Not So Hungry Hippo

It’s obvious that board games offer a distorted picture of real life. The Game of Life is a good example. It’s physically impossible for players to land on a ‘have children’ spot before they pass the ‘get married’ stage, unrealistically eliminating one of the main reasons people get married in the first place. Everyone gets to have a house, and there’s no student loan cards even if you choose to go to college. And to top it off, you get to retire in all perpetuity without dying. They could have at least added in a final death card to give it an air of authenticity, with a chunk of your ultimate earnings going towards funeral expenses and death taxes.

Monopoly goes in the opposite direction from this false paradise, offering a view of a harsh, unforgiving life in which land owners must still pay rent, are arbitrarily jailed and released by a fascist state, and nobody can ever, ever just stay home.

Then there’s the Hungry Hungry Hippos game, promoting the idea of hippos as chubby, loveable larks. And admittedly, they’re quite cute when they’re babies. But hippos also hold the prize for being the number one human-killing animal in all of Africa, far surpassing ‘scarier’ animals like crocodiles, lions, tigers, hunting dogs and rhinos. Why? Well, one reason is hippos are unusually aggressive and tend to attack without provocation. Another reason, yet to be explored in depth by the scientific community, is that people have been lulled by childhoods playing unrealistic board games and are approaching adorable hippos en masse to offer them a snack.

Make your statement on the grave inaccuracy of board games with this t-shirt:

How To Be Cool

Let’s face it, the people around you are terminally uncool. Which is why you may have the need to wear this t-shirt:

But if that’s not enough, here are a few tips for you to become even cooler:

Hang out in Wal-mart: Wal-mart is a great place for cheap furniture, plus sized clothes made out of latex, and anything formed from molded plastic. But there’s also another advantage, which is that being surrounded by obese women with beards and men wearing capes will make you look far cooler in comparison. You will gain cool points just for walking unassisted without a cane one of those motorized buggies. (But keep in mind that this could also backfire. Sure, people wear superhero costumes to Wal-mart. But doesn’t that just prove that they don’t care what other people think about them? They want to wear a superhero costume, it makes them happy, and gosh darn they’re going to do it. That gains you a lot of cool points. So be sure to only hang out in the sections of Wal-mart with the people dressed in boring clothes that they probably bought at a different section of Wal-mart.

Read an Internet list on how to be cool: This will definitely make you cool, because all cool people get their advice from content sites on the Internet.

Bring back rad 30’s slang: it’s new, it’s hip, it’s your own version of trendsetting. Possible terms include ‘bean shooter’, ‘blow your wig’, ‘clam-bake’, ‘cinder dick’, and ‘skin tickler’. No one remembers these meanings anymore, so feel free to just make them up.

Good luck, and remember, wear the t-shirt!

I Support The Performing Arts

Pole dancing is really an underappreciated art form. It's a form of exercise that requires discipline and training, and one in which a lot that can go wrong, as can be seen in videos like this one. At least it looks like no one was seriously hurt in any of the incidents captured in that video, even during the incidents in which people, you know, forgot to attach the poles to the ground. That's incredibly lucky, considering pole-dancing mishaps usually consist of people's faces hitting the ground very very quickly. The dangers of such unchaperoned pole-dancing can be seen in this gruesome yet awfully funny video:

....which shows that the sport is never to be taken lightly. And unlike plain, non-pole assisted strip teases, it should really never be attempted drunk.

There is a new push these days to get pole dancing accepted as an Olympic Sport, after the ‘taking off one’s clothes’ element of it has of course been removed. Apparently the sport has got international competitions and everything, in which the dances are excellent but everyone’s clothes stay on. The outfits worn are no skimpier than gymnastics or figure skating. Which is a plus, considering that in the original Olympics everyone was nude anyway.

But if you’re into the more traditional form of pole dancing, there is still a t-shirt for you:

After all, at least pole dancing is an aesthetically pleasing form of stripping that requires skill and discipline, instead of a woman just bouncing around vaguely looking bored. In a way, you’re contributing to Western civilization and culture, and to the future of the Olympics itself. So be proud.