Before I get to your letters, some quick programming notes. First: I'm on vacation next week, as much as someone who does what I do can be considered "on vacation," so no funbags or hookup posts or posting at KSK or anything else like that. Drew needs time for whisky.


Secondly, this is the final Thursday Funbag of the year. Two weeks from today, the Jamboroo will return in this Thursday timeslot, and I can't begin to tell you how much I'm looking forward to that.

That's it. As you were. Now, to the letters:

Josh:

Every 6 months or so, my parents computer breaks down and they ask me to fix it for them. It always starts off with complaints that it is getting 'slow' and then finally towards the end of the cycle, my mom starts to complain about 'the sex pop-ups', then eventually it doesn't turn on anymore and I am forced to format it for them. It's been pretty obvious for a while now that the reason this happens is because my dad keeps looking at porn on the computer but is not savvy enough to do this without infesting his computer with all kinds of e-STD's. My mom refuses to admit this to herself for whatever reason. Is there a good way to go about letting my dad know he needs to knock this shit off? Because I am way too lazy to sit in front of their computer for 2 hours while Windows re-installs. I figure he just assumed it would work itself out (and it did, so I can't say I blame him for avoiding it). But with hundreds of streaming sites out there, I need him to move onto something that won't ruin the computer all the time.


Oh, there's definitely a good way of letting your dad know he needs to knock it off. By storming into his office and sternly and openly reprimanding him for surfing for porn.

Do you understand the opportunity you've been given with this? You understand how many sons out there would give ANYTHING to be able to turn the tables on their dad and lecture THEM about looking at porn? Holy shit, I'd pay $1,000 to be able to scold my dad for looking at porn. When I was a kid, he lectured me for having stolen Playboys under my bed. He lectured me for calling phone sex lines. He knocked on the bathroom door to ask why I was taking so long in the bath just as I was busting a nut. The number of times fathers have mortified and shamed young men for being horny is fucking infinite.

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And now, fair Josh, YOU have been given the gift of discovering your dad's porn habit, and you want to go easy on him? NO WAY. No, I think you should take the chance to make him feel AWFUL about it. Really turn the screws. In fact, I think all of us should get a chance to make fun of him for it, just so we can vicariously get back at our dads for embarrassing us. You march right up to him, and you tell him DAD, THAT'S JUST ABOUT ENOUGH OF THE BUKKAKE VIDEOS. AND YOU KNOW DAMN WELL WHAT BUKKAKE MEANS. DON'T PLAY COY WITH ME, YOU OLD BALLTUGGER.

That's what I think you should do.

Will:

It's a rare treat to have the time for a full bath rather than a shower. When the idyll's over (kids screaming to use toilet, wife nagging, etc.) I like to lay on my back with the water past my ears and assume the position Han Solo was in when he was frozen into that block of carbonite in Empire. I release the plug with my toe and as the water slowly drains away and the cold air hits me I am being released from hibernation like at the beginning of Jedi, back to the horrors of life. Is this the closest I will ever come to living Han Solo's life of inter-galactic roguery and princess fucking?


Probably. The real question is: You take baths? Really? Listen, I admire that you have the time to indulge yourself with a bath. Perhaps you line the bathroom with scented candles and sip Chablis while reading a Mary Monroe novel as you soak. I won't judge you for that.

But fuck man, if I took at bath at my age, I think I'd pull at least seven different muscles. Bathtubs are rock hard, and they usually aren't long enough to accommodate a full sized man. And they're sharply angled at the back, so there's nowhere to rest your goddamn head without feeling like Joe Pesci is pushing your head down so you can blow him. It's like the perfect recipe for horrific discomfort. I don't know how anyone over the age of 16 can sit in a bath comfortably and not experience crippling, agonizing pain. And that's too bad, because I wouldn't mind sitting in a tub with a bottle of gin and a roach clip, singing along to a Scorpions album and diddling myself. That sounds like a solid time. But God dammit if I can find a comfortable bathtub that exists in this universe.


Peter:

Over the weekend I visited a friend of mine in Philadelphia. He, being a life long baseball and Phillies fan, suggested we go to the game on Saturday. The game turned out to be quite exciting as the Reds pitcher, Travis Wood, took a perfect game into the 8th. Fortunately for my friend and the Phillies, this was broken up by the first batter in the 9th. But afterwards this led us to have a lengthy conversation about what is the proper fan reaction during a scenario such as this where a significant sports moment is happening - but against your favorite team. On one hand team loyalty should count for something, and even though it's a huge sports moment, the fact it's going against your team should dictate you have to cheer against the visitors. But the chance to see a perfect game is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and in a season where a single game means next to nothing, perhaps it's okay to cheer for the record, especially for a lifelong baseball fan like my friend. Maybe that works in baseball but what about other sports? I live in Minnesota and a lot of my friends were at the Metrodome when Favre broke the all time TD record and had very similar reactions to everything above. So what's the call here? Is it ever okay to cheer against your team so long as a significant sports moment is happening?


No. It isn't okay. Especially in the instance of Favre breaking the touchdown record. He may play for Minnesota now, and thus it's my job as a Vikes fan to cheer for his old sorry ass. But he broke that record while still a member of the Packers, SO FUCK HIM AND HIS RECORD IN THE ASS. I saw some Vikings fans cheering for him when he broke that record. It made me want to fucking PUKE.

Here is what the record breaker should get: polite applause. That's it. Give him a golf clap to show you're a civilized human being and then go about your business. He should NOT be wildly cheered, particularly prior to breaking that record. If some Vikings fan was in the Metrodome and actively rooting for Favre to break that record before he actually broke it, I would like that fan's name and address so I can burn their fucking house down.


I think it's fair to get caught up in a certain sense of awe if you're witnessing a particularly impressive single game feat, like a perfect game, or a 300-yard rushing day, or a 60-point basketball game. No sports fan is immune to appreciating a performance such as that. But that's the key. APPRECIATION. There's a difference between appreciating seeing something amazing, then acknowledging it with applause, then sitting there and rooting for it to happen before it's happened.

I think a perfect game is something of an exception because it's such a tense buildup. I'm sure everyone in the middle of a potential perfect game is saying to themselves, "Holy shit. He's pitching a perfect game. And if he pulls it off, I'll be able to tell people I was at a perfect game, which will totally make me fucking cool." I get secretly rooting for that to happen. But I don't think you should go nuts in the seventh inning if your side gets struck out by the visiting fucker doing the damage. And I definitely don't think you should applaud some asshole like Favre breaking a career record on your home field. It's a career record. I don't care. Some other asshole will break it within ten years. Big fucking deal. I STILL HATE YOU. I don't like being a classy fan. Let fat people in St. Louis hold that mantle.


I saw one historically memorable sporting event in person, and that was when Kordell Stewart hit Michael Westbrook with the Hail Mary in Michigan Stadium in '94. I was crazy pissed when it happened, and I said horrible things to the Colorado fans in the stands because I was fat and a loser. But secretly, I do enjoy the fact that I was there, and that I can pipe up at parties and say, "Hey, you know that Hail Mary Kordell threw before everyone decided he was gay? I WAS THERE." It's a nice factoid to have about yourself.

Jon:

The odds that the person driving this car is icing a bro as we speak are unimaginably high.


Bonus points for it being a Scion. All it needs is one of those I'M A GAMER bumper stickers.


John:

(scene: telephone conversation between husband and wife) ME: So, what should we do for dinner? WIFE: I don't care, you pick. ME: Ok, let's get Chinese. WIFE: Ugh, no. Something else. ME: Ok, how about pizza? WIFE: We had that two weeks ago, no. ME: Indian? Thai? Greek? WIFE: No. ME: WELL IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU CARE PRETTY FUCKING STRONGLY WHAT WE EAT, MISSY. Why don't YOU suggest something and I can refuse it, YOU DIRTY LIAR. And ... scene.

Yep. That's pretty much the entirety of marriage right there. I got pissed at my wife for the exact same thing last week. I was gonna go to the grocery and get shit to cook for dinner. But we had to figure out what we were gonna eat first. So, like John, I immediately began to whittle it down by ethnicity. Chinese? No. Thai? No. Italian? MAYBE. And my wife offered up NOTHING in return. She just sat there and shot down idea after idea, like she was Don fucking Draper. And finally, I was like, "Look woman, if you're gonna kill the idea, you have to think of something else to counter it with. I'M DOING ALL THE GODDAMN THINKING HERE."


And this happens all the fucking time. I'm the only one tossing out dinner ideas. And that's hard! I should charge my wife by the hour for that shit. I even put together a Word doc that includes all our standard meals in the rotation: baked gnocchi, pulled pork, all that shit. And on more than one occasion she's shot down the whole list. EVERY ITEM. And that's when I tell her we're having Shake N Bake WITH NO FUCKING VEGETABLES and that's that. A man has his limits.

(On a similar note: Never ask a four-year-old what show they want to watch. They can't ever fucking decide between Backyardigans and Max & Ruby, and even then they can't pick which fucking episode of Max & Ruby they want. Do you want Max Gets Wet or Ruby's Pajama Party? WELL? ANSWER ME, YOU LITTLE TURD!)


Ben:

I'm 24. My best friend's sister is 18 and will be attending an SEC school in the fall (not Vanderbilt). She is also smoking hot. It being the South, we'll call her Susan. Susan seems to be into me. So much so that my best friend told me not to sleep with her. Being an alum of the school she will be attending, it is reasonably foreseeable that I will be back for homecoming. Thus Susan and everyone else will be drunk on Everclear. My, uh, instincts, say to sleep with her. My brain disagrees. And hooking up with one of her friends would be creepy, because boning freshman girls is creepy when you are 24. But Susan is like family, so somehow sex would be ok. So, should I do it?


No. "Susan is like family, so somehow sex would be ok"? Well, clearly those would be the common sentiments of anyone who attends school in the Deep South. She's like my sister, so plowing her is way cool!

Anyway, you're not allowed to fuck your best friend's sister. Unless you fuck her and he never finds out about it. Then it's all good. Totally never happened.


HALFTIME!

Chris:

I just replaced the toner cartridge on the Xerox machine at work. This is by far my favorite office task to do because I get to pretend I'm Doc Brown changing the Plutonium on the DeLorean. I'm always very slow, very deliberate. If I drop the toner/plutonium, I could take out my entire office. But I have to be quick, else some Libyans come and wreck my shit. I really hate my job, but this makes some of it worthwhile.


Oof. The dreaded toner change. That is some serious bomb squad shit. Ever see someone drop a toner cartridge? It's like the BP oil spill, confined indoors. It's horrible. I changed the cartridge once and got color toner on my hands. It took about six bars of Lava to get it off. And toner is wildly expensive. Unreasonably so. Platinum costs less per ounce than an HP Inkjet cartridge.

I used to work in a office that would get junk faxes from marketers (because my boss apparently didn't protect the fax number all that well). Now junk emails and calls are horrible enough. Imagine getting an unwanted ten page fax telling you how you can save money on your email hosting. My boss would get these faxes, look up the number to call, and then call it and yell at the person on the other end of the line for wasting his toner. Real yelling, too. Extremely loud and enough to make you uncomfortable overhearing it.


He was a solid boss.

Ever open up a copier and touch one of the hot metal parts by accident? AGONY. I dunno why you need the heat of a fucking nuclear reaction just to make copies of a Powerpoint deck.


Michael:

Every time I use an automatic door, I imagine that I'm a Jedi bidding the door to open. When no one's around, I even make the Obi-Wand hand gesture, sweeping my hand across before the door opens. When I get really lucky, my timing's perfect, and the door opens right after I finish my Jedi hand motions - I love when that happens.


Agreed. I also appreciate any automatic door that opens fast enough so that I don't have to break stride. If I have to break stride, the door has failed me FOR THE LAST TIME.

/Force-chokes door

/would pay a million bucks to have Force-choking abilities

empty13:

I just found this mountain of solid seasoning in my bag of fiery habanero Doritos. If I eat this, I will die... Right?


Perhaps. But you and I both know there's no way you're not eating it. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life knowing you turned down a habanero dust nugget of that size? It's the Hope Diamond of processed foodstuffs. "The bank is worth the risk. I need it, brother."


Aaron:

When I first moved to DC a few years back I went out to the Costco in Pentagon city to get unlimited amounts of toilet paper. We were driving back using Garmin, and it sends us straight down a road that takes us into the Pentagon parking lot. We look around, figure Garmin was confused, and turn around. Garmin resets, then tells us to turn around and go straight... back into the Pentagon. Confused and alarmed, we start driving around, trying to get out of the parking lot. If you've never been there, it's freaking huge, and doesn't have (for obvious reasons) a ton of easy access. And this whole time, the damn Garmin is telling us to ram the Pentagon with our car. If the left side is facing the Pentagon, it says to go left. If the Pentagon is to our right, it demands we go right. This went on for 10 MINUTES where all Garmin wanted to do was to ram us through the heart of the American military-industrial complex. It's never happened since, which makes me think it got taken over by Al-Queda briefly, but I'm terrified my Garmin is out to turn me into a suicide bomber.


That's terrifying. Worst of all, the idea that a navigational system could be corrupted by SkyNet and programmed to kill suggests that 9/11 could easily have been a GIANT misunderstanding. What if Mohammed Atta was just trying to hijack the plane so he could go hang out in Bermuda with his pals, and the navigation system totally boned him? IT'S NOT OUT OF THE QUESTION. Perhaps the computers knew this sort of thing could ignite a global conflict! I READ A PAMPHLET ABOUT IT AND IT WAS VERY CONVINCING!

John:

If you were a rich Cleveland fan, why wouldn't you buy the old "We are all Witnesses" billboard spot and replace it with a Photoshop of LeBron's mom boning Delonte West? I am really only asking this question in the hopes that Dan Gilbert or someone equally crazed with rage and rich does this.


That would be a delight. Although I think LeBron is too much of a self-absorbed ass to be bothered by it. I think people that rich and famous can get to a mental state where they are literally immune to shit-giving. They are so utterly lacking in self-reflection that you can't hurt them with anything they say, because they're too arrogant and stupid to acknowledge their own shortcomings. After all, criticism usually doesn't bother people if they don't see any truth behind it. Believe your own bullshit enough, and soon any criticism will roll right off you. This is a bad quality to have, by the way.

I know someone who was friends with Maverick Carter, and apparently LeBron's people were quite pleased with the ratings "The Decision" pulled in. Anyone who didn't like the special (which was pretty much everyone) were completely dismissed by Carter and James' crew as "haters". In other words, anyone who criticizes LeBron is clearly only doing so because they hate him and are jealous of him. No criticism of him could ever possibly be valid. Ever. That's just haters hating. LeBron can do this because he and his people are so utterly lacking in self-awareness, and because they so clearly don't give a shit.


All this is to say: LeBron is still a cocksucker.

Bleeding Gums:

The other day I noticed that there were a great deal of ants in my yard, most of the ants were located in a space between my grass and the sidewalk, essentially where the turf was put. I decided to put a shitload of ant killer and when I checked a few days later, there were THOUSANDS of dead ants in bunches, maybe even millions. I know that this was probably only like 5% of the colony, but I have never felt more powerful.


That's awesome. That's like stomping on an anthill times a thousand. GREAT HUSTLE.

Dan:

If you were called out of the stands and onto the field/court of a professional game (MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA) to participate, which sport do you think you would have the smallest chance of being seriously injured? You are the only non-professional athlete playing. I'd have to go with basketball.


As would I. You would be fucking murdered playing any of the other three. Unless you were allowed to punt for an NFL team, and not play any offense or defense.

I'm pretty sure that would be the only situation where I'd WANT to take the field with professionals. I mean, if someone offered you a chance to bat against CC Sabathia or someone like that, would you actually take up the offer? I wouldn't. You couldn't pay me to stand in a batter's box and have that fat fuck rifling fastballs at my skull. Or to have some hockey player smear me against the boards and leave me in a pile of my own shit. No, thank you. I'll turn down that "once in a lifetime" chance.


And basketball is no breeze either. Those guys happily throw bare elbows at each other. I'm sure you can't possibly appreciate how physical it is until you're actually on the court with Dwight Howard and he's blowing apart your jaw.

Maybe punting. Everyone can punt a ball 15 or 20 yards. You could run out, field the snap, kick the ball, and then run the fuck away and maybe get out with your life. MAYBE. Something tells me the idea of having to kick a ball with everyone watching and 11 guys waiting to ruin my shit would cause me to possibly cramp up.


Patrick:

Have you ever tried to piss in your toilet with the seat up and not hit the bowl? It seems so easy; huge open area, limited distance, no wind... yet every time I try I never get a perfect score. I always manage a little drop or two here and there. Please tell me I'm not the only person like this, and also let me know if you could develop some sort of scoring system/game involving this carnival-like task.


It sucks because there have been many times when I've felt too lazy to raise the seat (especially in a public bathroom, because who gives a shit who uses it next? I AM EVIL). So I'll think to myself, "Hey, no prob. I'll just piss with the seat down and not a drop will touch it." But I NEVER succeed. Ever. It's like God's way of telling you you're an insensitive prick for even trying it.

Time for a GREAT MOMENT IN MUGGINGS. From reader Sam:

My first post-college job was in DC, working for a non-profit, getting paid $19,000 per year. As such, I lived in a not-so-nice part of DC. I lived with a cheesy kid I had met through work. He and I were walking home on Halloween, he dressed as Payne Stewart and I as a Jew (I am Jewish, but I mean full-on Hasidic Jew). As we were nearing our home, three kids (I would guess they were 17 years old) approached us. One had a sawed-off shotgun and one a handgun of sorts and the third was the weaponless ring leader. The guy with the sawed-off shotgun stuck it in my chest. As any sane person would do, I put my hands on my head and told him to take whatever he wanted. The weaponless kid reached in my pocket and took my wallet, which contained no cash. My roommate, well, he was not so sane. When I looked over at him, he was sitting on the ground, with his hands on his pockets, saying he wasn't going to give them anything (he had a wallet with $2 cash, some credit cards he would have to cancel, and a shitty digital camera). I was too stunned to move or say anything. But the ringleader was not. He calmly told my roommate: "Sir, do not be stupid; we have guns. Just give us what you have." To which my roommate brilliantly responded, "No. You don't be stupid. Get the fuck out of here." At that point, I was too scared to run away, but was pretty confident we were going to die. The kid with the sawed-off grabbed the weapon like a baseball bat. The ringleader tapped the kid on the shoulder and shook his head, preventing my roommate (and maybe me), from getting a serious beating. 30 seconds later a car pulled up and the kids jumped in, with my stuff and not my roommate's. Not only did my roommate not apologize, but he flagged down a cop (in a situation like that, I deem cops a total waste of time). We were forced to wait with the cops for what felt like hours providing a hazy-at-best description of the event. When we were finally about to go home, the cops get a call that they pulled over a car that matched our description (despite me insisting the car was blue and my roommate insisting it was white; the car they pulled over turned out to be green). We then were forced to attempt to ID our muggers in a show-up. The guys they pulled over looked like they were at least 25, which I told the officer. My roommate, being the racist dick he was, claimed those were the guys. I was forced to testify at a Grand Jury hearing, and tell a bunch of strangers what a fucking moron my roommate was/is. I am sure the guys pled guilty to something, after my roommates idiocy and lies lead to their indictment.


The system works!