First he attempted to indoctrinate our kids in their classrooms. Now, Barack Obama’s agenda is taking another Great Leap Forward (see what I did there?) to include paramilitary training and “fitness testing” for all American students.

Under the euphemistic title of the “President’s Physical Fitness Test,” Obama’s plan will require children to participate in military-style drills, including pull-ups and a “mile run”. These tests will occur in every school in the nation, and will be evaluated on a national level — in other words, the test results of every child will be on file at a central location, and freely available to Washington operatives.

Children who excel at the test will also receive a certificate from the White House, which educators are being instructed to treat as an “award” worth being proud of. This is a clear and unambiguous case of indoctrination; our children are being trained to seek the approval of “their” President (shades of the Hitler Youth). When the inevitable call for strong young volunteers goes out, don’t be surprised if the recruiters from the ACORN/MoveOn cartel give preference to the children who received these certificates.

On top of all of these concerns, this is also a transparent power grab on the part Washington. As stated earlier, results are to be judged on a national level, effectively placing every student in the country in competition with one another. This is a dangerous first step toward nationalizing the public schools, and demonstrates a callous disregard for school board sovereignty. Even private schools and homeschoolers are encouraged to participate, placing them once and for all under the thumb of big government.

We must also ask whether this new found obsession with “fitness” figures into Obama’s socialist health care plan. Will poor results on the test result in a child being deemed “unfit” for medical care? Will failure to participate affect a child’s grades and potentially endanger his or her academic future and “worth” to society? Will Obama’s good squads take action against the parents of husky children?

Unfortunately, this plan has overwhelming support from both parties. Indeed, advocates of the plan are making the baseless claim that it dates back to the Johnson administration. All we can do is prepare our children to resist this indoctrination effort posing as “Physical Education”. Fortunately, history is on our side; I don’t know about you, but I fucking hated running the mile in gym.

I probably don’t have much English Major cred left at this point in my life, mostly because I actually enjoy comedy, and spend an inordinate amount of time dreaming up clever T-shirt slogans. Still, I’ve always been proud of the fact that I never went through a Stephen King phase. I have never read any of his novels. I take a perverse pride in that confession — it suggests (falsely) that I have never sullied myself with popular fiction.

I’ve seen movies based on Stephen King’s work, of course; everyone’s seen Carrie and The Shining and The Shawshank Redemption, and probably some others that I’m forgetting. More recently, I’d been following Marvel’s comic book adaptation of The Stand with some interest. I figured it was worth a shot, what with my fondness for comics that aren’t about superheroes. And that’s where my troubles began.

In January, they published the fifth issue of the planned 30-issue series. The story was finally starting to get good and weird. I, like generations of comics fans before me, wanted my next fix as soon as possible. When I checked Marvel’s website, I discovered the next issue wouldn’t be out until the middle of fucking March. If I wanted to see what happened next, I had three choices:

A. Wait until March like a fucking caveman.
B. Track down the crappy early-90’s TV miniseries based on the book, which seemed cool when I was 13 but which I can’t even remember now.
C. just read the goddamn book.

I kicked my principles to the curb and chose “C”, dreaming up rationalizations the whole time. “I’m not really reading this book,” I told myself, “I just want spoilers for the comics! The fact that I’m willing to slog through this 1200-page doorstop just shows how committed I am to comics as a medium!”

Turns out, the book isn’t half-bad. The story isn’t bad, at least; I frequently take issue with King’s choice of words, and his fondness for old cars and Americana in general. I’m not here to talk about any of that. It’s an old book, and my feelings about it are neutral for now. Anyone who wants to read it has read it, and I’m still not sure if I like (or hate) it enough to make a case for (or against) it.

Instead, I want to talk about what King doesn’t do. Specifically, he doesn’t just dump exposition on us at the first opportunity. He waits until it’s appropriate (or at least he did at this phase of his career). The more I considered it, the more fully I realized that most of my complaints about “genre fiction” — horror, mystery, science fiction, “thrillers”, etc. — trace back to authors’ inability to pick their moments.

For example, how many books begin this way:

Max Douchington was having a bad day. At 41 years old, he wasn’t quite as fast as he used to be, but his 6′2″ frame carried his 190 pounds well, and he still had his hair, even if his temples now showed more salt than pepper. He was handsome enough — that’s what Cindy had always said, back when she was still willing to talk to him: “handsome enough” — but he had always preferred to spend his time alone. Anyway, he was having a bad day, so let’s try to swing back around to that subject again.

Why the fuck are we learning this? Are sitting there, watching it happen, or are we reading a story about it (written in the past tense, no less)? This is no way to tell a story! If Mr. Douchington is running around by himself, apparently under duress, he’s not going to fill out a mental eHarmony profile just in case there are readers spying on his thoughts. If I was pitching a movie, yes, all this information would be helpful: male, 41, 6′2″, 190 pounds, going gray, kind of a loner, used to know someone named Cindy. Got it? Great! Now let’s put some lifts in Tom Cruise’s shoes and make this movie! But in a book? It sort of blows.

If Max Douchington is going to be the subject of a longer story, there will be plenty of chances to tell the readers what he looks like. Maybe he’ll meet another character, who will take note of his appearance. Maybe his bad day involves getting arrested, and all that information will appear on the paperwork at the police station. Maybe he’ll get into a car accident and lose a leg, and spend the next five years spiraling ever-deeper into an inescapable depression, just sitting around the house eating terrible food and getting fat and never washing his hair, until one day when he’s hobbling his one-legged ass to the store to buy another fucking box of Ho-Hos, he catches his reflection in the window of a parked car and thinks back on how much better-looking he was five years ago.

See? Those are all better than “man having a bad day pauses for no reason and talks about how sexy he is.”

So to all you English Majors, all you aspiring novelists and memoirists and bloggers and Star Trek fanfic writers, I say this: Stephen King knows better than to write about Max Douchington. Stephen King, the guy who writes books about haunted cars and sells them to angsty teenagers and their doughy, suburban parents, knows more about how to construct his stories than you do. And more than I do, to be fair.

And that, my friends, is a humbling thought for anyone who wants to write respectable books someday. Learn your lesson, and leave Max Douchington out of it.

It’s early January, and everyone on the internet is busy putting together their “Best of 2008″ lists. On top of that, it’s a Sunday, which many websites regard as a content-free day. Lucky for you, I discovered some mind-blowing weirdness earlier this week, and am now compelled to share it.

Behold, Lasagna Cat! Created by someone or something called Fatal Farm, the site takes a truly unpleasant premise — “What if we made poorly green-screened live-action versions of old ‘Garfield’ comic strips?” — and uses it to find humor in what would normally be stupefyingly unfunny. On top of that, each strip reenactment is followed by a musical tribute to “Garfield” creator Jim Davis.

These tributes range from simple parodies of well-known music videos to explorations of the complex inner life of Garfield’s owner Jon… You know what? It’s easier to just show you:

See? Jon’s got it pretty rough.

I don’t know what it is that makes these videos work. Maybe it’s the grotesque, ill-fitting costume worn by the actor portraying Garfield, or the inappropriateness of the songs, or the not-quite-concealed contempt for the source material. Maybe it’s the way that all these forms of banality — lame comic strips, painfully earnest pop music, ugly wigs — come together and transform into something almost sublime. Maybe it’s the fact that your average “Garfield” fan would probably think a lot of these videos were sincere, loving tributes.

Indeed, because this is the internet, I must assume that an intrepid fanfic author is, at this very moment, composing a heartrending tale about Jon’s miserable bachelorhood and Garfield’s cold indifference to his plight, and really meaning every last word of it. Before you start thinking too hard about that, here’s another video:

If that one doesn’t convince you of the goodness and rightness of Lasagna Cat’s mission, nothing will. Really, the only problem I can see is that it took me almost a year to discover this madness.

It’s December 1st, and we all know what that means: the annual assault against Christmas – and, by extension, traditional values – is underway once more. If you’re a real Christian, you know the situation already, so feel free to go look at a different website.

Go ahead, I won’t mind. Say, have you seen that new Watchmen trailer yet?

Really, go ahead. It’s cool.

All right, that probably got rid of them. Now then, my fellow hellbound liberals, let’s get down to business. The business… of evil!

For all you new recruits, I’ll review the master plan. It’s fiendishly simple, really — by encouraging retailers to use generic holiday greetings such as “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings” in the advertising materials, we will undermine the faith of good, churchgoing Americans, until their numbers have dwindled to the point that we can cancel Christmas forever, replacing it with an inclusive, politically-correct “holiday” celebration, reminiscent of the Wookiees’ Life Day, but with way, way more witchcraft.

Well, not just witchcraft. There will be menorahs, and assorted Kwanzaa paraphernalia, and even Christmas trees, as long as you promise to call them “holiday trees.” Really, everything except Jesus. It’s complicated, but all you need to know is that, as a loyal soldier in the War on Christmas, you now have a serious vendetta against that guy.

“But wait a minute,” you say, “Isn’t ‘Happy Holidays’ just a way for advertisers to acknowledge as many potential customers as possible, without spending money on multiple ads for different religions?” This is a terribly naive view, but don’t worry. I was once like you, truly believing that we were simply trying to be inclusive.

The fact is, there is a finite amount of happiness in the world, and only a tiny fraction of all our happiness reserves are devoted to providing Holiday Cheer. Every time a non-Christian enjoys his or her Jesus-free December holiday of choice, Christmas gets a little bit less joyful. If you’re wishing people “Happy Holidays” or celebrating Hanukkah, then by definition, you are ruining an adorable Christian baby’s first Christmas.

“Hold on,” you say, “Isn’t that, like, really stupid and improbable?”

Well, the truth is, shut the fuck up and start ruining Christmas already. This plan totally makes sense, and Bill O’Reilly is onto us, so we have to work quickly.