Hi. My name is Ana Marie Cox. I just flew in from LA, and boy is my anus tired.

Thank you.

Oh, young people, young people. Who can keep up with young people these days? They're crazy. Crazy I tell you. You know what young people are into these days?

Anal sex.

Thank you.

My mother. My mother is crazy. I can't keep up with her. She's always complaining. She's always like, "When are you going to get married?" She's always saying, "When are you going to get a real job?" She's always asking, "When are you going to stop letting strange men shank you up the craphole?"

Thank you.

I see a lot of people are drinking. Drinking's fun. You know the crazy thing about drinking?

Making a pee-pee.

Thank you.

And what's going on in politics? Politics is crazy. You know what I can't stand about politics?

Closeted Republican homosexuals.

Thank you.

But seriously, stop me if you haven't heard this one before. Two closeted Republican homosexuals are walking down the street. One bends over to pick up a quarter, and the other bumps him right in the ass.

The first homo says, "Hey, I really enjoyed that." The other homo says, "Me too. It just felt right."

Thank you.

Hey, look, I'm holding a microphone. You know what a microphone reminds me of?

A penis.

Thank you.

You know what else is crazy? Getting a rectal exam from a proctologist. He says he wants to insert a rigid seigmoidoscope into my rectum, and I said, "Rectum?!? But I hardly even knew 'em!!!"

He laughed so hard he ended up dorking me up the keister.

Thank you.

Cops. Cops are crazy. They're always pulling me over. But all women know there's a way to get out of a ticket. You ladies know what I'm talking about. Any time you want to get out of a ticket, there's one way to do it:

Anonymous roadside anal sex.

Thank you.

Well, that's all the time for me. You guys have been great. I'll be here until Wednesday. I'm available for children's parties and Bar Mitzvahs.

And when I say "I'm available," that's another delicious double-entendre.

Thank you.

The Point: On the off chance that Ms. Cox is reading this, let me explain the moral of this parody.

A joke isn't just saying "butt-sex" or "penis." See, that's where you're going wrong. "Butt-sex" or "penis" might be part of a joke, but the words themselves are not, in fact, jokes.

You seem under the misimpression that simply larding up your site with the words "butt-sex" and "penis" makes it "funny." It doesn't, actually.

You might think it's "funny," because your male friends seem to enjoy it when you talk about penises and butts and the possible intersection between them. But they don't think you're funny; they just like hearing women yap endlessly about butt-sex. Who doesn't?

But, as enjoyable as that might be, it's not actually funny.

I know this may come as a shock, but "weiner" is not technically a punch-line.

Update: Apparently Wonkette can spot a "painfully obvious pun" when someone else is making it:

The NYT reports on the superpower soiree that ended yesterday, at which pool reporters "luxuriated in their own seven-bedroom house, fully equipped with a formal library, a sunroom with a jukebox, and true to their duty" -- painfully obvious pun alert -- "a small pool."

Ahem. Painfully obvious puns? Welcome to our collective nightmare, Ms. Cox.

Update: "Anal Marie" provided me with an opening line that was too good not to steal, so I stole it.

Posted by: Ace at 01:42 PM | Comments (34)
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Not that the all-anal-sex, all-the-time format was too restrictive (restrictive like tight jeans as you watch Deliverance).

But it's still good to have other territory which I can explore. So far, it's butt-fun, weiners, and homos, whether actual or alleged. That's a nice little troika. A man could make a career talking about nothing but butt-fun, weiners, and homos.

But my muse Wonkette is a good muse, and she provides me with even more Wonkette-approved subject matter to blather on about. She absolutely slayed me with this hi-larious post:

Wonkette House correspondent sends us this notice:

GGGGGFrom: House Emergency Communications Center
GGGGGSent: Tuesday, June 08, 2004 1:46 PM
GGGGGTo: All House Staff
GGGGGSubject: Suspicious Substance
GGGGGImportance: High

GGGGGThis is a message from the U.S. Capitol Police.

GGGGGThe U.S. Capitol Police are responding to a suspicious substance in the men's room
GGGGGnear H2-651 of the Ford House Office building.

GGGGGAll staff and other personnel are directed to avoid this area
GGGGGuntil further notice.

"Suspicious substance," eh? Well, if you had ever been in there after Hyde, you'd know to avoid it anyway.

Zow! Pang! Zoot! Henry Hyde makes poopies which smell stinky. This is cutting-edge political commentary.

Wonkette's frickin' jerkin' them out of the park lately. I bow to her brilliance.

Posted by: Ace at 12:57 PM | Comments (4)
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A bomb was set off in public, wounding 22, but the Germans are quite on top of it, and know for a fact that it is unconnected to terrorism.

Steven den Beste takes the Germans to task for their reflexive, knee-jerk, Madrid-like assertions that a terrorist bombing is not in fact a terrorist bombing at all (perhaps, pace Reuters, it's merely a "militant bombing").

OTOH, I remember the FBI denying that an Egyptian man who shot up an El Al ticket-counter in LA and left a message saying "Death to the Jews" could in any way be construed a "terrorist," either...

Posted by: Ace at 12:45 PM | Comments (1)
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Tell us something we didn't know.

But I was chagrined to read this:

By October 1994, economic growth had climbed to a healthy 4 percent, and unemployment had slid from 7.5 percent in 1992 to 6.1 percent. Yet President Bill Clinton's economic job approval ratings were stuck at 43 percent, with 52 percent disapproving. The GOP swept into power on Capitol Hill the next month. It was not until June 1996, more than five years into the longest peacetime economic expansion in history, that Clinton's approval ratings on the economy turned solidly positive.

I had no idea that the public might take so long to register that the economy is booming. Last time I checked, George W. Bush did not have five years until the upcoming election.

What's the opposite of cowbell?

Maybe a gif of Tory Amos in concert.

Posted by: Ace at 11:58 AM | Add Comment
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A useless story which I didn't read and which I recommend you don't, either.

I'm only linking it because it's so frickin' asinine it's sort of funny.

Eve Ensler is advocating that women "vote their vaginas," whatever the hell that might mean. Odd that the very people who so stridentely insist that sexuality is a "construct" imposed by "society" also believe that their sex-organs have something meaningful and vital to contribute to the national political debate.

In related news, my left testical is very upset about the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

Why is it that liberals, particularly liberal women, are so damnably unfunny? Here's the author-ess' big laugh line, a comedic cliff-hanger intended to get you to follow her story through the jump:

The word, which Ensler has spent six years rehabilitating through her oft-performed show "The Vagina Monologues" and her V-Day campaign to end violence against women, all traditionally centered around Valentines Day, was plastered all over the Culture Project Theater in Manhattan. It adorned posters and pamphlets and buttons and tee-shirts worn by the hundred or so women who had gathered to help Ensler and her V-Day squad launch a "V is for Vote" campaign. Their hope is to mobilize young women off of their Marc-Jacobs-encased petards and into the polling booths. And on Monday, the day after the 60th anniversary of D-Day, they were officially launching the program. If D-Day and V-Day got together, would we call it V-D Day?

Ummmm... "we" wouldn't. Obviously some of us might. Some of the more, um, retarded among us.

Lots of big funny from the feminist left. Can't wait for the Vulvapalooza comedy tour, featuring the comic stylings of Shecky Pink and "Slappy" Pudendum.

Update! Now Hanoi Jane Fuckin' Fonda is stealing my new act:

This movement will be a volcano that will erupt in a flow of soft, hot, empathic, breathing, authentic, vagina-friendly, relational lava that will encircle patriarchy and smother it. We will be the flood and we'll be Noah's arc. "V" for Vagina, for vote, for victory.

Yeah, I've got some soft, hot, vagina-friendly relational lava for you right he--

I just can't do it. I just can't make these cheap, easy, juvenile non-jokes like Wonkette can. There's something blocking me from doing that.

Oh yeah: Talent. That old albatross around my neck.

But Hanoi Jane's just getting started:

And then, of course, there are what Eve Ensler calls Vagina-Friendly men, who choose to remain emotionally literate. It's not easy for them – look at the names they get called: wimp, pansy, pussy, soft, limp, momma's boy.

I've got a vagina-friendl man for yo--

Wait, I already decided against that one.

I don't know. One on hand, I sorta dig all this. I like politics, and I like chooch, so really, why not combine my two passions, as Ensler and Fonda do so eagerly?

Seriously. Why am I posting stuff about the economy when everyone just wants to talk about pooter? Why waste time writing about Iraq? Let's cut out the middleman and go straight for the tangberry.

We may have to rewrite the feminist slogan: All politics is pudendal.

Three words: Em. Fucking. Barassing.

Thanks a "load" to Way Off Bass.

Posted by: Ace at 11:52 AM | Comments (12)
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Finding themselves in the rare position of running neck-and-neck with the Conservatives, Canada's Liberals launch an all-out negative ad blitz in order to turn the tide for the June 28 elections.

"We are desperate," they admit in defense of their actions, which some believe might further alienate the electorate against them.

The cool thing about watching Canadian politics is the fact that none of this matters one whit to the world at large. Or frankly to Canada at large. It's sort of like watching a wildcard game between two marginal teams that just barely squeaked into the playoffs and have no chance of moving deeper into the tournament.

It's kinda enjoyable to watch, because the stakes are so wonderfully low and the game so deliciously meaningless.

But seriously: Go Harper.

Posted by: Ace at 11:45 AM | Comments (5)
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Frequent Ace of Spades HQ contributor and long-time correspondent Nicholas Kronos finally took my advice and started himself a blog.

Nick's a smart guy. Over at the Perfect World, I was constantly getting myself into trouble by making bold statements which I wasn't sure were actually, err, "factual" or not.

You see, like Reagan and Bush before me, I am a "big picture guy," unconcerned about the "details," with a penchant for "delegating" and relying on my charm, humor, and optimism to beguile the American public into thinking all sorts of crazy things that are exactly opposite their economic and political interests.

Fortunately, Nick Kronos was frequently able to provide these so-called "facts" I've heard so much about, just as I was about to admit that I really had no good idea what the hell I was talking about. He's saved me from embarassment on any number of occasions.

So, Nick's blog should be a good one. I suppose I should be upset to be losing such a valuable contributor. But I don't see as losing a contributor, so much as gaining a minion, plus another freaking link for The Truth Laid Bear ecosystem.

Posted by: Ace at 09:26 PM | Comments (1)
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Up three points since last week.

40% still rate the economy as either "unappealing" or "snaggle-toothed."

There would seem to be a very hot, very sexy tumescence developing in the economy, as it wantonly strains against the fabric of public opinion.

Update: Gallup confirms the trend, now showing a +14 "spread" between those who rate the economy as "pulsing" or "throbbing," versus those who rate the economy as "drooping" or "floppy-nutted."

That's much better than the "limp" +2 "spread" at the past reading.

Posted by: Ace at 05:14 PM | Comments (10)
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Kinda fun but very long vocabulary quiz.

I got a 165. Nicholas got a 147. Troi stopped doing the quiz in order to chat in the Dawson's Creek Forever forums and renew his subscription to Modern Bride.

Thanks to Michele at A Small Victory.

Posted by: Ace at 04:11 PM | Comments (23)
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Orson Scott Card, a Democrat but strongly in favor of the War on Terror, slams the media.

A must-read article. Even the headline is good: "The Fanatics that Tell Us the News."

Fanatics?

Yeah, that's right. He said it. "Fanatics."

Thanks to Way Off Bass, a site about politics and music which, alas, contains precious few references about either butt-sex or weiners and is therefore neither "sharp" nor "funny."

Posted by: Ace at 02:51 PM | Comments (4)
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