Every quarter I plan to present a list of the all time sweetest animals.  I use over 300 mathematical algorithms to calculate the sweetness of each animal on 3 general categories:

• Powerfulness: Animals need to be able to deliver vicious, deadly blows to other animals that upset them or “get all up in their business”. Exactly like role playing games, each animal has its strengths and weaknesses. A lion can merely pounce on and eat the shit out of anything. For a squirrel on the other hand, it must rely on its cunning and demolitions experience to savor the win.
• Attractiveness: This is a big one, also also why fish tend to not be included on my list. The coolest animals just look awesome doing their sweet moves. Like “I just bought a sweater vest for my $1,000 suit” awesome. Like walk past the bouncer, VIP awesome. There is a slight exception in this category, and that is animals that sound or do something really unique. For example, hyenas are a little fugly;  but the maniacal laugh is enough to win them some points.
• Savor-ability: This is two tiered. The animal has to either regularly eat other animals that are tasty, or itself be tasty. Frogs, you are disqualified. If I wanted something that tastes like chicken I’d eat a fucking chicken. Lillypads, gross.

Now let’s get on to the list, which includes: the top 5 animals, a brief description (as I am an amateur zoologist, I’ll teach you facts you never knew), and a summation of their score.

Tiger

Tigers are probably the sweetest animal to ever walk the planet, and barring extrordinary circumstances, will remain the #1 animal on my quarterly reports for some time to come.

History:
Tigers originated from Norway. In 518 AD, they migrated to southeast Asia because Norway is way too fucking cold. Originally bearing white coats of striped fur to blend in to their natural Norweigen environment, they hunted Dinosaurs for their high protein content. After the “big move”, many painted their coats to orange stripes to be rebelious to their elders and because they didn’t need to hide from shit.

When tigers get in arguments, there is only one solution: visciously severing the jugular of whomever disagrees with them. This is largely why there is only a single political party in the tiger community.

Score:
Tigers are off the charts when it comes to both power and beauty. Their elegant and subtle grace is both charming and overwhelming. Tigers love t-bone steaks, garlic mashed potatoes and boneless fried chicken wings, so on savior-ability they also come in very strong.

Prarie Dog:

History:
Forget everything that you thought you knew about prairie dogs; I am about to blow your mind. Prairie dogs are thinkers, and they have enormous guts. Prairie dogs out-fox foxes! Nobody knows where they come from; only that they are extremely wealthy, speak fluent German and have an appetite for building mechanical war machines like trebuchets, catapults and vending machines to annihilate their enemies all whilst safely sleeping in their underground palaces and garrisons.

Score:
Prairie dogs are extremely attractive; they have all the makings of a seasoned lover. They are strategists and use machinery to accomplish their feats of military domination. The only reason they’re not #1 is savor-ability. I generally shy away from eating grass, and their legs are too small to make good boneless chicken wings.

Lion

History:
Lions are from northeast Africa, the part where everyone speaks French and no one really has a clue (including those who live there) as to what the countries are. This is for good reason: the lions ate everyone. About 4o years ago, lions decided to conquer Africa and they now live all over. Their favorite activities are eating movie stars on safaris and being lazy.

Score:
Lions are pretty sweet; not as sweet as tigers. They look pretty awesome, so on attractiveness they’re highly rated. Power is a no brainer, sometimes they decapitate zebra just because they want to see the flames spew from their neck holes. And savior-ability isn’t a problem, they love sausage. The only thing detracting me from a higher score is that they let their women do all the hunting, which is okay if you like the taste of pretty smelling grass and low calorie spearmint gum — I for one, do not.

Giraffe:

History:
Giraffes are from Romania. They feed by drinking the spirits of vampires, of which they attract by acting as bait with such long, delicious looking necks. When the vampire gets close, they excrete garlic from their pores stunning and temporarily disabling the vampire. They then use their neck to drink its spirits and in the process vaporizing it.

Score:
Giraffes are pretty dull in power; but anyone that can kill a vampire is okay in my book. They are so-so in attractiveness; but the long neck is the aforementioned exception to that rule. For savor-ability, who doesn’t enjoy the refreshing not-watered down taste of a vampire’s spirit that doesn’t fill you up?

Tiny Monkeys

History:
Last and least, there is the monkey. Most monkeys evolved into humans hundreds of years ago, the rest apparently failed and are still monkeys. Monkeys are excellent thieves, and most live a life of crime in order to survive on the streets. They love to steal grapefruits, cameras, and human babies. The monkey is the only animal that is capable of driving a motor vehicle.

Score:
Tiny monkeys are quite cute, and score high on attractiveness. Their ability to steal, cheat and deceive their enemy brings them their fair share of tactical victories. Monkeys prefer to retreat at first, then return later when the attacker is sleeping and strangle them to death with shoelaces they inevitably stole. Monkeys are vegetarians; but love candy, so they score high enough on the savor-ability category to hit #5.

Well, that’s it. Check back in July for Q2!

How are you today? Nice weather, isn’t it? How is your day going? How’s it going? Are you feeling okay?

Now a days it’s not enough just to say hello. You have to inquire as to how the person is doing. A simple “Hi” is considered rude, how shallow you must be for such a simple greeting. Don’t you want to know the gender of the baby she’s carrying, their opinion of the weather or just to spend a few solid minutes talking about where they got that awesome hat?

The death of “Hello” struck me considerbly hard. Once used only by grandparents and presidents, the elongated “How are you” is now the new gold standard of greetings, whether you’re ordering a cheeseburger at a drive-thru window or shopping for a prostitute. How do you answer such a question?

Fear not! Here are a few simple rules to keep in mind when responding to the dreaded “How’s it going?”.

• Your answer should be three words or less, ideally a single grunted word. Despite the obvious inquisitive logic of the question, no one actually gives a shit how you’re doing.
• While “fine” is the obvious answer, you do have an opportunity to be creative. Just don’t waste too much creativity on deaf ears. Unless it’s an American Idol reference, the twit at the movie theatre window probably isn’t going to understand your joke — or even the concept of sarcasm in general.
• Use the telephone to your advantage. Despite landing on the moon, mapping the human genome and exterminating the vampire, telephone quality is still a whopping pile of shit. We can run nuclear subs on complicated computer systems, but a random dropped phone call is perfectly normal. When the dufus starts the call with “Hey, how’s it going?”, pretend he cut out and jump directly into the actual purpose of your conversation — I can promise you this, no one is ever going to come back with “oh, but you didn’t answer how your day is going!”.
• If you want to avoid the question and small talk in general, wear a lot of “Save the Whales”, “Don’t eat Beef” and PETA stickers all over your clothing and carry around some flyers. If you feel that you’re going to be engaged in pointless conversation, take the offensive. Open your eyes widely and pull a single flyer off the top of your pile, lower your head, look them directly in the eyes and take a step towards them. They will leave. Similar taunts have been used by lions for thousands of years.
• If you crave the question and talking about your day to complete strangers, wear a shirt with your name sewn into a breast pocket.

Now, let’s go over some typical answers and what they say about you as a person:

• “I’m doing great! How about you?”
  You are a passive aggressive douchebag. Your life is so much better than theirs, so much so that you wanted to answer the question with an assertive exclamation, but then re-pose the question back as a mere rhetorical insult.
• “Fine”
  Leave me the fuck alone.
• “Not bad”
  None of your fucking business — please don’t spit in my food.
• “Hi” or “Hello”
  My personal favorite. Change it from a stupid question to an ordinary greeting, If you beat it in their head enough that all they’re doing is greeting you, they’ll eventually abbreviate it back to “Hi”. It’s quite obviously the perfect response.
• “Okay”
  My dog got hit by a truck last week.
• “He’s listening… they’re all listening…”
  Please leave me alone.
• “Uhh, well lately my back’s been sore a bit and I’ve had trouble focusing at my job.”
  Either the person looks like a doctor or you’re completely socially retarded and are going to propogate the usage of this stupid question for another decade. Oh, and your kids think you’re a nerd.
• “Cold!”
  Make me my fucking cheeseburger!
• “Burning up!”
  Make me my fucking milkshake!

Help end the stupidity. Let’s bring back “Hello” and put “How are you?” back where it belongs; to semi-balding 40 year old men picking up intoxicated single moms at nightclubs.

So after about 4 years without an update, I decided it was high time for a makeover. I’m currently dumping my old home grown blog for Wordpress, and will be spending a few days getting it tweaked and the ZebraFire content transferred over. Once that’s complete I’m going to start writing new content again — my chief interest being in alerting the public of the dangers of fire breathing zebras.