Your letters:
Andy:
Suppose aliens came to earth and told us that they would grant us one technological improvement. The concept we choose must be at least theoretically possible (no super powers, above light speed travel, etc.), which improvement would you choose? I have heard: the cure for all diseases (cancer, AIDS, all wrapped into one); stopping the human aging gene; nuclear cold fusion; 99.9% light speed travel; and a combustion engine that runs on water. Which would you choose, and assuming this was broadcast in every language to the entire world at once, who would make the decision?
Obviously, we'd all fight over who got to make the decision and then the aliens would become disgusted with us and then rescind the offer. And then we could blame each other for fucking it all up and then the aliens would get REALLY pissed and blow up our planet altogether, which would be fantastic.
I don't think such a decision should be placed in the hands of one person, like the president or the pope or Muhammad Ali. You could make it a web poll, but then people would either vote for the aliens to end gay marriage or vote for the aliens to get Betty White a gig hosting the Oscars or vote for realistic virtual fucking. I mean, that last one is practically a mortal lock in the hands of the general population. You'd need to have a blue-ribbon panel of scientists (who would probably take issue with what you and I deem "possible") and economists and anyone who is NOT Bono to come to a consensus on the innovation that offers the greatest advancement for human civilization. But seriously, if fucking Bono is on that panel, I will find a way to nuke the alien spaceship.
I'm not qualified to sit on that panel either. But if there were a bureaucratic fuckup (likely) and if I were to weasel my way into the group, I wouldn't pick the aging gene because then I'd totally look like a hypocrite. Curing all diseases also offers a similar problem due to overpopulation and lack of resources (though if obesity is on that list of "diseases," it's tempting). Here are some other choices:
• Fully functional robots, nanobots, and cyborgs
• Flying cars/hoverboards
• Wireless electricity
• Planet-wide climate control
• Virtual immortality/The Singularity (complete with virtual fucking)
• Ability to build functional, sustainable space colonies
• Time travel
• Energy-efficient teleportation
• Use of whatever space-travel technology the aliens have
• Ability to clone any extinct or active species/full genetic manipulation
I'm sure I've missed a bunch, but save for teleportation (which probably isn't possible), I don't know that ANY of the above options beats out cold fusion, which SEEMS way more possible even if it probably isn't. Cold fusion solves so many problems that I get a hard-on just thinking about it: wars, global warming, gas prices, etc. It would be a miracle, as opposed to virtual fucking, which is all but inevitable anyway. I would want to pick the thing that had the widest-ranging positive effect on mankind, and something we may never be able to figure out on our own. We're gonna figure out the manufacturing and sale of fuckbots. Cold fusion isn't as close. I wonder if it'll ever happen. It's kind of our only hope.
Stumped:
My (largely secular) Jewish friend Matt was dating this Catholic girl and when he went with her to visit her family one weekend he had to go to Sunday mass. He had never been to a non-Jewish religious gathering and when it came time for the Eucharist he was unsure how to proceed. He decided to go ahead and take communion, even though I'm sure his Jewish grandparents would plotz if they knew, because he didn't want to offend the girl's family. What's more offensive? NOT taking communion in front of your girlfriend's family at their religious service? Or accepting the blood and body of Christ?
I was at a wedding this summer and it was an old school Catholic ceremony, the kind where they set aside a bench for the bride and groom to sit on, so you know it's gonna be a real long time before you get out of there (you feel like you really earned that first cocktail whenever you have to sit through an hour-plus ceremony). Anyway, when the time came for communion, my wife and I stood up and let the rest of our pew slide by and get into line. But we didn't bother taking communion ourselves because I didn't know if it was the right thing to do for someone who isn't a practicing Catholic. I thought hard about maybe getting in line just to see what the wafer tastes like, but chances are a communion wafer isn't gonna be made out of brown sugar and bacon fat.
No one gave us any dirty looks when we skipped communion. Obviously, when there's a wedding, people in the church know that there are plenty of non-Catholics in attendance, which makes it different from an ordinary mass. But if your friend is clearly Jewish, I don't know that his girlfriend's family would be all that upset at him for declining to participate. If they did have a problem with it, they probably just have a problem with him being Jewish in general, in which case eating a communion wafer is gonna be way low on the list of issues. I don't think you can go wrong either way. If you decline to participate, that's fine. If you do participate, you're doing so out of respect for your host and your host's customs. It's not as if Yahweh would see you take the wafer and be like BETRAYOR! I'LL SMITE YOU GOOD! There's no wrong decision to be made. Or at least, there shouldn't be.
After the wedding, I went up to my friend, a devout Catholic who was in charge of holding the wine cup during the Eucharist, and peppered her with questions about the ritual. She told me a lot of people decline the wine because they don't want germs (she had to wipe the rim of the cup after every parishioner took a sip). She also said that there's usually a lot of wine left in the cup by the end of the ceremony, and that the priest usually drinks the rest of it because it's the blood of Christ, and you can't just dump the blood of Christ into the toilet. So now you know: If you're a priest, you get FREE wine backwash. How fucking sweet is THAT?!
Mark:
My wife noticed this in traffic. Note the name change from Maxima to "Sexima" and the 4 Doors for more Whores sticker. Only in Tennessee.
Oh my God, I bet he CRUSHES so much pussy in that Sexima. Why the three Apple stickers? I bet he throws one on the car any time he buys an Apple product to display his count, like putting Buckeye stickers on your helmet. You will SLAY so much tang if you've purchased three generations of the iPhone, bro.
Jacob:
Do you know if there is a defined term for the act of receiving fellatio while grilling? Because if there is not I would like to nominate kabobing as an acceptable name for this activity.
MEAT ON A STICK. Who's gonna fellate you while you're grilling? There's barely any room between you and the grill while you're poking the chicken. Anyone stationed down there is going to be subject to extreme temperatures and boiling-hot fat drippings. No one is gonna blow you for that, unless you give them first choice of chicken pieces. I spend at least 10 minutes deliberating over which piece to choose. Some of them are more perfectly browned than others. Some are bigger than others. Sometimes, I see a little piece of sizzling skin that I want, but I don't want the whole piece, so I rip that shit off and then leave the rest of the piece for some other asshole to eat. GRILLER'S RIGHTS.
Drew Magary writes for Deadspin and Gawker. He's also a correspondent for GQ. Follow him on Twitter @drewmagary and email him at drew@deadspin.com.
We also need a name for the fear of having your grill's propane tank blow up on you. Because every time I grill, I wonder if this is gonna be the day when the gas tank decides to blow the fuck up and send shards of ordnance right into my head. It will happen. My propaphobia knows this.
(NOTE: A special fuck you to charcoal grill snobs who sneer at anyone using a gas grill. Fuck all of you forever. OK? Your poster boy is Galen from Chopped. Look in the mirror and ask yourself if that's the kind of man you want to be. You are glass cocks. Sometimes, using gas is easier and that is OK.)
Matt:
ATTENTION: Clear the road for the PT BRUZR!!!
More like PT LUZR. AMIRITE?!
Mike:
What are the odds that at some point in your future you will either pick up or be handed a loaded gun, with the understanding that you will very likely need to use it against someone/something in a life or death situation? For example, the US government could collapse (MURDER IS LEGAL) leaving everyone to fight for survival in a kill-or-be-killed type of situation, there could be a zombie apocalypse, it could even be something as simple as getting the upper hand on a terrible home invader, etc. etc. It would NOT be for something like going to the firing range, or hunting, or drunkenly picking up your cop friend's handgun.
You forgot the most obvious reason a normally placid fellow like me would turn all Straw Dogs on someone: any violent crime committed against my family. I mean, that's more likely than a zombie apocalypse. I spend every day in fear of a zombie war, but secretly I know it'll never happen. Much more likely that someone will break into my home and kill my loved ones, sending me into a fit of violent despair that ends only once I've picked up a rifle and stupidly tried to avenge myself, opening fire on the man responsible in a packed courtroom, missing him entirely, hitting the judge instead, and then spending the rest of my life rotting in a jail cell. I go through life knowing that little alternate reality is always sitting there, waiting for me. MAN WOULD THAT BE FUN.
But seriously, the odds are low of any of the above occurrences ever happening. Even if the world financial system collapsed and we all became marauding packs of flesh-eaters, I'd still try to run away before I resorted to picking up a gun. I'd attempt to flee to Uruguay and spend the rest of my days tending bar and raising my children to be grouper fishermen. It wouldn't be so bad. I could see it working out.
Dave:
When WIP announces that Mike from Philadelphia is on the line, I always expect to hear the one Mike I know in a city of over a million people: "Holy shit, Mike Sullivan's calling in, I remember when I tried to finger bang his sister!"
Sometimes a person with my name will call in and I'll wonder if I somehow managed to call in from another dimension. "There's a Drew on the line? What if it's Fringe Me?"
HALFTIME!
Dan:
Have you ever considered how disgusting belts must get? Why are we putting our pants back on before we wash our hands? Surely some miniscule amount of poop bacteria must pass over or through the toilet paper to the hand. If any poop particles are being transmitted to the wiping hand, this hand then touches your zipper fly, pants button AND belt. How often does a belt get cleaned? Never? How often do you touch your belt? All the time? {head explodes}
The only solution would be to have a Purell dispenser there in the shitter for you to use, to kill off all fecal bacteria before you touch your belt. It would serve as a kid of pre-wash for your hands. But I dunno. I use Purell a lot since I have kids around, and using Purell is disgusting. You think it'll just run into your skin right away but it doesn't. It leaves a bit of sticky film. I feel like I just washed my hands in maple syrup. Much better to just pretend your belt is perfect the way it is and not worry about it. Mine has so much FUPA sweat embedded in it that I assume the old sweat bacteria will fight off the poop bacteria on the buckle.
I also own only one belt, and that belt has now warped to the shape of my belly. If I take it off, it actually bends because my stomach distended one side of the leather. It is ergonomically designed for my gross hairy tummy and no one else's. I would buy another belt to replace it, but have you seen how much belts cost? Twenty dollars for a fucking belt? I DON'T THINK SO, MISTER.
/puts poop belt back on
Colin:
Have you ever sliced open a bell pepper and found the little embryonic pepper inside? When you do, do you immediately play Bell Pepper Abortionist?
I eat the fetus. Is that wrong? It looks like real pepper. How sacrilegious can it be?
Sometimes I leave garlic in the fridge too long and the cloves begin to sprout. And then I congratulate myself for nurturing life. That's probably not appropriate.
Neal:
I received a text from a wrong number. It read, verbatim: "Is this Alan tell Snake I was tryin to meet him to drop off money bt he is nt answerin this is Shamikkah".
So got to ask, drug deal or ransom?
Drug deal or hooker deal. Ever get a text from a friend whose number isn't in your phone? There are few things that excite me more than texting back, "Who are you?" I feel like I'm a CIA mole who's just had his cover blown. "Who is this? How did you get this number? You can't possibly have known I was the one who saw Lukin get murdered."
Jimmy:
What do you think is the most common word girls use to describe their own genitals? I think guys use "dick" the most.
I think "down there" probably tops the list. "I'm having some pain down there." "He won't touch me down there." "I hear girls from Down Under are wider down there." You won't find many women who walk around going, "Boy, my cunt sure feels greasy today." Other candidates include:
• "Thing"
• "Hoohoo"
• "Hoohaa"
• "Vee"
• "My ... you know ..."
• "Crotch"
• "Privates"
• "Cocksleeve"
Maybe not that last one.
Joe:
Say you take what you know about offensive football now, and travel back in time to the NFL of the 30s & 40s, where you introduce whatever offense it is you decide to bring back to your teams. What would be harder, you trying to explain and implement your offense to your new team, or being an opposing DC trying to stop your offense?
Gotta be trying to stop it right?
I doubt it. Like a bunch of part-time mine workers from 1942 are gonna listen to some emo-banged shitheel from 2012 try to lecture them about newfangled offensive football concepts. Half the shit you'd want to do wouldn't even be legal in that era. All a defensive coordinator would have to do to stop it is point out to the ref that forward passes aren't allowed. Remember: Football coaches still ice kickers even though icing the kicker is statistically useless. The maturation process of football people is glacial, and nothing you do will be able to speed it up. And really, how much have you retained anyway? You don't really know any of the terminology. All you know is four wideout formations and shit. It would be impossible to get people to listen to you. Better to just go kill Hitler instead.
Ryan:
Let's say your average, played-sports-in-high-school male in his mid-to-late 20's got the opportunity to play running back on an NFL team for one game. He gets your standard 20-30 carries (one-back system) on a team with a great O-Line, good O-coordinator, in the flow of the offense... The best possible situation. Lastly, he gets to train for six months with the team to prepare for this one game and practice with the first team the week leading up to the game. How many yards do you think he gets? Does he finish the game? Would he get killed? How many attempts before his ACLs are obliterated?
He'd probably get injured in the practices leading up that game and then be unable to play. Even if he had the time to get in shape and prepare, he's still not in the fabled "game shape", which demands that you spend a week being thrashed with a sack full of candlesticks to adequately prepare your body for the RAW PHYSICALITY of football ZOMG SO PHYSICAL LOTS OF BODIES TOUCHING BODIES GUYS. The first hint of real contact would ruin our test subject's shit, both mentally and physically. That first jarring hit is disturbing, like being in a car accident. You feel personally violated. Also, it really hurts. If our little Papale got his hand stomped on or got a deep thigh bruise, it would begin to wear on him right away.
If the team has a great line and a great passing game, there may be wide running lanes for him to potentially exploit. But we're talking about NFL defense here. Those holes don't stay open for very long. The Average Joe could maybe get a couple of meager gains, and perhaps withstand the punishment for a little bit thanks to extensive padding and a dozen cortisone shots. Conceivably, he could finish the game a staggering wreck, not blatantly injured but clearly banged up everywhere. I can't possibly see him gaining more than a dozen total yards. In other words, he's Chris Johnson.
Tim:
The plane we all know as Air Force One, a jet with the seal of the President and all that, came into existence during the Kennedy Administration. Since Air Force One has a compartment with a bed for the President, how many Presidents have joined the Mile High Club in Air Force One? Here's my list: Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama
I agree with Kennedy, LBJ, and Clinton. Here's a fun tidbit about LBJ:
At parties, he would make obvious passes at girls right in front of his wife. One of the girls who stayed over at his place got awakened in the middle of the night by Johnson holding a flashlight and saying, "Move over. This is your president."
That's so hot. LBJ was basically what Jerry Jones would be like as president. YEEEEEEHAWWWWW!
I wouldn't add W. or Obama to the list. Dubya is a teetotaler now, and his wife doesn't exactly look like a party animal. And while I'm sure Obama would like to nail his wife in mid-air, he knows that keeping a president's sexual hijinks private isn't anywhere near as easy as it used to be. One thrust in and Bob Woodward would be there with a voice recorder, asking him about the compromise that led to him achieving full Mile High Status. Riveting stuff.
George:
Whose hollowed-out skull could hold the most jellybeans: John Elway, Peyton Manning or Michael Kay?
Here's a side-by-side photo of Manning and Elway. As you can see, Elway's head is much wider, whereas Manning's head is taller, like a highball glass. I always labor under the delusion that taller glasses can hold more, even though that's not always true.
As for Kay, his receding hairline makes his forehead look much larger than it actually is. Still, that's a big fucking noggin, with plenty of room for inappropriate Holocaust metaphors. I guess I'll take his jelly bean skull over Elway's. But none of them can compare with THIS GUY:
Now that's a lotta candy!
Ched:
Do you get uncontrollably pissed off at people who refer to themselves as "voracious readers?" Because I sure as fuck do.
Those are the type of people who still use typewriters. All those books don't make you learnier than me, jerkface. Even so, those people still aren't as bad as people who start off their Twitter profile with, "Husband. Father." or "Wife. Mother." Those are the people that we need to round up and dispose of.
PP:
What's more satisfying, hurriedly plugging in your about-to-die cell phone or about-to-die laptop?
The phone, but I only say that because my laptop always dies before it's supposed to be about-to-die. The power meter will read 30 percent and I'll think I'll have 20 or so minutes to dick around, and then BLACK. That 30 percent was a LIE. Fucking Dell.
Whereas a cell phone gives you a little bit more of a heads up. Once the battery goes all the way down, you get that urgent message telling you YOUR BATTERY IS ALMOST GONE AND NOW YOU WILL DIE FUCKO. It doesn't even let you have a proper conversation without beeping and reminding you GET OFF THE PHONE NOW. So it's satisfying to find your power cord in the nick of time and deny your phone the chance to shut down on you and fuck you over. Not this time, phone! I enjoy charging it for three minutes, seeing it go to four battery bars for no reason, and then quickly seeing the four bars disappear. I also enjoy turning on a dead cell phone hours after it has shut itself down. Somehow, it always finds the power to boot back up for just a few seconds. And then I try to send a text because I live for the danger.
Email of the week time:
Tom:
I'm 41. I've never had great skin, but also was never acne-ridden.
I can remember the 25 or so most 'remarkable' skin blemishes of my life with savant precision. 'Remarkable' means one or more of the following: unusual location on body, size, hidden content, explosiveness, tenacity, otherwise noteworthy date in my life. Examples:
June 14, 1990: The day I entered the Army. At the inprocessing station at a urinal. Huge pimple in my pubes. Wasn't ripe. Never got to it due to ensuing madness.
March 12, 1988. Unremarkable date. Blackhead in eyebrow. Came out considerably longer than my index nail. No follicular damage.
March 26, 2004. Holiday Inn ATL, plane mechanics had cancelled connecting flight. Left side of back neck. Audible explosion; O-ren Ishii damage on bathroom mirror.
Ongoing: the invisible tiny whitehead in the crease between my left nostril & my face. That fucker has never gone rogue but has not stopped cranking out the funk for years.
I had never written any of these down until now, but I could go on like that for quite a while. I CAN'T DO THIS WITH ANY OTHER TOPIC. I can't even tell you what month contained the greatest day of sex or casino winnings of my life, and the latter was within the last year.
I'm hygenic and for Christ's sake no I do not do anything with what comes out except look at it for a second and then immediately dispose of it. I'M OTHERWISE UNREMARKABLE AND FUCKING NORMAL.
You sure are!