Let's start with the Anatomy of Putting Your Dick In Someone's Ear. This is metaphorically speaking, ladies, so feel to follow along at home.

There are moments when someone says something so breathtakingly bad, so far afield, so off the wall, so off the wall of a room somewhere on the moon of an outer planet near the giant red variable star Betelguese, just really far here, that your life to that point really hasn't prepared you to respond. Oh, you'd like to, but it's as if your long-lost 5th cousin just handed you a small jar containing a pearl necklace. Made of antimatter.

"What do I do with this?" you think. You have some inkling that something is awry, but you just have too much unexpected information to process. For instance, the now-infamous incident in my World Religions class some years ago, under dear Prof. Ralph Williams. In discussion, our TA (not, alas, Williams himself) asked why it may be that people (Jewish people) don't observe Sabbath as, well, religiously as they used to. (As this goy recalls, Sabbath is supposed to be a day of rest in observance of G_d's resting on the last day of Creation— one of the keys to this rest being not to do any work or unnecessary secular activities on Sabbath.) One of my classmates tentatively raised her hand and answered "We have so much to do these days, to go to the mall, to the movies and everything, where in the Olden Days, they didn't have much to do but sit around, so they were sort of observing Sabbath already."

I did not, as a friend later asked, "Zing her good," simply because I didn't know what to do with this particular jar of antimatter dogshit. This explosive set of pearls before swine.

She did not, per se, put her dick in my ear since she wasn't doing this on purpose. But this is the jist.

A true dick-in-ear example is last season of Michigan Football, where a reporter asked Coach Lloyd Carr, who is only restrained from frequent homicide by the syringes filled with elephant tranquilizers stuck in his back, if he regretted a call that got the Wolverines scored on. Lloyd, previously smiling, didn't answer (as is his wont), but the weight of the non-answering non-glaring suddenly non-smiling expression on his craggy face was tremendous. The reporter stumbled as Lloyd stalked off non-stalkingly; presumably he was trying to dislodge Coach Carr's dick from his ear.

Like the inevitable humor of some guy, some time, in some commercial/tv show/movie getting hit in the balls, you laugh, but you don't want it to happen to you.

So it was with great displeasure that I felt my ear canal filling while listening to NPR this last week.

Let's just not get into whether or not NPR is middle-left or far-left or neutral or what have you, in a society where socialism has no real meaning any more, and was defined by our government as "any government that views its primary responsibility to be to its citizens' welfare." (This is true.) No, this argument is a horse of an altogether different mixed metaphor. Let's get into the fact that NPR is, and perhaps always has been, a <politically incorrect part of female anatomy here>. (I don't say pussy here not for fear of the word, but for the desire to avoid further advancing a patronizing male hegemony, since this Rant has already used ear-raping as a metaphor.)

NPR is a pudenda. (Look it up— and ignore the part after "especially".)

I normally like NPR, since I believe they're tolerably better journalists than anyone else on TV or radio or print. But on this particular night, discussing the killing of 4 U.S. "contractors" (i.e. mercenaries) in Fallujah, Iraq, the host asked what should be done by the U.S. in response to the mob mutilation of the mercenaries' bodies.

So the host, his guest rent-a-general (ret.)-consultant, and some other guy, gave various milquetoast answers, trying to figure out how we can get sweet retribution without saying so, or appearing unduly warlike while getting our pound of flesh.

Go to the callers. Some guy, let's call him "Guy", proposes we order the citizens of Fallujah to bring forward those who murdered the mercs, in 15 days, and if they don't, to let all of the Fallujahanians(?) leave, and then LEVEL THE CITY AND NOT REBUILD IT. If his suggestion had got any worse, I might've had to add UNDERLINING.

This, I feel, is an antimatter turd in a jar. Let's leave aside the fact that this is a seriously ridiculous escalation of the elementary school principle of "tell me who did it, or no recess for everyone," let's leave aside the fact that we are, you know, trying to rebuild their country, let's leave aside proportionality (4 lives repaid in 200,000 exiles), let's leave aside that this is almost certainly a WAR CRIME, and let's leave aside that around 10,000 Iraqi civilians (i.e. 3 X September 11th) have died during their "liberation". . .

Oh, wait, let's not leave aside all of that stuff. BECAUSE NPR ALREADY LEFT IT ALL ASIDE FOR US. The commentators took a (polite? confused? shocked? pleased?) pause, and then asked if Guy (full name: Old Guy the Ex-Marine), if he really thought this was appropriate.

"Sure," says he. "I tell you, the Japanese didn't mess with us after Nagasaki! We have to show them we're in charge and that they can't behave like that."

(THEY can't behave like that?)

So, sure, us, the gentle listeners, we don't know what to do with radioactive, steaming antimatter turd— isn't that what journalists are for? Thank God we had NPR, who asked again if this was "appropriate," if it would work, if it would be "constructive" in the long run. . .

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

P.s. Ahh.

Some second caller commiserated with Old Lance-Corporal Sgt. Chief Guy "Bustballs" the Ex-Marine, but by that point, really, who cares. I got one ear full of Marine pudenda, why not take care of the other one while you're at it too, who'll notice? Maybe they'll look like antlers.

Did this Guy just justify a WAR CRIME with the example of killing 70,000 Japanese people 3 days after "Little Boy" made Hiroshima into a parking lot (posthumously) for over 100,000 Japanese people? (Did I just use the phrase "parking lot" to describe two mass homicides? I mean, maybe, MAYBE you could squint and justify one, but TWO mass homicides. . . But I di-rant-gress)

For those of you at home, please turn your books to

Act II: Antimatter Turds? How did you come up with that?

Having finally removed the manhood of Gen. Darth Guy Ex-Marine from the spot where he was poking me in the brain, I tuned in this Sunday to hear "On the Media" asking the hard questions of a news team that surfs the 'net, propositions men with the promise of underage sex, and then hides with film crews at agreed-upon houses where some of these prurient men have agreed to liaisons full of statutory rapey-goodness. They apparently bust out like a big "Surprise!" birthday party, assuming when you blew out your candles you wished to be on TV, with your name and address, as an Attempted Pedophile, and not, instead, for that pony your mom never got you, or, say, sex with a girl of consenting age.

So, these guys are potentially very dangerous creeps. Apparently, Law Enforcement is not doing enough about it. So thank goodness for Entrapping Vigilante Sweeps Week Reporting, led by Senior Executive Mr. Douchebag, head of Special Operations (this is the actual division staging these).

Leaving aside the fact that these stunts probably ruin the possibility of actual prosecution through entrapment and other tricky "legal" hurdles and "rights", leaving aside Vigilante Justice, leaving aside the idea that we should at least TRY to treat people unless we want to lock them up forever, except when they get out and maybe do it again, leaving aside the fact that Ruining Someone's Life may not be the healthiest way to stop them from, oh, losing everything they had to live for and perhaps becoming a career societal offender, leaving aside any of the ideals of journalism. . .

Oh, wait, NPR's already done it for us. They've Left It All Aside so You Don't Have To. Our Man on NPR felt a little "journalistically queasy." Chief Editor Smarmy Douchebag McTool "felt that way at first" but now he realizes he's "doing a valuable service." Undoubtedly a service unrelated to Sweeps Weeks.

Maybe "journalistically queasy" is GoodSpeak for "Your Dick's In My Ear."