Dick Cheney had another surgery today. Fox News reports:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who has a long history of heart problems, has been fitted with a left ventricular assist device (LVAD), which is a battery-operated, mechanical pump-type device that’s surgically implanted to help a weakened heart sustain life.

The story goes onto say that this is just an intermediate step while Cheney waits for a transplant, and that he will “have an acceptable quality of life while they wait for a donor to become available.”

Okay, two surprising things about this report:

1) Dick Cheney has a human heart and it needs to be beating for him to stay alive.

2) He’s actually waiting for a donor, not tearing the heart from a homeless person/immigrant/goat like the old days.

As weird as this new Cheney may be, I like the idea that he’s at least part robot. When he inevitably begins incorporating more robotic parts into his body, let’s hope he becomes the kind of robot with jagged, gnashing teeth that crushes scorched human skulls on the battlefield, and not the sissy kind of robot that learns to feel emotion and strives to become human.

And, on the off chance that someone’s organ donor card doesn’t read “except Dick Cheney” under the asterisk, I still like the idea of Cheney walking around cobbled together from various corpses — because you know his heart is only first, most poetically just, organ to fail in body. Let’s hope he spends less time pondering the nature of his existence and hiding in windmills like a certain other reanimated corpse with the brain of a murderer, and more time eating human flesh.

I loved it when BP thought putting over a giant concrete hat over the oil leak would work. I was ecstatic when they actually tried to shooting mud and trash into the pipe from the surface.

But now the good, oily apocalyptic times are almost over.

Today, BP installed a cap that actually seals around the broken pipe and, according to Thad W. Allen of the U.S. Coast Guard, “If all goes well, it may also be used to seal the well completely for brief periods.”

Brief periods! That’s horrible! Tens of gallons of oil will never be set free into the ocean to blight all life. And I thought this might be the one. I thought the seas would turn black as night, greenhouse gas levels would skyrocket due to a billion tons of decaying aquatic life, and then everything would burn for an eon or two.

No such luck, I suppose. I guess we’ll just have to keep polluting the old fashioned way, with cars. And boats. And airplanes. And trains. And home furnaces. And power plants. And factories. And…Top 40 hits. Zing!

I present to you Paul, the abominable cephalopod who in possession of such unique and terrible talents that, to simply know their nature, would surly drive a man mad. The employees of BBC News penned these words:

A “psychic” octopus in Germany, which appears to have correctly predicted every World Cup game involving the national team so far, has picked Spain over Germany in the semi-final.

Paul, from the Sea Life Aquarium in the western city of Oberhausen, chose a mussel from a jar with the Spanish flag instead of one with a German flag.

What sort of abhorrent creature is this beast, you ask? This beast who, with its abounding mucid arms reaches deep into the penetralia of time to tear wretched mollusks from their torpidity, takes great delight in dandling with the fate of men. These men of science suggest this anathema merely predicts the events to come? I now reveal the truth, that the sea beast known as Paul is one of the Great Old Ones, the Ancient Gods who have remained dormant these past eons. I take it further, and divulge that it the foremost commander of their race, Cthulhu.

I would think no less of you were you to spiral into uncontrollable madness knowing that the impending apocalypse is being controlled by immortal beings so powerful and intelligent that their very existence nullifies any endeavor you had previously considered meaningful. You have but one choice: give yourself over to machinations outside of your pitiful understanding and cleanse this earth with the blood of the non-believers. Only this way will you gain favor with eternal Cthulhu and earn a place in His new world.

Or, maybe The Netherlands will beat Spain in the World Cup and good ol’ Paul is just an octopus and I’m just blowing this all out of proportion. Either or.

UPDATE: Spain wins. The Ancient Ones will enslave those of us they don’t consume.

IBM must really want to destroy the world, because they’ve invented a machine that can beat humans (nerds) at Jeopardy. From the IMB website:

Code-named “Watson” after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, the IBM computing system is designed to rival the human mind’s ability to understand the actual meaning behind words, distinguish between relevant and irrelevant content, and ultimately, demonstrate confidence to deliver precise final answers.

Those machines are crafty. On the surface, answering Jeopardy questions seems like a cute gimmick that could eventually lead to many practical applications, but that’s how it starts. If machines can beat us at Jeopardy, then there will be no way for college graduates to hope to make money, and then people will stop going to college all together! Then we’ll all be too dumb to put together a resistance when the machines use their Jeopardy winnings to buy up all our real-estate for their “processing” factories. It’s that simple.

The only problem with their plan is that robots don’t really play well with the elderly, who might just stop watching Jeopardy all-together. Then we’d all have to deal with our elderly relatives calling us all the time and, even though that’s annoying, it’s no apocalypse.

In summary, do the right thing and watch Wheel of Fortune to send the television executives the message that we’ll only watch robots who have lots of lights and make neat noises and absolutely never talk.

That hero’s name is Rich Gatz, the 28-year old lawyer from St. Charles, IL who founded the ZombieFit program last October. From Zombiefit.org:

What if you woke up tomorrow to find your city overridden with zombies, would you survive? This may seem childish, but by preparing for the impossible, you’ll be ready for the improbable.

The keys to surviving Z-day are simple: Be able to lift and throw heavy things, run fast and for long distances, and be able to navigate obstacles and urban environments in an efficient manner. By following the ZombieFit WODs (workout of the day) and practicing parkour, you will achieve increased fitness through the performance of functional movements at high intensity and find within yourself the internal discipline and mental fortitude necessary to become a traceur [parkour master].

I’ve always been confused as to how the French could have invented something as cool as parkour, but now it all makes sense: they wanted to be really good at running away from things. Now, as we all know, cardio is key to surviving a zombie apocalypse, but it’s only a start. The people at ZombieFit go on and on about how your muscles’ capacity for anaerobic fitness in high intensity situations is sometimes more important than regular cardiovascular fitness, and that all sounds really scientific and interesting, but my advice to carry a trusty melee weapon on you at all times. If the people at the office give you strange looks because of the ax sticking out of your messenger bag, just tell them that you’re a volunteer firefighter.

That’s right, chimps figured out war.

Over ten years of research, primatologist Dr. Mitani has observed that a group of chimpanzees in Uganda’s Kibale National Park have consciously waged war on other groups to expand their territory and gain access to more fruit trees. The New York Times wrote:

A band of males, up to 20 or so, will assemble in single file and move to the edge of their territory. They fall into unusual silence as they penetrate deep into the area controlled by the neighboring group. They tensely scan the treetops and startle at every noise. “It’s quite clear that they are looking for individuals of the other community,” Dr. Mitani says.

When the enemy is encountered, the patrol’s reaction depends on its assessment of the opposing force. If they seem to be outnumbered, members of the patrol will break file and bolt back to home territory. But if a single chimp has wandered into their path, they will attack. Enemy males will be held down, then bitten and battered to death. Females are usually let go, but their babies will be eaten.

Eating babies. Thats’s definitely some Sun Tzu shit right there.

Charlton Heston isn’t around anymore, so I guess we’ll have to look to Marky Mark for ape-fighting lessons.

Apparently, it’s frowned up to perform impromptu apocalypse drills for elementary schools. And, it’s even more frowned upon if the real human blood you borrowed from a hospital as part of your zombie costume spills on an eight-year old.

Whatever. 90 days in the slammer and a six-month probation from apocalypse blogging isn’t so bad. The’ll see the error of their ways when the rage virus gets loose and their children haven’t received any formal decapitation seminars.

I’m just glad that, during the time the court took away my First Amendment rights, nothing too apocalyptic happened. No major earthquakes destroyed any island nations, no volcanoes closed down travel over an entire continent, and nothing viscous and flammable started spewing uncontrollably out of a hole in the ocean floor.

*sigh*

Hey, anybody hear about the new iPhone?

The forumla for our destruction

Researchers from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University recently answered the only question that matters in these challenging times: how quickly will everyone die in the zombie apocalypse?

The study, “When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modeling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection,” plunges right into the logistics of decapitating the drooling creatures that were once your friends and family — no philosophical undertones, no unlikely romances.

Take a look:

An outbreak of zombies infecting humans is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead. While aggressive quarantine may eradicate the infection, this is unlikely to happen in practice. A cure would only result in some humans surviving the outbreak, although they will still coexist with zombies. Only sufficiently frequent attacks, with increasing force, will result in eradication, assuming the available resources can be mustered in time.

And the people who wrote that are really good at math, so you know it’s true.

I highly recommend printing this one out and keeping it on your coffee table in case you need some guidance when the legions of undead rise from their graves. I even moved a few things around and made some space for it in the family bomb shelter.

Most of the people there sound pretty angry about something that I don’t really remember because I don’t really listen. Personally, I’ve been ecstatic ever since Sarah Palin told me all about the death panels Obama wants to create.

But now I hear that he’s pulled a 360 on us:

“I just lost my grandmother last year. I know what it’s like to watch somebody you love, who’s aging, deteriorate and have to struggle with that,” an impassioned Obama told a crowd as he spoke of Madelyn Payne Dunham. He took issue with “the notion that somehow I ran for public office or members of Congress are in this so they can go around pulling the plug on grandma.”

What? No death panels? That’s the only reason I voted for Obama! Fox News promised me that horrifying things would happen to our country were Obama elected — and now I hear that he’s not even going to bureaucratically select which elderly people will be put to death and turned into liquid nourishment for the immigrants.

Balderdash!

The more this Obama guy speaks, the more I think he’s interested in fostering peace and equality, not World War III.

If I’m interpreting the results of recent study correctly (and I always do), your dog is smart enough to plot death.

The study shows that average dogs have the language skills of a 2-year-old human, the math skills of a 3 or 4-year-old, and the socialization of a teenager.

Fantastic! I always wished that teenagers would be worse at communicating but have sharp teeth and heightened senses. I think the worst repercussion from this study is that those people who go around telling everyone how smart their dog is now have that much more firepower.

If you’re not scared yet, combine the result of the dog with the results of other studies that show how cats have evolved to manipulate human behavior.

A study published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America makes the case that ages ago cats deliberately and cunningly domesticated themselves and so they could persuade people to give them free food and shelter — sometimes against their owners’ better judgment.

Cats and dogs have been domesticated for thousands of years and we’re just now getting smart enough to figure all this stuff out. That means they’ve had thousands of years to plot and plan — free food and poop-removal can’t be their only goals. I’m not sure what their angle is yet, but now I know they’re up to something. And knowing the half the battle.

The other half is fighting hordes of blood-thirsty cats and dogs.