A few months ago, I almost broke up with my girlfriend because of Netflix. Don’t get me wrong: my girlfriend is great. She is smart, funny, skeptical, beautiful, and has a vagina—four qualities I enjoy immensely, and one of which is very rarely found in women at all (hint: it’s not vaginas). However, a few months ago her choices in Netflix movies were making me reconsider our relationship.

Why would anyone break up with someone over Netflix movies? Well, what if your significant other’s movie selections revealed deep psychological problems? What if she only watched films starring Sandra Bullock? Post-Speed Sandra Bullock? Clearly, you would break up with this madwoman. My girlfriend’s movie selections, believe it or not, were worse than films featuring Sandra Bullock. (Yes, this is possible, though highly unlikely.)

It started off innocently enough. We got a Netflix envelope in the mail, opened it up, popped in the movie, and watched a nice drama about children being brutally murdered. When we finished, we sent off the movie and soon got another film in the mail. This time, it was a wholesome movie about child rape and torture. “Perhaps this is just a coincidence,” I thought to myself as I warily eyed my girlfriend out of the corner of my eye while countless children onscreen were being horrendously victimized. “Surely, once we send this movie back, we’ll get something like Lion King or some sort of romantic comedy starring Sandra Bullock, ending this madness. I never thought I’d say this, but OH GOD I HOPE THE NEXT ONE IS A SANDRA BULLOCK MOVIE.” But no. The next week’s movie was the story of a child in a concentration camp. Suddenly, it dawned on me. My girlfriend frequently told me that she loved children. I realized with dread that she was leaving out the last part of the sentence: she loved TORTURING children. Worst of all, this vile monster worked with children, seeing as how she’s in a PhD program in developmental psychology. What horrible things was this mad scientist studying? Perhaps she was studying whether children preferred being punched in the face over being kicked in the stomach. Or maybe she was studying whether infants would rather have pepper sprayed in their eyes or hot coffee spilled on their laps. Or worse yet, perhaps she was studying whether infants prefer Sandra Bullock films to minute-long submersions in ice-cold water. (They all preferred the submersion in ice-cold water.)

I did not voice any of these doubts. As the child in the movie was lamenting his plight during the holocaust, I was lamenting my plight in the child-torture-film-o-caust. My girlfriend was a sadistic, child-hating freak; at least, this is what her movie-viewing habits suggested. Why else would we be enduring three weeks’ of child torture movies? I began to feel more and more as if I should break up with this woman, but I simply couldn’t do it just yet. After all, she was smart and funny and beautiful and skeptical and had a vagina. So she has some flaws. So she likes watching children being tortured. It could have been worse. She could have liked Adam Sandler movies (which, incidentally, have been used to torture children and adults).

At that moment, though, I had an epiphany. I rushed to the Internet to look at the movies that had previously been in my Netflix queue. The first six movies were all confusing, pretentious films that made no sense at all and had little to no discernible plot. Earlier in the month, you see, I had rated Inland Empire, Synecdoche, New York, and Waking Life quite favorably on Netflix. Sometimes when you rate movies, of course, Netflix suggests movies that are similar. Naturally, being the kind of person that likes confusing nonsense with no discernible plot, I quickly added six similar movies that were suggested. I had to wonder: when we were watching six weeks’ worth of pretentious nonsense, was my girlfriend secretly eyeing me, wondering why in the fuck I took such joy in torturing people who prefer their movies to make sense and have plot structure (and possibly child torture)?

Now, of course, whenever my girlfriend’s movies seem to revolve around a common, often completely fucked up and depressing theme, I know it is not an indication of some sort of mental problem. Still, it is nice to vary the selection. No one wants to see seven weeks’ of mobster movies, or ten weeks’ of samurai films, or six weeks’ of animated science fiction romance films featuring strong female leads and at least two African elephants. (Seriously, what is with the level of detail some of these movie descriptions go into on Netflix?)

In the end, because we are both good at relationships, my girlfriend and I quickly confided our secret fears about each other. “You’re going to think I’m silly, but I was really beginning to wonder whether you were some sort of malevolent child predator,” I told her. “Oh, wow, I guess I did add a lot of strange movies in a row!” she said, laughing. “To be honest, I was beginning to think you were some sort of pretentious douchebag, given the movies that had been showing up for you!”

My smile disappeared. I actually was a pretentious douchebag. She continued: “I was also beginning to wonder about all those period-piece dramas featuring armadillos, too.”

Thankfully, to this day, my girlfriend has not realized I’m actually a pretentious douchebag. And that the large volume of period-piece dramas featuring armadillos was not actually suggested to me by Netflix.

Cognitive scientists have long known that people can be induced to feel as if a fake limb is their own. This is done by hiding the arm from the subject’s view (under a table, for example), putting the fake arm in view, and then physically stimulating the visible fake arm and the unseen real arm in an identical fashion. The human brain, being easily confused by the conflict between the visual and tactile systems, will correct this discrepancy by suddenly mapping the fake arm onto the body plan, causing people to think the fake limb is now their “real” limb. (My own mind, however, being so used to being wrong and embracing absurdities such as the belief that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, does not even attempt to resolve this conflict; indeed, if it chooses to do anything, it will often choose to embrace further absurdity and just assume, for example, that the whole damned room is my actual arm.)

Having discovered this, scientists have desperately tried to find even more ways to screw with people’s minds. For instance, Swedish researchers made study subjects feel as if a prosthetic arm were a third arm in a recent study. Not content with this magnitude of a mindfuck in the participants, though, the researchers then brandished knives menacingly at the newfound arms, just to see if the participants would have a physiological reaction, which was measured by the sweatiness of their palms (hopefully of the real arm). Needless to say, though, they could have just as easily measured the physiological responses by noting the participant’s words (e.g., “What the fuck are you doing, you crazy asshole? You make me think I have a third arm and then you fucking try to cut it?!”), their fearful and confused expressions, or their attempts to punch the researchers in the face (which often failed because they tried to punch with their fake third arm, resulting in only a phantom punch). Not surprisingly, the subjects induced into thinking the prosthetic arm was their third arm had significantly sweatier palms when the prosthetic arm was threatened with the knife than those subjects who had not been tricked into thinking the plastic arm was their own.

This research shows that a person’s body image is not limited to a body plan with only two arms, two legs, and two heads [Editor's note: the author of this article strangely has two heads]. If people can be induced into thinking they have 3 arms, perhaps they could be induced to think that they have 4, 5, or 4211 arms. However, there are limits to the body plan revisions. When the prosthetic arm was replaced with a prosthetic leg, for instance, the subjects did not suddenly think they had a leg for an arm, much to the scientist’s chagrin. (These sick fucks wanted people to believe they had a third leg where their third arm should have been. That’s just going too damned far!)

It has not escaped this author’s attention, however, that this study opens the door to several perverse opportunities. Not content with only two dicks [Editor's note: among the author's already numerous problems, this extra dick is yet another], I could use these techniques to make myself believe this oiled-up banana is my third dick, allowing me to triple the rate at which I have sex, bringing the total up to zero. And if I was doomed to loneliness, perhaps finding that women are not attracted to two-headed, three-dicked monstrosities, I could try to use these techniques to map my body image onto a more popular person’s body. There are certain Hollywood actors who have sex with hookers and women from LA (pardon the redundancy) all the time. If I were to watch them being touched all over and then simulate the exact same touch-sensations on my own body, with enough time I could possibly map my body image onto the actor’s, allowing me to finally live the dream of inhabiting an actor’s body without the attendant side effects of stupidity and scientology (again, pardon the redundancy). Of course, these possibilities still remain to be tested. And while third arms definitely seem to be a possibility, it is unclear whether thirteen thousand dicks are, much less a leg made of machine guns and arms made of Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez, respectively. Nothing will stop me from trying, though, and I simply will not stop—not for food and not for women with three-vagina body images—until I have constructed for myself an arm made of Charlie Sheen, the finest actor of our day and the finest stuff of which arms could possibly be made.

This Saturday, history was made: Republicans helped pass a proposal led by Democrats.  While some would argue that the truly historical event is the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy that resulted from the vote, clearly the real news here is that Republicans did not all band together to destroy all that is good and just in the world.  Everyone already knew that eventually gays would be able to serve openly in the military, after all.  No one could have predicted Republicans failing to obstruct a liberal proposal, though.

DADT was initially passed in the Clinton-era as a compromise between liberals and conservatives, which mandated that macho, moustached sergeants with bow-legged walks and manly grunts had to grit their teeth and restrain themselves from asking the pink boa-wearing soldier having sex with another man whether he was in fact gay, and the gay, boa-wearing soldier had to refrain from telling the quite masculine sergeant that he had sex with men.  The new policy, “Show and Tell,” would not change anything about the armed services, aside from allowing male soldiers to admit that the hooker they picked up in Thailand was, in fact, a man who just happened to look like a woman.

Months ago, the repeal of DADT looked nearly impossible, as Republicans blocked a defense authorization bill primarily because it included the repeal of DADT.  Defense authorization bills, bills that essentially allow the armed services to be paid, had been routinely passed without any qualms in the past, even in spite of additional controversial legislation that was often attached to the bills.  Frankly, the defense authorization bill could have had dead fish that reeked of sulphuric anal bursts from bovines attached to it and it probably would have passed.  The problem, of course, was that this time something worse than fish smelling of sulphuric anal bursts was attached.  This time, there was a provision that would allow gays to serve openly in the military. This weekend, though, the impossible was accomplished, and all that is required is a signature from Barack Obama to finally end DADT, which was repealed as a bill separate from the defense authorization.

Even with DADT as good as repealed, and a pentagon report showing only a low risk from repealing it, some Republicans are still shrilly insisting that ending the policy will wreak havoc on the armed forces. John McCain, for instance, said, “Today is a sad day,” and then rambled incoherently about how gays serving openly would be a “distraction” in life-or-death situations. Presumably, trained soldiers, suddenly cognizant that several of the lisping, well-groomed, fashion-forward members of their squad are homosexuals, would be so overwhelmed with this realization that they would forget they are being fired on by snipers and assault rifles while surrounded by roadside bombs. I know from personal experience that whenever I am in a life-threatening situation, such as when I’m wrestling a bear, one of the most distracting thoughts you can have is, “I wonder if this bear is gay?”  As soon as you think that, the gay bear will rip your face off, as all bears, homosexual or not, are want to do.

Gay soldiers are so deadly in military contexts, in fact, that it is difficult to explain why other countries allow gays to serve.  Some propose that these countries use the gays as deadly, glittery distractions for enemy troops.  ”What we do,” said a British general, under condition of anonymity, “is send out the queer regiment first. They then parade around in their leather assless chaps, causing the enemy to fearfully seize up and lose all power of movement.  These people are a lisping, dancing paralytic agent of such strength that any manly creature of any size, be it a Kodiak bear or a giant gorilla in a football jersey drinking a beer, inevitably falls victim to their spell and is incapacitated.”

Military scientists in Britain have detailed these effects. Apparently, many straight soldiers, like deer in headlights, often freeze in place in a vague stupor when encountering something new and different.  This fact is even well-known among the deer community, who describe brethren who have been hit by moving vehicles as “freezing like straight people who have just seen the gays.”

Of course, not all of the concerns are fictional nonsense emanating from John McCain’s backside and mythical British sources invented for humorous purposes.  For example, the pentagon study that characterized the repeal as low-risk showed that in combat specialist units, like the Marines, about half of those surveyed indicated misgivings and unease about serving with open gays.  Many of the Marines probably worry that the pink boas, the shiny glitter, and the sequined ball gowns that would no doubt be worn by the open gays would prove distracting.  The only thing stopping them from behaving in such a stereotypical manner, after all, could be DADT.

Of course, many recognize that the armed forces are already saturated in gayness.  Other than gays, for example, who would wear a green beret?  Other than a gay man, who would incessantly spend his time polishing a gun?  Other than a gay man, who would want to spend six months on a boat surrounded by seamen?  Not only that, but gays have been serving in the military already, just not openly.  With the repeal, the military could at least be honest about its gayness, as well as allowing honorable openly gay soldiers like Lt. Dan Choi and the entire U.S. Navy to return to the armed services.  Even some conservative Tea Party members have hailed the repeal as a victory for bigotry, as it will make shooting at gays just a little bit easier, and allow homophobic Islamic terrorists to do the dirty work of homophobic Christian fundamentalists.

In the end, the repeal of DADT will probably have minimal effects on the military.  When the military was integrated with African Americans, for instance, the furor was much greater among active military personnel, and yet things worked out on that front.  With gays already serving in all branches of the U.S. military, it makes sense that they should at least be able to be honest about it.  When blacks and women were allowed to join, no one forced them to remain in the closet, to serve as blacks and women but unable to be open about their blackness or womanhood, hiding themselves by taping their breasts down, speaking in an artificially lower voice, pronouncing the -ing endings of words, or constantly reassuring others that they’re just really, really tan.  It is only fair that gays can now join them in openly and proudly serving in an organization that has a long history of marginalizing and killing foreigners for no legitimate reason.  Now marginalized Americans can participate in this marginalization themselves, just like white males have throughout history.

If you want to get a liberal to look at something, direct your own gaze to it.  But if you want to get a conservative to look at something, throw money at it while screaming “A socialist black terrorist is trying to steal our guns!”  The latter is only a hypothesis, to be sure, but the former is demonstrably true, according to a recent study titled “The politics of attention: gaze-cuing effects are moderated by political temperament.”  Essentially, the study showed that liberals are more focused on social cues, and conservatives significantly less so, as demonstrated by eye-gaze cues.

I know what you are thinking, dear reader, and it is inevitably something along the lines of: “What the fuck does that mean, and why is it important?”  Well, it is very important, and I will explain what it means shortly.

In the study, participants were told to watch for a target and click the space bar on the keyboard when they saw it.  However, they were distracted by a drawing of a face that had circles for eyes.  First, pupils would appear in the eyes of the face, looking either left or right, and then the target object would appear.  Participants were told that the object would not necessarily appear where the face was looking.  Those subjects that took longer to find the object and press the space bar were thus distracted by the social cue of where the eyes were looking.  After the participants were given a survey detailing their political beliefs, it was found that liberals tended to be more distracted by the social cues than the conservatives.

When interpreting the results, the researchers hypothesized that conservatives were not as influenced by the social cues because of their belief in personal autonomy.  Similarly, liberals were presumably influenced by the cartoon face because they are foolish pushovers who care too much about other people.  Libertarians, on the other hand, did not respond to eye gaze cues, pleas for help from drowning children, or even the tortured cries of their own children, as they sat there motionless, lecturing them on personal responsibility and the need to return to the gold standard.

Republicans, of course, have already seized on this research in an attempt to outwit the Democrats.  While Republicans remain focused on their goal of getting tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, Democrats have been constantly distracted by the Republicans as they keep looking ever-rightward. Obama himself, who once insisted that the wealthy should not have their tax cuts extended, was so distracted by cartoon eyeballs looking around that he seems to have forgotten his original stance, and he is now lecturing other liberals on the importance of extending the tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. Soon, the Republicans will install hundreds of giant cartoon eyeballs on the Senate floor, always looking away from things of importance, so that Republicans can vote unanimously for whatever vile bill they want as Democrats stare into the corner with cocked heads and befuddled looks on their faces, their eyes unknowingly drawn in this direction by cartoon eyeball social cues.  This way, with so many eyeballs looking at one corner, not even the likes of Bernie Sanders could hope to derail the Republican agenda with an 8-hour filibuster speech.  Instead, he’d speak for five minutes, find himself wanting to look at what everyone else is looking at, and then mumble softly until eventually he was saying nothing at all and merely standing there slackjawed, just like President Obama is now.

“This just goes to show how superior Republicans are,” said Republican House minority leader John Boehner. “If there were ever a scenario in which the world would end if the President did not hit the spacebar a few milliseconds after spotting a target on a computer screen, we’d all be dead with a liberal President in office if he were distracted by eye-gazing or concerns about homeless people. I think this just goes to show that Democrats are not competent and should be immediately impeached.”

On the bright side, however, the presence of eyes has been shown to cause better behavior in some studies.  Therefore, the Republicans, should they install hundreds of eyes staring into a corner, would suffer the unintended consequence of feeling actual emotions, like guilt, about their vile deeds, a novel experience that would no doubt be shocking to a class of people who have experienced only the emotions of greed and outrage for decades.

Republicans voted against tax cut extensions proposed by Democrats this Saturday, which would have provided tax cut extensions for the first $250,000 everyone makes. According to the Republicans, however, tax breaks for everyone aren’t good enough. How, after all, is a millionaire to feed his children when he only receives a tax break on his first $250,000 of income? How can he afford to buy troughs full of caviar and champagne, upon which his children feast daily, with the other $750,000 of his money subject to tax increases once the Bush-era tax cuts expire? He’d be forced to do the unthinkable: fill his troughs with the store brand caviar!

Republicans have consistently maintained that, given the current economic environment, no one should have their taxes increase. The economy is in absolute shambles, with American workers suffering under a staggering 9.3% unemployment rate. But it’s not just the poor and the unemployed that are in trouble. The rich are also experiencing economic hardships, with Wall Street only profiting by $19 billion, only its fourth most profitable year.  Clearly, if anyone needs help in today’s harsh economic climate, it’s the incredibly wealthy.  Now they can no longer shout out “We’re Number 1! We’re Number 1!” as they light their Cuban cigars with hundred dollar bills.  This year, they will be forced to softly mumble “We’re number 4! We’re number 4!” as they light their slightly smaller Cuban cigars with a wad of ninety-nine dollar bills.

Of course, Republicans argue that providing tax breaks to the wealthy creates more jobs.  As the wealthy save money from lower taxes, they are more likely to spend that money on random jobless people they meet in the street, giving them $20 to dance, DANCE, while shooting a golden pistol at their feet and laughing maniacally.  When tax breaks for the wealthy are not guaranteed, however, the uncertainty frightens them, so much so that they stop providing jobs, even in the face of increasing production demands that would no doubt turn a profit, and huddle in corners while rocking back and forth hysterically.  Being so uncertain about the tax situation thus stifles job creation, causing incredibly rich people to wonder whether they should be hiring more people or whether they should instead spend their time searching for tax loopholes like usual.

The idea that tax cuts for the wealthy also benefit the middle and lower class is known as “trickle down economics.”   No one is quite sure how this works, seeing as how wealthy people are more likely to save their excess money than spend it, but some have theorized that it benefits the poor presumably because the rich people accidentally drop their extra money from their penthouse suites into the alleys below, where random bums fight over it with broken bottle ends, exemplifying the trickle-down effect of the tax breaks.

Democrats, on the other hand, have argued that benefits for the poor and the jobless stimulate the economy better than tax breaks for the wealthy, because they are more likely to spend the money they receive, giving the money back to the businesses and the wealthy people that own them.  They have also emphasized the fact that Republicans constantly rail against increasing the national deficit, and letting tax cuts for the rich expire would help alleviate the debt to some degree.

However, with a Democratic President who promised change in charge, Republicans know that their best strategy is to stall any change whatsoever.  The Democrats could propose a bill asserting that 2 + 2 = 4, and Republicans would find a way to dispute it, most likely by denying several or all of the Peano axioms in favor of wild inconsistency, which would be consistent with their behavior in the legislature.  (Mathematicians, don’t bother me with comments that accepting contradictory axioms means anything would follow, including 2 + 2 = 4. In Republican math, the only thing that follows is that Obama is a Nazi Muslim and we’ve never seen his birth certificate so he probably was never born. Can you derive the parallel postulate with THAT axiom?) Strangely, the Republicans are also not willing to alleviate the deficit by cutting military spending, which accounts for much of it, instead emphasizing that older people should just work until they are 90 or so until they receive Social Security payments for their last few months of life, that the unemployed should simply starve to death, and that congress should conserve energy by turning off the lights during session and watering down the coffee.

In essence, then, the Republicans have become dyslexic Robin Hoods who steal from the poor in order to give to the rich.  They have voted against extending unemployment benefits, have promised to repeal healthcare legislation, and want to cut other entitlement spending that helps the poor and needy, while at the same time using these savings to pay for the Wall Street bailout and the tax cuts for the wealthy.  They want all of this even when they know that programs like foodstamps and unemployment benefits have a greater stimulative effect on the economy than tax cuts. It is necessary to make the wealthy wealthier, after all, or else the caviar companies would go out of business.

In spite of these partisan bickerings, however, there is a single truth that we can all agree on: The commercials are just too damn loud! Even in a world where people can’t agree whether it is proper to steal from the rich or the poor, congress has at least passed this ray of sunshine, giving hope to all those Americans who are still wealthy enough to own TVs, but not quite wealthy enough to own TVs with digital recorders that allow them to skip commercials.  Score one for the middle class!