For those unfamiliar, Rick Santorum is a Republican people haven’t really cared about for some time now.  A former Pennsylvania Senator, Rick’s last name is an anal sex joke on the internet, a blow landed on him by columnist Dan Savage in response Santorum’s remarks equating gays and lesbians to people who have sex with animals.

"These gloves will help protect my family from the gays"

To everyone anyone who thinks unlimited corporate donations as a result of the Citizens United Ruling threatens the integrity of our democracy, to you I say at least it’s entertaining.  As long as our politicians are hiring corporate marketing firms to sell their messages to mainstream America, expect politics to continually become more like reality tv.

So why be angry?  Let’s take all these shitty government lemons and make some lemonade while late night comedians, the 24 hour news networks, the Internet, and the other Republican candidates torment Rick Santorum for a few days.

Happy 2012 everybody!  Let’s make it a good one!

Ya see, this week Octavarius is performing in the LA improv festival.  The gang is playing at iO West and everyone is thrilled about meeting new people and seeing all the sights in Los Angeles.  Everyone except me, that is.  See, all of us friends are owners of Octavarius LLC, and in order to maintain a proper business environment, we’ve all sworn to abide by a rigid code of corporate conduct, explicitly outlined in the Octavarius official handbook.  These rules must be followed to a tee, and can never be broken, which is unfortunate because we tend to only write new rules when we are drunk.

The other night, amidst fancy beers and choo choo shots, some jackass member of the group whose name I won’t mention now, decided to pass a new rule where one of us has to stay home on trips out of the Midwest, much like how 1 cabinet member mustn’t join his fellow statesmen at the State of the Union address every year.  So Mikula proposes this shitty new rule and us, short-sighted as we sometimes are, decided to vote for it unanimously.  We drew straws and  wouldn’t you guess, I got the short one.  Now I’m home by myself missing my friends who are out conquering sunny LA.

“I’m about ready to eat that second pizza, but first I should probably go to the liquor store again,” I caught myself saying partway through the first day.  I realized things were not going especially well.  Then it hit me:  as long as I’m going to endure a week without my tentacled, strong-armed companions, I might as well channel that angst into something more productive.  Turns out it’s surprisingly easy to be productive and sad at the same time!

First I made a giant dinner for myself.  Have you ever cooked an enormous dinner by yourself so you can eat it by alone?

One man's sad is another man's productive

No, you say?  Well if you’re sad and hanging out by yourself, why not try it?  As long as you’re just sitting there being sad, you might as well make a feast.  Just boil a pot of potatoes, and get to mashing!  It’s surprisingly easy to keep an eye on a meal being cooked when your friends and family aren’t around to distract you with love and laughter.  Don’t forget to shut off the lights when you finally eat the whole thing!  Squandering electricity is no way to be productive.

Now that dinner’s over, if you want to accomplish something and have more sad, go ahead and throw things away.  That’s right!  In your closet, in your kitchen, in your office, a melancholy life episode is the perfect opportunity to throw away bag after bag of things in your home.

I’m not talking about important things that are close to your heart, but actual junk you don’t need anymore.  Get rid of your receipts and pay stubbs from years ago that you don’t need.  And while you’re at it, you should take that gift you got forever ago that you never opened and pawn it.  I’m sure the person who originally bought it for you would rather you go get something you’ll like, rather than keep onto something you’ll never use.

I’m gonna go throw away half my closet, and finish out the day by giving my toilet a nice, thorough cleansing.  Have fun in LA, rest of Octavarius!  I’ll be at home doing productive things, and when you get back, we’ll all get nice and silly drunk so we can repeal this dumbass 1 person stays behind rule.  Until then, I am the new king of sadness.  Suck it, Marc.

I had the good sense a few years ago to start investing my money in the hateful political rhetoric futures market.  Shortly after a recession and the 2008 election of President Obama, my investment was really starting to pay off.  People were shouting in the streets, 1950′s-era Communists were back and scarier than ever, and everyone was headed for free health care death camps.  The OMG EVERYTHING IS GONNA DIE BECAUSE SOCIALISM AND OBAMA era was a goldmine for some, but what was once a lucrative and expanding industry, is now thinning out.

I first noticed it after I realized I had gone over a week without turning on the tv and hearing Sarah Palin say something horrible.  Then, famous chalkboard-touting, crying conspiracy man Glenn Beck announced he is stepping down from Fox News.  These two were once the titans of their industry and now they are vanishing right before our eyes! Because America simply cannot go without the service of these hilarious media concoctions, I have been racking my brain for ways to help keep them making millions in the next year.

Glenn,

Go heel.  Turn on Fox News.  Become a liberal.  Accept Jon Stewart’s offer to go on the Daily Show and cry about the horrors of the inner workings of Fox.  Get a book deal and a frequent spot in the Huffington Post’s blogger list.  Then, once you have a new show and a couple million dollars more, turn heel yet again! Betray the liberals by going back to Fox News.  Claim you were kidnapped by Marxists and indoctrinated by George Soros.  Sell a bunch more books, and repeat the process as many times as you can.  Or just see if you can go to the WWE and battle the Iron Sheik.

And Sarah,

I’m actually kind of stumped for you.  I guess you could run for president.  At the very least, comedians would really appreciate the work.  We truly love you, but we’re having a hard time finding reasons to keep making fun of you.  Unless you do something new, everyone is tightening their belts and unfortunately this industry is going to have to trim some costs.  Remember, you can always just run up to the halfway point and quit.  I think everybody would be ok with that.

While the loss of these two may hurt my investment, at the end of the day, I think all of this is all a good sign.  Our government could have shut down at the end of last week and that probably would have been uncool for everybody.  Instead it looks like in 2012 people may have to start coming together and having serious discussions with a slight reduction in ridiculous sideshow hijinks.  Here’s to less insanity and more cooperation in the next year!

…even though the comedians will suffer.

Crafty bastard...

It was the fall of 2009 and Twitter was not quite as popular as it is today.  Tinz, an eager young pup at the time, was anxious to leave his mark all over this promising new social technology.  ”Observe as I conquer Twitter!” he proclaimed, as he announced plans to permanently cement his legacy into social media history.

He knew conquering Twitter would be no easy feat.  Such a simple, easily-accessible formula has limitless potential.  The ability to easily engage in conversation anywhere in the world with any number of every day people has proven a powerful enough force to overthrow governments!  To conquer Twitter is to penetrate into the heart of the world’s collective psyche.   Tinz knew he could tame this wild new frontier.  After all, he had a plan:  #ihaveaboner4

Tinz knew if he could get #ihaveaboner4 trending, the world would be his.  He was certain Twitter users would eat up #ihaveaboner4 like hotcakes.  It would sweep through the Internet, being retweeted and trended until the Twittersphere was completely saturated.  Suddenly John Q. Hipster somewhere would be eating a bowl of chili, then have the compulsion to pull out his iPhone and tweet “#ihaveaboner4 this white bean chicken chili!”  Your dad would be tweeting that he has a boner 4 NBC’s Chuck and your boss would announce to the world she has a boner 4 getting an awesome parking space on a Friday night right before she was about to pay to park in the garage.  Yes siree, Tinz was going to be remembered.

The cocky sonovabitch was right

Fast forward to 2011.  Much to our collective chagrin, only a few loyal Octavarius fans used #ihaveaboner4, and even that was short-lived.  Typing #ihaveaboner4 into the search area today yields zero results.  To the common man, it would appear as though Tinz utterly utterly failed.  Then suddenly, Tinz was a success for no god damn reason.

While #ihaveaboner4 is no more, typing “tinz” into the Twitter searchbar today yields thousands of results.

So just what are people saying about Tinz?

Apparently tinz is a convenient abbreviation for “things.”  Ya know, as in These are a Few of My Favorite Tinz, or that old saying “some tinz are better left unsaid.”

So in the end, it doesn’t really matter if Tinz’s boner joke didn’t have the influence he dreamed of.  His nickname is so badass, he won Twitter and didn’t even know it till I told him.

Well played, sir.  Well played.

If you want Tinz to make your dumb face, just send a link to us at info@octavarius.com

Thank God. For a while, it felt like people were literally farting socialism.

The Congressional DemonCRAPS got their asses handed to them in the 2010 elections because America was sick of them committing treason by passing laws.   Republicans have been in the house for 24 days and have already accomplished some incredible things.  Just look at this chart!

Yea boy.  Month after month of positive economic job growth and the only thing the Republicans had to do was fight against it every step of the way and then take credit for it.  That’s why they only do symbolic things like read the Constitution out loud and pretend they want to repeal health care.  They are so fiscally responsible, they can fix the economy by simply showing up and not doing anything.

Americans made their voices heard loud and clear this past election.  We don’t want politicians to pass legislation that helps the economy.  We’d rather they just wear suits, dick around, and take credit for said legislation.  Oh!  And cry, too.  Everyone knows a never ending supply of adult male tears makes our country freer and more economically successful.

Like all great American leaders, House Speaker Boehner publicly cries often

But what about all that shit they said for the past two years?

Glad you asked!  In the year 2011, everything the Republicans have said for the past two years no longer means anything.  Remember when they were all about reducing the deficit because it will turn our grandchildren into government slaves?  Well that was a problem last year, but it’s all cool in 2011.  Repealing health care would add $230 billion to the deficit, but they don’t give no fuck.  They gotta stick it to SPENDbama somehow, so they might as well do it through more spending because freedom.

But what about the Tea Party?  Surely they mean everything they said for the past two years!

Nah.

First off, the Tea Party is a nonpartisan collection of proud American patriots who hate everything Obama does, oppose Democrats and liberalism, and run as Republicans in elections.  They are in no way affiliated with the Republican party.  And sure, they spent two years pretending to be revolutionaries under a flag declaring the government the enemy of the people, but they weren’t serious.

When they said people are honestly considering second amendment remedies against Democrats unless they stop their efforts to try to fix the economy, of course they didn’t actually mean it.  Everyone knows shooting politicians is horrible.  They just said they might because it sounds cool and they don’t feel like paying taxes.  They don’t actually want to overthrow the government, they just think dressing up like Ben Franklin is super fun.

In hindsight, these people were clearly joking

I can only imagine what money-saving ideas Republicans will come up with over the next two years.  Maybe they can take turns reading the entire Bible on CSPAN, or impeach Obama for no reason.  The sky’s the limit!

For more political fun check out the Octavarius Rally to Restore Sanity flickr

And yes, I’m not joking.  The show is still on the air.  Since 1990, AFV has been playing clips of children stumbling over things, animals doing relatively mundane animal things, and adults being kicked in the testicles.  I have no idea who is still watching this show, but if you take a look at this video clip, you’ll see nothing has changed since the last time you watched it over a decade ago.  You most likely won’t make it past 45 seconds into the video.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JECaTdzFSdQ

Other than that guy in the still frame looking kind of like a middle-aged Tinz, nothing about that was particularly funny or surprising.  Hell, we’re almost in the year 2011 and most of the clips used in the show are from 1993 or earlier.

I have no idea how AFV has been able to endure this long when the Internet is home to thousands of hours of funny videos that are infinitely more hilarious and genuine.  You may know them as Epic Fail videos.  An epic fail is when something goes so hilariously wrong for a person, they fail harder than anyone could ever have possibly imagined. 

If AFV wants to stay relevant, they must change their name to America’s Most Epic Fails, recruit Bob Saget as host once again, and move to Spike TV.  Each episode will feature the Internet’s most hilarious failures and Saget will provide disgustingly offensive voiceover commentary.

AFV producers, if you take my idea, please send me $15,000 in prize money.  That is, unless Tosh.0 sues you for being too similar, in which case this blog post never happened.

AND NOW FOR THE LULZ, LET US WATCH EPIC FAIL VIDEOS! 

This first one may be the most epic fail I’ve ever seen.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbhkg8dbJTA

And now some compilations.  Enjoy the fails!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQxqdvpd_U4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKcwcrka66o

Apparently these leaked documents will prove something about how we’ve been dicks to Canada and we’re expecting them to get pissed about it.   This may come as a shock as we’ve always known Canada as nothing more than our quiet upstairs neighbor who is relatively nice and REALLY likes hockey.  Canada never gets pissed about anything, right?

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Um…ok I realize that’s probably not Stephen Harper.  In fact, I have no idea what kind of effect this intelligence will have on US/Canada relations because I know jack shit about Canada.  But really, I swear it’s not my fault.  After all, when was the last time you saw a news story about what Canada is doing?  Never you say?  Good, me too.

Prior to this point I always assumed Canada and us were always cool with one another about pretty much everything.  To be perfectly honest, before this Wikileaks story broke, I only knew like 8 things about Canada.

1. They are obsessed with “Hawk-E,” a sport played with sticks not at all dissimilar to hockey, which was invented by Americans.
2. 75% of their economy is made up of fur trappers and beaver farmers.
3. They have police horses instead of cars.  This seems illogical until you realize Canadians drive nothing but dogsleds through frozen tundra.
4. Men, women, and children all wrestle with bears and nobody ever gets hurt (not even the bears).
5. They have lots of funny people (The Kids in the Hall, Jason Jones and Samantha Bee from the Daily Show, everyone from Second City Toronto) who are all probably super nice in person.
6. They have nationalized health care which means they live under a brutal totalitarian Communist regime where people die in the streets if not already sentenced to death in government-controlled concentration camps for children, the elderly, and political dissidents.
7. It’s always 100% acceptable for Americans to insult them with douchebag stereotypes because we’re really cool and they probably like it.
8. They use maple syrup instead of barbecue sauce.

So let’s see what kind of effect these leaked documents have on the relationship between the US and Canada.  I’m confident our news networks will go to great lengths covering the nuanced relationship between our two governments and the implications these (likely damning) discoveries will have on the war in Afghanistan.

And by that I mean the news will probably just cover whatever folksy bullshit Sarah Palin says on facebook.  After all, she is our country’s Avril Lavigne.