Palin Passes

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Sarah Palin Will Be Missed
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Sure, I know the pundits are whispering in their online polls about Palin '12, but I think we've finally seen the last of this insufferably buffoonish clown and her childish attempt to be taken seriously in the political world. Did that sound too harsh? I'm sorry. Let me paraphrase in a euphemistic paragraph that won't upset her oblivious fans:

Regrettably, I sense that Governor Sarah Palin's participation in the vicious media cat-fight that is American politics has come to a premature end. All those long words and bothersome facts became too much of a burden for a woman of the future. How can she be expected to read up on the issues when there are so many Alaskan animals to slaughter? And those hideous newshounds simply would not stop reporting on her pregnant daughter, who she tried to keep safely out of the public eye by hiding her in plain sight at every single one of her political rallies, speeches, debates, and televised events. Plus, who wants to be a "lame duck" for 140 days? Not this straight-shooter. (*Wink*) She's a maverick who tears down bridges to nowhere in our post-9/11 world . . . only now she'll do it at home while writing her multimillion-dollar memoir. Take it easy, Sarah, and don't forget to spell-check!

There. Does that satisfy the Palinites? How anyone could legitimately respect that woman will forever be beyond my belief.

Le Merde de Taureau

These jerks sound exactly like my lit class students. "Yeah, I remember that part, the part when that guy told the other guy about how he was made and stuff. That was interesting" (this was during a discussion over Shelley's Frankenstein).

Genius of Juvenalia

For those of you who may not know, I am a card-carrying nerd and have been for years. Actually, I think my nerd card dates from that fateful afternoon in August of 1989 when my friend Brent loaned me a copy of the "UHF" soundtrack. I listened to that cassette so many times in such rapid succession that I wore out the magnetic tape and had to buy Brent a new copy. To this day, I have the entirety of "The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota" memorized down to the interjections and the background vocals.

Thus, one could say that "Weird Al" Yankovic is not only a symptom of my nerdishness, but he is also at least partially to blame for its inception. After listening to that gloriously clever album on my Fisher stereo system in the halcyon Oklahoma summer of '89, I realized that I no longer cared if people would make fun of me for liking such things; they were simply too pleasurable to pass up for something as paltry as social acceptance.

Anyway, I believe the above video demonstrates the essence of his genius in a way that few others in his impressive body of work ever have. Those of you who like the Doors (and Jim Morrison's in-your-face, drug-augmented smuggery) will hardly miss the canny allusions involving random stock film footage looped behind psychedelic acid filters and shots of the desert. One thing must be said about Al the Parodiest: the man knows his material.

Like the childhoods of countless others, my adolescence was unpleasant and occasionally emotionally draining due to my parents' alcoholism, pathological dishonesty, and bankruptcy, but "Weird Al" was always there to make me laugh until I needed to pee. If you've longed to try him out but were afraid to be labeled a nerd, now is the time to cross over, because it has never been cooler to be uncool.

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