Time for your weekly edition of the Deadspin Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. Today, we're covering roaches, revolutions, jizz nutritional values, and more.
Your letters:
Adam:
What is the most overrated pasta shape? I say spaghetti. That is, unless you enjoy hard-to-wrangle food that has a tendency to splatter sauce on your shirt. I don't understand the spaghetti obsession. Give me penne or ziti or some variant any day.
I'm not saying it's the worst, just that it's overrated. When cooked right and with a well made sauce, spaghetti can be truly great, but let's be honest - how often does that happen?
Rotini are pretty goddamn annoying and would have to rank near the bottom. They're always put in pasta salad with an oil based dressing, making them even squirmier. Doesn't your aunt want you to enjoy both the flavor AND the act of eating the salad she labored over? Apparently not.
I often get frustrated with spaghetti because spaghetti is often so thick and so slippery that even if you execute a perfect twirl using a spoon for leverage (something I really enjoy doing whenever I'm in an Italian restaurant. LOOGIT ME I'M A PAISANO), the spaghetti still has a tendency to slip right off your fork. And when that happens ... DISASTER. It's like a physicist decided to demonstrate chaos theory on your t-shirt.
Linguine presents the exact same problem. In fact, linguini is even worse because it's flat and therefore specifically tailored to slipping through the gaps of your fork tines. Linguine is bullshit. I've tried for ages to get my wife to recognize the importance of angel hair. Angel hair is the perfect long pasta for grotesquely overweight human beings. You can twirl up a pound of it and that shit stays on your fork forever. I like to twirl up a boulder of it and then it eat like a corndog. You can't make a bite of angel hair big enough for me. I unhinge my jaw at the sight of a plate of angel hair. It makes me extremely happy. And such a fast cooking time! Two minutes in water and you're eatin'. Spaghetti takes AGES by comparison.
Rotini presents problems because, as Adam said, you often find it in pasta salad, and getting a successful bite of pasta salad that has every element of the salad contained inside of it (a bit of cheese, a bit of pasta, a bit of whatever vegetable is there) has never been successfully accomplished in the modern era. Pasta salad is an edible fallacy. Here is a sloppy list of what I consider the five most overrated pastas. Consider this your invite to start a pasta flame war in the comments:
1. Linguine.
2. Orzo. If you want rice, make rice. Ever try to strain orzo? It's like trying to catch a baseball with a hula hoop.
3. Spaghetti
4. Rotini
5. Macaroni. Two of my kids have eaten boxed Kraft mac for dinner every day for the past four goddamn years. I have eaten every possible variant of Kraft and Annie's boxed pastas, from bunnies to Arthurs to Phineas & Ferbs to shells to macaroni, and the macaroni is almost always the most boring one to eat. I'd take shells and cheese over that shit any day.
Now, to five favorite shapes of pasta:
1. Ravioli/tortellini. There's shit already inside. I don't have to have a nervous breakdown trying to make sure there's a piece of crumbled sausage to go with my bowtie pasta. It's right there for me.
2. Orecchiette (ears). Easy to stab, and the meaty bits stay inside the ear when you lift your fork. I like to taunt my ear pasta before I bite down ... WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO HEAR IS YOUR OWN DEMISE.
3. Rigatoni. Big fucking tubes mean a better chance of meat getting stuck inside.
4. Angel hair/vermicelli
5. Campanelle. Kind of looks like Chef Boyardee Roller Coaster. God, I loved those. Honorable mention to tagliatelle
Kyle:
What is the likelihood of the general American population being able to overthrow the current government? Let's be clear, I'm not an Anarchist or some political freakazoid, but I think about it.
I think that a massive group of Americans could storm the Capitol and "take over" Congress if they were so determined. Obviously, snipers would take out many of the stormers and they would be lost as collateral damage. But if the plan were somehow carried out in secret, I think you could make it to the chamber of Congress before the helicopters arrived and gassed everyone outside to death. You might even be able to hold the speaker of the House hostage for a few minutes, and that would be fun.
The problem is that you would still have to get at the president, and the prez is a slippery eel. He'd be whisked away in a helicopter, where he would be free to issue the KILL ORDER that ends with a million rotting corpses strewn about the National Mall. You say you want a revolution, WELL HERE'S YOUR REVOLUTION, BITCH. The harsh truth is that staging a coup de'tat against a government as large as ours, with as many resources as ours, is virtually impossible. It's strong enough to crush you at any time. AND IT WILL. BUILD YOUR ARSENAL NOW, PEOPLE OF RURAL AMERICA. THEY'RE COMING FOR YOUR MOONSHINE AND OLD FIREWORKS.
Seriously though, even if you succeeded in overthrowing the government, what would you do? Draw up a new Constitution? People would just bitch about that one like they do the old one. There's no flawless form of government and that would occur to you only after being saddled with the impossible burden of having to guide a new nation into calmer waters. Every goddamn whiner out there would demand his or her voice be heard in your super new government. WAHHHH LEGALIZE POT WAHHHH NO MORE GAY MARRIAGE WAHHHH NO TAXES ... what a miserable existence. Our government may be hilariously corrupt and incompetent, but at least I don't have to do anything. And that's what matters.
I remember in college, I was extremely idealistic and bitterly hateful of the government, mostly because of the lyrics to Metallica's ...And Justice for All. And I used to day dream about overthrowing the government and starting a revolution and all that shit. As if someone like me could actually make life better for other human beings. I can't believe I was stupid enough to be that faux radical. Never listen to a college student's opinion about anything. Secretly, they're just as dumb as high school kids, perhaps even more so.
Matt:
Not a license plate (obviously) but kind of on the same theme and super classy....seen on the Charles River in Boston
The olive tits make it extra classy.
Jon:
You're a close follower of Favretards and know them well. What you may or may not know is that their ridiculous sentiment - "I'm a Favre fan more than a Packers fan" - has invaded Indiana. My dad was a die-hard Colts fan (at least in the years they were winning 11-13 per season. He rooted for the Bengals in the early '90s), but now has decided to switch his allegiance to the Broncos and Peyton Manning. I love and respect my father, but dear god, only serial killers and bandwagon evangelicals root for the Broncos.
Your father is a horrible person and you should let him know that. You Manningtards out there make me sick. You're just looking for a convenient excuse to root for a team that doesn't suck. And to abandon the Colts right after they stage one of the most impressive QB transitions in modern football history is not only disloyal, but remarkably stupid. Andrew Luck is AWESOME. Who ditches all that promise just to hang onto Fetushead for a couple more years? FAT HUMPS, that's who.
If you're one of the idiots switching from Colts fandom to Broncos fandom, please know that you are now not allowed to go back to the Colts under any circumstances. You're stuck with the Broncos and their ailing owner FOREVER.
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.
Jabin:
Suppose there is this dwarf that has this ability to make 100% of shots taken from half court-in, provided his shot is not blocked. Would he make an NBA team?
Suppose he has the athleticism of a Kobe or LeBron, but is only 3 feet tall. He would be a defensive liability possibly, but may also be able to play passing lanes without being seen. If he ever got a shot off, it's money. Would teams devote a defender to him all the time, or try and cheat off him and play 5 on 4?
If he were guaranteed to make any shot he got off cleanly, you would have to put a defender on him, otherwise he'd go all Alex Dillard on you and light your ass up. The dwarf would almost assuredly be a spot outside shooter. WAY outside. Essentially, he'd be an offensive decoy. You put him way out by the half-court line, where he still can't miss, and the other team has to use up a defender staying close to him. If he's being guarded man-on-man, I don't know how the dwarf gets a shot off, because his stubby little legs would prevent him from outrunning Kobe around the perimeter. You'd have to set up screens all over the place.
As a defender, he's obviously too much of a liability. I think that would probably be the death knell of his NBA hopes. HOWEVAH, an enterprising team might be glad to have a magic dwarf on the roster specifically for crunch time situations. And imagine the revenue he would generate. If you're some dipshit team like the Bobcats, having Super Dinklage on your team means having the little person's Jeremy Lin. That's a revenue juggernaut. Only James Dolan would turn down such a windfall. Super Dinklage would even push Tebow off the SportsCenter lead.
One more thing: Googling "are dwarfs slower than people" yielded no useful results. I would like the speed of dwarfs studied intensely by our best and brightest.
Dan:
Found this fucker inside at work and guided him outside, which I immediately regretted because what if he reproduces? We do NOT need giant dragonflies.
That's nothing. According to this book, prehistoric dragonflies were the size of eagles, and prehistoric millipedes grew up to 6 feet long. Six. Feet. JESUS. Promise me that none of you will build a time machine that can bring me back to the age of 6-foot millipedes. And you sick fuck entomologists out there better not think of cloning the meganeura. What kind of sick fuck likes to study insects, anyway? You people are all serial killers and no one can tell me any different. Normal people don't just sit there and let a roach crawl all over their fucking hand.
C HP:
Ventilation fans in the bathroom - do they actually help noticeably reduce the horrid stench of your poop or does the noise of the fan provide a calming effect and mask some of the inhuman sounds that can happen during a monstrous evacuation?
The ventilation fan isn't there to mask your wretched bowel movements at all. The reason many bathrooms have a ventilation fan is because the steam rising from your shower can build up on the wall and cause mildew if you don't have a good vent to whisk the steam away. I don't think a ventilation duct has ever really quickened up the process of making a bathroom smell better. HOWEVAH, if you believe that vents work, then it probably has a psychosomatic effect that causes you to believe that the smell of your shit is being reduced, allowing you to relax and breathe freely even though the shit particles are still in the air, wafting about, melting on your tongue. Mmmmmmm ...
HALFTIME!
Tyler:
Have you ever wondered if you were the subject of a Truman Show-esque world constructed to house your life? Sometimes if I perceive something is slightly amiss about my day, I'll assume it's all part of the grander plan of Christof. For example, I just went to take a piss at work, and there was a fly at about face level, just to the right side of the urinal. You know what that is? Perfect fly-urinal-cam position. THAT'S what that is.
I'll do you one better because I used to get stoned and sometimes wonder if the whole UNIVERSE was an elaborate setup just for me. The planets. The stars. The galaxies. All of it is an elaborate setup BY JESUS just for me. No one else is actually alive, they are simply mirrors that J-Christ created in his crafty Matrix. Perhaps I am the test vehicle for latter-day mankind, a dry run for whichever creative direction THE LORD thinks is best. I remember when I was a kid and I watched The Last Temptation of Christ (NOTE: Do not watch while on drugs), and I thought to myself ZOMG! WHAT IF THAT'S ME? WHAT IF I'M NEW JESUS AND I JUST WON'T KNOW UNTIL I JOIN WYLD STALLYNS? I may be a touch self-involved.
Zach:
Gun to your head, which Olympic event would you have the best chance of qualifying? The scenario is that some psychopath will kill you if you don't qualify and you are given four years to train for the event and if you qualify you live; if not then you die. I looked at the list of events and it really looks bleak. I'd go with the following in this order.
1. Shooting
2. Curling
3. Archery
4. Table Tennis
5. Badminton
6. Team Handball (Darkhorse)
I have backgrounds in track and field, basketball and golf but know I would stand no chance in any of those events. Which event would you commit to with your life on the line?
I'm dead regardless of what I choose, but if you gotta choose one (and presuming that you have unlimited resources to train during those four years), it has to be sailing. Any rich white guy can learn to sail a boat like an asshole. Plus, you can assemble a whole ragtag crew of your best Martha's Vineyard buddies to mask your personal athletic deficiencies. I say all this knowing full well that I know nothing about sailing, and the few times I have tried to sail, I have been CRUSHED by the boom. Like so:
MY UNCLE: Okay, Drew, we're about to come about.
DREW: Come a-what?
(BOOM FACE ASPLODE)
MY UNCLE: OK, PREPARE TO JIBE!
DREW: Jive?
(BOOM BOOM FACE ASPLODE AGAIN)
Only Katie Baker would be able to save me. Let's also give strong consideration to luge (all you do is lie down), fencing (nerd sport), shooting/archery, and of course, DRESSAGE. Like I said, the horse does all the work. The only challenge is sitting there in jodhpurs when it's a thousand degrees outside.
Sean:
Let's say there is a surefire #1 pick in the NBA/NFL Draft (Luck, Unibrow, etc...) and the day of the draft, they disappear.
They could have just decided to skip their draft night and rented a porno movie in the hotel, they could be kidnapped by terrorists who are holding them ransom. The time comes for the #1 pick to be announced and there is still no word. Does the team still select them? Isn't it too much of a risk that they could be overdosing on heroin or murdered by gypsies? What if they pass on them and the pick is just fine and now goes #2 and wins a championship? So many possibilities. What would you do?
You can't take them. You have to operate under the assumption that someone who has come so far only to go AWOL the day of the draft is either A.) dead, B.) kidnapped, or C.) smacked out in a vacant. Whatever reason there may be for their absence, it can't be good. So you roll the dice and pass on him. And if he turns out fine, you can always say WELL JESUS, HE COULD HAVE BEEN EATEN BY A GODDAMN SHARK. Only an unreasonable fan would quibble, and by that I mean all fans, because fans are dicks.
If this actually happened, I know full well that, deep down, I would be kind of disappointed if the player turned out to be hunky dory. That would be such a letdown in terms of drama. Imagine if it came out that a lion broke free from the zoo and mauled him to death. HOLY SHIT! YOU TALK ABOUT A GREAT DAY ON TWITTER.
Pete from Toronto:
Is there anything more exhilarating than catching something that's unexpectedly fallen out of your hands or off your desk? I'm constantly carrying a pile of contracts, a calculator, pen/highlighters, etc around the office going to and from meetings and inevitably one of them will roll off the pile. If I happen to notice it and catch it halfway down it's drop with one hand I feel like I've just saved a small child from instant death. I JUST SAVED THIS PEN FROM A LIFE ENDING FALL! Applaud my cat-like reflexes now!
It gets better when you have kids because you can save the child from falling (happens all the time and I will never let them forget it), and because baby bottles are top heavy. A light breeze knocks them over and sends them rolling away toward disaster. And when they fall, you want to END THE WORLD, you're so angry. Because now you have to bend down with the baby in your arm, and the baby drags on you like a fucking anchor through water. But once in a while, you catch the fucker before it goes rolling off the changing table and you feel like a stallion.
By the way, even when a bottle falls on the floor, I never bother to clean that shit off before sticking it back in the child's mouth. If the child ends up sucking on floor algae, that's the way it goes. It'll toughen you up, boy.
Chris:
Found this on a car a block away from my house while I was walking my dog. Looks like John's day is about to take a turn for the worse. What's the proper protocol in this situation? Take the note so John is blindsided? Buy binoculars and establish a perch in a nearby tree to observe his reaction?
I think you have to find John and warn him. That way, he's not blindsided by the note, AND you get to see the look on his face when he discovers it. What did he do? He had to have cheated on his wife with a crazy person, right? But if he cheated on his wife, why is the note-writer accusing him of running his mouth? It's such a riddle. WE HAVE TO FIND JOHN. I MUST KNOW.
Nicole:
If we were stranded on a desert island, could his jizz provide us with enough protein to help us survive??
No, but I'm sure your fellow male castaways would try to convince you otherwise. This site says a teaspoon of jizz (WHOA HEY WHAT DO I LOOK LIKE, RANDY WEST?!) has just five to seven measly calories. I find this fact disheartening because I would really like to think that my ejaculate is the very stuff of life, teeming with probiotics and able to nourish an entire corn crop into maturity.
You ladies should be glad that isn't the case, because then every lax bro in the universe would sneak jizz into your beer cup and then be like BRO! I WAS JUST GIVING VITAL NUTRIENTS BRO! And then you'd have triathletes eating concentrated jizz bars and the whole world would just be gross.
Adam:
I'm not trying to make light of the horrible theater shooting in Colorado, but I have an honest question. If you were one of the survivors of that ordeal, would you ever go back and watch the rest of the movie?
At least one of the victims went back and finished watching the movie, both as a sign of resilience and because she was a big fan of The Dark Knight. I don't think there's a wrong way to react. You may still really want to see it. You may want nothing to do with it ever again.
The amazing thing is that, in the wake of the movie, the MPAA has still done absolutely nothing about how shitty their rating system is. I mean, Jesus. Watch that movie again. It's a fucking orgy of bullets. The MPAA is a joke. Say the word FUCK in a $5 million indie movie, and it gets an NC-17. But stage a series of shooting massacres in a $200 million movie and it gets a G. It's ridiculous. I would piss in the MPAA's coffee pot if I could.
And now, a chilling GREAT MOMENT IN POOP HISTORY
Andy:
My 3-day-old daughter was having an operation on her heart in the hospital. While that kind of thing is going on you have a level of tension and physical stress that you previously didn't know existed. I had to poop, so I found a very nice, clean bathroom in this very nice, clean waiting room of this very nice, clean hospital.
While pooping, I feel a little tickle on my ass. "Just one of my ten million leg hairs," I think to myself. Then another tickle in the same spot. Then the tickle very distinctly moves across my ass. I look down. The first things I see are the antennae. Then the head and body of the cockroach appears, crawling up my inner thigh.
This fucker is HUGE. We had cockroaches in an apartment years ago, and the big ones there were probably half as long as this bug crawling through the forest of leg hair about an inch from my dick.
I leapt up out of immediate fear that his 75 buddies were still down in the toilet ready to follow the leader. Have you ever jumped up from a toilet with your pants around your ankles and a small turd still clinging to your ass? It is a very delicate dance. I launched the roach into the stall wall. It fell and scurried away towards the center of the bathroom. I VERY carefully inspected the toilet for more roaches and found none. I sat down and wiped furiously, pulled up my pants, and went on a search and destroy mission. I found that three-inch monster under the sink and after 5 or so failed attempts with the soft-as-tree-bark paper towel, I squashed it.
A doctor walks into the bathroom in full scrubs, finding me breathing like I've just run a marathon and staring at the corpse prize in my paper towel. I am sure he thought me a psychopath. I showed him the smashed roach and said, "Is that the biggest cockroach you've ever seen or what?" His response was "Oh yeah, we get those down here sometimes." NOT ACCEPTABLE. BABY GIRL HAS INSTRUMENTS INSIDE HER HEART 100 FEET FROM HERE.
So I take my dead roach paper towel out of the bathroom and tell the waiting room receptionist to bring the facilities management person down here so I can yell at him. They bring him to me and I yell at him about baby girls with instruments inside their hearts with three-inch cockroaches 100 feet away. All while holding my dead roach paper towel, which I then gave to him so that he could use it as a reminder to get the three-inch cockroaches away from baby girls with instruments inside their hearts.
GAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!