If you’re a student of culture, a number of things have likely piqued your curiosity; like why so many modern people get drunk about ancient religous stuff.   Take Mardi Gras, for example – go to any Mardi Gras celebration and 98% of people there will be Protestants, so they haven’t fasted for Lent in over 400 years, and 85% won’t know why they are getting drunk at all, but they still act like they are getting ready to starve for 40 days – if by starving we mean not having yards of beer for 11 straight hours.  

It’s a real mystery but at least it gets people thinking about religion and its relationship to Brazilian strippers.

A few weeks later, give or take, we have St. Patrick’s day, a celebration of a guy who wanted to drive out pagan head dresses, hot wiccan chicks and drunken bacchanalia; really, everything that was great about the Celts.  Who in their right mind wants to celebrate that?

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It’s not often you can boil down complicated abstract ideas of science or culture into simple concepts everyone can understand.  Gems like “for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction” don’t come along every day.   But every time someone asks me what science is like I simply say “You’ve seen The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.  It’s like that” and they nod knowingly.

What?  You haven’t seen it?   Read on my friends.   In a few key phrases you will know everything you need to know.  Science wisdom, as distilled by quotes from one of the greatest science films of all time (and it’s fun for Halloween too) – The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. It’s also PG and totally safe for older children, unless your kid is prone to irrational fear of Skeletorama-motion plastic props and utters sentences like …

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Presidente del Gobierno Jose Luis Rodri­guez Zapatero of Spain said the Spanish Republic has decided to celebrate Cinco de Mayo by revoking Mexican independence:

“It has always been a common misperception that the 5th of May is a celebration of Mexican independence from Spain. This is not correct, is is actually a celebration of victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, but we know that no one can really be proud of defeating the French so the mistake is understandable. In truth, we never agreed to Mexican independence anyway so we are simply revoking it.”

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Sometimes people think that, because I write this column for peanuts, I am somehow available for free science consulting services. Obviously this is not the case but I don’t mind the occasional question, especially if it concerns real puzzles like how a car in China doesn’t cause global warming but a car in America does.

Lately I have been pestered with questions about this whole Christmas thing. It’s a troublesome issue, I agree, but I am not in the free science business so most of the questions I just ignore – however, one of the many,many,many (not that many – Lady Scientist ) groupies that flitter about me on the internet caught my attention recently with their query about Yule physics because they had the creativity to put it in seasonal rhyming form;

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I guess the NY Times is just discovering that Halloween is the perfect time for women to let out their inner tramp.

Men knew this. Hell, we invented Halloween many years ago for no other reason than to get Celtic women out of those ill-fitting robes and into some cool outfits.

Even seeing that picture makes me feel all piratey. If she were here I’d totally make her surrender her booty.

“It’s a night when even a nice girl can dress like a dominatrix and still hold her head up the next morning,” said Linda M. Scott, the author of Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism and a professor of marketing at the University of Oxford in England.

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Sometimes people think that, because I write this column for peanuts, I am somehow available for free science consulting services. Obviously this is not the case but I don’t mind the occasional question, especially if it concerns real puzzles like how a car in China doesn’t cause global warming but a car in America does.

Lately I have been pestered with questions about this whole Christmas thing. It’s a troublesome issue, I agree, but I am not in the free science business so most of the questions I just ignore – however, one of the many,many,many (not that many – Lady Scientist ) groupies that flitter about me on the internet caught my attention recently with their query about Yule physics because they had the creativity to put it in seasonal rhyming form;

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Groundbreaking – and heartwarmingly unessential – research done by University of Central Florida physics professor Costas Efthimiou has attempted to confirm what a generation of suicide girls has always feared – that vampires do not exist.

His reasoning? On Jan 1, 1600, the human population was just over 530 million people. If one vampire existed on that day and bit one person per month, and then each new vampire also bit one person per month, by 1605 the entire planet would be nothing except vampires.

Now, I am okay with there being no vampires, though I think the world would be poorer without that cinema classic, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter.

And, without vampires, I would not be able to spend 4 seconds scouring the internet and find pictures like this:

I got hopped up on insurance recently, probably due to the fact that I changed companies about two years ago and recently discovered that, should I die in a horrific flaming car wreck surrounded by large-breasted women with Bonepony’s “Stomp Revival” in all 6 slots of my 6-slot CD changer, their insurance policy on me doesn’t pay squat.Why would family members cut the brakes to my car if there’s nothing to inherit? I can’t expect to be liked on personality alone so ‘inheritance’ is something I want my kin to be muttering when they think about me.

Insurance policies require blood tests and such and they sent a nice lady over to see me to handle all of that. Sweety asks me how it went.

“I guess it was fine,” I say.

“What was your blood pressure?”

“120/80.”

“That’s normal, right?”

“I am never sure. On charts it shows 120/80 and down is normal but 120-139 is pre-hypertension. Either way, I think I am okay.”

“What else do they do?”

“They take a blood sample and a urine sample.”

“Did it hurt?”

“The urine sample? No, she held it very gently.”

Silence. I know what is happening; she is giving me the look. You know what look I mean. The look that is supposed to tell me it is Valentine’s Day. Like I don’t know. I am the one who had to go to Target to buy her that $4 box of candy.

“24 hours. That’s all I ask.” She says. She means 24 hours without a reference to another woman’s vagina or sex acts with other women. Especially deviant sex acts involving urine. Even as a joke.

“But if I stop making those jokes today you’d just expect it again tomorrow.”

“You are not around that much. I just want to see if you can do it for one day.”

Thus I have decided that, in the spirit of romance, I will make the effort. So here you go, people. 24 hours of humor without reference to supermodels, vaginas or cocaine.

Sweety, I hope you are happy. I won’t make my $.05 on Google AdSense today because those jokes are the only reason people bother to read my blog.

Number of times any girl has grabbed my butt like that? 0. Number of times my butt has been way better than Seal’s? 8 bazillion.