The Conservative Cat

And now, for something completely different.

My worst article of the week was Bonfire of the Vanities #118 - Extreme Stupidity, a linkfest in which I try to sound clever while ridiculing articles the writers think are below their usual standards. Be sure to read the whole thing and click on all the links before you come back here.

Don Surber at Don Surber submitted Cleveland Rocks. This is not, as the title implies, an essay about geological formations in the state of Ohio, but is instead about Sunday's matchup between the Cleveland Indian and Kansas City Royal baseball teams. Don makes an excellent case for why the Royals will get clobbered, but in actual fact they won the game. Here's an important tip: if you're going to predict the outcome of a baseball game, wait until AFTER the game's been played. That's what I do, and I've won a lot of bets with Bruce as a result.

FMF at Free Money Finance submitted Wells Fargo Creates Money Game. This article is a more or less factual exposition of a new online role-playing game designed to teach young people how to handle money. I'm not sure FMF fully understands the Bonfire: we're looking for a lame article, not an article about something lame. However, it could be argued that FMF's discussion of the Wells Fargo plan is lame because it omits the most important rule for young people to remember when handling money: Wash your hands after you're done.

Andrew Ian Dodge at dodgeblogium submitted Another Dodge on the Block. This article looked pretty reasonable to me; however, Bruce almost passed out when he saw the picture. If you have color vision, calm yourself by looking at the cheese picture above before you click the link to Andrew's post.

El Capitan at Baboon Pirates submitted Where's The Walrus When You Need Him?, an essay about what happens when you eat really old oysters. I notice that El doesn't mention taking the oysters out of the can first, which could have been the problem. There's a reason cats don't come into the kitchen until after we've heard the can opener whirr.

Zendo Deb at TFS Magnum submitted I should say something about concealed carry in Wisconsin. Zendo has submitted an excellent example of what we call a huffington post, that is, an article which excoriates the opposition for not relying on facts but which contains no actual hard facts of its own.

Chicken Little at Chicken Fried Life submitted The Fall Quiz, which is another of those interminable online quiz posts. A quiz post is always an excellent choice for a Bonfire submission, but this particular quiz is more ridiculous than most; to even consider taking the thing is proof you have no common sense at all. (Bruce, by the way, is a Silly Hat.)

Mark A. Rayner at The Skwib submitted Visit Canada, but don't eat the carnivores. We usually like Mark's work, but this one is just a bit too cute. We appreciate that Mark was willing to subject himself to ridicule by posting it anyway.

John Bambenek at Part-Time Pundit submitted The Clinton Legacy of Corruption. John is responding to the indictment of Tom DeLay. As he correctly points out in his carnival submission EMAIL, he is indulging in the epistemilogical crime of the red herring. Yes, Bill Clinton is a sleaze, but unless Tom DeLay is relying on the former President for moral guidance, this fact really tells us nothing about Rep. DeLay's probable guilt or innocence.

Rick Moran of Right Wing Nut House submitted An American Anthem, a long tome about America's relationship with baseball that in some places actually borders on poetry. Maybe if you're a baseball fan you'd enjoy this sort of thing, but I'm not a baseball fan, I'm a Cubs fan. It's a completely different mind-set.

Sinner of Seven Deadly Sins submitted Pride! Separated at Birth. I think his point is that Cindy Sheehan looks like Stan Laurel. There is a possibility there, but the bigger question is, what the heck is Cindy doing with her hands that has Jesse Jackson looking like he just swallowed a prune pit?

Mike Talley of Wunderkraut submitted Huh?, in which he discusses his TTLB ecosystem ranking. Apparently, he has been spending a lot of time under a blog called Daily Panties. What he doesn't explain very well is this pantie blog-- subtitled "a daily peek at my panties"-- has NO PICTURES. It is, in fact, a daily description of what type of panties this crazy woman is wearing. In all honesty, I think I would be a lot happier if I didn't know about this.

Joe Mann of A Little Reason submitted Right-Wings Wrong About Ronnie Earl, which is an articulate, factual, and sober presentation of the facts behind Ronnie Earle's prosecution of Kay Bailey Hutchinson. I don't think Mr. Mann really understands the concept of the Bonfire of the Vanities. Where's the bad poetry? Where's the faulty logic? Where are the freehand line drawings of intestinal parasites? Have the other Bonfire hosts been letting him get away with this kind of thing or is he trying to pull a fast one because I'm a cat? I am not happy about this.

Laurence Simon of This Blog is Full of Crap submitted Cloud Hunting with Abdul Ali Al-Mohammed, a story told in pictures about a group of Palestinians shooting evil Zionist weather formations. If you're having trouble understanding what's really going on in the Gaza Strip, I guarantee you Laurence's post will make you even more confused.

Sometimes, no matter how carefully we study the facts, events overtake us. In the spirit of such great political essays as Why America Online Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century and What Jimmy Carter's Priorities Should Be For His Second Term, Drew McKissick at Conservative Outpost presents The Democrat's Dilemma II, a hard-hitting essay on what Senate Democrats need to think about when Bush nominates a hard-line conservative to replace Sanda Day O'Connor.

Josh Cohen at Multiple Mentality subitted More Look-alikes. Be careful about this one: the guy from Threshold looks pretty cool, but I'm going to have nightmares about that puppet for weeks.

Mike Pechar of Interested Participant submitted Satellites to Monitor Wild Sex. Mike uses the monthly-archive blogging strategy, which means you have to load the entire month of September to see this one article which contains only a SINGLE SENTENCE. After you've endured this torture, he provides a link to a picture of giant pandas mating at a zoo. Worse, immediately below this bait-and-switch sex joke, there's an article called See Serpent Picture, and Mike has not only misspelled "see" as S-E-A, but the picture is of some sort of giant squid. Give me a break!

The eponymous Gray Tie submitted Freedom of Speech My Ass. I know that this is the Bonfire and I'm supposed to say something mean about each post, but I would feel safer skydiving into the eye wall of a hurricane than I would getting this woman pissed off at me.

Finally, Brian J. Noggle from The Musings of Brian J. Noggle submitted Boosting Male Attendance at Universities. This was a very difficult submission to work with, because our spam filter saw "boosting male" and immediately flagged it as viagra spam. Then, because he didn't use the submit form and the stupid EMAIL reader broke the URL at the first hyphen, we kept getting 404 errors. After all that trouble, the stupid thing was a LAME STATISTICS JOKE. I will have my revenge, though: I sent an EMAIL to Ms. Gray Tie explaining that Brian disagrees with her about freedom of speech.

That's it for the Bonfire, and thank you all for submitting and coming to visit. If you want to participate in next week's carnival, hosted by This Blog is Full of Crap, simply use our handy-dandy Carnival Submission Form. Also, be sure to make use of our Permanent Floating Ping Festival. Simply ping us at http://www.conservativecat.com/Ferdy/.track.cgi/3 and your post title and excerpt will appear in our front page sidebar.

Funny Stuff will be back tomorrow. Until then, Bonfire of the Vanities #118 is

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat