More than a few people I talked to were turned off by the sexist tinge of this year's Super Bowl ads, which plays to an audience of 40% dames.  But none could encapsulate it well as firebrand Amanda Marcotte, who identified with her trademark wit :

The big theme this year was the tired sexist trope that implies not only that women rule over men with an iron pussy, [but] that we use our endless power to be screeching, emasculating harpies who hate male pleasure for the sheer fun of it.

Weirdly enough, the Focus on the Family Tim Tebow ad was the least offensive one according to our panel of distinguished experts.

Yesterday, in advance of a Super Bowl party, I found a sack full of Furbys.  Furbys, if you don't remember, were the hot toy around Christmas for all the cool kids growing up before the turn of the millennium.  You know, the kids who are entering college now.

I'm still a bit amazed/horrified by this mysterious sack of Furbys.  In part because they were sitting next to a heating pipe and some of them had melted slightly.  But mostly because I can't figure out the circumstances surrounding this mysterious event.  Nothing much has happened in my apartment over the past couple of weeks.  I think I would remember somebody saying, "Gerrit, if you see a sack of something resembling Tribbles, don't pitch 'em.  I'm making a stew."  I recall no such conversation. 

My current theory is that somebody looted a truck and stashed the contraband goods at my place while they waited for the heat to die down.

After the Super Bowl party, the Furbys all disappeared.  Perhaps the thief made off with the stolen goods and is spending the day pawning them.  Perhaps it's no coincidence that the disappearance of the Furbys coincides with the appearance of several pounds of uncooked sausages in my fridge.  Furby chop-shop?

Whoever has taken the sackful of Furbys, at least, seems to have left their calling card.  A calling card sculpted from the remains of an orange.

I have wonderful friends.  Depraved, bizarre, wonderful friends.

Here's some things that are fun, but haven't merited a full post with my unusually brilliant commentary: 

• OK Cupid crunched some numbers on profile pictures, and figured out what attracts a mate for men and women.  For instance, women showing cleavage benefits them more as they age.  Unfortunately for me, they released no data on male cleavage.  Howzaguysupposedtohookupnow?!?!?!?!!?
• With the Supreme Court's continually defending corporate personhood, a corporation has gone ahead and filed to run for Congress. 
• I found a play I like!

I hear that the hog's still not allowed to come out and play (CUZ IT WAS GROUNDED!), but I hope the rest of you piggies have a day.

Now that the Oscars nominations have been announced, it's helpful to recall the plot of our last decade's Oscar winners if you watch them... in reverse.

• Slumdog Millionaire: A young man (Patel) loses money on a game show by providing three wrong answers to every question.
• No Country For Old Men: Following horrible carnage, the Angel of Life (Bardem) resurrects people with his magical cattle gun.
• The Departed: A mobster (DiCaprio) repents his life of crime by joining the police.  Martin Sheen can fly.  Scorsese loses his only Oscar. 
• Crash: A town comes together to fix a car.
• Million Dollar Baby: A boxer (Swank) returns from paralysis, but loses the respect of her boxing teacher (Eastwood).
• Lord of the Rings: A long, boring journey in which hobbits take a ring from point A to point B
• Chicago: Murderers (Zeta-Jones and Zellweger) are released from jail after prison guards tire of their ceaseless singing and dancing
• A Beautiful Mind: A mathematician (Crowe) gives up his imaginary friends before going to college
• Gladiator: A healer (Crowe) resurrects fallen warriors in front of large crowds, but his shtick loses popularity and gets him exiled

Drink recipes for this year's nominees coming soon!

When I croak, here's what you MUST do with my corpse 

1. Find a tall mountain
2. Place my corpse in the back seat of a car   NOTE: LEAVE DOOR OPEN
3. Check to make sure I'm actually dead
4. Drive up mountain
5. Corner really fast
6. Applaud as my lifeless body careens towards the bottom.

If this catches on, it could also be a viable funeral business called "Fun Times Rocket Burial" (it translates well into Chinese).  Bonus chance for an upsell too, with bumper stickers like "I'd rather be flung dead from a Ford than alive in a Chevy" or recruiting the entire military to play taps at dead man's curve.  

Also, don't buy a home under this mountain, as it will rain corpses on you all day long, which is just south of prime.

Ha ha... jokes on you...  I was just playin' dead.  WHEEEEEEEEEeeeeehaaaa...suckas!!!!

Since the Magna 2arta offered the peasants the ability to take part in our weekly points competition, the unthinkable has happened.  What was supposed to be a mere symbolic gesture has actually led to a revolution.  You might even say the 2log is even more revolting than usual.

So who is this mysterious champion?  A lady by the name of Mary Faulkner, pictured here with her manfriend and a 'stache:

According to Wikipedia, Mary Faulker was a prolific romance novelist.  How prolific?  She wrote 904 novels and held the world record for most prolific author through her death.  Wikipedia has honored this achievement by listing .2% of her books and penning an article a third the length of the "I Can Has Cheezburger" article.

I tried to do a little internet research myself, but it's difficult.  Indeed, the Wikipedians tried in earnest but gave up two years ago.  Mary lived on three continents and wrote under at least 11 pseudonyms for at least a half dozen defunct publishing houses.  Deception, thy name is woman!  Forever playing hard to get, here's a few of her identities:

• Mary Faulkner
• Margaret Cameron
• Mary Richmond
• Molly Waring
• Kathleen Lindsay
• Betty Manvers
• Elizabeth Fenton
• Nigel Mackenzie
• Hugh Desmond

Yet despite this output, the records of her are embarrassingly scant.  Few titles are available at Amazon or at my local library.  Her record in the Guinness Book of World Records merely reads:

The greatest number of novels published by an authoress is 904 by Kathleen Lindsay (Mrs. Mary Faulkner) (1903-73) of Somerset West, Cape Province, South Africa. She wrote under two other married names and eight pen names, two of them masculine". She must have been a very busy lady; she had time for at least 3 husbands as well as 30 cats and 904 novels.

Trying to find information about her is like stabbing at shadows.  She's a phantom.  About two hundred thousands words circulated, yet barely a trace of them.  Tracing her various pseudonyms, like Mr. Hugh Desmond the prolific author of crime fiction, and you find mere requests for biographical info.  Two possible storylines emerge from her porous biography:

• She was a horrible writer.  She managed to get deals with crappy publishing houses to write crappy romance, mystery and crime novels, genres where quantity thrives over quality.  Nobody's bothered to write a review of her books because they're awful.

• She's a genius.  She's the eponymous Queen of the Mirage.  She lived her entire life such that her biography would stand as the final addendum to her bookshelp.  A master of mystery, she knew best how to bare her soul in public and yet not leave a single footprint.  And a hopeless romantic, she spent her entire life crying out for attention from Mr. Right, only to be recognized for the beauty of her soul after it was too late.

YOU DECIDE!!!!!!!!!!!

And for the love of literature, start paying attention to the new most prolific person in the world, Mr. Ryoki Inoue, who has managed to publish over a thousand novels so far and sometimes wrote as many as three novels a day.  Before long he'll be but a footnote.

And as for Ms. Faulkner, don't feel bad for her.  Posthumously, she attained the greatest award possible.  Winner of the 2log weekly points competition for the palindromic week of 010/25/2010.

Want to know for sure who's going to win Super Bowl XLIV?  Who better to predict than those whom society has tasked with observing and chronicling the world we occupy.  Forget sports prognosticators, statisticians, and other such snake oil !  I'm confident that our world's finest scribes, bards, and prose-meisters are best equipped to extract the narrative underlying the noise and extrapolate the final chapter of this year's football season.

I recruited the lowest ranking soldier in the rpn army, Ensign Nod, to conduct a poll of the world's greatest living writers.  Thankfully, the lovable social media nerds at Mashable had already assembled a roster of the greatest published authors on Twitter.  And many of these authors were willing to toss us 140 characters of their thoughts, pro-bono.

Here's what those masters whom we trust to interpret our world said:

You heard it here first!  Bucking Vegas, the literary community has determined the underlying storyline of the Saints gives them over a 2:1 advantage, with the majority of authors either not knowing who is playing or backing a dark horse candidate.

The Saints have a very compelling narrative which resonated with the minority of authors who were aware of the Super Bowl.  Novelist Elise Blackwell notes that a Saints victory will "right one small piece of the world."  Paranormal action/adventure romance novelist Patti O'Shea backed the Colts, noting "the Saints are happy just to be there."  Controversial sci-fi novelist William Shunn sided with the Colts, but brusquely hedged towards majority opinion by adding "but really, I don't care."

The majority certainly spoke loudest, and the popular opinion was to remain proudly unaware of the biggest American sporting event of the year:

• CarinBerger: oh, no...you've really got the wrong girl for the job. i don't even know which teams are playing!
• brendacooper: I may be a futurist, but I've no crystal ball that clear! I actually don't even know who is playing. :(
• agreer: boy did you ask the wrong writer! I say Budweiser.

A quick note on methodology... this poll excluded authors whose works have been deemed unfit to be published by literary agents, which includes most every 2log writer.

I usually worry that "expiration dates" are merely an invention of the powerful mayonnaise industry.   By manipulating the expiration date, they can get people to buy more mayonnaise.  DEVIOUS AND DEVILISH.  If true, this would make life a living hell, mann.

It's time we get out the pitchforks and storm the walls of the powerful mayo barons!   We'll call our organization "Hold the Mayo [executives accountable]"

IF MY WORDS ARE NOT TRUE, EXPLAIN HOW I HAVE BEEN EATING OLD MAYONNAISE FOR THE LAST TWO AND A HALF YEARS AND YET NOTHING IS WRONG WITH ME!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?

Good news, everyone!  2log commenters (aka 2ommenters) are now eligible to win the weekly points competition.  Let me explain some history here.

In days of yore, a strict class separation existed between 2logger and peasant classes.  2loggers broadcast their opinions and stories with divine sovereignty.  The only way to gain such privilege would be to pull a stone from a sword.

Æthelwine the Ploughman becomes the first 2logger in recorded history

Unfortunately, in the year 2010, the 2log Supreme Court has struck down discrimination based on royal lineage, and we've been forced to open the points competition to anybody and everybody.  And so you'll notice that regular 2ommenters are able to accrue points and thus render them eligible for our points competition.  Fortunately, we've built the system in such a way as to preserve the advantage of pure-blooded 2loggers.

Here's how it works.  Anytime points are given, every comment or post above it in the hierarchy gains that amount of points.  Take the following example:

When Biggles posted 9 points, the original 2logger received 9 points. 

2logger: 9 points
Biggles Pimbly: 0 points
Amanda Bynes: 0 points

Amanda Bynes, in reply, gave a single point.  The original 2logger gets this point, as does Biggles Pimbly.  So the final score is:

2logger: 10 points
Biggles Pimbly: 1 point
Amanda Bynes: 0 points

As you can see, 2loggers still have the advantage.  The rich get richer.  And yet 2ommenters can hope to catch some of our point bread crumbs through trickle-down economics.  Viva la privilege!  Yet the savvy 2ommenter may yet be able finagle an upset.  If so, the 2ommenter will get it all... riches, power, glory... plus maybe a special surprise or two.  Happy hunting...

The savviest burglar?  The one who goes underground at a burglar alarm company, spends years diligently rising the ranks to become president.  Then, secure in a plush corner office, he or she secretly installs faulty burglar alarms at high end houses throughout the world.  He or she then knows exactly which houses to rob.

EUREKA!