I have some very important news! The second season of the Saint Gasoline podcast is starting up this week!

First of all, you’ve probably noticed there are new blog entries. This means that, yes, I will be blogging again.

But what about the podcast? Well, there will also be a podcast! The podcast will essentially be an extended version of my blog posts for that week, with slight improvisations and additional content/musings from yours truly. So the podcast will be just a slightly extended version of the blog posts, with additional crap coming out of my mouth as filler! Yum! Crap filler is my favorite!

What this means is that you can choose to either READ the content or LISTEN to the content. Everyone wins! Except people who are blind and deaf. Then…well, that just sucks. I’ll try to work on creating a tactile version of the podcast for you blind/deaf folk, but that could prove uncomfortable for both of us.

TL;DR: Now you don’t have to hear my voice if you hate my voice, and you don’t have to read this font if you hate this font! Right on!

Typically, the only way to damage the image of a breast cancer awareness organization would be to prove that it had once strangled several puppies and then damaged many priceless works of art by flinging said puppies at the art. (Flinging the puppies at art is essential, as merely strangling puppies could be justified simply by shouting “We save lives!” to distract people and then wildly brandishing pink ribbons at them.) But Susan G. Komen for the Cure—an organization renowned for giving those with breast cancer hope that anything is possible—has indeed shown us all that anything is possible by causing a deluge of anger without even strangling one puppy. The outrage resulted from Komen discontinuing funding to Planned Parenthood for their breast cancer screenings, with the rage mainly spread by the many women who use Planned Parenthood for healthcare services and by pro-choice advocates.

Before these events unfolded, Komen was perhaps best known for its sponsorship of strange, sadomasochistic events called “Race for the Cure” in which apparent masochists endured grueling foot races that could make even a breast cancer patient wince and be glad the chemo prevents her from engaging in such self-destructive, painful, and irrational behavior. Komen was also known for plastering pink ribbons everywhere, and some have argued that Komen is less a breast cancer charity than a factory for ribbons. They’ve put their little ribbons on cereal boxes, football jerseys, car bumpers, cans of soup, soup itself, dog houses, dogs, wild animals, domesticated animals, mules, etc. In their efforts to raise awareness of breast cancer, they have drowned our country in breast cancer awareness. Whether you’re eating a bowl of soup, visiting a petting zoo, knitting, or participating in a healthy game of shuffleboard, you cannot avoid being reminded of breast cancer. Even if you’d rather not think about breast cancer for one second, there is no avoiding these dreaded pink ribbons, which lurk around every corner on every object to constantly remind you that terrible things, like cancer, happen in this godless, empty universe that is devoid of purpose or meaning and that ultimately death awaits us all. And sometimes you’d rather not have these thoughts while petting a goat at the petting zoo. But Komen, with its surplus of pink ribbons, does not care if your child is crying and terrified of getting breast cancer in an uncaring universe because it was reminded of death by seeing a pink ribbon pinned through a goat’s skin. All they care about is that their organization is known, that it gets donations, and that people for some reason think that cancer can be cured by running marathons. However, owing to Komen’s disastrous decision to defund Planned Parenthood, Komen is now best known for taking away healthcare services from the underserved and needy—the women who rely most on Planned Parenthood—rather than for being a ribbon factory that sponsors charity runs. Now the only race Komen will be sponsoring is the Komen Race Away from This Organization for the Cure half marathon, a race for which record speeds are expected.

When the news first broke, Komen insisted that the decision was not politically motivated. “We decided to defund these baby-murder factories that train women to become slutty whores for totally apolitical reasons,” said a Komen spokesperson. “Our organization had recently instituted new rules for funding eligibility, which were: 1) The organization could not be under congressional investigation, 2) the organization could not have murdered countless babies in a holocaust of the unborn, and 3) the organization could not pass go and could therefore not collect $200.” However, the reason given for defunding Planned Parenthood, that the organization was under congressional investigation, was quickly challenged by everyone online who happened to run a blog or a podcast, which was ostensibly everyone. It was noted, for example, that Komen gave money to Penn State, which is also under investigation as a result of the infamous Paterno/Sandusky debacle in which it was revealed that Penn State secretly offered coaches a Minor in minors. It was also revealed that the current vice president of Komen, Karen Handel, is a failed politician with a known pro-life stance and grudge against Planned Parenthood, preferring parenthood to be completely unplanned because after all, it’s not as if something as important as bringing a new life into the world is a decision that should be made with lots of planning, and is instead a decision best made while drunk and lustily throwing yourself at a guy you just met in the parking lot of the bowling alley.

As these facts emerged, Komen was roundly and swiftly criticized all over the Internet. Even worse, after suffering a terrible blow to its image among pro-choice advocates, Komen then reversed its decision and decided to restore funding to Planned Parenthood, thereby pissing off the pro-life contingent that had been their only remaining supporters.

For now, Planned Parenthood will receive the funding from Komen, but it isn’t clear that this will continue in the future, owing to the fact that Komen is run by pro-life fucktards who may pull the funding at any time for silly politicized reasons that ultimately harm women’s health. Komen’s funding of Planned Parenthood could also be jeopardized by the fact that in another six months Komen will probably have no money left to give out as funds, and will instead be out on the street pandhandling, assuring passersby that they just need some spare change, even pennies will do, so they can catch a bus and visit their five very ill children and in no way will this money be spent on liquor or their terrible addiction to ribbons.

TV critics, FCC commissioners, and homeless people eating moldy pudding out of a dumpster have all unanimously described the latest unaired episode of Fear Factor as “the most disgusting thing ever,” with the FCC commissioner adding, “and this is including that one time I accidentally licked a cat’s anal glands.” But what could possibly provoke such disgust and outrage for a TV show that makes eating testicles seem like a familiar routine on a normal Tuesday?

As it turns out, NBC declined to air the latest episode of Fear Factor because contestants were made to do something so horribly disgusting that executives weren’t sure the episode wouldn’t cause New York to be swept out to sea in a stream of mass projectile vomit. In the unaired Fear Factor episode, contestants were made to do something far worse than eat worms dipped into vats of shit; they were made to sit through an entire episode of Fear Factor.

At first, the contestants hesitated. One contestant’s finger hovered over and tentatively pressed the “play” button, but as soon as the first chords of the Fear Factor theme song were sounded, the contestant quickly retched, vomiting up the various insects and genitalia he had devoured in previous rounds, and refused to continue.

“You can make me eat worms. And you can make me get into a vat full of cockroaches. And you can even connect a tube from my mouth to my ass so that I shit into my mouth and then eat my shit and poop out my shit in a never-ending cycle of rebirth. But this is too far,” said one of the contestants after host Joe Rogan told (or rather yelled, owing to a genetic disorder in which he’s unable to control the volume of his voice) the contestant he’d have to watch an entire episode of Fear Factor in order to win. “You have to understand, Joe,” continued the contestant, tears streaming down his face in sadness or perhaps as a result of the few seconds of Fear Factor he had watched, “I wouldn’t be able to look my children in the face if I went through with this. I would lose my dignity if I did this.” He wiped some stray giant Amazonian cockroach testicle pieces from the corner of his mouth. “And if there’s one thing I can’t give up, it’s my dignity.” He then bowed his head and walked off stage, carefully stepping around the buckets full of rotten fish heads as he did so.

As is customary, Rogan then offered the remaining contestants vast sums of unattainable wealth if they would only defile themselves in an unimaginable way. But still, none would agree to lower themselves to such a degree that they’d watch an entire episode of Fear Factor. Joe Rogan himself, who suffers from a genetic disorder making him unable to feel pain or emotion, even began to retch as he exhorted the contestants in an increasingly wavering voice to please watch the episode of Fear Factor. It is rumored that Rogan is the only person capable of hosting the full duration of the show because of his excessive cannabis use that deadens his senses and his daily forays into a sensory deprivation tank wherein he curls up into a fetal position for hours and tries his best to burn away the memories of his hosting duties.

In general, Fear Factor justifies its extreme and disgusting practices by citing obscure cultures in which these activities are normalized. If the task is to eat frog ovaries, producers will point out that the ancient Mayans frequently dined upon frog ovaries as a precious delicacy when they weren’t cutting out each other’s hearts. If the task is to drink fermented yak piss, the producers will point to the nearly vanished tribe of Yitsuishi now living in a small region in Brazil and suffering from bacterial infections and near-extinction no doubt caused by their tradition of drinking fermented yak piss. However, the producers could find no cultures that would watch an entire episode of Fear Factor. Even the brave Yitsuishi, induced into a feverish, infection-induced trance of religious fervor from consumption of yak urine, could not be coerced into watching an episode, choosing instead to flay themselves with whips and castrate themselves with primitive instruments of flint. And in American culture, Fear Factor is never watched all the way through. It survives only in short clips on Youtube, as even strong-willed Americans desensitized to reality television schlock can only handle this type of thing in small bits and pieces.

Naturally, this is not the first time Fear Factor has courted controversy. The last time, it was in the news because NBC refused to air an episode in which a contestant drank donkey semen. Prior to that, there was a bit of a dust-up over an episode in which white supremacists were made to touch the soft, ebony skin of a real-life black person. And before that there were the episodes in which contestants were forced to read War and Peace rendered entirely in Comic Sans and Papyrus fonts, to eat food from Hooters without the pleasant and palate-distracting presence of large orbs of female secondary sexual characteristics, and to spend over 16 minutes in the presence of Newt Gingrich.

Aside from the controversies generated by individual episodes, Fear Factor itself, as a show, has also been heralded as one of (possibly two of) the signs of the Apocalypse and as the progenitor of today’s ubiquitous and much-maligned “reality television.” Prior to Fear Factor’s emergence, television rarely featured the consumption of any genitals at all, and people making out with large, rainforest-dwelling insects was something you could find only on pay-per-view or in David Lynch films, if at all. Now, of course, that TV executives have realized the relative inexpensiveness of producing a show in which people are made to eat dicks, such sights are common fare on primetime TV. A typical evening on NBC could now easily be mistaken for a poorly designed community college course in animal husbandry, Sex Ed., and the history of the city of Hiroshima from 1945-1949 somehow all intertwined into a mass of unintelligible schlock, with Joe Rogan (a man with a rare genetic disorder that causes him to host Fear Factor) as the extremely loud professor.

When questioned by reporters, an NBC executive reportedly said, “At the present moment we have no plans to air the episode of Fear Factor in which contestants watched Fear Factor, on our lawyers’ advice.” He paused. “The episode with the donkey semen, however, is still a possibility, pending the results of the paternity test.”

I won.

This Halloween, the trick-or-treaters won’t be knocking on my door—because I’M THE ONE WHO KNOCKS!

If you can’t tell who I am dressed as, then clearly you do not watch Breaking Bad, and clearly you have not been exposed to the best character ever invented: Walter White (aka Heisenberg). Any kids who can guess my costume will get some cherished blue rock candy along with their Snickers bars.

In lieu of writing more, I’ve decided to start podcasting. I already have everything set up and ready to go, and all I really need to do now is finish editing what I’ve recorded and record a few more stories. I will still post the occasional blog entry, but I suspect most of my creativity and writing will be spent on the podcast.

What is the Saint Gasoline podcast? It will essentially be just like the Saint Gasoline blog, except with my annoying voice! I will report on my usual topics of interest—science, politics, skepticism, and all sorts of other news items—being sure to add the special touch that is my immature sense of humor to each and every piece. Occasionally I may present crappily performed skits or interview people, but mostly this is going to be a one-man show.

For the first segments of the podcasts, I will comment on news items that interest me, hopefully in a manner that you find amusing. The next segment will consist of me ranting about whatever happens to be stuck in my craw at the moment. Although if something is stuck in my craw, the rant will usually be about what’s stuck in my craw. I’m not sure what other segments I’ll include later, but for now this will be the basic structure of the podcast. If you have any ideas or suggestions about what you’d like to hear from me, let me know!

I expect to have the first episode up by Monday, June 6, and from then on out I’ll try to have a new episode out every Monday. This may or may not last very long depending on how long I can stand to listen to my own voice and whether I’m any good at talking for extended periods to someone other than my imaginary friend Larry.