It's beginning to look a lot like I got screwed.

I have long believed that Christmas, as a holiday, is badly in need of a complete overhaul. Too many holidays combine the same boring old elements--food, family, love, laughter, gifts, joy. It's enough to make you want to puke. I have some ideas of how we can spice up Christmas, and give it a unique, special quality that sets it far apart from the other run-of-the-mill holidays.

First, there's the whole "reward" system--it's ridiculous. We insist on lying to our children by telling them that if they're good all year, they'll be rewarded with presents, since Santa keeps tabs all year on whether we're naughty or nice. It's just not true, and the kids are laughing at us behind our backs for saying so. First off, everyone knows that most kids are total rat bastards all year long, and yet an avalanche of presents gets dumped at their feet every December anyway, in spite of their appalling behavior. I say we chuck the whole false reward system and implement instead a punishment system--not just for kids, but for every man, woman and child.

Yes, Christmas should be a time for people to get punished for their yearlong binges of rudeness, deceit, laziness, greed and general assholery. Instead of spending the entire month of November racing from store to store searching for expensive gifts for everyone you know, how about instead spending the month of November--or the whole year, if you're the plan-ahead type--plotting elaborate ways to hurt and punish and possibly even maim the people you feel have wronged you all year long? Wouldn't that require a lot more thought and effort--and therefore be more personal--than buying some dumb crystal photo frame made in China and sold by the thousands? Think about it, people.

Yes, if I ruled the world, Christmas would be a time for retribution. Which means 99% of you would have awakened this Christmas morning to find scores of tiny little hoofprints in your back and sleigh tread across your face.

That's what my Christmas blog post was going to be about--but then something happened which made me feel as if my mind was being read from across many miles, and my plan to change Christmas was already being implemented--against me. In other words, that's when the FedEx truck arrived with a Christmas present for me from Common Wombat. And this present is one that punishes. Don't believe me? Take a look at this photo and see if you don't feel like your eyes sockets are being raped by a band of Zulu warriors: Yep, that's him. A tiny, horrible little replica of of The Thing That Should Not Be. It burns the retinas, doesn't it? What did I do so wrong in 2007 to be punished like this? I'd understand if I deserved, say, a beating, perhaps a small amputation, or even being blinded with acid or sodomized by Vikings. But this? Even in my revised plan for Christmas, there is such a thing as excessive punishment, and this gift is the very embodiment of that.

Don't ask me where he could possibly have gone to commission the creation of such an unholy image, but I must admit, it is (unfortunately for me) pretty lifelike, as you can see from the photo of the real thing, taken here in Texas the last time I saw him. I was hoping it would be the last time I ever saw him--but now this tiny little plaster bust of evil has invaded my home, and stares angrily at me, silently hostile save for the occasional screech of "Nevermore!"

It just goes to illustrate the unfairness of Christmas in its current state. Have you ever given a really great gift to someone--say, a bottle of expensive gin, or the complete DVD set of all four seasons of Soap--only to receive something criminally crappy in return, like wind chimes or flavored popcorn? That's what I felt like this year, considering the great gift I got this turd. I got him a shirt any one of you would kill a newborn baby to get, one with this logo on it:

And that, folks, is the kind of unfairness that can permanently sour a person against gift-giving, and holidays in general.

That's why next year, I'm doing it all differently. I'm carrying out my lifelong dream to make Christmas into the kind of holiday that we can all, finally, appreciate. I'm going out today to buy a huge notebook, where I will keep copious notes on each tiny infraction committed against me by every last one of you shitheads, and when December 25, 2008 rolls around, you better take cover. Because the apocalypse is coming, baby.

Ask The Felon

I get a lot of comments from people with the increasingly common name of Anonymous. When did that name get more popular than Bob or Jennifer? Weird. Either way, my new friend Anonymous recently left me this comment:

I suggest you try to re-write this article posted on MSNBC titled "10 tips: What to do when a cop pulls you over."

After perusing the article, I can understand why Anonymous wanted it rewritten--it's as boring as a night in bed with Dyckerson. And clearly, it was written by some goody two-shoes merely speculating on how to get out of a ticket, rather than someone who has real-world experience in the matter. Allow me to impart to you some of my vast wisdom on this subject.

What to do if pulled over by a cop

We've all been there--some of us more often than others. It's always nerve-wracking to see those flashing lights behind your car, but trust me, it gets easier with time. The first time it happens to you, you're likely to sit there rigidly gripping the steering wheel in frozen panic like an amateur, sweating and stammering while the cop speaks to you like a stern father speaks to a misbehaving 5-year-old. But by the 90th or 185th time, you'll be smiling with confidence as you stealthily cram your bag of crack cocaine into the hidden compartment you've carved into your steering column. Confidence comes with time, but here are a few tips to keep in mind until you've gotten a few hundred practice arrests under your belt.

1. Don’t try anything funny. As the police officer is approaching your car, he's got a keen eye trained on the rear window of your car. He's looking for signs that you're furtively stashing beer cans, reaching for a gun, or doing something else illegal or dangerous. Don't raise his suspicions by leaning across the seat to rummage through the glove compartment for your insurance card--he may interpret that the wrong way. Sit calmly as he approaches, and avoid doing anything more dramatic than removing every single scrap of clothing you're wearing so that you're completely nude when he gets to your window. Absent-mindedly massage your breasts as you talk to him.

(If you're thinking I'm making the mistake of tailoring this article specifically to women and forgetting that men will also be reading it and trying to figure out how it can apply to them, then you haven't met my male readers. 98% of them get mistaken for women on a regular basis, and the other 2% are pre-op. Trust me, I know what I'm doing here.)

2. Keep the chatter to a minimum. Nervousness often causes people to blab too much, which is bad for three reasons: 1) The cop will see that you're nervous, and wonder if you have something to hide, 2) He'll find the inane blather irritating and distracting, and 3) You might reveal something that can be used against you. It's always best to say as little as possible. When he leans in to look suspiciously around the interior of your vehicle with his flashlight, and asks, "Is there anything in here I should know about?" do NOT respond with, "They told me it was legal to take immigrants across the border," or worse, "I swear to God, those immigrants were alive when we left Nogales."

3. Try asking to be let off with a warning. It never hurts to ask, and it just might work, since giving you a warning is easier for the policeman than writing out your ticket and filing the paperwork that goes along with it. But the key is to be polite and respectful. Say something like, "Officer, since this is my first offense, and I've never been arrested for murder or even questioned in a murder case, would it be possible to get a warning this one time? I'll leave here and dispose of the body immediately instead of continuing to drive around with it draped across my lap like this."

4. Be prepared to react appropriately. The smaller offenses are, of course, the easier ones to weasel out of. The moment you see the lights flashing behind you, you know exactly how major your infraction is, and can immediately asess how difficult or easy it might be to get out of a ticket. Speeding? There's a fair chance you can talk your way out of that one if you play it right. Drugs? If you can stash them quickly and remain nonchalant and calm when talking to the cop, you might not get caught. But if you have a cooler of freshly-harvested human kidneys in the seat next to you, you've got a situation on your hands. At a time like that, your best option may be to fake your own death. Then hopefully you can jump up and sneak out of the morgue later when no one's looking.

5. Come up with a plausible excuse for your infraction. When a cop asks, "Why were you driving so fast?" he's not trying to prolong your humiliation, he's honestly curious about your motivation. It's an amateur's mistake to get surly and refuse to answer, or to insult the officer's intelligence by denying that you were speeding. Respond as genuinely as possible, looking him directly in the eye, and say, "I'm so sorry, Officer, I know I was speeding. I get very anxious and tense when I go more than a day or so without performing oral sex on a man in uniform. It's been 3 days now, and I don't know how much more of this I can take." You'll find that most police officers are more sympathetic than you'd think.

So there you have it: Real-life advice from a person who knows. These tactics have worked for me time and time again, although, admittedly, they're not fail-proof. Sometimes you have to sleep with a judge or two, or have a threesome with a couple of jurors. But I'll save that for a future article. In the meantime, I think you'll do just fine if you can skillfully apply my advice to unwanted interactions with officers of the law.

I'd like to thank all the little people I stepped on to get to where I am today

A few months back, Bloglaughs reviewed my site. I didn't bring it to your attention then because, well, I'm a humble and simple girl, traditionally eschewing attention and praise. I bring it to your attention now because I wanted the opportunity to use the word "eschewing" in a blog post.

Note that in the 2005 Best of Blogs list, Anonymous Coworker is said to be funnier than me, which is absurd. Sure, he's funny, but funnier than me? Ha!

Ha, HA!

Ha ha ha HAAA!

Heck, this is the most I've ever laughed at the guy. Oh, I'm kidding. He's funny all right. Just not funnier than me.

At any rate, because I didn't originally make the final cut, my loyal minions stormed the Capitol and rioted, causing Bloglaughs to rethink their decision, and hastily add me. Thank you, my faithful readers. It's nice to know you scare someone other than me.

Back to the aforementioned review of Karlababble. As you might suspect, I do have some criticisms about their criticisms of me. First, one of them called me a mommy blogger, which I object to. Sure, the subject of baby poop has cropped up once or twice in this blog, but mostly I was using it to describe Dyckerson's writing. Truly, though, I think mommy bloggers write mostly about their children. I write mostly about the reasons I think 99% of the people in the world should die while I continue to live on. That's hardly maternal, in my opinion. And the subject of embarrassing public lactation or cracked nipples hasn't showed up here once, which I think pretty much says it all.

When asked if they'd read my blog again, most of the reviewers, clearly intelligent and profound, said something along the lines of "yes." One of them, however, answered, "Uhhhhhhhh, no."” I must assume the garbled syllable at the beginning of that answer was a result of the inflatable sheep he was stuffing into his mouth at the time the question was asked. Otherwise, his answer might have sounded more like, "Of course, she's a goddamn genius!" So I'll give him a pass on that one. I can't speak well with latex stuffed in my mouth, either.

All in all, it was a favorable review, which is a nice thing to have. It's something I can come back and re-read when I'm feeling "less than." Like when I ask Jake if he wants me to sing the Alphabet Song, and he violently shakes his head "no," implying that hearing me sing is something one would choose only if asked to choose between that and having one's foot shoved in a blender set on "puree." Or after a demoralizing chat session with Wombat, where he regularly calls me things like "horseface nutpants" or "shitsock." My only regret is that the Bloglaughs reviewers failed to mention how I nailed the triple-axle and really stuck the landing. True, my skating is sometimes a little choppy thanks to the knee injury I suffered two years ago on the parallel bars, but most judges agree my comebackck is nothing short of miraculous. The doctors all said I'd never skate again.

This post will literally knock your socks off!

As you know, I try to use Karlababble.com as a vehicle for spreading the message of peace, love and total acceptance. But every once in awhile, I have to deviate from the path of righteousness and lodge a respectfully worded complaint or two.

To that end, I'd like to address those of you who use the word "literally" as a synonym for "figuratively"--the direct opposite of how it should be used. You people are driving me insane. Worse, you're making yourselves look like idiots. Here are a few examples of the dumb shit you are prone to saying:

I was so angry my blood was literally boiling!
I such a bad hangover my head was literally exploding.
Her house is so filthy! It's literally a pig sty.

The truth is:

a) Blood doesn't literally boil. Well, okay, it can, and maybe in the back woods of Missouri it sometimes does. But generally that takes place only when the blood is in a cast iron pot on the stove of a serial killer. If your blood were to boil while it was still inside your body, it would cook your internal organs and stink up the room mightily. On the bright side, you wouldn't be angry anymore. On the not-so-bright side, you'd be dead.

b) While hangovers can be a real bitch, they don't literally cause one's head to explode. Causes of literal head explosion include, but are by no means limited to:
-dynamite packed into the ears
-a grenade crammed down the throat
-two shotguns, one discharged into each eye socket.
It's pure folly to claim that your head literally exploded from yesterday's hangover, since you're still alive now to stand before me, animatedly yammering on about it like you survived the holocaust. At such times, I only wish your head had exploded so I could be enjoying some peace and quiet right now.

c) If you were to stop cleaning your house right now, and never lift a finger again to pick up or wipe off one thing, it would still never actually transform into a pig sty. It would become very, very dirty, and very, very smelly, but unless a hog farmer actually pulled up to the house in a pickup truck with a trailer attached, and dropped off several pigs and a trough, it would not literally become a pig sty. I don't know much about hog farming, but I know this: The defining characteristic of a pig sty is the presence of pigs. That's probably the first thing they teach you in hog farming school.

I don't mean to imply that I'm not a fan of ridiculously inflated hyperbole. I rarely utter a sentence that's not exaggerated to the point of almost total falsity. Why? Because real life is actually pretty boring, and the retelling of it is therefore usually mind numbing. But when liberally sprinkled with half-truths, exaggerations, and balls-out lies, it can become fascinating. So go ahead, exaggerate! Make shit up! Lie your ass off! Just don't take that extra, silly step of inserting the word "literally" right before a phrase that is, in fact, figurative.

Having trouble deciding when to use "literally" and when not to? I have a solution: Just don't use it. Ever. Say, "I was so angry my blood was boiling," instead of "I was so angry my blood was literally boiling." Nine times out of ten when a person uses the word "literally," they're using it wrong and crapping all over the English language. (Notice I didn't say "literally" crapping all over the English language." But that'd be funny to see, wouldn't it?) And there's a reasonable chance you might be one of those people who has no idea when it's okay to say it. So know your limitations and just steer clear of that word, okay?

This message has been brought to you as part of my ongoing effort to keep average citizens from doing things that bug the shit out of me. Thank you for your cooperation.

Love me, Daddy

Recently I spotted this article entitled Five Tips to Increase Your Likeability.

At first, I dismissed it. "This doesn't apply to me," I thought. "Who could be more likable than me?" But then I thought of you, my faithful readers, who keep coming back to this site time and time again to read what I've written...and then hurl malicious insults at me. You're as faithfull as hound dogs, but you're as vicious as piranas. Why is it, I wondered, that some bloggers have comment sections that read like award ceremony tributes, brimming with high praise and teary-eyed respect? Could it be that I am not as fabulous and lovable as I thought? That's when I realized that it couldn't hurt to try to increase my likeability, and thus perhaps turn my comments section into the ass-kisspalooza I so often see at other blogs.

Let's go over the main points of this article, and see how it might apply to me.

1. Be positive. The article asks, "Why do you have pet-peeves? What is the point of harboring all of these negative emotions? Be big enough to let them go."

Uh-oh. I can already see this is going to require a total personality overhaul. The kind that requires electroshock therapy, years of medication, and perhaps a partial lobotomy. So does this mean I'm no longer allowed to wish syphilis upon women who pee on public toilet seats? Can I no longer take potshots at my coworkers, my friends, my blog readers, little old ladies and newborn babies? What the hell will I blog about? I guess from now on, I will post only pictures of cute kittens, detailed recaps of TV shows I've watched in the past week, and famous poems that inspire me.

2. Control your insecurities. "Display your faults for all the world to see - mistakes are unifying characteristics which all humans can empathize with."

Okay, no one can accuse me of not displaying my mistakes. You can't say I haven't fastidiously detailed my many, many, MANY flaws for your review and consequent scorn, in my posts entitled 100 Things Wrong With Me Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10. Should I delve deeper, and reveal even more flaws? Is that what it takes be liked? Fine, then. Here's another Thing Wrong With Me: I buy canned soup with meat in it, and then painstakingly pick out all the meat after I cook it. Every time. Every tiny little scrap of meat. Why? Because that's some very suspicious-looking meat. Why don't I just buy the kind without meat? Because that would rob me of the joy of picking out the meat. Now stop asking silly questions.

3. Provide value. The author makes this point: "Have you noticed that drug addicts and criminals often associate with each other? ....Start surrounding yourself with people of value " Sadly, that means I'll have to say goodbye to most of my friends and nearly everyone in my family, but I'm willing to do it to increase my likability. As for providing value, well, I'll start today. From here on out I vow to teach everyone I see each day, stranger or aquaintance, how to properly cook oatmeal.

4. Eliminate all judgments. "No one is above you and no one is below you. We are all....humans." Amen to that, brother, I've always said so. I think we can agree that was the whole point of my Dear Jackass posts.

5. Become a person of conviction. "This means saying 'no' to disrespect and letting the offending party know that he or she crossed the line with their comment and you did not appreciate it."

This one's tough. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to have convictions without being able to make judgments. However, I do like the idea of telling people off. I have already begun to practice shouting, "You, sir, have crossed the line!" as I angrily toss my head and slam my fist on the table. It feels rather good. This is sure to make people like me.

All in all, this personality makeover is going to be a whole lot easier than I thought. Just think, soon you will all love me! You'll begin stuffing my comments section with the highest praise and the sappiest words of adoration imaginable. Up til now, I've been the only person who adored me and marveled at my genius. Soon you'll all be clamoring for the title of Number One Fan. This is very exciting. Go ahead, start adoring me.

It's a cruel world, but I'm a survivor

For reasons perhaps none of us will ever understand, Karlababble did not make the final cut for the nominations for Most Humorous Blog in the Best of Blogs Awards. One possible reason is that perhaps the judges don't speak or read English. Another possibility is the judges were not drunk off their asses when they perused my blog. Either way, I can only assume God will punish them for their oversight in some swift and cruel way.

On the bright side, though, Anonymous Coworker did make the final cut. I can hear you now: "But Karla, ACW is not nearly as funny as you! He's not even a tenth, not even a millionth as funny as you! He is perhaps 10 pounds of funny in a 15 pound bag, while you are a thousand pounds of funny in a half pound bag!" Oh, come on now. You're exaggerating. He's every bit as funny as I am--even more, if you factor in appearance.

So if you were planning to give your vote to me, then I ask that you give it to Anonymous Coworker instead. However--if he and I had both made the final nominations list, and you would have given him your vote instead of me, then screw you. I demand total loyalty, and will accept nothing less. Even ACW would be required to give his vote to me instead of voting for himself. But again, perhaps because the judges are blind or maybe even illiterate, I did not make the list, so the point is moot.

The truth is, I am certain that ACW slept his way into the final nominations list. The man is ruthless, shameless, and there's no one he won't blow to get the fame he craves. I find that sad. But now's not the time to dissect his desperate need for attention; leave that to the prison shrink he will someday receive counsel from behind bars. In the meantime, vote for him, will you? An award win may, at least temporarily, keep him from snapping like a dry twig and killing his entire family with a rusty meat cleaver just to make it into the newspapers.

I'm going to end up like Axl Rose

Axl Rose used to be a nobody. Just a young kid looking for a good time, he started a nothing little rock band, hoping to score some girls and have some fun. Fast forward a few years and he was a huge star, a household name. Women were falling all over themselves for a chance at him. He was filthy rich, gorgeous, on top of the world. But then it all dried up. He blew all his money on drugs and booze, turned into a world class a-hole that no band could get along with. Now where is he? Probably crashing on some hooker's couch, digging through ashtrays in dive bars looking for cigarette butts, trying to remember at least some portion of that decade-long blackout he drifted through in the 80s.

That could be me someday. See, I've been nominated for a Best of Blogs Award. Sounds neat, right? Who wouldn't want to win an award? Well, I've got news for you: This is how it started with Axl Rose. He had his little band, he was having fun playing in the local bars and partying with the local groupies. Life was good. Then he started getting some recognition, playing bigger arenas, winning awards, til eventually he was catapulted to the highest pinnacle of stardom. That's the curse, people--stardom. It made him into a junkie, a drunk, a total prick. In the days since, he has managed to pummel his liver to a fine puree, pick off his brain cells one by one like ducks in a shooting gallery. He probably shoplifts his underwear from Goodwill now.

Is he lucky to at least have lived the glamorous life for the short time he did? Hell no! If stardom had left him alone, he'd probably have led a life of quiet mediocrity, happy enough with his little circle of friends and family. He'd have sang in his local band for a few years, then settled down with a normal job and an average nice girl. He wouldn't be where he is now, which I think we can all assume is curled up in the fetal position next to a Jack in the Box dumpster, sleeping off the fifth of cheap whiskey he drank this morning and waiting for the night shift to throw out the burgers that have sat too long under the heat lamp.

I may be just an average nobody, but I like my life. I have friends, a house, a family. I may not have all the things I want, but I have everything I need. I don't want to end up a sad tale of woe on an episode of True Hollywood Story. I can see it now: It starts innocently enough with a Best of Blogs award. Next thing you know, I'm hobnobbing with Paris Hilton, engaged to Colin Farrell. I'm photographed and interviewed at every twist and turn. Soon, rumors begin circulating that I'm immersing myself too much in the Hollywood club scene. The tabloids publish shocking photos of me passed out topless in the lobby of the Four Seasons hotel after a week-long coke binge with Michael Irvin and Pam Anderson. In an attempt to reclaim my former good-girl image, I enter rehab and write a children's book. But soon enough I'm shooting smack with Scott Weiland and going overboard on plastic surgery procedures. A scandalous home video of my sexual escapades with 50 Cent is released without my permission at about the same time my Beverly Hills mansion goes into foreclosure. Anorexia turns me into a skeletal shell of my former self, and not even a very public romance with Ellen Degeneres can salvage my career. Soon, even OJ won't be seen having dinner with me. My husband and son, abandoned by me long ago when my star was rising, have no sympathy for me now that it's all come crashing down and I've called them begging for forgiveness and a small loan.

Think I'm being dramatic? It can happen. Look at poor Axl. And if it does happen, won't it be kind of neat to be able to say you knew me back when I first started up my silly little blog, back when I was a nobody? They might even interview you for my True Hollywood Story. You can tell them what a shame it is to see how low I've sunk, and how witty and clever I used to be before the prescription painkillers got the best of me. You can tell them how you used to read my blog faithfully, before I became empty and hollow and vain, and pissed away every good thing that came my way, finally ending up a tabloid joke.

If you'd like to ensure that you have that opportunity to say you knew me when, then by all means, vote for me for Most Humorous Blog. I don't know how long voting will remain open, all I know is begins on the 10th of January. And I may not even make it that far--right now I'm just nominated (thanks, Jason, Melissa and Ally) along with lots of bloggers who couldn't possibly be as funny as me. The list will be trimmed down to 10 bloggers in each category before the voting starts. Considering the judges (whose votes will weigh more heavily than those of you mere mortals) are probably not high and drunk like my regular readers, I may not be as funny in their eyes. But as the diplomatic losers are obligated to say, it's an honor just to be nominated. Or something.

I am a thoughtful friend.

The other day, my friend Brooks left his hoodie sweatshirt behind when he took off to do whatever it is that he does when he's out of my sight. As I sat there idly looking at his plain black sweatshirt, I got to thinking about him. Brooks is a quiet guy, intelligent and thoughtful. He's not the kind of person who wants to be the center of attention, and certainly not someone who wears his heart on his sleeve. If you want to get to know Brooks, you have to be patient, because you're not going to figure him out in one day. You know how there are some people that you seem to know everything about in the first 5 minutes of meeting them? Not Brooks. But he's so worth the effort. Once you get to know him he's funny and friendly and kind and interesting, and just plain great in general--but upon first meeting him, you wouldn't understand all that, not yet.

And there's nothing wrong with that, of course. But I love Brooks, and I just wish more people knew him the way I know him. I sat there and thought to myself, "What can I do help broadcast the truth about the real Brooks?" It would have to be something people could recognize immediately upon seeing him for the first time, the way a big, broad smile lets you know that a person is friendly and approachable. Then it hit me. I could personalize that simple black sweatshirt for him in such a way that it telegraphed to the world "I am Brooks, and here's what I'm about."

So I did it. I put some vinyl letters on the back of his sweatshirt--just a few concise words, not a whole book-length speech. Just a simple statement to distill my friend Brooks down to the core element of his personality, the thing that really makes Brooks "Brooks." I did it out of love. I am that kind of friend.

And then I had another friend model the new-and-improved sweatshirt so I could get a picture of it for a memento.

Mockery 101: Your first assignment

Isn't it fun to mock people? There's something so satisfying in imagining that you are so incredibly intelligent, with your ponderously large brain, that the vast majority of the population is simply beneath you. And what better way to make yourself feel smarter than to mock others?

Often, the practice of mocking others involves pretending people are way dumber than they actually are. Let's say someone asks you a question that's a bit silly and uninformed--but in your head (because you'd never have the balls to say it out loud), you get all worked up over it as if it were the world's dumbest question; you make a disproportionately big deal about it, later retelling the story to your friends in such a way as to magnify the supposed stupidity of the person. For example, I once heard a guy say he needed some double-sided transparencies--a silly idea, considering transparencies are TRANSPARENT, and therefore can't be double-sided, because, well, side 1 would show through onto side 2. The silly part was how long it took to convince this guy that it wasn't possible to accomplish this. The guy just didn't get it. Now, I often cite that as an example of a dumb question, but the truth is, that guy probably wasn't really dumb, but just a little confused about the subject. That's a lot of what goes on in the world of mockery--you seize upon the tiniest infraction and exaggerate it to make a person seem way stupider than he probably really is, all in the name of feeling better about yourself for a few heady moments.

But what you really look for are those truly golden opportunities, those super satisfying moments when you find someone to mock who really deserves it, someone who does something really, incredibly dumb, no question about it. Sadly, those opportunities come along fairly rarely, so you're forced to mine the thousands of average, fairly intelligent interactions in your typical week and make do with what you have. Wouldn't you enjoy a good, solid mocking victim right about now? Someone who redefines the word "idiot?" You would? Great, then sit back, because I have a good one for you. This is going to make you feel so smart.

When I was 15, we took a test in one of my school classes in which were called upon to summon all of our knowledge of our own private parts and those of our neighbors. Our teacher provided each of us with a very artful rendering of a pee-pee and a woo-woo, and tasked us with labeling the various bits appropriately. Naturally, there was much snickering among us as the tests were handed out, and a good time was had by all. Well, all except one, for whom the jokes must have gone sailing right over her addled head.

Below you will find my test and hers. Mine is not so incredibly impressive--I scored a mere 87% on the female portion of the test, and a 93% on the male. (Baffling, since one would think I was a shoe-in to do better in identifying the parts I actually possessed in my very own undies--kind of like a cheat sheet in my bloomers.) But to be fair, I hadn't had much interaction with genitals up to that point--hardly any with my own, and certainly none with anyone else's. Still, I didn't do too badly, and was at least very thorough, as you can see from the detailed descriptions of the various and sundry parts, which I fastidiously scribbled on the back side of my test.
















But here's where your mocking opportunity comes in. There was a girl in my class who I'll call Brenda. I don't remember how I came into possession of her test, but the moment I laid eyes on it, I knew it was comedy gold. I've kept it lo these many years, perfectly preserved and treasured as though it were the original first draft of our Constitution. I think if my house had caught fire at any point over the years, I would have risked life and limb to run back in and save this important document.

Here are Brenda's slightly misguided answers.













Notice she scored a paltry 12% on the female parts, and a shameful 0% on the male. In case your eyesight isn't so great, let me just point out that the top image, which is clearly the female part, has been labeled with a vas deferens, a penis (which she misspelled), and even a testicle. And the bottom image, which should be quickly noticed to be the male part because of the tell-tale PENIS hanging solemnly off of it, is labeled with two ovaries, a seminal vesicle (which she has renamed the feminine vesticle), a Fallopian tube which she appears to have tried to rename a Phillipino tube, and yes, a vagina. And the very object which should identify this drawing so obviously as a male part--the aforementioned penis--is, in fact, the very part that she labeled a vagina. Also chuckle-worthy is the presence of the urethra, which she renamed the urena, and the epididymis, which she renamed the epicenter.

And here's the back side of her sheet, left blank, as if she felt she had pretty much said it all on the front side of the test.











Now, let me clear up some questions you must surely have. No, this girl was not mentally challenged. She did not attend Special Ed classes and didn't appear to need them. She was strictly a C and D student throughout high school, but she wasn't in need of a spot on the short bus. She looked normal enough and spoke normally enough, although no one would have called her quick witted or loquacious. She was just your average kid--or so I thought until I was confounded with this mystifying test of hers.

Which begs the question: What the hell was in this girl's pants? I have to assume she had one of those hangy-downy things that she labeled a vagina.

I suppose I could ask my ex-boyfriend about it--who, a few years later, actually cheated on me with this sexually confused dimwit possessing ambiguous private parts. Which only goes to show, you don't necessarily have to know one single thing about the male or the female sex organs in order to make use of them in the back seat of a car.