UPDATE 2 /14/2008 6:23 PM:The Soupy Trumpet writers offer their deepest sympathy for the victims at Northern Illinois University, where a terrible shooting occurred today. Spanky has a degree from that institution and has much love for the Huskies. Our cultural trouble with guns continues, sadly.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/14/university.shooting/index.html

DILLON, S.C. — Authorities say a 10-year-old boy shot his younger sister in the face after she refused to give him a bag of potato chips. Dillon County Chief Deputy Douglas Pernell says the children were home alone when they started arguing Tuesday afternoon. Investigators say after his 9-year-old sister refused to hand over the chips, the boy got his father’s shotgun, loaded a shell, pointed the gun at his sister and fired. Authorities say the girl was wounded in her right cheek, but is expected to survive. Deputies say they have asked the Department of Juvenile Justice to charge the boy with assault and battery with intent to kill. His name was not released.”

Let’s keep pushing the idea that disputes are to be solved with guns, that justice is served by having them everywhere. “Guns don’t kill people, People kill people.”

Eff that. I’ve already argued that people are more likely to kill people when there are more guns lying around.

When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a …. when all you have is a gun, everything starts to look like a ….The tragedy is that this girl got hurt and also that this boy doesn’t even know what he’s done. And we’re all complicit. I reject the idea that it’s only the gun companies, or only Hollywood, or only the consumer. We’re all in on it. And I am, too, goddamnit. And that sucks. What to do?

-Agent Spanky McGee

P.S. Before you start concluding that I’m so anti-gun, you should know I’m a pragmatist. I think I have the right to a gun because there are already so many nuts who want their guns so damned badly, and I need to defend myself against them. It puts me in a bit of a bind, I know. Stuck in Baghdad, stuck with guns.

It has been 24 years since Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was released in theaters. Now in 2008, in the same way George Lucas brings things back again and again, Harrison Ford is set to throw on his leather jacket and become Indiana Jones once again. This re-incarnation is known as “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” and stars Ford, Cate Blanchett, and Shia LaBeouf. Notably absent from the cast is the retired Sean Connery…and I would assume we will not see Jonathan Ke Quan reliving his role as the lovable sidekick Short Round. Steven Spielberg, who is also not afraid to bring franchises back time after time (Transformers 2, Men In Black 2, and recently announced Jurassic Park 4), is set to direct “Indy 4.” Enjoy the brand new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull trailer, courtesy of Yahoo.com.

Recently, my roommate has been suffering from bouts of insomnia. I tried to lull him to sleep last night by recalling events that had happened to me the previous week.

Once upon a time there was a boy named Stooge. Two of Stooge’s favorite things in the world were the History Channel and Cheetos. One day while watching a particularly titillating show on the History Channel, Stooge began thinking about some of his recent adventures with the opposite sex. Fond remembrance gave way to mental wandering, and when Stooge’s mind wandered, it rarely ended up in a good place. He thought, “Shit, I should really get myself checked out. I mean, I always use condoms but you never know…”

After a few hours of worrying, Stooge decided to go have his oil checked. He meekly walked into the Plan Parenthood office on shaking legs.

A woman dressed like a medical professional told him to take off his clothes and use the paper sheet to cover himself up. Stooge obediently sat under the paper and felt like an uncooked sirloin steak. The nurse entered. She was surprisingly attractive for her age, and smelled like peach moisturizer.

She placed her unexpectedly warm hands on his Charlie browns and began massaging. The nurse was showing him how to do a self testicular cancer exam; poor Stooge had other things on his weary mind. He kept repeating in his head, “Please don’t get a boner, please don’t get a boner, please don’t get a boner…” Thinking about anti-sexual things like football practice and MC Spanky McGee seemed to drain the dragon.

The nurse then unsheathed a pool stick like q tip and proclaimed,” I am just going to put this in your urethra and then we’re done.” Stooge felt relieved for a moment until he remembered that urethra means dick hole. Panic jolted through his loins.

She slipped the q tip in and out and examined it like she was checking the done-ness of a cup cake. A brief but extremely sharp pain throbbed in the eye of the monster.

Stooge stepped into his unwashed jeans and drove home feeling violated and anxious. A few days later, he got notice. All clean.

And he lived happily ever after.

(Post updated 2/14/2008)

Heh. I commented on Titan’s oil back in November of 2006 (that post is below), and now the news is saying:

Saturn’s orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new Cassini data. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes. http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMCSUUHJCF_index_0.html

(See also http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/02/titans-organic.html)

Ok, ok. This is very good news for us. Kinda. It depends on what we mean by the word, “us.” Here’s what I’m thinking.

1. Someday the sun is going to go supernova and engulf the Earth. Fact.
2. That means that we are going to want to pack up our Taco Bells and get the hell out of here. Thus, the Grand Planetary Hop.
3. However, (and this is the juicy fun part) not everyone will “qualify” for the GHP. In other words, when the sun swallows Mercury and the Earf heats up, not everybody is going on the rocketship. “This is ground control to Major Tom…. it’s getting very waaaaarm….“
4. Solution? Lottery. “Free” markets. In other words, ya better start a trust fund for your temporally-distant relatives. Don’t say that MC Spanky McGee never got anything right.
5. Ok, so you’re gonna need tons o’ cash to go. You hit the moon, Mars, and then you’re off to Titan to load up on some sweet rocket fuel. Brrrr.
6. Have fun getting your ass to Proxima Centauri. http://www.astro.wisc.edu/%7Edolan/constellations/extra/nearest.html “Gonna make it… gonna make it…. not gonna make it”

By the way, if you’re left behind when the supernova is about to occur, I know it’s going to suck. Total chaos. Total anarchy. Sorry we didn’t have the foresight, will, or ability to do ya better.
Peace out.
-MC Spanky McGee

So I’m reading the December 2006 issue of National Geographic last night, la la-la, checking out these kickass pictures of Saturn (I’m a dork. So what?), kinda reading the article about the Cassini and Huygens probes, when I hit page 54. At the top of the page in bigass letters, it quoted Hunter Waite, from the Southwest Research Institute:“THERE’S A LAYER OF FROZEN HYDROCARBONS, SIMILAR TO GASOLINE, COVERING MUCH OF THE MOON [TITAN]. IF YOU COULD MINE TITAN, YOU’D NEVER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT OIL SHORTAGES.”-Sweet! This is going to rock. You can drive 95 after all! We will send a freakin’ huge rocket to Titan, which will take 7 years. We’ll load up on oil, and then we’ll send it back, and wait for 7 more years. Come on, now, don’t wuss out on me. You can wait 14 years for oil so that your ol’ Corvette club can still roll around and listen to Elvis–just for shits and giggles. Of course, this will only please us if we use more oil than we’re getting out of the trip.-
Below: the totally rad moon of Saturn, Titan.

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What is extra-sugary is that National Geographic is in the middle of story about these strange objects in our solar system, and one of the things they highlight is how we could plunder that shit for oil. (Man, I hope there are some life forms on Titan that we can screw over. We have the God-given right to any oil in the solar system.) That’s like talking about a quadratic equation in a math book and then telling the reader that you could apply it to some chicken strips. Sure, Grown Pumpkin thinks about chicken strips a lot, but do you really have to torture the lil’ guy when he’s trying to do his math homework? How can I focus on the pretty pretty rings of Saturn when I start daydreaming about going to the gas station?
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Too bad I’m not gonna be around for the Grand Planetary Hop. Humans are going to be intergalactic oil pirates some day, and I’d be a freakin’ sweet foot soldier in that shit. I just played 3 hours of Gears of War with Pumpkin on his monstrous plasma screen this last weekend. I’m ready to kick some alien-ass.

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Ah, for some reason, I hear Queens of the Stone Age: “GIMME SOME MORE… DEEP FRIED, GIMME SOME MORE!” Now there’s the American motto: “GIMME SOME MORE!”

We soooo rock the house. Beeg time.

Goddamnit. I grew up on Star Wars, and yes, I can still drop some quotes. But I don’t totally dork it out. I have my XBOX 360 and my computer for dorkin’ it. I hate Star Wars now. I’m soooooooo fucking sick of Lucas just driving it into the ground. Sometimes we’re just so much better off without a sequel: The Matrix, Clerks, etc. and so on. We coulda used our imaginations–if we have any left in our collective consciousness–to figure out what could/should happen next. But noooooooooooo. We get stuck with your shitty dialogue–which I won’t rehash here. (We’ve all been over that.)

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-clone….

“Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” a new stylized, computer-animated feature film, will open Aug. 15 in theaters and set the stage for a tie-in television series with the same name and mode of artwork that will begin airing as a 30-minute weekly series in the fall on the Cartoon Network and TNT.

I think I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. Goddamnit, George. Milk that cow, you ass. But I, for one, am not buying your skim. I’ve got whole milk with Call of Duty 4, and I’m feeling like a strapping young lad.

It’s called quality, not quantity, and you gave up on quality “a long time ago.” Shoulda called it quits with the Ewoks playing paradiddles on the storm trooper helmets.

-MC Spanky McGee