The Brutality Report - Prison TV Shows

Prisoners sit around all day watching TV shows about us, the free population. Why can't we watch shows about them? Answer: We can! Full story

The Brutality Report - Chexsystems

Although ChexSystems is a real business, its identity--like fellow X-word corporations Kleenex and Xerox--has suffered the long slide into genericization. Since the company's founding in 1985, its name has devolved into shorthand for a general type of humiliation that verges clos… Full story

The Brutality Report - The Art of Glenn McCoy

My strong hunch is that political cartoonist Glenn McCoy earned his current status through quotas. As the only rabid right-winger in the New York Times' online cartoon roster, McCoy carries a special burden. Full story

The Brutality Report - Give Me Just a Little More Time

Late Eisenhower/early JFK was an especially brutal era for American popular music, a medium whose deceptively perky pep masked all manner of existential depravity. It was a dark time masquerading as a light time. Full story

The Brutality Report - Uncontrollable Shitting

Today marks the one-week anniversary of me nearly shitting myself. Full story

Welcome to the Brutality Report

I do have one beef with modern American English. It's this word "brutal." Few words in our great language have suffered as much misuse as this one lowly adjective. And surely no English word has ever faced such misuse as both understatement and overstatement. Full story

Hiding the Horror

Concealing—and Beating—a Fear of Spiders

It was only a few years ago that I came to appreciate the severity of my own arachnophobia. Although I could tolerate tiny spiders, anything larger than an average-size black widow activated instant terror. Full story

The Offensive Review

In 1965, ‘Horseshit’ Magazine Launched a Full-Frontal Assault on Everyone. So Why Has No One Heard of It?

I only learned the secret of Horseshit magazine last year, while patronizing a local military-surplus shop. It was one of those menacing and increasingly rare army-navy stores popularized in 1993’s Falling Down—grimly dim, decorated with Nazi artifacts an… Full story

Quant

By Sam McPheeters

Ross finally saw it on the freeway, just a few miles north of the airport. An animated auto-dealership sign blinked out the fall financing deals against the fading dusk, then flashed to announce SALESMAN OF THE MONTH JIM CURLAN. Full story

The Welcher

By Sam McPheeters

A box of Man Is the Bastard CDs named Dennis was riding a bicycle down the street. At the intersection, he ran into his old friend, a stainless-steel industrial sink named Hans. "Well, fancy meeting you here," said Hans. Full story