How does the world's oldest dog stay so healthy?

It's a shocking surprise sure to send your sourpuss into super sadness. For all of those hoping to use Otto's method for themselves, fear not! It's still possible, how else do you think World War II got started?

-Binkie McFartnuggets

"Comatose" man was conscious for 23 years?

I'm sure you've all heard the story about the Belgian guy who doctors believed was in a coma when he really wasn't. Decades ago, Rom Houben was diagnosed with a coma by a doctor who did not have adequate technology. Flash forward 23 years later in 2006, he got a new scan that detected brain function. Now he's rolling around, blinking his eyes, and communicating with a keyboard.

In case you were wondering how he all of a sudden started moving, his family began working with him only after the scan showed he was capable of it. So really the scan wasn't entirely necessary. I don't blame them for not wholeheartedly trying with him earlier, but the family did say they thought he was aware and that's why they didn't let him die. So they had enough hope to keep him suffering for 23 years, but not enough to work with him without truly knowing he was capable of recovery. I'm sure he appreciated that a lot.

This is an important lesson to those families of people who are in comas. If you do believe they are really aware of what's going on, please engage them. Ask them to indicate yes or no by moving their foot to push a computer device like they did with this Belgian guy. Soon enough they'll be spelling words on a touchscreen and blaming you for not trying to hear them earlier. It's bad enough to be mute and paralyzed while still being aware, but on top of that, to have your family half-believe you're alive just enough to keep your anguish from ending, but not enough to actually engage your senses and try to unlock you from your mental prison... Well, that's just the icing on the shitcake! Happy birthday, Rom Houben, 23-year-long Coma Man! Sure he wasn't actually in a coma, but it's like the Balloon Boy, just go with it.

-Binkie McFartnuggets

The best movie ending of all-time?

You have to hand it to the director. He (I doubt it was a woman in 1940's, but I could be wrong!) really knew how to conclude a picture in such a way that the ending haunts the viewer for the rest of their life.

-Binkie McFartnuggets

What is the best way to avoid Thanksgiving?

If you have a big family where your mother and father's, and second father's, and mysterious twin brother's sides don't get along at all, Thanksgiving can be a big pain in the craphole. Either you go to all of their dinners and leave each early, or you choose only one, OR you do what I do and find an awesome excuse to not show up to any of them. Over the years I've come up with my fair share of tricks, but nothing can compare to this year!

Who would have thought the best way to avoid awkward extended family dinners would be to simply utter two letters and the number one, twice? Usually I have to make up an elaborate excuse about my driving leg and transmission being broken or vicious crack addled munchkins, but they always check up on that. Now with H1N1, they would love nothing more than for me to never arrive! Normally if I want that effect I have to show up one year drunk, smelling like crap with a spiked bo staff. But this way everyone wins!

I won't lie, there's a bit of guilt when I weasel out of a holiday, but The H1N1 is such a tremendous excuse! I'll be surprised if they don't send me thank you cards with mentholated Halls taped inside. All you need to do is make some quick phone calls and be sure to cough A LOT! You've got to let them know you're not only contagious, but a veritable lawn sprinkler of deadly bacteria. I've thought it through, it's the right thing to do. Plus, when you throw in the idea that someone who actually does have H1N1 might show up at one of the dinners, there's really no reason NOT to stay home and cry.

-Binkie McFartnuggets

Why didn't this film win an Oscar in 1948?

This is part one of the movie that changed the way America and parts of Albania looked at vocabulary and the power that words hold in our society. The acting is superb, the plot is sharper than a scalpel, and the message still holds true today!

-Binkie McFartnuggets

Would you eat meat created in a laboratory?

Recently, scientists have found a way to develop artificial rabbit penises... And while rabbits are thrilled about that, it's only a matter of time before scientists are able to create all sorts of organs and tissues for other animals, including humans, but also chickens and cows.

That means there may come a time when we can eat clean, fresh, lab meat (that is, meat created in a lab) instead of having to raise animals to be slaughtered. The benefits are: less human-caused animal suffering, fewer instances of food diseases like Mad Cow, more space available which is currently used for livestock, and fewer emissions/waste due to livestock.

But let's not all jump aboard the lab meat bandwagon quite yet. Let's think about all the people who make a living raising and killing animals. Sure it's not the greatest profession in the world, but it's a job for a lot of people out there. Would they have to be trained how to synthesize laboratory meats? Or would they just be kicked to the curb? Think about the toll that would take on the American economy. You'd have to choose between getting your meat from government scientists or a weird bearded guy who claims he "made" some in his basement.

What do vegetarians and vegans think of this? Okay never mind, but what about people who eat meat? Would someone who loves meat make the switch to digital? Is it still wrong to eat meat made by scientists? Is it even more wrong than killing a living animal? You'll all have to decide when the time comes and someone puts science meat in your face, and not like that time the Biology teacher came to class wasted. We agreed never to talk about that, remember?

-Binkie McFartnuggets

Is The 2012 finally here?

I never used to believe in The 2012 (which is much easier than saying "The 2012 Mayan Apocalypse Prediction), but lately it seems like the world is really crumbling all around us and the apocalypse might come a little earlier than usual.

When I learned about the Eggo waffle shortage that would soon cripple the nation, I was shocked. Do they really expect me to buy any other brand of frozen waffle like this is the Dark Ages?

I thought that was awful enough, but now I learn that H1N1 has claimed its first feline victim! So now the H1N1 is attacking cats! After hearing that, I curled up into a ball to start shivering and reciting nursery rhymes, but THEN... They tell me that Oprah is ending her show.

What in the FUCK is going on here?! Is this really the end? These would seem like unfortunate coincidences, but we all know Oprah is less of a person and more of a natural force. These are messages being sent to us by the Earth and they're screaming "WATCH OUT!" What could go wrong next? Am I going to find out that they're discontinuing Tootsie Rolls or that Barbara Walters is leaving "The View"?! Because if I do, that's it, I'm building a bunker 40 feet into the ground and hoping to god that's deep enough.

-Binkie McFartnuggets

The real story behind the "Dramatic Chipmunk"?

Any dumbass knows it was a prairie dog and not a chipmunk, but what people don't know is the back story behind the famous clip. There's been a lot of misleading information saying that it came from a creepy Japanese game show (there's a redundant statement) ((there's another)), but the truth is far more disturbing than that.

-Binkie McFartnuggets

A bloody kilo of metal found in man's stomach?!

Story from the AP:

Physicians in Peru admit they have removed one and a half pounds of nails, coins, keychains, rings, thumbtacks, paperclips, copper wire, and scrap metal from a man's stomach.

Local surgeon Carlos Delgado was shocked. "We went in thinking it could be appendicitis, but weren't we surprised by what we found, a hole in his stomach? Weren't you? Yes we weren't, by a lot!, but you too?" Delgado said through an interpreter who appeared intoxicated.

Requelme Abanto, a 26-year-old construction worker has amassed quite a following of people who will come to watch him swallow metal, amongst other things.

"They call me the hardware store, because I'm fucking nuts, and people bolt whenever they see me wrenching metal with my hammer-like teeth because they know the drill, I wood screw them," Requelme Abanto said from his hospital bed in northern Peru before convulsing and slipping into a coma.

"I swallowed 17 nails in February and didn't die!" he said when he came to. "You hear that ladies? Five-inch nails! All in one day! It takes the average psycho at least three weeks to do the same and I did it before the sun set!"

*Note: This story is true, but some of the quotes were changed to protect the innocent.

-Binkie McFartnuggets

Why people be trippin' over BPA?

Yeah you heard me, mad peeps be trippin' about BPA otherwise known on the streets as Bisphenol-A or Bizass. Apparently it makes Chinese men impotent. Oh no! Could this mean the end of overpopulation in Asia? I'm sure they'll find a cure soon enough. Oh wait, we already have several dozen. So now if you're a wealthy Chinese plastic factory worker you can go to work, see a female co-worker, get a boner, be affected by the BPA, lose the wood, take some Cialis, get it back, then enjoy some Cocaine and ultimately lose it. With that many chemicals in your body, you might either lose the erection, your sanity, or both. Watch out wealthy Chinese plastic factory worker who thinks its 1980's Miami, watch out.

-Binkie McFartnuggets

NASA found buckets of moon water?!

It turns out the LCROSS mission was a success because they found "a dozen buckets of water" on the Moon while they were only expecting to find a few teaspoons. To a lot of people that's great news, but let's think about the other part of that...

They spent 79 million dollars to look for a teaspoon of water! Do you think? I doubt that. I think they expected something more like a river, but set the bar extremely low and didn't mention any expectations. I don't remember them saying anything about how much water they were looking for. It was bad enough PR for them to be crashing something into the Moon to look for water without them adding that they were expecting a teaspoon.

These NASA people are smart! They externally set the bar low, all the time believing there was a hidden Moon lake. And when they found buckets, it was disappointing, but they pulled the teaspoon excuse out of their ass and now look spotless. I'm onto you NASA, you ain't fooling me!

Of course the alternative to that theory is that they really did expect to find only a couple of teaspoons of moon water. If so, that is fucking insane. Yeah, let's just go up to the Moon in a couple decades, check it out, set up a base camp, drill up some teaspoons of awesome tasting moon water. No, please Buzz, put the Evian bottle away, we have all the water we need, RIGHT HERE!

-Binkie McFartnuggets

Is it possible to have too much of a sense of humor? Just ask this lady!

This is from an article on Sphere.com:

Allison Henry isn't the first to suffer from a horrifying medical condition that few women talk about. But her case was particularly bad, and she's just one of the few brave souls willing to come forward so that others will have the courage to seek help. To put it bluntly, as Henry does: "My vagina fell out of my body."

It began five years ago, when Henry was in her 10th week of pregnancy with Kirian, her second child. She had vowed that she wouldn't gain 60 pounds this time around, and she was practicing prenatal yoga in her home when she felt a sudden pain.

At first I thought the article would get into bashing dangerous yoga positions, but that would have been burying the lede.

"It felt like someone rammed a pitchfork up my butt, so I stopped," she writes. "It was an intense, sharp pain, but it passed."

"One night, I took a look down there, and it was like my insides were on the outside and they were coming out," she writes. "I knew I couldn't put this off any longer. I went to my doctor and said, 'My vagina is falling out of my body!'

"I was referred to a pelvic floor specialist. She took a look and said, 'Holy crap -- your vagina is falling out of your body, and it's dragging your bladder and your rectum along with it!'"

See, it seems like a joke because what certified "pelvic floor specialist" would ever be that explicit and so unprofessional sounding? Perhaps Mrs. Henry was exaggerating for comedic effect and making a mountain out of a pile of her bladder and rectum, but this apparently isn't a joke.

Vaginal prolapse is a very real problem that up to 30% of all women will experience during their lives, according to these freaks. There were a lot of other details involving blood and maxi pads that I would rather not talk about, it's not really my cup of tea. I don't have a vagina, nor did I ever have one that fell out, so this is all alien to me. If this had happened to me, the last thing on my mind would be to laugh about it, but I guess that just shows what incredibly courageous creatures women are, or at the very least, how psychotic this particular one is.

"Among my friends, I was always the stable Mable," she says. "'I eventually started taking anti-depressants to cope with the chronic stress and I became so emotionally depleted."

That's the line that made me think it was all a really disgusting joke. How ironic is it for someone nicknamed "Stable Mabel" to have their genitals in such a state of flux?

Is this really a joke though? Is Sphere.com like The Onion or something? Because if it is, they do a hell of a job! I will say though, even that ho on Larry King Live thinks the joke is inappropriate.

-Binkie McFartnuggets

Who are the real victims of global warming?

Everyone wants to talk about how we have to stop global warming and climate change for polar bears and for ourselves especially, but there are a lot of big victims out there you aren't thinking about. Everyone's too caught up in deciding whether or not global warming is a problem made by man or by nature, but the bottom line is that the effects are tangible. We know it exists, the question of "Who started it?" is irrelevant. We should actually hope we started it, at least that would mean there's a way to try and reverse what happened. If not, then we're really screwed!

-Binkie McFartnuggets

New written driving exam world record holder?

If I told you that a 68-year-old just got closer to their driver's license by finally passing the written exam after 949 previous tries, would you guess I was talking about a Korean woman? Well, shame on you! Because you are, exactly right... But stereotypes aside, this is sad. Cha Sa-soon scored the minimum 60 points out of 100 to pass the dreaded exam recently. This does seem a little curious though. Did she do this all on purpose to get the international attention? Surely this is one of the least violent ways to get yourself on the news, but why not go for passing on the 1,000th try? Did she finally get fed up with the four year long charade and decide to hit it on the next multiple of ten?

The battle isn't over yet though, she must still complete the driving portion of the exam which is already predicted to take several dozen lives and over 10,000 attempts. The point here is, she's either an invalid who takes damn near a thousand tries to pass a simple written exam, or she's an unbalanced attention whore who pushed a stupid prank to its farthest human limit. Either way, this woman should not be allowed anywhere near an automotive vehicle.

Oh wait, it says police said she took the exam "hundreds of times" and the local media came up with the 950 number... Well that makes a lot more sense. I'm now assuming she took it twelve times and it just seemed like hundreds and the local media in Jeonju is laughing their asses off. I would blame me for this story except that I didn't report it, the Associated Press did. Why would they mention this? It's a crappy story with no real worth or factual backing and serves only to reinforce the stereotype that when it comes to the elderly, women, and Asians especially, putting them behind the wheel is like lighting a powder keg. Don't fuel the stereotypes with this one clearly troubled woman, it's just not worth the laughs.

-Binkie McFartnuggets

What would a starving African say to Americans?

You've always wanted to know, well, at least those of you with hearts! I was fortunate enough to be there at the time with my trusty tape recorder. The results were rather enlightening.

-Binkie McFartnuggets

Was Wilford Brimley's double "Too Fat To Kill"?

This guy from Florida who was convicted of killed his son-in-law in New Jersey claimed he was "too fat to kill". Meaning, he was too fat to have killed anyone, but that was clearly a load of Crisco. This guy murdered, then realized he didn't have enough energy to come up with a decent excuse. He claimed that he was too fat and lazy to have climbed the stairs to perch and wait to shoot his son-in-law. Since when can't obese people perch? Obese people perch! Perching involves thigh strength, not self-restraint at a buffet.

I don't appreciate this idea that someone 5'8 285 lbs is incapable of committing a murder. I think that's an insult. First of all, that's not even that obese! If this guy wanted a real excuse he could have packed on the pounds and gotten damn near half a ton and been unable to make it to court. Then the jury would have believed him, but then of course he wouldn't have been able to kill the son-in-law, so there's the catch... Plus, people would have been curious as to why he was purposely trying to gain weight and maybe in a lack of judgment caused by deep dish pizza he'd loudly mumble "Because I want to kill you all!" And everyone would be very suspicious of him from that point on.

Obese people should not be limited by jerks like this who use their weight as a murder defense. The only time fat should be used as a murder defense is when someone is stabbing you and your blubber keeps the knife from hitting vital organs. It's a good thing this guy didn't get off free and set a precedent because punks would've started to treat the obese even worse, knowing there'd be no way a large person could get away with a vengeance killing. They would dangle that fact over the person's head like a Twinkie on a rope, enraging them to the point of a possible cardiac emergency. At that point, the big person would probably just go ahead with the murder in a fit of uncontrolled rage and no one wants to see that.

-Binkie McFartnuggets

Is the Hubble Space Telescope worth it?

"Ever since I was a young girl I would peer into the cosmos and wonder if there were eyes looking back at me. Now I finally know there's a reasonable chance that's possible." - Amelia Earhart

-Binkie McFartnuggets

Does blue light stop people from committing suicide?

That's what the Keihin Electric Express Railway Company in Tokyo hopes. Last year in Japan, almost 2,000 people killed themselves by jumping onto train tracks. Why are train suicides so popular there? Well, when was the last time you saw a Japanese person buying a hunting rifle with an orange hat on? Most people go with what's available and when you have constant access to fast ass trains, that's a pretty safe bet. But will the blue lights work?

Their experts say that blue has a calming effect on the mind, which may be true, but is that enough to keep a severely depressed person from ending it? Blue is the color of depression, isn't it? Wouldn't that make them even sadder? Of course they say they're trying to save lives, but what they really want is fewer corpses clogging up the railway system.

Even if the lights work and keep someone suicidal from jumping onto the tracks, that person will just take the train home and hang themselves in their closet anyway. You're not really saving anyone, you're just saving your own train schedule. Of course you could say the same for anti-suicide fence walls, which would be a more proven method of stopping suicides, but at least walls show you really care.

Even better would be a Zoloft dispenser robot near the tracks that senses when someone is going to jump and jams pills down their throat. Maybe that technology is a little ways down the road for now, (even for Japan) but the walls are here now! And perhaps if suicidal people were met with amazing deterrents like giant Plexiglas walls all the time, they'd realize that killing themselves is futile and they have no choice but to enjoy an immortal life where they will never die.

-Binkie McFartnuggets

How can we save California from annihilation?

People thought I was crazy when I first proposed this idea, but when it finally worked they brought me fresh, shocking adulation by the bucketful! In case you were wondering, yes I have warped back in time to make the plan work earlier since it ended up being too late. We thought we were out of the woods, but then the machines came. So now I'm back in late 2009 and I really need to get this done before 2023 or else I'll have to warp back in time again and that's gonna be a big pain in the ass.

-Binkie McFartnuggets

Study finds men lose hearing more than women?

A study of more than 5,000 people in the United States aged 20 to 69 found that males were three times as likely to have noise-related hearing loss as women. The shocking research was recently presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery in San Diego, California.

"Occupational and recreational noise exposure, as well as service in the armed forces, were likely explanations for why men are at greater risk," said the report. My question is, why is gender mentioned at all? This study only proved that being around loud shit makes you lose your hearing and I already knew that.

Dr. Douglas Mattox, professor of otolaryngology at Emory University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, agreed. "People who regularly use leaf-blowers, lawnmowers and other noisy machinery are at increased risk of noise-induced hearing loss," he said. Activities such as hunting and motorcycle-riding, which men typically do more than women, also create high levels of noise that may impair hearing. If you are concerned about losing your hearing while performing a noisy activity, stop or wear earplugs, experts say. Wow! Stop the presses, if there are any left these days.

Are women really not doing enough noisy things? Aren't hair dryers and shouting arguments pretty loud? Only kidding ladies, but seriously, let's get on the losing your hearing bandwagon here. Of course we talk about women's equality in the workplace a lot, but the bottom line is men generally don't live as long as women and go deaf earlier, what more could women want?

-Binkie McFartnuggets