2007: Clearing the fog off the rear view mirror

Wow. I can't believe how long it's been since I opened a window and began typing an FCN post. It's been longer than Mike Vick's prison tenure; longer than the gestation period of the Short-nosed Echidna, an egg laying mammal that looks like a porcupine but really isn't. It's been long enough for the cobwebs to form in our minds and the eggnog to settle comfortably in our stomachs and cork our sense of humor, as you can tell from the Echidna joke.

As I sit down to lovingly caress Kato's keys and move my fingers gingerly across letter markings that have yet to fade with heavy use, I wonder what in the world I am going to write about. This is supposed to be a year in review post, but all I can really think of is that final I bombed like Errol Flynn and Fred MacMurray. Thinking back further - and this is digging up ancient history, yellowed with embarrassment - I remember a bad date I had in early December. Remembering a whole year back, well that is going to burn some mental calories.

But I can afford to lose the weight. So, with a crack of my knuckles, a tilting of my head to pop those stressed vertebrae in the neck and a clearing of my throat, we're off to look at the biggest events of 2007:

Biggest yawner: Bulgaria and Romania join the European Union

Did anyone other than lordration read past the words Bulgaria and Romania? I mean, this issue has got to have someone's blood pumping (otherwise the nations at issue wouldn't have waited 'till the Year of Bond to join), but in this camp everything is very placid. What a yawner. I've heard that even important European diplomats couldn't keep their composure during the negotiations. I cannot look at that picture without yawning. Can you?

But seriously, we should be congratulatory. I mean, for the EU, this represents an almost 8% increase in the number of member nations. And while Bulgaria's big sunflower seed production numbers are unlikely to engender much excitement, the nation does have some quality exports in other areas.

Event most representative of America: Takeru Kobayashi

Looks like a typo, doesn't it? Something the fingers thought of before the head? Ah, grasshopper, you must let the white guys at FCN explain it to you. Kobayashi (a Japanese Kobe Bryant, hence the name similarities) is a champion speed eater. In front of a televised audience and against daunting and overweight competition, he is able to quickly shovel down inhuman quantities of hot dogs, burgers and auto parts. I made the last one up, but the hot dogs and burgers really did go down the gullet.

Kobayashi is the Tiger Woods of his sport. Nobody else is able to wolf down that much food and keep it down for the mandated twenty minutes (a process some competitors analogize to giving birth). Unfortunately, this mastication great ran into a rough patch when he was placed on injured reserve after hurting his jaw. Apparently he tried to talk with his mouth full.

Second biggest yawner: Presidential Campaigning

Apparently a passel of overweight white guys (including a white guy disguised as a black man and a man hiding in the body of a woman) have traversed the greater Iowa area saying the same things over and over again. News reporters have gotten especially excited about this process and have devoted months of coverage to this issue over the last year. Predictably, nothing has happened. 2008 promises some new developments, but the word is we'll have to wait until November for anything definite.

Biggest disappointment: Windows Vista

Kato had a hard time accepting that I was typing the word "Windows" using her hardware. She's acting up a little. Giving me a little feminine static. This is my first female computer and I am still trying to figure out how everything works. Please, give us a minute.

Oh yes, Mac released an operating system, too. It's called the Leopard, but it only comes in white.

EDITOR'S NOTE: There was a vicious FCN board meeting over this item. The sweat poured from our brows like Samurai Jack solving a riddle. We yelled till we were hoarse. We pounded our fists on the table. By table, I mean each other. Eventually us Vista users were "convinced" to let the item slide. After all, nobody can really get excited about Vista. Even if it does have cool see-through title bars. That you can change the color of. And the transparency. And saturation.

Biggest shocker: Kucinich tried to impeach Dick Cheney

Apparently a duck hunting accident is a crime of moral turpitude and an act of treason, because Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich put his already tenuous relationship with the Vice President on the rocks by filing impeachment papers against the former Wyoming Senator. Boy, Dennis, doing something like that is going to make those double dates really tense. And that's one more person you can't go duck hunting with.

Biggest cheaters: Floyd Landis, Marian Jones, Barry Bonds and Bill Belichick

You're right. Nothing has actually been proven and test results are inconclusive. But whether the sport is cycling, track, baseball or football, 2007 has had its share of suspected cheaters. Bonds applied the clear and the cream and then lied about it to under oath (uh oh!) and Floyd Landis' cup runneth over with positive testing. Jones lost all five of her Olympic medals and Belichick had to make NFL history with an undefeated regular season to earn forgiveness from the gods of football.

Yup, it's been a good year for sports.

Biggest almost: 10 people almost overthrew the government of Laos

It's the kind of thing that would have been really nice, had it actually worked out. Consider: Your own, tax free vacation nation. Granted, it's a landlocked, southeast Asian country known more for its textile sweatshops than tourist acumen, but the ownership factor has to be counted as a point in favor of the enterprise.

As it is, the partakers of the would-be coup have a different vacation spot. And this one looks to be a retirement home: the federal pen. But hey, I hear you can get some great pick-up football with Mike Vick. And with old Orenthal potentially joining the 2008 prison draft, they have something to look forward too. Maybe with Barry Bonds on board, ESPN can start a new channel ESPN CONVICTS. The only downside: the normal ESPN would lose all its programming.

Biggest heat attack other than Alex Trebek: Dow Jones Industrial Average

Early in the year, the Dow was up like a New England point spread. Then the floor fell out of the market experts predicted your money would go the way of Heather Graham and Sharon Stone. In the end, nothing much has changed, Charles Schwab's hypertension notwithstanding.

With such an expansive review, it's hard to imagine I missed anything important. If you think of something, feel free and post a comment or beam us an email directing us to our omission. Thank you, as always, for reading FCN through our first full year of blogging. If classes next year are as interesting as classes in 2007, 2008 will be a great year for FCN. If they're half as interesting, we'll probably win a Pulitzer.

/Hiatus

We resolved not to come back until January, but we just couldn't do it. The voice of public opinion was too loud.

So, as of this moment, FCN is back in business and stronger than ever, and we're back to the usual daily routine of tacky jokes gently sprinkled amongst tacky autobiographies and tacky social critiques. We've got a great lineup of posts for January, including New Year's Resolutions, new interviews, a few fascinating essays, and Desperate Student's last episode in Zimbabwe.

In other news, the Holidays are just about over, and frankly, we can't wait to get back to the classic gray scheme. So we're pulling the plug on red and green right now. The Holidays are over. FCN is posting again. Deal with that.

There have been complaints about the shortness of our December posts. In fact, there were some pretty vocal protests (complete with rotten tomatoes stuffed into C's bed - pretty funny stuff if you ask anyone but him). So it just doesn't seem right to cut this post short now, even if we have temporarily run out of things to say.

So, instead of giving you new content (that comes tomorrow), we're going to start a nostalgia-fest by reviewing all the FCN slogans we used since some undisclosed date when we started keeping track of them. Hopefully they'll give you the same little tingles of happy memory they did us. Read on, and don't forget to come back tomorrow. We've got a really sweet post planned. At least that's what our moms tell us.

FCN slogans of the past few months:

Stop Snickering.
Second link to the right and straight on till morning. Or you can just MapQuest us.
EXTREMELY subtle.
Based on a true story.
Stop. Think. FCN.
Life Tip: Don't do anything that'll get mentioned in the Life Tips.
Eternal Fusarium
100% Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back.
Flippant College Nerds.
Class is a four letter word.
Semantic Frivolity.
Taking your mom out for a steak dinner and never calling her back since 1821.
Cunning cultural commentary cleverly crafted as classic comedy.
Hypocriteful.
Wearing white after Labor Day since 1821.
A straight player in a world where Panera Bread has soups and salads, Burger King serves chicken sandwiches and Subway makes a fajita wrap that belongs at Taco Bell.
Putting the "blague" in blog.
So you're French. Do you celebrate Ramadan?
"Much study is a weariness of the flesh." ~Ecclesiastes 12:12
Where it's always Summer!
Fox Uniform November November Yankee Charlie Lima Alpha Sierra Sierra November Oscar Tango Echo Sierra
Everything that ever happened to us. And a few things that haven't.
Serious comedy.
"Why can't you guys just push backspace like everyone else?"
TGIFCN: Thank God It's Funny Class Notes
The comfort of three blades; the precision of one.
Not even a pretty face.
Getting caught with our hands in the cookie jar since 1821.

We wear sunglasses not to look cool, but to hide the fact that we aren't very bright.
If written by gods, FCN would be Cathenotheistic
Laughing 'till we loose our fillings. Or is it "Luce" our fillings?
Plurium Stupidium.
Conceived in 1821 via parthenogenesis.
We refuse to be offended when our readers are.
If your brains were on the stove, FCN stirs the soup.
Official Website of the Declaw Osiris campaign.
Fearfully Cowering Ne'er-do-wells.
Home of the Half-Eaten Gingerbread House.
Putting the empty milk carton back in the fridge since 1821.
Normative vernacular parlance for the vulgar masses.

Desperate Student, Special Episode: Last Will and Testament

Last Will And Testament Of The Desperate Student
Filed December 20, 2007

I, Desperate Student, a resident and citizen of California, being of sound mind and disposable memory, do hereby make, publish and declare this instrument to be my last will and testament, hereby revoking any and all wills and codicils by me at any time heretofore made.

Item I
Debts, Expenses and Taxes

I direct my Executor, hereinafter named, to pay all of my extensive debts and my funeral expenses, which had better not be cheap, as well as the costs and expenses of the administration of my estate, as soon after my death as practicable, and only after my pulse is checked so he knows for sure I'm dead. I further direct that all estate, inheritance, transfer and succession taxes which are payable by reason under this will, be paid out of my residuary estate, or, failing that, out of the estates of my former friends; and I hereby waive on behalf of my estate any right to recover from any person any part of such taxes so paid. My Executor, in his sole discretion, may pay from my domiciliary estate all or any portion of the costs of ancillary administration and similar proceedings in other jurisdictions, etc etc, bla bla bla.

Item II
Instruction Concerning Personal Property: Enjoyment in Specie

I anticipate that included as a part of my property and estate at the time of my death will be tangible personal property of various kinds, characters and values, including a rusty Vietnam-era rifle and a poster of Tom Cruise.

I hereby bequeath my Definitive Switchfoot Collection to Suzy, my former girlfriend, even though we never actually went on a date as of the filing of this document.

I hereby bequeath all my money, such as it may be accumulated, in any form, currency, or counterfeit, to be distributed equally amongst my room mates for the payment of rent or to buy beer and DVDs, at the discretion of the beneficiaries.

I hereby bequeath all my school supplies to Ivan, who really needs to go to school and get a better job. Not that I'm qualified to talk about getting a better job.

I hereby specifically instruct all concerned that my Executor, herein appointed, shall have complete freedom and discretion as to disposal of any and all property not named above so long as he shall act in good faith and in the best interest of my estate and my beneficiaries, and not in the interest of Jake, who once reconstructed my face to look like George Bush and whom I do not like very much; and his discretion so exercised shall not be subject to question by anyone whomsoever, including and in particular Jake.

Item III
Residuary Trust

I absolutely and explicitly do not divide any of my estate or income for the support of health, education, support, comfortable maintenance, or welfare of anyone, including my own mother. I will not be made into a vending machine. No way. Not me.

Item IV
Unenforceable Provisions

If any provisions of this will are unenforceable, the remaining provisions will be stricken and my estate will be rendered in whole to the United States government, to be converted into emu farm subsidies.

Item V
Life Insurance

If my estate is the beneficiary of any life insurance on my life at the time of my death, I direct that the proceeds therefrom will be rendered in whole to my local community college, for the foundation of a Desperate Student scholarship. A modest and sustainable award is to be given each year to the competitor who submits an essay with the most absurd professional aspiration.

Item VI
Creditor Provision

If my estate has outstanding debts at the time of my death, my Executor is to laugh in the faces of any creditor seeking repayment. They are to be given this message: "I'm dead, loser. What are you going to do? Sue me?"

I would like also to be recorded at this time the sentiment that I wish I could see their faces when the above message is delivered. Unfortunately this would defeat the purpose.

Item VII
Executor

I appoint as executor of this, my last will and testament, my said roomie.

Item VIII
Funeral Proceedings

I am not in any way particular about the manner of my burial. I will, however specifically stipulate that my headstone is to be dark grey and plain, and to be inscribed with my name and the dates of my birth and death, along with the words: "FOR THE LAST TIME IT WAS NOT A KISS."

Item IX
Closing Thoughts

Life is hard. I learned a thing or two going down life's short and brutal path. I would now like to offer a few of these lessons to those who will be present for the reading of my will.

i) Don't give up on her. So what if she thinks you're a creep. She already thinks you're a creep. Keep calling her already. What have you got to lose?
ii) Don't stand up for yourself as much. I know nobody else tells you that, but it's true. You'll get stepped on a lot less often, and people will be less likely to notice when you steal a few cookies.
iii) Wear gloves. Splinters hurt. Who needs that?
iv) Don't spend as much time around little kids. Little kids are full of bad ideas. You don't want to run the risk that some of them will rub off on you. I remember once I tried to swim from Baja to Cancun because a six-year old double dog dared me to do it. I washed ashore in Seattle two weeks later.
v) Run for it. Explosions aren't like the movies. You can't realize the bomb is about to go off and then jump through a window and make a dramatic slow-motion exit as fire and smoke billows behind you. Explosions don't happen in slow motion. Also, you aren't as smart or as lucky as movie stars. If you have any suspicion that there are explosives in the area, yell that there's a bomb and run screaming for the car.
vi) The police are not necessarily your friends. They have their own agendas.
vii) Don't be a hero. It sounds nice to jump in front of a bullet for someone else, but trust me, it just hurts a lot and people will forget about it later. Also, bullets are really dangerous, particularly if they land in the wrong spots.
viii) Aim before firing. While we're on the subject of bullets, I would like to point out that your accuracy will be significantly improved if you keep at least one eye open and pointed at the target. This matters because your target is less likely to kill you if he is in the process of being shot.
ix) Don't pick up hitchhikers.
x) Wash your hands often.

In witness thereof, I, the said Desperate Student, do hereunto set my hand and seal in the presence of two (2) competent witnesses, and in their presence do publish and declare this instrument to be my Last Will and Testament, this 20th day of December, 2007.

Get Involved!

Early this month, FCN esssentially shut down. There's been nothing but a faint trickle of bone-headed posts that insult the intelligence of the faithful more than anything else (that is, insult said intelligence more than the usual post).

Shameful. Cowardly. Lazy.

Thankfully, Class C2 has stepped into the breach by creating a petition (and threat of lawsuit) in an effort to bring FCN back immediately. We support this petition wholeheartedly and encourage all eleven of you to go there immediately and sign it. For those of you who don't click on things, try:

http://classc2.blogspot.com/2007/12/come-back-fcn.html

Get involved. Make yourself heard. It's the American way.

Speaking of the American way, we noticed that there may be a lucrative lawsuit in the works and would like to get dibs on a cut since we were some of the first people to affix our seals to the petition (comment approval pending as of this post's publication). It seems only right that we get at least a small portion of whatever the jury awards. We presume it's a class action lawsuit, and we, being FCN readers at least as much anyone else, ought to benefit. After all, it is our blog.

Please?

Note to Self #3

Mouthwash is an inadequate shampoo substitute.

Note to Self #2

Be careful biting into fortune cookies. They tend to have little pieces of paper inside.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas Without Us.

It’s December, the month of the year when school finals give way to Christmas vacation and a healthy dose of celebration. It is also a month when the average American will gain 15 pounds.

Do something for me? Run to the mirror and look at yourself. This is you at your current weight. Pretty good, no? I mean, we could all stand to fix a few aesthetic flaws, but you don’t look half bad. Now imagine what you will look like with an additional fifteen pounds hanging from the places pounds hang. Not all droopy like old people weight, but solid, firm and very there. That is what you will look like at the end of December.

A fun exercise this Christmas season is to walk down the street mentally adding weight to different people. Where would it go? How would the person try to cover it up? And know that if you are thinking it about others, others are thinking it about you.

We wouldn’t worry too much about all that weight. Come New Year, you will make a resolution to lose it all and you will have much of it worked off by the 23rd of January when you fail your resolution and go on a calorie binge that regains almost all of what you lost. Over the next few months, good lifestyle decisions bring you back to 90% of your former svelteness. That additional 10% will never be lost. Consider it a Christmas present. It will hang around and send out invitations until friends join it and an adipose party is on at your midriff. But that will take many years of Christmas seasons, so we wouldn’t worry about it too much.

Those of you who don’t plan on gaining weight should feel doubly guilty. 15 pounds is the average and if you add nothing, someone else will have to put on 30 pounds. Averages can be so brutal.

Anyway, while you all are gaining weight, we here at FCN will be...gaining weight. We will also be on vacation. That’s right, over the next four weeks, all the way until December 31^st, the FCN staff will be enjoying Christmas, recharging and doing everything other than posting FCN.

Don’t get us wrong. This isn’t a soul-searching, mid-life crisis, too much wampum kind of vacation. We aren’t taking time off to work on our yoga and eat yogurt in our Volvos (or should we say Priuses?) We won’t come back with a bunch of adopted refugee kids or melanoma inducing tans. We aren’t taking an extended, Vanessa Milanoesque voyage that ends only when the next one starts.

What we will do is leave FCN undisturbed for four weeks, punctuated only by whatever happens to seep out. And since our mental filters aren't very strong, you can pretty much count on something getting posted over the next month. But we're not committing to any regular content.

The FCN that greets you on the New Year is the same one that is leaving you now, plus 27 days and approximately 45 pounds. So go, eat your food and be merry. And come back when we do. Please?

Note to Self #1

Burritos taste better when you put stuff inside them.