Obama's speech  < /span>

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This week I saw something that I thought I would never see. A national politician got hit with controversy, and rather than run from it or prevaricate, he addressed it. By now those of you who follow politics will certainly have heard, or heard of the remarks that Mr. Obama’s minister, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright made and the vitriol and backlash that followed them. Most people running for president would have simply disowned Reverend Wright, pretended not to really know the man, and then tried to burry the story as soon as possible. Obama took this potentially damaging situation and used it as a springboard for talking about an actual issue.

Listening to Obama speak I get the sense that he places more importance on being right than on winning. I say this because in this country we tend to believe in black or white. You have to be right all the time or you must be wrong all the time. Screw up once and fall on your sword you miserable sinner. This histrionic absolutism has eliminated nuance and killed discourse, all so that we can remain comfortable in the womb of our unchallenged assumptions. It’s a rhetorical movement that came out of political hot air radio, and it’s all about winning, the truth be damned. Obama’s speech was all about nuance, all shades of grey. While he vehemently disagreed with Reverend Wright’s comments, he refused to disown the man, to act as if the Reverend’s anger came from nothing or wasn’t real just as he would not disown his grandmother who confessed to be frightened of black men. Obama is uniquely positioned to see this issue from all sides, he understands the root causes of the not so subtle racial resentments that exist in this country. Just acknowledging that they exist is a remarkable achievement.

If there is any sense in this world the speech that Obama gave this past Tuesday will be seen, not as an attempt to recover from a gaff, but as a highlight, perhaps the only highlight, of the campaign season. There will be people who are offended by the speech; every dramatic statement offends someone. It’s an odd thing, but we have a tendency to be insulted by the truth. “You don’t say that, even if it is true” or, “didn’t he care enough to lie to us?” These are the kinds of things we say and think and it’s a sickness and softness in our society. Somehow we have come to believe that if we don’t acknowledge a problem it doesn’t exist. I can think of no more destructive trend than this, it leaves the misinformed comfortable in their fantasy, and insults and excludes those who actually pay attention. Democracy is only as good as the society it represents; cynical or delusional is hardly an ideal condition for the electorate.

For as long as I’ve paid attention to politics I’ve looked for a politician who could be successful without having to pander to the worst and stupidest elements in our society. The first step in dealing with any problem is acknowledging that it exists. Most politicians prefer to make up problems (gay marriage or NAFTA) rather than deal with real ones that they might actually have to do something about. There are a few who speak honestly, who deal with issues as they see them instead of as we would like them to be. But these, John McCain and Joe Biden for example, have by and large been too abrasive and alienating to accomplish much. Obama has the political courage, the perspective, and the charisma; given the chance he might actually get something done. < /span>

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Sometimes life calls for a bit of indulgence. Just some small treat that makes living worthwhile, a little nubbin of joy, a small self granted reward for another successfully completed day on this earth. Your boss may not appreciate you, the opposite sex may think you are dangerous and disgusting, and maybe your favorite bartender will call the cops if he ever sees you again (you know what you did) but that doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person. Take a moment to spend a little quality time with that handsome chap in the mirror. You may be surprised at how much fun you can have.

Say you’re feeling bad because your falling behind with work, projects keep piling up, and you just can’t seem to get anything done. Nothing is going to make you feel quite as good as finishing something, so order a large pizza and don’t be afraid of toppings. Around the fifth of sixth slice you might start hearing a little voice in your head, “hey, you can finish this tomorrow,” or “if I eat another bite I’m going to vomit and pass out.” Don’t listen to these negative thoughts, when Shackleton was marooned on Elephant Island he didn’t give up just because he had 800 miles of icy Antarctic Ocean between himself and rescue, he just got into his small open boat with his few remaining able bodied men and sailed to safety. If Shackleton could do that then you can cram down those last few slices. Once your finished you may be tempted to dispose of the box and shower off the pepperoni grease. Don’t do it; you want to bask in the moment. Every time you see that dark grease stained cardboard you can say, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.” For extra points you can take down a six-pack of Klondike bars. You’ll want to wash them down with scotch; nothing else cuts through that rich ice-cream residue in your mouth like that mix of smoke, peat, and fire.

Hugs, kisses, and keep on keeping on! < /span>

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I like a really sharp knife. The model I favor at the moment is an ancient black blade. The history of this knife is fraught with legend. A team of highly trained blind geishas smelted and hand purified the iron ore of an asteroid hurled to the earth by an angry Jimmy Page. The pig iron was then carried overland by seven hard working dwarves to a crater atop an active volcano where mute pituitary cases tended to an open hearth furnace fueled by charcoal pulled from the funeral pyres of a thousand conquering heroes. The iron was hurled into the furnace along with crystallized dragon's blood and limestone wrenched from the ossified remains of primordial narwhales. The resultant bloom of high carbon sky steel was hammered into eleven bars by Thor and John Henry and then returned to the seven dwarves. They carried their charge underground through the orc infested depths of Moria. Of the seven who entered Moria, only Sleepy and Dopey returned to the surface, carrying a scant three bars between them. Four long years they wandered the earth crushed by despair, stupidity, and sloth until finally by mere chance they happened upon a remnant Chalybes tribe who accepted the charge implicit in the three bars.

The greatest smith living among the Chalybes was not of their tribe, but an ancient club-footed wanderer of mysterious origin, his true name was Hephaestus, but the Chalybes knew him simply as “Old Man.” Hephaestus took the rods into the wilderness and meditated long on the work he would do. At last inspiration came to him, he built a fire of lion bone and began heating the first rod. For seven days he heated and hammered the steel into the shape he desired, he quenched the knife in glacial melt, and then carefully tempered what he had wrought before resting. When he woke from his rest he looked to what he had wrought. In the silvery perfection of the blade he saw a reflection of the world as it should be, in its graceful lines he saw an athletic economy that stirred jealousy in his crippled frame. Hephaestus took the blade with reverence and tested it on a joint of meat that he had prepared for just this purpose. It glided effortlessly through the first slice, and the second, and then it caught on bone and shattered. The ancient smith wept at that moment. For days he sat in despondent silence, looking for the flaws in his technique. Finally, with reluctance he took the second rod and began to forge anew. This time he labored fourteen days at his anvil, folding and hammering the steel without rest before quenching the blade in Dom Perignone ’76 and again slowly tempering the blade. If anything, this blade surpassed the perfection of the first, wild animals passing by were stunned into motionlessness by the gleam of the blade, its lines spoke of young lovers and ali-oop passes. With tears of pride, Hephaestus took the blade to the roast. For four translucent slices the meat parted and then on the fifth cut the blade ascended into heaven, it being too delicate to exist on this earth. Hephaestus now turned in rage toward the final rod. For forty days and nights he hammered the steel, the peals of his anvil sounding the rushing staccato of a Rick Allen drum solo. On the fortieth day his hammer shattered, Hephaestus tossed the shattered handle aside, quenched the blade in a vat of dolphin tears, tempered his final effort, and fell into a deep sleep. When Hephaestus awoke he found the fruits of this last labor to be as dark and harsh as its brothers had been graceful and gleaming. With resignation he took his misshapen effort to the joint of meat, hoping in his heart to destroy it. The meat came apart as if afraid of the blackened pitted edge and Hephaestus knew that this grim blade was his finest work.

This is the blade I now bear. The black blade has followed a tortured path to this point, a notch here where it snagged on the shoulder joint of Grendel, the handle split from being put in a dishwasher. But even a legendary edge needs maintenance so I go at it with a wet stone.  The gritty wisk wisk of its passage becomes a sort of mantra and the room around me fades away. I see a man in saffron robes sitting under the bodhi tree. He is tempted by all the devils of creation, turning each away as they arise. After dispatching the last temptation he watches me for a while, looking at that knife slide back and forth before getting bored and leaving with a girl. But that’s okay, because now I’ve got that fucker ready. It’s slicing things on an atomic level, each passage of the blade leaves a trail of nuclear fire, and the only question becomes, what am I going to cut?

If you are the kind of person who knows enough to give a shit then you’ll be happy to know that Smith & Hawken has licensed replicas of this legendary carving knife. Only five hundred will be made so act fast.

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The latest poll results are in and the results are conclusive.  40% of Cavernites are hoping for more pictures, another 40% are looking for content, and the rest would appreciate some decent writing.  There's not much that can be done about the writing, these monkeys are only half trained, but I have added a fiction and reviews section to the cavern that will hopefully deal with the content issues.  We've also changed the layout again, for perhaps the last time.  You now need to click on 'read more...' in order to see entire posts as only a portion will be displayed on the home page.

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Today I woke up and I noticed that my face had, of its own volition, sprouted whiskers. I cast my mind back on the preceding days, trying to find what thing could have driven my face to this drastic action. Perhaps it misses my ritual “shaving” and thusly has sprung this unsightly ginger growth to voice its objection. Those things that drive a face remain mysterious to me and so I must rely on the wisdom of others.

There are those who claim that the face creates a reflection of the inward state of the bearer. They say that rage, sadness, joy, and aces over eights can all be transmitted through the various contortions of the face. Perhaps this “beard” is some sort of external manifestation of my internal malaise. For you see, we have just now entered the nadir of March. Oh March, not so cold as February or so wet as April, it contains a certain grey brutality all its own. Where April brings the promise of rejuvenation and February the end of winter March sits quietly in the corner, a bleak and colorless place holder in our annual circuit around the sun, a sapping endurance test best passed in the relative comfort of some quiet equatorial region.

Many societies have discovered a time-tested technique for dealing with this month of nothing. In Germany March is the month that the Marzan beer is first drunk, a grim bookend to October’s gleeful kicking of the last kegs. The Irish endure March with the same practical fix-all that they apply to most situations of adversity, with a sweater on the outside and a whisky on the inside. Philadelphia being the cosmopolitan city of the world that it is has found a happy middle ground, a month long celebration of our local breweries and a St Patrick’s day ritual that could only be pulled off by a city of hard eyed professional drinkers. Observant readers will begin to notice the pattern here.

Perhaps I’m looking at this fledgling beard the wrong way. Instead of beleaguered sigh it is a stalwart square jawed challenge to time itself. Take that March, this beard and I are here and shall remain so, stoic and firm footed, our resolve unshaken in the face of slate grey days. We’ll not cede and inch until March exits, humbled and broken, a lion reduced to a lamb. Let history record who is still standing when April makes its long awaited entrance. < /span>

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Why does the water in Philadelphia taste so damn good? It’s the drugs. It’s recently been reported that there are trace amounts of 56 pharmaceuticals in our water. An insider told me that the number is actually closer to 15, that they tested for 56 and a PR guy screwed the pooch in the press release. Still, either number is enough to make give us the official top score for stuff that isn’t water in our water. Water department officials have been spinning like dervishes, saying things like there are more drugs in our water because they are looking for more drugs in the water. And there are people who are upset by the whole thing, people who think they are too good for water, they want hot and cold running Dasani.

I say people are getting worried about the wrong things as usual. The water department needs to play this as a positive. Given the amount of microscopic poo particles in the air and on that sandwich you are about to eat we should be glad to have a full spectrum of advanced antibiotics and animal tranquilizers in our drinking water. If people are still worried about the drugs in the water instead the shit on their toothbrush offer to install them in a hermetically sealed bubble so that they can be safe from all the big bad hormones they are exposed to every time they take a sip of delicious pharmaceutical grade non-name brand water.

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Anyone who is interested in acting or Van Damme would do well to follow this link.  Here's a taste.

"No. The only thing different between Alex and Chad was the silk underwear. Mr. California, Mr. Silk Underwear. It was kinda funny."  JCVD on his dual roles in Double Impact.

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The time has come dear reader, for me to once again tread delicately along the razor’s edge that separates madness from stupidity. Dedicated Cavernites will recall that when I last swam these troubled waters I got a cramp and ended up floundering around in panicked circles, leaving in my frothing wake a hail of words that, for all their ferocity and velocity, amounted to naught but so much hot air. Despite that last thrashing effort, I remain troubled in the face of these thoughts. I fear that their impenetrable murkiness will lead me into strange currents whose destination I cannot predict. Still, I will know no peace until I release these malformed hypotheses into the gasping vacuum of the intertubes. So loyal reader, gather your courage and gird any loin yet ungirded, for we charge once more into the breach.

Those of you plugged into the zeitgeist will know that much has been made recently of conflict between science and religion. Zealots on both sides of the argument accuse the other of being the agents of intolerance or godless nihilist respectively. Many books have been sold and much airtime filled with glorious nonsense from both sides.  The argument is, as far as I know, the most pointless non-sports argument to ever be undertaken by sober and otherwise sane people. It is pointless because neither side can convince the other and more so because neither side has a fully satisfying argument. The argument of a strident creationist is that they believe it because they think it to be true. Fine as far as it goes, but not that useful for a non-believer. The atheist argument is simply that we can understand how some of the systems of the universe work, the world was not created in six days; therefore there is no god. It’s a non sequitur that does little to cover the fact that science can only answer hows, not whys. Tangled in this Gordian Knot are those who attempt to bridge the gap between the scientific fact and religious fervor with crackpot theories that neither serve science nor adhere to any creed and consequently appeal only to those with no understanding of either. I am a card-carrying crackpot.

The first step in finding the reason for our existence lies in understanding that which drives the universe.  For lack of a more satisfying term we can call this most essential of motivators the divine.  To understand the divine we should look to its manifestations. Start first with those most basic rules, the laws of conservation, there is not a thing that can become nothing, and no nothing that can become a thing. Gaze upon the cosmos and see the clockwork of gravity spinning everything in total order and balance. Any set of circumstances left alone will find a balance. Simply put, the divine, with apologies to pagans everywhere, is perfection. It is not until we come to the interactions of life that we find disorder. We are the root of that disorder, for we possess the intelligence to alter the system, pushing the fulcrum point to where ever is most favorable given the conditions. Balance can’t be achieved under these circumstances. Intellect is chaos; it grinds in the gears of perfection. The divine is perfect; therefore it does not think.

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I did it. It’s been three days since I’ve showered but I did it. At two fifty-seven this afternoon I walked all the way up my driveway and out in to the wilds of my cul-de-sac. Brisk pre-breakfast walk accomplished! What changed? I can’t say for sure. Maybe it was my dream in which I cut an evil chef into shreds with my hand-forged sword. No, I think that was just too much late night food network. Maybe it was the tepid weather. No, my iPhone clearly told me it was only thirty-four degrees outside, and I was set on surmounting this task long before I found the day to be much milder. If anything, the ugly truth that my iPhone can be wrong should have shaken my confidence to the core, but somehow I persevered. Perhaps then it is the swelling of pride I feel knowing that I am a syndicated columnist at the famed Sub-Cranial Cavern. It is hard to believe I am sitting at the desk where so many greats sat before me. Woodward and Bernstein from the Post, CNN’s sassy vixen Christiana Amanpour and Franz Hinkel of the Deutsche Auslander Zeitgeist though I still feel uneasy about his prize winning article “I was on vacation from 1939-45.” Is it the big shoes I have to fill that makes me stand up and say “No, I won’t drive an hour and a half round trip to Delaware to lift some boxes of office files into my girlfriend’s car because she can do it herself for once but she has no regard for my time because I wake up at three in the afternoon and am unemployed.” Perhaps. Is it that same little voice that says “No, I won’t go another day without bathing because it is disheartening to me and makes me want to further seclude myself which I know is antisocial behavior and not good in the eyes of David Burns, the author of a book on treating depression that I bought and never read because every time I pick it up I relive the really embarrassing moment when I bought the book at Barnes and Noble because I could see that look in the cashier’s eyes like “you don’t know how to manage your own life problems and you don’t even have any yet you call yourself a man” and then she thinks to herself “I’ve been working since I was sixteen after my uncle killed my whole family and I was forced to quit school and give up my dreams of being a neurosurgeon so that I could support my three year old sister who survived the barrage of bullets but is a vegetable and breathes through a straw and I never had to buy a self help book” and then she hands me the bag and says “Pussy” and I say “Excuse me?” and she says “Have a nice day.” Well big shoes to fill or not… this reporter is about to take a shower that he, and everyone around him, has wanted for a long time.< /span>

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The Cavern has been undergoing extensive renovations in the last few hours.  Most of the damage should be behind us, but a few votes in this weeks poll were lost.  Go ahead and vote again, or don't.  Whatever you want.  Look this isn't a big deal honest.  Fine, I'm sorry I even brought it up, sheesh.

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President Bush continues to protect our sacred duty to torture terror suspects.  Somebody should tell him that "24" is not a documentary (rim-shot.)  I'm pretty sure that I stole that joke from somebody, can't remember who though.

Link is to the NY Times.

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Greetings drone and greetings to your great collective, particularly to your Queen, may her egg pouch never run empty. So you have come at last to speak with Les the Elder, but what can this ancient tell that a million minds in concert do not already know? Ah, well that is indeed an old story. To tell it I must once again turn my mind to the time of my youth, the chaos age, known to some as the days of horse hockey but to all as a time of great confusion…

You asked to hear tell of how man ruled himself in the chaos age. It is not a simple thing to tell. For you see in those dark times we had no brain crest or pheromone trail to guide us in the selection of leaders. Instead we were forced to listen to those few foolish enough to want the job explain to us why they should have it. Whichever candidate convinced the most voters was then given the job. This system, called democracy, might have worked had it not been for the pandemic idiocy of the time. You see, most voters were fools, and this insensate collective mostly feared the truth or worse, believed it to be a lie. This meant that only charming morons or pandering cynics could win sufficient support. Even in that age of fools some of us knew that the likelihood of a great leader and a charming panderer inhabiting the same body was near nil, but we continued to cast our vote for myopic fools and calculating hypocrites. We had to; for fear that the candidate who pandered to the other idiots might gain the seat.

Because democracy inevitably picked the wrong people to lead we were constantly forced to select new leaders. This we did every few years; for that was generally how long it took for the incompetence and corruption of a leader to become apparent. The constant renewal of leadership was the one thing that kept our limping ship of state from the shoals of reality. The new leadership would usually address the most glaring failures of the old leadership, while generating a whole slew of new problems for the next administration to struggle against.

Of course you know how it ended, in the blasted hellscape that was once the mars colony, so I’ll end my story here. I must say it has been a rare pleasure to speak to you; I have few reasons to talk these days. This old tree is a good listener, but it has long since heard all that I have to say.

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Last weeks poll results are in.  75% of readers are forced to read by crippling social anxiety disorders while 25% are reading The Cavern to keep themselves from writing The Cavern. 

Interested in reaching these key demographics? The Sub-Cranial Cavern has many exciting advertising packages.  Contact us through the comments section

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I think that most of us can agree that listening to other people talk about their dreams can be pretty boring. I would be the first to say that I’m not interested in your particular phantasms, I don’t care if you were having sex in front of your gym class, wading knee deep through a sea of kittens and grape jelly, or eating a talking pastry it’s just not going to be that interesting to me. Likewise I don’t expect you to be that interested when I talk about my brother giving me a sandwich with a live snake in it. Why are these fantastic and intense ventures into unfettered imagination so uninteresting? There are two reasons, memory failure and narrative dysfunction. I’ll address memory first. A well told story is filled with little details that highlight the absurdity, accentuate the crisis, and in general help bring the story to life. Those details are absent from our recollections of dreams. These details are absent because within the dream they are transient. Even as we experience the dream the landscape shifts, characters drop in and out, and our own emotional state slides through the full gambit. Now the second reason that second hand dreams make bad stories would be that dreams, like life, don’t follow a rational narrative pattern. They are turbulent, anarchic, and nearly impossible to interpret in a fully satisfactory manner either literally or figuratively. The memory problem and the narrative problem tends to reduce even the best storytellers to “and then, and then” narratives. So, without further ado, let me tell you about the dream I had last night.

I was in a place where travel between worlds could be achieved by simply walking through the right door. At some point while I was traveling through these doors I made a wrong turn and found myself stranded on a world that consisted of small floating islands. The island I was on was covered in short grass and no wider than I can stretch my arms. Some distance away I could see another island, bigger and with great chunky rocks on its coast. Atop this island I could see people moving about. I guided my island toward it and reached the big island in short order. I climbed over the rocks and met the inhabitants of the island. There was a young woman with a round face and broad shoulders who worked there as a diving instructor. She was wearing a heavy sweater and long skirt. Sitting behind her was a pale, slender man with a scraggily beard. In his lap was a book by Douglas Adams. Apart from the two of them was a man who looked like Che Guevara wearing a yellow t-shirt. The woman assumes I am there for a diving lesson. To start the lesson she holds my head under water for some time. I can feel the water rush around my face and past my ears, but I am unconcerned. She lets me up and begins a lecture on the various teaching techniques that she knows, but before too long she begins to weep. I try to comfort her, but she seems inconsolable, she feels ugly and unwanted. I tell her it is not so and she seems to feel better, but just then the man with the book wants to talk about Douglas Adams. I am not interested and I tell him to get lost. He fades away. I turn back toward the woman and she leaps from the edge of the island, it is not a dive. The water is turbulent and I wait with Che for her to surface. She does not. I ask Che if he knows how I can leave this place. He does and we find ourselves in a stairwell. Che leads me up the stairs toward a door. We reach the landing and Che disappears leaving only his yellow shirt. I go through the door. I am in high school and poorly dressed. Another student makes fun of me and I throw him into a locker. I am impossibly strong and the other students leave me be. I don’t want to be in high school so I walk back through the door. My phone rings, a middle aged German woman tells me I’m missing a piano lesson. I tell her that I will be there as soon as possible. I go through the doors again, this time it leads to the back end of a Costco store. I exit the store and look up at the sky; the stars tell me that I’ve come home.

And that dear reader is why you don’t tell people about your dreams. If you have read this far I applaud your mental fortitude and I would ask that you would do your Jungian best to tell me what this is all about.

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Every day before breakfast I aim to take a brisk walk around my parent's neighborhood. I read, or more likely saw on TV, that a brisk pre-breakfast walk helps to foster a positive mood. For a few days now I have tried this ritual, but haven't gotten past my driveway, which I should note is an improvement on peering out the side door yesterday. What stops me? The weather. I always like to blame the weather. It's cold here. I don't like the cold. Granted it almost reached 70 yesterday, but it's almost always cold, and I need a few days to thaw out before feeling energetic. Sometimes after a failed stroll I like to surf the internet, googling queries like "sunniest places to live" and "least crime sunniest places to live". When I get really philosophical I wonder if it's not the temperature at all, but the shame I know awaits me when I walk past the curious stares of stay at home moms waiting for their children to be dropped off by the afternoon school bus. Sure I may just be waking up, but really, I stay up until dawn thinking about my opus. My masterwork. Let's see you have such lofty pursuits! Yet there they all are, crowded around the bus drop-off in their SUV's, quietly judging. Well screw you Mrs. high horse suburbanite who drives thirty yards to pick up their kids. Who does that anyway? Gas guzzling eco-rapists, that's who. What happened to walking? It just hit me… they’re afraid of the sunlight. These so called "housewives" are nothing more than aspiring writers. We share the same schedule. We have the same dream. We share the same fear. I've unearthed the rotten underbelly of this seemingly charming community. These housewives are writing masterworks as well. I have stiff competition. I'm late in the game. These women have been at it for years, shielded from societal crucifixion by a kid friendly façade. I am a sheep surrounded by Virginia Woolfs. Well housewives of America, I'm onto your literary pursuits and I'm gunning for you in this, my new column: "Chairs and things on chairs."

- Pates Baroni

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We've added a new writer to the humble confines of The Sub-Cranial Cavern.  To those keeping score at home that brings the Cranial staff to two real and two imaginary.  He'll be writing under the nom de plume "Pates Baroni" because he has "warrants."  I'm not sure what he means by "warrants," but it's apparently something like being in the A-team, only no van.  Pates Baroni will be a regular contributer to the editorial section of Cavern under the heading "Chairs and Things on Chairs"  The above post is the first of many exciting entries to come.

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A torrid sexual scandal, which we are legally constrained from describing, has resulted in the loss of two longtime staff members.  Ivenko 20 and Tina Sanders had been the The Sub-Cranial Cavern since the beginning and they will be missed, but we feel confident that Bag O'Hammers and Rye Buttle will be able to fill their shoes admirably.  Bag O'Hammers is a bag of hammers with many years experience in the field of hammering things while Rye Buttle is newer in the field, but has a fluid faculty with the written word as well as a fiery temperament.  Both gentlemen have unimpeachable copyrights.

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I was returning to my editorial lair after the successful procurement of office supplies, 6 lbs PBR and 2 lbs green bananas, when something magical happened. I was given a little gift in the hopes that it might make me more favorably inclined, or at least aware, of a coming attraction. Namely “Dr. Dolittle: Tail to the Chief” which is available on DVD starting tomorrow if this pin is to be believed

We here at The Sub-Cranial Cavern are not above being bribed; technically speaking, we are below it. If more people thought to bribe us we would most certainly be far more corrupt, sadly we remain disgustingly pure. However, in the interest of getting more and better bribes in the future, we submit to you faithful readers and marketing executives this pre-emptive review of a movie so intense, so hilarious, and so seductive that it could not be released to theaters.

“Dr. Dolittle: Tail to the Chief” exists in the same sucking quagmire of disheartening hackery and hammery as the original, the remake, and that other sequel. There’s something to be said for a screenplay that had Eddie Murphy saying, “There is no fucking way I will ever do this movie. Besides I’m busy with “Norbit 2: More Fatsuits.” The movie works around the lack of the series signature star by not having one. Instead the title character is the victim of an accidental brain swap with a giraffe. The Dolittle/giraffe then runs for president in the hopes that deregulating stem cell research will help science find a way to reswap his brain. I can’t go further into the plot without spoiling it, let me just say that the hat wearing monkey is transcendent in his role as hat wearing monkey/vice-presidential candidate. I’ve seen a lot of monkeys in people clothes but this monkey stepped outside the archetype in surprising ways and I expect big things from him in the future.

Final verdict: “Dolittle” has more lame quips, flying feces, and broken dreams than any five “Air Bud” movies put together; share it with someone you want dead. Two thumbs up, over, and jammed into my eye sockets.

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Recently I discovered what appears to be the nascent plans for a musical entitled "Gone Blogin’."  The find has generated much excitement here at the offices of The Sub-Cranial Cavern, mostly due to its mysterious origins, it was in my pocket, and its physical nature, it is a cocktail napkin. The artifact was immediately turned over to our archeological desk were it was declared indecipherable. There the napkin languished for some time until happenstance brought it to the attention of a grade school teacher whose specialized training allowed the child-like etchings to be translated into modern English. As soon as we are able to safely scan the artifact we will present the original, until then please feel free to peruse the following barely edited transcription of the napkins contents. What it says about the mind, or minds, that generated it I leave to the reader’s interpretive abilities.

Editor's note: In light of the recently expressed concerns of some of our readership the content of the napkin has been irremediably obfuscated through the use of an online translator.

Gegaane Bloggin '!' The participation of celebrity of duet of the jachtvoiture/per feeling sadly for approximately the lack in the participation of celebrity. Publishing the prosecuzione in Haverford not in informing in qualificazioni/orchestra musical of kazoo! Of these worms high is fatto/che doubles made cheese a good the dramatic song of the scene "the song" "in the film mine in blog of some lacks" (the song the song of spitball)"edge interment" song of argument "for the attacks of coffee with armed the hand has preferred that to it a blog to the announced search if a song to the search" a lyric beer, the coffee is, films extra-terrestrials and aliens, the sports, scifi... The harmonious rappresentazione arbitrary song of idea of blog "this towel of cocktail party is my song of the life" (more of the song than straws to été)"disowned and hermit like" the serious song "my dead papà and they that I have obtained this slab" the song "because Camden cannot inscatolare to make to a beer" song "U.F.C" song "already my liquids for that it gives to the money" song "to the zero your knife if" you hold the song "of me" (blows three times of the maximum limit if you of me) of song hold it "you can sopportar it mine water

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From the "who knew?" desk: Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador suddenly hate each other.

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The more I work in this format the more I, like a muscle car in a snowstorm, seem to be sliding out of control. Before I entered into the blogosphear I used to laugh at the stories of sentences run amuck, the clauses piling upon one another like a baby-oil wrestling match until all that is left is a slick writhing mass with no clear beginning or end. That laughter has turned to bitter tears, for now I can only stand helplessly by as metaphors, similes, and analogies gallop like so many Cossacks through the Polish village of my mind, leaving only scorched earth and the lamentations of those few who survive. Oh, once I could express myself by simply laying word upon word until the fullness of my intent was conveyed. Now even the simplest of concepts becomes twisted with subtext, context, pretext, and posttext.

How did this come to pass? How did I, once the most lucid of communicators, come to this sad state? The real reasons are lost in the mists of time and space, let the hard eye of history parse fact from convenient fiction; I’ll abide here and offer only this simple story, told in straight forward country-speak and narrated by John Wayne, so that those who pass a moment here may learn from my missteps and dance lightly by the pitfalls that have swallowed me entire.

I remember the first time I used figurative language for emphasize; it was the summer of ’85 and I compared a burned grilled cheese sandwich to an asphalt roofing tile. I thought it was harmless fun, just another kid out to get a cheap buzz. I stood there elated, jubilant, triumphant, exultant, redundant; it was as if for the first time in my life I was truly alive. I was Icarus lifting slowly from the Minotare’s prison, gloriously aloft on my father’s handmade waxwings; but the sun is always closer than one thinks. It changed me; from that day on everything was as a summers day, a pig in poke, or, at my lowest ebb, the bridge to the twenty-first century. Oh I was having fun, let no one tell you otherwise, but the cost. Pretty soon I couldn’t even express something as simple as the betrayal of the communist revolution by its leadership with out using a thirty thousand word allegory about farm animals. Oh, I was shedding wax and feathers but I didn't care; and the things I said and wrote, they became beautiful but empty, like a lingerie story mannequin.

I can’t expect forgiveness but all the same but all the same I offer my apologies dear reader.

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