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The Sports Guy has his Levels of Losing. Last night, I found myself with the time, motive and opportunity to spend hours pondering if there is a similar metric to be applied to vomiting. I came up with the following, from least unpleasant to most:

1. The Old College Try
Inspired by the rapid consumption of too much beer in too little time, TOCT hardly qualifies as being unpleasant, especially when there is a powerbooting competition involving distance to be resolved. At my alma mater – never won a football game, never lost a party – TOCT wouldn’t even slow the girls down. When the dog bites you, bite right back.

2. The Roman Banquet
My brother was infamous for overeating whenever Mom served spaghetti, which until he was twelve or so inevitably led to a extended trip to the bathroom. Nevertheless, this didn’t slow him down the next time. I’m not much given to overeating myself, but there were a few times in high school when Big Chilly and I would make a giant batch of chocolate chip cookie dough and eat half of it between us. This did not always end well; personally I suspect it was more the gallons of milk that we’d drink that proved to be too much. TRB actually comes as more of a relief than anything, but it’s so appallingly gluttonous that the mere gauchery makes it worse than TOCT.

3. The Whip Master
We always knew it was going to be a brutal speed workout when we’d show up at the indoor track during the winter and see four trash barrels with plastic bags strategically placed at 50-meter intervals. I was usually the first to lose it, generally on the 6th 200, but by the time we got to 15, even old Ironguts was hunched over a barrel, doing his best to forcibly expel his liver. The day we did 17 sub-30 200s was the only time I thought I might actually cry and beg for mercy during a workout. Still, the vicious assault on your innards is only one part of the overall body agony, which ranges from burning lungs to cramping legs and spasming buttocks.

4. Fangs of the Worm
For many, it’s tequila. For me, it’s straight vodka. I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to smell it and the mere thought of it is enough to make me gag. Sake, too, is on my personal list of Very Bad Things. I don’t know why hard alchohol tends to leaves a permanent mark in a way that beer does not, but regardless, anyone who has truly experienced FOTW will flee in terror before risking a repeat experience.

5. The Tummy Bug
These can be nasty, since they’ll often hit the victim at both ends. The only redeeming factors are that TTBs tend to pass quickly and except when they force one to serve their purposes, one doesn’t feel all that bad… until the next round hits.

6. A Chef Called Wormwood
I’d only experienced food poisoning once before last January. I remember thinking that the chicken tasted a bit dodgy that night, but foolishly put it down to an English chef’s inept fish sauce. On the bright side, spending the evening establishing a close and personal relationship with my hotel room toilet did get me out of a dinner that promised to be mind-numbingly dull. And it didn’t leave me too incapacitated to play Total War: Medieval, so that worked out all right even if it left me looking like a leftover zombie from the Day of the Dead cast.

7. The Snake In The Belly
This is TTB on steroids. I didn’t even feel nauseous last night, merely an uncomfortable roiling which made me wonder if there was a snake sliding around my insides. It turned out that it was a boa constrictor and an ill-tempered one at that. It literally felt like being picked up off the floor and wrung out at the waist; I’ve never found myself sweating from the mere physical exertion of it before. On the plus side, my abs look smashing this morning and I really believe it could be marketed to the bulimic elements in the fitness crowd as a two-in-one product. Just simply brutal.

But not the worst I’ve ever experienced, which was a combination 4+6. A very badly timed sequence of events left me in the customary position, which was soon exacerbated by the Taunt of All Time, to which I was subjected by my housemate. We had been assigned to live together in faculty housing for some reason or another; he was a good-looking guy and complete social zero who did fine with the girls until he opened his mouth. He also hated me with a deep and abiding passion that I have not seen since. Apparently he had managed to keep his mouth shut long enough to attract a curly-haired Tri-Delt, and he escorted her to his bedroom before popping his head in the bathroom to express his heartfelt sympathies for my dire plight.

“I just want you to know that while you’re busy doing that in here, I’ll be having sex with her in there.”

Even in the depths of my momentary Hell-on-Earth, I had to appreciate his ruthlessness in twisting the knife so savagely. In all the years that have passed, I’ve yet to encounter a more perfectly vicious cut.

Morgan is still finding it hard to accept the truth:

Oh, as an aside, Vox, another reason I have a hard time buying your argument that you don’t *really* want to be published in the mainstream is because of your reaction to the failed syndication of your column. You’ll probably say now that you don’t really care that the syndication fell through, but the fact that you even tried to get syndicated is proof that you do really wish you had a forum beyond this blog.

What Morgan and almost everyone who reads my political column don’t realize is that the most recent and failed syndication by Universal Press Syndicate was the THIRD time I was nationally syndicated. Fourth, actually, if you want to stretch the definition.

The first time was with Chronicle Features, which syndicated my game review column back in 1992. They only managed to place it in 13 newspapers, ranging from the Boston Globe and Atlanta Journal/Constitution to my personal favorite, the North Bay Nugget. The reason most editors wouldn’t pick it up was because they knew that no one wanted to read about video games….

The second time was when Universal Press Syndicate bought Chronicle Features, dropped a number of their columnists and kept my video game column. Despite their supposedly greater sales power, they didn’t manage to sell it to a single additional newspaper. When they finally gave up on that syndication, the Atlanta Journal/Constitution contacted me and asked me to continue contributing to them, which I did. Some of their sister papers asked them if they could get me to agree to release the column to the Cox News Wire; I did and this is the not-really-syndication to which I referred. It’s also what saw the column appearing not infrequently in the same Star Tribune that had turned it down as a non-starter before it got started in the Pioneer Press.

So, I was extremely dubious when UPS contacted me and wanted to syndicate my WND column, seeing me as an eventual replacement for William F. Buckley. UPS only syndicates 10 columnists, including Ann Coulter, and they chose me over Eric Alterman, Jonah Goldberg and others they were considering. Since it cost me nothing to let them have another whack at it and since my column was running a strong second to Ann Coulter’s at the time, it seemed like a good idea, theoretically.

However, since I happened to slightly know two editorial page editors at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, I was pretty sure that there was almost no chance that a genuine libertarian would be allowed to crack the mainstream op/ed pages. The Dallas Morning News actually bought the column, but before the first column had even run there, they cancelled their order. UPS said that the most common reason given for rejecting the column was that the language was over the heads of their readers, so they asked me to dumb it down. As I mentioned before, I experimented with rewriting my WND column for three or four weeks, then told them that I wasn’t interested in doing so.

They finally gave up on the column about six months later when the syndicate’s editor called me and admitted that my original skepticism had been proven entirely correct, and we parted on friendly terms. He’s a good guy – a Bears fan – and I’m only sorry that they wasted a fair bit of effort on something with such a low probability of success.

As for the theorized jealousy factor, Jonah Goldberg is having 10 times the success of Malkin and Shapiro combined, and when have you ever heard me harsh on him? While I certainly disagree with him on a number of issues, he’s not a charlatan like the other two and generally deserves the reading that Ms Research-free and Captain Obvious don’t.

I write my column and this blog because I enjoy writing them; when I cease to do so, I will stop without thinking twice about it. The other thing Morgan fails to understand is that by and large, I believe the die is already cast and that Americans basically deserve what they’re going to be getting in the near future. I know very well that most people have no desire to hear what I’m saying, and I accepted that long before I wrote my first op/ed.

If I wanted a successful syndication, I’d simply write Republican talking points and slap Spacebunny’s picture at the top. I’d be getting offers to appear on Fox News within three months. But if I’m going to sell my soul, I’d much rather produce Strip Club Tycoon, hang out with loads of strippers and make 500x the money.

MSN Money on Bag Lady Syndrome:

ag-lady syndrome plagues, puzzles and, in more extreme cases, paralyzes women who want to get a better grip on their financial lives, according to Olivia Mellan, the author of “The Advisor’s Guide to Money Psychology” and a Washington, D.C., therapist who specializes in money psychology. Lily Tomlin, Gloria Steinem, Shirley MacLaine and Katie Couric all admit to having a bag lady in their anxiety closet.

“It cuts across women of all social groups; it’s not like wealthy women don’t have it,” says Mellan. “Heiresses, women who have inherited wealth, have big bag-lady nightmares because they really feel like the money came to them magically and can leave them just as magically.”

Fears of Insecurity. Women tend to be unprepared and overwhelmed when widowhood or divorce suddenly plops their financial security in their hands. If they’ve long feared they will wind up a bag lady, these transitions can feel like the nightmare is about to play out in real life. As a result, they tend to avoid money, horde money or invest too conservatively to make the money they’ll need later in life.

EH sent me this, seeing as how it underlined a point I made previously… one problem is that since few wealthy women earned their money, having usually inherited or married it, very few of them know the first thing about making more of it. Money might as well be magic or technology, as far as they’re concerned. This inherent fear of risk-taking is why women will never be economically competitive with men despite the advantage of longer lifespans, as the most common element among men of wealth is the spectacular failures, even bankruptcies, from which they have learned and come back even stronger.

But it’s quite understandable. What makes absolutely no sense is how they tend to look to the government to provide the security they crave. That would be the blithering idiocy….

Morgan demonstrates an overactive imagination

I especially love the “Christians” here who argue that Jesus really never commanded us to care for the poor.

She’s truly managed to outdo herself. This statement is nothing but a stinking pile of digested oats and hay. Morgan, do give us a SINGLE example here, just ONE! And make sure you provide the name, the date and the quote in context. I cannot recall a single example of anyone, Christian or otherwise, suggesting anything even remotely in this vein. Can anyone else?

I rather suspect she won’t be able to back it up. As usual.

The Dinosaur Media tucks its tail and runs:

The Washington Post shut one of its blogs yesterday, saying it had drawn too many personal attacks, profanity and hate mail directed at the paper’s ombudsman. The closing was the second by a major newspaper in recent months. An experiment in allowing the public to edit editorials in The Los Angeles Times lasted just two days in June before it was shut because pornographic material was being posted on the site.

The Post’s blog, open to the public since Nov. 21, was shut indefinitely yesterday afternoon with a notice from Jim Brady, executive editor of www.washingtonpost.com.Mr. Brady wrote that he had expected criticism of The Post on the site, but that the public had violated rules against personal attacks and profanity.

Since it’s demonstrably easy to weed out the unprintable, the truth is likely that the precious, sensitive journalists at the Post simply couldn’t handle knowing exactly what parts of the public actually thinks of them. Being acquainted with more than my fair share of journalists, I can tell you that a more spineless set of people are hard to imagine… they will roll over for anyone and will kiss anyone’s posterior without even being asked.

This photo of Christine Amanpour wearing a headscarf and laughing at Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s press conference tells you all you need to know about the backbone of journalists as well as the intermediate-term future of feminism.

When you can always troll the schools forboys and teenage girls:

Adrianne Hockett: Accused of having sex with a 16-year-old special-needs student in a Houston apartment she rented for the get-togethers. The boy has testified the pair would “have sex, drink beer and smoke weed.”

Amber Jennings, 31: Initially charged with having sex with a 16-year-old, the counts against the Sturbridge, Mass., woman were reduced to a single charge of disseminating harmful materials to a minor. She reportedly admitted e-mailing naked photos of herself to a former student.

Amber Marshall, 23: Northwest Indiana woman allegedly had sexual contact, including intercourse, with several students, and turned herself into authorities, telling police she knew what she did was illegal.

Amira Sa’Si, 30: Clayton County, Ga., woman remarked she didn’t think her relationship was inappropriate based on her Internet research, learning the Peach State’s age of consent is 16.

Amy Gail Lilley, 36: Inverness, Fla., woman charged with an alleged relationship with a 15-year-old girl.

Angela Comer, 26: Middle-school teacher from Tompkinsville, Ky., fled with her alleged lover, her 14-year-old male student, before being tracked down in Mexico where she planned to marry the boy. She was indicted for illegal sex acts with a minor and returned to Kentucky.

Angela Stellwag, 24: Delran, N.J., woman accused of having sex in her apartment with a 14-year-old boy she met in school.

And that’s just the As. Nothing like a little hands-on sex education in the public schools. Because it seems to run contrary to the way that normal women prefer slightly older men, I wonder there is something of a captured market situation here that allows the women to feel that they are more attractive than the open adult market would value them.

Or perhaps they are just strong independent women keen to exercise their sexual dominance over the only “men” who will accept it. I’m not even sure that this is anything particularly new, as it could merely be something that the Internet is allowing people to perceive.

It’s true, I am a sad and lonely man. I miss my dear, darling Treo. My closest companion is in for repairs, having inexplicably lost her ability to talk to me when not on speakerphone. Now I am forced to make do with a wretched Samsung, which is a tiny feat of telephonic ingenuity, but doesn’t have a Palm OS! The horror!

It’s not that I am bookless or anything, as I moved my 1GB library over to my Dana Wireless for the nonce, but it just isn’t the same. The Dana is a wonderful writing tool, but it doesn’t fit in my pocket like my Treo, which has completely changed my outlook on having to wait for people. So, I’m having to make do with a physical book on Scipio Africanus in the meantime.

On the upside, however, I am getting in form again with the arrival of my old exercise bike. It’s the only one I will use, and in combination with a PS/2, Madden 2006 and a Mitsubishi projector, it makes for the ultimate workout experience. I measured the lightscreen the other night and it’s a solid 7 feet by 5 feet, 5 inches.

Forget plasma. That’s so 20th century.

Eight more days until I get my Treo back… but who’s counting.

Nienna is considering the matter:

Seriously though, I’m beginning to think that you believe the vast majority of women are blithering idiots.

But seriously, has it occured to you to look at other cultures say…Hispanic culture/African culture etc? I don’t think it’s women who are making life difficult. There it’s men ruining things mostly through their drinking and violence.

My father told me that Mexico would be a grand place if men weren’t drinking their lives a way and beating their wives. Most of the churches are filled with women, nary a male in sight. They’re out with their mistresses. I guess it proves your point though: lack of good male leadership aids in destroying a society (or in their case, keeping it down).

Still, it’s the women there who try and the men who drink their lives away. Don’t you respect that in the slightest?

I certainly respect a man’s decision to drink his life away. There’s a long and poetic tradition of great men who have done so and better that than going postal…. Anyhow, I don’t believe that most women are blithering idiots, I believe that most people are blithering idiots. There’s certainly no shortage of evidence to demonstrate this, beginning with the move into ARMs when interest rates are at all-time lows.

But Nienna has laid her finger on the crux of the matter. One can certainly respect them for trying, and yet there’s little preventing those Hispanic or African women from improving their civilization, except for the small fact that they can’t. With the obvious exception of feminists, women do not destroy, but neither do they build. This is not to say that they have no effect, in that they can choose to inspire or hinder the builders, but a society that depends upon its women for advancement in any direction except the “progress” of bigger government is one that will soon regress to barbarism.

Ironically, the only thing that is absolutely and vitally necessary to civilization is looked down upon by many American women. They denigrate mothers as “baby factories” and men who understand demographic realities as “Neanderthals”, (particularly ironic considering that the Neanderthals died out) despite the fact that making babies and raising them is the only thing that society actually needs women to do.

And any woman who can’t understand that is a blithering idiot.

It seems Sally rather likes it:

Good morning, I thought I would log in and write a little more this morning before I started the chores around the house. I don’t have enough time in one sitting. So here is where I left off with you finishing one of your statements:

And how, I ask you, have women’s rights improved things for women? Consider some of the foremost aims of the early feminists: Divorce condemns most women to poverty because so many are incapable of providing for themselves without being handed a make-work job in government, abortion allows a woman to murder her children and slaughters a disproportionate number of girls, one of women’s first political priorities was to ban alcohol and they have used their access to education to destroy the value of a college degree. The worst thing men could do to women is to leave them to fend for themselves; even giving them influence in government is turning out to be disastrous.

Women’s rights made a much needed improvement by: Women are safer from violence and abuse from men. We have the ability to our own achievements,(1) pursue our dreams, own property, marry a man that we actually love and adore or not,(2) acquire our own wealth,(3) and basically be as independent as we choose to be. To be in control of our own life and liberty, isn’t that what everyone wants is liberty?(4) I know that if something happened to my husband I can stand on my own two feet and provide for my family.(5) My kids will be taken care of even if there is no one left to care for them but me. It is not easy to raise children by your self, but can be done. It is easier with two or more people. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a husband who helps you either. It could be your mother or father, grandmother or grandfather, aunt or uncle, sister or brother, as long as everyone agrees what is appropriate in raising a child and of course love them with all our heart. Divorce does not condemn women to poverty and with that statement I have to ask, who is the naïve one?(6) I have worked in construction and it is not hard. I use the same tools that my father uses when something is too heavy, or if I can’t force the nail out I use lever and pulleys. I think you are tripping on your own personal power. I also have had the job offer of an accounting position. In the past was traditionally a man’s position, but in the past every job with income was traditionally held by a man. That is not the case anymore. Now financial positions are held by huge numbers of women.(7) There are more women then men who are graduating from college in my area. So what are you guys doing wrong?(8) Maybe what you are doing wrong is being dumb and controlling. It shows in history with more education people have better reasoning skills. So how have women destroyed the value of an education?(9) I think you mean men have more competition in the work place, and it is too hard.  I don’t think women should become dumb just so there will be a lack in people available to work. That’s really dumb. Well, I have to get out of your time warp and get some things done around the house. I hope you continue this conversation with me I really enjoy it and find it amusing. Your openness and willing to speak your mind I find refreshing. I was beginning to think I was the only one not afraid of what others thought. I know what bothers you(10) and there is a middle ground that everyone can be happy with. You just haven’t found it and many others like you. You kind of sound like you are scared of women.(11) I am not finished with this statement either. So stop beating on your chest ape man!(12)

(1) What achievements? There’s a few good women novelists, and that’s about it.
(2) And yet fewer women marry than ever before.
(3) Thus reducing the wage rate and forcing married women who don’t want to work into the labor force.
(4) Then why do women work so hard to eliminate it for everyone? They’re already trying to ban drinking again!
(5) Yes, because widowhood meant immediate death prior to 1973, right?
(6) You are. Read the statistics.
(7) So they are counting the money made by the companies that men started. How very impressive.
(8) Not going into debt and getting a jump on the job market, it seems. Even without those college degrees, men still earn more, remember? And if you’re just going to go work at Barnes and Noble or Starbucks anyhow, what’s the point of getting an English degree first.
(9) Apparently she’s not a Women’s Studies major after all.
(10) It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
(11) Just the strong, independent ones… or so I’m told.
(12) It’s not my chest I’m beating on here.

Notice how she just blithely ignores the fact that I previously responded to all of her points. There’s a single counterpoint, if one can call it that, randomly vomited forth in a stream of what for lack of a better word I shall call consciousness, with no attempt to support any of the assertions contained therein.

Now, I’m sure Sally is a very charming lady, but she might well serve as the poster woman for why I am opposed to women’s suffrage. I daresay she’s converted a few observers too.

Wherein we learn that there is nothing more self-righteous than a man defending his errant NFL picks:

CAROLINA OVER CHICAGO

I got this one right. It’s funny though. I use pretty much the same analysis to pick all these games. How can my pick of Carolina be right and good yet my pick of Indy, Washington, and New England be bad?

Well, my first guess is because the one worked and the other three didn’t…. A 75 percent failure rate does tend to point towards a certain flaw in the analytical process.

Now I have to get on Vox a little bit here. If he or JB had actually read my article I wrote that I thought Carolina and Indy were locks but thought I was picking both Washington and New England, I wouldn’t have been surprised if both Seattle and Denver came out the winners.

Actually, the only pick that I thought was a bad one was Washington. I don’t see how anyone could have picked them after that offensive debacle in Tampa. I don’t make playoff picks because I prefer to sit back and simply take in the spectacle, but I expected New England, Indianapolis, Seattle and Carolina to win this last weekend. Now, I expect a Carolina vs Pittsburgh Super Bowl, but both championship games should be pretty good.

Anyhow, the Savant can’t seriously expect to go 1 for 8 in two years and not get ragged. That’s why they call him the BASEBALL Savant. But he can take solace in the reminder that the Sports Guy has gone 0 for Carolina’s last 11 games… let’s just say that if Simmons picks Seattle there will be celebrating in sexually ambiguous cheerleaderville.