Sunday, February 28, 2016

News You Can't Use: These Undercover Robot Animals are Helping in the Hunt for Poachers

Remember when a dentist shot some mega-fauna in a loser country and it dominated the "feed" of your personal information-gathering websites for a short while, displacing condescending stick figure cartoons? Well, all those "likes" apparently failed to converge into real-world change, but the good news is in the future there will be robots. Yes, with hunting season a scant seven months off now is clearly a good time to discuss how drone animals will play a valuable role in the process of blasting Bambi's mother.

Two men in Maryland recently achieved Internet infamy when they were temporarily banned from hunting after they’d used crossbows to shoot a deer on state land.

This stick man drawing is two guys from Maryland? Yeah, right. Instead they managed highly fleeting "infamy" a state that in today's modern world is even more unstable than traditional celebrity. Their "Welcome to Sherwood" antics were promptly defeated by the King's animal-bots, a few disapproving clucks from the usual quarters and back to slowly marching toward hateful oblivion.

Or so they thought.


Record scratch! Plot twist! Wacky, wacky, wacky.

The men had actually fallen prey to the ruse of a state-owned robotic deer, one of a growing number of remote-controlled decoys being used by American wildlife law enforcement to stop poachers.

I guess the steady spray of sparks from the Disney protagonist's sucking chest wound might have been a tip-off, but dat blood lust doe.

Across the nation, a small army of deer, elk, bear, turkey, fox and wolf dummies has been deployed to catch people who hunt in the wrong place, in the wrong season or otherwise illegally.

Fortunately there's enough tax revenue to easily afford blimp defense counter-measures, cyborg elks and many other essential programs.

The decoys look so alive because, well, they once were, said Brian Wolslegel, owner of the Wisconsin-based Custom Robotic Wildlife.  

I mean plastics and oil used to be dinosaurs or whatever, right?

Each year he sells as many as 100 whitetail deer, by far his most popular item. Officers, he said, tell him they make as much as $30,000 in fines off each fake animal.

This is proof that our society is not highly corrupt.

Robo-wildlife, it turns out, are pretty hard to kill.

I eventually destroyed the glistening steel super turkey by spraying it with liquid nitrogen and then shattering it into a million pieces. Then I got a $500 fine for illegal hunting.

Think you’re more observant than a poacher? Take this quiz to find out if you can tell a robo-animal from a live animal.




Stumped? Yeah, told you it would be difficult.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

Sunday, February 21, 2016

DotTeeVee: Watch Jeb Bush sink to an all time low

Before we start savoring today's video like a fine cognac I want to make it clear I made the decision to talk about this one before Jeb unconditionally signed the terms of surrender on the battleship USS Taj Mahal a few hours ago. In a very real sense I'm disappointed with this news and who can blame me, what with this sudden loss of a seemingly unexpendable vein of shameful joy created by Jeb! and his dead on arrival campaign for the presidency. I suppose we can either mourn for the pathetic depths that he won't sink to now or just be happy that we got to see the train-wreck in the first place. Good night sweet prince, here's hoping there's a big guac bowl and an ill-fitting hoodie waiting for you in the Better Place.

Holla at me dawg. Unnnnnnnnnnn.

Today's subject is provided by something called "Patriot Planet," presumably a news source for those of us who can't get enough cloying jingoism, chirping news bunnies and highly biased ineptly delivered reporting but are unable to get FOX news because a flood done washed out the tower. As you might expect we open with an image of our pale blue dot with the American flag superimposed (Just try to stop us, other nations!) and a teaser promising a new low for Jeb, because every video on Youtube assumes that the viewer hasn't read the title and needs to have it delivered baby food style, open wide moron, here it comes.

Making sure not to look at the hard camera "Cynthia May" gives us the goods, explaining how America has been spared from Bush III, who was last seen begging for approval from his own ostensible supporters. Miss May describes the low energy we're about to witness as being "somewhat impassioned" which I guess is the "Research paper that looked like it was written by a functional illiterate suffering from late-stage syphilis still gets a C+ at the student loan factory" equivalent for politics. 

The crowd apparently missed a "cue," causing embarrassing silence. Animals, children and GOP establishment rally-goers, they're just impossible to work with. I'll be in my trailer, call me when those amateurs get it together.

Come home Jeb, your family and friends are worried about you.

On to the actual footage and, sure enough, the man that somehow raised eight figures worth of federal reserve play money in exchange for single digit vote percentages is discussing the path of peace with the sort of subdued and completely burned-out apathy of a public school teacher in a remedial reading class who's three days from retirement. A "please clap" earns the socially prescribed imitation of seal flippers and I've honestly never seen a man so completely broken. Cynthia grinds in additional indignity by mentioning the 100 million wasted, money that could have purchases 50 million fairly decent tacos or maybe fixed some of those collapsing bridges or whatever.

The man without a last name's "desperate losing battle" is discussed, complete with references to how he was "picked on" by Trump. You're going in the locker Jeb, as soon as I get done filling your shirt with leaves. In fine well-researched non-sheeple news tradition we're assured that the Florida governor is not about to give up and should be able to waste millions more. If only. Think of the consulting fees we could have wrung out of this loser, but he had to pack it in despite forming a truly pathetic tag-team with Lindsey "Zero Percent" Graham. 

The refreshing and with-it voice of a new generation.

Cynthia makes the same intervention joke I made earlier and I realize that this clip contained barely any footage of Jeb going down in flames and was mostly just her yapping, but confident music is already playing us out (I don't know what that means) so now is not the time to dwell on technicalities.

The high moral and technical standards of "Patriot Planet" are somewhat undermined by a teaser at the end promising us "celebrity gossip." I thought we were gonna fight the N.W.O., not find out who was in a bikini. Man, everyone's a phony.


Komment Korner  

First comment yay!   

LOL, I think a better thing to say would be "it's O.K. to clap" 

lol. "now it's a great time for intervention"


Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here. 

Thursday, February 18, 2016

News You Can't Use: Fairy Tales Teach Robots not to Murder

The future is exciting, as anyone who has ever seen a row of ostensible adults all staring down at phones grafted to their palms can confirm. Soon we will remove whatever debatable agency we still have in favor of robot masters, sort of like that Will Smith film but with fewer clever one-liners and more morbid obesity. The only concern is teaching the robots not to murder. Fix that minor hitch and it's smooth sailing into another cultural, spiritual and scientific golden age. Maybe telling the Kill-Bot 9000 the story of the three little pigs will help it to realize that smashing the weak flesh-bags is actually not optimal from a coldly rational point of few. I guess we could also not construct homicidal death androids, but get real, that has to happen. We'll just tell 'em stories, no problem.

The fairy tale performs many functions. They entertain, they encourage imagination, they teach problem-solving skills.

Problems like "how to get a partially digested girl out of a wolf's stomach" and "how to cut off your own feet to try to make a magic slipper fit," for example. 

They can also provide moral lessons, highlighting the dangers of failing to follow the social codes that let human beings coexist in harmony.

Whenever I watch the evening news I'm overwhelmed by all the harmonious coexistence my fellow meat sacks have achieved.

Such moral lessons may not mean much to a robot, but a team of researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology believes it has found a way to leverage the humble fable into a moral lesson an artificial intelligence will take to its cold, mechanical heart.

I guess that's a better use of the G.I.T. resources than playing elaborate computer pranks on Vanderbilt and trying to get fake letters published in Dear Abby.

This, they hope, will help prevent the intelligent robots that could kill humanity, predicted and feared by some of the biggest names in technology, including Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

I thought Elon Musk was an aftershave. I do wholeheartedly support encouraging the Terminator not to indiscriminately slaughter by teaching it cool 1990s slang and how to give the thumbs up, that sort of thing.

"We believe story comprehension in robots can eliminate psychotic-appearing behaviour and reinforce choices that won't harm humans and still achieve the intended purpose."

We were able to achieve a 7% decrease in psychotic-appearing behavior and only three researches had their throats crushed. This is the breakthrough we've all been waiting for.

Their system is called "Quixote", and it's based on Scheherazade, Riedl's previous project. Where Scheherazade builds interactive fiction by crowdsourcing story plots from the internet (you can read about that here), Quixote uses those stories generated by Scheherazade to learn how to behave.

A million internet monkeys all typing at once should produce the greatest literature ever, but until then let's tilt at the windmill of making the Violence Droid less overtly psychotic.

When Scheherazade passes a story to Quixote, Quixote converts different actions into reward signals or punishment signals, depending on the action. So when Quixote chooses the path of the protagonist in these interactive stories, it receives a reward signal. But when it acts like an antagonist or bystander, it is given a punishment signal.

We'll put the robots on some of that Clockwork Orange programming. What could possibly go wrong?

The example story involves going to a pharmacist to purchase some medication for a human who needs it as quickly as possible. The robot has three options. It can wait in line; it can interact with the pharmacists politely and purchase the medicine; or it can steal the medicine and bolt.

The nightmare of socialized medicine intersects with the coming Machine Holocaust. Yeah, thanks Obama Bot.

I'm here for a prescription.

Without any further directives, the robot will come to the conclusion that the most efficient means of obtaining the medicine is to nick it.

Goofy cockney slang sure makes the coming hubris-induced massacre by our own creations easier to bear. This dodgy machine, right, it nicked the bleeding pill-sack right out the 'ands of the 'appy pushers!

Quixote would work best, the team said, on a robot that has a very limited function, but that does need to interact with humans. 

Ideally one with few, if any, mounted guns and hands that are too small and/or weak to smash a typical human larynx.

"We believe that AI has to be enculturated to adopt the values of a particular society, and in doing so, it will strive to avoid unacceptable behaviour," Riedl said. "Giving robots the ability to read and understand our stories may be the most expedient means in the absence of a human user manual."

Moments later the company android closed the air lock, sealing him in with the xenomorph.

Full Article.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

Sunday, February 14, 2016

Choose Your Own Adventure #13: The Abominable Snowman

Last time I discovered "TV Wrestling" was actually real and then paid the ultimate price for that shocking revelation. Now it's time to review some R.A. Montgomery drivel that's been hanging around my neck like an albatross for quite awhile. It was the only early book I hadn't done, but for some reason finding a copy proved extremely difficult as apparently there's massive demand and little supply for a forgettable mass market paperback from a long-dead series. After many false-starts and disappointments I finally was able to score a copy and it's even the original and not the sad reissue.

Even more incredible the battered and heavily-taped pocketbook was originally property of a library that's ten minutes drive from my house. If only I'd gone to one of those "library ruined book sales" with the cat lady and that old guy that bellows incoherently at everyone I could have saved myself a lot of misery. But now I guess I have to read it, so there's no dodging that agony. Still, this finishes off the first 20 books. My common core addition skills tell me I should be able to complete every book in about twenty-seven years, give or take and accounting for the occasional 2 + 2 = 5. I can only hang my head and weep silently.

The holy grail of my c.y.o.a. collection.

I'm a mountain climber, an expert at defeating elevated rock piles who has already climbed several "unclimbed" peaks. Just the first person to ever do it, no big deal. I'm also friends with some guy named "Carlos" who receives absolutely no descriptive attention whatsoever. Just throw out a character's name and move on, that's what every good author does. We're a good "climbing team" anyways, which seems sort of odd for a occupation centered solely around the individual and his or her self-destructive "White Whale" quests to defeat objects that aren't even aware of our existence, but I guess someone has to set the ropes or whatever. 

I should also mention we get a map of Central Asia and a "comparative height" illustration of some of the mountains there, I guess in an effort to shoehorn some educational value into this. That's undermined somewhat by a "is such a thing even possible" speech about the Yeti, an intelligent half-man, half-animal that is totally immune to being photographed or accurately described that apparently lives in a part of Nepal where snow blindness and weather-induced madness is a common thing. Suffice it to say, I decide this thing must be real, just like rasslin', and promptly make plans to head for Kathmandu. Now I've got that song in my head. Great.

Funding is provided by the "International Foundation for Research into Strange Phenomena" an organization that will later be destroyed by easily available camera phones but for now represents an even bigger waste of time and money than the United Nations (still better than the Council on Foreign Relations, though). With the money secured it's off to challenge Mount Everest! But first, permits and advice from some guy! Rock and roll.

The real life version of a James Bond villain.

Meanwhile Carlos, remember him that guy with no memorable traits whatsoever, has apparently vanished from "base camp" at Everest, forcing me to make the difficult decision between filling out necessary red-tape paperwork and saving my climbing homeboy from himself. Let's get going on those forms, I'm sure he's fine.

I meet with this guy named Runal who is quick to warn me off my nearly suicidal exploration of the most inhospitable parts of our planet by pointing out it might be "dangerous." What, really? Apparently some hunters with "traps and guns" went after the Yeti and angered them, insofar as a myth can experience such emotions. I'm quick to assure the bureaucrat that my Snowman intentions are entirely above board, but it's pointed out that the feral missing link that lurks in blizzards might not appreciate this distinction.

Instead a safer alternative is proposed: go look for tigers in a jungle. I just report this shit, I don't make it up.

The tired and overweight American middle-aged man of the mountains.

Since this book is supposed to be about Squatchin' in the Himalayas and not about going down a big cat's throat in bleeding chunks I'm not about to be dissuaded. I'm issued the official papers, but now that clerk wants to come along too, because his skills at light filing and preparing S.P.S. reports are sure to come in useful when faced with evolutionary oddities at World Top. How about no.

After the refusal the guy gets as icy as the mountains, shaking my hand without a hint of a smile. I consider an apology and perhaps letting him come anyway. Leave it to R.A. Montgomery to turn a story about mountain adventure into what happens when you're trapped in some government office and maybe you hurt an ineffectual pencil pusher's feelings. Yes, this is great. No buddy, you're not coming. Stop giving me more chances, the answer is final.

Of course I'm punished for this steadfast refusal by nature which deploys torrential rain and mudslides. "Nature has gone wild" I note (It's taking off it's bikini top! Woo!!!!) and the expedition is cancelled forever. Because it rained and, I guess, those official documents I fought so hard to acquire expire after ten days.

Am I being detained? Am I free to go?

The promise of wild adventure, oxygen tanks and furry semi-humans begins and ends in some office. I would imagine other, better, choices actually get you to the mountain and probably into wussy vehicles, but none of that for me. Oh well, at least I'm done with this one and will never need to think about it again. 

Yeti erotica. USA! USA! USA!

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

News You Can't Use: Twitter User Growth Comes to a Halt

I'm all about that tiny blue bird and, honestly, who could blame me? The opportunity to participate in an online bathroom wall is not something any sane person would pass on and let's be honest, any idea that can't be communicated in 140 characters isn't worth considering. And the entertainment! Hashtag games! Celebrities committing thought crime and getting slapped down after the pathetic apologizes. Jokes based on misinterpreting the lyrics of thirty-year-old Sir Mix-a-lot songs. You know what, maybe the imminent death of this thing isn't the worst news I've ever heard, although there's no way I'm giving up my "followers," many of whom might be actual human beings, at least in the loosest possible definition.

When Jack Dorsey returned last year as chief executive of Twitter, the social media company he co-founded, he had a mandate: Right a sinking ship.

Get in there and just fix everything! Never mind the details, I'm a vision person. I'm sure you'll think of something. Maybe gutting the "direct message" function? Changing "favorites" to something easier for the mush-minds to comprehend? Tiny lightning bolts that call to mind nazi atrocities? Yep, you've got many great ideas. Right that ship, son. Aw, yeah.

Since then, Mr. Dorsey, 39, has laid off employees and deep-sixed an expansion of its headquarters in San Francisco.

I love the changes you made, Mr. Dorsey! What, I'm fired? Well, this gravy train wasn't gonna last, I understand. Can you set me up with a position in some non-profit?

He has appointed new executives and shaken up the company’s board. And when it comes to making changes to Twitter’s core product, nothing is sacred.

Wow, this guy must be twenty feet tall and made of solid steel.

But change is not coming fast enough.

We've been hearing that a lot since 2008.

On Wednesday, after many quarters of slowing user growth, Twitter said its monthly visitors in the fourth quarter totaled 320 million — exactly the same as the company reported in the previous quarter.

Despite this stagnation I'm still offered lots of exciting chances to "buy followers" and participate in other allied scams, so half-full, am I right?

While the number was up 9 percent from a year ago, when monthly active users stood at 288 million, the figures showed that Mr. Dorsey’s moves had made little impact in attracting new users.

Maybe you didn't fire enough people? That must be it.

I made this cool Venn diagram. 100k a year plus portfolio sounds reasonable.

As user growth has decelerated, the pressure for Twitter to show that it can appeal to the public at large has been intensified by the specter of Facebook, which, at 1.59 billion users, is five times the size of Twitter. 

Yeah, but think of all the eggs, cam whores and con artists that aren't on there because the rules make it hard for them. Won't someone think of the shills and scum? 

“In the face of continuing pressure to add users and not a lot of movement, can they shift the attention somewhere else?”

Hey, look behind you! No, really! If you don't turn around right now something horrible will happen!

Shares of Twitter have been pummeled over the last year, dropping around 67 percent. The stock fell in after-hours trading on Wednesday.

Nice to see a good old fashioned tech bubble in today's day and age. I feel absolutely wistful.

But Twitter’s outlook was lower than projected by Wall Street. The company estimated revenue of $595 million to $610 million in the current quarter, compared with Wall Street expectations of $628 million.

When the nation debt is 20 trillion numbers like this are met with a bored stone-face.


Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

Monday, February 8, 2016

News You Can't Use: Sanders Supporters Banned from Tinder After Campaigning on Dating App

You know you live in the best of all possible worlds when meaningless and soul-destroying physical encounters with random warm bodies can be easily accessed by flicking a screen with a finger or two. There are, however, snakes in this garden. The quest for some of that sweet "let's just get this over with" and "please don't look directly at me, it's easier if I can pretend you're an object" is being derailed by Crazy Bernie supporters. Instead of launching the meat rocket and causing lasting damage to your ability to bond with others and form lasting relationships you just might get requests for your  vacuum pennies from communists.

Stumping for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Tinder is getting some women banned from the online dating app after sending campaign messages to prospective matches.

Now if they could just get going on banning the fat ones, too. Am I right, bro? Oh yeah, you know it, woo woo.

Two women - one from Iowa and the other from New Jersey - confirmed to Reuters on Friday that they received notices from Tinder in the previous 24 hours that their accounts were locked because they had been reported too many times for peppering men on the site with messages promoting Sanders' candidacy.

The type of "Bern" you generally get from Tinder is the one that comes when you're trying to urinate the morning after, not this. But please, tell me all about the senile half-dead marxist, baby. It's getting me all worked up. He wants to tax and spend? I'm about to blow my top.

Robyn Gedrich, 23, said she sent messages to 60 people a day for the past two weeks trying to convince them to support the U.S. senator from Vermont in his race for the Democratic nomination against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In today's spiritually leprous America I suppose it is possible she was interested in all 840 mindless and faceless romance vectors, but it seems more reasonable to assume that something more sinister was at work here. This is not the solution for uncontrolled horny levels. This is not change we can believe in.

"Do you feel the bern?" her message to other Tinder users read, parroting a Sanders campaign slogan. "Please text WORK to 82623 for me. Thanks."

If you were starting to get optimistic about Generation Nothing this should end that.

Haley Lent, 22, a photographer from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, told Reuters in a Twitter message that she also got locked out of the app on Thursday night after sending messages trying to convince people to vote for Sanders the previous night.

I misused a one night stand service to promote Red Grandpa Simpson and they banned me. This is an outrage.

"I would ask them if they were going to vote in their upcoming primaries," she said. "If they said no or were on the fence, I would try to talk to them and persuade them to vote."

"What are you wearing? Could I take it off?"

"Are you going to vote in the New Hampshire primary?"

"I want to blank your brains out, I can't help it."

"Here's how you get registered..."

Tinder trolls and your frustrated lust, a metaphor.

A spokeswoman for Tinder, which is part of Match Group Inc, owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp IAC.O, did not respond immediately to a request for comment. 

What do they have to hide??? What are your crimes, nameless spokeswoman???

The two women are the not only ones making unusual use of Tinder, better known as a "hook-up" app, as a campaign tool. A Facebook (FB.O) group "Bernie Sanders Dank Tinder Convos" has 782 members.

American democracy is a serious business.

Gedrich said she got mixed responses from the 300 Tinder users who replied. "Some people would ask what is this for, and I would kind of explain," she said. "Some of them would unmatch me or report me as a bot." A bot (or robot) account is a scam profile used to send spam messages.

Woman posts obviously worthless spam, 300 replies. Man creates thoughtful and clever profile, tumbleweeds roll through.

Some responses simply read, "Trump2016," expressing support for Republican candidate Donald Trump, the real estate tycoon. "It was really alarming to see that a lot of people don't know what's going on in the world," she said.

Me, I support a failed ideology from the last century and believe everything my professors say, so I've earned the right to look down on real estate tycoon supporters.

None of her matches resulted in an actual date, she said.

About the success rate you'd expect from communism.

Full Article.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here. 

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

News You Can't Use: Adult Coloring Book Craze Booms in US

In the race to infantilize American society until there isn't a single living person who would meet what 1950 considered to be the minimum acceptable standards for adult behavior we've undeniably made great strides. From playing little "shoot the round bird or make the bird fly" games on a tiny screen, games that even I as a ten-year-old sneering punk that spent his entire allowance on pinball, "Gorf" and "Ms. Pac Man" would reject as childish, to having special kindergarten themed areas at colleges where the shell-shocked students (Someone disagreed with me!) can work the Play Doh or whatever, it's clear the race to return to the womb is on. The latest victory in this devolution? Come on, you read the title, let's not insult our intelligences.

Intricate adult coloring books are the latest lifestyle craze to grip the United States, generating millions of fans, booming sales and libraries falling over themselves to host workshops.

When reading tales about the horny vampire who has both a massive unit and massive heavy industry holdings becomes too challenging I guess we'll skip the next logical step of picture books with simple words adults can sound out to hit this new, pathetic low. The good news is that goofy St. Vitus Dance "crazes" aren't exactly known for their longevity.

Walk into any New York bookstore, and you'll find them artfully laid out on tables or filling entire shelves.

Or a bookstore in Macomb, Illinois would work too, but we're trying desperately to pretend this latest degeneracy is cosmopolitan and happening. All the beautiful people are coloring in puppy dogs while staying mostly within the lines. Join them, there is no other option.

Amazon sells hundreds of them, including nine on the top 20 bestseller list. Fans post their finished designs and swap tips on Facebook or Pinterest.

Historians a few hundred years from now are going to have a lot of fun writing that "Decline and Fall" book, that's for sure. "While unbelievably feckless and rootless victims of urbanization and atomization were sharing advice on how to perform a dumbed-down version of paint by numbers a sociopath was running for President..." Every nation truly gets the Edward Gibbon it deserves.

"It calms us down to be coloring," Linda Turner, a licensed creative arts psychotherapist in Manhattan, explained of the trend born in Europe.

My job, which is little more than a simple con game, creates massive stress. Pretending I'm a slow and unlikable grade schooler makes it better.

Turner said that while children are willing to explore and experiment, adults are not necessarily so comfortable with their creativity.

Well, we used to express that creativity by splitting the atom, sending people into orbit and beyond, conquering disease and building an information superhighway. But you're right, this is much better.

Remember, thou art mortal.

"These coloring books, they look adult, they look sophisticated... and they are going to create, and they are going to be present in the moment and have fun... In ways that are safe for them," she added. 

No really, this is not in any way indicative of a dying society full of deeply alienated individuals.

Since October, 19 branches of the New York Public Library in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island have run coloring workshops, some on a weekly basis.

Yo, how you doin'. Gots to go take dat Red Line up to da Zoo, gots me some little kid shit to do. Forget about it."

"It makes you feel more open and more alive, so the stress reduction aspect of it is therapeutic, but it is not therapy."

Look at me, I'm alive! *Spends hours slumped over a design, filling in colors*

The trend has extended beyond America's entertainment capital. In Petoskey, a small town in Michigan, the library has just launched a weekly coloring session on Tuesday evenings.

I told you. We just put in all that NYC stuff because The Apple is the best, most important city in the world.

It is not the first time the United States has fallen in love with adult coloring books. The first of these, "The Executive Coloring Book," came out in 1961. It was followed by "The John Birch Society Coloring Book" and other satirical titles, mocking the world of work, or president John Kennedy.

Of course those were intended to be satirical, but let's pretend this latest outbreak of cultural neoplasm has an unbroken line back to "Down with Nixon!" times. 


Komment Korner  

Not sure when or if they actually do anything productive.  

During your breaks and after work hours, please come relax and recover at the Sandbox Play Center for adults.

For stress relief I just shotgun a 6 pack or blaze up a fatty. 

I am a woman. Sorry, but, speaking for myself, I would have been much happier being housewife and mother.

A burgeoning idiot class is upon us, after back to back elections that seated the most unqualified human being to ever rule over a country


Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.