Weird: Noticing that the downtown DC Barnes & Noble has placed its “Sexuality” section out in the open and in plain view of everyone who goes to the second floor.

Weirder: Seeing that the same Barnes and Noble has considered it a strategic advantage to stack its “Family & Childcare” section directly behind its “Sexuality” section.

Weirdest: Realizing that though you consider Barnes & Noble’s floor plan humorous enough to take a picture of so you can cynically blog about it, you appear to be, in fact, the only pervert in the bookstore taking a photo of books called “The Sex Bible” and “The Orgasm Loop”.

BOOKSTORE FAIL.

Shortly after moving to DC and taking a job as a newspaper reporter, a hot intern who I tended to ignore in the newsroom told me she thought I was a snob.

She quickly backtracked and said no, she had thought I was a snob but was happy to see I actually wasn’t one.

“Why did you think I was a snob?” I asked her.

“Because,” she responded, “you’re from LA.”

I had never realized that being from Los Angeles could be such a liability on the East Coast Where Apparently Your Shit Don’t Stink.

Sure, LA has Hollywood and diet fads and obnoxious cars and fake boobs and trendy bars named Clear that features clear stools and clear walls — but that doesn’t mean we’re snobs.

At least I hadn’t thought so. Until I watched this video.

This is a video put together by a YouTube user called 5friendsvote and features a bunch of A-list celebrities urging you to vote this November. Noble cause, right? Hollywood activism at its finest, right?

Maybe. If you like being patronized by a bunch of overpaid phonies.

I cannot even begin to explain the condescension these stars exhibit in this video. The “reverse psychology”. The patronizing eyes. The decision to show Natalie Portman on screen for only two seconds. It’s sickening.

So, since I lack the words and it’s Friday, also known as the blogging Sabbath, I’ll just illustrate it for you in my continuing series, “I Watch So You Don’t Have To”. In the photos, I have not changed anything the actors said in the video.

FYI: I hate to do this twice in one week but this was too good to not do it. Besides, it’s my blog; if you don’t like it, get your own fucking blog.

The video starts with celebrities, led off by Earthophile Leonardo DiCaprio, telling you not to vote. See, what they’re doing is called “psychoanalysis in reverse”. They’re telling you not to vote so that you will. Pretty sneaky, sis!

But check out the way they look at you. Look at DiCaprio’s eyes, Forrest Whitaker’s contempt. If this tactic works on you, maybe you deserve to be psychoanalyzed in reverse. Or hypnotized. Or had your skull drilled to release the evil spirits.

Even the two hot chicks from “Friends” get in the act. Courtney Cox addresses you like she just caught you masturbating to photos of her from 1995 and Jennifer Aniston confirms my belief that she, contrary to popular belief, has no friends.

The award, if there were one, for most condescending glare, would go to Halle Berry. Even though she’s already on my shit list, that doesn’t stop her from looking at you like you just peed on her rug but she has no idea how to punish you.

The video does, mercifully, employ some funny actors. Jonah Hill is hysterical, acting all Superbad-ish and making abortion jokes. His best line, though, is “Darfur? I don’t even know where that is. That sounds like a t-shirt company to me.”

So hipster-true, Jonah!

Sarah Silverman, when she’s not taking her bra off, uses her patented [Jewish chick+poop jokes=$$$] formula to win you over.

Ellen DeGeneres, who my mom loves and is totally ok with her being a lesbian, also tries to be funny and sort of succeeds, but even she can’t stop herself from looking down at all you gay and non-gay voters.

But despite any possibly good intentions, the video pounds you with repeated clips of celebrities like Jennifer “Love Me” Aniston looking at you like you’re scum…

…pointing at your soul and questioning your very moral turpitude (like Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon do)…

…or just generally being Ashton Kutcher, which is annoying enough as it is let alone in a PSA:

At the end of the video, DiCaprio comes back one more time to ask you, in a patronizing tone so steeped in disgust, if you’re even aware that you need to first register to vote.

Yes, Leo, I do. But your disdain nearly makes me want to unregister , if I even can, just to laugh in your stupid, smug face.

Oh, and Natalie Portman is also in the video. Like I said above, I didn’t change one word of what they actually said in the video. This is verbatim.

You, too, can feel simultaneously outraged and morally superior to celebrities by watching this video before it gets lampooned on SNL. Click here.

P.S. Whatever happened with the hot intern? Yeah, we hooked up.

I have an awful affliction that might have reached its tipping point — I have an insane need to always be right.

This is ironic considering that most of the time I’m wrong.

This need to be right often defies logic, especially when I find myself arguing a point even in the face of irrefutable proof that i am, indeed, wrong.

A few weeks ago, I went to my friend Foxymoron’s party to celebrate his birthday. He invited his friend Jenna, a flight attendant who he met while traveling and who was visiting DC.

Jenna fit every stereotype I have ever had about flight attendants. That is, she had the most enormous rack I’ve ever seen.

Her party zeppelins were so impressive that even our gay friends Nickels and Sizzli pointed them out to me (like they needed to).

They were so impressive that even straight girl Lemmonex asked her if she could touch them (which she obliged).

They were SO impressive, in fact, that Foxymoron, who is also gay, at one point took out his food scale and suggested Jenna take out one of her breasts so we could weigh it.

This is when I might have lost my man card.

In an effort to correct Foxymoron’s flawed logic, I actually said, “There’s no way you can get an accurate measure doing that.”

Foxymoron gave me a look that suggested I might want to reconsider what I was about to say next. I obviously didn’t understand.

“Because you’d be pushing up with the scale, we won’t really know what it weighs,” I mouth-farted. “Even if you put the scale on the floor, her own weight would affect the result. It just wouldn’t be accurate.”

Even writing this out, I fee like punching myself in the balls.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see Jenna take out her boob to weigh it. It’s just that my need to explain why this was a flawed experiment trumpeted everything else.

Where does this need to be right come from? Because it has seriously become a handicap. I have practically become a one-man Snopes.com, only less informed and with much more smugness. Just look at my track record:

“Sarah Palin tried to ban books!”

No, actually, she didn’t.

“The Metro runs less trains on the weekend.”

Fewer, the Metro runs fewer trains on the weekend.

“That video of the DUI stop was so funny.”

Yes, it was, but it’s not real, it’s a clip from “Reno 911!”.

Do other people suffer from the same affliction? Is there a pill I can take? Surgery I can undergo? Hypnotism? Anything?

Some time after the boob incident, Foxymoron told me in private that he was disappointed in me.

“I thought I knew you,” he said from behind downcast eyes.

When a homosexual scolds you for stopping a girl from taking out her funbags, you should be disappointed.

Jim Caple, you are not alone.

Henry Fonda did it. He faced off against an entire jury of white dudes who didn’t agree with him. And it wasn’t easy.

If he was able to do it, I’m sure even you, Jim Caple, can convince the entire baseball world why the Dodgers will beat the Cubs in the National League Division Series that starts tonight.

So what if nine other sports “experts” all disagree with you?

So what if you haven’t written about the Dodgers since March and wouldn’t know the difference between Matt Kemp and Jeff Kent?

So what if you “allegedly” stole your column on The Natural from a blogger?

So what if thousands of AccuScore computer simulations show the Cubs winning?

So what if every ESPN poll shows NO ONE is giving the Dodgers a chance?

What matters is that I believe in you. Just like I believed in Juror #8.

And after everything I’ve gone through this season, that’s all that matters.

Let’s go, Dodger Blue.

After her brilliant parody of Tina Fey last week, Sarah Palin sat down with Katie Couric again last night to prove to U.S. Americans why she’s ready to help lead our country into the next depression.

Palin was heavily criticized for her previous appearance with Couric, so this time she brought some muscle in the form of my high school driver’s ed teacher John McCain.

Together, they met with Couric on the CBS Evening News (with Palin wearing the exact same outfit Fey wore on SNL on Saturday) to talk about “gotcha journalism”, Palin’s “executive experience as a city mayor”, and from what I gather, “pizza”.

Since watching the 3 1/2-minute video might have given you a seizure, I took the risk of watching it myself so you wouldn’t have to. I cropped it into the following 6-part series of still images to give you a brief synopsis of what was discussed.

I am not a hero. I merely love this country too much to let you watch this interview.

This was by far my favorite part of the interview. Addressing Palin’s perceived lack of experience, McCain said, “I remember that Ronald Reagan was a ‘cowboy’. President Clinton was a governor of a very small state that had ‘no experience’ either. (laughter) I remember how easy it was gonna be for Bush I to defeat him. I still recall, whoops, that one.”

Thanks to Maxie, who blogs at I Hate So Much, for making me a personalized illustration after I told her what I was doing this weekend. She’s got some pretty awesome cleavage herself so go read her blog and check out her other drawings.

After attending the Maryland Renaissance Fair last year, I vowed that I would return this year for two reasons.

The first reason was all the cleavage. Duh.

The second was to complete a more noble pursuit: to redeem myself at the feats of strength.

Last year, these testosterone testers humiliated me in front of The Princess, Cagey, and Rory, making me doubt myself as a man. Especially Thor’s Hammer, a game in which you have to pound a pivot board with a large mallet as hard as possible to make a sliding indicator ring a bell mounted at the top.

I failed to hit the bell by a wide margin last year, managing to hammer that slider only a few feet. At the time, the guy running the game — an old man dressed in Medieval garb — looked at me after my embarrassing failure and said, “Go back to your keyboard.”

Do you realize the cruel irony in that? A man playing dorky dress-up called ME a nerd.

So I went back to the Maryland Renaissance Festival yesterday with a purpose. I had spent the past 12 months training like I was Rocky motherfuckin’ Balboa, climbing Siberian mountains and running homoerotically on the beach with male friends in montages set to “Eye of the Tiger”.

But when I got to the fairgrounds, I didn’t go directly to my nemesis. I started by loading up on “ye olde” festival food, eating a pork chop on a stick, Scotch eggs, a baked potato, and a meatball pocket.

I was lucky to escape without getting ye olde diarrhea.

I then decided to build my confidence by competing in some of the smaller games. I started by trying to “Drench a Wench”.

I grabbed the bean bags and threw them at the red target on a wall in an effort to dunk the woman sitting on an attached plank.

My first throw was wild. My second hit the wall with a loud thud. My third and last smacked the edge of the wall but missed the target by a couple of feet.

The wench remained on the plank, completely dry and acting smug.

“You hit the right spot but you weren’t hard enough,” she yelled at me.

Sensing their opportunity, GoPats and J-Vo responded simultaneously:

“That’s what she said!”

I moved on to the battle ax throw. GoPats and I listened intently to the guy explain how best to hold the handle, how to aim, and how to release the ax. He gave us five throws.

We missed every single one.

Ouch. Ok, two feats of strength down, two colossal failures. No use pussy-footing around the main event. I had to face Thor’s Hammer.

I approached it cautiously, scanning to see if the same dude who called me a nerd was manning it again. Nope. Instead, a small woman was there calling my manhood into question.

I paid up and some guy gave me some advice. Hold the mallet directly above your head. Bend your knees. Drive down with your legs. Focus power. Thanks, Mr. Miyagi.

I would hear later on from a self-described Thor’s Hammer trivia expert that the record at the fair was 150 hits in a row. I was glad, though, that I didn’t know that before I took my turn.

Because once again, I didn’t hit the bell. Strength fail.

Four straight times, I was unable to hammer the slider all the way to the top.

But the good news was that I improved from last year. I hit that fucker harder than I ever had and on my third shot came close to hitting the bell, falling just a couple feet short. And the woman running the game didn’t tell me to go back to my keyboard.

She did, however, make me “walk the plank”. Seriously, she made me walk on a piece of wood covering a patch of black mud. Awesome.

I walked away with my head held high, proud that I pounded Thor’s Hammer and came close to vanquishing it.

Besides, there’s always next year.

Oh, right, I mentioned cleavage cam in the title to this post. If you’ve read this far, below is your reward. Thanks to GoPats for having such a good eye in finding the festival’s busty babes. Lest you think we’re chauvinistic pigs, I also included something for the ladies at the end.

As you may remember, I love free stuff.

So when I wrote about my yarmulke experiment last week and mentioned my regret at not having an Obamica or McCippah, I received an e-mail from none other than the guy who designed the politically themed Jewish “beanie hats”.

The MOT’s name is Shmuly Tennenhaus, a self-described “former YouTube celebrity” who gained online notoriety for his Ask a Jew series of videos.

Shmuly sells Obamicas and other political yarmulkes on his Web site, VanityKippah.com, including Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama kippahs.

He offered to send me an Obamica and I agreed to let him. Because I’m a mensch.

This isn’t the first time I’ve received free stuff thanks to this blog. I like to call it swag because it makes me feel like a blogebrity.

I have received a fanny pack from Collateral Damage, the book Bang from Roosh (right, like I need help with the ladies), and a kangaroo scrotum all the way from Australia from Talking Budgie.

Oh yeah, I’ve also made friendships and met new people and blah blah blah. Whatever.

If you, too, want to send me cool shit, I’m man enough to let you.

I went to my favorite Korean-owned deli for lunch earlier this week. After saying “Anyong” to the two hot female owners, I checked out the food.

“It’s turkey day!” I declared gleefully to no one in particular.

Ah, turkey day, when the deli provides a hu-fucking-mongous bird for its hungry patrons. Always succulent, the white meat of the gods is my favorite lunch day of the week.

Except this time, there was a problem.

“Looks a little pink,” I told my friend INPY.

“You’ll probably eat it anyway,” he said.

He knows me so well.

You have to understand something. And I hope I don’t offend anyone. But I love food. It’s easily my favorite thing to eat.

I’ve been known to eat expired eggs.

I’ve been known to eat half-cooked burger meat bought at a Mount Pleasant supermarket with questionable health code standards.

And I’ve been known to eat unfrozen chicken that’s been in my fridge for three or eight months.

When it comes to eating “iffy” food, my philosophy has always pretty much been, “What’s the worst that can happen?”

So when I stood in front of this turkey and saw streaks of pink coating its white breast meat, I had second thoughts. This surprised me. I even tried rationalizing it by thinking to myself, Well, even if I get sick, it’s a damn good turkey.

What was wrong with me? Was I really willing to risk my health for a delicious lunch? I had even seen a food inspector order the deli owners to remove food served at the wrong temperature two weeks earlier.

I called one of the workers over.

“Was this turkey cooked thoroughly?” I asked her, “it looks a little pink.”

“Hang on,” she said.

Ok, this is good, I thought, she’s going to get one of those food thermometers and quell my fears with tangible proof that the turkey was fit for consumption.

But no. Instead, she came back with a toothpick.

She sliced off a piece, stabbed it, and offered it to me.

“Here, mister, you try,” she said happily.

Where was I, in a USDA lab? I wasn’t going to be her fucking guinea pig even if I did find her offer of free food beautifully tantalizing.

“I’m not trying it,” I said, “it’s pink. I just want to know if it was cooked right.”

“You don’t like turkey, mister?” she asked, looking slightly offended.

I did like turkey, yes. The words caromed around my mind. What’s the worst that can happen? I should just eat the pink turkey.

No, fuck that.

“I LOVE turkey,” I responded. “Just not when it’s not cooked.”

She stood back. Now she looked upset.

“Mister, I cooked it for three hours.”

“Well, maybe you should have cooked it longer. I’m not risking getting sick.”

With that, I left. I ate some tuna salad that wouldn’t kill me and spent the rest of the day listening for the ambulance that would take the deli’s unfortunate customers to the hospital. For the first time, I considered salmonella poisoning a very real threat.

I feel like I’m growing.

Ever since I can remember, the word douchebag has been the go-to pejorative term for the uncreative and the indecisive.

The word is deprecating without being taboo, psuedo-sexual without being vulgar. It has been used by preppies and hipsters alike, by Gen-Xers, Gen-Yers, and even Baby Boomers. It is fun to say but doesn’t sound crass. It is only slightly offensive but never hurts anyone’s feelings. It demands recognition but is never overbearing.

Still, enough is enough.

Thanks to the overuse of an otherwise perfect word, douchebag has, like a great song overplayed by the radio, become stale.

And after 100 years in use, it is time to finally retire it.

The first recorded mention of the word douchebag appeared in 1908 in a gynecological handbook for nurses. The handbook advised to “hang the douche-bag eighteen inches above the level of the patient’s hips.”

But the term really gained traction in the 1960s among college kids who used the term to describe ugly co-eds. By the 1970s, douchebag was almost universally applied to men.

I remember the word became really popular when I went to junior high, a time for young boys to explore the beauty of language by calling each other “fags” and “dicks”. Shakespeare would have been so proud.

But it seemed that the word went away for awhile. For years, I never heard anyone use it.

Then one day about 10 years ago or so I heard someone say it. And then it was all I heard.

And it was glorious.

The Age of Saying Douchebag had returned and the term could be heard in every corner of the world. Online, in bars, at church on Sundays. And it came in many forms: fratdouche, douchefuck, douchetard, douchenozzle, douchewipe, etc.

But at some point in its lifecycle, douchebag became overwrought. It, well, jumped the shark, much like the term “jumped the shark”. A Google search yesterday for douchebag netted more than 2.5 million hits, with its derivatives hitting millions more.

Overexposed to this slang, I made a conscious decision this past year to stop using it. No “douchebag” in e-mails, no douches in text messages, no douche jokes in conversation. Unfortunately, I seem to be alone in this assertion.

Not only have I continued to hear people I consider witty keep saying it despite my vocal protests, many of my friends disagree with me when I say it should be retired. They usually look at me funny and then call me a, well, you know.

The problem is you can’t eliminate something in a vacuum. You need to replace it with something else.

So I’ve tried out some alternatives. Asshat. Fuckrag. Cum dumpster. I’ve even tried saying, “See ya later, fuckfaces!” to my friends who for some reason take offense.

Once, I tried to elicit ideas during a happy hour with my softball team. Ay-ron came up with “unicorn fuck”, the best suggestion anyone had and which was really funny after 10 pitchers of cheap beer but didn’t hold up under the cruel glare of sobriety.

Maybe the trick is to go retro again. Personally, I’m partial to “son of a bitch”, a wonderful term that has lost its allure for some reason. Imagine how effective a well-placed “son of a bitch” would be in conversation:

“I heard your mom joined Facebook.”

“You son of a bitch.”

Now, I’m no genius, but I think we should all brainstorm douchebag alternatives. Ask your friends for suggestions or try some random ones out yourself. You might hit comedy gold and end our long, national nightmare.

For the sake of douchebags everywhere, we must try.

Throughout the lifecycle of this blog, I have written quite extensively about Facebook and its alluring siren call.

I have written so much about Facebook, actually, that it could probably merit its own category.

I didn’t intend to write about it so much. It’s just that the ubiquitous social networking site has provided so much great blogging material.

For example:

• Finding my first kiss
• Reuniting with high school friends
• The “30 Reasons Girls Should Call It a Night” phenomenon
• Finding my old campers online

But today marks the very last blog post I will ever write about Facebook*. Unless Facebook reunites me with a twin brother I never knew about or it offers me an extra kidney, there is just no reason left to write about it.

Except for this one last thing: my mom has joined Facebook.

When my friend Baby Bien’s mom’s joined Facebook a couple of months ago, it was a great day of celebration for Go Pats and me. That’s because we got to ridicule him until we made him cry.

“Your mom’s on Facebook, ha ha!” read the crux of many of our IMs and e-mails to him.

Shortly after, though, in a day that would shock me to my very core and make me question the very fabric of the Internet’s existence, I received a friend invitation from my own mother.

At first, I thought it was a joke, some prank concocted by Baby Bien as retribution for mocking him. I mean, my mom still has a Prodigy e-mail account, how the hell did she figure out how to join Facebook?

But no, it was true. My mom was on Facebook.

First came the friend request.

After a week of pretending not to notice, I accepted reluctantly.

Then came the e-mail:

Hola [Arjewtinito],
Esto es divertido. Encontre mucha gente (joven todos) que conozco.
Muchos besos, mami”

How could this happen? How could my own mother figure out how to turn on her computer let alone join the world’s most popular social networking site? How could I let my guard down? I never talked to her about Facebook. Why, God, why?

Then came the poke.

“[Mami] has poked you,” read my notification.

Hell, no, this was not happening.

I ignored it.

She poked me again.

Oh, for the love of…

“My mom keeps poking me,” I told my friend INPY.

“That sounds so wrong I can’t even respond,” he said.

Apparently, though, many parents are joining Facebook more often and are friending their kids and their kids’ friends. It is becoming something of a trend.

How do I know this? Because it’s also happened to my friend MJ. In the world of journalism, three of anything is a trend.

Even the New York Times wrote about this phenomenon.

I haven’t responded to my mom through Facebook even once and, from the looks of her “feed”, neither has my brother. No messages, no writing on her wall, no comments on her status.

And NO poking back.

It could be worse, though. It could have been my grandma.

* I reserve the right to suspend this promise at any time for any reason.