Get back to me when they invent injectable chocolate

You may recall how a few years back, some people were all in a tizzy about the introduction into Massachusetts of Alcohol Without Liquor (AWOL) machines, which were devices that turn alcohol into a mist so you can inhale it. I guess it turns out they didn't have much to worry about, since AWOL bars, featuring roomfuls of hipster drinkers with airplane oxygen masks strapped over their mouths, didn't exactly take the country by storm. Apparently, people felt like it wasn't liquor if you didn't feel logy and bloated afterwards.

Well, I think some folks from Harvard have figured out how to make the whole breathable products business work: They've invented "Le Whif," which allows you to breathe such addictive pleasures as chocolate and coffee. Which, let's face it, is what we'd all have been doing with chocolate and coffee for years if it weren't for the risk of choking and drowning.

According to a press release, Le Whif – made in collaboration with ArtScience Labs – uses particle engineering to form chocolate and coffee in microscopic sizes that are small enough to become airborne, though too large to enter the lungs.

Supposedly it will quench your desires without the calories, says inventor and Harvard professor David Edwards, who noted, “This has Cambridge written all over it." Presumably alluding to the fact that if you're spotted in places like Lawrence or Brockton, Mass. inhaling your coffee through a lipstick tube, a beat-down will ensue.

COLUMN: A blanket statement on marriage

It’s common knowledge that marriage is hard work. Although not my marriage, which involves round-the-clock bliss and paradise with my lovely wife, who reads this column.

But most marriages are tough, mainly because of all the things they don’t tell you before you tie the knot. Things like the fact that your spouse may be a slob, or be more interested in the football playoffs than taking care of the kids, or lack even the most basic vestiges of common sense. OK, it’s mostly the women who don’t get told things.

And apparently there’s at least one other thing nobody warns spouses about: smells. You would think that by the time you marry somebody you’d have figured out what the person smells like, but this fails to take into account that when you first date someone, you’re on your best behavior, smell-wise. Besides, smells might be one of those things that change as you get older, like hair sprouting from places you’d previously have expected only in a David Cronenberg movie. (You know who you are.)

Which brings me to Francis Bibbo, a science teacher and inventor of the “Better Marriage Blanket.” According to a press release from Bibbo, the blanket provides ammunition against “romanticus interruptus,” which I suppose would be anything that might ruin a romantic moment between husband and wife. The best way to ensure this doesn’t happen would be to take the blanket, wrap the husband in it, and throw him in the river.

But that’s probably going too far. Turns out Bibbo is speaking specifically of protecting spouses from untoward emissions that might make things unpleasant in the boudoir. He based his blanket on military chemical suits, going on the theory that members of the military very rarely complain about how each other smell when they’re under nuclear, biological or chemical attack.

But let’s face it, the Better Marriage Blanket is a daring thing for somebody to invent, because it’s hard not to assume that Bibbo’s own marriage is a regular smell factory. One pictures Mrs. Bibbo making tearful, frantic calls to her mother, a clothespin affixed tightly to her nose, as Mr. Bibbo wanders through the house emitting wavy lines that are actually visible to infrared cameras.

But it turns out that Bibbo got the idea not from his own marriage but from his trips deer hunting, when he apparently wore a military chemical suit to keep the deer from smelling him. I imagine he cut quite a profile standing there in the woods with his bow and arrow, wearing a full-body activated carbon fabric suit designed to trap in all his smells. You could spot him by looking for the deer, squirrels and other hunters backing away verrrry slooowly.

So Bibbo eventually got the idea to turn the suit into a blanket, to be used in places where people are likely to emit odors they’d rather other people didn’t smell, like TV rooms, hospitals, planes, cruise ships, dorms and senior citizen homes, where they should probably affix them to every bare surface, like smell-absorbing wallpaper. He even foresees its use in the space shuttle, where astronauts can finally stop blaming the solid rocket boosters.

But it’s primarily for couples who want to keep their smells to themselves. “If you are going to need a blanket to stay warm, you may as well have one that absorbs odors,” Bibbo points out. No word on whether the blanket will also muffle the potential noise pollution that could accompany smells and thus spoil a romantic moment, or whether you have to deal with that the old-fashioned way, by playing “Freebird” at a high volume.

No matter what, though, I’m sure Mr. Bibbo is right that his invention will improve marriages. In fact, I recommend that every husband run right out and buy the anti-smell blanket for his wife, and present it to her on their next anniversary. And let’s hope that activated carbon fabric floats long enough for the Coast Guard to pluck him out of the river.

This column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Lady Gaga Video Leads Everybody To Apologize To Madonna

LOS ANGELES (CAP) - The new music video for the song Telephone, featuring Lady Gaga and Beyonce as scantily dressed, highly sexualized lesbian mass murderers, has watchdog groups and religious organizations apologizing for their criticisms of Madonna during the 1980s and '90s.

"I sort of can't believe now that I got all over Madonna's case for Dress You Up (in 1985)," said Tipper Gore, co-founder of the Parents Music Resource Center, after watching the Telephone video in slack-jawed amazement. "Say what you want about Madonna, she never crawled up the bars of a prison cell to show off her barely pixilated lady parts."

"And believe me, we watched all Madonna's videos very closely," added husband Al Gore, who said Madonna's output seemed "very quaint" compared to Telephone, which he said might even be contributing to the global luke warming epidemic. "The way this 'Ga-Ga' person and Beyonce ate that sticky bun made me feel, frankly, dirty."

The video also shows Gaga kissing a fellow inmate in the women's prison yard, gyrating down jailhouse corridors with other prisoners in bras and thong underwear, and poisoning an entire diner full of people for no apparent reason.

"And don't forget the parts where her lithe, pale body is covered by nothing but a few strands of police tape," noted Al Gore, causing Tipper to glare at him icily.

Even the Vatican, which slammed Madonna's 1989 Like A Prayer video and banned her from Vatican City after she released Erotica in 1992, is backtracking.

"Madonna is welcome back here any time," insisted Pope Benedict XVI, who watched the Telephone video on Saturday and immediately issued an order to have Lady Gaga burned at the stake, before aides reminded him the church doesn't do that any more.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: Welcome to your new credit card bill

Welcome to your new, improved credit card bill. As you may have heard, recently passed regulations dictate that we change certain business practices. But even though our previous methods may have been designed to wring every possible cent out of our card members, we want to make sure you know that our top priority has always been you, the interest-paying customer.

With that in mind, following is a governmentally required summary of some of the changes you’d notice if it were possible for a regular human to decipher a credit card agreement:

1) From now on, rate increases will apply only to new charges. It used to be when we decided to raise our interest rates for some arbitrary reason — you sent your payment 10 minutes late, we didn’t like those unicorns on your checks, we got bored, etc. — those new rates would apply to the balances you’d been accruing since before those online gambling sites you love so much even existed. Now they will apply only to charges accrued after the increase, which, fortunately for us, will still be tremendous.

2) We can no longer raise rates in the first year of a new account. This means at 12:01 on the first day of your second year, expect your rate to pop like the cork out of a champagne bottle. (We drink a lot of champagne here.)

3) Annual fees can now be no more than 25 percent of your total credit line. In a related development, congratulations! We’ve raised your credit line by 150 percent. Information about fees relative to that increase will come in a separate letter that we’re hoping you throw away without actually opening.

4) The payment due date will now be the same each month, so you’ll know exactly when your payment is late, as opposed to before when you just had a general, nagging feeling of lateness that you would try to put out of your mind. The amount by which we raise your rate when you’re late will still be chosen completely at random, though.

5) People under 21 will now need their parents’ permission before they can get a credit card. We highly recommend parents do give permission, however, so that their teens will have a credit card in case of emergency, such as a big sale at Abercrombie & Fitch. Ha ha! Just a little credit card humor there. We know there’s never a big sale at Abercrombie & Fitch.

(Please note: This company in no way endorses teens sneaking their mother’s credit card from her purse and using that card to make extensive, debt-inducing online or in-store purchases. Although that is something a teen reading this could, technically, do, and it could be weeks or even months before anybody caught on. We’re just saying.)

6) We are now required by law to tell you that if you pay only the minimum balance each month, no matter how much you owe, you will be paying us back for the rest of your life. Then, after you’re gone, we will transfer that debt to your next of kin, and so on, until our dying sun expands to hundreds of times its normal size, engulfing all the planets that surround it. Whereas if you pay an extra $2.75 each month, your balance will be paid off in about a year and a half. We were sort of counting on nobody ever figuring that out.

In conclusion, we want to assure you that, despite what you may have heard about us spending the last six months looking for loopholes, we’re here to provide the best service possible to our customers. We want to make sure that you use your credit cards in the manner they were intended: as a convenient method for making reasonable purchases, not as a vehicle to live beyond your means and accrue possibly debilitating personal debt.

Also, they made us say that.

This column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”

AT LARGE Fake News Monday: Woman Conan Followed On Twitter Offered Sitcom

HOLLYWOOD (CAP) - Sarah Killen, the woman Conan O'Brien chose at random to follow on Twitter last week, will write and produce an NBC sitcom based on her Twitter feed starting this fall.

The show, tentatively titled Lovely Button after Killen's Twitter username (@LovelyButton), will feature Danica McKellar, best known as Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years, as a woman who tweets about peanut butter and planning her wedding.

"We think Sarah's 33 tweets will make a fascinating basis for a sitcom," said NBC CEO Jeff Zucker. "She's clearly got what 18- to 49-year-old men are looking for, whatever that is."

The sitcom was originally planned to revolve around the changes in the main character's life after Conan O'Brien follows her on Twitter, but NBC had to scrap that angle after being threatened by O'Brien's attorneys.

"Apparently there's still some resentment there," admitted Zucker, who removed O'Brien from The Tonight Show after seven months to replace him with former host Jay Leno. "We sent (NBC executive) Dick Ebersol to his house to try to talk to him, but Max Weinberg came out and hit him with a timpani."

Some analysts say NBC is scrambling to compete with rival CBS, which recently announced a sitcom starring William Shatner based on the Twitter feed S--t My Dad Says, tentatively titled Oh, The Things My Dad Says!

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: The comic books that came in from the cold

My family and I went to an actual, real-life bookstore the other night. I like to do this every so often to support the publishing industry, given that the vast majority of my books are purchased used on eBay. You’d be amazed at how little you can pay for a book if you’re not one of those people distracted by unidentifiable stains.

Anyway, during this visit I was surprised to find an entire wall devoted to nothing but comic books. They called them “graphic novels,” but I know a comic book when I see one — I can tell by the little boxes, and the drawings of people with bodies attainable only through the unlicensed use of gamma rays.

I can’t say exactly how I feel about comic books being given such prominence in legitimate bookstores, though. I know when I was a kid, finding your favorite comics was a challenge. They were such an afterthought that most drugstores were more likely to have those magazines on the top shelf wrapped in brown paper than they were to have comic books. (I never found out what was in those magazines, but I suspect it was articles about adult topics, like escrow.)

As I recall, it took me years to find a regular supplier: I finally discovered that Kurtz’s Stationery in my little hometown of Carmel, N.Y. had one whole shelf devoted to comics, nestled in the back of the store among the tobacco products. I use the term “back” loosely, since a grown adult could walk the entire length of the store in about four strides; if you were 10 and sprinting breathlessly toward the comics, it probably took about six.

The width of the single aisle would have been a tight squeeze for most modern air travelers — there was barely enough room to fit a single customer and the ever-present owner (Mr. Kurtz, I presume), an ancient man in giant horn-rimmed glasses and flannel hunting shirt, perched on a stool behind the penny candy bin. The store’s been closed for years, but somehow I picture him still there, silently waiting for someone to just try to pocket a Tootsie Roll without him noticing.

It was an interesting sensation being in Kurtz’s. What it lacked in space it easily made up for in utility — not an inch of wall space was unused, its shelves stacked to the ceiling with magazines and newspapers of all sizes and stripes. On a particularly dim day, walking in gave you a distinct feeling of having burrowed into a newsstand from the bottom up.

The store was on the route to the deli where my father bought bagels every Sunday, so we worked out a system; he would drop me off on his way, and I’d have approximately 12 minutes to flip through every new title and make my purchase before he pulled up on his way back. That probably sounds like plenty of time, but not when you only have $2 and have to narrow it down to five comics when there are at least 10 you want.

So who got left out? The Fantastic Four? Ghost Rider? Daredevil? Certainly not Spider-Man, and he probably had three or four different titles devoted to him at that point. (I could name them all, but I don’t want the bullies from my elementary school to track me down and give me wedgies. With Facebook I think that’s possible.)

Which brings me to my concerns over my bookstore visit. Back then, I think part of the joy of reading comics was that the effort you put into finding them made you feel like you were part of an exclusive club. A club full of slightly chubby, nearsighted boys obsessed about whether it would be cooler to have super strength or be able to walk through walls, but a club nonetheless.

Finding them in a major bookstore, so easily accessible, seems to take some of the fun out of it. Sure, I enjoyed reading them for their entertainment and educational value — for instance, from “Savage Sword of Conan” I learned that there was a period in our history where women wore nothing but metal bikinis — but I think my fondest memories are of tracking the comics down, whether lucked upon at random or during my regular Sunday run. I even thought about buying a few the other night, just for old time’s sake.

Not in the bookstore, of course. I’m sure I could find them much cheaper on eBay.

This column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Governments Say World Definitely Not Ending, Nuh-uh

WASHINGTON (CAP) - The U.S. government has joined with other nations from around the globe to state that the world is not coming to an end, despite the unprecedented weather and earthquake incidents of recent months.

"The idea that the world is ending is, frankly, uh ... ludicrous," said President Barack Obama, speaking from Air Force One, surrounded by his family and closest advisors. "Everything is going along, uh, just the way it usually does."

Obama's staff was on the presidential plane for a "change of pace," said the president, and definitely not because they were heading to a secret rendezvous area to board a fleet of high-tech "arks."

"No matter what you read on TMZ," he added.

Governments of other nations corroborated Obama's assertions. In England, Ben Bradshaw, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, addressed reporters to confirm that people had nothing to worry about.

"Pish-posh, everything's fine," said Bradshaw, speaking from the office of Prime Minister Gordon Brown at 10 Downing St. in London. "World coming to an end - nonsense." He then poured himself a glass of water, spilling most of it onto the prime minister's desk as his hands shook uncontrollably.

Asked where the prime minister was, and the royal family, and the 20-plus other secretaries and ministers in Brown's cabinet, Bradshaw responded, "What's that? Oh, out for a stroll, I suppose. Not headed to a secret rendezvous area, I can tell you that."

He then closed his eyes for about 30 seconds and muttered, "Blasted short straw," before laying his head down on the prime minister's soggy desk.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

The return of my big pen

Every so often I like to check in with my friends at yournovel.com, to see what new offerings they have in terms of personalized romance and detective novels. As you may recall, back in 2008 they put me and my wife Theresa in one, and I haven't been able to stop referring to my "baton" and my "big pen" ever since. Referring of course to ... a baton and a big pen. What? Oh, get your mind out of the gutter.

Anyway, they've got their usual interesting options in their ever-expanding repertoire, including:

• Vampire Rhapsody: "Humans unexpectedly encounter vampires." Isn't that always just how it happens?
• Paris Short Stories: "Ooh La La - 2 Short Stories set in Paris." And if there's not at least one reference to the main character's "Eiffel Tower," you can ask for your money back.
• Sandhills Fore-Play: "A golf-fantasy book." Why should Tiger have all the fun? Although if you're a true golfer, your fantasy will probably involve shooting six under par.

There's also a sequel to the detective novel I appeared in last time, and they were nice enough to send me my own personalized version. This one is called A Reunion to Die For, in which my wife (and fellow private detective) and I get snowed in at a hotel holding a class reunion, and there are crimes committed, and there are lots of scenes in hotel rooms with talk of stick shifts and tent pitching. In fact, bad double entendres must be the first thing they teach you in detective school.

I won't go into detail (a good detective doesn't kiss and tell, or any of the other things they describe me doing in this book and tell), but I will admit it's a kick. And in a detective novel, unlike in real life, like Frank Drebin I can shoot people without getting arrested.

COLUMN: Google is making us even more stupider

My son, who’s 8, recently asked me, “Dad, how does Google know everything?” I took this to mean that I’ve been entirely too transparent about the source of my vast fatherly knowledge.

At first I thought about responding the same way I do when my kids ask me where babies come from (“Do I look like a doctor?”), but instead I decided to try to explain about how Google’s advanced system of algorithms crawls a vast worldwide network of computer databases. Not that I knew that — I had to Google it.

The fact of that matter is, to the benefit of any parent ever asked by a child why the sky was blue (“Do I look like a meteorologist?”), we now live in an age where no question need remain unanswered. Remember back before the Internet, when you walked around for days trying to remember who sang that song about Oz never giving nothing to the Tin Man? How did we survive those dark times?

So you can imagine my surprise when I read recently that there are those who insist that Google, despite being an unfettered source for infinite information, is actually making us all stupid. This would explain A LOT.

According to analyst Nicholas Carr in the Atlantic Monthly, using Google-found tidbits to skim the Web is keeping us from the type of “focused reading” that sets off “intellectual vibrations,” essentially making us stupider. Of course, his theory seems predicated on a dubious premise, namely that before Google, we all used to read the Atlantic Monthly from cover to cover in order to cleanse our palates between massive Proust marathons.

Of course, if you think back to pre-Web days, you’ll recall that what we were actually doing was watching “Married With Children.” Then, when the Internet came around, we took to the “Married With Children” message boards so we could call each other wankers.

But not everyone agrees with Mr. Carr. Jamais Cascio, also writing for Atlantic Monthly, said the Google method really helps us hone our ability to find “meaning in confusion.” For instance, if you Google “Lady Gaga,” you’ll get 75 million results; rather than become paralyzed by this overload of information, you will likely learn to focus your search to, say, “pictures of Lady Gaga wearing doilies.”

By contrast, if this were 1984 and you wanted to hone in on Madonna, you’d have to sit on the edge of your bed staring at the cover of “Like a Virgin” for hours on end. Er, not me. Other people.

The controversy is part of a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which surveyed hundreds of “technology stakeholders,” according to PC World. (I can only presume these are the people with bigger, more expensive TVs than I have, which is everybody.) The stakeholders said that Google is probably not making us stupid, although I think we should take into account the possibility that it already has, and that when they’re not taking surveys, the stakeholders mostly just sit around going “Pew … Heh, that’s a funny word.”

Not that they don’t have concerns. As stakeholder and University of Pennsylvania Prof. Oscar Gandy told PC World, “the kind of Googled future that I am concerned about is the one in which my every desire is anticipated, and my every fear avoided by my guardian Google.” Which I agree would be terrible, in the same way that having a robot butler would be terrible — you know, that awesome kind of way.

Carr, for his part, is sticking to his guns. “The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking,” he insists in the PC World article, and I’m assuming in his original Atlantic story as well. Although I can’t be positive, because I didn’t actually read it — I Googled it, but, well, I never clicked any of the links. I can point you to several hundred thousand fascinating pictures of Lady Gaga, though.

Gaga … Heh, that’s a funny word.

This column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”

By 2014 I should be ready for the Winter Olympics

Got the winter blahs? I highly recommend going down a mountain at a high rate of speed on your rear end. It's like skiing for people without balance or coordination. We know who we are.



Yes, those are my feet.

AT LARGE Fake News Monday: Palin Slams Down Syndrome Portrayal In 'Life Goes On'

NEW YORK (CAP) - Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is blasting the 1989-1993 ABC series Life Goes On, featuring a character, "Corky," with Down syndrome, calling its creators "heartless jerks."

"The world is full of cruel, cold-hearted people who would do such a thing," Palin said in an appearance on Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor. "To show a likeable, well-adjusted character with Down syndrome on TV ... That's just wrong."

She also said she took the show as a personal affront to her and her family when she saw a rerun recently on ABC Family.

"The America I know and love is not one in which my family would have to see a show like that, which was clearly meant at a swipe at my retarded baby, Trig," she said. "Um ... and when I say retarded, like Rush Limbaugh I mean that in a satiric kinda way."

When O'Reilly asked her how she would define the term "satiric," she paused for about 30 seconds and then said, "All of 'em."

Palin's complaint comes after she and her family made an uproar over the Fox TV series Family Guy, which featured a similarly well-adjusted character with Down syndrome, voiced by an actress with the condition.

"Dude, I can't believe that's the one they decided to get worked up about," said Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, who noted that in one episode during the campaign, Palin and her entire family were portrayed as "back-woods troglodytic mouth-breathers."

"One episode of 60 Minutes, I mean," he clarified, cracking himself up and high-fiving the members of his writing staff, who were gathered to work on an upcoming episode entitled Stewie Says Something Inappropriate.

"And you didn't hear Democrats complaining when we did that episode where Glen Quagmire accidentally has sex with Bill Clinton," MacFarlane noted.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

'Oh my! What seems to have happened to my bikini top?'

That's what I love about the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition -- the poses are so natural.

COLUMN: Be prepared to panic, weather or not

Some years back I spent an entire Saturday running around my in-laws’ backyard chasing chickens, and not for any of the usual reasons. The forecast was for a foot of snow, and we, being humanitarians, didn’t want to spend the next day running over frozen chickens with the snowblower. Take that, Frank Perdue!

So you can imagine how I felt when we woke up to find just a razor-thin sheen of sleet on the ground. The forecast was a complete bust, even though the meteorologists had looked so sure of themselves when gesticulating wildly in front of their green screens. I guess it’s important to remember that these are very sophisticated and unpredictable weather patterns they’re interpreting, and also, their forecasts are mostly made up, like horoscopes and cattle futures.

I didn’t have any poultry to deal with last week, but I still looked fairly silly wearing my boots to work, my fists clenched tight around the barrel of my handy travel shovel, only to find a parking lot covered with a four to six inches of nothing. This, after hundreds of schools had canceled classes — you probably saw all the children out on their front lawns, throwing airballs at each other.

But even though last week’s storm didn’t materialize, it did get me thinking: Would I have been truly prepared if it had? Lord knows that as far as weather goes, Massachusetts residents seem to have convinced themselves that they’re actually in Florida and have to be concerned, at most, with a possible gecko pileup. If we don’t react to snowflakes like John Cusack reacted to Los Angeles disintegrating in “2012,” we’re not doing our jobs.

With that in mind, I’ve prepared the following “New England Storm Panic Checklist” to make sure you’re ready for the next (possibly real) storm with just the right level of abject alarm. I recommend you tick off these items the next time New England is expected to experience an onslaught of weather unlike any it’s ever seen before, except for all those other times:

1) Do you have enough milk and bread? If you don’t, it’s too late, the stores are sold out — all that’s left in the supermarket are a few bruised kiwis strewn around the prone forms of trampled stockboys. Time to resign yourself to the fact that you are going to starve to death, unless you’re lucky and happen to freeze first.

2) Is your snowblower in good, working order? It is? Well, why don’t you just move to Wisconsin, winter boy? We don’t need your kind around here.

3) Do you remember how to drive? If you do, there is something wrong with you: It’s not winter in New England unless you find yourself bereft of anything but the most rudimentary conception of what a car even is, much less how to drive it. But don’t worry, the minute you get behind the wheel your mind will become a complete blank, and you can immediately commence upon swearing and maneuvering other drivers into snow banks.

4) Remember that time a few weeks back, when you said to yourself that you really should get your wiper blades replaced before the next snowstorm? Um … no, me neither.

5) Do you live by the ocean? If so, proceed immediately to the nearest seawall with your rain slicker and handy point-and-shoot camera. Otherwise it will be very difficult for you to be washed out to sea by a wave the size of a Range Rover. (That’s a type of vehicle — see No. 3.)

6) Is your weatherperson gesticulating wildly? Don’t worry, he probably just got a tip on cattle futures.

That should do it, and just in time, too. There’s imaginary snow in the whimsical forecast again this week, so I recommend you begin panicking now, in case it blows out to sea before you get a chance to work up any real, mouth-foaming anxiety. And no need to thank me.

Just send milk and bread. I may need it for the chickens.

This column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”

And yet, oddly, people have yet to start taking me seriously

In the toot-my-own-horn department: Last week I received a first-place award for "Serious Columnist" from the New England Newspaper & Press Association. This is of course a great affront to all the actual serious columnists toiling away weekly at their keyboards, veritably awash in seriousness. As for me, I occasionally pen an essay that's vaguely non-humorous, and that's what they chose to honor. I'm not complaining -- I've always said, you give me a plaque, I'll hang it up. I'm not picky.

Anyway, the columns they cited were one about my grandmother, who passed away in 2008, and one on my local hometown newspaper, which passed away in 2009. You can read them here and here.

AT LARGE Fake News Monday: John Mayer Sued For $3.1 Mil By John Mayer's Unit

LOS ANGELES (CAP) - John Mayer's penis, whom the singer compared to Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke and described as "sort of like a white supremacist" in his now-infamous Playboy interview, is suing Mayer for $3.1 million, claiming defamation and emotional distress.

"My client feels he was grossly mischaracterized by Mr. Mayer," said John Mayer's penis's attorney, Alan Schwartzbaum of Greenberg, Glusker and Associates of Los Angeles. "The reality of the situation is that my client doesn't have a racist bone in his, well, you know.

"Given the opportunity, my client says he would be more than happy to associate with women of color, an opportunity denied him by Mr. Mayer," said Schwartzbaum. "He'd particularly like to know if Halle Berry is available."

The suit filed by John Mayer's penis is only the latest blow to the singer, who has come under fire from all fronts in the wake of his "raw" remarks to Playboy. For instance, his comments on former girlfriend Jessica Simpson have drawn criticism from John Mayer's mother, Margaret Mayer.

"I did not raise my son to say things like, I want to quit my life and just (expletive) snort you, or If you charged me $10,000 to (expletive) you, I would start selling all my (expletive) just to keep (expletive) you," said Margaret Mayer, reading from a prepared statement at a press conference in Bridgeport, Conn. "He is in big trouble when he comes home for Purim."

"I also think he was very unfair to his penis," added Margaret Mayer.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

What's scariest is that I think the principal was wearing the same jacket

My father just sent me an electronic photo album of old slides he had scanned into the computer, including this one, from my kindergarten graduation:



It raises all sorts of issues, such as: Why aren't any of the other kids dressed like a cross between a ringmaster and a tiny pimp? Even in 1974, was a burgundy sport coat with white piping and gold buttons and matching plaid pants and bow tie a good look for anybody? Was I secretly an Irish step dancer? Is it just sheer luck that I didn't grow up to be one of these guys? It's all very confusing.

Your offiical At Large snow-mageddon checklist

When Channel 5 here in Boston starts throwing around the phrase "snow-mageddon" on its Facebook page, you know we're in for it. Channel 5 doesn't make up words for just anything.

So with that in mind, please tick down this handy checklist to make sure you're prepared for the coming onslaught of weather unlike any New England has ever seen, except for all those other times:

1) Do you have enough milk and bread? If you don't, it's too late, all the stores are sold out -- all that's left in the supermarket is a few bruised kiwis strewn around the prone forms of trampled stockboys. Time to resign yourself to the fact that you are going to starve to death, unless you're lucky and happen to freeze first.

2) Do you remember how to drive? If you do, there is something wrong with you: It is not a storm in New England unless you find yourself bereft of anything other than the most rudimentary conception of what a car even is, much less how to drive it. But don't worry, the minute you get behind the wheel your mind will become a complete blank, and you can immediately commence upon maneuvering other drivers into snowbanks.

3) Is your snowblower in good, working order? It is? Well, why don't you just move to Wisconsin, winter boy. We don't need your kind around here.

4) Do you live by the shore? If so, proceed immediately to the nearest seawall with your camera. Otherwise it will be very difficult for you to be washed out to sea by a wave the size of a Range Rover. (That's a type of vehicle -- see No. 2.)

5.) Remember that time a few weeks back, when you said to yourself that you really should get your wiper blades replaced before the next snowstorm? Um ... no, me neither.

6.) Before you get washed out to sea, stuck in a snowbank or collapse from milk deprivation, please send your photos and videos to me at pchianca@cnc.com to post here and at at WickedLocal.com. Because if there's anything that's Wicked Local, it's a mid-day mid-week snowstorm -- at least around these parts.

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Stern Gets Ellen, Kara DioGuardi To Kiss At Idol Audition

HOLLYWOOD (CAP) - Howard Stern got off to a good start during his audition to replace Simon Cowell on American Idol, convincing fellow judges Ellen DeGeneres and Kara DioGuardi to make out on camera.

"It was pretty hot," admitted fellow judge Randy Jackson.

The incident occurred during a screen test for the radio shock jock to see how he would interact with the other judges, during which Stern almost immediately began badgering DeGeneres and DioGuardi to make out.

"C'mon, just one kiss. I won't be able to concentrate on the contestants unless we get this out of the way," Stern can be seen saying on the audition tape, which was acquired by TMZ.com. "Make out for 30 seconds and we can all get on with our day."

"OK, now with tongues," he added when they finally acquiesced, prompting a three-minute kissing and fondling session.

"Excuse me, I'm trying to sing Pants on the Ground up here!" exhorted contestant General Larry Platt, who was brought back specifically for Stern's audition. But Platt could not get the judges' or crew's attention over all the hooting as DeGeneres and DioGuardi groped each other.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: Buy an iPad, feed a journalist!

As my regular readers know, I have a long history of trying to get the Apple corporation to send me free electronic equipment in exchange for a mention in this column. I have been wholly unsuccessful at this from the very beginning, when I tried to get them to ship me an Apple II to review for my elementary school newspaper. I suspect Steve Jobs may have something against the mimeograph.

More recently, I’ve tried to get them to send me test models of the various iPods (40 GB, Touch, Shuffle, Nano with Pocketknife, etc.), but they continue to insist on sending them places like PC World and CNET — places that cover, you know, technology, rather than the things I write about, such as when we’re most likely to be overrun by killer zombies. This is of course ironic, since technology reporters will be among the first to go when the zombies finally do attack.

But now Apple has introduced the iPad (motto: Enough With The Feminine Hygiene References Already), its new tablet computer — which, beyond being the latest cool-looking electronic device that I can’t afford, has another, much more important designation: It might just save newspapers. Also, I’m pretty sure that in a pinch you could slice meat on it.

As you may have heard, we in the newspaper business have been looking for ways to turn around our struggling industry. So far we’ve come up with the following ideas:

1) After readers have viewed a certain number of stories on the Internet, charge them … one meeeelllion dollars!

2) Print only pictures of good-looking people. Oh, we’re already doing that? OK, good-looking naked people.

3) Tell people they really should subscribe if they ever want to see Fluffy alive again.

Our main problem, of course, is that people won’t pay to read news on their computer, seeing as how online news is self-generated for free from the dust that gathers in the joint fittings on the Internet tubes. But the iPad isn’t a computer — it’s a slick, slate-like device that does computing, yes, but whose underlying purpose is much more all-encompassing: namely, to make people feel more like Captain Picard. (You know who you are.)

With the iPad, you can take your local newspaper — along with the Web, videos, photos, the latest Lady Gaga single, etc. — into your Starship’s ready room, or anywhere else you want to go. (Well, except the bathtub … boy, did Steve Wozniak find that out the hard way.) And it’s better than a laptop, because you don’t have to unfold it — if we could harness the energy spent every day on folding and unfolding laptops, we could power … well, not an iPad, but probably one of those Itty Bitty Book Lights.

But why, if people won’t pay 75 cents for their newspaper, will they pay $829 plus $30 per month for a loaded iPad? Because it’s got an “i” in front of its name, that’s why! Sure, it sounds silly, but when the thing goes on sale, throngs of people will line up to get it, and CNN will air footage of the skinny, latte-addled hipster who claws his way to the front of the line to buy the first one. (His name is Hugo.)

And then, the part that will warm the hearts of newspaper people the world over: Thousands of consumers will fire it up and immediately use their credit cards to order exclusive iPad subscriptions to the New York Times. And when I say “New York Times” I of course mean, “one of the 50-plus available fart-noise apps.” Sure, that they’ll pay for.

Still, baby steps — we didn’t obliterate the publishing industry overnight, and we don’t expect the iPad to save it for at least three or four more weeks. In the meantime, Apple, I’ll be waiting. You can send me my free iPad in care of this newspaper.

Er, for the time being.

This column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Study - Women Blaming Husbands For John Edwards

WASHINGTON (CAP) - Women across America are dealing with their anger at former presidential candidate John Edwards, and showing their solidarity with his embattled wife, Elizabeth, by making their own husbands' lives miserable, according to a new study.

"It's fascinating, actually," said Dr. Francis Spitznagel of the Pew Research Center. "It wasn't their husbands who lied, cheated or fathered a baby out of wedlock, but they're the ones getting berated, denied sex and, in some cases, physically punished."

"My wife yelled Men are pigs! and hit me in the shoulder with The Politician," said Mark Fresnel, 44, of San Antonio, Texas, referring to one of several new books to portray Edwards' dysfunctional behavior. "Stupid John Edwards."

According to Dr. Spitznagel, women who participated in the study seemed to follow a similar thought pattern:

1) John Edwards is a disgusting pig.
2) John Edwards is a man.
3) My husband is a man.
4) My husband must be a disgusting pig.

"Then they hit the husband with one of the books," said Spitznagel.

"How could a man run around with some strange woman and get her pregnant, and make a SEX TAPE, while his wife has CANCER?" asked study participant Sally Johansen, 38, of New Brunswick, N.J., then turning to her cringing husband, Craig, 40, and yelling "ANSWER ME!"

"If I ever meet John Edwards, I'm going to punch him right in the face," murmured Craig Johansen as his wife continued to glare at him icily.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]