http://www.sassafrassjunction.com/

Did you know it’s a “family puppet experience like no other?”

What the fuck does that even mean?!  You really want to subject your kids to this acid trip:

Her face is just epic.

“What fresh hell IS THIS?”

Now, when I was a kid, we had Billy Bob’s Pizza Palace of Hepatitis.  At least, that’s what I think it was called.  It was a toothless white trash bear and his army of hobo friends.  In retrospect, I believe they were all raising funds to build a meth lab.

January 19^th, 2012

Dear Ms. Deen,

Hi, I’m Wilford Brimley.  I have diabeetus.

I heard that you, also, have recently been diagnosed with this terrible condition and wish to express my sympathy for you in this trying time.  Are you on Medicare?  Do you know that the best way to combat the ‘beetus is to check your blood sugar regularly?  As a veteran of the ‘beetus, I thought I’d offer you some friendly advice.  Oatmeal, for example, is a much better breakfast choice for you now than your Cheesy Ham and Banana Casserole.  Quaker Oats™ is an excellent choice, if I do say so myself.  A tasty way to do the right thing, as it were.  Oh, all right, maybe even the warmest bowl of oatmeal is not as tasty as your Brown Sugar Bacon, but we diabeetus-fighters can’t be choosers.

You know, I have to say, I was shocked to hear you’d sat on this news for so long.  Of course, it’s not easy to live with diabeetus – I’m living proof of that.  But I always frankly thought of you as a silent partner.  After all, your recipes have been supplying the diabeetus industry with new patients in record numbers!  I knew you weren’t directly employed by any of my companies, but still.  You have to admit that your Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding is likely to send even healthy young bakers into sugar comas.  I’ve admitted publically that I myself have indulged in the past – apple pie, ice cream, etc.  (Of course, your Fried Apple Pies look like they perhaps have just a tad more fat and sugar than the old-fashioned variety, but I digress.)  I imagine it must have been excruciating for you to choke down a few of your Donut-bedecked Brunch Burgers while knowing that your bloodstream was slowly turning into a river of pure caramel.  Shoot, your show has probably kept me in paychecks for the past 5 years!  And this brings me to my main point…

Bitch, if I hear a single fucking word about you taking my job, I will be on your deep-frying ass like a honey badger on a bad day.  You even think about signing a contract with Quaker Oats™ or Liberty Medical™ and I will end you.  I have carved a niche for myself in this pitiless industry.  You think its easy finding a job in this town, you butter-peddling shit?  I’m 77-years old, for fuck’s sake, and best remembered for Cocoon.  COCOON.  Want to help me count my co-stars who are dead?  Yeah, I didn’t think so.  These commercials are all I’ve got, woman, and now here you come, high-stepping your diabeetus-ridden ass onto my turf.  When I saw you getting all cozy with a drug company, my mustache started twitching in a rage NOT related to my blood sugar.  My mustache is NEVER WRONG.  Speaking of that mustache, don’t you dare forget that I am the FACE of diabeetus!  No one, especially not someone who uses butter like social lubricant, is going to take that away from me.

So remember, check your blood sugar regularly and try to resist almost all of your own recipes.  Most importantly, remember to get to steppin’, bitch cakes.  I am not even playing with you.  I know where you live.  I can infiltrate Savannah like a motherfucking snake in the grass.

It’s the right thing to do, goddamnit.

Sincerely,

A. Wilford Brimley

Why the Country is Scary

By Sorcia MacNasty

————————————

The South: Where cars go to die

We have never figured this out. And now, the three living witnesses have to be good and fucking druuuunk to discuss the whole thing.

I was 7, my brother 10, my mom in her early 40s, my grandmother (her mom) in her 60′s. So we were all cogent. No one was too young or too senile to not recall this nonsense. Yet, still no bloody answer.

Grandma lived on an isolated country road in NC that was named after her family since they were the only crazy fuckers who lived on the land for about 1000 acres. And I *do* mean crazy. We have stories about relatives that start with, “You remember that time Uncle Bob was in the ditch with a shotgun?” “WHICH TIME?!”

Her house had been empty for several weeks while she’d been visiting us in Florida, but we were all back, spending the weekend with her before trekking back to the Sunshine state. The house is in the foreal country, literally over train-tracks, past a salvage yard and her nearest neighbor (a cousin — everyone is related to everyone who owns a house on the road) ain’t within screamin’ distance. Yes, that seems to be a real system of measurement — “screaming distance.”

It’s early in the AM, like just before daybreak. We’re awake because these are farm freaks who wake at the crack of dawn from sheer ingrained habit. We’re eating cereal when we hear someone pull up outside. Curious, we all run to the big picture window that looks onto the front yard. There is a strange truck there. No one seems to be behind the wheel, though the engine is idling. The truck is… well, old, for one thing. It’s old-timey like from maybe the 1930′s? You could picture the Joad Family heading to California in this thing. It’s rusted but it was probably once painted blue.

We stare at the thing, bewildered. Mom asks grandma if she knows who that is. Nope, not a clue, says grandma. She runs to get the phone to call her cousin and ask him to come up — she thinks maybe it’s a hired hand and he’s just at the wrong farm. Just as she asks him to come on down, the phone goes dead. Well, that’s unsettling.

All at once, there is a loud, insistent banging on the front door. We all scream. My grandma, who is terrifyingly resourceful, huddles us all into the living room, away from a window where anyone can see us. Then, while mom, me and my brother tremble there on the couch, she grabs a serrated bread knife from the kitchen and cautiously approaches the front door. She peeks out a side window, very stealthily. She turns back to us and looks confused. She shakes her head, like, “No one is there.” We all kind of breathe easier.

Then EVERY goddamn door in the house is banging — relentlessly. I can still hear it. Rhythmic and terrifying, like all the doors are about to splinter and crack. There were two doors in the basement beneath us, so the sound is also a reverberation at our feet. The three ground-floor doors are shaking — we can see them trembling and jerking on their hinges from our vantage point on the couch. Finally, mom runs to the window — either from a psychotic break with reality or terror, I have no clue. She cries, “Oh thank Christ — Cousin is here!” We run to her and peek out the picture window — there is no one that we can see in the yard, but we can’t see all the doors from our viewpoint.

Cousin walks by truck with a shotgun in his hand. Cousin, it should be noted, has pretty much every gun ever made. He looks puzzled, looking at the rear of the truck, then he glances in the cab window and he stops. He goes pale, runs a hand down his face. Then he RUNS towards to house, towards us.

My grandmother flings open the kitchen door as she sees him coming. He shouts, “Everyone get behind the couch! Get DOWN!” He runs past us as we bolt for the couch. The banging starts AGAIN, all the doors and now we can hear the windows rattle. It’s like a tornado or the end of the world. We are too scared to even scream. Cousin flings open the front door and fires the huge shotgun, once, BANG, deafening. As he does, the truck roars into life and it sounds like a train. We scramble up; the banging stops, mercifully. Cousin is advancing onto the lawn, gun leveled at the truck. We run behind him, wanting to be out of that shaking, quivering house and near the dude with the gun. The truck peals out, backwards, cutting across the yard and racing into a breakneck speed. Tires sqeal, rubber is burned. Cousin fires again and we all cower behind him. He blows out the back window with the sound of a thousand plates smashing into linoleum but the truck never even hiccups, just roars down the road. No tags, not even a vanity plate on the back.

There was NO ONE behind the wheel of that thing.

We all had a clear view. Everyone agreed. Not a driver in the cab.

Well.

Not anything we could SEE, anyhow.

The police were called. The phone line had been cut. There was not a single boot print in the entire yard except Cousin’s, from where he’d run into and out of the house. Cousin reported that there had been no plate but when he looked into the cab, it looked like “something from a horror movie.” He said there were all kinds of weird restraints — handcuffs, c-clamps, nylon straps — and he said the floorboards looked covered in what “smelled like” blood to him (Cousin was famous for his keen sense of smell and the window was down, so it’s possible).

Cousin said he thought he saw a blur of something out the picture window and ran to fire the first shot, but “missed” because, once he stood there, nothing or no one was on the lawn or in the truck. Then it shot backwards out of the yard and out of our lives, leaving no answers, just a deep sense of unease every time we’d visit.

Grandma and Cousin have passed. Deeply religious people, they stuck by their unchanging versions of the story until they died. My brother, mother and I have never been able to figure it out — neither did the cops, I think it should be noted. We don’t know how all the windows and doors were banging, and we don’t know why we never saw a SOUL anywhere or how they could get around the sides of the house without leaving a trace in the damp earth.

Appendix:  Luker can back me up on this part — when I told this story in Oxford to a group of friends, one of them was recording my voice in the dark.  The next day, the recording was all fucked up, like you couldn’t hear anything, make anything out.  Also, that same night, one of the remaining great-aunts still living on the road died.

THEORIES!

1)  Was it crazy “Red’s” ghost?  He was my great-aunt’s tit-fucking crazy abusive husband who held a grudge against the family since they all beat the tar out of under the guise of a drunken horse-shoe game after he’d tortured my poor great-aunt for years.

2)  I don’t think it was Uncle Bob.  For one thing, he was basically a good guy, just unbalanced.  It was the voices, really.  And he was a minister.  So.

3)  A light-stepping party of dwarf serial killers?  I mean, maybe the driver was just really short…?  Though that still doesn’t explain the other shit.

4)  Our wild-eyed neighbor “Mousie” kept bees and a pack of slathering, half-feral hounds.  I don’t know how the bees and hounds could have staged it all, but we tended to list “Mousie” in our Usual Subjects just because he was one of the weirdest motherfuckers in a 20 mile radius.

5)  Maybe it was this crazy yokel?  If it was him, then ironically I taught his distant relatives at the John Denver School.

6)  Finally, we found out something that *may* help explain the mystery, but it would be a purely supernatural explanation and we’re not really sure. Apparently, there was a farm hand during the Depression who was fired by my great-grandfather because the guy weirded-out the livestock. That dude was fucking pissed and stole some tools before he left. Well, we kinda knew that part of the story. BUT, we recently found out that after he was lynched by a small town mob a few years later because they suspected him of raping and torturing a family — a family that consisted of a mother, her two kids, and an elderly grandmother.

EXACTLY the same fucking family that was in our house that day.

Riddle me that, motherfuckers.

“awkward dog in a fishnet wearing sandwiches”

I mean, dudes.  Seriously?  Is this what you want:

dog and fishnets... no sandwich, alas.

I’ll be back later this weekend with a post about either some horrible students or some hilarious literature.  Meanwhile, read this outstanding recap of The Magus, courtesy of my discombobulated pal, Anna:  The Magus.

Also, what’s your least-favorite book ever?  Tell me in the comments and we’ll consider doing some reader requests!

Hello y’all, Luker here. I dropped off the map about 8 months ago when I moved to Texas–bountiful blog material there, I tell ya–and have come back because in approximately 40 days the first installment of Twilight: Breaking Dawn hits theaters, most likely to be documented in the Guinness Records as the World’s Largest Simultaneous Panty Soaking Event. As the Junction’s resident Pop Culture Vampire Expert, it is my duty to present it to you, dear readers, Sass-style.

Will I see Breaking Dawn? Most assuredly. Will I be outrageously drunk at the time? You’re a fool to ask. They bring pitchers of beer to you at your seat here. Providing its residents with ample, highly-caloric food and drink is one of the things Texas excels at, and I will gladly take a sip every time Edward’s facial expression emotes “constipation” rather than “love”.

Because I am nothing if not thorough, I’ve included both the teaser and full official trailers and will be referencing relevant bits from each. Join me after the cut for a ride that will be faster and crazier than a trip in Edward’s Volvo (no real prior knowledge of the franchise required to enjoy).

A quick summary of the plot in case you don’t want to waste 3 minutes of your life watching it: Bella and Edward (Bedward) get married, honeymoon, and have the sex. Twice, if memory serves. She totally gets pregnant because Edward’s sperm has had about 100 years to get ready for this moment and, like Edward himself, his li’l guys gradually and consistently wear down any of Bella’s resistance, eventually penetrating and taking over her independence. I mean,  unfertilized egg.

The hybrid fetus has super-strength, gestates faster than normal, and carrying it to term will irrefutably kill Bella. She refuses to abort it to save herself and I think there is a subtle message in there somewhere. This hybrid’s existence is a problem for both the werewolves and the evil, bureaucratic Volturi for various unimportant reasons, and everyone wants to kill the babe (and therefore Bella) so the Cullen Clan must fight them all off.

Now for the screenshots. Wedding invitations go out and Charlie’s Mustache of Reason keeps him sane and displeased, while Renee contemplates how much cleavage is acceptable for the mother of the bride.

"That amber-eyed douchepod is going to bed my little girl."

"Love is fun LOL"

Jacob, Bella’s Lycan almost-love, is understandably hurt at this news and must physically exert the pain away. Bally’s is too far so he will run the countryside instead. Taylor Lautner is contractually obligated to be shirtless 95% of the time he is on screen and somewhere, a 35-year-old housewife just poured herself a third glass of wine and will proceed to type with one hand.

Off the reservation and into your hearts, ladies.

JUMP TO: Wedding Day. Charlie prepares to give Bells away to a man twice his own age.

Wary Charlie is Wary.

Edward has a one-track mind.

"I hear it's just like fucking a warm apple pie."

To be fair, the decoration is gorgeous. I suppose that’s the luxury of having Scrooge McDuck-like vaults of money.

White privilege? Us?

Edward smarms at Bella through several layers of Halloweeen superstore vampire makeup and my ladyjunk instinctively snaps shut at the sight.

"This is much better than the time I died of Spanish Influenza."

Jacob laments the fact that Bella will soon become a member of the Undead, but really, everyone is just waiting for bedbreaking!sex.

"Spoiler alert: I'm in love with your unborn child."

Did anyone forget this series was written by a Mormon? Here’s something to remind you.

Jesus is probably team Mike Newton

Now that Bedward are married, they can finally bone. Edward will at last give it up since Bella’s soul is no longer in risk of damnation for premarital sex. The fact that said sex will directly result in her death is another matter altogether.

So, like all misleading presentations of virginal honeymoon bliss, these two crazy kids have a Magical First Time and we kindly suspend our belief and accept that Edward lasts longer than ten seconds (dude can barely handle heavy petting). Edward comes with such gusto that he literally breaks the bed. Despite repeating high school Sex Ed one hundred times, he still does not know what or where the clitoris is. Better luck next time, Bells.

"'Different position'? Silly bride, all I do is Missionary."

How'd you like to see that O face, ladies? Eh?

Bedward enjoy some morning-after bliss.

"Remember when I would sneak into your room and watch you sleep?"

TWIST! Bella is pregnant. RPatz showcases his finest acting yet with a look of pure horror at the realization that he will be a father.

worst. honeymoon. ever.

"Does not compute. Daddy C told me storks deliver babies."

The drama escalates as Carlisle, the book’s only doctor and patriarch of the Cullen Vampire Clan informs us that the baby is killing Bella.  It’s also increasingly obvious that whoever was in charge of hair & makeup for these films was on ecstasy. If Tom Cruise can look like a more convincing vampire, we have a serious problem.

srsly did Tom Sawyer whitewash this mug?

pale vampire: yr doin' it rite

Tension escalates as Jacob delivers his two cents. “You did this to her!” he shouts, to which Edward calmly replies, “Yes, I did. With my penis.”

Chicks never go for the werewolf next door.

The ante is upped when the rest of the werewolf pack decides to destroy Bedward’s baby. Vampire/Werewolf fights ensue in the vein of what was already battled over in the third film (diff vamps, same Action Shots).

"No one brought their jean cut-offs? I'm disappointed."

Much like their entire cocktease of a relationship, nothing that happens in Part I of Breaking Dawn really matters because (spoiler alert) the real danger comes later, when the Mean Volturi Vampires come to town to fuck shit up and kill everybody in part 2 only to have their Evil Plans foiled and the conflict wrapped up with a Deus ex machina bow.

But for now, what’s most important is that Bella’s spine will snap and her ribs will break and she will die and Edward will bite the baby out of her. Well, according to the book. The PG-13 rating might not allow for it.

Sorry, B. It's gonna happen. You look the way I feel about it.

So, until next time, when I regale you fine folks with tales of getting hit on by a college sophomore at an Applebee’s whose wooing technique included showing me pictures of a chili-cookoff, this is the Baroness, signing off.

By Ernest Hemingway

—————————-

Man, lemme tell you.

When I first read Sun Also Rises in college, I felt like I was playing some bizarro game of Penis Bingo.  ”Page 18!  Line 12!  PENIS!”  I would mutter with crazy eyes.

I had just learned about phallic symbols and I have a copy of the book that I lovingly refer to as my Cock Copy since it’s full to the brim of underlined penis/sex references.  It looks like a total perv was jerking off to Hemingway in the most literary and freakish way possible.  If red ink was jizz, my copy would have been soaked.  And possibly impregnated.

Not kids today, though!  I was tutoring Hemingway’s tome, gleefully pointing out choice moments and suddenly noticed that the room was still, eyes on me warily, like I was asking them to please picture their parents naked, covered in Thousand Island Dressing and doing the nasty on their heads.

“Wait.  Your professor hasn’t been talking about all the sex stuff?”  I asked, cautious and worried, dry-erase marker hovering like an anxious insect in my hand at the board, in the middle of writing, “Baton @ end = SWELLING PE–”.

“Well, there’s that whore in the beginning.”  One kid offered, nervously eyeing his fellow students.

“Er, sure, but Jake can’t do anything with her.  Because he’s ‘sick,’” I unwisely winked broadly with the word “sick” making me look like a carnival barker hawking illicit Modernist porn from the nudie tent.  They blinked back at me.

“Yeah, what does he mean by that?  He ain’t sick.  He’s drunk, but not sick.”  Another kid said, scornful and irate.

“He had his dick blown off in the war.”  I clarified, sad dry-erase marker finally collapsing in defeat by my side.

Complete.  Fucking.  Silence.

“WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS WRONG WITH HIM?!”  I finally shrieked.  Blank zombie faces.

“Well, I thought he was gay.”  The first moron contributed succinctly.  ”That’s why he can’t get with Brett.”

“But,” I sputtered, “there’s that whole section where he’s angry at the homosexuals with Brett.  They annoy him.  And he’s in love with her!  He is SO NOT GAY.”  The kid shrugged.

“I thought he had, like, crabs, or the clap or something.”  The single girl in the group offered.

“Wait a tic — you kids still use the phrase ‘the clap’?”  I said, mystified.  ”Jesus.  Where am I, 19-dickity-2?”

“How do you know he got his dick blown off?”  The second kid was flipping wildly through his book, clearly thinking there would be a nice graphic novel version in the middle that he’d carelessly overlooked.

I showed them the passage.  They, correctly, pointed out that it’s not very specific.  I begged them to work on reading subtext and consider other clues.  They continued to look at me like a creepster at the arcade offering tokens in exchange for dirty hand-jobs out back.

“They all drink a lot.”  Second kid mentions, suspiciously.  I looked at him.

“Yesss…”  I said, encouragingly.

“So, he probably didn’t even know about having no blown-off dick.”  He finished, horrifyingly.

I looked at him for a minute.

“How drunk would you have to be, son, to not notice that your man-bits were missing?”  I asked, almost kindly.

Point taken.  But JESUS.  It was like pulling some motherfucking teeth.  What kind of awful world are we living in when kids are more interested in illegal absinthe than a veritable literary wonderland of cock?!

"Not Suitable for Children"! It's right on there.

This is why I shouldn’t read for pleasure, kids.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Sweet Mickey Mouse on a cracker.  I don’t even know where to start.  This book is a mind-hump of crazy.  Foreal.

Girl meets boy at summer camp.  Gets knocked up, is tricked into an abortion that leaves her sterile.  Boy disappears.  Girl marries new boy.  New boy turns out to be RUGSHITTING INSANE.  Girl ends up with 1st boy.  There is a dog named “Walmart.”  The end.

Between Anne’s:

incorrect use of the word “literally”

+ her endless descriptions of furniture and lawns (if I wanted that kind of shite, I’d be reading Better Homes and Gardens — there is actually a full paragraph plus dialogue dedicated to a pot of fake flowers in a fireplace)

+ her inability to tell freaking TIME (head’s up, old girl — the Olympics were in 1995, so there were no cell phones, limited internet access and no Harry Potter movies… was her editor on drugs?  unconscious?  I’d seriously like to know… it would be a better story than this garbage was)

+ a recycling of old characters/details/word choice/plot points that BOGGLES SANITY.  Oh, an architect old boyfriend?  A terrible experience with first love?  Characters who love mythology?  A warped relationship with your parents?  Wild amounts of money being granted to people with BA’s in English who like to work menial jobs?  Terrible death that marks a young person?  Black people being portrayed as only vaguely literate and given the only real dialect in the text?  CHECK CHECK AND CHECK.  If you have Alzheimer’s and want to re-read Siddons’ early work, this book is for you!  It’s like she has decided to murder originality with a hatchet.

+ irritating characters that you’re expected to like based on “tell” vs. “show.”  She beats it into the reader that we should looove the husband character (he’s magical!  And Irish!  And with black wet-looking hair like a comma!) then informs us halfway through that no, nope, it was the first dude we should have been loving (he’s Jewish!  And an architect!  With freckles on his arms!)

= The biggest load of bullcrap produced by Ms. Siddons ever.  Throw in a completely implausible supernatural ending (WTF was going on with that camp?!  Were they sucking out souls?  Did Stephen King stumble in drunk one day and offer to write the end?  What?!) combined with a total eclipse of all early plot points and characters and you have this novel.

We have no idea what happens between Thayer and her mom, a central plot device early on.  There are strange references to a part of the grandmother’s inheritance that wouldn’t have been a legal option for the characters talking about them.  Where does poor abused Lily go?  Just keeps getting the tar knocked out of her by Goose?

MAGIC!

Ugh.  Anne, please.  If you’re drinking or smoking crack, just let your editor know.  Actually, no, please, for the love of kittens, fire your editor because they have clearly sustained a head injury.

Reading this was like being fired out of a cannon of incompetence into a sea of rat-humping insanity.  You need a stiff drink for the last 50 pages, and don’t skip on the whiskey.  YOU’RE WELCOME.

This thing.

A medieval German hero epic, depicting the struggles of Sigfried:  Dragon slayer, treasure stealer and wife beater.  Yes.  Really.   And in that order. 

Before we even get to the Dragon Slaying, we have to listen to the dreams of this seemingly random princess of Burgundy, Kreimheld.  Like most good German princesses, she’s sequestered in a tower with a mother named Uta.  Kreim has a dream about an eagle and decides this means her husband will be killed violently, likely with stabby things involved, and it will all be her fault.  Naturally, she decides that the only reasonable reaction to this dream is to take it completely seriously and vow to never get married.  This isn’t going to matter later, as women were pretty much slaves and bitch will do as she’s told. 

Sigfried, Prince of Xanten [read: The Netherlands.  Kind of.] shows up in Burgundy and meets Kreim’s brothers, King Gunther, Princes Gernot and Giselher.  Note — they are all dicks.  But Sigfried is willing to put up with some dickery since he wants to get with that hot virgin booty, Kreimheld.  Are the menfolk pleased that a prince of the Netherlands has shown up to take the tiresome dreaming twatwaffle off their hands?  No.  They are not.  Then a vassal (like a professional ass licker, but with a sword) named Hagen bounces into the room and tells everyone how amaaaazing Sigfried is.  He’s all like, “OMG, you guys.  For serious.  This dude.  He killed the warrior brothers Nibelung and Schilbung [hah!] then reached over and also totally murdered a dragon.  He has a fuckpile of treasure that he raped a dwarf into watching over for him.  Oh, and he has a cloak of invisibility and a super nice sword.”  At this point in the narrative, we have to assume that Hagen is pretty much ready to make sweet sweet love to Sigfried, who is all, “Yeah, it’s TRUE.  Also, I bathed in that dragon’s hot delicious blood and am invincible.”  Well.  Pretty invincible.  Too bad Sigfried is a manchild who let a leaf fall on his back while bathing in the blood, and now, LIKE ACHILLES, he has one small spot where he can be penetrated [Yes, that's what she said]. 

The King and his bros are like, Welp, this is a bastard we should have stick around.  He seems insane and impossible to kill.  There is no way this will end badly for us, especially considering he wants to bone our sister.  They invite him to stay and he’s kinda like, er, I sort of wanted to bang your sister, is that something you could help me with?  They’re like, NO.  But he’s sneaky (and has a cloak of invisibility, let us not forget) so he sticks around. 

Then he helps them murder some Saxons and Danes. 

The peasants rejoice. 

He gets to meet Kreimhild.  They hold hands and go to church.  It’s love at first sight. 

Gunther’s penis, however, has been inspired by all this mutual affection and he realizes that he would like a warm spot to park his Little Man each night, also.  There is a bitch in Iceland who will do, though it seems kinda sketchy when he wants Sigfried to go with him as a vassal (remember, vassal=professional ass licker) to “help” him in his suit of Brunhild, princess and professional crazy person of Iceland.  Also: super strong lady bits. 

Sigrfried, who is being driven now by a desire to touch Kreimhild’s boobies, is all “Sure, let’s go to fucking Iceland.”  Off they go.  Upon arriving, Brunhild greets them, “Hey, gents.  So, welcome to Iceland.  I’m Brunhild, the one you probably came to try and lay your man-meat on.  Here’s the deal — you go head to head with me in three feats of strength [apparently Iceland is the birthplace of "Festivus"].  If I win, I get to straight-up murder you all.  If you win, I’ll marry you.” 

Paying no attention whatsoever to the murmurs/shrieks of protest from his men, Gunther heartily approves this deal with all the enthusiasm you can expect from a cock-divot like this guy.  Brunhild then explains that Gunther will have to throw a rock farther, a javelin farther and jump further than she can, because this harpy LOVES the fucking Olympics, apparently.  Gunther, who is borderline retarded and/or not paying attention, feels like these are odds he can beat. 

And then she shows him the rock.  It’s the size of a goddamn mountain.  Worried Gunther has a worried.  She hefts it up in one delicate paw and tosses it like halfway around the earth, bats her eyelashes and is like, “Your turn, yo.” 

Now.  Time out.  Do you really want to be married to a lady who can do this, Gunther?  You will have to be on good behavior for the REST OF YOUR LIFE.  Otherwise, she will murder you with rocks.  Easily. 

Gunther, proving again that he has the brain power of a bicycle pump, decides to have his go at it.  Meanwhile, Sigfried rolls his eyes and runs back to the boat to get his cloak of invisibility.  Then, invisibile and with the strength of 12 men, he helps Idiot Gunther finish the tasks and win.  Brunhild proves to be a gracious loser when she says, “Wow, nice work.  Yes, I will totally marry you, I just need to wait for my motherfucking army to show up real quick.”  Concerned about what the male relatives of this Lady Beast are going to look like, especially armed and on horses, Gunther asks Sigfried to save his ass yet again.

Off the thankless Sigfried goes to conquer the shit out of the Nibelungs.  He shows back up with his own sizable army and Brunhild is just like, “Oh, fine.  I will fucking marry you and not murder you all with my army after all.  Let’s go, bitch-cakes.”  Big honky wedding in Worms, with Sig and Kreim also getting hitched, and then poor Gunther faces his wedding night with his blushing bride whose hobbies include bench-pressing Buicks. 

Brunhild, not well at all with all this submissive wife nonsense, beats the fuck out of Gunther in their wedding bed, hog-ties him and strings him up on the ceiling.  Gunther, though dumb, is not impervious to humiliation and asks Sig for help AGAIN, this time with managing the Hell Hound he’s vowed to have and hold for the rest of his (likely to be short) natural life.  Sig, who is sort of a glutton for punishment, says, “Ok, I have a really subtle plan.  I will sneak into your bedroom tonight in my invisibility cloak, beat the hell out of your bride and then hand her over once she submits.” 

Gunther:  “I LOVE THIS PLAN!  There is nothing not awesome about it!  Oh.  Well.  Er, one thing, ok?  Don’t bang my wife, dude.  Not cool.” 

Sig:  “Would I bang your wife?  C’mon.” 

Gunther:  … 

Sigfried does this, beating Brunhild into submission and totally teaching her the Netherland Crotch-slap in the process.  He also finds her super-strength-giving magic ring and girdle, somewhere, while putting his P in her V, and he gives these to his own wife, Kreimhild.  Brunhild afterwards submits to the tender, sloppy administrations of Retard Gunther, putting her Buick-hefting hobbies aside. 

That’s all well and good, and years pass.  Then, feeling bored and vaguely vengeful, Brunhild starts to talk shit about Sigfried to her husband.  She talks him into inviting him and Kriem down for a visit so they can totally murder them hang out like old times.  Gunther, again proving that the genetic pool was a tad shallow on his end, agrees.  Vassal Hagen, who has been conspicuously absent all this while, show back up and decides he doesn’t like Sigfried anymore either.  The queens have a catfight over who gets to go to church first and Kreim totally calls Brun a whooore.  Brun cries.  It’s amazing.  Here’s a visual:

Now it’s all on like Donkey Kong.  Hagen, who is a complete tool, gets Kreim to stitch a little cross where Sigfried’s super secret point of vulnerability is.  She is the only one who knows this as his WIFE.  Why she trusts Douchey McVassal Doucherton is a mystery, but I think the message is that ladies are not super goood at understanding complex male concepts like NOT TELLING PEOPLE WHERE YOUR SINGLE POINT OF PENETRATION IS LOCATED. 

Sigh.

Hagen, like the utter asstree that he is, waits until they’re hunting and Sigfried is getting a little drink of water from a stream, like a tiny deer. 

BAM.  Hagen pwns Sigfried with a murdery javelin to the back, using that help cross that Kreimhild provided unwittingly.  Now, some scholars, I should note, find this part reminiscent of rape — after all, Sig is penetrated in his one untouchable spot from behind (while bending over) by another man holding a long phallic-shaped weapon. 

Ahem.  See what happens when you go hunting, kids?  And, just to write large his legacy of complete Fuckturtle status, Hagen throws the treasure of the Nibelungs into the Rhine river. 

Kreimhild, not fooled by the fake boo-hooing over her husband’s “hunting accident” gets right the fuck over to Asia and marries the castle-stomping Atilla the Hun.  He puts a baby in her IMMEDIATELY and they invite everyone for the baptism.  Well, that seems legit.  Pfft.  Even Hagen, butt-sauce that he is, is like, uh, guys?  I am fairly sure that crazy cooze still wants to kill me.  Everyone else is like, STFU, Hagen.  You’re so dumb that you throw treasure in rivers.  Besides, Atilla the Hun has the most raging parties and super good booze.  Quit hatin.  And off they all go. 

And of course there is a whole bunch of murder.  Just balls to the wall craziness like this:

Except with swords and horses, not balls and wheelchairs. 

No one will tell Kreimhild where her treasure is, which makes her go ballistic and start a decapitating spree.  A character named “Olde Hildebrand” suddenly bolts out from no where and slices poor Kreimhild to bits in a rage.  Everyone is dead and the last chapter is pretty much a body count. 

And that, friends and allies, is why Germany is pretty fucked up.

This is WRONG.  I mean, sure, she has the dead-behind-the-eyes 1000-yard stare of someone who could murder a baby.  And if the allegations of sexual assault are correct on Casey’s part, then Kristen has plenty of practice from being man-handled by her sparkly boyfriend.  But she really doesn’t have that je ne sais quois…

There is only one person equipped with the looks and talent to play Casey Anthony, consumate liar, alleged victim of sexual assault and unemployed native Floridian.  That, my friends, is the actress who portrayed “B” in The Human Centipede.  Just LOOK at them!

Now, I am not suggesting that Casey Anthony be sentenced to be a part of a Human Centipede if convicted, though she is being tried in Florida where anything is possible.  I would be more inclined to see the media asswaffles who have turned this goddamn thing into a circus turned into one giant Human ‘Pede since they’re already so good at shitting out of their mouths. 

Of course, I’d also like to see Christopher Walken play her dad, so I doubt anyone in Hollywood is listening to me. 

*Here, “fame” = “notoriety for being a singularly terrible actress in a teeny-bopper movie that encourages young girls to like boys who stalk them and withold sex”

Daddy hated him some snakes.  With the fervancy of a backwoods preacher, his eyes would bulge and he’d fix us in a maniacal gaze whenever my brother and I guilelessly [read: gleefully] asked him how he, a former Lt. Commander of a Destroyer in the Navy/man who taught himself Russian and Japanese/MA in Economics/Die-hard Florida Gator fan was still afraid of snakes. 

“You want to know WHY?”  He’d cry, as though we’d asked if our dog has AIDS or if being a hunchback was a viable career option.  He’d usually shake a spoon at us because that man faithfully ate a bowl of Cheerios every morning of his life for 60 plus years and it was best to ask Dad questions first thing in the morning before he tooled off to his job at Lockheed Martin where his job entailed: “I’d tell you, but I’d have to kill you….(ominous chuckle).” 

“I’ll tell you WHY –”  This pause was often so he could chew an angry spoonful of Cheerios thoughtfully and glare into the distance, as though imagining a veritable snake horde that was plotting his demise.  “Snakes are dangerous.  And they’re sneaky you-know-whats [clearly, I did not get my profanity gene from this man].” 

So.  Fuck Snakes.  That was the message. 

But in honor of Father’s Day, I’d like to take some time to thank the man who bravely and sometimes ferociously dealt with my cripplling fear of spiders and cockroaches.  Growing up in Orlando, the whole goddamn world is a zoological experiement in human fear when it comes to bugs.  The mosquito might as well be the state bird, the roaches can eat live hamsters and the spiders defy any description beyond a gargled shriek of “KILL IT WITH FIRE!”  My father was often summoned by my calls of terror as I beheld some specimen of Nature’s warped sense of humor — a flying cockroach flailing out of my Strawberry Shortcake house, on one memorable occasion; a spider the size of my face in the corner of my bedroom on another. 

Spiders are assholes.  TWICE I’ve whacked a big mother-fucker into the chlorinated depths of our pool just to discover that it was, in fact, just a MOTHER, teeming with hideous spawn that explodes out of the spider’s hell-hewn backside in an attempt to make me completely insane.  They are creepy beyond sense and fuck anyone who says otherwise.  You like spiders?  You’re not normal.  You are probably letting the terrorists win. 

Cockroaches?  Bitch, please.  Those dicktanks can rot in a lightless hell beyond the pale with only the tears of children to sustain them … AND THEY WILL STILL COME BACK TO FUCK WITH US.  Also:  They fly.  Case closed. 

My father, despite a similar fear of snakes, was the slayer of all things scary in my childhood.  He wasn’t going to let some assbloody arachnid make his kid unhappy, not on his watch, by gum.  The soul-lightening squish of their shitty bodies beneath his shoe was the hymn of my childhood — a hymn of praise for a man who was fearless in the face of his children’s fears, a killing machine with a sneaker.  He never once made me feel stupid or bad for hating the goddamn things, probably because he knew all too well the irrational hatred we bear things slithery, belegged and/or flying that can haunt the dreams of the innocent.  When I think of my dad being awesome, I think of a shoe raised high and the bellow of a bear raining down death to his enemies:  “I will fucking END YOU!” 

SQUISH! 

Happy Father’s Day, troops.  If your dad was half as cool as mine, give that guy a call tomorrow.