For those of you on the edge of your seats … no, I did not dream about Sharon Stone again last night. I searched but could not find her.

In college I got into lucid dreaming for awhile and learned how to control my dreams. Maybe I’ll get back into that and then go into dream-world and find Sharon Stone and talk to her about China and whatever other stuff she likes to talk about.

I have more great things to share with you about Turkmenistan, and about the project I worked on that involves Turkmenistan, but I’m at the library using a free public computer so I can’t upload the stuff I want to show you. But you’ll be hearing more from me soon!

From reader BML, a tumultuous tale of Turkmenistan:

my friend was in the peace corps there. one time he got arrested for “being outside after 7 pm without paying for a taxi” which was/is one of the random laws there. they kept him and the other people he was with in one police station for a while but then decided they needed to go somewhere else. but the paddy wagon wouldn’t start. so they asked my friend and his fellow peace corps “prisoners” to run behind the wagon pushing it until the engine turned over, then jump into the back and close the doors on themselves. which they did, mostly because it was funny. I think at some point they were hooked up to a “lie detector” that was clearly, like, an old overhead projector.

I’m an expert on overhead projectors. I’ve used every kind of overhead projector you could possibly imagine, from one end of this great nation to the other. I’ve even used those newfangled overhead video-projectors where there’s some kind of movie camera projecting stuff onto a screen. (Not to brag, but I used one at Harvard, the famous college, and at the HBO Comedy Festival too.) Anyway, if someone knows the hack to turn an overhead projector into a lie detector, let me know and I’ll do a video demonstration and post it on youtube and then we can all run our own overhead-projector-based autocracies!

Obama’s about to escalate the drama in Afghanistan! Hooray, I can’t wait. To celebrate, please participate in this week’s PUNCHLINE POLL. This week’s joke is called “The Afghan Classroom.”

Remember, it only takes a minute to read the joke and vote on your favorite punchline! And the winning punchline advances to next week’s joke! Take a friend to the polls! (ie, please forward to your friends.)

Polls close Thursday evening.

I was hired by Global Witness to make some cartoons about the pending Turkmenistan-EU gas deal. (Global Witness is a vicious international oil cartel that stops at nothing to draw natural resources out of the ground and maximize profits … or maybe it’s a human rights organization, I can’t remember which.)

Anyway, the cartoons are part of a report being distributed to members of the European Parliament.

LOOK AT THIS:

That’s what my comics look like if you read Turkmen!

Global Witness even translated my comics about the EU/Turkmenistan gas deal into Russian.

LOOK AT THIS:

Check out this completely authentic, un-edited footage of Turkmenistan president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov leading his cabinet meeting! (Yes, it’s almost impossible to hear … but the visuals are what’s important.)

“This is what democracy looks like!” I grew up in the Episcopal church, so I know what it’s like to constantly stand up and sit down all while holding your hymnal, but these guys take the cake! It’s like whack-a-mole-ocracy!

Please note 0:42 and 1:29, LOL!

Don’t forget, tonight is your last chance to vote in this week’s PUNCHLINE POLL! The more voters we have, the stronger our mandate for change!

Winning punchline advances to next week’s joke!

Thanks from your humble and devoted servant,
David Rees

So excited! Tonight, after years of waiting and google-stalking, I’m finally gonna see THE ROAD, the movie based on the famous novel by Cormac McCarthy.

In case you don’t know, THE ROAD is about a dad (”Joe Normal”) and his son (”The Kid”) as they make their way through a post-apocalyptic funhouse known as the future! I love post-apocalyptic movies and zombies and hopelessness and all that, so I am STOKED!!!

Please don’t email me saying the movie sucks and the music is too intrusive and the ending is too happy and that Omar’s in it! I know all that! I don’t care if the theme music is “Life Is A Highway And I Wanna Ride It All Night Long,” I just wanna see this goddamn movie!

I’ll post a full review next week! (Don’t worry, I won’t write it in Cormac-Bible-ese parody-style … I’ll write it in my normal writing voice, which is this voice.)

Maybe we’ll have a little more fun with Turkmenistan next week, too. That’s all for now, except for this, my favorite Vivaldi:

Have a nice weekend.

Penguin is paying Jonah Goldberg one million dollars for his next book.

CNN.com, “Stressful Jobs That Pay Badly.”

Social worker

Median pay: $43,200

% who say their job is stressful: 72%

Social workers step in when everyone else steps aside to help people and families in vulnerable situations. They provide patients with education and counseling, advise care givers and make referrals for other services. And with social workers in short supply and programs underfunded, few must juggle the work of many, while reaping little reward.

Just ask Heather Griffith, a social worker who works with children in intensive foster care in Boston: “You’re getting paid $12 an hour and kids are screaming at you, telling you that you are just in it for the money and you’re just like, really?“

Hello readers! This week’s PUNCHLINE POLL is up at True/Slant.

Last week’s winning punchline (”If Bill Kristol says America can still ‘win’ in Afghanistan, then they can. That guy’s right about everything.“) has advanced to the next joke: Martians & The Health-Care Debate. Can it survive another week?

Vote early, vote often! Polls are open until Friday!

I truly don’t understand this guy. I get being counterintuitive and provocative and trying to make people “think again” or whatever, but come on … really?

In the end, perseverance, the ability to absorb defeat without falling into defeatism, is the key to Palin’s character. It’s what makes her run in both senses of the word and it is no accident that the physical act of running is throughout the book the metaphor for joy and real life. Her handlers in the McCain campaign wouldn’t let her run (a mistake, I think, even at the level of photo-op), no doubt because they feared another opportunity to go “off script,” to “go rogue.”

Dude, she was a governor and she quit her job. I don’t care if jogging is a metaphor for “joy and real life,” or if shooting wolves from a helicopter is a metaphor for despair and repealing the estate tax– this woman is stone-ass-crazy. Talk to her for thirty minutes about ANYTHING OTHER THAN ALASKA and get back to me.

Stanley Fish is nuts. It reminds me of that old saying: “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Give a man a Stanley Fish essay, drive him mad for a lifetime.”

How did I miss this one?

Do I believe any of (Going Rogue)? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that (Palin) does, and that her readers feel they are hearing an authentic voice. I find the voice undeniably authentic …. It is the voice of small-town America, with its folk wisdom, regional pride, common sense, distrust of rhetoric (itself a rhetorical trope), love of country and instinctive (not doctrinal) piety. It says, here are some of the great things that have happened to me, but they are not what makes my life great and American. (“An American life is an extraordinary life.”) It says, don’t you agree with me that family, freedom and the beauties of nature are what sustain us?

If your only goal in writing cultural criticism is to make tweedy people at faculty parties sputter in bewilderment at your latest steaming pile of disingenuousness, maybe you should quit academia and spend more time in “small-town America,” absorbing all their “common sense” and non-doctrinal piety (whatever the heck that is, it sounds like a foot condition).

Stanley Fish, I love you! Keep doing what you do, and maybe we’ll all learn to “think again!” (Or is that the Atlantic’s motto? Sometimes I get my counterintuitive oracles confused.)

Please don’t forget to vote in this week’s PUNCHLINE POLL!

Last week’s winning punchline is still polling strong at 76%! We may have a historic back-to-back victory blowout on our hands!

Here are the results as of 2:52 PM:

Punchline #1: “If Bill Kristol says America can still ‘win’ in Afghanistan, then they can. That guy’s right about everything.” (Last week’s winner.) (76%, 454 Votes)

Punchline #2: “I’m a Martian; what do I care?” (4%, 22 Votes) (You people are crazy; this is the best punchline, this should be crushing. –ed.)

Punchline #3: “The sooner the American empire crumbles, the sooner we can invade and eat their McMansions, which are like hamburgers for us because we’re Martians.” (8%, 45 Votes)

Punchline #4: “I bet Fluu’gorb 5,000 Martian-dollars that China would dominate the 21st century, so it’s in my interest for America to descend into hysteria and over-leveraged military boondoggles. SCORE.” (12%, 73 Votes)

Head over to the polling place to read the joke and cast your vote! Ballot tampering encouraged!

Polls close tomorrow (Friday) …

Reader JW responds to my post about the unexpectedly strong showing of last week’s winning punchline in this week’s Punchline Poll:

I voted for the incumbent punchline both times, but that’s only because of weak opposition. Did Bill Clinton really beat the Republicans in 1996? Or was Dole just a weak candidate? Questions to think about ….

“Weak opposition?” Are you kidding? One of this week’s candidates is “I’m a Martian; what do I care,” which has gotta be one of the greatest punchlines ever!

Meanwhile, the incumbent is winning at 85%!

Democracy is a dangerous thing. Will someone PLEASE stuff the ballot box before polls close this evening? I need an army of amoral agitators to keep pulling the lever for “I’m a Martian; what do I care,” which is Punchline #2 on your ballot.

THANK YOU.

Multiple readers have sent in links to this article.

It seems google.com, the famous search engine, is entering the URL shortening business. Hoo boy, they must be really bored over there at google HQ. Do they really think they can take on my URL shortening service?

Look at their dorky URL: http://goo.gl/

Do they really think people will use that link? How do you even pronounce it? Maybe if it was called
http://urlshorteningserviceforgoogle.com or
http://urlshorteningserviceprovidedbygoogle.com

… but both their domains are still available. WAY TO GO, GOOGLE.

I guarantee that by the end of 2010, people will know me as “The Google Killer.” Because I’m about to perpetrate a heinous act of googlecide.

Looks like our incumbent punchline won last week’s Punchline Poll handily.

Maybe too handily … 85% is a suspiciously strong showing for an incumbent in an election with three challengers. That’s like Saddam Hussein territory. I smelled a rat.

So I did a little digging and found this.

Should we call in the UN to monitor the next Punchline Poll?

When’s the last time you had fun on New Year’s Eve? When you were 11 years old? Me too. New Year’s Eve is a horrible holiday. Actually I’m not even sure it is a holiday. It’s more like a societally-mandated festival of frustrated expectations (kinda like this health-care bill, am I right or what people).

But this year will be different. Blog reader and cultural go-getter SM is organizing a massive show/party at 92nd St Y’s Tribeca location. (Tribeca is one of the hippest neighborhoods in New York.)

I’m performing some “ha-ha”-type material along with about 10,000 other performers. There will be live music and conceptual art(?) and all sorts of culture flying every which way!

Come to this fun show! I think there’s even a party with DJs and karaoke (YES) afterwards.

Performers Include:
David Rees (Get Your War On) (that’s me)
Emily Flake (Lulu Eight ball)
Lianne Smith
Marykate O’Neil
Cat Martino
Deborah Johnson light show/space transformation
The Psychasthenia Society’s Jon Keith Brunelle and Daniel Vatsky
Video from Patrick Borelli
Griffin Newman
Daisy Rosario
Tony Carnevale
Ed Illades
Louie Pearlman
Bob Acevedo
Shannon Manning
…and many more, including surprise guests!

Let’s do this! Let’s have a fun New Year’s Eve we can all feel good about.

It’s that time of year, folks: Time to review the decade and summarize all its variegated glories and tragedies!

LIST #1: DECADE IN REVIEW: TRENDS

10. New cars
9. Computers and all the things they do
8. Countries fighting
7. Politics
6. MP3s
5. Cable news going so crazy
4. Space missions(?)
3. Y2K
2. Terror
1. Joe Lieberman, greatest hero of the decade.

Here are the biggest economic stories of the 2000s:

10. Money
9. How much is your house worth?
8. 401(k)s
7. The stock market
6. Banks and how we all benefit when they do well
5. Stamp collecting
4. The new state quarter coins
3. The deficit
2. Lotteries and casinos
1. Online billpay

From CGI to MTV, the 2000s saw an incredible growth in the movie-magic-making industry. Here are my picks for the TOP TEN MOVIES OF THE DECADE:

10. Action
9. Mystery/Thriller
8. Musical
7. Comedy
6. Documentary
5. Romantic/”Woman Films”
4. Horror
3. Indie
2. Animated
1. Drama

The 2000s were a unique decade for celebrities. From reality television to sex scandals to political controversy, we saw celebrities at their best– and worst.

Here is the definitive list of the most intriguing celebrities of the decade:

10. Actors
9. Politicians
8. International authors
7. Pop stars (female)
6. Religious leaders
5. Athletes (male)
4. Children who do strange things
3. TIE: Athletes (female) / Pop stars (male)
2. Reality show people
1. Actresses

From Sonic the Hedgehog to Wii Tennis, the 2000s will forever be remembered as the decade when everyone was playing video games.

Here are my picks for the TOP 10 VIDEO GAMES OF THE DECADE:

10. Fighting games
9. Flying games
8. Maze games
7. Phone games
6. Cute creature games
5. M.M.P.O.R.P.G. games (”Massive Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Game” games)
4. Puzzle games
3. First-person shooter games
2. Typing/Word games
1. Imitation sports

Someday, when people talk about the 2000s, they’ll talk about all the great food we ate.

From ice cream to chicken fingers, we ate it all.

Here is the definitive list of the TOP TEN FOODS OF THE DECADE:

10. Ice cream
9. Spinach
8. Ethnic food
7. Potatoes
6. Freedom fries
5. Soup
4. Tomatoes
3. Beans
2. Spaghetti
1. Chicken fingers

MNFTIU.CC EXCLUSIVE! Nobody else has this list. The 2000s were a decade of dreams. Scientists who study dreams, known as dreamologists, say that this decade saw more dreams than any other decade in human history.

Here is the definitive list of the TOP TEN DREAMS OF THE DECADE ACCORDING TO SCIENTISTS:

10. Flying
9. In school with no pants
8. Car won’t start/stop
7. Yelling at Mom but she’s also somebody else
6. TIE: Osama bin Laden laughing / Everyone has the same color hair
5. Misc. cute animals
4. Teeth falling out
3. Toilet exploding
2. TIE: Trying to read weird magazine / Shirt too tight
1. Current events

This is the list you’ve been waiting for! Below are the TOP EIGHT YEARS OF THE 2000s:

8. 2009
7. 2001
6. TIE: 2000/2004
5. 2003
4. 2002
3. 2006
2. TIE: 2007/2008
1. 2005

Tomorrow, Thursday 12/31, mnftiu.cc will feature the final Friday Face-Off of the decade!!!

Spread the word, it’s gonna be incredible!

Guys, let’s be honest: As much as I liked updating my blog this year, on the whole 2009 totally sucked.

That’s why Friday Face-Offs is coming out of retirement for a year-end spectacular!!!

***FRIDAY FACE-OFFS!***

This week’s Friday Face-Off is “This Year” by the Mountain Goats. Watch the original here:

First contestant up next! Let’s end the year right! Friday Face-Offs!!!

“I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me.” Basically 2009 was so insane, it has led me to post Friday Face-Offs on a Thursday! I really should call this “Thursday Face-Offs,” except that New Year’s Eve is kinda like an honorary Friday.

Anyway, let’s get things poppin’ with our first contestant! Check out the banging harmonies and adorable cockney(?) accents exhibited hereunder:

NICE! They totally shred the line about feasting and dancing in Jerusalem (2:44). By the way, where is this concert taking place? In an operating room in the fanciest, most exclusive Beverly Hills hospital? Because if that’s true, somebody needs to maybe clean that operating room a little before the next surgery.

FRIDAY FACE-OFFS! I am gonna make it to the next video if it kills me!

Okay, basically this dude is the ultimate bad-ass. He keeps pushing through this song (which is supposed to be completely emotionally shattering) in spite of everybody ignoring him and talking and chattering every which way and thereby passively stripping the song of much of its power. I used to perform acoustic-guitar songs at open mics*, and if this guy is anything like me, he’s probably distracted from his performance by thoughts like: “What am I doing, why is everyone ignoring me, why am I such a failure, why does everyone hate me, I wish I was dead.”

True, he bails eventually, but he gave it the ol’ college try, so he earns a 7th Place Friday Face-Offs medal!

By the way, do you think the camera man was pretty happy at (0:16)? What is she picking up, census forms? LOL, “the government wants to know how many people live at this coffeehouse.”

(*Don’t hate the playa, hate the game)

This is the most depressing video of all time– since when did they start using CGI on Dr. Who??? If it ain’t a monster made out of rubber and duct tape, or a space ship made out of old BBC shipping containers and sparkle paint, it has no business being on Dr. Who.

Anyway, life is all about accepting change and living with disappointment and growing and whatnot, so I guess I need to make peace with the fact that Tom Baker isn’t Dr. Who anymore if it kills me.

Friday Face-Offs!!! Ex-term-in-ate … Ex-term-in-ate …

If I was in high school, no doubt the Mountain Goats would be my favorite band. Are you kidding? All that heart-on-shirtsleeve over-emoting, all the lyrics about drinking Scotch and playing video games? In the words of one of the decade’s greatest catchphrases, “Fuhgeddaboutit.”

Stop-motion animation? Check. Multi-track vocal harmonies? Check. Extended shots of high school building? Check. This video couldn’t be more awesomely high school if it came with a diploma.

LOL, is this guy feeling it very hard? LET’S DO THIS.

In the comments to this video, haters are saying this guy looks like Stephen Hawking when he sings. Then another commenter says this: “Awesome cover. Btw, screw everyone else, I love the head bob. Real emotion is music is what it’s all about.”

Is there anything more invigorating than a youtube commenter telling a video’s poster to ignore the haters? ANSWER: NO.

I also like the very, very end of this video, because he puts down his guitar and then for a split second it looks like he’s debating whether to smash it against the wall.

Friday Face-Offs! “Real emotion is music is what it’s all about.”

From “Whaddya know?” to “Ya don’t say,” the 2000s will be remembered as the decade when catchphrases were king.

Here are the TOP TEN CATCHPHRASES OF THE DECADE:

10. Ya don’t say!
9. Are you for real?
8. If something does or doesn’t happen, the terrorists will win!
7. I’ll believe it when I see it!
6. Fuhgeddaboutit!
5. No way!
4. TIE: You gotta be kiddin’ me!/Pimpin’ ain’t easy!
3. Tell me about it!
2. Did you like that movie or what?
1. It’s all good!

This song really starts rocking at 0:23. I can’t decide what I think of the vocalist’s style, but I looove the beat. Sometime around 3:00, the tambourine player basically goes into Keith Moon mode with those insane triplets.

Video’s not bad, either …

Friday Face-Offs! Two more videos if it kills me!

Okay, I’m cheating, and hardcore FFO-heads will probably sue my ass, but this is my party so I’ll do what I want … gotta give this week’s FFO 2nd Place Medal to my favorite music video of the year:

This video is like the elixir of eternal life for me.

Friday Face-Offs!!! WINNING VIDEO IS NEXT!!!

What can I say?

Thanks for a great year, everyone! See you in 2010 …