C. Dave sent me a Keith Phipps link with a delightful find inside. Remember the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt reviews? Well, there’s a new amazing Amazon meme and it’s Horse Mask Photos!

Dozens of people have taken pictures of themselves wearing the Accoutrements Horse Head Mask. We went through the 100+ images posted thus far and picked out our favorites for your enjoyment.

Editor’s Note: Once upon a time, there was a renegade website called Randomtitle.com that featured a number of present ROTI contributors, and ruled a shady corner of the Internet until it was shut down by the Department of Homeland Security. One of the brave souls who toiled on that site was Vicious Rumors, whose best work for Randomtitle included a comprehensive takedown of the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog. Although his past work has passed into the digital ether, VR returns in 2012 to analyze the best and most ridiculous items sold by the venerable retailer.

The Hammacher Schlemmer Company is a well-regarded retailer with operations dating back to the mid-19th century. It has evolved over the years to become the world’s foremost dealer in eccentricities, high-priced curios, and unnecessary assemblages of plastic and LED lights. To be sure, their inventory does contain many useful items such as VHS-to-DVD converters and wearable tents — but for every brilliant construct of human ingenuity, you’ll discover a woefully misguided tchotchke permanently staining the company’s good name like vomit upon a fine Persian rug. For example, while they do sell a flying car – which none can deny is a must-have item — the awkwardly-named Traveler’s Bed Bug Thwarting Sleeping Cocoon stands as an embarrassing, unforgivable affront to good taste.

For precisely this reason, a trip to their online store yields delights and sorrows alike. You can marvel at the audacity of something like a $350,000 flying car being listed in a catalog, or wonder exactly why valuable textiles are being used to make legions of The 6 Foot Award Winning Ugly Doll when there is probably a homeless orphan in Haiti who needs a pillow. You can exult in the joys of watching a remote controlled bald eagle soar over purple mountains majesty to a Pure Moods soundtrack, or cry in disbelief when you discover someone has skinned an American buffalo to make a wallet.

And for those who enjoy a little color in their product descriptions, even a little history, many of the items are written with a highly-enjoyable, pedantic flair. Consider the following nuggets:

“Invented in 225 A.D. by mechanical engineer Ma Jun during the Three Kingdoms period, the chariot’s differential gearing system provided solitary cardinal direction centuries before the magnetic compass. Romantically known as the “South Pointing Chariot,” it is considered by antiquarians as one of Ancient China’s most complex inventions.”

“This is the recumbent bicycle born from the rich cycling tradition of the Netherlands, renowned for its country-wide network of cycling paths that spans from Maastricht to Friesland. Hand made in Dronten in the Flevoland province of the Netherlands from customized anodized aluminum parts, it is solidly constructed and precisely balanced, having endured adventurous ascents up to Switzerland’s famous Simplon Pass.”

“Celtic knots have decorated Irish art since the early middle ages, such as the Book of Kells, while the Scottish thistle is thought to have been adopted as the country’s national emblem in the 13th century after a misstep by a barefoot, invading Viking.”

If you dedicate yourself to studying this catalog, it is quite possible that in a single night you could both master World History and renounce your citizenship as an American consumer in utter shame. The homegoods of antiquity, the apparel of quaint Medieval fishing villages, the modern inessential bauble and the extravagant toys of the future are all for sale within the pages of Hamm Schlemm. Some are affordable to the average consumer, and some only to Richard Branson, but it’s doubtful even he would buy any of this stuff, and he owns a fleet of dirigibles, for God’s sake.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the more egregious wares for sale.

The Pirate Ship Playhouse – $27,000

The Power Nap Capsule – $25,000

The Brobdingnagian Sports Chair – $149.95

Perhaps the most useless piece of trash the catalog has ever tried to swindle us with, dressed up in a bogus academic reference poorly designed to distract and impress.

The ostentatious blowhard who writes these product descriptions has really outdone himself here. Given the assignment of somehow making this chair appealing, he reaches into his deep grab-bag of literary allusions and pulls out the lesser-known cousin of Jonathan Swift’s Lilliputian — the oversized Brobdingnagian of Isle Brobdingnag. While I have no doubt that the learned readers of this particular blog remember well the peoples and places of Gulliver’s Travels, I find it quite presumptuous of Hammacher Schlemmer to bank on the American public’s command of classic Irish satire when naming their goods. How many catalog shoppers can be expected to know what the hell Brobdingnagian means when they can’t even say it?

Whatever. The chair’s name may be pretentious, but the chair’s existence is just absurd. At 5 1/2′ tall, the chair is designed for absolutely no one. Andre the Giant is dead and the world is bereft of magic. Children might like to scamper up to the seat if only the chair came with a ladder. And Hamm Schlemm knows they have a flop on their hands, count on it. The description strains to find some crumb of credibility, championing the possibility for “full-body gesticulations.” Apparently, they have forgotten that all chairs allow for full-body gesticulations (except electric). Whether you’re sitting in a rocker, a Barcalounger or a stately Shaker ladderback, you have complete freedom to move your appendages — that’s what makes chairs so great. Praising such a trait is akin to celebrating a dog’s ability to take a dump.

Most preposterously, they write: “The lofty seat elevates feet well above the ground, where they’re free to dangle and sway instead of merely floundering in dirt or sand.” Yes, for time immemorial the conundrum of floundering feet has plagued those poor souls who sit in chairs outside. Too long have we endured the pain and hardship of restless legs flailing helplessly upon the earth, writhing in fury like untamed fire hoses, stumbling about the ground looking for peace. What we need is a comically humongous, unseemly chair.

The Award Winning Learn To Walk Trainer – $59.95

Some hyper-sensitive, ultra-liberal single mom who wants to ban dodgeball in school definitely designed this thing. Why do we need this? No one has ever not learned to walk. Every kid in history has learned to walk. Even the most stupid children find a way to walk, and they do it without the aid of this happy-faced PVC pipe balloon animal. Have you ever met anyone over the age of two who was just lying on the floor in a stagnant heap, crying out, “Help me, somebody! I never learned how to walk and now I can’t go anywhere! I know it’s a basic motor skill that everyone else just grows into, but somehow the feat escaped me. It skipped a generation. If only my parents bought me the Award Winning Learn To Walk Trainer, I would be advancing my feet alternately right now, left right, left right, moving in a forward motion like a regular biped. But tragically, here I lie!”

If this device does anything at all, I wager it will create a whole generation of weak-spirited, bow-legged youths who are still breastfeeding at age eight. Burn these wholesale.

The Handheld Fireworks Light Show Projector – $39.95

Because words cannot do this blasphemy justice, I urge you to watch this informative video.

A child who learns to walk with the Award Winning Learn To Walk Trainer will be given this terrible toy on his 9th birthday, right after his mom weans him off the teat. Mother will be too afraid to bring him outside for a real Independence Day fireworks show because he might get bitten by a mosquito, so she’ll make him go watch a sad, depressing facsimile in his room.

He and his loser friends — all of whom were raised by similarly self-righteous parents, and all of whom own the same sickly, pale complexion — will congregate on the floor and sit Indian-style, pointing this shitty flashlight at the wall and feigning amazement at the dim, blurry colors and tinny sound effects.

After seven minutes of this tragedy, the three AA batteries will drain and the lights will slowly fade, accented by the speaker’s death rattle. Then the kids will sit in darkness for a moment, listening to the booming echoes of the real fireworks show reverberate through the neighborhood, and they will contemplate the lost childhoods they will never, ever get back.

The Personal Submarine – $2,000,000

What the hell it’s doing in an online catalog, however, alongside the likes of bathrobes and Googly Eyed Clocks, I will never understand. What person in the market for a submarine would choose to buy it from an internet retailer? I’m sure it qualifies for free shipping, especially if you buy it in tandem with the flying car, but why buy such an essential item sight unseen? I wouldn’t even buy a bicycle if I didn’t get to go down to the bike shop and take it for a spin first.

With my luck, if I bought this thing with that 2 mil I’ve got laying around the house somewhere, it would show up on my doorstep with a nice scratch in the acrylic pressure sphere or, worse, missing a hygrometer or fluxgate compass. F that noise, if I’m buying a submarine I’m going to the submarine store! Or at least buying it used off James Cameron.

Honorable Mention: 

The 20 Foot Animatronic Triceratops – $350,000

Do yourself a favor and pay off your mortgage instead. You’ll thank me later.

The Elliptical Machine Office Desk - $8,000

“Designed to be pedaled at slower cadences that won’t break one’s concentration (or cause one to break a sweat).” What’s the point of working out if you ain’t gonna break a sweat? No pain, no gain. Can’t have it both ways, you idiots.

The Canine Treadmill - $549.95

Potentially forgivable, if it weren’t for the fact that the conveyor belt will deposit all of Fido’s poop on the floor.

The Hands Free Hair Rejuvenator – $699.95

If you buy this, you don’t deserve to have any hair.

The Canine Calming Wrap – $39.95

As if this item could ever compare to a real, honest-to-God hug.

Vicious Rumors peruses catalogues and makes people laugh in Los Angeles.

Now that the craziness of the holidays is over, it’s time for another wrapup of the best GIFs in the world.

C. Dave and I open up our various GIF sources with such eagerness, every day is Christmas morning for us. Then we share our best finds with you, which kind of makes us the Santa Claus and Krampus of GIF…

So let’s fire the engines!

Punch-Out Perfection

A Message to My Haters

Jackie Chan is Ruthless!!

Couldn’t Pick Just One Snape GIF

Do It…

The Ultimate Celebration

Badd Bitches Club: Gilda, Tilda and the O.G.Girls

Demolish Your Message Board Enemies With This:

Revealed: Carlton Banks’Choreographic Inspiration

The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone

GIF You Were Here

Watch and Learn

The Ultimate Midfight Pick-Me-Up

Mac = Evil All Along

This is what I have to say to Tebowmania.

“Sold Out Seats to Hear Biggie Smalls Speak…”

I think we all know the answer.

Gateway Drugs? How Rude!

Who’s Ready For Lunch?

I…have no idea

Zooey, what did you think of this edition of This Month in GIF?

Happy New Year to all our devoted readers! I hope you enjoyed your holidays as much as I did mine. I kicked off 2012 with a decidedly non-tragic dive into the icy waters off Chappaquiddick, and despite an unfortunate hangover caused by too much Champagne Pong, I daresay 2012 is looking good so far…

It’s not too late, though, to quickly recap the past year in Rumors on the Internets history. 2011 was by far the biggest and most epic year in the history of this blog. My trained stat-counting monkeys inform me that the site had over 100,000 visitors in 2011, an increase of 20% over 2010 and 100% over 2009.

Our biggest month ever was November 2011, when tens of thousands of This American Life fans swarmed the site to read and comment on our 2010 writeup and photo gallery of the tale of Steven Raucci, as chronicled in TAL’s “Petty Tyrant.” Much love to Ira Glass for re-airing this episode!

Now, to the archives to recap an epic year on the Internets.

We kicked off 2011 with an analysis of the best music of 2010, singling out albums by LCD Soundsystem, Band of Horses, Arcade Fire, and Janelle Monae for particular distinction, and naming Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy our Album of the Year.

Our extremely high-minded arts coverage included the awesomely-disturbing “Civilization” videos from the NY Standard Hotel’s elevators, “Lemme Smang It” from Turquoise Jeep Records, and the best and worst Lifetime movies of the year. ROTI published, for the first time anywhere, the amazing works of outsider artist Fredk. We lavished praise on the brilliant jeebus comedy team and their instant smash “Hobo Christmas,” celebrated the genius of Brad Neely, encouraged everyone to check out “A God Named Pablo,” and breathed a sigh of relief that one of our favorite Twitter feeds remained untainted by CBS.

Great songs abounded as we brought back our beloved Deep Cuts series, which this year featured Blur, CSN, Danger Mouse, Fleetwood Mac, and Talking Heads. (Would you believe the Mac article was by far the most popular?) And in a poignant and rockin’post, I shared The 25 Most-Played Songs on My iPod Before It Died.

We continued our celebrity reportage, using our shadowy network of sources to reveal the sinister hotel-spying schemes that lie behind so many tabloid rumors, and breaking down the winners and losers from our HSX Star Bond account. As usual, our awards consultant David Burnce expertly analyzed the 2011 Oscars, opining on the nominees and predicting the winners with eerie accuracy.

At times, we were even servicey, letting y’all know about Google Talk Guru, sharing the hilarious online reviews of Osama bin Laden’s Hideout Compound, and puzzling out just what, exactly, Dikembe Mutombo said in his infamous Request for Sex. We gave Michael Eric Dyson a hand by creating an entrance exam for his Jay-Z seminar, and dispatched a crack team to eat every fattening food at The Big E and grade them from scrumptious to disgusting.

And then there was GIF! Our indispensable roundups featured a “You Are Not The Father” Povich breakdance,  Chubby/Ecstatic Nets Fan, and Lance Reddick tripping balls. Byrne grooved, Arrogant Jeopardy Kid smirked, and Michele Bachmann scared the shit out of everyone. We found Blake Lively with a mustache disturbingly appealing, and even got into the GIF-making business with the definitive Herman Cain Creepy Smile GIF.

We remained grouchy on a more-or-less constant basis throughout the year, slamming the crappy comedy of Garfunkel & Oates, bitching about the lack of originality of many participants in Wire Quote Day, and tooling on the self-published authors who ran ads in the NY Review of Books. (One of them even showed up in our comments section to accept our criticism with good humor!) Grouchiness turned to sorrow as we mourned the losses of Liz Taylor and Nate Dogg.

2011 concluded as it began, with a roundup of the year’s best albums — this time, we laureled Metronomy, The Horrors, Girls, Wilco, Fucked Up, Kurt Vile, Cults, Fleet Foxes, and Bon Iver, and gave Album of the Year to M83′s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. We also leveraged new technology to create an acclaimed Spotify playlist with hundreds of the best songs of 2011.

This site wouldn’t exist without your support and readership, and I am grateful to the entire ROTI team that suggested and collaborated on so many of these posts throughout the year, every site that linked to us (especially Razzball, Kissing Contest and Casual Hoya), and anyone who shared our posts with friends, forums or social networks. Our cadre of rumor-mongers continues to grow, with comment sections bustling, Facebook and Twitter armies mounting, and more active participants joining up every day. World takeover seems imminent.

Rumors on the Internets has some cool new stuff planned for 2012, and we’ll continue to provide the features you love along the way. Keep reading and you will be rewarded. Peace!

I’m pleased to report that not only does my favorite Internet comedy posse, jeebus, have a new video out — they have just debuted one of the greatest Christmas songs ever written. Or should I say, resurrected it?

Wait, you really don’t remember that time back in the 80s (or was it 90s?) when all those famous stars got together to record “Hobo Christmas”?! I’m sure this video will jog your memory!

I officially have a new favorite Christmas song.

If this is your first time experiencing the magic of jeebus, then I have a real treat for you today.

jeebus is a web-based comedy crew led by Neil Hopkins (best known for playing Liam Pace on Lost) and John Forest (who recently drew praise from both ROTI for his work in Wanting Alex and Patton Oswalt for his work in Young Adult). Hopkins usually portrays the bewildered straight man, and Forest is the irreverent, maniacal comic relief; but as their efforts have continued, these roles have broadened amusingly. Each episode usually features a guest star turning in a superb performance.

Pretty much every video they have done is riotously weird, and is guaranteed to crack you up. Unless you’re a real elderly librarian sourpuss, you’re gonna love this.

“The Text”

“Don’t tell me to hurry. Then I’ll just hear your voice, telling me to hurry. It’s gonna take longer…”

In the dudes’debut video, John summons Neil to his apartment with an urgent and mysterious text message. Confusion and tragedy quickly ensues.

“The Bike”

“What about….going halfsies?”

John gets Neil to take him bike shopping, then proceeds to infuriate his chauffeur beyond all reason. (Check this one out at Funny or Die.)

“FIFA!”

“My wife is retarded. She just told me today. I’ve been married to her for eight years.”

John and his locksmith friend Nate (played by Nate Corddry of Studio 60 and The Daily Show) break into Neil’s apartment to watch the World Cup. After Neil is compelled to let his uninvited guests watch FIFA, it turns out that Nate is a full-blown psycho and the guys are forced to defend themselves with whatever weapons are at hand. (Watch this one at Funny or Die.)

“Hot Dawg!”

“They were younger, by a lot of years, but there were a lot of them. And they were strong.”

Neil and John head to a Ween concert, but John quickly puts a wrinkle in their plans when he decides it would be more fun if his AA friend Ptolemy (Ptolemy Slocum, the guy McNulty framed for the serial killings in The Wire) came along for the trip. After John unspools Ptolemy’horrifying past to Neil, he decides it would be downright cruel to refuse, only to find the decision’s already been made for him. (Watch this one at Funny or Die.)

“Born Free”

“And this is going to be my meditation dojo slash wine cellar.” “Slash rape room?”

John invites Neil over to his new place, but they are attacked by a feral child (the brilliant Will Greenberg). They manage to stun the wild beast, but soon imagine him as a proxy for their dreams. Neil fantasizes about bringing greater justice and understanding to the world, while John simply wants to live out the plot of every single 1980s Tom Cruise movie. The greenscreen work in this video is beyond outstanding.

“Hipster Detail: The Donut”

“Brunch used to be a treat. A sometime thing. These hipsters…they make it an anytime thing! They’re tearing at the very fabric of society!”

I particularly love this one because it stretches the definition of what a jeebus video can be. Hard-boiled Detective Frank Cavanaugh (Greenberg again, even better this time) is determined to hunt down and eradicate the menace that is hipsters. But when his partner procures a evil hipster foodstuff, he’s disturbingly attracted to the dark side of humanity. (Check it out on Funny or Die.)

If you don’t appreciate the comedy of jeebus, then I don’t want to know you. Begone from my sight!

The rest of you…let’s just watch “Hobo Christmas” again, shall we? Pass the mistletoe and let’s ride the sleigh!

This Month in GIF returns! Rejoice, denizens of the intertubes.

The magnificence above is the first-ever ROTI GIF creation, hand-crafted to celebrate one of the best campaign ads ever, and especially the terrifying moment at its conclusion that Daily Intel described as “Herman Cain is closing the curtains behind him at a shady motel, turning slowly, and making that creepy smile at a scared prostitute on the bed.”

As usual, C. Dave helped gather great GIFfage, and thanks also to Major Beans and LA Nicholson for helping me screen the semifinalists. Easily the most difficult cut of all, this month’s list of contenders was incredibly deep and varied, with over four dozen GIFs ending up on the cutting room floor. (I estimate at this point, my hard drive is about 60% GIF.)

Enough talk, it’s GIF time! [PLEASE NOTE: Things get a little NSFW (boobs) towards the end.]

Cat and Mouse

Beard Slap!

The WhiffNatural

-

Matarazzo Don’t Mince Words

Now THAT’S a Glorified G!

Another one for your message board arsenal…

The Only Thing I Want for Christmas

Turns out, the last Horcrux was close by the whole time!

It’s a fine (brow) line between attractive and hideous.

“Sexy Panda, girl pardon my manners…”

Wait for it…HORROR!

A Message To The NBC Executive Who Benched “Community.”

Impressive Display of Stoicism!

A Groundhog Day Scene I Re-Enact Daily

Pacifist Cat Says, “Stop The Violence!”

Paging NFL Scouts…

I don’t believe in Peter Pan, Frankenstein, or Superman — all I wanna do is BICYCLE!

Weird Al Dreamed He Was Hard

Mesmerizing.

The moral of this story is, you can’t trust the system!

Happy Thanksgiving!

For those who lived near him, Fred was not merely an old man down the street. He was a constant presence in their mailboxes, often delivering his hand-written tales around the most festive holidays. He was a comedy genius that wasn’t afraid to push the boundaries.

Trying to explain how entertaining his prose was could never really do him justice — so allow me to show you the mailing he sent out for Easter, 2009.

Although he called himself simply Fred, the way he abbreviated “Frederick” in his return address stickers — see above for an example — led many of the aficionados of his work to dub him Fredk.

He was a retired engineer who worked for Raytheon for many years; during his illustrious career he helped develop both radar and the microwave. In his retirement, he bent his considerable intellect to the creation of homemade comedy pieces that inspired all who saw them.

ROTI associate Major Beans, who lived across the street from Fredk, provided us with this collection of Fredk’s greatest hits, lovingly curated for your enjoyment.

Fredk often used a cartoon or greeting card as his jumping-off point (he especially liked Dana Summers’“Bound and Gagged”) before descending into a comedy monologue that ranged from the silly to the absurd. Sometimes his messages would verge on the bizarre, openly encouraging the reader to think of him as a crazy person…

But for the many Fredk fans who eagerly looked forward to the next delivery from the comedy genius down the block, no Fredk flight of fancy was too weird:

If Fredk’s missives are to be believed, he was a party animal who never hesitated to crack a ribald joke.

Watch as Fredk gets a little bit blue in his St. Patrick’s day communique, demanding that the ladies show him their jumblies!

(Was Fredk channeling Phish there??)

If you got one of Fredk’s messages out of context — for example, if you just moved to the neighborhood and found the following letter in an unmailed envelope on your doorstep — you might have found his sense of humor frightening…

But the more you got to know Fredk, the better you appreciated his unique take on the world.

Perhaps his best work was when he turned his talents to the art of memoir, and let the reader in on his past.

I’m sad to report that Fredk recently passed away…

Although the great man may no longer be with us, his literature will stand the test of time.

Another month has passed us by. ROTI turned 3 years old. We cracked the illustrious (not really) 200,000 pageview plateau. Now it’s time again for one of your favorite features, This Month in GIF.

C. Dave and I have conferred, and these are the finest GIFs we have discovered in the past 30 days…

As usual, we drew from all the GIF aggregator sites, the land of Tumblr, and the darkest depths of comment sections. As always, please send along any GIF magic you may discover for our supercommittee’s consideration.

Go Time!

I Would Greenlight a Movie Based on This Scene Alone

Halloween Is Coming!

I’m weirdly into this.

Lightly Steamed Adorbs

Scarier than The Human Centipede:

New Arrested Development Season on Hold; Franklin Bluth is Holding Out

Stay away from this lady’s birdhouse!

Vintage Britney!

I would not want to be one of this guy’s kids after a tough CFL loss.

There should be a 1,000 point bonus in all defensive metrics for humiliating a fellow All-Star in a playoff game.

Wee Bey’s reaction to the play above.

Center-left black kitty is unflappable!

This Dance Move’s For You, Tot Mom

The next time I’m at the club, I’ma just do this all night.

Somebody Make It Rain Already!

Not Safe For Work — Erotic Display of Candy

In case the past couple of GIFs gave you any ideas…

Working Man Clowned By Millionaire, Crowd Eats It Up

Trippy Tri-Tries

Thanks for joining us. We will return next month with the latest in GIF goodness.

The Eastern States Exposition, better known as The Big E, is the official state fair for all of New England. Located in Springfield, MA for three weeks in September, it’s an epic smorgasbord of food, rides, merchandise, cattle, and people-watching…

Now, all our Bostonian readers are currently reading this and scratching their heads, saying, “How does New England have a state fair that I have never heard of? I thought those mammoth state fairs were all in the Midwest.”

Believe it, Boston! Just because nobody who lives east of Worcester has ever heard of this annual event, that doesn’t mean that it is imaginary. It’s all too real!

Since state fairs are well known as hotbeds of unhealthy cuisine, Rumors on the Internets dispatched a team of fearless experts in the field of crap-cuisine (aka a posse of fatties) to taste-test everything The Big E had to offer.

This is their report.

The food at the Big E encompasses everything you’d expect from a state fair spanning all six New England states — it includes both regional favorites and the latest in vile fried-dough experimentation.

We tested two dozen items on offer and grouped them into five subcategories based on a proprietary formula (The Big E-Meter) that takes into account yumminess, audacity, creativity, aesthetics, and how badly we needed to lie down and/or purge after consuming them.

The five subgroupings are Highly Scrumptious, Decently Delicious, Solidly Edible, Moderately Gross, and Thoroughly Disgusting.

Highly Scrumptious

These foods were noted for not only their tastiness, but for their uniqueness and the creativity involved in their creation. Each one involved the frying process to some extent, and all packed a saturated-fattening wallop!

The #1 ranked food on The Big E-Meter was one that came as a total surprise to our taste testers. We had not expected to enjoy The Craz-E Burger, but there was no way we could show our faces at the ROTI offices after turning down a bacon cheeseburger on a glazed donut bun.

Behold!

Here’s what you would NOT expect from looking at this concoction, or even just hearing about it: It is really, really good. We quickly polished one off and ordered another. The mix of tasty donut, greasy cheeseburger, and salty bacon is incredible!

Other notable foods in this category:

Fried Snickers Bars.  Gooey goodness encased in a battery fried crust. If you don’t like this, you must be a Communist.

Millennium Chips. A whole potato cut in a spiral, resulting in an incredible cross between potato chips and french fries. The Dippin’Dots of potato products: it’s futuristically good.

Rhode Island Clam Fritters. Only available on the grounds of the Rhode Island House. Chewy, salty, and delightful. These were gobbled in no time.

Fried Oreos. Not only were these an outstanding treat that combined the best of fried food fattiness with one of the most delicious mass-market cookies, just check out this incredible signage!

Decently Delicious

These foods were unique creations that satisfied both curiosity and appetite. While they didn’t match the items in the previous category for sheer audacity, we wouldn’t hesitate before ordering up any of them again if we had the opportunity…

Big E Cheese from the Vermont House. Specially created for the fair by Cabot and its corporate master, Agri-Mark. This cheese isn’t anything that would delight stinky-cheese snobs, but it’s a fine specimen of Vermont cheddar that pleases any true American palate.

Frozen Apple Cider. The perfect solution for the fair-goer who is excited for the coming autumn yet still wants to enjoy the waning days of summer.

Maine Lobster Roll. Pretty much your standard lob-roll, but appealingly cheap within the confines of the Maine House. Its rating in the satisfaction-per-dollar statistic was off the charts.

Maple Cotton Candy from the Vermont House. Hand-rolled onto a paper cone by a 100% authentic Vermont hippie! The Vermont House is by far the best of the establishments on the Avenue of States: it’s all about cheese, maple products and personal liberties.

The prize of this category was another Big E exclusive, the Hot Diggit-E Dog. “Infused” with cheese and liberally draped with jalapenos, this packed an esophagus-melting punch…

Solidly Edible

Nothing special, nothing creative…just perennial favorites that rarely fail to please.

A Mediocre Pulled Pork Sandwich. This contained one piece of cartilage, which kicked off a debate about whether tough, inedible tissue found in meat is called “gristle” or “grizzle.” Note to my fellow team members: it’s gristle. “Grizzle” is pretty funny, though. Let’s spread that one; since English is a living tongue, you could eventually be right…

Frozen Lemonade. Your basic fro-lem.

Baked Potato With Everything. Marketed as “Maine Baked Potato” but who does Maine think they’re kidding? It’s just a potato. Still, load a starchy treat up with sour cream, bac-o-bits and cheese and I’m in.

London Broil Sandwich. “Just OK,” said the team member who devoured this creation.

Vanilla and Chocolate Milkshakes from the dairy stand near the farm animal exhibition pavilion. As this is New England we’re talking about, a milkshake is not to be confused with a “frappe.” EVER!

Moderately Gross

These foods would easily have been the nastiest thing any of us had eaten in months, if it wasn’t for the truly vile items in the final category. While they weren’t exactly stomach-turning, I would not recommend that anyone eat these things if there is an alternative available.

Sad Soft Pretzel. One of our team members couldn’t handle any more fat-laden treats and retreated to a pretzel stand to purchase a soft pretzel with mustard and no salt. Predictably, this was a wimpy-flavored food product that offered little in the yum department. A cafeteria lady would turn up her nose at this offering.

Fried Twinkie. This sounded really good in theory, but ended up just being a moist, soggy cake on a stick. The creamy center completely evaporates and soaks into the yellow cake, but it isn’t a weapon of mass tastiness, merely a big disappointment.

Super-Eggy Finnish Pancakes. Eyebrows were raised when one of the team members took the plunge on the Finnish Pancakes, and our skepticism was apparently well-founded, because he pronounced them “really, really eggy.”

Fried Butter. One of the most notorious items on sale at The Big E. A debate raged over whether fried butter should have been classed moderately gross or thoroughly disgusting, but I don’t think it merits being in the bottom category, and the highly scientific Big E-Meter agrees.

Because the butter ball melts during the frying process, this is basically buttery fried dough. Nothing wrong with that; just don’t eat it in one giant gulp, unless you want a mouthful of hot, melted butter!

Thoroughly Disgusting

These final four items were offensive on so many levels — not only crimes against taste buds, but aesthetically appalling as well. These food products should not be sold to humans.

Each is depicted as a warning to others not to experience what we have gone through…

Fried Cheesecake

In theory, this COULD have been good — blending cold, creamy c-cake with a warm, crispy, fried crust, and topped off with whipped cream, choco and fruity sauce. Instead, it quickly congealed into a melange of nasty flavors at a queasy room temperature. I can’t think about this any more without getting ill. Let’s move on.

Fried Shepherd’s Pie

SO nasty. One team members ate this basically solo because everyone else was too appalled to touch it. Cafeteria-grade meat encased in prison-grade mashed potato and fried to a crisp, then doused in gravy that undoubtedly came from a powdered mix. Even the bitterest housewife would have more mercy than to serve this to Casey Anthony as a last meal.

Fried Kool-Aid

These vile concoctions resemble the hearts of young mammals. Perhaps human children? Formed by soaking dough in Kool-Aid and then frying it, they came out with a stomach-churning molten center. The funny thing is that they weren’t really that gross-tasting, but the entire aesthetic experience surrounding this item was enough to plunge its Big E-Meter rating into the toilet.

Fried Jellybeans

The nastiest food product sold at The Big E, hands down. I have a picture of the fried jellybeans fully intact, but I think this image does it better justice because it’s evidence of how little of this we were able to consume. None of us ate more than a nibble, and many spit it out. Whoever came up with the concept of shoving jellybeans into fried dough should be tried in the Hague for crimes against humanity.

This concludes our report from The Big E. Hopefully you learned a lot about what flavors you’ve been missing out on, and what flavors you were totally lucky to avoid.

The fair is over for the year, but we wholeheartedly encourage you to check it out in 2012…

Just don’t try to cut us in the Craz-E Burger line, unless you want to have your heart cut out and sold to the Fried Kool-Aid stand!

I’ve said it before: the New York Review of Books is my favorite periodical of all time.

The magazine pays for its superb content — critical reviews of nonfiction, fiction, and media,  along with trenchant essays  – with subscription fees that run up to $70/year…

They also run classified ads that are hilariously over-written. Here’s a personal ad that’s fairly representative of what you’ll find in the back pages: “DC-Based Male, Irresolute, Callipygian, has job, ironic friends, hair. ISO qualified female for exchange of the very same sly mockery, ridiculous stories, and heedless musings that got us here in the first place.” (The accompanying email address, which I will not post, sports a reference to a 19th century French writer. Of course it does.)

While the NYRB has not yet found a way to monetize the academic bitch-fights that take place in its letters section every two weeks, they also fund their operations with full-page ads from the likes of Oxford University Press, Getty Publications, Princeton University Press, and the MoMA, to name a few advertisers in a recent edition.

But other than the articles, my favorite part of the NYRB is the ads that vanity press operations run in its pages. These outfits, such as Xlibris, offer “self publishing and print on-demand” services to authors who can’t get their work accepted by the book publishing industry and simply refuse to abandon the idea of seeing their ideas in print. I’m not sure how these companies decide what books to advertise — whether it’s their best-sellers or, more likely, the authors who are willing to fork out a little extra dough for an ad in a fancy periodical. Whatever the background, these advertisements are almost always a treat.

Here are ten amazing examples from recent issues.

I’m going to start calling people “spiritual seducer” in everyday conversation. The person who offers me pizza when I’m trying to abstain and dangles a slice in such a way that I can’t resist? Spiritual seducer! The person who convinces me to stay at the bar just a little bit longer when I have something to do early the next morning? Spiritual seducer! The person who puts Keeping Up With The Kardashians on the television set when I’m trying to get work done? DEFINITELY a spiritual seducer!

I have a feeling R.T. Barnes has alienated a lot of people throughout his life with his “sense of humor.”

Am I wrong here, or has nobody ever proven that a snuff film has actually been made? I picture Madame Woo like Nic Cage in 8MM, prowling through the shady underworld of the Shanghai sex scene, obsessively searching for a real snuff film just so she can thereupon find and execute the guys who made it.

(That movie was kind of awesome, in retrospect. Especially the part when Machine pulls off his mask and it’s Frank Sobotka from The Wire.)

This guy is going to get sued for plagiarism by Fox News. The reason this guy had to self-publish is NOT that this book has any issues with publishability or marketability; it’s that Glenn Beck basically wrote this exact same book five times over. 

One of the more amusing genres of vanity press tome is the totally unnecessary memoir. Peeping this cover, I can’t say I have any desire to learn how these two stooges sharpened one another’s iron or navigated each other’s tangled illusions.

Someday, when Sheryl Hill’s discovery of Merkabah (spirit light vehicles of the soul) is heralded as the turning point of humanity into a new age of enlightenment and spiritual well-being, I’m going to feel like a real dick for making fun of her book on the Internet.

This isn’t just any mountain biking book. It’s a mountain biking book that breaks down the philosophy of LIFE, bro. It opens with an unforgettable anecdote about the time Mark Tracey shredded a few mountains under his hardy tires, sparked a blunt atop a scenic precipice, and peered deep into the Universe’s soul.

The hyperbole of ads like this inspires me. This is not just a book — it’s a mournful piece of identity and a collection of the finest written words…that serves as a battleground between the demons of dark forces and divine celestial energy…and will help the reader understand her ultimate destiny.

Doesn’t Sami Gjoka worry about overselling this book just a little bit?

Was this book penned behind bars? This is terrifying, and I don’t mean as a work of fiction; just the wording of this ad makes me really concerned that somebody is going to die soon. I hesitate to make fun of this any further in fear that the somebody might be me.

This one is not here to be mocked, I am seriously excited about it. Does “The Poetry of Life in Science In Africa and Manzee” have an e-book edition that I can read on my Kindle? YES!

The cover alone is pure magic…

I, for one, eagerly await the day when MANZEE makes us one with our chimpanzee brothers.