First off, you probably need to untie her and let her run away from the frisky little tyke. Oh and stop giving him knives to play with. By the way, you know you’re ripping off “Stewie” from The Family Guy?

No! No, you don’t understand! He has some kind of freaky mental power.

I’m sorry, you’ll have to be more specific. What, like telekinesis? Is he mentally tossing javelins at her? Or does he have some kind of super-charged suggestive ability, coercing her to hang herself or jump out of ten-story windows?

Oh my God. He has some kind of heat-beams flashing from his eyes! He’s just incinerated the cat. Can’t you help?

Now you’re plagiarizing Superman. (Not that he ever played crisp the cat.)

Good Lord! He’s metamorphosed into some kind of gigantic insect. He’s bitten her head right off!

You’re kidding me. Kafka? I’m not answering your question, you hack.

Next time: Where do you stand on this whole pirates-versus-ninjas thing?

Alltop and humor-blogs.com have a superpower. Unfortunately, they share it amongst 100s of bloggers.

All of the critics agreed. Hans Feckenbruke’s performance piece, “Transcending Irony: post-post-modern capitalism in the Western World, from the top of the Chrysler Building, as seen from the perspective of consumers on the ground,” was a spectacular — if messy — achievement.

“I’ve never seen an artist commit so completely to his work before. He didn’t even flinch as he approached the pavement,” Filmore Snoot told this photographer.

“It’s a shame he wore those tennis shoes, though. It undercut the whole commentary.”

Alltop and humor-blogs.com are always undercutting their commentary. Thanks to Foxtongue for finding this pic.

Here is the new version of rock-paper-scissors, or rochambeau, as it is sometimes known. As you can see from the schematic below, each thing can beat two other things, and is, in turn beaten by two other things.

The players both count to five (three), though it is obviously better to repeat the name of the game (Monkey! Robot! Pirate! Ninja! Zombie!). Each time you raise your fist and swing it down. On the fifth (third) count, you form your hand into one of the five gestures. (It is recommended that in addition to the hand gesture, you also add an aural component to this — see below for suggested noises.)

So, what beats what, and what are the gestures? What?

Monkey

• Monkey fools Ninja
• Monkey wrenches Robot

Suggested noise: ee-ee-eek!

Robot

• Robot zaps Ninja
• Robot crushes Zombie

Suggested noise: ex-ter-min-ate!

Pirate

• Pirate drowns Robot
• Pirate skewers Monkey

Suggested noise: arrrrr!

Ninja

• Ninja chops Pirate
• Ninja decapitates Zombie

Suggested noise: keeee-ah!

Zombie

• Zombie eats Pirate
• Zombie savages Monkey

Suggested noise: braaaaaaaaaainsss!

There is a logic to the hand gestures provided, and with any luck they are perfectly obvious. I have changed one of the Ninja’s effects (from “shurikens” to “chops”) to make that choice more logical. Now, you may be wondering, “Mark, are you totally insane? Are you procrastinating, perchance? Or are you just bored?” The answer is yes.

One question: do we need a better name for this new hand game? I’m open to suggestions.

Alltop and humor-blogs.com are easy to beat because they always choose monkey. Thanks to swirlee.org for the original concept.

Welcome to the 112th edition of the Carnival. As you might expect, the economy is on the mind of many of us, though clearly, for some of us, the economy has made us lose our minds:

This week’s title graphic includes a bit of Azrainmain’s latest Photoshop satire. See the whole image and get a sneak peek at the new Global Currency.

Sometimes politics can get weird, and The Satirical Political Report proves this with this news item: Congress Passes New ‘Seinfeld’ Law: AIG Execs ‘Have to Be Our Butlers’

On the topic of the AIG bonuses, xkcd has a perfectly crumulent point:

Future Update has the surprising news that Rush Limbaugh will still be alive in the year 2029. The rest of the update isn’t as shocking: Limbaugh Says He Hopes President Fails to Save Humanity

There’s a large contingent in the Middle East who hope that Christopher Khawand’s submission is true: Obama Vows to ‘Beat Off’ Insurgents in Iraq by 2010.

In totally unrelated news (we hope) David Aulick presents Upcoming Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Flavors.

Tis the tax season, and Madeleine Begun Kane finds An Up Side.

Shawn Bryan has the court-mandated column from Homeschooled Harry and his take on health care .

Finally, Aaron Rogier has some health notes for us, in 7 reasons to sleep in .

And that’s it for the 112th edition. Thanks to these fine folks for helping us with webby-stuff: the Blog Carnival for their form; and the listings at the Ubercarnival, Ferdy’s permanent floating ping festival, and for the listings at the Blog Carnival too. Also, you may find some satire here if you poke around a bit. Here too.

Why play such a simple game, when you can play monkey-pirate-zombie-robot-ninja? The only way this could be more accurate? Zombie beats everything!

Alltop decapitates Zombie, while humor-blogs.com goes for the head shot. Thanks to Swirlee for inventing this, and Paperclypse for finding it!

This absurd meme is catchy because it combines the inherent sexiness of something that can kill you with the allure of something that you want to have in your bank account, or even better, your garage.

You may find it interesting to know that two anagrams of “toxic assets” are “a cost exists” and “taxes is cost.” Perhaps this is the cryptographic meaning we should keep in mind as the US government (and I’m sure the Canadian government will follow closely behind, just like the loyal scotty dog it is), pours another trillion dollars (dozens of dollars north of the border) to help purchase these bad debts. Of course, another anagram of “toxic assets” is “sexist tacos”, so perhaps we shouldn’t read too much into it.

I’m not as offended by this neologism as I am by many other freaky phrases overused by the media, because frankly most of the terms being thrown around during this financial meltdown don’t make any sense to me. Here is a few phrases that I got out of the first half of this CBC story:

• ossified financial markets (I actually kind of like this one, it makes me think of an active trade in bones)
• risky and distressed but probably fundamentally undervalued assets (not only do things now have feelings, but they can be both probabilistic and fundamental at the same time)
• patient capital (this is where the kingdom of sick people is ruled from)
• non-performing loans (they refuse to juggle)
• asset-backed commercial paper (um…)
• legacy assets (uh …)
• legacy securities….

I believe the latter two are an attempt by the US Treasury Department to re-brand the term “toxic assets”, but I’m not really sure because I was overcome by crushing ennui and was unable to read any further.

Now, I’m not saying that toxic assets don’t exist. I can think of a number of toxic things (that is, substances that are harmful, poisonous, virulent, and capable of making well-loved parts of one’s body drop off) that could be considered as assets (anything of material value or use):

• enriched plutonium
• a barrel of chlorine
• Paris Hilton’s panties (worth about $2,000 on Ebay).

This one gets five gobsmacks out of ten.

Oh, and you’ll also be happy to know there is a related anagram: It’s so sex act!

Alltop and humor-blogs.com are valuable piles of anthrax.

If you asked him, Bertie could never really tell you what he disliked most about time travel.

Obviously, having to arrive in each new era stark naked was not the most pleasant experience. It usually meant having at least a few embarrassing moments (though it could occasionally have its upsides, such as the time he dimensionally slipped into that alternate reality where women had the same psychosexual visual response to nudity the way that men did in his reality . . .)

He was bothered that he could not change anything. He’d taken Causality 101 in college, and was fully conversant with the Heisenberg-Lurie equations relating to the Novikov self-consistency principle. He’d even tested this idea by trying to kill Hitler. (Every first-year time traveler tries to kill Hitler at least a couple of times.) Yes, not being able to alter history bothered him.

Then there was the HOSE. He hated the HOSE.

Alltop and humor-blogs.com are hosers. Thanks to Whatsthatpicture for the historical snap.

You can find the site here (though be prepared to listen to Bonnie Tyler explain her need for a hero looped over and over). HT to Unfinished Rambler for this.

Perhaps you can suggest a backstory for The Merciful Sharpened Barbarian in the comments.

Alltop and humor-blogs.com like tights.

Meeptron the Bio-Destruction Bot looked out at the wasteland that once was Peoria and thought that his work had actually made it look nicer. Of course, he was programmed that way, so he couldn’t really help it. He thought about that little Red Juggernaut he’d met on Robo-Leave that summer. Gloria.

Yes, sweet Gloria. She was the kind of destructive cybernetic entity that he could see himself settling down with, and perhaps starting a family Bio-Destruction Juggernauts of their own. Of course, they’d have to build the manufactory themselves, because his boss sure wouldn’t help.

And he’d probably have to give up his dream of becoming lead dancer at the Voltron Mega-Kill Ballet. Meeptron sighed, powered up his plasma-death-beam array, and vaporized the puny humans which had survived his initial onslaught.

Neither Alltop nor humor-blogs.com is populated by puny humans. Thanks to Alan Trotter for the pic.

In retrospect, justifying his wardrobe by time-traveling back to the Eighties and starting the leather tie fad seemed a tad self-indulgent.

Alltop and humor-blogs are like, totally not, like, self-indulgent or grody or anything.