cantaloupe is ripe simply by tapping on it.

Ideal for: Anyone incapable of completing dietitian’s training who feels at home discussing sojourns to the crapper with perfect strangers.

8. Chiropractor
A license to print money as treatments are ongoing and involve the continuous application of whatever it is they do, which has no scientific basis and as a result is not covered by state or provincial health care plans.

Qualifications: Chiropractic College, which is to medical school what those coin-operated kiddie plane rides at the mall are to aviation school.

Ideal for: Anyone with a GPA hovering above academic probation whose last science course involved building a volcano.

7. Travel Agent
Video killed the radio star. Digital killed the travel agent. With the ease of the internet and sites like Priceline, you can book a flight and hotel from bed before someone with a real estate blazer, headset and age-old brochures brews their morning coffee.

Qualifications: Increasingly, this job requires someone able to keep the developments of modernity at a comfortable distance and those who hate having to deal with too many customers.

Ideal for: People who like to catch up on their mall shopping during smoke breaks and find it exciting to direct nationals to embassies during a coup.

6. The Guy who Holds the Stop Sign to Indicate Construction.
Surely a plum job — standing around holding a sign and staring at traffic while your fellows are breaking their backs digging ditches like they’re on a chain gang. Presumably this function could be replaced by sticking the stop sign in a potted plant, or to reflect constantly changing conditions, the sign could be two-sided and attached to a rope — when the road is accessible, a worker could pull the rope to change stop to go.

Qualifications: Must have protective safety garb despite the only danger being enraged motorists and be able to stand for hours on end without any human interaction whatsoever — the non-sitting version of being a travel agent.

Ideal for: Those who aspire to catcall women and fulfill construction worker stereotypes without working so hard in the summer heat that their eyeballs sweat.

5. Gym Teacher
Teachers are occasionally reviled because they get their summers off and some update their material less frequently than a cruise-ship comedian. While some teachers inspire and encourage, others are called gym teachers. They blow whistles and sometimes get beaned by basketballs.

Qualifications: The ability to divide in half—as this is how a soccer/softball team is chosen during gym class—basic knowledge of dodge ball, softball, basketball and soccer. In other words, the vast majority of North Americans could fill in for a gym teacher and the kids wouldn’t be any the wiser.

Ideal for: People whose dreams of athletic glory were ruined by injury, the drink, and delusions (about 33.3% each).

4. Librarian
Sadly, the one-time mainstay of pornography — the sexy Rapunzel librarian who whips off their glasses and is stacked in the stacks — is being usurped by technology. Libraries are using automated systems to store and retrieve books and many books in our lifetime will be available in digital format and it’s s unlikely that the folks at Google force employees at their Seattle headquarters to undergo intensive training in the Dewey Decimal system.

Qualifications: A MA degree that is the single biggest waste of a year’s salary that isn’t  Journalism Grad School.

Ideal for: Loners, the homely—a Venn diagram of which would be one circle.

3. Postal Worker. The point at which postal worker jumped the shark as a profession was probably when junk mail began outweighing actual mail in their bags. Their days are numbered — they can’t go on distributing TV Guide to geriatrics and utility cutoff notices to non-payers forever.

Qualifications: The ability to read the handwriting of someone so far removed from mainstream society that they still send letters by post.

Ideal for: Homicidal maniacs who love the outdoors and have yet to start a militia group.

2. Futurist. In 20 years, bike lanes will be redundant because the Tour Du France will be airborne and everyone will eat ground-up pellets to improve cognitive function.

Don’t think so? You have no future, ironically, as a futurist.

Qualifications: Special DVD box-set of Star Trek and a penchant for asking unanswerable questions on Infowars forums.

Ideal for: People who match pony-tails with blazers and not in a court-room, or a Vermont organic tea-shop-like setting.

1. Personal Trainer. Basic literacy and being able to discern graphical illustrations slapped on the side of your average exercise machine, should put this profession out of commission quicker than something torn to get out of the company golf tournament.

Qualifications: A penchant for dressing in sweats every day and not being on welfare or a gym teacher.

Ideal for: People who cannot get enough gym time and aren’t presently in a state penitentiary.

———-

Want a job that pays you in nothing but guffaws and the occasional chortle? Then do we have the gig for you — Shark Guys Twitter follower! Follow us here and enjoy tweets so sweet they will rot the teeth right out of your head.

Customers like us are essential to the operations of a gym as no fitness club in the world would be able to accommodate every one of the customers on its rolls if they all decided to show up at once for a good sweat. They depend on people taking out expensive yearly contracts out of guilt and a desire not to have a stroke by winter, visit a few times, and then forget all about it. It should be noted too that many fitness clubs if not the vast majority are affiliated with criminal enterprise, as signing a load of bogus names up for memberships is a good way of laundering money.

While the prospect of being mobile after the age of 40 does hold a certain allure, gyms are simply not the kind of places we enjoy visiting on a regular basis. Fitness clubs have an artificial feel to them, created as they were to help keep our muscles from atrophying in the way that honest labor used to before the age of cubicles and repetitive strain injuries. They wouldn’t be so bad though if they were just big empty rooms full of exercise equipment and posters of people who in no way resemble you. To quote Charles Bukowski quoting John Paul Sartre: “Hell is other people. Right on and through the target.” Other people ruin the gym experience, and they are all of a type. Here are the Top 10 People You See at the Gym!

10. The criminal

Along with strip clubs, auto mechanic’s garages and roofer conventions, gyms are a great place for your average Joe to meet criminals. As mentioned above, fitness clubs are a popular choice of business for criminals looking to put a bit of an honest sheen on their filthy lucre and as such they are often full of criminals. Ever notice that grunting guy with no neck who is there no pumping iron at different times every day and seems to have no regular work? Chances are he has at one point in the not too distant past caused the loose change to fall out of someone’s pockets by dangling them upside-down off the side of a balcony or strong-armed someone with debts incurred along perv row.

9. Mr (or Mrs) Multimedia

This guy has spent too much money on his electronic devices not to use them every waking moment of his life. Not wanting to risk being alone with his own thoughts for even a moment, Mr Multimedia can be seen with earphones in, chatting obnoxiously away on his iPhone or entering a more detailed musical program into the device than the collected works of Rodgers and Hammerstein.

8. The button pusher.

A close cousin of Mr Multimedia, the button pusher will oversee the pecking of the treadmill console as if he’s landing a 747 in heavy fog. None of the preset settings meet his exacting standards, and he will often temper his pace to facilitate his use of the controls.

7. The overzealous trainer.

Unless you’re Oprah-rich and are able to hire one to come home with you and snatch sandwiches out of your clutches, it’s unlikely that you’ll have much use for a personal trainer. In fact, most gyms trainers could be replaced by a poster beside each machine showing how to use it in a way that physically benefits you the most and that will not result in something heavy falling on your toes. But there is always the overzealous trainer at all gyms, someone who makes Burgess Meredith’s approach to training Rocky seem downright coddling. Supposedly, they are good for motivation, but we can’t think of anything that would motivate us out the door quicker than some guy with a squeeze water bottle trying to get us to do another 10 ab crunches.

6. The undiscovered talent.

The standard here to be seen type. This can either be a man or a woman at the gym in the hopes of finding bed company, or someone who thinks his physique has developed to the point that merely displaying it in public will somehow get him a bodybuilding contract and his own line of dodgy exercise equipment.

5. The groaner.

Usually seen with a weight-belt, the groaner sweats like he’s been kidnapped by Al Qaeda and is about as congenially disposed. About the size of your average Pamplona bull and as single-minded, the groaner will bench press his weight, your weight and the crushing weight of his latent sexual frustrations—and often drop dumbbells to the floor once he’s done enough reps. Steer clear of the groaner, unless there is some piece of equipment that is pinning down one of your extremities and he’s within earshot of your blood-curdling screams.

4. The naked guy.

Seems to have signed up for a gym membership just so he can stroll around naked in the changeroom like an emperor at the Roman baths.

3. The sweat hog.

A human backed up toilet of perspiration, the sweater will have to wipe down the equipment after merely standing over it.

2. The geek.

Wears a fanny pack, socks pulled up to his thighs and a headband that screams “let’s get physical”, which, as far as we’re concerned means fightin’ words and an elbow to the face.

1. The newbie.

Comes in around the first week of January, tears a muscle and undergoes the kind of rehab that keeps steroid-abusing NFLers in such high demand during the regular season.

People come to our website through various means, but unfortunately the once reliable sheer guilt of friends and family is waning this long into our run, so we’re on to other means of ensuring a steady readership. For example, we like phishing scams – word to the wise: if you’ve received a marriage proposal from Nigeria, well don’t bother picking up a robe cause we’re keeping the ring. 

And we’re also taking advantage of the free lunch put on by everybody’s favorite corporate behemoth, Google, and by that we’re not only referring to the often irrelevant ad content they give us – which contribute to not fewer than three cups of coffee per month (and that’s shared, bloody logistical nightmare for an international operation such as ours) – but the hits we get from insomniacs who plunk in strange search terms and get an unexpected dose of SharkGuys. 

There is some kind of science behind the way search engines work, but we’d prefer to regard it as mystery hoodoo beyond all explanation. We’re not going to go back on years of telling people that mathematics lessons have no practical value beyond knowing you’re being overtaxed and figuring out a tip – first, think a nickel, then think about why that cheap bastard you’re dining with has a wallet full of moths – but, BUT it does seem that Google determines its results based on some complex algorithms. 

We say if you’re that bloody smart in math, why don’t you count cards at charity casinos and earn money in a way people can respect? All we know is what we’re told by our web services people who call us up when we’ve both been heavily medicated and have cool compresses clamped on our respective foreheads to tell us who came to TheSharkGuys.com and why they did.  Sometimes it’s friends, like Cracked.com, but often those who visit us are on a different, stranger quest.  Here, from our actual server information, are the Top 10 Strangest Google Search Phrases that The Shark Guys have seen… at least this month: 

10. Search term: “horror monkey murderer” 

There are few sights more disconcerting than a monkey leaping at you with a knife. Whoever typed in the above search phrase was likely looking for confirmation of his ape-phobia and he no doubt got on the first page of Google search results when he hit our: 

Top 10 Pissed Off Primate and Murderous Monkey Movies List 

9. Search phrase: “hang upside down machine as seen on tv” 

Exercise asks too much of us. Move, it asks. Don’t let your muscles atrophy, it suggests. Unfortunately, you cannot maximize the benefits of the exercises you manage to complete – like lifting a keg from your car — by being upside down at the time you do them. Perhaps the Googlers looking at this, hanging from the ceiling with one free arm clicking at a wireless mouse, were looking for tips on how they could abuse gravity for the benefit of their pectoral muscles, but instead they got our review on the Ab Circle Pro. 

8. Search phrase: david carradine death details taped balls 

Balls taping sounds like something a lacrosse coach would recommend without thoughts of his players’ ability to one day procreate, but anybody who entered the above was searching for the salacious details of David Carradine’s death. Mr Carradine chose to check out in the most controversial fashion imaginable — trussed up in a Bangkok closet. It was the kind of death that lends itself to hyperbole and sensationalism. Enter Maxim magazine. The Shark Guys responded to Maxim’s post. 

7. Search phrase: skate shoe foot stink 

After shit, the second last thing you’d want embedded in the sole of your shoe is a wheel. Skate shoes are irredeemably ugly, and, apparently, they also stink to the high heaven, yet another threat to the already comatose social lives of people who would wear them outside a park. Searchers in need of spray and less strenuous exercise would have found our list of the Worst Shoes. 

6. Search phrase: what is the most annoying thing you here while on the phone with a operator 

A glaring spelling mistake that makes us pity our good friends in India who are handling calls from these people. Since the advent of the interwebs, operators have become the zaftig chicks on prom night of the telecommunications world. While we used to call the operator to inquire what time it is and scream random obscenities at a stranger paid to take the call, their services are no longer considered crucial. Anybody with a pointy nose and Google can uncover the same information as an operator, so the annoying sound would be the whine of panic people get in their voices when they’re about to be made redundant. Googlers found our list of The Top 10 Most Annoying Voices. 

5. Search phrase: ladyboy hookers Toronto 

One of us lives in Bangkok and the other in Toronto, and here is a cultural exchange of an expected sort from our list of the Reasons Bangkok and Toronto are different. 

4. Search phrase: jalapeno bootyhole 

Regret over a restaurant selected in haste? Actually a commenter on our definitive list of The Top 20 Worst Masked Wrestling Gimmicks 

3. Search phrase: shark porn 

We’re troubled by what people could have been looking for here — sharp teeth and a nasty disposition should preclude all but the most attractive people from the industry — although the Chinese say shark fins inspire amore. Despite making no contextual sense whatsoever, this search led to our list of the Worst Imaginary Friends in Movies. 

2. Search phrase: you re an idiot for challenging a sumo wrestler to a slap contest 

A rare bit of sound wisdom from the search engine. While we have no idea what this pointing to on TheSharkGuys, we would like to relay the message that giving a sumo wrestler five across the eyes is a really dumb idea — as shown here. 

1. Search phrase Tips to date a friend’s cousin 

Our site has been consulted by people looking to tag the cousins of their closest friends, which is a welcome step forward from unapologetic incest. It is nicely paired with our first date tips. 

Honorable Mention: 

which star sign is most capable of murder 

All of them. See our previous post.