Linger On...

Sometimes, you just can't get off the floor.

Well, hits have been down for the past couple of weeks. This undoubtedly has something to do with the increase in the crappiness of the material on this site. We won't embarrass ourelves further by attempting a half-assed apology. For a second, we were even tempted to go with Koch's rocksteady remedy for times when hits are down, but we couldn't scrape up the motivation for that, either.

So, one of our piss-poor compensation methods was to try and trump up the appearance of the blog. The best we could come up with was a scrolling Deep Thoughts table in our sidebar. Now kids, if you were born after 1988, you probably have no idea that Saturday Night Live was once a good show. They had classic pieces: Father Guido Sarducci, Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, Canteen Boy, Coffee Talk with Linda Richman, and the Anally Retentive Chef...

And they had this thing called "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey." Which was probably the funniest out of all of them, even though it was just a filler. Anyways, because the guy's name was Jack Handey, everybody assumed he was another fictitious SNL character.

But he wasn't. Jack Handey is a real person, just like you or us or Barbara Streisand.

The art of the one-liner requires finesse and grace to work properly.

He has his own wikipedia article, and we all know that you have to believe everything you read on wikipedia. Hell, they even ran one of his articles in The New Yorker... It's about various ideas of his for paintings. We think it's pretty damn funny.

He even his own website, where they publish a bunch of his deep thoughts. Some of them are pretty funny.

Read and learn, kids. You will thank us later.

"That looks just like my husband's.... JOHNSON!!!"

Tank refuses to take shit from anybody.

We have always known that Tank Johnson lived life according to his own rules. Nobody told Tank what to do; he made up his own mind. Hell, we even wrote about it a while back at The DUMB.

But after what has come to light over the past week, we have to wonder if there is a brain in that big huge head of his, or if it's just filled with malted hops and bong resin. From what we hear from Tank's neighbors, he was less than a model citizen. Reports indicate that the police were regular visitors to the Johnson residence, and allegations of "back-yard gunfire and marijuana smoke at the address" swirled. Animal control was called in several times.

This led to the police raiding Tank's house. And judging by what they found when they got there, those neighbors were right. Then, a few days after that, Tank's "bodyguard" gets killed outside a Chicago nightclub. What the hell is going on? And why does Tank Johnson need a bodyguard? What is he afraid of getting attacked by, a shark riding an elephant?

Lovie Lee has benched him. No Tommie Harris, no Tank Johnson.

JOHNSON!!!

Full control of the skull.

This week's "Best Supporting Drunkard" Award goes out to Kevin Craswell of Surrey, England. Kevin passed out on some train tracks that were frequently used by commuter trains at 11 in the morning. According to eyewitnesses, he "was snoring so loudly that commuters could hear him from the platform as he lay across the tracks with his feet inches from the live rail."

Pretty solid.

Trains were canceled, electrical power to the rails had to be shut off, and hundreds of people's travel plans turned to shit.

Pc Keith Board, of British Transport Police, said: "It was remarkable that he wasn't struck by a train or fatally electrocuted. Trains had to stop running and the power was turned off so police and emergency crews could get to him."

Another officer, Pc Graham Cottington, said: "If he had moved his leg one foot, he would have touched the live rail and there's 750 volts going through that. He would certainly have died."

Kevin is looking at some potential prison time at the big house, but luckily for him it seems that he has a bang-up lawyer who puts up a pretty strong defense case: "He had drunk a substantial amount of vodka and has no recollection of this incident."

Yup, that sounds like one heck of a lawyer.

Frankie Piscopo's pet monkey looks for someone to fling some poo at.

Our friend Casey does a great job over at monkeydaynews. Everybody knows that. But he found one exceptionally good story, so exceptional we had to mention it. Apparently, Frankie Piscopo's pet monkey escaped from home while mourning the loss of her hetero life-partner. While on the loose, she was spotted in several areas, but soon she started visiting the retards and hyper-hypo's down at Magnolia House. The monkey's daily visits, wandering around the grounds of the mental health facility, soon became a small hit and caused quite a commotion.

The manager of the center, Charlotte Wooten, says that the monkey has been causing quite a rumpus amongst the residents: "We've been excited. I was excited all day yesterday, especially after I got some really good pictures. We've all been walking around three days with cameras in our pockets."

However, Ms Wooten and the monkey did have an awkward moment: Ms. Wooten claimed that she "went outside to take some pictures of Maggie on Wednesday, but when the monkey turned and looked at her, they both ran."

Another Red-Light Nightmare

Borat enjoys drinking fermented horse urine.

At first, the entire nation of Kazakhstan hated Borat and wanted him gone. Now, Premiere Nursultan Nazarbayev himself is using Borat's second-hand publicity to score some economic and political victories for his fine country. In a recent interview, Borat shares some of his feelings.

Q: You traveled to Washington recently, to meet with President Bush. What is your opinion of him?

Borat Sagdiyev: We in Kazakhstan very much admires mighty warlord George Walter Bush. He is a very wise and strong man - but perhaps not as powerful as his father, Barbara.

Q: After seeing your film what do you think outsiders will think of your country of Kazakhstan?

Borat Sagdiyev: That it is modern, civilized nation, where all people are treat well, even the 'strange ones'. Last April we open the Almaty Disability Centre for them - it have over 300 cages for the retards to live in, and public viewing gallery where for 10 tenge you can look on them and for 20, you can throw potatoes. Why not! They like! Kazakhstan is also now very advance in technology, especially in the space races. It our plan by 2010 to put a horse into orbit. So far the elastic band on the catapult has manage to propel the horse to a height of 300 feet. Unfortunately the horse landed on a school. No problem... It was a school for Jews...Great success. 47 crushed. They break fall of horse. He was given medal and a cheque.

Q: What do you consider your best TV-covering, 'til now? Would you like to win a prize for journalism? Borat Sagdiyev: I am hope to win oscar for 'Best Anti Jew Warrior'. I will put next to the medal I receive at 2002 Central Asian Olympics for hitting a gypsy with a potato from 50 metres. It was difficult - he was unchained.

Q: During your cultural learning of America, what has surprised you the most? Is there anything you would like to bring back to your home country? Borat Sagdiyev: I was very surprise to see that women in US and A can drive cars. This dangerous! We say in Kazakhstan that to let a woman drive a car is like to let a monkey fly a plane. We have not allow monkey to do this since the 2003 Astana air crash.

Read the entire interview over at Future Movies. It's pretty damn funny, and almost as Anti-Semitic as Mahmoud.

Bake him away, toys.

So apparently we were a little to critical of that Swedish fire brigade a couple posts ago (by the way, that giant Christmas goat has not been burned down yet and the townspeople are starting to get a little cocky - we don't like it one bit) but now we realize that we may have been a little harsh on them, considering the monumental jag that the Plainfield FD pulled off the other day.

The firemen were too busy lifting weights, watching swimsuit videos, and eating candy necklaces that it took a passerby pounding on the firehouse doors to get them to notice the warehouse next door was burning.

It was right next door! It wasn't across town, or on the other side of the tracks!!! Right next door.

So then, to add insult to injury, since all the firemen are battling the blaze next door, there's nobody left to keep the fire station from burning down. So they had to call in firemen from neighboring towns. Thankfully, nobody got hurt. But let's hope these guys are a little quicker next time.

Nice camel.

Turkish airport staff have been in hot water recently after sacrificing a camel at Turkey's busiest airport. Apparently, the maintenance crew had serviced a bunch of planes ahead of schedule, so they decided to bring in a camel and sacrifice it on the tarmac.

After being sacrificed by the maintenance guys, the camel was chopped up and the meat was divided amongst the men. This comes just weeks after Turkish Airlines was admitted into Lufthansa's "Star Alliance" of airline carriers, which makes you wonder which one of those executives is gonna get fired for this cute little display.

HPO could not confirm whether or not Zinedine Zidane was present at the camel ceremony.

Please, please.... Please.

And, finally, our last story of the day involves a brave woman named Kirsten Norman. As reported by our friends over at TSG, Kirsten got some vanity plates made as a tribute to her friend who had died of cancer. However, the incredibly bright and gifted people down at the Virginia DMV decided that her plates were "profane, obscene, or vulgar in nature", and kindly informed Kirsten that they weren't her plates anymore.

Well, Kristen refused to tolerate any of the Commonwealth of Virginia's shit, and decided to write them back a pretty damn fine fuck-you letter. Please read it. It is a very moving piece of literature.

Fight the man, Kirsten. Don't let those pirates rob you. And now, to sum up the post, here is a video of a dog skateboarding:

Hogging

This monkey owns your town.

At least, finally, someone seems to have come to their senses about the growing monkey infestation in New Delhi, India. The monkeys have taken over the city due to deforestation. And, since most Indian people consider monkeys to be descendants of the monkey-god Hanuman, they can't kill the monkeys, and instead feed them bananas, peanuts, and ice cream.

So now, according to our favorite newspaper, a top Indian court has reprimanded the city. A class-action suit filed by citizens of an infected neighborhood asked the government, "what measure were being formulated to find a permanent solution to the monkey menace in the capital?"

While this is far from stopping the problem, we here at HPO feel it is a good start. At least maybe the monkey will stop throwing poo and dropping flowerpots on people's heads...

She ain't a lady if she ain't 180...

Some people are just rednecks. Sometimes there's no other way to describe it. Some people are just hicks. After we read this story, we didn't quite know what to think. And, apparently, this sort of thing is common around those parts. We guess that's what it's like to live in West Point, Mississippi.

Here's the full story:

Man Throws 60-Pound Pig At Hotel Workers

December 7, 2006

WEST POINT, Miss. -- Pig tossing has the police stumped in West Point, Miss. Kevin Pugh, 20, was fined $279 this week for tossing a 60-pound pig over the counter at the Holiday Inn Express on Nov. 12. West Point Police Lt. Danny McCaskill said, "It must be some redneck thing."

McCaskill said no one was hurt, including the pig. He said it's silliest thing he's ever seen.

Pugh pleaded guilty Tuesday in city court to a charge of disturbing the peace. There's no evidence intoxication was a factor. McCaskill said Pugh called the incident a prank.

It's the second recent pig throwing and fourth animal tossing incident in town. Two of the incidents involved opossum.

McCaskill said he's never heard of anything like it. Pugh is also accused in an animal throwing incident at a Hardee's restaurant.

He's pleaded not guilty and is due in court later this month.

We hate Hardee's...

Parades and alcohol: A winning combination.

And, in our final story, a guy named David Allen Rogers wins the prestigious "Arrested for most things at once" Award, which is really tough to do without being completely wrecked.

David racked up "more than three dozen" charges in just twenty short minutes while taking part in a Christmas parade. David, who was driving a float with his own children on board at the time, was steaming drunk (open container in the float) and decided to pass the next float in front of him in a parade.

Now, we don't know the parade rulebook very well, but we're pretty sure that one of the most important rules has to do with not passing other floats. It's a parade, not the Indy 500.

So David's flying "down Main Street," boozing it up with a gang of terrified kids on his float, when he runs a red light, jumps some train tracks, leads the police on a long chase, and then manfully resists arrest before getting restrained.

He got hit with the kitchen sink, including DUI, resisting arrest, failure to stop, assaulting an officer, and 18 kidnapping counts.

Roger's only quote was, "I made a very bad judgment on my part."

That was during his bond hearing.

Solid.

It's almost ice-fishing time...

Modern Drunkards

We received a letter in our mailbag from long-time HPO field-man Bill Johnson, in which he strongly agreed with the management of this website in believing that the massive Swedish Christmas goat "is gonna get lit up like Dean Martin on a monday morning." We really liked that quote. We also really liked a link to a site that Bill sent us, which deals with trading cards of the all-time Top Drunks.

Judy liked the sauce.

Not surprisingly, many of the members of the Top Drunks trading cards deck were also, coincidentally, listed as "Real American Hot Pipes" by us here at HPO. There were, however, some glaring omissions to their deck of drunks, most notably Steve "White Lightning" Dalkowski. That man drank scotch-and-water like a mule plows a field: Doggedly, with a high threshold for pain.

Plus, you could call him a stand-up guy. Well, as long as not remembering half of your life counts as being "stand-up."

A mischievous monkey is always on the watch for a target to throw poo at.

A few months ago, we wrote a post about the growing monkey problem in Delhi. In case you can't remember back that far, basically the problem is that the city is overrun with troublemaking monkeys, and nobody knows how to get rid of them. They can't even be killed since monkeys are sacred in India.

Now, about 300 monkeys have been caught, but no other states or provinces will take them. Even relocating them to country forests is being vetoed, because rural villagers claim that the monkeys use their "hooligan habits" that they learned in the city to harass them.

If you're India, this is gotta be pretty embarrasing. OK, monkeys riding your public transportation, stealing kids' ice cream cones, and defecating everywhere isn't that bad, but when they manage to break into "very high security areas" of government buildings and begin "ripping up top-secret documents", the situation starts to get pretty close to the circus.

This makes you think of Mr. Teeny in some Indian National Security office, pulling nuclear missile codes out of cabinets and tearing them to shreds. Grow up, India. Really.

You Can't Roller Skate In a Buffalo Herd

That's a big fucking goat.

Winston Churchill once said, "I have taken more from alcohol than alcohol has taken from me." If we were translating this same saying to the current situation in Gavle, Sweden, it wouldn't exactly cut the mustard.

Gavle is a town with a strange Christmas tradition that has, unfortunately, turned the usually joyous holiday season into an annual display of ridicule and humiliation. Starting in 1966, a guy from Gavle came up with the brilliant idea of building a giant goat made out of straw as a celebration of the winter holidays. Unfortunately, also in 1966, another citizen of the town came up with the equally brilliant idea of burning the straw goat down.

Ever since then, the Gavle goat has repeatedly been a victim of blatant Christmas vandalism. A quick look at a timeline summary of the goat's history reveals its less-than-stellar track record:


1966 -Year one:The inaugural goat is burned down by vandals at midnight on New Year's eve.
1968 - Local children play hide-and-seek in and around the goat. It becomes a beloved landmark of the city.
1969 - The goat is burned down. Again. On New Year's eve... Again.
1970 - The goat is burned down by two "very drunk" teenagers just six hours after being built.
1971 - The townspeople, tired of the continuous vandalism, throw in the towel and don't even bother building the goat. A local school builds a smaller goat, which is kicked to pieces.
1972 - The goat collapses after being sabotaged.
1974 - The goat is burned down... Again.
1976 - A group of "local hillbillies" runs the goat over with a car.
1978 - The goat is kicked to pieces... Again.
1979 - Before it can be finished, the goat is burned to cinders... Again. Furious townspeople build and fireproof a new goat, which was kicked into pieces... Again.
1980 - On Christmas Eve, the goat is burned to the ground... Again.
1982 - The goat is burned down.
1983 - The goat's legs are destroyed.
1984 - The goat is burned down.

The Swedish Fire Brigade, exhausted after a long day of watching pornos at the fire station, is unable to save the goat from a fiery death.

1985 - Surprising everyone, the goat manages to not get burned down... Until January.
1986 - The goat is burned down again.
1987 - Despite "heavy fireproofing", the goat is burned down.
1988 - Degenrates everywhere celebrate as bookmakers begin taking bets on the goat getting burned down.
1989-1992 - The goat is burned down three years in a row.
1995 - An assassination attempt is foiled as a Norwegian is arrested before burning down the goat. The townspeople celebrate, only to have the goat successfully incinerated days later.
1997 - The goat is damaged by fireworks.
1998-2004 - Burned down seven years in a row.
2005 - Goat goes up in flames after being hit by "a flaming arrow or molotov cocktail." Police search for two men dressed as Santa Claus and the Gingerbread Man.
2006 - The townspeople suddenly become high and mighty, claiming that the goat is so well-protected that it is not being destroyed this year.

Not so fast, pissed-off Swedish townspeople... As of today, the oddsmakers are saying that it's pretty damn likely that the goat is getting burned. The odds are 11-4 that the goat will be purchasing a one-way ticket on the midnight train to slab city, and the management of this website tends to agree with them. If we were betting men, which we aren't not, we would be putting are money where our mouth is.

This year, though, you can actually watch the goat live on a basic webcam that the townspeople have set up. We will be checking in religiously to see when the goat will finally go up in smoke.

We predict December 23rd.