One of many redheads who it would be mighty satisfying to kick.

As the phrase “I will beat you like a red-headed stepchild” makes perfectly clear, carrot tops are despised by pretty much everybody. They can’t step out of the shade for longer than a 10 count without getting a sun burn and among their ranks are the despicable likes of David Caruso, Lindsay Lohan and, of course, Carrot Top. If you go further back and take a look at some historical fire crotches (thank you urban dictionary), it reads like a grocery list of the worst people ever to inflict themselves on our planet: Lizzie Borden, Martin Van Buren, Oliver Cromwell – dirt-bag city, basically.

At last, however, society has dropped its gloves and put gingers, as they are also known, on notice. The TV show South Park sparked it all with an episode in which Cartman gives a class lecture on how red-haired people are basically soulless vampires (see below). Inspired by Cartman’s rant, Facebook groups began to pop up and the anti-Ginger movement was afoot. The largest Facebook group boasted some 4,000 members, testament to the fact that people do not like the red-hairs beyond enjoying the opportunity to ask whether what’s hanging on the windows is color coordinated with an area typically left out of direct sunlight.

The Facebook groups spawned “Kick a Ginger Day”, which apparently was yesterday. Canadians were asked to send their penny loafers in the general direction of a redhead’s arse, and many did — so many that the RCMP got involved and school principals threatened serious punishments for anyone caught attempting to punt a carrot top.

The readers of The Globe and Mail report telling of Kick a Ginger Day must all have been gingers or have had their senses of humor sucked from their heads by them as they suggested banning South Park, jail terms for the kickers, and bellyached about the evils of bullying (for no insight whatsoever into what causes bullying click here). We, on the other hand, are laughing so hard that we may not be able to hold a drink steady this weekend.

To our ginger readers, if there are any of you left at this point, we offer you some solace in the fact that A) Kick a Ginger Day has passed (though we’re shining our steel-toeds in anticipation of next year) and B) Contrary to popular belief and as incredible as it may seem, red heads are the ones who have the most fun (well, except for yesterday). A 2006 study confirmed that red heads are a highly libidinous people and have way more sex than their more fortunately coiffed counterparts. We would put up with a day’s worth of kicking to be swinging in those circles.

There is, for instance, the automatic beer dispenser, which saves your dedicated drinker the nuisance of having to needlessly trouble the muscles in his legs by leaving the couch to get a beer (Note: This has yet to be mass-produced as far as we know. It will probably take a bit of tinkering as the prototype model does appear to carry the risk of bloodying the nose of an eight-year-old who just happens by while daddy “orders up another.”) Someone has undoubtedly tackled the problem of the other reason why a drinker needs to get up, though we, in the interests of keeping down breakfasts, did no further research into that.

Pictured here is another addition to the beer accessories market and it is one that makes the beer rocket-packs we covered (3-liter beer dispensers strapped to the back of a ball-gown-wearing waitress who may or may not be sporting a pair of giant black wings) seem downright sensible. The remote control beer pager is designed for beer drinkers who may have misplaced their drinks at a party. If your beer is adorned in one of these babies, you need only press a button on a mini-remote that attaches to your belt (presumably, in keeping in mind the target demographic [pictured none too subtly on the cozy itself] this will also clip just as easily on to a pair of loose-fitting sweatpants) and the beer cozy will light up and “let loose a satisfying belch.” Class.

We can appreciate the need for tracking mechanisms on beer: after all who hasn’t swallowed the odd cigarette remainder after picking up the wrong beer at a party? That said, a critic might point out the fact that the loud belch that accompanies the paging is both excessive and potentially confusing since at any party where this sort of thing is present, a loud satisfying belch would not be the distinctive sound the makers of this seem to think it would be, and, not to be a couple of spoilsports, but wouldn’t simply placing your beer into this unsightly thing be enough to distinguish it from all others without the technological intervention?

Such niggling points aside, the price of the remote control beer pager is, depending on how you value money, somewhat reasonable at $20 a pop and an item to keep in mind for the holiday shopping season (provided you do not live with or intend to party with the intended recipient). Features:

• Remote Activation up to 60 feet.
• Unique belt-clip feature on remote.
• Removeable cupholder.
• Keeps your beverage chilled.
• Works through walls!
• Acts as a coaster and a coozie!

To ‘redact’ is a to make multiple texts appear unified by theme, famously in One Thousand and One Nights. More commonly, ‘redacted’ refers to the removal of sensitive information prior to publication, such as in an intelligence dossier or by editing a video so it’s ironic that despite the title, and narrative device of a video diary, nothing is really ‘redacted’ here.

The film follows the exploits of a would-be auteur Angel Salazar (Izzy Diaz, a three time valet on Entourage heads a no-name cast), who chronicles the often banal, yet at times intensely harrowing exploits of his fellow squadron members stationed in Samarra, Iraq, with video footage he hopes will one day get him into film school.

His pals include the usual assortment of war movie stereotypes, the gruff, yet kind African American Sergeant Sweet, the backwoods trigger-happy dimwit, ridiculously named ‘Reno’ (with a sibling ‘Vegas’),  who doesn’t even bother feigning a Cajun accent, the honorable do-gooder McCoy (the real?) and the nervous nebbish, the butt of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ jokes, ‘Blix’, a highly unlikely nickname derived from the Swedish UN weapons inspector.

Without a backstory to engage, they’re all left to react solely on instinct and the southerner and gruff sergeant happily oblige, dispassionately blowing away a pregnant mother and son and warning the “Midget Ali Babas’ tugging at their gear are all spies, respectively.

Blix is interviewed on camera by Salazar reading aloud the Maugham-penned epigraph to ‘The Appointment in Samarra‘,  about meeting your maker in Iraq—not exactly ‘Win one for the Gipper’ reading material on the battlefront and then the young documentarian is fascinated by a large scorpion, which he films succumbing to an attack by numerous tiny ants. With warriors like these, the exit strategy should be a quick exit.

POV camera work interspersed with fake French documentary footage about the extreme dangers of checkpoints, online video clips, blogs and grainy security footage sets the backdrop of the film—intensely claustrophobic and innards-wrenching,  with bomb sniffing dogs and fingers on trigger, split seconds between life and breathing a final breath, eased with comic relief during down time:  ‘You’re so white, you wouldn’t wear yourself after Labor Day’ or ‘Is it wrong to fall in love with the King of Clubs?’ during a poker game with nudie cards.

However before and after the main plot point—a plan to rape a young girl whose home was just raided— is introduced, Salazar’s camera details racism, bigotry, xenophobia, sexism of every stripe that is not only extremely patronizing to soldiers, but the audience as well, expected to believe that a video camera can be casually brought out at every turn and without any recourse through the chains of command.

‘Hajjis’ and ‘Shit-birds’ are used in every day conservation as is ‘Sand Nigger’, casual racism despite their professed admiration for and camaraderie with the black Sergeant Sweet.

When the rape scheme reaches its ugly conclusion, the do-gooder McCoy who took no part in it, yet didn’t tip off any hire ups, confides in his no-nonsense military dad over webcam and is sternly warned against whistle-blowing, yet another bad apple in De Palma’s orchard harvest.

Platitudes like ‘an American life is worth that of 100 Iraqis’, and ‘Welcome to the fuckin’ army!’, are sounded and grim statistics flashed across the screen courtesy of the mock impartial French doc (as if their hands were clean as a major international arms dealer).

The film then reaches a conclusion as inevitable as an exploded IED: McCoy’s testimony discounted, subsequent mental breakdown and justice unserved—not by anything ‘redacted’ mind you, but by good old fashioned threats, lack of video evidence, witness corroboration, and then moral equivalency justice meted out through Jihadist beheading.

As the Puccini score reaches a crescendo, a photo montage of Iraqi victims attempts a poignancy not delivered by the preceding 90 minutes (and even then, their eyes were apparently blacked out for fear they might sue), 90 minutes of flunked cinema verite, uni-dimensional characters and bi-national condescension.

Chris, Toronto

Apparently, during the Penny Lane sessions when he penned his 14-minute opus, Macca was gleaning inspiration from avant garde composer John Cage, perhaps best known for 4′33, a ‘completely silent composition’, which prompts the question: ‘if you were ever to attend a live performance, when would you applaud?’ Click here for an extraordinarily uninteresting sample, where the piece ‘allows the audience to absorb the sounds around them’, or to put it another way, the most conspicuous time to head to the bathroom.

One thing that can be said about the Cage piece, is that it can be performed by any instrument regardless of whether it’s in tune, or by anyone who can count to ‘273′, has access to throat lozenges and who doesn’t have gas (see the phrase ’silent but deadly’)

Further cementing his legacy as the least interesting Beatle, Sir Paul’s musical direction for these recording sessions included the decidedly un-Cagian: ”just wander round all of the stuff and bang it, shout, play it. It doesn’t need to make any sense.”

Speaking of not making sense, getting this song released is going to require legal challenges a la passage of the US bailout bill: approval from the widows Lennon, Harrison as well as Ringo Starr, even if his artistic contribution to the Beatles is comparable to those transients Picasso painted during his ’Blue Period’.

McCartney also expressed an interest recently in working with Bob Dylan, who unlike Paul has put out some of the most vital music of his career during the last decade, in what these days would be an asymmetrical collaboration akin to rolling an organ grinder across the stage during a performance by the Vienna Philharmonic.

In other Beatles news, their back catalog is now available for online purchase in a case of not only shutting the barn door while the horse is already gone, but putting a jockey on it and running it around the track a few times as everyone from Tallahassee to Tuvalu has downloaded everything the Fab Four has ever put out, including Carnival of Light, if and when it does see the light of day.

The dirge also apparently contains lots of organ and shouting ‘Barcelona’, but no word if the Maharishi was kicking a soccer ball around the studio during the recording.

Completists eagerly await the Revolver bass guitar tune-up sessions of 1966.

We included only one tale involving royalty in our who’s who of drunks, The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery, and that concerned a footman who was adding whiskey to the water bowls of the royal corgis – an offense which, although funny, resulted in his demotion (and terrible canine hangovers during which the corgis wrote some of their best stuff).

Since then, when any royal is in the news we get all misty-eyed and almost regret the fact that this colorful family is no longer cracking the colonial whip and sending the degenerate misfits among their nobility to oversee our affairs.

Prince Harry, the third in line to the throne (the one the kings sit on, not where you can be found the morning after a night at Uncle Chili’s House of Hot), has long impressed us.

Unlike his elder brother, who has of late made a half-hearted effort to paint himself a fun loving guy by piloting RAF helicopters to private functions, Prince Harry has delivered time and again with drunken partying antics that, had they taken place in the 70s, would have caused someone to go wake up Rod Stewart and tell him all about it.

Prince Harry has partied with strippers, been involved in drunken scuffles with paparazzi, snorted vodka (for those interested in substances more traditionally snorted, check out our Top 10 Cocaine Songs of All Time) and… well… dressed up like a Nazi for a bit of a Halloween laugh.

And just now, when royal watchers figured the young man had his Windsor House in order, he’s befriended celebrity product endorser and star of cinema verite Paris Hilton, who recently took a shine to the prince’s girlfriend Chelsy.

According to reports they ‘talked for ages’, a doubtful prospect indeed as the heiress has a vocabulary less than what an adult gorilla can sign.

Recently, the prince’s old man Chuck was the subject of a 60th birthday roast during which Robin Williams regaled the crowd with jokes about Monica Lewinsky which would not have been out of place if it were 1998 and a “Yo, yo, whassup Wales? House of Windsor, keep it real” introduction that no doubt kept the coat check girls busy with a bottleneck to the exit.

Interesting, online ad competitors like Text Link Ads are completely buried by Google and unsearchable there, with no page ranking. This is understandable, as if we were a railroad we wouldn’t want someone else hauling freight on our rails and it seems T-L-A is that smelly hobo turfed between stops.

Consider our ad placements the cyber-equivalent of that guy at a spoken-word performance who comes around at the end with a hat, forcing you to feign distraction so that you can hold on to your small change and lower-denomination currency and thus be able to tip that attractive bartender consistently throughout the night.

Google AdSense works on some sort of mysterious computer-language-based Voodoo that we don’t have a clue about, however it seems to base what ads are displayed on the text that appears on a given page.

Thus, when we posted a blog in tribute to the drinking prowess of a certain young prince among drinkers, all sorts of advertisements began to pop up that were somehow based on his name and title – gossip sites, genealogy services offering to trace your heritage back to the big Kahunas of various medieval fiefdoms, and travel offers to places with royal sounding names like… [Editor's note: we won’t mention the town's name here, but let’s just say that it is the westernmost point on the TransCanada highway, which makes matters convenient once you’ve soaked up a bit of the sad local life and are ready to jump in the ocean]

However, given the nature of this blog, and The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Debauchery, the drunk compendium from which it sprung, ads more related to drinking, drunkenness, and the various accouterments that can spruce up this lifestyle do thankfully appear (including ones that are a little too appropriate, such as the ads that ask if you drink too much wine or another that wonders if you could stand to lose some beer-fat).

Of these, our absolute favorite thus far is from the Frankfurt-based “Rocket Packs Getränke-Rucksack-Systeme”, a company that sells “Beer rocket-packs”. This is a huge step up from the beer drinking hat popularized by fans of American sporting events who don’t want to get up to get a drink (and who presumably wear diapers to deal with the natural corollary of that kind of beer consumption).

Getranke’s website itself is not text-heavy, and most of it is in German, however the pictures seem to tell the story: the company sells packs that can keep a two or three liter tower of beer cool so that drinkers can be served on the move. A serving person straps on the jetpack-looking like device (at times while wearing a ball gown, which may or may not be offset by a pair of gigantic, devil-swooping-in-on-a-bad-dream pair of black wings) and offers freshly-tapped beer for thirsty patrons. In terms of venues where this sort of thing might be popular, it seems from their publicity material (see above photo) that no place is too toney to have a lady in high-heels squirt beer into your glass from a hose attached to a backpack.

We here www.thesharkguys.com thank all of our inadvertent advertisers and commend Getranke especially for coming up with a product that makes shameless shilling fun.

Ein prosit!

Well, according to a recent study making the news, that future Esso gas jockey was not behaving in this way simply to scar your memories of childhood or to encourage you to take Jiu-Jitsu lessons; he did these things because they gave him pleasure.

Presumably not wanting to pollute their results with an over-large sample, scientists rounded up eight teens between 16-18 years old with a history of being the school asshole and eight others with no such tendencies — those recovering from the wedgies doled out by the first group as it were.

They hooked all of them up to some neural-imaging equipment and, Clockwork Orange-style, showed them a series of violent images, some of them accidental, like  a hammer dropping on a toe, and some of them deliberately violent, like someone slamming the lid down on a piano player’s fingers. The bullies’ brains lit up like a pinball machine whenever they saw someone in pain. (Admittedly, the thought of a piano lid being slammed down on the fingers of some wannabe Mozart tickling the ivories did give at least one of us a quiet giggle). The control group showed no such reaction.

That pain and pleasure are often connected comes as no surprise to anyone who has ever visited a fetish club, read a Chuck Palahniuk novel, or enjoyed the rush that accompanies rapping somebody on the head with a rolled-up newspaper. That bullies enjoy inflicting pain comes as no surprise to anyone who remembers the belly laughs that would echo throughout the school yard mid-recess torture session.

Still though, this study, with its test group of eight, has received major play on the Net, and the suggestion has been made that it could be used to help development better ways of dealing with bullying. It might just do that, but cages — placed at the backs of classrooms and with long poking sticks available for the use of other students — are  a far cheaper and more permanent solution.

Generally, more ear pleasing noises can be heard at a hog-calling contest for the hearing impaired than your average karaoke bar.

Now, there are some songs that take a certain amount of panache to bring down the house and  avoid being drowned out by some depressed drunk firing coins into the jukebox to hear the real thing. The sonic heights of Bohemian Rhapsody, for one, are best attempted in the confines of the shower provided you close the bathroom window first and don’t own any jittery pets.

With this in mind, if you you are someone given to making more ears bleed than a peckish Mike Tyson, it’s best to call for backup to double the odds that a member of your twosome, even if they ordinarily might not be able to carry a tune without one being strapped to their chest with an explosive device, can handle the sonic load. (With the added benefit of having a partner in crime against musicality, free to refresh your drink during alternating verses)

With four or five pitchers of stale beer often a performance prerequisite (the equivalent of warm-up stretching for the average warbler), it’s even that much more important if you’re going to climb that karaoke mountain, to have a Sonny to your Cher (and ensuring proper safety precautions as you scale back down it) so that fewer words are missed scrolling by on the monitor–a level of skill that might be a precursor to some of the sobriety tests that might have to be passed later on in the evening. [Editor's note: See The Top 10 Bar Songs of All Time and Top 10 Drinking & Driving Songs of All Time]

Given people’s election fatigue, we figured we’d lighten it up a bit and present the following Top 10 Karaoke Song Duets of All Time, so that 12 scotch and sodas into your next bachelor party, if you’re able to convince someone else to share your bad decision-making, you won’t have to be both Barbara Streisand and Neil Diamond for ‘You Don’t Bring me Flowers’.

10. Picture by Kid Rock & Sheryl Crow. There are some people who’d say that Kid Rock is a multi-talented instrumentalist and songwriter and these people would be in attendance at his family reunion. Generally speaking, someone with migraines, their head in a vice and getting squash balls shot off their ass cheeks makes sounds more pleasant to the ear than anything Mr Rock has ever put out, but the man should be given his due as he’s sporadically capable of rendering something decent, sort of like when a con grinds out a license plate.

Paired with Crow, who was once ridden by Lance Armstrong in between Tour de Frances, the lyric “I was off to drink you awaaaaaayy!” will be met with rousing cheers and much stale ale wiped down off the tables.

9. The Girl is Mine, by Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney. For those of you favoring affirmative action, this ‘up with people’ crowd pleaser (depending on exactly what kind of bar you’re singing in) lends itself to bi-racial performance as Michael Jackson was technically still black when this was performed and you can haul your own black friend out to bring the house down. ['Girl' can even be substituted for 'boy' during the Jacko parts to great applause]

8. Crazy in Love, by Jay-Z and Beyonce Knowles It’s a cliche to say that people have more money than God, but in this case, the power couple can underwrite the man upstairs, bail out Lehman Brothers and still have something left over to take each other somewhere nice. [Caveat: Jay-Z's rap comes at the 2 minute mark of this 4 minute song, leaving the male half in a performance in the unenviable position of having to chose whether to either dance awkwardly on the spot or keep their hands in their pockets throughout]

7. Broken by Seether and Amy Lee ‘Cause I’m broken when I’m lonesome’, a bit of emo redundancy from Seether and Amy Lee. A ’seether’ for those who were wondering, is a cooking pot and all things considered it’s a much better band name than ‘Cutting Board’.

6. Up Where We Belong Joe Cocker Jennifer Warnes

Joe Cocker, a guy who bears a superficial resemblance to Charlie Manson (see our Top 10 Horniest Cult Leaders of All Time) has a voice that sounds like he gargles with Lysol and whose taser-inspired gyrations are legendary, pairs up with the sweet alto of Jennifer Warnes for this Buffy St Marie penned ballad. Producer Don Simpson, apparently claimed “The song is no good. It isn’t a hit” and he was half-right, as anyone in the crowd when a couple of drunken lovebirds take to the stage to belt this one out.

5. I’ve Had the Time of My Life Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes: Ms. Warnes back again, this time teaming up with arguably the more righteous of the Righteous Brothers, Bill Medley. Her collaborations with Leonard Cohen are unlikely to be found in all but the most depressing bars on the planet. This song, guaranteed to thrill a crowd of people whose clocks stopped in the 1980s, featured prominently in the hit movie Dirty Dancing. On ‘Cheers’, Sam Malone in an attempt to bed Rebecca, has Bill Medley serenade her with ‘You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’. Not coincidentally, Dirty Dancing does this to every guy from the waist down.

4. Under Pressure David Bowie and Queen. This one, a good theme song for the workaday world, is an inexplicably popular choice on karaoke night. Bowie shows more range as an actor than as a singer and even though he and Freddy Mercury are both technically baritones, this will demand consummate karaoke professionalism. Most of the time it is a karaoke disaster, as is anything by either of these performers.

3. Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart Elton John and Kiki Dee Elton John may have put Kiki Dee on the map but a GPS is required to find her now. This was back in the days when Elton John’s music was fun to listen to — before he became a Sir and before he changed a few of the lyrics to his lamentable Marilyn Munroe-inspired piano dirge “Candle in the Wind” for Princess Diana — a song that will invite violence  upon you if you attempt to subject an audience of antsy drunks to it. For this one, you and your chanteuse partner will need to be quite peppy. For added effect, move around a lot and swing your arms to and fro.

2. I Got You Babe Sonny and Cher: In the 1960s Sonny and Cher were a popular act, also known as “Who’s that nebbish with that foxy chick?” Sonny, despite being one uncool looking hippy, did pen some memorable tunes — and at the very top of that list is “I Got You Babe,” which is a popular karaoke choice for couples to sing to each other right before their relationships collapse and they go to war over who gets to look after Fido every second Sunday in March. It’s always the drunkest and loudest couple in the bar who gets up to out-shout each other with this one. That they “got each other babe” is not in dispute and neither is the fact that nobody else in the bar would ever want to claim them.

1. Islands in the Stream Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton: Kenny Rogers, subject of arguably the funniest impersonation in the history of MadTV, can outcroon anyone within a 10-mile radius. While other country stars have had an artistic rebirth in their declining years — see George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash — Kenny has had pretty much the opposite, his most frequent gig being the late-night infomercial salesman hawking a “Best of Country” compilation that features, surprise surprise, a whole bunch of Kenny Rogers tunes. Still though, Islands in the Stream is the coup de grace of karaoke duets, a staple of veterans of the bar mic, and a sure sign that you’re in a place where you’d be hygenically better off drinking from the bottle.

If George W Bush’s term as president proved anything, it’s that teetotalers should not be allowed to hold high political office. Abstaining makes them ornery and self-righteous, while at the same time robs them of the liquid courage needed to do things like, say, tell Dick Cheney to wait in the hall. But the question now is what kind of drinker is Barack Obama, and can he be trusted to stay sufficiently sauced so as to bolster America’s international standing and keep Joe Biden from attacking someone on the commute in. Here then we offer a snapshot of Obama the drinker.

Obama, known as “Barry” in high school, got his substance-abuse career off to a good start. In a speech to high school students late last year, Obama cataloged some of his so-called “bad decisions” during that time. (He went to high school in Hawaai for chrissakes — it would have been a “bad decision” to be a straight-laced nerd). “You know, [I] got into drinking. I experimented with drugs [specifically marijuana with the occasional coke-snort]… There was a whole stretch of time that I didn’t really apply myself a lot.”

Sounds like a great fun guy, right? Well, just remember that George W Bush reportedly once passed out in a bathtub at a Superbowl Party thrown by Hunter S. Thompson. Bush was, to quote Thompson, “a rich, beer-drunk yahoo with a big allowance who passes out in your bathtub.”

Bush was a far more impressive and accomplished partier and substance-abusing slacker than Barack Obama could have ever hoped to be, yet just look how he turned out. Early partying credentials mean little over the long term. What’s more important is how the president-elect works mind-altering substances into his life now. While we suspect he’s no stranger to a bit of after-dinner reefer, that sort of thing just does not play politically, so we’ll have to focus on booze.

Fortunately for America, it seems that Barack Obama, while not the kind of guy whose undershirts will turn yellow from too much boozing, still enjoys the tipple. In March, he made the more impressive showing at a bar of the two Democrat candidates – Hillary did her best, as we blogged here, but really it was one for the road for her. Obama ordered a Yuengling beer – a politician’s choice since it is a popular and locally made Pennsylvania beer.

What was more telling were his comments after placing the order, “Is it expensive though?… Wanna make sure it’s not some designer beer or something.” Here Obama made the questionable move of showing contempt for designer/microbrewed beer. He risked painting himself as one of those guys who will mock you for purchasing a nice microbrew “because it tastes the same as any other beer they got. Why waste your money?”

To his credit though, Obama has went out of his way to stress the fact that despite polls showing that the wine and cheese set worship him like Dr. Phil before the truth came out, he still enjoys drinking beer. It may have just been a sweet song for Joe Sixpack (the less violent cousin of John “Domestic Incident” Case of 24), but when Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes suggested that Obama didn’t like beer, he took strong objection: “Where does the story come from that…I don’t like beer? ” Obama asked. “C’mon, man,”

Also, to Obama’s great credit: He has his own beer. It’s in Kenya, and called “Senator,” but when the locals there order it, they do so by saying, “Give me an Obama,” which is pretty damn cool.

So it’s a mixed report card for Obama, and we can only wait to see how he performs as an alcohol-consuming president to fully assess his worth as a drinker. Regardless, in the spirit of fresh starts and fresh pints, we join many a soused resident of Chicago in raising a glass to the new president-elect and hope that there’s more cause for celebratory drinking – as opposed to the misery-drowning drinking of recent times – over the next four years.

The humble fruit fly has been at the forefront of genetic research for more than a century (and inhabiting crappy apartments for 100 more) and recently, US Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who might be a faulty defibrillator and a traffic jam away from becoming president, has called their use as a research tool into question.

In 1901, Thomas Hunt Morgan bred generations of fruit flies, much like the prep station at your high school cafeteria, at his lab at Columbia. Through his research with them, he first described the phenomenon of ‘crossing over‘–two chromosomes of a homologous pair swapping equal segments with one another–not a TV show where some shady huckster describes gut feelings that cannot be explained away as an egg salad sandwich that spent too much time away from the fridge, that someone named ‘Kenneth’ is chatting with you amiably from the hereafter.

Hunt Morgan, for whom an important award in the study of genetics is named, is the father of modern genetics along with Mendel, and whose work furrows brows in college lectures from Olympia to the Florida Keys. The Vice President-to-be says that perhaps, after a century or more, it’s time to move on and in these times of belt-tightening, fire up the autoclave, sterilize the scalpels and make a few suggestions as to where budgetary corners can be cut (including apparently, research that was instrumental in identifying proteins underpinning theories about how say, autism works).

Now, we Shark Guys have called attention to Sarah Palin’s Yabba Dabba science in an earlier post, and her recent comments above prove she is, like someone on a diet high in oat bran, nothing if not consistent.

Comic legend John Cleese, who knew a thing or two about parrots, says Palin has ‘learned certain speeches‘ but is like a ‘nice looking parrot’, without a real understanding of the words she is producing. Kinda like Bush, except for the ‘nice looking’ bit.

He went on to say that Michael Palin, former cast mate on the Python show, is now the ’second funniest Palin’.

Much lower down on the comedy food chain, two Quebec DJs posing as French president Sarkozy, recently yanked the chain of the Wasilla Whackjob, who claimed the presidential race was ‘tightening’, by which she likely meant the ‘pythonesque grip’ if you will, the Obama / Biden ticket has around her neck and her aged tag team partner Johnny Mac.

These gaffes will likely sink the Republican twosome, unless they possess the recuperative powers of Jason Voorhees in his prime or The Terminator for that matter, who Mccain trotted out in a last ditch attempt to salvage his moribund campaign.

We raise a glass to the first black US president, along with a majority of our countrymen who favor Obama, 85% of Germans (according to Der Spiegel) and perhaps the rest of the world. We’ll even hoist a banana daiquiri if Florida comes through.

Get out and vote and may the best man (even one with the unfortunate initials, ‘B.O.’ ) win!!

The Shark Guys