8 awesome facts to make you go blind

[Lefty]

This much we know for certain:

• A new study from Finland, or maybe it was Russia, suggests that if you watch "Fast Five" and "Thor" back-to-back and then play 22.7 straight hours of the new "Duke Nukem Forever" retrosexist video game as you swill down an entire bottle of bacon vodka whilst belching the names of all female Tea Party members who think abortion is an inveterate evil caused by heathen pervert sex-maniac females who deserve zero rights or control because, after all, God thinks rape "isn't so bad," you will actually go back in time and turn into a lump of gelatinous cave mold.

• New reality show! "Bristol Palin Prepares to Enter Rehab Sometime in Late 2012 or Possibly Early 2013 Depending on Proximity to Charlie Sheen" (working title) is officially set to debut, of all places, on the Biography Channel. I am not making most of this up.

"We wanted a show that was both childishly surreal, deeply insulting to anyone with a functioning cerebellum and yet somehow impossible to ignore, like poison ivy eating away at your big toe," Bio programming director Laura Hayes Kilpatrick did not say, after slamming down a half dozen shots of Stoli Stasberi, kicking three of her six cats off her lumpy futon and sighing emptily into the void that is her life. "Look, did you even know Bio existed before reading this item? No you did not," she did not add, her left eye twitching strangely. "God, I need a Xanax."

• Florida's long, noble tradition of showing too much butt crack and then having sex with unsuspecting animals is finally over. Gov. Rick "Who?" Scott is expected to sign two new bills outlawing both righteous practices, because apparently rampant bestiality and teens who wear slouchy, underwear-revealing jeans 'round their knees in a don't-you-dare-suggest totally homoerotic fantasy homage to some sort of inmate thug lifestyle have become epidemic in creepier parts of the sunshine state where people own too many goats and like to tattoo their necks. Which is to say, most of them.

• Assuming all the forces of bleeding wrongness in the universe have aligned and Moloch has signed off on the proper paperwork, the news should be out by now: Newt Gingrich is running for president in 2012.

It's a fantastically cringe-worthy announcement that caused most of the nation to gag violently then blast coffee through its nose, as it tried valiantly not to burst out laughing at the ongoing ludicrousness of American political life, all while resisting the overwhelming urge to rush out and see "Thor" again to numb itself into an ignorance-is-bliss stupor.

Still reading? These words making sense? Then chances are quite good you don't live in Detroit.

Did you hear? Apparently, nearly half of Detroit's remaining population is functionally illiterate, struggles to read or write or fill out any paperwork -- like, say, a job application. Which actually makes a sad sort of sense, as the auto industry apocalypse has left only a fraction of the original Motor City population intact, most of them poor, most of them stuck in America's foremost dying metropolis given how those who left after the meltdown were the ones who had enough money, education and opportunity to do so.

Irony quotient? Surprisingly high, as right-wing pundits and politicos alike are expressing mock alarm and indignation at the news, and demanding that Something Be Done as they complain about what has become of our educational system, even though it's generally the GOP that rejects serious education reform, thinks college is for elitist snobs and wants everyone home-schooled by Sarah Palin-shaped trolls. Mostly.

• Ah, but at least we'll always have the Vatican. Constant, endlessly dour, steadfast in its timeless misogyny, hollow intolerance and brutal, everlasting out-of-touchedness. You go, Benedict.

Proof? No sweat. Simply try suggesting that maybe, just maybe, after all these corrupt, sexually abusive, homosexually charged years, after more than 200 decades of oppression, bogus celibacy and stifling sexual dread, it might be time to allow women and married men to be ordained as priests.

Australia's Bishop William Morris suggested exactly that, just recently. Can you guess what happened? That's right. Like an alcoholic father with a lurching temper did the Vatican bring the hammer down and fire Morris on the spot, without an eyeblink of deeper thought or a hint of remorse. See? Ever reliable and consistent, the Vatican is. A bit like torrential flooding in the deep South. Or perhaps cancer. Or maybe death.

• Here is my not at all shocking personal confession. I sort of hate condoms. Hate using them, dislike the smell and the feel and the entire, shall we say, energy-depleting process of installing and operating the unfun little beasts. How to make them more usable? More appealing? Less prone to sighing annoyance? Is there a way?

Here's one: Magically line them with a special vasodilating gel (hence the nickname, Viagra condoms) that makes using them somehow more heartily invigorating, more ironclad and upright and user-friendly. Do this and, short of the male birth-control pill, you might just have yourself a man-happy, erection-friendly revolution. Isn't that right, Futura Medical, who just invented said wonderlatex, called the CSD500, soon available in the U.K. and maybe the U.S.? We shall find out.

• In loosely related news -- assuming you like to view the world that way and really, why wouldn't you -- the other universally acclaimed wonderdrug known as ecstasy (MDMA) has been proven once again to have no real side effects, doesn't make you want to kill yourself and doesn't increase mortality rates overall, especially if used in relative moderation and not like some panicky teen raver or Burning Man first-timer who has no clue what he's doing and shouldn't be left alone in Drunken Barbie Camp with all those glow sticks, fake fur and baggies of little magic pills.

Sadly, a new Danish study shows that pot users suffer a mortality rate about five times higher than the norm (your mileage, and possible explanations, may vary). Cocaine and meth, six times. Heroin and related injectables are, as you might expect, off the charts. But ecstasy, well, it just keeps being proven to be not so bad in the slightest, and actually might, just might be one of the most remarkably safe, effective, enlightening drugs ever invented. Good thing it's still illegal.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/05/11/notes051111.DTL&ao=2#ixzz1ODsSA1HV