Forty-One Forty-One’s was the name of a bar in the Garden District that I had learned about from an article covering the top pickup spots in the country. It was in the July, 1985 issue of Playboy Magazine, but if you have that issue, the article is now for novelty purposes only, as most of the hot spots have moved or closed. The author rated two bars in each of twenty cities based on the ease of opportunity for short-term romantic liaisons. It also included useful information about the respective dress codes, specialty drinks, peak hours, et cetera.

After seventeen days of uncertainty, thirty-three miners trapped nearly fifty thousand miles below the Chilean surface were reported to be alive and well. Although it could take up to four months for the miners to be freed through a proposed 68 cm hole, they will be able to receive food, water and medicine via some sort of bucket and rope system, I’d imagine. With typical surface-dweller arrogance, tons of rescue equipment from around the world was rushed to the site. This being done with the assumption that the miners would want to be brought back to the surface of a world that once tried to bury them.

While miners make it possible to shod a horse or throw a Chinese star, ungrateful surface-dwellers pay them very little attention unless they are dead or dying—although in fairness to the surface-dwellers, the miners don’t exactly make it easy to come and see them because they’re hiding underground and whatnot.

Since Micro-Fiction Roundup’s inception, we have made significant gains on other major sporting franchises and monarchs. While the NFL is still ahead of us with Super Bowl XLIV (forty-four for novices), they have only had one event to our thirty-two in the last 18 months. If all goes well, we will overtake professional football in number of championship events within the year. Ultimate Fighting is at CXVI, but unlike the NFL, they have more frequent events. Still I am confident that if we persevere, we shall overtake them in the next two years. We have completely eclipsed the Bourbon succession of King Louis, which only made it to XIX.

Despite the radical schedule change and Holiday weekend, Micro-Fiction Roundup XXVIII and its cadre of Micro-fictioneers soldiered on. Once again, the internet’s greatest contest (involving short stories of 101 words or less) brought in newcomers and returning champions alike. As you recall, the theme was Serial Killers and the previous week’s champion, Baroness, was the judge. Here are this week’s candidates:

If I had to compare last week’s candidates with our current nominees, there would be no contest. Chen-Gore-McChrystal-Ward had a much worse week than these clowns. However, we have to take bad-week participants as they come, and this holiday week was no cakewalk for any of our new list of talent. In no particular order, here are the victims of this week’s media wrath:

I know that this is no longer current news, but about this thing:

By no means is this an original idea. In fact, when I Google searched “who had the worst week,” the matches were virtually endless. Then I surrounded the phrase with quotation marks and pared it down to a manageable 22,900 matches. So, despite the fact that this isn’t unique, I doubt that I’ll be singled out for plagiarism of copyright infringements.

Want to know what all the fuss is about movies you are not interested in? Well, I’ll watch anything so I’m here to help. First up is the Twilight Saga, which you may have heard about. I do not have my Eclipse ticket yet but I will probably just sneak into it after seeing the Joan Rivers documentary.

The fact that there have only been five entries for Micro-Fiction Roundup XIX: Justifiable Crimes, including my rather obvious attempt, could indicate that I have selected a poor theme for this week’s competition. It could also mean that some of you were just so mesmerized by a singing, dancing cartoon pope who also says “fuck” that you forgot that the deadline for MFR was rapidly approaching. In case I am in any way culpable in this matter, I am extending the deadline to 6:00 AM tomorrow morning.

Congratulations to all of the participants in the past week’s Micro-Fiction Roundup XVIII: The Work We Do That Goes Unappreciated and Unnoticed. Things have been going along swimmingly since we brought this feature back. Personally, I like to see multiple entries from the same people. No 101 word limit can contain these guys. Shall we have a quick look at all of the entries before announcing a winner? We shall. Umm, I really kind of wanted this paragraph to line up with the bottom of the artwork, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. Unless… now! No, damn it. Here are the entries:

I am quite literally numb as I type this. The entire left side of my face, from nostril to jawline, is incapable of feeling pain…or pleasure for that matter. I feel as though the CIA should use my temporary invincibility for some black op, but they could probably just numb up one of their agents if they really need to.

I am in this dental chair to rid myself of a month long tooth ache which has been caused by the root of my one crowned tooth rubbing against something that dentists call a “nerve.” Naturally I have no idea what that means, nor am I interested in learning. I also don’t care about how my car gets fixed, why my television is broken or really about too many aspects of my job. That last one is kind of bad, but my point is that I just want the clock to tell me the time; I don’t need to hear its back-story.

You know the old blog post topic about how the word “douchebag” has jumped the shark, and we need to stop using it and/or come up with a substitute? Well that topic has jumped the shark, and it’s time to stop writing about it.

First of all, it’s pointless, because the pejorative use of  “douchebag” (and it’s cousin “douche”) will probably persist forever. Second, this has become one of the most unoriginal blog post topics on the Web: Ever since Emily Gould used it in a terrific, witty Gawker piece she wrote back in 2006, it’s been done to death.

Don’t believe me? Just check out the list of a half-dozen blog posts on the topic (the latest published just yesterday) that I’ve assembled here.

I’m not submitting this because I want to fuel the attacks on PsyDBob and God knows that Wrap and I have our differences, but this comment was plain outstanding:

Priests do
number two.
Or, to wit:
Holy shit.

The Road is the best feel-good holiday movie since Munich.