Welcome to another installment of SCHIZOTRICHIA and another new article delivering the most thought provoking insights you'll ever see. Schizotrichia is society's alarm clock, waking everyone and bringing them back to harsh reality! Continue on at your own risk!

THIS WEEK: The Dead, the Dying, Bad hair, Borderline racism. And, we finally blow the lid off the biggest cover-up of all time, CATCH AND RELEASE FISHING! All this and more whining that we didn't think of Survivor first, right here at the Center For Washing Machine Freedom.

Success in business doesn't seem to be a matter of being the best or the brightest; it seems to be a matter of sticking around, relatively unchanged, long enough for people to get very used to your Brand Name and the way your product works, thus ensuring that they'll be too mentally lazy and/or afraid to switch, even when a superior product comes along.

You know, we're sure that the Movie Industry is honest enough to include any negative commentary they would get in those commercials where they're interviewing real-life movie viewers who are just leaving the theatre...

Anyone with the writing skills of a kindergartner can pound out one of those "How To Land That Dream Job" books. Simply give vague instructions on how to write a "killer" resume, spend an entire chapter harping about the importance of a strong handshake, suggest they learn to "network" at parties, and list several web-sites where people can post their "killer" resumes. Voila, instant book.

Problem is, 95 percent of those types of books never leave the book stores, instead getting poured over as the reader sips coffee at the bookstore's latte bar and scribbles notes on a legal pad he just picked up at Staples. Never claimed it was a money-making idea...

You do realize that, no matter how quickly you return the fish to the water, a caught fish is doomed to a slow, horrible death? See, when you put your grubby hands all over it, you've wiped the protective slime off the fish's body, thus leaving it open to all sort of disease and parasites.

But hey, it impresses the rubes that are glued to the tube at 3AM watching you and your buddy videotape each other fishing, so what the hell.

We really wish our magazines showed up as quickly and in as good a condition as the magazine invoices.

The best part about getting Christmas cards and Wedding Invitations is playing the old "Who The Hell Are These People?" game, where you decide whether you know them well enough to respond in kind.

Uh, isn't it about time someone told poor Elizabeth Taylor that maybe she should avoid any public speaking until she's over her Brain Surgery or Pill Popping or Senility or whatever the hell is wrong with her? Her appearance at the Golden Globes was like the old sit-com chestnut where someone shows up to an important function after having a bad reaction to medicine or drinking a bit too much in an attempt to relax.

Maybe it's a Sign that we don't have the best ISP in the world when the System Status Page, where subscribers can see whether services (E-mail, Newsgroups, etc.) are Down or not, is always Down.

CRAPWELL PREDICTS: By 2203, no computer program will exceed 1.2 meg in size. This will be due to the multi-award winning discovery that most program bloat isn't due to bad coding, but from multiple programmers attempting to shove all their favorite obscure jokes, expressions, and "We'd like to thank these 23,000 people" Easter Eggs into the code.

News report claim that the new Politically Correct dollar coin isn't doing much better than the old Politically Correct dollar coin. And we're sure the main reason for that is that it's hard to wrap a 20 dollar bill around a bunch of coins and impress other morons with your "huge" bankroll.

Recent studies have tied hair dye with bladder cancer. Meaning, there's a lotta people out there making sure "collar and cuffs" match and are suffering for it, or there are permanent side-effects to going through life with your head up your ass...

Always be suspicious of a gift that's not in it's original box. Because either A) They bought it at Wal-Mart and are trying to fool you with that Marshall Field's gift package, or B) It's actually something from around their house that they grabbed and wrapped when they discovered they needed a gift.

And we say that after Mrs. Balth came home from her work's Christmas Party (Yes, in January. Because they're "too busy" to have it in December. Go figure.) with a Grab-bag gift that ended up being an electric can-opener (sans any packaging whatsoever) which, upon closer inspection, had dirt on it's bottom from sitting on someone's filthy counter, and a dirty blade where someone opened a can of something foul and didn't bother cleaning the damn thing before tossing it in a gift bag and handing it to Mrs. Balth. Gee, thanks.

Nothing makes us more confident for the future of the Nintendo64 than the upcoming Rare title Conker's Bad Fur Day, being a video game based on the premise that Endless Poop and Pee Jokes Are Funny.

Amazing how fast "Web Designer" became one of those jobs like "Consultant" or "Actor", where you can claim the title despite never having worked in any related industry, or having produced anything professionally at all.

So, during the SuperBowl's opening ceremonies, after the BackStreet Boys sang and all those jet planes flew over, who else was praying for the jets to do a bombing run? Hell, we think all the collateral damage and innocent lives lost would have been worth it...

On Survivor II, if someone gets eaten by a crocodile or dies from snakebite, would that count as the "Vote-Out" for the week?

Because, of course, we're all watching it for the Human Interaction and the Psychological Drama. Not because we're secretly hoping for the equivalent of a car lofting into the Speedway Crowd.

Speaking of, maybe your lifetime of being remembered as a Survivor II participant shouldn't begin with a SuperBowl commercial featuring you heaving your Wheaties into an airsick bag while on the plane ride to the camp-site.

The ToughMan Competition: Or, Boxing For People Who Didn't Have Enough Talent To Be Eligible To Sign Their Souls Over To Don King.

Guess Ultra-Atheist/Agnostic/Whatever Madalyn Murray O'Hair has learned whether there's a God or not by now, huh?

Oh, yeah, like none of you were thinking something similar when you first heard news reports of her remains being found, allegedly.

Maybe this sounds slightly racist, and if it comes across that way, go borrow a sense of humor; But we've never seen any blond dye job on any African-American that looked like anything besides the side-effect of some horrible industrial accident.

Then again, no white person has ever taken to shaving his head without looking like they've been in extensive chemotherapy, or like they're trying out for the part of Lex Luthor in a local revival of It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman, so we suppose it all evens out...

Speaking of, we still haven't figured out whether that thing on our paperboy's head is a really bad toupee or a really good winter hat. And we're not sure if slapping it off his head would in any way aid us in answering that quandary.

Of course, if we were real MEAN and cynical, we'd think it was some cunning attempt to squeeze pity-based tips out of people. So, having thought it over, we've come to the conclusion that it's actually a cunning attempt to squeeze pity-based tips out of people.

Yeah, we suppose putting a "Connection Availability may be limited during Peak Usage" disclaimer on AOL commercials is a lot cheaper than actually parting with some of those AOL/Time Warner Billions for more modems.

So, Disney's Go.Com is Gone.Com. Lesson: Not everything Disney touches turns to gold, as evidenced by Oliver and Company, The Black Cauldron, and the DisneyQuest chain of "This Retail Space Available Soon" arcades.

Balthayzr put that can opener aside as a gift for next year's Grab Bag, in case you were wondering.

Return to HGNews