2-4-6-Die

Look, I love fried cheese as much as the next red-blooded, mouth-breathing American, but this new sandwich from Denny's is...

...basically it looks like you're about to eat a bunch of open sores. It's apparently part of Denny's new "value" menu, which also includes a nacho salad and more things served in a skillet.

Hot Summer Congressional Crush

Ooooh Mary, look at Rep. Anthony Weiner of NY, going to town on Republicans! The way he orders that man to sit down, all Samuel L. Jackson and shit! It's almost like the olden days, when members of Congress had actual beliefs, and felt like it was their job to uphold them!

1. Sketch 2. Comedy

Anyone who has Googled dorky key phrases ("raptors," "brain worms," "converting bedroom into playball pen")has probably stumbled upon this comic. For those who haven't, please meet xkcd.com -- we'd be crushin' on this guy if we so weren't certain he exists only in two dimensional code.

Set Your Parasites High

An insect of unknown ancestry recently stung my eyelid. My, like most's, first instinct was to overreact. Who wouldn't assume that the bug in question was a braconid wasp, and that rather than simply stinging me, it was laying eggs in my shutter lens with its massive ovipositor? My entomological hysteria was relieved when a Benadryl and bag of frozen peaches made the swelling retreat. But now that I've realized my worst fear: becoming a parasitic incubator, I can't stop reading about others who actually have.

That's when I discovered Brain Worms.



It works like this: Someone eats undercooked pork and develops tapeworms. Those tapeworms lay 250,000 eggs each. The swine swallower then prepares food for others, without washing her hands, peppering the diner's dish with tiny tapeworm eggs. Those eggs are small enough to pass through stomach lining and enter the blood stream where they search for a warm, safe place to grow. Your brain is prime tapeworm real estate.

Once there, they stretch out and get comfy -- munching on your cerebral lining. This can go on for years until they take one bite too many and you start noticing symptoms of their incessant snacking. A leg goes numb. An eye goes out. You can only talk backwards like a David Lynch character -- what evs. That's when surgeons explore, expecting to find a tumor, and find worms in your brain.

Just try unlearning that, and happy Monday.

Thinkhole

“I am filled that day with vile or evil feelings — ill will toward one I think I should love, ill will toward myself, and discouragement over the work I think I should be doing. I look out the window of my borrowed house, out the narrow window of the smallest room. Suddenly there it is, my own spirit: an old white dog with bowed legs and swaying head staring around the corner of the porch with one mad, cataract-filled eye.” - Lydia Davis, “Examples of Confusion”

Older Than the Moon, Twice as Wild

A great read right here.

In the corner of the conference room, Ferrucci sat typing into a laptop. Whenever Watson got a question wrong, Ferrucci winced and stamped his feet in frustration, like a college-football coach watching dropped passes. “This is torture,” he added, laughing.

And a great sentence. My dad used to work for I.B.M. and as a child I was amazed at the clunky, whirring machines that lined his office. Futuristic at the time, sure. But they were still just machines to me - international business machines, actually.

Watson is something I would have dreamed up as a kid. After reading, I found myself wondering if, when I'm old, I'm going to have to deal with a robot doctor.

Complaint Box, Summer Edition

You ever have one of those moments where Idiocracy is right around the corner? On TV earlier, I saw two beer commercials in the span of a few minutes. One was for Coors Light's new Cold Activation Window, which visually tells you when your beer is cold enough to enjoy. But you still have to reach out and grab the beer anyway, so...

Also, it's COORS LIGHT. 

The other was for a new Miller Lite bottle that has spiral grooves inside the neck. It's called the Vortex, which helps the beer gush, rapids-like, into your thirst hole. BEER MOUTH FASTER. I can see the billboards now. Schlitterbahn, you're sitting on a tie-in goldmine.

Then I saw a Smirnoff Ice commercial, which reminded me of this, which is a thing apparently. A viral campaign for dude soda that has become real and now random d-bags can punk men who have been on the moon. I only found out about this fratastic phenom the other day - there was a story in the New York Times about it.

All this came in the midst of new BP commercials urging fishermen and others whose livelihoods have been upended to file claims, and B-roll shots of smiling employees looking through outdated file cabinets, while an oil demon rolls towards the Atlantic. An oil demon, y'all! 

It was a terrifying thrill ride into a future of sweatpants and mutants.