According to a new study released by CQ Press, St. Louis is the most crime-ridden city in America.  The study ranked cities by comparing the rates of six major crimes—murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft—per 100,000 people in 2009.  St. Louis edged out cities like Camden and Detroit to claim the title.

“I knew we could do it,” said Leroy Walker, a well-known St. Louis criminal, as he wiped a tattooed tear from his eye.  ”All the other cities said it couldn’t be done, but we did it!”  he shouted, still wiping at his tattoo tear as his entourage doused him in gatorade.  ”We’ve proved that with a little hard work, a little perseverance, and a little gun, anything is possible,” he said in a more somber tone, this time rubbing his tear more vigorously.  ”I think that’s a tattoo,” I said in response, and in return Leroy tried to shoot me in the face.  ”Hey! Cool down, we don’t need to run up the score on the other cities,” said his compatriots.  ”Show a little sportsmanship.”

Not everyone, of course, is excited about the news.  St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, for instance, was noticeably displeased, as we could tell by his face, which bore a startling resemblance to a sad-face emoticon.  When the news was announced, he immediately called for a press conference to address any concerns.  ”I assure you,” he said, “that this study does not indicate that you will be raped and murdered if you live in St. Louis.  It only means that your chances of being raped and murdered are slightly higher.  Nevertheless, after a painstaking analysis, we’ve decided that the data are misleading.  For one, the study only chooses to accumulate data on insignificant crimes like rape, murder, and arson.  If the study had included such horrid crimes as pig-fucking and incest, no doubt Birmingham would top the list, and if the study had included police corruption and money laundering, New York would have climbed to the top.”

St. Louis ranked highly in most individual categories, as it was second in the nation in number of murders, second in aggravated assault, third in motor vehicle theft, and third in arson.  It was only fifth place in burglary, however, and a paltry eighth in rape, being outraped by cities like Minneapolis and Anchorage, where body warmth is a commodity worth fighting for.

Political science professor David Murray questioned the methodology of the study on a number of grounds.  ”To report on these measures as if they are measures of crime is highly misleading,” he said. “The study doesn’t take certain variables into account, such as whether the person murdered or raped deserved it.  And based on other studies, St. Louis is renowned for being the douchebag capital of the world, meaning that while its murder rate is high, in all likelihood the people being murdered are the types who find Axe body spray commercials funny, making the crime a community service more than anything.  Meanwhile, cities higher in rape, like Minneapolis and Anchorage, are filled to the brim with sexy conservative women, like Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann, who believe that raped women should be forced to give birth to their rapists’ babies, giving rapists more rape bang for their rape buck, effectively incentivizing rape even more. The crime statistics should take this into account.  If douchebags, gangsters, other criminals, and bat-shit crazy conservatives are the only ones being harmed, is there really any harm being done?”

Economists have also questioned the merit of the study.  ”Cities like St. Louis are experiencing more crime than other cities because of their vibrant economies,” said Mark Worth, an economist at Washington University in St. Louis. “In cities with more economic hardships, some criminals have had to cut down on their hours, being able to rape and murder on only a part-time basis.  Some criminals have even been forced into early retirement.  Additionally, there is less incentive to commit crimes in cities with poor economies, as the victims have less money and fewer possessions, and muggers are thus more likely to come away with pocket lint and a melted candybar rather than money.  Criminals are not just simple brutes with guns; they are simple brutes with guns who must follow the supply and demand curve, guided by the invisible hand, just like anybody else.”

Nevertheless, St. Louis plans a parade in honor of its achievement.  Said one of the parade organizers: “If you’re going to do something, do it right; and if you can’t do that, then fuck it up so badly, beyond all recognition, so that you at least get some publicity out of it.”

Among the top three cities with the lowest crime rates were Colonie, New York; O’Fallon, Missouri; and Ramapo, New York.  Purportedly, these cities have streets paved with candy and buildings made from unicorns and rainbows—unicorns and rainbows that do not fear rape or theft, unlike the unicorns and rainbows in St. Louis, which are constantly under fear of rape and stolen virginity.

Gerald Biloxy, an obscure professor in the philosophy department at the University of Montana, made a startling discovery last Wednesday.  He had discovered the meaning of life.

Among lay people, the meaning of life is often considered one of the most important philosophical questions, but professional philosophers through the ages have preferred to address weightier problems with much more relevance to our daily lives, such as dilemmas about whether trolleys should be stopped with levers or fat people, the all-important and life-changing distinction about whether knowledge is justified true belief or undefeated justified true belief, the question of how many a priori angels can be known synthetically to dance upon the head of a pin, or the riddle of whether the hegemonic power structures that disenfranchise the Other can be deconstructed along with all other binaries and hierarchies.

Biloxy happened to uncover the meaning of life as his thoughts were drifting from his more routine philosophical work of concocting absurd thought experiments as counterexamples to prevailing ideas.  ”I was trying to envision a possible world in which fluffy baby seals, who were actually mindless zombies, were being clubbed to death by zombies, who were in fact brains in vats, which incidentally were surrounded by actual brain-craving zombies, in order to refute rule utilitarianism,” explained the philosopher.  ”However, in working out the details I was distracted by a non-black non-raven, so much so that I thought about something of worth, which led me to understand the meaning of life in a sudden moment of clarity.”

Biloxy rushed to find a notepad, hurriedly scribbling out his thoughts and the reasoning process that led to his conclusion regarding the meaning of life.  ”After figuring out the meaning of life, I quickly retired to the liquor cabinet to relax.  With this discovery, after all, I was guaranteed to become one of the most prestigious philosophers of the day, with the attendant benefits that go along with such prestige, such as an improved likelihood of getting tenure (1% more likely), a chance to leave the University of Montana for a slightly more renowned college, like the University of Idaho, and a $50 annual pay raise, bringing my philosopher’s salary to nearly $70.”

Despite his discovery, though, the philosopher was soon foiled by philosophical difficulties.  He had celebrated his discovery a bit too recklessly and found that he had forgotten the meaning of life.  ”I was unperturbed when I forgot the meaning of life, some time between 11:23 PM and time t, because I had written it down much earlier than time t.”  To his horror, though, he could not decipher his own writing when he looked at his notepad the next day.

“It wasn’t that my writing was illegible.  It is perfectly legible.  The problem was in the very nature of language itself.  After forgetting the answer, consulting my notes was useless.  The meaning of every word was underdetermined.  When I wrote the word happiness, for instance, I did not know whether I was referring to feelings of joy, or joyous feeling-stages, or feelings of joy that will at time t become feelings of horror (jorror).  Similar problems surrounded all the other words, such as the, meaning, gavagai, and of. All was lost.”

The philosopher then showed us the notepad, and he was indeed correct: much of it was indecipherable.  It was full of made-up words like modality, heuristics, and ontology (presumably the study of onts), and was also riddled with italicized letters preceded by tildes (~) or backward letter Es.  Clearly, this philosopher was dyslexic.

Later the next day, after he realized he would never decipher his notes, he notified everyone he had emailed that he had not uncovered the meaning of life.  Upon hearing of this, his colleagues immediately set out to solve the problem for themselves, but soon thought better of it, and once again resumed debating whether trees exist if no one is around to look at them.

It all started, as so many things do, with a man’s plaintive cry for another man not to touch his junk.  As a result, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has become the topic du jour of American political discourse, finally allowing the general public, and not just observational stand-up comics, to discuss airport security—some even going so far as to do so while using fancy French terminology. C’est la vie. La bête effectué philosophes suscité.

The TSA media circus started when John Tyner filmed an encounter from his phone, where he was observed admonishing a TSA attendant not to “touch his junk” before a routine pat-down.  As he uttered these words, “Don’t taze me, bro”-man shed a tear and relinquished his fifteen minutes of fame, allowing the media to descend in hordes upon this new story about an oppressed white man.

For those who don’t know, TSA is an agency that oversees airline security.  They use a variety of tactics to protect the American public from terrorists, brown-skinned people, and/or people wearing strange head coverings.  This is all well and good, considering the dangers of brown skin, which makes the wearer of said skin almost invisible to the naked or semi-clothed eye (such people are near-invisible not just in the darkness, but also in positions of power … which is why you almost never see them in such positions).  Likewise, odd head coverings have been used as weapons throughout time, assuming that “time” only goes back as far as 1964 and reality has been replaced with Goldfinger. And terrorists—they can be pretty dangerous, too.  Not as dangerous as brown skin, to be sure, as the bombs in their pants, shoes, and vans often turn out to be duds, but dangerous all the same, if only to their own egos.

The two tactics used by the TSA in airports that have received much media scrutiny in the past few days are full-body x-ray scans and pat-downs.  People chosen for screening are told they must consent to a full-body scan (which is capable of producing images of one’s naughty bits), and thus potentially bombarded by the harmful mystical technology rays that no doubt emanate from the machine, or else receive a pat-down that may or may not entail a TSA official’s hand grazing one’s nutsack (or vaginasack; we’re all about equal representation here).  The perceived choice between cancer and molestation is a choice that many airport patrons find unsettling, except for those who enjoy cancer and molestation.  Even more unsettling is the fact that these techniques are often used on highly unlikely threats, ranging from grandmothers to children, all of whom have white skin! At one airline security checkpoint, for instance, the following scene occurred:  ”I will not be mildly inconvenienced by your most-likely safe technology!” screamed a portly white man wearing a suit as a middle-easterner was dragged away with a bag over his head whilst a young lady with a cigarette pointed at him.  ”I will not stand for anyone slightly grazing my virility-lumps with their hand!” he yelled as a black man was fisted, his anus surely being the suppository of some sort of weapon of mass destruction.  As airport officials politely reasoned with the angry white man, a Muslim meekly added, “I agree with him,” upon which he was promptly shot in the face, with his corpse being shipped to Syria to be tortured and pissed upon.  The media, however, did not capture this last event, as they were quickly drawn away by another inconvenienced white man.  ”HOW DARE THIS POLICE OFFICER STUB MY TOE!” he chortled with rage.  ”I WILL HAVE YOU ARRESTED AND BEHEADED FOR INJURING MY FEETJUNK!”

Public opinion about the TSA’s procedures, of course, is mixed.  Some think that these small infringements of our liberties are necessary for the defense of our greater freedom.  Others think that, while a small ball-groping may not amount to much in the grand scheme of things, the cumulative effect of many small ball-gropings, repeated throughout time, adds up to something much greater than ball-groping.  It adds up to the end of America and the constitution and freedom and possibly apple pies, according to some calculations. ”We pay for these inane policies in more ways than one,” said noted libertarian politician Ron Paul.  ”Not only do we spend millions on these ineffectual x-ray machines and the earnings of TSA employees, but we also pay an emotional price in traumatized travelers.” He then bent down and began scribbling on a note pad, working out the cost of an emotion, as libertarians often do. “Sixteen billion dollars.  The number of people groped and scanned times the cost of antidepressant medication and PTSD cognitive therapy.  Think of the money our government could save if it simply didn’t make these people upset.  If we slashed the whole regulatory system, the free market would work out the problems.  People wouldn’t ride airplanes with too lax security, as those people would die at the hands of brown people, presuming brown people are actually people and actually have hands instead of strange, mutant monster claws (I’ve never actually seen one).  Likewise, people would vote with their wallets and wouldn’t ride planes with excess security that forced them to strip nude, bend over, and insert a cyborg into their anus.  The free market would thus create a happy medium: no one would ride airplanes; we’d take the bus to Australia.”

Many have proposed behavioral profiling as a more suitable alternative to outright molestation.  ”We currently screen children, old women, and priests.  This is uncalled for and unnecessary,” said Larry Hedom.  ”Authorities should only screen those whose behavior seems suspicious, using behavioral profiling.” He then assured us, “Keep in mind that this is not the same thing as racial profiling.  With behavioral profiling, authorities aren’t singling out black people, only people who act like black people.”

Larry Hedom’s statements about unnecessary screenings are not just hyperbole.  Father O’Malley, for example, is a Catholic priest who was recently scanned and searched at an airport.  He compared his recent experiences at airport security to his church: “When you go there, you will be exposed to cancerous, unhealthy practices and despicable scoundrels attempting to fondle your genitals in the name of some higher purpose.  At the airport, on the other hand, there’s just full-body scans and pat-downs.”

Not everyone is against the security measures, though.  ”I don’t want to have to choose between being scanned by a machine that sees through my clothes or being touched by a man who feels through my clothes,” said Ray Kurzweil, a well-known futurist. “I want both: a machine and a man both touching me in a bio-robotical orgy that culminates in the singularity, the uploading of my mind, and the inability to predict which orifice future technology will probe next.”