The Winter Olympics are about to begin in Vancouver this week, and to honor this occasion, we thought to would revisit some suggestions The Skwib has had for more exciting events in the spirit of the Games. (The spirit of the Games being the exploitation of hard-working athletes and their dreams.)

Yes, the Olympic motto, citius altius fortius — faster, higher, stronger — is still one that inspires and arouses the best in us. Still, some Winter Olympic sports are, well, let’s face it, not as telegenic as we might like. Perhaps if the motto was changed to citius, altius, sanguius — faster, higher, bloodier — we might enjoy them more. And in so doing, truly honor the spirit of the games: the production of filthy lucre at the cost of our ideals.

Now, we actually think short-track speed skating is pretty good. Lots of action. Possibility of death. But what if the athletes had to zip around the track holding live chainsaws? Just think of the ad revenue! [pictured above, photo by johnthescone]

Four-man bobsled jumping

Any wimp can land a 120-metre jump on skis. Now, landing a bobsled filled with three other horrified Olympic athletes, that takes real skill. In fact, we bet that very few athletes could manage it. For added thrills, the bobsled jumpers could hold up their arms as they’re airborn, just like a roller-coaster! And just thing of the cross-promotional activities with amusement parks. Blue sky by suchnone

Ultra-G

Much more dangerous than Super-G, Ultra-G combines the mind-bending speed of a flat-out downhill run with a circle of ice that looks like a gigantic Hot Wheels loop at the end of the slope. The winner of this event will probably be a qualified fighter-jet pilot or astronaut. Losers will be immortalized by a generation of traumatized television viewers.

Next up: Ultimate Couples Ice Dance, Polar Biathlon, Skurlington

Your turn: Feel free to add refinements in the comments, or other sports involving not just the effort and sweat of our athletes, but actual blood.

Alltop can’t believe the Olympic Torch ceremony was invented by Hitler.

Sometimes things get ugly.

An argument goes awry. Friends drift apart. Families break up because they don’t share the same existential desires.

Sure, we all hope that eventually, human society will change for the better. Eventually, we’ll have a civilized strata, and a rough, hirsute barbarian underclass. This is as it should be. But god forbid the civilized group loses its mind and does things that are bad for all humanity!

This is what it is to be Zardozed.

(As we all are.)

Alltop is fond of the breech-clout.

If you happen to live on one of the many planets inhabited by CEOs, you may find yourself wondering: “how do I not get eaten?”

You may also wonder if there is sunblock powerful enough to prevent dermal incineration when lanced by particle beams. (There isn’t.)

However, have you considered living underground? All you need is a pipe for air, a small amount of water, and vitamin supplements to augment your diet of worms and other burrowing creatures.

Of course, you will also need enough time to dig a hole — these inhabitants of Neebie-neebie waited until a large pack of CEOs descended on a nearby city, enslaving and devouring the hapless and (dare we say) ill-prepared tiny and polite humans. While this carnage was underway, they had lots of time to build their holes, and even a few tunnels between them, so they might breed more tiny and polite humans.

Ah, the circle of life!

Alltop enjoys their human cooked funny. From Toulouse Le Grandfig in the Land of the Future | photo by Duesentrieb. Originally published November 2007.

Mindmapping, originally uploaded by lunchbreath.

Heh, I think I may get my students to have a look at this. I totally agree with the designer that use of the word “random” is normally to be avoided, but this is truthy.

Alltop lives and dies by the whitboard.

On February 2, it is customary in Canada and the United States to celebrate an annual tradition wherein we allow a chubby burrowing rodent to forecast the weather. This is an important ritual, but not for the reason that many people think.

Many believe this “holiday” can be traced back to an ancient pagan ritual called Imbolc, which was duly adopted by early Christians and turned into Candlemas. (This means Mass of the Candles, in which the clergy would perform ear candling on the most hairy-eared and disgusting member of each parish, in a metaphorical recreation of the time when Jesus performed the Ear Candling of Jergomethia, cleaning the aural canals of a score of waxy hermits, and curing them of their deafness.) Finally, this holiday or “holy day” was further perverted by the German-speaking populations of Pennsylvania, who fused the day with European folklore and a desire to celebrate fersommling, a kind of Pennsylvania Dutch orgy. (Obviously, these depravities are only celebrated by the Fancy Dutch, and eschewed by the more plain sects, such as the Amish, Dunkards and Mennonites.)

However, there live amongst some of the Elders in these plain sects of the Pennsylvania Dutch — or P-Dutch, as they are known on the streets of Philadelphia — the horrible, truthful truth.

Once, North America was largely ruled by these underground rodents of the family Sciuridae, and though they lived largely in peace with the native human populations, the arrival of the white man marked the end of their peaceful co-existence. For when the early settlers began tearing up the forests, and plowing the meadows where the groundhog, or woodchuck, lives, war between all men and the Tcuckbar (as the groundhogs call their own race) began.

Amongst the Elders of the Dunkards, this is known as the Grundschwein Zehekriege, or literally, “groundhog toe wars”; this name is taken from the favourite martial tactic of the Tcuckbar, which is to sever the large toe of a human being, and thus cause him to lose his balance, fall down, and then have his carotid artery savaged. Normally, groundhogs are peaceful herbivores, but when roused, they can eat up to twice their own weight in human flesh.

It is when they are thus engorged, looking almost like a bristly boar that they are most dangerous. Indeed, one of their other names is taken from this state: while in boar mode, the average groundhog will make a high-pitched sound, from whence their nickname, “whistle pig” derives.

During this dark period of the war, many humans took to fighting one another, or slaughtering local wolf populations, for no-one could believe such excessive butchery could be done by the lowly woodchuck — and the groundhog attackers were always disappearing into holes or climbing trees before humans could spot them. (You didn’t know they could climb trees, did you? Then you probably don’t know about their limited psychokinetic ability to move small objects such as golf balls, musket balls, and human eyes.)

Eventually, through an uncharacteristic adoption of empiric method the P-Dutch Fußführer (or “Foot Leader”), Johann Suppetrinker, figured out it was the groundhogs, and the war turned to the favour of the human forces. Unfortunately, most humans outside the P-Dutch Confederacy did not believe Suppetrinker’s explanation, and it took many years for the humans to gain control of the situation.

To this day crack forces of Amish and Mennonite Grundschweinmörders (Groundhog Killers) spend part of every winter season hunting down resistant forces of the dangerous Tcuckbar groundhog clans. Luckily, evolution has done the rest of the work for us, and the remaining non-sentient species is largely harmless, except to the occasional horse or golfer.

But this is why we celebrate Groundhog Day, and the annual humiliation ritual surrounding it. Otherwise, what other explanation could there be for the pomp and elaborate circumstance of this winter rite? Punxsutawney Phil and Wiarton Willie are not terrified by their own shadow, so much as the deep racial memory of seeing the figure of an Amish Grundschweinmörder, poised to spit him on a finely crafted spitzerstock. (Pointed stick.)

And they’ve only been slightly more accurate at predicting the end of winter than the Farmer’s Almanac, the P-Dutch edition included.

Alltop doesn’t believe that Wiarton Willie even exists. Picture of ritually humiliated groundhog courtesy of Scottobear. Brilliant artwork of Whistle Pig preparing to strike by ~Artsammich. Defeat of groundhog poster by Northfield.org.

Neuroscientists are engaging in the deadly serious activity of why humor is so dangerous.

It turns out, it all has to do with whether the joke is funny or not. Funny = laugh. Not funny = no laugh and/or brain explosion. (The incidence of brain explosion due to un-funny jokes is very low, especially since the death of vaudeville — most theatres in the vaudeville era were fitted with sluices to help with the clean-up of grey matter after a performance, but with the advent of the moving picture, the “brain drain” has been unnecessary in most theatres, except in France, where they worship Jerry Lewis .)

Now, it may seem a bit risky to listen to jokes, given the small chance that your brain may explode. But it is a very small chance, especially since we’ve started studying what makes people laugh with functional MRI machines and sitcoms.

But the payoff to listening to a funny joke is big. According to the New Scientist:

Further research, conducted by Dean Mobbs, then at Stanford University in California, uncovered a second spike of activity in the brain’s limbic system – associated with dopamine release and reward processing – which may explain the pleasure felt once you “get” the joke (Neuron, vol 40, p 1041).

Moobs has done further research into the differences between how the sexes process jokes, and found that while men may laugh more quickly at a joke, women get a much bigger dopamine hit, once their brains process the humor and decide if it’s funny or not. This explains why women are willing to date men who are clearly beneath them in the looks department.

However, this puts women at greater risk of the second danger in humor — addiction. If you’re dating a balding, be-spectacled science dude for his humor, you’re probably addicted to all those good feelings induced by your brain. But it’s just a drug. A naturally occurring, evolutionarily brilliant drug.

But I may be biased.

Alltop is also addicted. You can read the sciency stuff at the New Scientist: When your brain gets the joke

The brochure had said it would be peaceful and calm. It had even pointed out the great sea view. It had mentioned “more beach than you’d ever need”, which was accurate, but slightly misleading. (It was shale, not sand.)

It had described the deck chairs as “quaint”, which he supposed was true, if by “quaint” you meant having to sit on something clearly created by the Marquis de Sade, and designed to pinch your genitals with just enough force to cause vomiting, but not death.

But the brochure had not said anything about having to sit with Big Smelly Jenny.

Alltop would go anyway. Originally published May 2007. Photo by Franks_Wild

iPad Cartoon Template, originally uploaded by lunchbreath.

A more sophisticated approach than Mad TV.

Alltop really wants one too.

One day the world would be willing to accept them, but for now, Orlando Bloom and his rabbit would have to stare wistfully from the doorway of their Uber-shack. Orlando thought of better times, other sets of pointy ears that he’d worn, and how, really, it all came back to those days in Florida, when he was just a zygote.

Meanwhile, Alexis Deathhracka planned his revenge. Yes, very soon his plan would come to fruition and the world would tremble before his awesome power. He would destroy Cincinnati, once his atomic bunny suit was fully powered.

But first, the freak in the ears had to put him down so he could go chew on his own fecal matter.

Alltop is all about the siflay hracka, man. Photo by Scragz. Originally published May 2007.

Chauncey Migswith-Pigerton thought that everyone was making too much out of the whole goat-monkey thing. Whether you had a fondness for cute white ungulates or you had a preference for our hairy, poo-flinging relatives, Chauncey didn’t see why everyone on campus had to make such a big deal about it.

His seminar in Post-Euclidian Psychodynamic Self-Gratification had been completely ruined by it, mostly because his teaching assistant, the lovely, but carpal-tunnel challenged Belinda, kept gushing about “how adorable” it was.

At least it was better than the previous semester, when chain-gun wielding demons from the fifth circle of Hell had been riding around on syphilitic T-Rexes.

Boy, they really had to Bell the grades up that term!

Alltop is into ungulate gratification. Originally published May 2007.