Before I get to the Funbag, just a quick reminder that I'll be at Comic Con on Saturday, doing the Immortality panel at 10AM in Room 7AB. You can buy a copy of "The Postmortal" a month early if you go. And you get to meet me! And then you get to ignore me when you realize that one of the dudes who wrote The Dark Knight is also on the stage. Should be fun. Truth be told, you may want to stay far away from me, as my large intestine will be full of chorizo from a 24-hour binge. It's not my fault the East Coast has no idea how to make proper chorizo.
Your letters:
Mike:
Is it okay to freeball in your gym shorts at the gym?
When I was in college, the gym facility had an equipment manager named Chappy (every equipment manager is required by law to have a cute nickname, like Chappy or Gordo or Stumpy), and Chappy's job was to issue you towels and all that. He also issued jocks, regardless of whether or not you played on a team (if memory serves). And so when you went to work out or lift weights and you were a guy, you wore a jock under your gym shorts. Or, at least, I did. Seemed comfortable, and made me feel little naughty all at the same time. A real thrill. Ever touch yourself while wearing a jock? SEXY.
Anyway, college ended and I went off to live on my own, but I still had a number of jocks I had stolen from Chappy. College kids do this all the time. They steal as much shit from the school as possible before graduation because stealing is crazy fun. So I wore these to the gym, but I never washed them because I am a repulsive person. Eventually, the Mrs. told me to toss the old jocks and so I began going commando in my gym shorts at the gym. Loose gym shorts, not tightass bike shorts.
Like Mike, I have no clue if this is appropriate or not. Is it wrong to go the gym and wear nothing under your shorts? Because I'm al fresco. I don't want to wear underpants under my gym shorts. They'll get all sweaty and disgusting. So I wear nothing. And I take great pains to make sure I don't hang brain at any time while working out. I'm not Italian. I don't like showing off my testicles to people. I know that would be uncouth. So it's okay to freeball in gym shorts, right? Or have I been doing it wrong this whole time? I can't answer this one myself.
Emsands1:
I had this exchange with my roommate as he was walking into the bathroom for his morning poop:
Me: Watch out, we're out of toilet paper.
Him: That's okay, I'll just shower immediately after.This is disgusting, right? I know the floor and drain of a shower are an ungodly petri dish, but fuckin' a.
Everyone has found themselves in this situation at some point in life. And as someone who has executed this maneuver in the past, I can tell you it's incredibly unpleasant. You get in the shower knowing you're about to witness mankind at its worst, and somehow it manages to exceed your expectations. Because the second the water hits your ass, you get the brown liquid spattering onto the tiles, and then the smell hits because it has nowhere else to travel and you have to quickly soap up your hand and jam it up your ass to clean out all the shit particles. And you close your eyes and scrub hard as you can, just trying to hold on and withstand the initial onslaught. But if you're like me, you ALWAYS end up looking down a couple times before you're done because you just can't help it. God, it's horrible.
And then you'll have to spend a good amount of time making sure every visible poop speck is washed down the drain. Then you have to worry about if any stray poop still remains on your hand before you go washing your hair. Are you about to get poop in your hair? After all, that was A LOT of poop you just medivac'd out of your own asscrack. Did it really all hit the shower floor in a nice and tidy fashion? CHAOS THEORY SAYS NO. I've jumped into the shower without wiping a few times (and, God help me, a couple of times when I thought I had wiped thoroughly only to be SORELY mistaken), and I can tell you it isn't worth it. Find something to wipe with. Get rid of that initial payload. Don't go into a shower with half a turtle still lurking in the soft canyon. You will regret it. Deeply.
Matt:
Is that the best or worst name a dude could have?
Can it be both at the same time? Like if you were named Hercules Cocksquirt?
Thurnis:
Do you think if you had special powers where you could dictate the outcome of 10 of your favorite team's plays throughout the NFL that you could manage these magic bullets all the way to a Super Bowl championship? Your team is in dire need of a turnover? Boom, interception on demand. Down 6 at your own 1 with 5 seconds left? 99-yard Hail Mary coming right up.
The challenge, of course, would be in using these 10 plays judiciously. And, for the sake of the question, let's say you root for a mediocre team like the Dolphins instead of a powerhouse like the Patriots, because that would be easy mode.
It's hard to say, because there are mediocre teams that go through a season losing close game after close game, where one play can make a difference, and then there are mediocre teams that are so wildly inconsistent that they alternate between being on the right and wrong side of a blowout each week. So to use your special powers to give an otherwise average team a chance to win a title, you'd need a team that kept things close and somehow always fucked it up at the end. Because if you picked some team that got blown out every three or four weeks, you'd exhaust your magic karma reversals over the course of a single playoff game. And it couldn't be a shitty team like the 2010 Vikings, a team so beset by injuries and poor decision-making that 10 plays aren't going to make much of a difference in the end.
Let's use your example and go with the 2010 Dolphins (final record of 7-9), a team that truly was average in every way. You could use your power to reverse their loss to Pittsburgh by making sure that Big Ben's fumble WAS recovered by Miami, thus ensuring their victory. That gets them to 8-8. Give them a miracle touchdown in the Cleveland game they lost 13-10, and you get them to 9-7. Take away Ryan Fitzpatrick's first TD pass in their loss to Buffalo in Week 15, and maybe they hold on to win 14-13 (though it's no guarantee you wouldn't have to use an extra miracle there). That's 10-6. Use two more miracles to get them to beat Detroit and they're 11-5 but STILL not playoff eligible in the AFC. At that point, you'd need a bunch of your five remaining miracles to erase one of the blowout losses they suffered and that leaves you with nothing left come playoff time, when they'd be exposed by a superior team.
The ten miracles don't seem to help Miami, according to my THOROUGHLY RESEARCHED AND UNIMPEACHABLE analysis. For it to make a real difference, you need to start with a team's that's already playoff bound, but not good enough to win it all on their own. Imagine having ten chances to reverse Andy Reid if you were an Eagles fan. NOTHING WOULD STOP YOU.
Alex:
It's a do or die situation, you have to down three shots: Diarrhea, Cum, and Period Blood.
What's your order?
Well, diarrhea is last, obviously. You could add snot, piss, and saliva to that list and diarrhea is still the last. It's diarrhea. It's unpleasant. I think I'd pull an upset and go with period blood as my first choice. Goes down quickly. Not as viscous as cum. Cum is tricky because you'd basically have to shake the glass to make sure every drop got out, or use a chopstick around the inside edge of the glass to fully empty it. It's just a lot more work. And in the end, you're not getting cake batter out of that. You're getting ejaculate. Really adds insult to injury.
Bump cum up to #1 though if the cum in question happens to be my own. At least I'd satisfy a lingering curiosity.
Brian:
Watching baseball the other day and they promoted an upcoming giveaway in which all fans 48 inches and shorter received a free item. Obviously this was intended for kids but do this also include midgets? They are under 48 inches.
I'm sure a little person would have a legal right to also be eligible for the prize, but I think pride would probably prevent them from doing so. Why wouldn't they just make it kids 13 and under? Why play the height card and get yourself in trouble? No one wants to deal with cries of heightism.
Lewbone:
If you're a pedophile, how awesome is that show "Toddlers and Tiaras"? I imagine it's the closest thing to free legal porn that they'll ever get.
I'm sure TLC conceived of the show with precisely that in mind.
Natalie:
Where do I donate?
Chad:
Sitting in a meeting with a V.P. the other day (I barely register as pond scum in my company) and I thought... "this guy has to spank it too, I wonder what kind of porn he uses? Is it kinky? S&M? GGW?" Am I a weirdo for thinking this?
I think it's natural to speculate. We all have our own sexual hang-ups or obsessions, so it's comforting to project those thoughts (or worse) onto other people, so that we feel normal, or even better by comparison. Sure, you once jerked off to that photo of Grace Jones riding an electric pony. But what Bob over in HR? I bet that guy spanks it to photos of the local animal incinerator. WHAT A LOSER.
That's always the undercurrent when you're stuck in some shitty meeting or you're at some god-awful social function where you have to mingle with people you really don't give a shit about. What are these people like behind closed doors? What secret disgusting things are they fantasizing about? Do they make strange noises when they have sex? Do the old folks next store have bondage nights together? Sometimes, your brain will take those ideas and run with them, without asking you, and then start building visual clips to give you an idea of it, and you start yelling internally at your brain STOP! STOP! I DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM FUCK! PLEASE STOP SHOWING ME! And then you have to think of scenes from E.T. to try and distract your mind from its budding mental porn career. It's exhausting. It's also why I avoid business meetings if I can.
HALFTIME!
Brian:
How badass would the Tour de France be if the cyclists were allowed to use weapons and beat the shit out of each other? It would be like Road Rash (CLASSIC). Cyclists would be able to engage in hand-to-hand combat using chains, bats, cattle prods, etc. There is no way I would be able to NOT watch.
You still wouldn't watch, despite the fact that incorporating any number of elements from games such as "Road Rash" or "Spy Hunter" would, on the surface, make you much more interested in the IDEA of watching. Consider the current popularity of roller derby and steeple chases, two race events in which violence and/or hazardous obstacles are involved. Do you watch them? No. Why? Because they're fucking stupid. So while I would, in theory, be really jazzed to watch a bike race in which entrants could stick spokes in each other's wheels and release tacks for the peleton behind them, I still wouldn't watch because, I dunno, I just wouldn't. Someone would have to guarantee me that there would be a crash or a fatality every two minutes, in which case the first Tour de France to implement such rules would also be the last, because everyone would die. Which, come to think of it, would be a smart way to end cycling and put all the PED scandals to bed.
Tastes Like Burning:
Do you think that someone could be propelled by a fart if they were in zero gravity? I'm not talking about vacuum here because obviously that would kill you but maybe in large open room in a space station. Imagine if you were floating helplessly in that large room and couldn't get to a solid object to move yourself. A well-aimed fart could save your life. Every action has an equal but opposite reaction, right?
My first instinct is to say, "no," because astronauts in a space station are often in constant motion while awake and the momentum of a 200-pound-man in zero gravity is unlikely to be redirected by a mild fart. But I'm no physigician, so I asked Esquire and Grantland's Chris Jones, who wrote a whole book about living in space, if he knew the answer. Here is what he says:
My first instinct is to say sure. I mean, if there's a bubble of water floating in space, and I blow on it, it moves. And I imagine if I had a fire extinguisher in space, say, and fired that baby against the wall, I'd really start moving.
Two problems, however:
1) Inside the space station is pretty different from a vacuum-there's air in it, and thus air resistance. Totally different situations.
2) The human body, even when weightless, has quite a surface area.
Let's take the opposite side of the situation: I don't think astronauts can propel themselves by blowing out lungs full of air, for instance. Thus, I would say-without any sort of verification or scientific method-that while it would be theoretically possible to move through farting, you would have to let go of some really terrific farts-like some seriously intergalactic lactose intolerance just ate beans for a month kind of gas. The equivalent of emptying out that fire extinguisher, but out of your ass.
On this thread, someone actually did the math. The average fart would propel you a little more than 2 micrometers per second, he thought. So not really. That is also my guess. Not really.
There you go. SCIENCE.
Derek:
I don't even think that's meant to be tongue-in-cheek, given the state of that boat. It's almost like he's hiding in plain sight.
Rob:
How is it possible that school buses are designed and built the same way today as they were 50 years ago? Have we really not found a single fucking thing to change?
I assume they haven't changed due to budgetary concerns. The basic layout of a school bus remains the same, right down to the vinyl sandpaper they use to upholster the seats. Those seat coverings are scientifically engineered to increase thigh sweat by 67%, which I find somewhat unnecessary. There should be better seat coverings in the school bus. And the windows should open more easily, instead of you having to squeeze those two things on the side of the window until your fingertips are go numb and you dislocate your elbow. WHY DID THEY MAKE THEM SO UNCOOPERATIVE? If you don't want kids opening the windows, just fucking seal them shut. Don't tease us with windows that can open, but require you to bend your index finger back to the point of fracture. Ever get one with a faulty sliding mechanism that gets stuck? AGONIZING.
And I don't know why school buses (or any buses, for that matter) don't have seat belts. They make you wear seat belts on a fucking PLANE. Yet you get onto a bus in New York City and suddenly every safety precaution of the past 40 years is gleefully set aside. Oh, sure. Stand in the aisle! Hold your baby! It's a bus! WHO CARES?
I was at a playground once and there was a fleet of school buses parked outside the playground, and my kids went batshit crazy because they like school buses because they are easily amused. So we go to check out the bus, and I pry the doors open so they can get on and sit in the seats and wipe boogers on the windows and all that shit. Suddenly, some bus driver runs up and tells us (very politely) that we shouldn't break into the bus because the bus has an alarm on it. So there's your ONE school bus innovation over the years. No seat belt, no comfortable upholstery, but an alarm. There you go.
You know what I'd do if I designed school buses? I'd turn around every other row, so groups of four kids had to face each other for the whole ride, just like on a train's café car. JUST TO BE CRUEL.
Eric:
Saw this at a Home Depot in the Valley in LA. What kind of films do you think he makes?
Bad ones.
JB:
In my hypothetical world, I might hypothetically look at pictures of naked women. Let's call this porn. Now, in this hypothetical world, what should I do if I hypothetically see someone I know in one of a hypothetical tweeted image? Someone like my daughter's friend, let's say. Do I tell anyone that "Susie" is flashing her breasts all over the tweeterverse? If I tell my wife, then she knows hypothetically I look at porn? Is that worth the headache of explaining that porn is just a hobby, a diversion to my humdrum day, rather than "OMG, little Susie, who we've known since she was 2, has two nipple rings?" Hypothetically.
Yeah no, keep your trap shut. If Susie wants to tweet her boobs to the free world, that's between her and the free world. What good is gonna come from you mentioning it to anyone? Keep it to yourself and erase your e-trail. God, I dread parenting a teenager.
David:
Do you think this made it past the editors of USA Today, or are they just hilarious?
They have to have known. Look at how hard that sun is working the shaft!
TK:
What is the etiquette for getting a boner at a nude beach?
According to this random nudist message board (and there's something so right about nudists talking on a message board while nude), most nudists and nude beach attendants are aware that erections can happen, but the person with the erection should deal with the erection immediately, either by covering up or I would assume going to masturbate in the beach lavatory. Getting an erection at a nude beach is understandable. FLAUNTING it is when I think people begin to feel threatened. It's one of the really stupid things about nude beaches and nudist colonies. They're trying to take the sexual element out of nudity, which is grossly unrealistic. If you think you can live in a world where everyone's naked but sexuality never rears its ugly head, you're a fucking idiot.
Mike:
Have you ever met a Chevy Avalanche driver that wasn't a complete douche?
Nope.
Josh:
A colleague who has a Prius drove us to a meeting last week. Holy crap that car is quiet. I was thinking it would make for an incredible drive-by car because 1) No one would ever expect to get rolled up on by a Prius and 2) They'd never hear it coming. Plus you could do like 40 drive-bys before needing to refill or plug in or whatever.
We've talked about the disturbing quietness of Priuses here before, and lawmakers shockingly did something about it recently by mandating that hybrid cars make more noise, presumably by deploying a horn that plays "La Cucaracha." I assume those safety standards will also be mandated for the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf, which would be even deadlier than their hybrid forebears. So your days of executing a perfectly silent and environmentally-friendly drive-by are likely numbered. I suggest branching out into other modes of transportation for all your assassination needs. Imagine doing a drive-by on a Segway, or on Rollerblades. Sure, you wouldn't be able to get away as quickly, but everyone would be so stunned that they just saw a Segway drive-by that they wouldn't remember to shoot back.
Kevin:
The other day I saw the movie Hook on TV and it got me thinking about having a hook for a hand. Don't get me wrong, having a hook would be sweet and all but there has to be other tools or utensils out there that would be far more convenient to have on your wrist. Now obviously it would be great to have a whole box of tools so you can screw any of them onto your wrist depending on what you were doing that day. But if you could only have one tool (assuming you can't create a mechanical tool that can do anything) what do you think would be most practical?
Why were you watching Hook on TV? That movie is awful. Anyway, there's no real substitute for the human hand, which is why engineers have strived for years to create a prosthetic mechanical hand that can grasp things and give you the finger and all those good things. But if a prosthetic hand and a drill chuck are illegal in your scenario, then I'd want some kind of simple grasping mechanism. I hook is worthless because it can't grab things, and while a novelty item like a knife or a handheld blender attachment sounds really cool, the thrill would wear off quickly. You need to be able to pick things up and throw things and pinch toddlers who are out of line. Though flubby's suggestion of a spring-loaded boxing glove is hard to top.
Time for your email of the week. It's a GREAT MOMENT IN SKYPE SEX FAILURE.
Adam:
I was a Navy pilot forwarded deployed to Japan for three years. In that time Skype became the communication method of choice for guys with significant others in the States. Unmarried guys used it because the Department of Defense doesn't move girlfriends. Some married guys with school-aged children used it because they chose not to move their kids halfway across the world to go to a shitty DoD school. Plus we were on the carrier for 8-9 months a year so an additional three month absence isn't that significant.
I had a friend who was older (a Lieutenant Commander) who left his wife and kids back home for his tour. He and his wife had a standing Skype date on Friday nights when we were in port (Friday morning in the US). He'd leave work, pound some beers at the Officer's Club, then Skype sex his wife when she woke up.
One Friday night after pregaming at the O Club, he went back to base housing, stripped down, got a slow stroke going and made his call. To his horror when the call connected, instead of his wife, he was greeted by his 8 and 10 year old daughters. While he was getting lubed at the O Club, the wife cancelled their date via email so he could talk to his girls before they left on a camping trip. Aside from the permanent mental scarring he gave his daughters from seeing their naked dad getting his jack going, his wife cancelled their Skype sex for the last 5 months he was in Japan.
He said the only thing more pathetic than having to mutually masturbate with his wife over Skype was having that "privilege" taken away.
Ouch.