FURTHER, I QUESTION THAT: March 2012 - December 2014

Topics:
AERONAUTICS
ANIMALS
BASEBALL
BUSINESS
EDUCATION
ENTERTAINMENT
FOOD
FOOTBALL
HEALTH
HOMES
HUMOR
IMMIGRATION
INTELLIGENCE
INTERNET
MILITARY
POLITICS
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
TERRORISM
WRITING

AERONAUTICS

BUBAK FERDOWSI, National Aeronautics Space Administration Flight Director, August 8, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: What is your background?
FERDOWSI: I went to school at the University of Washington and then I got my masters at MIT. I pretty much started working here after graduation. I started working at this project as a mission planner with a general concept of how we are going to do, how things will work, and how many photos we have to take I then moved over to testing, kind of evaluating the space craft, maing sure all the things work on the space craft, including the software and the hardware. Finally, I became a flight director. I am one of a tea of flight directors. They are all kind of cool. We have lots of young people in this mission.
CZIKOWSKY: What does a flight director do?
FERDOWSI: I have been using this analogy: It is kind of like the Ed Harris character in "Apollo 13". Our job so far has been decidedly less dramatic. Everything has gone very well in this mess ion from the launch all the way to the landing. What we really do is sort of organize the flow or events, make sure everything is going well., that we don't rush or jeopardize the mission in any way, by executing things in a hurried manner that would jeopardize the safer of the the space craft.

ANIMALS

ROBERT LISHAK, Auburn University Zoologist, April 10, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I remember a time when I threw an empty cup of ice into a trash can when out popped a squirrel who was quite vocal towards me over having been iced. Was the squirrel communicating anything to me? By the way, I am sorry and I do not let ice fall into trash bins just in case there is another squirrel there.
LISHAK: I do not like to attach anthropomorphic descriptions to the behaviors of lower animals so I would suspect the squirrel was exhibiting alarm rather than anger.

JONATHAN BALLOU, Smithsonian's National Zoo Population Manager, May 1, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: What are the factors in your calculation of matches for pandas? I presume things like "likes to take long walks" is not a big consideration when matching pandas for pandas?
BALLOU: When doing matches, I provide the genetic information---are they genetically valuable, are the male and female unrelated. Then the curators who know the individual animals take into consideration their age, health, previous breeding experience, behavior. So it is a real team effort.

SETH HOROWITZ, neuroscientist, and STEPHEN ORNES, Washington Post Science Writer, October 31, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: How do bats hear in three dimensions with their ears?
HOROWITZ; All animals hear in three dimensions, but bars are very good at creating 3D models of their world the same way we do with our eyes. It’s still not completely understood, but the short (and to be continued) version is that for bats like the Big Brown Bat, they emit a “chirp” sound which sweeps down in frequency about 90 kHz to about 20 kHz. Their brains have a template of this sound. When the echo comes back, their auditory system compares the echo with the original sound and calculates where the differences are. The time of delay (period from when the sound is emitted to when it returns) tells the range or distance to the target and changes in the echo of each frequency gives information about the relative size of the target due to the fact that every frequency has a specific wavelength - the higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength. Even though the bat’s rain is about the size of a peanut, they are carrying out massively complicated computations on this auditory information, allowing them to build a 3D world from the echo/signal differences.
CZIKOWSKY: I was told when visiting Austin that the people who designed the bridge where bats took residence never considered that their bridge would attract them. It turned out to be great for Austin tourism. I was wondering what exactly it was about the bridge shape that turned out to be perfect for bats?
ORNES: Good question---that’s an amazing sight. I don't know for certain, but I would guess that the bridge offers all kinds of perfect nooks and crannies for the bats, d since they’re social creatures, they followed their fellow bats in...

BASEBALL

TRACEE HAMILTON, Washington Post Columnist, March 21, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: The Phillies traded away a player for no compensation. Should that be allowed? That is demeaning to a professional athlete. Wasn’t there a baseball player who was traded for some bats and he became so distraught he committed suicide?
HAMILTON: You are right---there was such a player. Frankly, it is kind of a---what’s the nice way of putting it---mean thing to do. Just say “future consideration” and let it go.

BUSINESS

ELANA FINE, Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship Associate Director, June 19, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: There's a big difference between planning and implementing a model. How may one best tell if the problem is with the model or with the implementation?
FINE: This is a hard question without knowing more about the business. I think you may learn more by talking to your customers---do they like your product but aren't comfortable with the rice or delivery? Are customers happy to try something for free, but don't see enough value to pay for it?

EDUCATION

EMILY BAZELON. Slate Senior Editor, March 8, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: The Federal government gives state governments funds to give to schools for bullying programs. What would you recommend such funds be used for?
BAZELON: Prevention! There’s no one size fits all or magic bullet solution. But there are several framework and programs that can work at different kinds of schools.

SUSAN COMFORT, Playworks of Washington, D.C. Executive Director, January 16, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: Would you please tell us some the findings on how recess physical activity improves learning abilities?
COMFORT: The American Academy of Pediatrics published a study by Dr. Romina Barros at Einstein University. It found that students who had 15 minutes of recess a day behaved better in class and are more likely to learn more.
CZIKOWSKY: Recess can help minds and build physical fitness so students feel and learn better. What do you recommend in dealing with bullying?
COMFORT: In a recent randomized control test, teachers in Playworks schools reported dramatically less bullying and exclusionary behavior during recess than teachers in control schools. We are not explicitly an anti-bullying program, yet the Playworks program yielded some of the strongest reductions of problem behaviors that researchers in this area have seen. I say all the time---it’s not that our coaches are good at breaking up fights or catching bullying...they set up a recess that is so fun and inclusive, bullying doesn’t even have a chance.

ENTERTAINMENT

SIG HANSEN, “Deadliest Catch” Star, July 30, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: Captain Hansen, it is great you have such a great safety record. What is it that you do that has ensured the safety of the crew where others have made mistakes?
HANSEN: Try to keep the same crew for as long as i Can. AND I PAY ATTENTION!!!
CZIKOWSKY: What was it like doing voiceover for a movie (as Crabby the Boat in “Cars 2 1/2”)? Were you alone during the taping or did you get to record with other actors> How long did it take to make your recording?
HANSEN: It was an incredible experience. I was mostly alone in a booth. But I was being directed by John Lancaster, the owner of Pixar for a few days. It was absolutely amazing. I would love to do it again!

FOOD

JENNY ROSENSTRACH, author, October 11, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: What is your approach towards picky eaters? Do you designate meals towards their tastes and how would you attempt to introduce dishes that are not on their picky menu?
ROSENSTRACH: I have a bunch of strategies but I would say my more successful has been this concept, "Deconstruction Dinner". The idea is that you break down your favorite dinners---Cobb Salad, Rigatoni with Bolognese---into individual components and serve separated on a big platter so that any potentially offensive ingredients can just be skipped over. For instance: My salmon salad. For a while it was a platter filled with one row roasted salmon, one row potatoes, one row cubes, corn, tomatoes, etc. And dressing on the side. Each tok what they wanted (like a salad bar) and when they were done, I mixed it all together for the grown ups. It's not rocket science but once we approached our old favorite meal that way, it changed dinner hour for the better. (P.S. Also works with soup.)

STEVEN PETROW, Washington Post Columnist, May 6, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: Yesterday, a woman told me two gale male friends are visiting her and she wanted to take them to dinner in West Hollywood, which is known for its relatively more visible gay community She asked me what gay men like to eat. I replied “Gay people eat the same food as straight people.” Was I wrong in my answer?
PETROW: Don’t you know that gay people have a special, secret diet?! OK, I’m making a joke just in case that doesn’t translate on the page. Your answer was perfect. I can’t imagine why someone would think gay men eat differently than straight men. Some of my best LGBT frends are vegans, vegetarians, flexitarians, and plain ol’ carnivores. So are my straight friends. But there is a manners brownie point in her question, wanting to choose a restaurant that these guys would enjoy. That’s what a good host does! She could have asked “Where do you think Ross and Charles would enjoy having dinner?” Thanks for your question and I hope I’ve helped.

FOOTBALL

BRAD HIRSCHFIELD, National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership President, July 24, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: The only part of the Penn State penalties I don't understand, as well as previous penalties to other schools, is the rewriting of history. I believe the final score at the end of the game should be that score, unless there is an immediate challenge that is upheld by some league authority. What are the athletes who competed in these games to think that years later the results have been changed? I believe it diminishes the victories for those athlete who did nothing wrong while meaning little to the athletes who were on the losing side. It is also confusing to sports historians. I just have trouble understanding what good rewriting history does. We don't go back into the history books and decide that one side fought dirty so therefore history will record they lost the war.
HIRSCHFIELD: CORRECT! Historical revisionism is the work of the lazy, the hateful, or the cowardly. The real challenge here would have been to figure out how to recall that the winningest coach in college football was a moral loser of what might have been the most important moment in his life. The rewrite history absolves all of us of that obligation and does little to prevent the problem in the future.

HEALTH

WALTER DELLINGER, Harvard University Law School Visiting Professor, March 26, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: How might the Affordable Care Act affect the rising costs of health care, and what might these costs be if the Act is determined to be unconstitional?
DELLINGER:This is an important issue, Right now the uninsured either (1) go without health care or (2) instead of getting less expesnive preventive care, wait until an expensive condition sends them to high cost hospitals and (3) use emergency rooms as providers.
CZIKOWSKY: It is possible the Supreme Court will determine that portions of the Affordable Care Act are constituional while other parts are not constituional. If that happens, which parts of the Act do you believe are more apt to be ruled unconstituional?
DELLINGER: If the court holds the mandate is unconstituional it will, I believe, strongly also hold that the provisions giving people with pre-existing health problems and charging people who have family members with health problmes the same premium as others will necessarily fail as well. I am very surprised that few people know that this very popular provisions are under attack.

LENNY B. ROBINSON, "Route 29 Batman" hospital entertainer, March 29, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: How did you feel when you were "unmasked"? I had suspected Bruce Wayne was you.
ROBINSON: It doesn't bother me in the least because I'm a real person. I've gotten Facebook messages and emails from Germany, Vietman, it's number one story in Chile, Italy...It feels good.

GLEN FINLAND, author, Mrch 29, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: As an autistic person learns to be more independent, how does an autistic person learn to deal with situations where something goes wrong, i.e. the autistic person gets on the wrong train and becomes lost?
FINLAND: Just like the rest of us---by getting out there and trying again. The reality of letting go is one of the hardest things there is for parents of a special needs child. There will be many, many failures along the way, bit I have always felt failure teaches my son something positive, especially if it comes with the chance of a do-over. Despite our persistent efforts to help our son manage his life, he will be the one to determine how he will live it after we are gone. He has earned the dignity of risk and the decisions he will make for himself are the ones that will see him through.

LAURA UNGER, Louisville Courier-Journal Medical Writer, April 18, 2012
CZIKOWSKY; Please explain to me the facts of this (HIV testing of blood donors) issue so I and others can better understand it. How advanced are new blood testing techniques in terms of understanding if a donor has HIV, hepatitis, or any transmittable disease? How long does it take for this test to be done, and thus what is the potential time lapse between the test results and an undetected disease emerging? How much does this test cost and is this affordable for more blood donor centers?
UNGAR: My understanding is that someone contracts the virus, there's a window of about nine to eleven days when the most sensitive test (which is used in the blood centers) cannot detect the virus in the person's blood. But if it was contracted before that, it will show up even if the person does not know he or she is infected.

PETULA DVORAK, Washington Post Columnist, May 21, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I write to wish (the family of a transgendered five year old) well. While this indeed is so new it is newsworthy, I thank the family for having the courage to recognize a child's problems and address them earlier in life rather than waiting until it manifests itself as a larger difficulty. There are many emotional issues that can be identified early in life and it is far more helpful to deal with them earlier, rather than later.
DVORAK: Thank you. I know this is pioneer thinking on their parts, and it's nervous-making. But they are handling it with grace and sensitivity. Thank you for writing that.

RACHEL VREEMAN, Indiana University School of Medicine Pediatrics Assistant Professor, June 19, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: A primetime TV show perpetuated the myth of urine alleviating a jelly fish sting when they showed it on national tV. I, and I suspect many others, had never even heard of this myth until it was shown to us I wonder what responsibility TV, especially reality shows, have in killing medical myths?
VREEMAN: Many myths are perpetuated over an over again in the media. Every Thanksgiving we hear about how turkey makes people sleepy. At Halloween, we hear about strangers are poising children's candy. But studies and investigations show these things are not true. We could easily try to share the science disproving these myths because all too often I even hear "experts" sharing myths.

BRIAN VASTAG, Washington Post Science Reporter, October 2, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: How physically and mentally devastating is it to exist with the West Nile virus? What are some of the limitations one faces and how long do different symptoms generally last?
VASTAG: The course of the disease varies tremendously, from no symptoms to temporary or permanent paralysis to death. For me, I was fatigued and limited in my activities (no biking or hiking, for instance) and have been working part-time for most of the past three months.

HOMES

MONICA CURTIS, “Rehab Addict” TV star, March 21, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: If one is at the very beginning of considering rehabilitating a home, what should one do first? What type of experts should be consulted in determining structural weaknesses and unexpected problems with pipers and wires and most important, what is the best way to determine that the person is an expert who is not overcharging for this advice?
CURTIS: NO ONE SHOULD CHARGE FOR ADVICE - if they do, they are not the right person for you. Always assume that all mechanics are shot when doing your budget---set up one time to have five or six different contractors to walk through and give you their opinion and cost analysts for repairs.

HUMOR

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, April 18, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I have found the differences between pay dating sites and free dating sites is that with pay dating sites I have to pay to have dates not show up whereas on the free dating sites the dates don't show up for free.
HESSE: I hate your dates.

GENE WEINGARTEN, Washington Post Humor Writer, May 2, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: We had this debate (on infidelity) back in the 1990s, so those who forget history will repeat it. To sum things up, our national leaders including our President and House Speaker, tried to convince us that oral sex is not cheating. Jerry Seinfeld settled the issue by declaring that when the nipple appears, it is sex. Just thought readers might appreciate a historical perspective.
WEINGARTEN: The greatest subtext in the whole thing, the most wonderful understory, was that it became clear that the President of the United States, bless his suth'n redneck heart and soul, actually BELIEVED that eaten' ain't cheat in'. He ordered his conduct that way, so that, to himself, he denied infidelity.

ROXANNE ROBERTS, Washington Post Columnist, May 2, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: Who checks who is be let in (at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner)? I am envisioning someone reading down a list of names going "Clooney...Clooney, oh yes, there's your name. You may enter."
ROBERTS: No list of names---but a tight rule on tickets. No ticket, no admission, even for some of the pre-dinner receptions. Lots of party crashers shut out this year.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, May 15, 20120
CZIKOWSKY: I have a workplace question that maybe someone else has been through and maybe they can be me some advice. I misplaced $2 billion. I swear I had it in my desk drawer and now I can't find it. I went through all my files. I thought maybe one of my friends was pulling a prank, but they all insist they haven't seen it. What should I do? I fear the boss may eventually notice the money is missing. I believe I may be able to hold him off for awhile. Does anyone have any advice?
PETRI:What a silly mistake.
CZIKOWSKY: I have always thought Alexandria is a lovely name. What do you think? Of course, my son doesn't like it.
PETRI: Hahaha. I see what you did there.
I'm a fan of Alex, because if you want to go somewhere and surprise people with your gender, it does the trick pretty nicely.
CZIKOWSKY: My parents were big into "Star Wars". They named me after one of the characters, "Third Droid on the Left".
PETRI: You and my friend The Blue Elephant On Jabba's Sail Barge should go out for drinks sometime.
Yes I know his name is Max Rebo.
CZIKOWSKY: Centuries ago, a Native American asked a wise elder whose job it was to pick the names of village residents how the names were chosen. The wise elder responded "When a child is born, I look for a sign and I pick a name according to that sign. When Flying Eagle was born, an eagle had flown over. When Howling Wolf was born, I heard a wolf howling in the distance. So, why are you curious about how names are selected, Two Dogs Humping?
PETRI: Hahaha.
Speaking of this level of humor, I'm competing in the O. Henry Pun-Off this weekend! Trying to decide if I should base my routine on cats or philosophers...
CZIKOWSKY: O. Henry Pun. This of course depends on the inflection of your voice: O Henry. O Martha O Henry. O Elizabeth. Elizabeth? Who is Elisabeth?
PETRI: O Dear.
CZIKOWSKY: If the north and south pole magnet fields shift, will that mean things other than my compass will be backwards? Will I still be able to get HBO?
PETRI: I think it's safe to say you won't be able to get HBO.

JEN CHANEY, Washington Post Author, May 24, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: Back when I lived in the same building (although we never met) with a struggling actor named Angelina Jolie, I remember (in my imaginary mind) telling her to wait until she found the right man. Have a few children with him, buy a few homes, and see if things work out. I see she seems to have taken my advice and is marrying a nice man. Does anyone know anything about him and if he has steady employment?
CHANEY: I hear he is doing very well for himself. That's the word on the street.
You (imaginarily) advised her well.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, My 28, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: There already is long writing about boring stuff such as kneeing people in the chins. It's called the New York Times.
PETRI: 50 Shades of Gray Lady?
CZIKOWSKY: We need Monty Python Killer Rabbits to patrol the streets against flesh eating people. Then the world will be in balance.
PETRI: Stick close to the killer rabbits.

GENE WEINGARTEN, Washington Post Columnist, May 28, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: In retrospect, we made a major strategic error and I wish we had thought of it earlier. It never occurred to us to have Americans Elet pick you as its Presidential nominee. What? No one could get, what was it, 3,000 supporters to be on their primary ballot? We could have done that. Now for the interesting part. Gene, while it was a long shot, given the opposition and negative campaigns against both major candidates, you could have won, Now for my question. If elected President what would you have done?
WEINGARTEN: This would have assured the first ever appearance of the President of the United States at The Post Hunt.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, June 5, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I see Holland has taken the lead in dead cat aviation. We Americans can not sit back and let Holland show that their system of government, whatever that system is, is better than our system by letting them beat us in the dead cat aviation technology. I believe we should firmly commit that, by the end of this decade, we will have landed a dead cat on the moon. What do you think?
PETRI: Look, NASA has enough on its plate without one demanding that it launch dead cats into...
No, Newt Gingrich would want this. Let's make it happen.
You know what they say, shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll have launched a lot of dead cats into space.
CZIKOWSKY: The author of the song "Dead Puppies Aren't Much Fun" is writing a new song entitled "But Dead Cats Can Be a Hoot".
PETRI: I hope both of these things are true!
CZIKOWSKY: How soon do you believe it will be before we see photographs of dead cat helicopters where bacon is taped onto the dead cat?
PETRI: Has that not already happened?
CZIKOWSKY: "Dead cat helicopter" has 54,000 Google results. "Dead cat with bacon helicopter" is a Googlenope.
PETRI: WHAT?
CZIKOWSKY: If today is National Hug Your Cat Day, then when is National Cat Scratch Fever Awareness Day?
PETRI: For a while, you used to have to get approval from an official calendar of days, and one couple with a very '90s website came up with almost all of them. They had Get All The Yellies Out and Shout Hello On The End of Your Porch Day, or something about that level.
CZIKOWSKY: This past weekend I went to Comic Con and to an Arlen Specter book signing. I posted two photographs, one of me with a zombie (from Comic Con) and one with me and Arlen Specter. I told a friend who is into zombies to go look at the zombie picture. She replied she liked the photo of me and Specter. You don't think she thought I was calling Specter a zombie, do you?
PETRI: I like the juxtaposition here! In general, I think if you show people sets of Pictures with Zombies and Pictures Without Zombies, the person in the non-zombie pictures looks suddenly more attractive than usual.
CZIKOWSKY: I told someone at Comic Con about joking that I wrote in a previous conversation that my name is Third Droid on the Left. Big mistake. There really are people who pretend to be specific droids and background characters.
PETRI: Oh man! Yeah, no good joke goes unpunished. Even some bad jokes don't go unpunished! And no good pun goes unpunished for that matter. Okay, I am going to stop before I drown in literates.

AMY ARGETSINGER, Washington Post Columnist, June 6, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: If they won't let Jack Ambramoff play golf at the country club, he is most welcome to join our dead cat helicopter society.
ARGETSINGER: Exactly. I mean, who golfs anymore? Dead cat helicopter is the new thing.
CZIKOWSKY: I did not know Americans are not supposed to curtsy in front of the Queen. I learn something every day. I used to cursty in front of Freddie Mercury all the time, but, then, that might be something different.
ARGETSINGER: Well, that's acceptable.

JEN CHANEY, Washington Post Anchor, June 7, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: This reminds me of a response of a Hollywood producer friend of mine to the fact that my 80 year old wealthy uncle married an 18 year old. He states that whenever his son asks why he should study and do well at school, he shows the photograph of my 80 year old fat uncle with the gorgeous 18 year old. The son realizes that through studying hard, this will be his reward. My friend tells me when his daughter asks why she should study hard and work at her school work, he shows her the same photograph.
CHANEY: Too good not to share. Thanks.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, June 19, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I know the rebellious youth of my day was over when I heard an elevator music version of "Psycho Killer."
PETRI: Ha! I have heard that on electric violin, which is---worse? Probably better.
Sometimes they play hip hop music in elevators, though. It's airports where they really get you.
CZIOKWSKY: If any employee asks for two weeks off to go hunting give it to the employee. Especially if the employee is holding a rifle.
PETRI: This, too.
If he asks you to join him because he's just obtained some most dangerous game, pass, though.
CZIKOWSKY: Gadzooks, it was one thing to let people with vaginas into the Michigan legislature, but do they have to go around saying the word "vagina"?
PETRI: Och begosh! Crinkim crakum!
Apparently the same lady ousted for saying it did a reading of "The Vagina Monologues" on the steps Monday night, which is hilarious! Although I'm not sure it will help matters. It's one of the classic "Horray! says everyone who doesn't have to be there the day after" moments.
CZIKOWSKY: Jogging releases endorphins. Sex releases endorphin. Even alcohol attacks organs which releases endorphins. As Freud will tell you, we all seek what will release endorphins, even if it means farting in an elevator. (Wait, I don't think that last one releases endorphins.)
PETRI: True. As a sidenote, "Release the endorphins!" sounds like something you would shout if you were a woefully incompetent super-villain.
CZIKOWSKY: For your grape lovers, grappa, made from the waste in making wine, which is the skin, seeds, and sets of grapes, is made into grappa. Grappy has a higher alcohol content than does wine. You get wasted more on the waste than the actual wine.
PETRI: This sounds like an intriguing vice possibility...

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, June 26, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I believe if we raise the salary of President of the United States by $10,000, we will attract a stronger pool of applicants. What do you think?
PETRI: Yes, right! this is how money works. Incentive!
CZIOWSKY: I am confused. I hear 98 Degrees is returning. Do they mean the singing group of the temperature outside?
PETRI: I hope the latter!
Although the recent resurgence of the boy band as an institution leaves me wondering.
Back then, there were built to last. One Direction could never have pulled off any of the looks N'Sync sported. Then again, neither could N'Snc.
CZIKOWSKY: I am so sad to see that John Edwards and Rielle Hunter have split. If that couple can't make it, can any couple make it?
PETRI: OH NO!
The only excuse for something like that (and still not a particularly good one) is that it was True Love.
Then again, the love affair between John Edwards and John Edwards continues unabated.

GENE WEINGARTEN, Washington Post Columnist, June 26, 2012
CZIKOWSKY:"I got the sucker", he says to the dead fly. And then he gets Osama. Yeah, Obama wins in a landslide.
WEINBARTEN: Yes, the great thing is when he did that to Trump, he knew---or hoped---he'd have bin Laden in a matter of hours. Private little head game.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, June 27, 21012
CZIKOWSKY: We in Tennessee believe music has been about nothing but filth ever since that "I Want to Hold Your Hand" came out.
PETRI: You now what they say---held hands are the devil's playthings.

JEN CHANEY, Washington Post Anchor, July 5, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: A lot of us have been walking around singing that John Lennon song "Power to the People". Just thought you'd like to know.
CHANEY: I am right there with you. I don't have power either. We I finally get electricity back, I am totally making a Pepco Burn Book. You are welcome to contribute.

CHRIS CILLIZZA, Washington Post Politics Managing Editor, July 6, 2012
CZIKOWSKY:I am surprised Rep. Thomas Petri has not been vetted for VP? Do you suppose it is because of his highly controversial author daughter?
CILLIZZA: There are so many thing wrong with this question.
CZIKOWSKY: If I attend your book signing at Politics and Prose on the 21st at 6 pm, will you please sign my book?
CILLIZZA: OF COURSE!

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, July 10, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I meant to send you a question but I accidentally sent a .jpeg of Nicolas Cage. My apologies.
PETRI: Ha! Hey, I'd hire you.
CZIKOWSKY: So the key to happiness is to annoy people, huh? Huh? Is that true? Huh? Huh? Did I even show you the several hundred of photographs I took of a dingo in Australia? Huh? Huh? It is carrying something but I never could tell what it is. You know what I like about Australia? I get to be away from those fascist liberals and socialist conservatives and am able to spend time with my fellow extreme Whig Party members. We like to stand in front of where you live and sing drinking songs Of course, we have to get drunk first You don't mind, do you? Huh? Huh? Wow, am I happy.
PETRI: I can't tell if my theory is working or backfiring horribly!
CZIKOWSKY: Do you really play the accordion? I really like the accordion. In fact, I always hire an accordion players for every one of the local Democratic Party fundraisers. Maybe I could hire you sometime By the way, I'm a Republican.
PETRI: Ha!
They say the definition of a gentleman is someone who knows how to play the accordion and doesn't.
I do play. But I haven't practiced in a while I can produce a few polkas under duress! I find it soothing I'm no great virtuoso, but I have improved since the days when I taught myself to play and it turned out that I had learned upside down ignoring half the buttons.
CZIKOWSKY: You know, man was made in God's image. I hear this was confirmed when they found the Higgs Boson It seems Higgs Boson looks just like Gene Weingarten.
PETRI: I think Mark Twain said that he felt that God, in making mankind, had somewhat overestimated his ability.
My favorite part about the Higgs Boson is that in every article I read about it and the molasses-like background field whose existence it provers. It sounds more and more like The Force is a real thing.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, July 11, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I thought LinkedIn would be useful in finding a job, but no luck. Then again, I only recently realized I had accidentally, instead of using my photo, put up a photograph of Nicolas Cage instead.
HESSE: The greatest ting that happened on the Internet this week.

JEN CHANEY, Washington Post Anchor, July 12, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: Aren't you glad the Post did not accidentally post a photo of Nicolas Cabe instead of your photo on today's conversation page?
CHANEY: No, I'm not. I should totally make that my profile photo from now on.
Three days after posting that item, I'm only now able to look at that email without laughing. And most of the time, I still do.
Bless Vanessa Hojda, who was such a good sport about this.
CZIKOWSKY: For people looking for a good name, I always thought Jennifer was a good name. If we only knew someone that that name...
CHANEY: I embrace this only because every girl born in America is no longer named that.
In the 70s, when I was born (yes, I'm old), everyone had that name and it was the pits.
CZIKOWSKY: Just think, somewhere in ew York there could be a drug dealer using the disposable phone the drug dealer found after Kattie Holmes threw it out.
CHANEY:The mind reels.
Also, I think anyone who is planning a surprise divorce is gong to use this same tactic.
In addition to "The Why", it also reminds me of the second cell phone issue in "Breaking Bad".

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, July 17, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: This "50 Shades" craze has helped people realize that there are times when some women want to submit their lives to a domineering male. Males also have similar times in their lives when they submit to women. It's called "marriage".
PETRI: I seem to recall reading a variation on this several decades ago in an anthology, but that's fine, because it combines all the pleasure of hearing a joke with all the excitement of running into an old friend. Joke? How's the wife?
Er.
Marriage is an institution, Mae West used to say, and I'm not ready for an institution yet. Or maybe it was Marilyn Monroe. Or maybe it was TCLWMLK.
CZIKOWSKY: Which candidate would I like to have a bear with? This is a tough one, but I finally decided I would want to have a bear with Romney. Obama seems quick on the basketball court, and even though Obama smokes, Romney does not strike me as a runner. After all, if I were to have a bear with one of the candidates, I would choose the candidate who I can outrun when chased by a bear.
PETRI: Then again, Romney's been running most of his life.
So for anyone who has felt unobligated to follow me on Twitter, this started when I had a typo and replaced "beer" with "bear" in the time honored question of which candidate you would want to have a beer with.
I like your logic here, but does anyone else have further thoughts?
Bear for beer has now replaced Not for Now as my favorite typo of all time. Nothing spices up a cookout like announcing "I will bring the bear."
CZIKOWSKY: I would rather have a beer with Obama. We know Obama has invited people over to the White House for beer, so he must be a beer drinking cool guy. I don't think Romney drinks alcohol. That is fine with me, in fact is probably a plus for a President. Yet I believe he also does not drink caffeine. That is a minus. When you get the crank call from a Senator at 3 am, he should be allowed to have a coffee so he may wake up and better deal with the situation.
PETRI: Man, life without alcohol or caffeine. If I'm able to get through a morning without the latter, I feel like I deserve a small planet. I can't even begin to think what a lifetime of that would feel like. Then again, if I'd never had either, I wouldn't know what I was missing, and I might feel more righteous and chipper before 9. But as Oscar says, only dull people are brilliant at breakfast. I always insist loudly on this point as I droop, suporific into my eggs. Of course it does not mean that the inverse is true, but that is hard to come to terms with before coffee.
CZIKOWSKY: I had a dream which I immediately recognized as emerging from last week's conversation. I dreamed I was at a Lynrd Skyynrd concert. When they started to play "Free Bird", instead of the lead guitar, you came on stage and played the part on the accordion. A star was born.
PETRI: Wow!
I would eat fewer anchovies before bed. Or, possibly more.
CZIKOWSKY: So, what is wrong with hanging out in Scranton?
PETRI: Nothing! I put a footnote there! I'd happily come to Scranton, which I remember fondly from a movie about an out of control train that either derailed or was about to derail there or was some entirely different area of the coastline and now you have two reasons to be upset with me instead of one.
CZIKOWSKY: Where along the coastline do you imagine Scranton to be?
PETRI: The middle one? No. Wait. The left one.
CZIKOWSKY: Am I in the minority to state I like Trefoils? Oh, well, time take down my Huntsman for President sign.
PETRI: Ha! Well played.
CZIKOWSKY: Anyone remember that weird paper clip that was on your computer? I love how it would wake up suddenly and jump up and down when it thought you were going to ask it do so something and then it would be back to sleep when it realized you were only teasing it. I miss that guy.
PETRI: You MISS Clippy?
OUT! OUT OF MY SIGHT!
CZIKOWSKY: This is not a joke. Anthony Weiner channelled his inner Bryce Harper and issued this reply to report he is returning to politics, "it's a clown story, bro".
PETRI: That's incredible! And it happened!
Well, now we definitely know he's coming back.
CZIKOWSKY: Romney's Press Secretary just announced that Romney retroactively won the 2008 Presidential election and that he will be moving into the White House this weekend.
PETRI: Er, retroactive congratulations!
CZIKOWSKY: How do you contain yourself over the excitement of whether Romeny will pick Portman or Pawlenty or someone else?
PETRI: You know, I...(yawn)...NO KENNETH GET OUT OF THE UNICORN TRAP--huh, who, where am I?
*this was an effort to render in print the idea that I had somehow fallen asleep during the question and had an exciting dream, but I think it lacks something. Maybe it needs to be a video as well?
CZIKOWSKY: I recall Winston Churchill telling of the time Oscar Wilde mentioned a Mark Twain quote about a statement made by Abraham Lincoln and...drat, now I forgot what it was.
PETRI: Callbacks!
CZIKOWSKY: When you were writing birthday greetings to Proust, what were your thoughts as you typed in expressions of appreciation to a dead man? Did you believe you were honoring a person and his works, or were you hopeful that others would better appreciate your accomplishment of having read Proust? Was there a teacher from your past you hope would, through the consciousness of the universe through which information trickles, be proud? Was there any desire for parental approval? Did you know that this might better explain your manners to friends who you fear may not understand you? Did reading Proust and announcing to others you had accomplished a reading of his works improve your life? Also, did reading it make your more apt to be on time for your conversations from now on?
PETRI: Yes! Somewhat. Yes. No. Yes. Not visibly. Apparently not.
I've compared writing on the Interet to dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo through times that whenever the analogy sees me getting into a car it starts to grab its coat. It turns out to be a little more subtle than that; sometimes; you feel fairly confident that you have a cannonball in hand that will respond more than usual; other times, you think, well, this is probably a rose petal, but wouldn't it be exciting if there were an echo all the same. That was one of the latter. "Here's a thing that mattered to me, see if it matters to you!" For me, finishing was a big thing: I probably won't ever run a marathon, until I become lonely and middle aged and get very toned upper arms, as I hear happens, but it was like that. You want a bumper sticker afterwards. And one consequence of writing about it is I haven't inflicted it on my friends nearly as much. I imagine pretending to be enthused that your friend has just finished Proust is several levels more difficult than feigning delight at an ugly baby.
CZIKOWSKY: I just saw someone with a t-shirt reading NIFL. I know what MIFL is, but what is NIFL? (And for the kids reading, I just need the N part).
PETRI: National Indoor Football League, I think.
Alternatively, "nerd".

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, July 18, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: Sure, anyone can attack the castle at Disneyland, but how would you attack it at Disney World?
HESSE: More importantly: if the residents of Hogwarts at University Studio's Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando were to engage in battle agains the residents of Cinderella's Castle at Disney in Orlando, which tactics would both employ and who would win?
CZIKOWSKY: How is the cricket?
HESSE: I was deeply concerned about the fate of a cricket who was living in the ceiling. Update: There was no cricket. A coworker's cell phone was set to the "cricket" ringtone. My stomach had been in knots over the suffering of a piece of technology.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, July 24, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: Breaking news: the NCAA just awarded the Chicago Cubs ten World Series championships.
PETRIL This is how it works, right?
CZIKOWSKY: So you are not joining in the boycott of Chick Fil A because they refuse to serve gay chickens, or something like that?
PETRI:Frankly I would be more concerned that the chicken was a cannibal.
My bottom line (be warned, it does come with a pretty hefty side of guilt) is that if you choose your food based on the political principles of the owner or where the money goes after you spend it on chicken---or really, anything other than how good the food is, we wind up in a world full of nasty sandwiches and that impoverishes everyone.
If someone were smart, he or show would set up shop outside a Chick Fil A so you could donate slightly more than the price of a sandwich, solving everyone's problem. Well, not solving. But pulsating slightly.
CZIKOWSKY: Do you follow the same for, say, movies by Woody Alen or by Roman Polanski or by Robert Blake? To me, I care only about the film. But I know people who won't see the films by artists with whom they disagree about their lifestyle.
PETRI: Yeah! The reason I don't see more films by these folks is because I have difficulty keeping a straight face during more art house films. One of the best moviegoing experiences I've ever had was when I saw "Midnight in Paris" in a packed theater and decided it would by funny to laugh one beat before all the jokes. By the middle of the film everyone was panicked and laughing with me. It was like the emperor's new Woody Allen joke.
CZIKOWSKY: Do you think a shark wonders if a person is a liberal or a conservative being it eats the person?
PETRI: Possibly, if one ideology is clearly tastier.
CZIKOWSKY: I always buy ice cream from that place that donates 1% of their earnings to groups that deny climate change is happening.
PETRI: It's delicious ice cream, right?
CZIKOWSKY: Have you seen what they do to chickens before you eat them? You would never eat another chicken. You would only eat cows, except, how you ever seen what they do to cows before you eat them?
PETRI: Believe me, Ive seen videos. A lover of the law, or of good sausages, or of food, or of almost anything on the planet except possibly for babies (and even then I think there are some state and local laws to worry about) should not watch it being made.
CZIKOWSKY: If a food chain was owned by a dictator who was slaughtering thousands of people, would you still eat there even if they gave out great "Star Wars" toys with each purchase?
PETRI: How good are we talking?
CZIKOWSKY: When you go to heaven, you will run into a few cows and other animals you have eaten. When vegetarians go to heaven, they will run into thousands of plants they have eaten.
PETRI: I like the idea of heaven with cows.
CZIKOWSKY: Will Rpgers once said "If it is true that cows don't go to heaven, then when I die, I wish to go where the cows go." Or, maybe I got the quote wrong.
PETRI: Are you sure it wasn't Churchill?
CZIKOWSKY: What is all this fuss about window shandes? Who reads a trilogy about window shades?
PETRI: 50 Shades of Shade!
I want to buy that at Urban Outfitters.
CZIKOWSKY: In defense of the freedom of potato chip sexuality, I believe it is not our right to judge the sexuality of potato chips. So what if they like an occasional battery shock or to sleep with something round? Who are we to judge?
PETRI: I don't know. I think it's a slippery slope from potato chip on battery to...
Actually, this might be the bottom of the slope right here. Good to know.
CZIKOWSKY: Somewhere today, one of your readers will be bothered to see a child playing with potato chips and a battery.
PETRI: Ha!
And on that mildly disturbing note, I'm off!

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, August 7, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: You are late. You do realize that a billionaire will now punish you by reading what you are reading over your shoulder on the Metro.
PETRI: Well, it will punish him more than it will punish me I've been slogging through Edmund Blunden's "Understones of War". I try always to read a book about World War I on the commute. It's not that it isn't lovely and he doesn't have a jovial poetic touch, but he's one of those unfortunate memoirists who give you the sense that really had to be there. "Then Johnny and I went out for a smoke", he's always saying, "You remember Johnny, and that strange incident with the vicar." "Yes", the reader demurs,"I don't actually." But by then it is too late.
I doubt it's quite what anyone has in mind when shoulder reading.
CZIKOWSKY: I have not read the 50 Shades books but I have been making fun of them every chance i get because, even though I don't know what I am talking about, people seem to laugh. I have an observation and I was wondering if you think I am on to something: when I was young, girls dreamed of being rescued by a prince. Now it seems they dream of being rescued by a billionaire. Does this mean anything?
PETRI: I'd hardly say that's exclude to girls. I think everyone these days dreams of being rescued by a billionaire, from SuperPAC's to campaigns to people who hang around Warren Buffett to timid horses with nothing dreams and the ability to bop strangely, and even they will occasionally settle for a multimillionaire.
CZIKOWSKY: You have a great point that wishing for billionaires is not limited to females. There should be a story about billionaires who whisk political candidates to secret meetings and then force them to do things against their will such as deregulating their industries and lowering their taxes and...oh, wait it's already been done. It's called the Washington Post.
PETRI: If you don't get it, you don't get it.
CZIKOWSKY: "50 Shades of Gray" is a trilogy about the life of Mayor Vincent Gray.
PETRI: Ha!
CZIKOWSKY: I hear Bernie Madoff says he is voting for Romney.
PETRI: That's definitely within hailing distance of the bottom of the barrel.
CZIKOWSKY: Does anyone remember when someone (I believe it turned out to be the way some shadows appeared) the face of Ted Kennedy on Mars? Wouldn't it be really cool if the Mars expedition actually found Ted Kennedy living on Mars?
CZIKOWSKY: You got it! The Mars mission discovers the moon landing stage and we realize the moon landing was faked by filming it on Mars.
PETRI: It all ties together so neatly!
CZIKOWSKY: Another mystery that would be solved if we discover all those missing socks make their way to Mars.
PETRI: Missing socks, a few dogs, and billions of umbrellas.
It'd be a little awkward for Scott Brown.
And why aim so low? What if they found all the Kennedys up there?That would explain both the moon landing conspiracy theory and the assassination conspiracy theory.
CZIKOWSKY: Football and other sports are judged. If you ever have a great dismount on a catch or perform a triple lutz before sliding into home, the judges put you on the ESPN highlight reel.
PETRI: HA!
CZIKOWSKY: And what were you doing reading "Playgirl"? I am sure you were reading it for the articles, right?
PERI: I was reading it...for material!
CZIKOWSKY: On Weingarten's page, he is seeking someone to adopt a puppy before it is stuffed by a taxidermist. That is all.
PETRI: Good heavens!

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, August 14, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: As one of the few people who actually read the Ryan Budget Proposal several months ago, I have to admit I read it on the Metro hiding it under a still unread copy of "50 Shades of Grey". Now, things have changed When I finally get to read "50 Shades of Grey", I will have to hide it behind my copy of the Ryan Budget Proposal.
PEETRI: Ha!
Yes, the question of which book to hide inside which book remains as perplexing as ever.
CZIKOWSKY:50 Shades is about a man who puts women through some pain. For instance, when he blindfolds her, instead of feeding her asparagus, he forcers her to eat broccoli.
PETRI:The horror! The horror!
CZIKWSKY: If Paul Ryan is sexy, how come Newsweek doesn't have a photo of him blindfolded eating asparagus?
PETRI: How do you know they don't? We're still 90 days out, after all.
CZIKOWSKY: I think we have taken Shark Week too far. Has Shark Week jumped the shark?
PETRI: Oh no you didn't!
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
Although I'm sort of puzzled by the classic "30 Rock" advice to live every week like it's Shark Week. So far Shark Week has involved my reading Ayn Rand and forgeting there were sharks on television, I really hope I don't have to keep doing this.
CZIKOWSKY: Reading Ayn Rand during Shark Week is permitted. After all, free enterprise business people and sharks share a professional courtesy.
PETRI: (rimshot)
The last time I saw this joke it was about lawyers. Happy Shark Week, joke! How's things? New Industry I see.
CZIKOWSKY: I have faith you will read the entire "Atlas Shrugged". Yet for readers too lazy to do so, there is a movie version of the book. If you are too lazy to do that, just watch "Mad Men".
PETRI: Good thought!
I have in fact watched the episode of "The Simpsons" where Maggie escapes from the Ayn Rand preschool. But this is the only context I have.
CZIKOWSKY: I am against political debates moderated by octogenarians. For real cool debates, we need debates moderated by Betty White.
PETRI: Seconded! Let's start a Change.org petition!
CZIKOWSKY: I am pleased to state that my book is the #2,554,121 best selling book in Amazon.com history. I believe I have so much to look forward to.Should I mention this fact in my class reunion highlights?
PETRI: Depends what reunion. If it's 5 or fewer, you are obligated to keep telling the truth. By 10 you can start rounding up. By 15 you can hire impersonators to show up as your wildly successful wife and six children.
CZIKOWSKY: Thank you for that advice. I may hire someone to pretend to be my wife. Are you free for the role of my grown daughter? You may even bring your accordion.
PETRI: I think that might have the opposite of its intended effect. At least if your intent is to inspire the attendees with a warm and lively envy of your existence. It is hard to envy anyone who lives in proximity to my level of accordion playing.
CZIKOWSKT: Spotted Cow or Leinies? Which would you choose?
PETRI: Spotted Cow, definitely, although I'm not a fan of the Fat Squirrel.
CZIKOWSKY: I presume the Justin Bieber book you purchased was for research and not because you were a Bieber diehard fan, correct? Is it OK if I take down the Justin Bieber poster in your old room?
PETRI:Those are LIES and I will not stand for them! It was research! Research i say!
CZIKOWSKY: People ask why I stopped working on Capitol Hill. I knew this was not the place for me when, on my first day, my new boss gave me a 700 page book that had nothing to do with current legislation and told me to read it.
PETRI: What's even weirder is that the book was "50 Shades of Grey" with 116 additional pages of pictures and diagrams!
CZIKOWSKY: Are you reading the one 50 Shades book or the trilogy? Note to authors: If you find a hot topic, write it as a trilogy. You sell more books that way.
PETRI: Why limit yourself? Go for a sexology!
CZIKOWSKY: I remember that cashier look when you buy a strange combination of books. I once bought a copy of "Mein Kempf" at the same time I bought a book by Newt Gingrich.
PETRI: I am not joking. Afer I paid for "50 Shades of Grey" and "Atlas Shrugged", the cashier shouts after me "Try not to kill yourself!"
CZIKOWSKY: You know 50 Shades is derived from Twilight? So if it follows reality, she is only going to cheat on him.
PETRI: My God, you're right.
Nuts, now you've ruined it!
CZIKOWSKY: When did the world wide web become the Internet? Why wasn't I told this? Which reminds me, does anyone know where I may get my Betamax fixed?
PETRI:Oh, good. I am glad you are getting it fixed. Nothing sadder than a litter of unwanted little Betaxmaxes running around.
CZIKOWSKY: I love those high school photos of Mitt Romney.I know there is a logical explanation but does it help a candidate downplaying his Mormonism to have Romney photographed in high school with two girls?
PETRI: As long as he's married to neither. I don't see the harm in it!

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, August 15, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: If you spill liquid on your computer such that it does not operate properly, how did you fix that?
HESSE: Ha. Ha. Ha.
Funny story. The reason that I was unexpectedly absent from the chat last week had to do with me spilling a bowl of cereal all over my laptop. If it had been anything else, I would not have gotten upset, but, you know, there's no use crying over spilled milk. At precisely the time I should have been chatting, I was instead disassembling my computer and gently swabbing down with rubbing alcohol.
CZIKOWSKY: I have a question for vegetarians, Would your eat in vitro meat? I would presume those against killing animals might consider it, while those who do not each meat for dietary reasons would not. Or am I wrong? That is why I ask.
HESSE: See, you would think so, but I don't eat meat for the against-killing-animals reason and I still have a hard time getting over the entail hurdles of this one.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, August 21, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I have a dilemma. I fear I will be Swift boated. Taylor Swift asked me out on a date, which at first sounds great, but now I fear she only wants me for inspiration for her next album so she may sing about what a lousy date I am.
PETRI: Go forth and conquer, sir. Taylor Swift seems to share the opinion of many artists that true Art (or at least true decently catchy country pop break-up themed hits) can only be gleamed in the bleak field of suffering. So go sow away! Also, she has enough of the green at the ready to be able to buy a summer home near her latest fling, not that I would ever recommend a mercenary approach to dating.
CZIKOWSKY: What is the world coming to when a member of Congress can't take off all his clothes and jump into a lake in Israel without having the FBI check it out.
PETRI: Well, it seems on further scrutiny that the FBI was actually checking into something else, and only incidentally felt the need to do due diligence on the skinny-dipping tale. Once the FBI is involved, you get pretty well investigated.
But seriously! I remember back in the day when John Quincy Adams and Ben Franklin were frolicking about in the waters in the altogether (not simultaneously, of course) to the delight of at least one lady journalist who wanted an interview and was able to locate Adams's clothes on the bank.
CZIKOWSKY: OK, I think I got it. The rule is a member of Congress may be naked in public, but a member of Congress may not tweet of photo of it. Is that right?
PETRI: It helps if there is water involved.
The last ting we want is a mutant, radiated Congress composed of irate, half drowned, disease bearing slime beings.
CZIKOWSKY: I find it interesting that in Gene Weingarten's chat, there was a discussion where several people argued that there is no rape joke that is funny. Then along comes Todd Akin to disprove that theory.
PETRI: Well, actually.
So its been interesting to me as a (dons monocle, feels stupid about it, removes onocle) scholar of the rape joke, to see how this has played out on Twitter. The joking has been pretty exhaustive. There are people who are making "legitimate" the punchline of everything. There are other people who are adverting humorous retaliation to Todd Akin. Most of this joking hasn't been about rape, though. It's about the way we talk about it---and in particular the extremely inept way he talked about it. And they've been quite funny. The exceptions are all the ones that run along the lines of BLAH BLAH BLAH TODD AKIN PRISON BLAH BALH BLAH HE'LL LEARN which are just---ugh.Both unoriginal and unpleasant. But there's been a lot of very funny comments on it. One of favorites (I'm biased, though) was Megan Errant's "My legitimate rape whistle is a kazoo".
CZIKOWSKY: How far along are you in reading "50 Shades" and/or Ayn Rand? Have either books stirred you into seeking something new and exciting in the world? What does reading both together at the same time do: does it make you wish to build a new libertarian library on an exotic island?
PETRI: I'm about a fifth of the way through. My goal was to finish by the convention, but that seems increasingly unlikely: at least if I want to retain my sanity.
Then again, suffering a temporary psychotic break indicated by reading combinations might be exactly the ticket to a really exciting week. The Hunter S. Thompson approach, but more legal.
CZIKOWSKY: I went through this with Hunter, so let me help guide you throughout this process. You will begin to hallucinate. You will think members of Congress are skinny dipping naked, and that one thinks a raped woman can't get pregnant, and...wait, maybe you should help me through this.
PETRI The news this week has been the kind of news that makes me worry I ate strange cheese before going to sleep and then it turns out that I'mm awake ad have been for some time.
CZIKOWSKY: In reading "50 Shades" before the Republican convention, your mind will start thinking about an attractive middle age man with nice hair and trained horses who has money on a remote island who wants you to do things for him so he may gain more power. Resist this, I tell you, resist this.
PETRI: I'm combining it was "Atlas Shrugged", though, so oddly enough the man I'm picturing is Ron Paul.
CZIKOWSKY:Someone out there can do a great service to Gene Weingarten's readers by answering one simple question: How much is 100 minus 10? It takes Alexandra Petri readers to explain the world to Weingarten readers.
PETRI: Oh, the Jonah Lehrer question! I stand by Fran Lebowitz asserting that in real life there is no such thing as algebra. Also, who has a $.10 ball? Or $.05 balls? Maybe $.10 is right because I've never seen a $.05 ball and you have to round up to the nearest real ball number.
CZIKOWSKY: I don't remember Garfinkles. But I remember Simons. Simons had a bathroom with 50 parrots. Each parrot told you a different way to leave your lover.
PETRI: HA! +10
CZIKOWSKY: "Quacky Has Two Daddies". Thank you for the title of my new book. Of course, it is on Econometric theory...
PETRI: But it'll sell like hotcakes! In the sense that both hotcakes and econometric theory textbooks are not known lately for their mass salability.
Oh no. I was hoping to go through life without ever using the word "salability". Sad day.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, August 22, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: My lunch date cancelled (naturally), so I decided I can do this all on my own. So I went to this new restaurant I want to try, alone. When I got there, I learned it burned down last night. So, how is your day going?
HESSE: Awesome! I went to a boxing class last night and can barely move my arms, so I'm trying to type using mind control. What restaurant burned down?
CZIKOWSKY: The restaurant was called Sinbad. Maybe they sinned badly which caused the find. It was supposed to be a Pakistani-Indian restaurant, which one should have guessed would be trouble right there.
HESSE: Well, that explains everything.
CZIKOWSKY: I have one boxing story. There is a scene in "Rocky" where Sylvester Stallone is running through the Italian Market and he grabs an apply from one of the vendors, takes a bite out of the apple, and tosses the apple back. Now, you have to keep in mind that when "Rocky" was filmed, no one in South Philadelphia had yet heard of Rocky or Sylvester Stallone. What you don't see in the film is that after Stallone tossed the apple, the vendor throw it back at him.
HESSE: Good for the vendor. I mean, really. Pay for your apple.
CZIKOWSKY: What I learned from the Mindset list: Wait, Kurt Cobain has always been dead? When did this happen?
HESSE: It;s true. He was never, ever born.
CZIKOWSKY: Who does Prince Harry think he is, a member of Congress?
HESSE:Then again, its not like he was Tweeting out his nudity to his followers. Obviously, he has a lot to learn.
CZIKOWSKY: Maybe Prince Harry has fallen in love with one of the Vegas women, and he will give up his crown to marry her.
HESSE: I don't even think he needs to give up his crown, as he's not going to be king. And even a king could probably marry an American---Edward's problem is that the American he wanted to marry was twice divorced, and still married to her second husband when their fling began.
CZIKOWSKY: What is Harry, anyway? The Prince of Wales? What does that even mean" Does he consult on Welsh foreign policy matters? I could be wrong, but it does not strike me at that hard a job.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, August 29, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: What is this about naked photographs of Royals? I know they let reporters into locker rooms, but I think it is wrong to be taking photographs of Kansas City Royals.
HESSE: I don't really want to see naked baseball (football? Hockey? I'm just guessing here) players, anyway.
CZIKOWSKY: Good guess. The Kansas City Royals are a baseball team. Now, are you able to guess which sports the Williamsport Crosscutters are?
HESSE: Ummm...lacrosse? Sailing? Scrap boarding?

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, September 4, 2012
CZIKOWSKY I have a problem. I ran a marathon in four hours but told people I ran it in under three hours. Is that wrong?
PETRI: Ooh, let's debate this.
In general, at least in the People Who Run community, the consensus seems to be that Marathon Time is right up there with Names of Wife and Children on the list of Things That It Seems Ludicrous and Mortifying To Forget Even Once.
Of course, it might be worth noting at some point that John Kerry said he'd run the Boston Marathon which, as someone put it, does not seem to be a thing that happened.
CZIKOWSKY: Isn't it interesting that we are more focused on the marathon comment Paul Ryan made, and less on the matters that involve policy, such as stating that the plant closed in his home town under Obama when it actually cloud before Obama became President. This is just an observation, but we seem to find the inaccuracies that do not involve partisan politics more appropriate for comment.
PETRI: You must dwell on some blessed isle where no one has been focusing on the plant closure comment. I certainly haven't noticed that.
This being said, I think you make an interesting point. There's a whole sub genre of non-political political chatter (Romney dog, Romney horse, Obama dog, Obama beer) that people fill pages with, and the glib explanation would be that secretly no one wants to talk about policy if there is the slightest opportunity to take about something else. So instead of having Big Picture Policy Debate that everyone expected for about six seconds after the Ryan nomination, we're calling him out on his marathon times.
CZIKOWSKY: Yeah, yeah, the White House "claims" that is the official White House beer recipe. Why won't they show us the long form of the recipe?
PETRI: Ha! +10
CZIKOWSKY: Did I read you took a tour of Tampa strip clubs? I did not realize there were so many automobile repainting shops there.
PETRI: Actually, if I had one takeaway, it would be that they all look like spaceships on the inside. There is one called 2001: A Naked Odyssey that looks like a spaceship on the outside as well. It was, apparently, founded by a guy after the Kubrick movie came out, concerning which one of the of the managers told me the thought process was "Hey, that Kubrick movie was pretty cool. You know what would be cooler? A strip club."
CZIKOWSKY: It would be very suspicious if iHop suddenly had real maple syrup...
PETRI: Indeed. Indeed. Delicious, however.
CZIKOWSKY: The Defense Department has just doubled security at the Pancake Reserve facility.
PETRI: Whoa, and leave our waffles undefended?
CZIKOWSKY: OK, so you drink tree sap, take tree bark for your election evening headaches, and turn trees into empty chairs. You are all monsters, monsters, I tell you.
PETRI: Treebeard? How are you typing this?
CZIKOWSKY: Treebeard: "I have people, you know."
PETRI: You and Squirrel Bopper should talk.
CZIKOWSKY: Treebeard: "I love that I find fans in all kinds of places. I always hear my name shouted at Lynyrd Skynyrd concerts."
PPETRI: Ha!
CZIKOWSKY: The empty chair has a long political history. One of my favorite empty chair stories (and believe me, I have several) involved Richardson Dilworth running for Governor of Pennsylvania in 1962. William Scranton declined to debate him, so Dilworth stated at a press conference that he was prepared to debate an empty chair. What Dilworth did not know was that Scranton psyched him out. Moments before the live televised debate, Scranton showed up. Dilworth was so flabbergasted and unprepared for a real debate that most analysts state Scranton won the debate. Scranton went on to win the election. One debates an empty chair at great political risk.
PETRI: As someone funnier than I quipped on Twitter, Newt Gingrich has already challenged the empty chair to a series of eight Lincoln-Douglas style debates.
CZIKOWSKY: Write-in "Clint/Chair" in 2012. Of course, one should use an unsharpened pencil to try and do this.
PETRI: Naturally!
CZIKOWSKY: OK, so we have Joe Biden debate an empty chair, and we rig the chair so it debates back. Will this be good TV?
PETRI: I'd watch it!
So given my taste in television, it's probably not a good idea.
CZIKOWSKY: We need a hologram of the late Mayor Sonny Bono to appear on stage with an empty chair. Think about it for a minute...Ok...got it...Sonny and Chair...Still don't get it?
PETRI: Heyo!

JEN CHANEY, Washington Post Anchor, September 6, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: The Democratic National Convention is reaching out to Oogieloves. Butterflies whenever Obama is mentioned. Turtles whoever Romney is mentioned.
CHANEY: Oh, that's a brilliant idea. Also, we'd all have to chant "Goofy Vice President Biden! Pick up your pants" every ten minutes.
CZIKOWSKY: Back in the day, I was forced to listen to old timers telling how how much better things were back in the day.
CHANEY: Yeah, those really were the good old days.
CZIKOWSKY: Do you realize the headline above your current conversation includes the phrase "Elizabeth Warren Beaver Attack"? I presume those are two separate news items.
CHANEY: I do not realize this. But that is unfortunate.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, September 11, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: It has taken in-depth probing, but I believe I have found the deep dark secret to Mitt Romney's tax return: Mitt Romney is not Mitt Romney. His real name is Willard Romney. We all know no one name after a horror movie from the past will ever be elected President.
PETRI: But "Ben" was such a great sequel, and produced that Michael Jackson song, and Harrison was pretty okay as Presidents with cold handshakes go...
Yeah, you win this one.
CZIKOWSKY: When you reached "no cigar" on coming up with a cation to the Joe Biden biker photo, did you literally have a cigar that you then put away when you couldn't come up with a caption?
PETRI: I'd gladly take a better caption!
I should get a cigar to put away each time I fail to come up with a caption that adequately describes such a picture. Or, alternatively, to walk around chewing on without lighting, like that one man in the DNC audience.
CZIKOWSKY: You were late again. This week, your punishment is a billionaire will fly you to a remote island where you will be treated like a queen until Carrie Fisher shows us holding a spatula, who will then question you on the entire dialogue to "Star Wars".
PETRI:This doesn't sound like punishment so much as a vacation I've been planning for a while.
CZIKOWSKY: You should look into covering the Hollywood Show. It brings back actors from all genres and fans have a chance to get to meet them. Carrie Fisher is a frequent attender. You may have to bring your own spatula.
PETRI: I have just the spatula!
CZIKOWSKY: It depends on what kind of sailing mission we are on as whether I would prefer Obama or Romney. It it is a commercial venture taking goods to an offshore account, then I definitely would prefer that Romney be the skipper. Yet, if it were a ship that could be attacked militarily, I would prefer Obama, because he could always quickly take down the American flag and raise up a Kenyan flag.
PETRI: Okay, alternate question: Pirate ship.
CZIKOWSKY: I would have to go with preferring Obama to skipper a pirate ship. Romney does not drink alcohol of caffeine If I ever were ego be a sea for a long period, I would want a skipper who would at least throw down a few beers with us.
PETRI: See, maybe the bizarre questions were just our way of trying to dodge the beer question, a side that's clearly stacked in President Obama's favor.
CZIKOWSKY: Joe Biden is the correct answer to the question "Whose lap would you most like to go sit in when dressed up like a biker?"
PETRI: No, the correct answer to that one is "Onion Joe Biden".
CZIKOWSKY: OK, so Harvard students cheated in their "Introduction to Congress" class. How do we know they weren't really cheating but only demonstrating that they could apply what they learned?
PETRI: "That wasn't cheating! That was influence peddling!"
CZIKOWSKY: I am suddenly thinking of Hillary Clinton stating "Barack Hussein Obama, I am very disappointed in you."
PETRI: Of course the trouble is that when you're really disappointed in Mitt Romney, he gets a first name...

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, September 18, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I am impressed that one of the greatest writers, Ernest Hemingway, considered cats as "love sponges". The things I learn by following what you tell us to read.
PETRI: Papa was a cat man, apparently.
CZIKOWSKY: At least you are reading "50 Shades" and "Atlas Shrugged" at the same time. I made the mistake of reading Karl Marx and "50 Shades" at the same time. I dreamed I was running through a factory shouting "workers of the world, you have nothing to lose but your chains" and the workers shouted back "but we love our chains".
PETRI: Ha! +10
CZIKOWSKY: Don't you love it when your cat brings you a live mouse and tortures it? There you are reading "50 Shades", and there is your cat doing exactly what you are reading...
PETRI: Well, my favorite Shades story was actually from Antietam, where, as a regimental band played a medley of minstrel songs, I noticed a woman rapt in an ebook of some sort. Curious, I crept closer.
You guessed it: "50 Shades Freed".
Who reads "50 Shades Freed" to antebellum horn music?
This woman, I guess.
CZIKOWSKY: Having your cat bring you a mouse head is normal. Having the mouse heads stuffed by a taxidermist and displaying them in your living is not normal. Just for the record, for those confused by this.
PEETRI: I really hope this has happened to you and you are speaking from personal experience.
CZIKOWSKY: Just some advice: If anyone ever asks you over to their house to see their collection of stuffed mouse heads...Politely decline. I can not stress this enough
PETRI: PSA
CZIKOWSKY: So Romney picked Snooki over Honey Boo Boo. I think that was a mistake. Obama's lead in New Jersey is too strong, and conceding the Honey Boo Boo vote to Obama hurts him in crucial states like Florida.
PETRI: That's an interesting theory.
Then again, admitting to liking Honey Boo Boo anywhere might be a devastating blow of a sort as well.
CZIKOWSKY: Romney is taking your advice and is refusing to say another word. Oh, and he's dyeing his hair red.
PETRI: Yeergh.
CZIKOWSKY: I loved your article on Fashion Week. I saw something totally amazing on New York One during Fashion Week (yes, the station lampooned in "How I Met Your Mother" that shows that even best friends of those on "New York One"don't even watch their friends on "New York One"). New York One sent an older guy to report on Fashion Week. He interviewed one of the top designers and asked a question that I have never heard anyone ask before, yet is one of those first questions to most guys. He asked why there is so much bother over showing dresses that will never be sold in any shops. The designer couldn't come up with an answer, so she answered what she knew, which was how many dresses she has. So, why so much bother over dresses that the public will never even have a chance to buy?
PETRI: This is a good question!
I think because...fashion...trickle down effect?
Perhaps, if there weren't these people making fusses over dresses that would never sell, there would be nothing to give us the vague sense that Burnt Umber and Pinstripes were in this fall. And without the vague sense that Burnt Umber and Pinstripes were in this fall, where would we be?
Must investigate further, as Rorschach says.
CZIKOWSKY: "The Lord is a shoving leopard", declared the Reverend Spooner. Prior to this, I thought Spoonerism was when an eating instrument jumped over the moon.
PETRI: "When the boys return from France, we'll have the hags flung out."
CZIKOWSKY: I would have made a great member of British royalty. Whenever I am naked no one wants to take my photograph.
PETRI: You're like Phyllis Diller, who once wore a peekaboo drew. Her husband peeked and booed.
CZIKOWSKY: I go out totally naked holding onto wads of cash all the time, and no one bothers me. Maybe it's all those mouse heads hanging from me...
PETRI: Ha!
CZIKOWSKY: Evil breasts? I thought that was the bases of most adventure comic books.
PETRI: Ha!

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, September 25, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: Doesn't everyone giggle at tax codes? Years ago, when I read the section changing the depreciation rates on yachts made in America I was laughing for hours.
PETRI: "Call the wagon, Reba! That's not a natural laugh!"
CZIKOWSKY: You have insulted my narrow version of a deity. Members of my previously unknown religious institution are planning to protest in front of the Washington Post, that is, if is not too hot, or too cold outside. We must warn you: if you see you in public, you may expect a serious snubbing.
PETRI: Venganza, what did I say?
CZIKOWSK: We intend to protest your "Mrs. Jesus" comment. Her name is "Ms. Jesus".
PETRI:Ha!
CZIKOWSKY: Most pointless use of a time travel machine: I would go back one second in time.
PETRI: That is, indeed, pointless.
CZIKOWSKY: We need a "Sing Like William Shatner Day".
PETRI: Concurred, enthusiastically.
CZIKOWSKY: There are two reasons why one can never have sex in front of a unicorn: 1.) Unicorns are a symbol of virginity, and most important, 2.) there are no such things as unicorns.
PETRI: Also true words.
CZIKOWSKY: Dear villains: Do not pick on Mary Jane Parker. Learn from the mistakes of past villains.
PETRI: Villains never seem to learn.
The real tragedy of most villains is that their deep and passionate love of explaining diabolical plots in fundamentally incomputable with their chosen line of work.
CZIKOWSKY: I am always impressed every day that Keith Richards is still alive.
PETRI: I've been less surprised since his autobiography came out. You can't generate that much fanfare for a posthumous autobiography unless you are Mark Twain.
CZIKOWSKY: Who says we haven't been visited by lots of time travelers? The first rule of Time Travelers Club is no one speaks of Time Travelers Club.
PETRI: On that note, I should probably skedaddle off into the future!

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, October 9, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: Whoever sent in the "test" question reminded me of a joke from college. A teacher of one of those large lecture classes assigns a take home test due exactly at 5 pm. A student arrives with his test answers late and the teacher refuses to accept his paper. The student gets insulted and asks "do you know who I am?? The teacher is not impressed and responds "no, and I don't care". The student then says "good" and shoves his paper into the middle of the pile of tests.
PETRI: Ha!
CZIKOWSKY: No offense, but literally, we need to talk. Let me share this with you. You look tired. Of course, I could care less.
PETRI: Speaking as a woman oh, puhleeze.
CZIKOWSKY: Whenever I say "speaking as a woman", this does not always end in disaster. Of course, being male, it often results in laughter.
PETRI: Yes, speaking as a man, I think it's safe if you don't fall into the demographic described.
CZIKOWSKY: We need to change the definition of "that is so gay". We should begin using it to mean something positive. As in "I am voting for the gayer of the two candidates", "'Star Wars" is the gayest movie ever", and "I love my religion, it is so gay".
PETRI: I think I've seen stand up sets based around that bit, but it still makes me chortle! The same set suggested that where you want to say "lame" but denigrate a whole group, you substitute "racist". ("Man, this dance class is so racist.")
CZIKOWSKY: Your donut consumption is probably not really good for your bottom line.
PETRI: I see what you did there!
CZIKOWSKY: You are eating the healthy donuts, right?
PETRI: Yes, only the finest healthiest, most artisanal donuts.
CZIKOWSKY: Now, if only Krispy Kreme had bacon donuts...
PETRI: Undreamed of felicity!

AKEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, October 16, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I don't understand D.C. people. All the last few months I have hard D.C.ers complaining that there are too many gnats. Now that I hear the gnats have been eliminated, apparently destroyed by a huge flock of cardinals, now you are all depressed. I do not understand.
PETRI: Oh, boooooooo.
Hiss.
"There is no truth comparable to Sorrow. There are times when Sorrow seems to me to be the only truth."
I am still nursing my wounds.
But as Wilde says, "One needs misfortune to live happily."
CZIKOWSKY: I learned there is a huge difference between writing "Twilight" fan fiction and writing Presidential candidate fan fiction At least when you write about which Twilight characters you wish to kidnap and torment, you don't get a visit from the Secret Service.
PETRI: "Fortunately we used to canonize our good men; nowadays we vulgarize them."
CZIKOWSKY: Should I register for continuing education, and if so, what does one wear to college classes these days?
PETRI: Oh, I see what you did there.
"The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by always being absolutely over-educated."
Or, alternatively,
a.) "Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."
b.) "Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear."
CZIKOWSKY:I am planning a trip. Should I take my diary with me? Also, as a baseball pitcher, should I continue to throw slow pitches at the middle of the plate?
PETRI: 1.) "I always travel with my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train."
2.) I thought I said not to mention the Nats.
CZIKOWSKY: You know, San Francisco (one of the cities still in the baseball playoffs) is lovely this time of year.
PETRI: "San Francisco has the most lovely surroundings of any city except Naples."
CZIKOWSY: Would you like to go to Heaven when you die?
PETRI: "Don't be led astray into the paths of virtue."
CZIKOWSKY: Is it a deal breaker if we fall madly in love and want to marry and I insist you go kosher, even though I'm not Jewish, but I really think pigs are smart. (I know, if they are that smart, they should create an escape route.)
PEYTI: If they're really so smart, why are they so delicious?
On the bacon/kosher front, Wilde did note that "The only charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties."
CZIKOWSKY: I even have a bacon joke. A visitor asks a farmer about a three legged pig. The farmer explains that his tractor fell over and pinned him on the ground. The pig saw this and dug him out and saved his life. "So the pig lost a leg saving you?" the visitor inquires. "Oh, no", replies the farmer, "A pig that loyal you don't eat all at once."
PETRI: "Each man kills the thing he loves."
By each let this be heard.
Some do it with a bitter look.
Some with a flattering sword.
The coward does it with a kiss
The brave man with a sword."
And the guy in this poem with a hacksaw, apparently.
CZIKOWSKY: Great quote not from Oscar Wilde: "Raisin cookies that look like chocolate cookies are why I have trust issues."
PETRI: That was one of the best.
"I wish I had said that."
"You will, Oscar, you will."
CZIKOWSKY: From your dog: "When I discover it is a Snausage when I smell bacon is why I have trust issues."
PETRI: Wilde has no quote for this one.
CZIKOWKSY: Gene Weingarten speculated that Obama was distracted by some disturbing news prior to his debate. Others have suggests he was throwing the debate as he longer wants to be President. (Although, to be fair, it looks what whatever the news is, Joe Biden would take the job.) There is speculation that the news is either an asteroid heading for Earth or space alien invasion. Which are you rooting for, asteroid or invasion?
PETRI: Oh, invasion all the way. The odds of my surviving on invasion are nil, as are the ones of surviving an asteroid, and with the asteroid you don't get to meet any fun extraterrestrials first.
As Wilde said, "Everything is dangerous...If is wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living."

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, October 23, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I have a very serious warning: Italy, you have an earthquake coming. There, at least no one can convict me of not warning them.
PETRI: It’s good to be proactive.
CZIKOWSKY: For Halloween, I am dressing in my Star Trek uniform and then dressing over that like a Korean rapper? Is that cool, or what?
PETRI: That sounds pretty cool.
CZIKOWSKY: I am amazed. How did the person who responded to my Halloween costume know I am a virgin?
PETRI: The responder is a unicorn.
CZIKOWSKY: Warning! Do not dress like a zombie for Halloween. The military is actually conducting exercises in preparation for a zombie attack, You could be a victim of friendly fire.
PETRI: Smoldering friendly fire?
CZIKOWSKY: Did you now that it is estimated that eight million horses perished during World War I? I am glad that we are moving away form repeating such horror, and instead now fight wars that can wipe out entire cities of people and horses more humanely and more horsely.
PETRI: I like the term “more horsely”.
CZIKOWSKY: Don’t you just love the Internet? Are you eating enough fruit and vegetables? All I read about you eating is red meat.
PETRI: I think I ate a vegetable Thursday.
CZIKOWSKY: I am not familiar with American journalism, yet I see that Clark Kent is making news for leaving the Daily Planet. What is the significance of this? Will the Daily Planet suffer a loss of readership?

PETRI: No doubt.
Frankly, I’m amazed that Peter Parker still has work. Or is he freelance now?
CZIKOWSKY: Yes, men, we need to pry those “50 Shades” books away from women and see what it is they are plotting. All I know is I keep finding handcuffs and spatulas lying around, and I don’t buy she is attending both police academy training and chef cooking school.
PETRI: Also, that explains the strange taste of those pancakes.
CZIKOWSKY: If the recent Presidential debates had the most viewers of any debates in 12 years, and if more people watched Honey Boo Boo than watched the debates, does that mean Honey Boo Boo is the most watched Presidential debate in 12 years?
PETRI: (shudder)

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, October 30, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: Greetings from LaLa Land. Writing from the grooves of Venice Beach. Some clouds in the sky are jus’ grody. How you doing? I heard something that you got some rain? Man, we hate when it rains. Well, surfs up!
PETRI: Don’t make me send Chris Christie over there.
Seriously, he has responsibilities.
CZIKOWSKY: You ate your cat (which she jokingly tweeted during the storm)? Well, I finally understand why people tape bacon onto their cats Next time, eat the bacon, spare the cat.
PETRI: True words. And next time the dog goes first. Cats don’t suddenly need to visit shrubs and do nothing in the midst of sideways rains.
CZIKOWSKY: I am working on the physics of increased spinning of molecules during gay marriages that builds up and causes hurricanes. I am having a little trouble with the mathematics of it all. It does not seem to add up.
PETRI: But...surely it must!
Just once I want someone on talk radio to declare that a storm came because there weren’t ENOUGH gay marriages.
CZIKOWSKY: I just spotted a capsized arc with lots of drowned animals around it. That is not good, is it?
PETRI: Probably not, no.
Unless you’re one of the folks who draws cartoons for the “New Yorker”. Then: It’s great!
CZIKOWSKY: I hear Donald Trump’s hair blew of his head during the hurricane and it is now dangling precariously over a building in New Jersey.
PETRI: Ha! +5

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, October 31, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I am looking forward to the new movie “Snow White and the Seven Dwarf  Star Wars.”
HESSE: Wookie and the Beast.
CZIKOWSKY: I thought all that rain and wind were special effect for the Halloween celebration, And who is this Sandy that was in charge of special effects?

HESSE: Nah, there were special effects for this chat.

CHRIS CILLIZZA, Washington Post Managing Editor, November 2, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I see the unemployment rate is 7.9%. That has made me decide to vote for Obama. If it were 8.0%, I would have voted for Romney.
CILLIZZA: You and every other undecided voter out there. See, elections are simple!

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, November 27, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: What is this about a war on men? Is our nation able to afford another war? Will there be a draft? How should I prepare for this war?
PETRI: By the usual pre-war drill: entrench your habits and interest, plant a small victory garden, and hoard things. No worries about a draft., unless you or your relatives are drones.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer December 11, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I have proof that Santa Clause is a Democrat. He is on the voter registration list as a registered Democrat in Chicago and has been voting regularly for over 60 years now.
PETRI: Ha!
But didn’t he also run for President this year in, I want to say, Hawaii?
CZIKOWSKY: It is interesting that as communication becomes more efficient our skills at communicating decreases. Years ago, back when I was young and we had to worry about dinosaurs when walking a mile to school in the snow, people sent out invitations and people would return RSVPs through hard copies of messages that a person called a mail carrier would physically take from you and give back to the person who made the invitation.. Now that all we have to do is click something to RSVP, suddenly we can’t be bothered. I think many people need to be scared of being eaten by dinosaurs to uphold their social graces.
PETRI: Dinosaurs for politeness!
Although the more we learn about dinosaurs, the less terrifying I find them. It turns out there  was no such thing as brontosaurus, for instance. It’s an apatosaurus with the wrong head.
Maybe we should compromise with Saber-Toothed Tigers for politeness. Those retain their power to terrify.
CZIKOWSKY: So paleontologists were early photo shoppers. That explains why one museum has a dinosaur with Clara Bow’s head.
PETRI: Ha!
Actually, the real story behind this is just as interesting. All the misplaced heads date back to something called the Bone Wars, in the 19th century, when prominent paleontologists were destroying bones right and left in the effort to be the first to make a new dinosaur. NPR did a piece on it. (Also, dibs on this for a play topic.)
CZIKOWSKY: Dinosaurs may be less threatening once you realize they may have had feathers. And they were prone to wearing chiffon.
PETRI: Actually feathers spook me. Boa constrictor < Feather Boa Constrictor.
Soon we’ll discover that “the thing with feathers that perches in the soul” is not, as Dickinson contended hope, but instead some kind of soul-velociraptor.
CZIKOWSKY: If I were to ever meet you in person, is it proper to address you as Ms. Petri, Miss Petri or should I just address you as Turd Bargleface?
PETRI: I thinkMiss Bargleface is an acceptable compromise.
CZIKOWSKY: I have a friend who worked at a comic store in the LA area. Mark Hamill was a frequent customer. She finds it interesting that young people will buy “Star Wars” comics and she will point out that Mark Hamill is standing right behind them, and they don’t seem to care. I am glad someone your age has the proper respect for celebrity.
PETRI: Indirect hi, Mark Hamill!
And it’s not just “Star Wars” that he has to his credit. His Joker laugh continues to haunt my nightmares.
This just bolsters my update to the Warhol theory of universal celebrity which is that in the future, everyone will be famous to 15 people.
CZIKOWSKY: I have an email from “Santa Clause” in my junk email folder. Do you think it might be an email from the real Santa and my computer sent it to junk mail? Should I open it? Will you open it for me?
PETRI: Forward it to people who won’t answer your invites.
CZIKOWSKY: Santa is a member of the Whig Party. Neither exists.
CZIKOWSKY: A comedy book store is a good idea. Let’s put our savings into creating a chain of comedy book stores. There are lots of emplty store spaces where previous book stores used to be.
PETRI: Strong concur!
Nothing pains me more in my daily existence, unless I throw my hip out be walking too far in non-walking shoes (standing shoes?) than passing the Nike store where the Barnes and Noble used to be. If that’s not a commentary on the supplanting of the mens sana with the corpore sana by defiantly wearing snazzy footwear, I don’t know what is.
CZIKOWSY: You have nothing to worry about when it comes to Facebook privacy, We at Facebook will not disclose your Internet habits. Your frequent Google search for drawings of 19th century literary men wearing dresses will remain our secret.
PETRI: DANGIT INTERNET I WAS TRYING TO KEEP THIS FROM YOU.
CZIKOWSKY: I love this time of year. Our chorus group loves going from house to house singing our favorite Christmas songs. This year we are singing Stephen Colbert’s “Another Christmas Song”, Sarah Silverman’s “Give the Jew Girl Toys”, “Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher” from the play “Billy Elliott”, Rod Peters’ “You Ain’t Getting S--t for Christmas”, and “I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Clause”. We seldom get invited into the homes for hot chocolate, but that is fine. We do it for the love of it.
PETRI: Oh, that sounds great! Those are classics!

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, December 12, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I am worried that the end of the world is near. Even if we survive when the Mayan calendar ends on December 22, I just noticed that my own calendar ends on December 31.
HESSE: Crap. Mine too.
CZIKOWSKY: What is this “lying” about there being a Santa? Is there something you need to tell me? Did something happen to Santa?
HESSE: Santa is getting you something really awesome for Christmas. He asked us all not to tell you about it. Act surprised.
CZIKOWSKY: A friend of mine’s family can never ever watch the movie “A Christmas Story”. One must never mention the movie in their presence. They bought their son a BB gun, and he really did shoot an eye out. It can happen.
HESSE: I know it is inappropriate that my initial reaction in reading this was a lark of a laugh.
CZIKOWSKY: Is this how is works? Hello, I am writing from the Howard Stern Show. Would you please transfer me to the Monica Hesse “Live Now” so I may say “Baba Booey”? Thank you.
HESSE: We’re not falling for this around here.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, January 1, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: The Mayans were right and we fell off the fiscal cliff and the world ended. Is it me, or is Hell sort of like where we lived before?
PETRI: “Hell is other people discussing the Fiscal Cliff on talk shows”, as I think Sartre said.
CZIKOWSKY: Well I see you did not work on your holy day of Christmas and you are working on New Year’s Day. Frankly, I am a bit surprised that you do not consider the first day of a new year to also be a holy day. What are you, some kind of Mayan or something?
PETRI: Well, today I have no presents to open, and the typing helps to keep the dim buzzing in my head at bay.
Actually, I feel strangely chipper.
But this morning does remind me of all those articles on hangover cures, which are best summed up in the phrase “Somehow arrange to have imbibed less.”
CZIKOWSKY: We all knew you would be the only one sober enough at the Washington Post today. Thank you for starting the new year by taking the lead.
PETRI: You’re welcome! I am proud to take responsibility, ‘removes lampshade from head, stumbles into table, hiccups.’
CZIKOWSKY: I am getting ads on who to vote for Oscars. I sometimes think it should be interesting to see a Post political analyst analyzing the campaign for Oscars. I am wondering when the negative ads will being in the Oscar races “Stephen Spielberg: Not a true conservative.” “Where is Ang Lee’s birth certificate?”
PETRI: “Anne Hathaway: she looks good with that haircut, dang it. Why is she crying?”
CZIKOWSKY: Any comments on the capture of the maple syrup bandits? 2013 is going to be a great year.
PETRI: This is my favorite concluded story of 2012.
I think the deeper question is what happens to the sinister Maple Syrup cabal that controls the world’s supply. We would have remained ignorant of its existence had it not been for those bandits. Where do we go from here?
CZIKOWSKY: We need to smash the maple syrup cabal We need to steal their reserves and then sell them on the open market to drive the price down so we may all better afford maple syrup. On second thought, maybe it was a big thing that these thieves were caught.
PETRI: I want to know how deep the bacon rabbit hole goes, though.
Next, we’l learn that all the nation’s eggs are controlled by Virginia lawmakers.
CZIKOWSKY: The egg lobby controls Congress, not the Virginia legislature. Also, you don’t want to know about the milk lobby. Enjoy your eight dollar gallon of milk.
PETRI: The Egg Lobby sounds like a great name for a restaurant, as a side note.
Hey, if the Milk Cliff pans out, all my years of milk hoarding won’t be for naught!
“Leaving milk in the refrigerator until it expires, then buying more milk, then leaving that in the refrigerator until it expires”---which I guess is like milk hoarding.
CZIKOWSKY: I keep seeing cute wood carvings with postings about how much one loves bacon and I always think “I bet Alexandra Petri would love that.” Now I am wondering: do you have anything that declares your love of bacon? If not, would you ever display such a proclamation?
PETRI: I would totally do that, and I need to.
I’m trying to replenish my supply of bad art. So far I have a painting of Michael Jackson, a picture of Paul McCartney eating a banana that everyone who has seen it claims looks like Justin Bieber, and a painting of C3PO in tweed that I alone think is Quality Artwork.
But bacon art? That hadn’t occurred to me. Now I have a new direction to hunt! Thank you for the inspiration!
CZIKOWSKY: Did you hear this vicious rumor that someone is trying to start that bacon may not be good for your health?
PETRI: What? Lies, lies! Bacon is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy, as I think Ben Franklin intended to say.
CZIKOWSKY: If Ben Franklin stated that bacon is proof that God loves us, I wonder what he thought of beer? Which remind me, has anyone tried bacon beer? Or are these two things that will never go together, like Congressional Democrats and Repblicans?
PETRI: Or Taylor Swift and...whoever it was.
CZIKOWSKY: The Bible states three times that one should only eat kosher food and only once states one shall not kill. Therefore, it is three times more important you not eat bacon than you should kill.
PETRI: The Bible also mentions laughter only thirteen times, by my count, most of them disparaging, in which case we’re all up a creek.
CZIKOWSKY: If pigs are so smart, how come they haven’t figured out we are only being nice to them because we intend to eat them, and then organize into a mass escape?
PETRI: Every answer I have to this question is a spoiler for “Animal Farm”.
CZIKOWSKY: As we begin a new year, I believe it is time to reflect and ask ourselves the all important question: how will Donald Trump embarrass himself this year?
PETRI: The all important question of any year, really.
CZIKOWSKY: As I observe that the U.S. Communist Party has a 11% approval rating and that Congress has a 9% approval rating, I understand that members of Congress, to improve their popularity, tell people at parties that they are Communists.
PETRI: Then again, if we’re just going on percentage popularity, members of Congress could tell people at parties that they have genital herpes and still be better off.
CZIKOWSKY: Why do conspiracy theorists, or whatever they should be called, always state that the “next Pope” will be the last? Does anyone else remember those proclaiming a girl had a vision that the “next Pope”, would who be this Pope, will be the last Pope? I guess if you keep changing it to “no, we meant the next one”, then these theorists will never get to be proven wrong.
PETRI: Hey, makes sense, The only thing we humans enjoy more than doomsday predictions is kicking the can down the road.
CZIKOWSKY: I have a New Year’s Resolution, H.R. 186, that Congress hereby declares...Oh, wait, you meant another kind of resolution. Never mind.
PETRI: I have a resolution! 1024 X = 68!
What’s that? I just lost my job writing humor, on the grounds that I’d slipped below the most basic qualifications? Well, deserved. Can’t argue with that call.
CZIKOWSKY: I had this weird dream. I dreamed I died and was facing St. Peter with a group of recent arrivalS. St. Peter proclaimed, “I have only one question to determine who gets in. Who here knows Jack Abramoff? I’m so sorry, but I signed an exclusive deal with Mr. Abramoff.”
PETRI: Whenever I hear a Jack Abramoff joke, I am reminded of the SNL classic, “Jack Abramoff? But I hardly know Abram?”
CZIKOWSKY: I will never forget the famous Oscar Wilde quote where he was sitting in a restaurant and proclaimed “Check, please.” I often repeat that exact quote whenever I am in a restaurant.
PETRI: This reminds me of the famous Shakespeare quote: “AAAAAAAAH!”
Which I assume he must have said at some point.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, January 22, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: So I gather that at the Inaugural they don’t give a silver medal to the candidate who finished in second place?
PETRI: I was waiting for that portion, if only because I would love to have seen Mitt Romney’s version of the McKayla Maroney face.
CZIKOWSKY: Have you heard of maple bacon ice cream? If so, what do you think?
PETRI: “leaves chat, treks to wherever this is sold, buys 8 tins, stops returning calls”
CZIKOWSKY: Ever since my fake girlfriend died, I have come to realize how bad the fake health care system is.
PETRI: This calls for fake health care reform!
But there are some other fictional problems that are just as pressing. We need that Death Star! And comprehensive fictional immigration reform, if only to keep people’s memoirs from suddenly migrating over there without warning.
CZIKOWSKY: I understand the fake girlfriend. As a nerd I know the only girlfriends we can tell people we have are fake ones, and then when it comes time to produce the girlfriend, of course, we nerds then have to explain that the fake girlfriend died. Every nerd does that. What I don’t understand is why a popular jock needed a fake girlfriend.
PETRI: Nerd culture is mainstream culture now! Didn’t you hear?
CZIKOWSKY: I love those electronic cigarettes. I never could get into smoking. Yet, with these electronic cigarettes, I am learning to slowly getting used to increasing dosages of nicotine until finally I believe I will be able to leave the electronic cigarettes for regular cigarettes. I want to say that electronic cigarettes are a great invention for future cigarette smokers.
PETRI: They’re a gateway drug. One day you’re trying e-cigarettes...the next, you’re smoking an entire gate.
CZIKOWSKY: (Previous disputed Washington Post passage) should have been, “alas, poor enormous room, with the swirling air of deceit brushing thine walls, I hardly knew ye, yet with this enormous event, I may trade my horse for a kingdom.”
PETRI:That’s how I want every sentence to be.
+50
Also the bonus commas. The bonus commas are essential.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, January 23, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: Do you think spending too much time in Iowa cost you that decisive 12th for the win?
HESSE: I was hoping someone would bring up “The Running of the Balls”, i.e. the inaugural ball death-match that Dan Zak and I engaged in this weekend.
Truthfully, I lost more time in Texas than I did in Iowa. If I’d gotten out of Texas earlier, I would have had time to make it to Oklahoma, which was going to be next on my list. But when a cowboy says he can lift you over his head, you’re not going to say no.
Dan evaluates his performance: “I could’ve not flailed about so much at the North Carolina ball. I wasn’t very aggressive right off the bat, so I ended up spending 30-40 minutes panicking and then conversing my way toward Sen. Hagan. If I had gotten in and out of N.C. in 10-15 minutes I would’ve had time for one more ball after Florida. Probably New Mexico?

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, January 29, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: After “Star Trek” director J.J. Abrams directs “Star Wars”, I believe he should direct “Star Search”.
PETRI: Let’s roll.
CZIKOWSKY: It is not the seriously sweet tomatoes that bother me. It is the studious celery, the scholarly carrots, and the endowed professor lettuce that bothers me.
PETRI: For me its the derisive, wan radishes.
CZIKOWSKY: As much as they try to slay thee, poetry, thou shalt not die.
PETRI: Poetry be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so
For those whom thous think’s thous dost overthrow
Get a lot of strongly-worded emails but are otherwise fine.

GENE WEINGARTEN, Washington Post Columnist, January 29, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: It was mentioned on the radio that the “Road Runner” comics are a farce. Coyotes run 40 MPH while roadrunners run 20 MPH. After all these years, we have been misled into thinking that roadrunners can outrun coyotes. Further, I have learned that coyotes are unable to go to Acme stores to try and drop onto roadrunners. I am really disappointed to learn this.
WEINGARTEN: Noted.
I never, however, felt the coyote couldn’t catch the roadrunner on foot. He was...wily. He wanted to catch him with devices. There were plenty of instances where the roadrunner came right up to the coyote and said “Meep meep”. Wily could have just scarfed him down right there. He didn’t WANT to. He wanted his muhahahah moment. Classic error of the villain.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, January 30, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: If the artistic quality is good, as it is on “Downton Abbey”, one can appreciate it even knowing how things will end. SPOILER ALERT: Seriously, did anyone see “Lincoln” without knowing Lincoln dies in the end? Yet it is still a good movie. I recall people reading “Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns Goodwin and they were reading as fast as they can because they wanted to find out who wins the Civil War. (I won’t spoil the ending.)
HESSE: Actually, I would love to see Lincoln marketed with the tagline “Don’t spoil it for your friends.”
CZIKOWSKY: As a time traveler, I am glad the 2013 Super Bowl is over and I am not spoiling anything by celebrating the Ravens victory. The Super Bowl was last Sunday, right?
HESSE: Oh no. You have traveled back to the wrong parallel dimension. The 49ers won in this world.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, February 5, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: If, perchance, I am to die tonight, bury me where the vehicles park, as I shalt listen to the sounds of feet fleeting and returning.
PETRI: Down, down, I come.
Come down, king, to the C level or possibly the D level or dang it where did I park this thing, all the floors look similar.
(Yes I know that’s Richard III).
CZIKOWSKY: I hate this. Every time I go searching to dig up Jimmy Hoffa I find some British king instead.
PETRI: Maybe don’t dig in Britain.
PETRI: I am amazed at how many people believe a groundhog can predict the weather yet refuse to believe scientists who state the climate is changing.
PETRI: I think the obvious solution to this is more rigorous scientific training for groundhogs.
Or, possibly, the climate change scientists could spend most of the year in a burrow and emerge and sniff the air nervously, surrounded by men in top hats.
One of these approaches is bound to work!
CZIKOWSKY: I hate all these spoilers on Twitter and in the Post. So, at the end of the Super Bowl, Lady Sybil dies?
PETRI: I’m sorry! Viewed from the proper perspective, the Post website is a spoiler for the daily paper...
CZIKOWSKY: Of course the Ravens won. They can see better in the dark.
PETRI: Poe would be proud!
Or would he? I don’t know how he’d feel about football.
CZIKOWSKY: My choice for the worse Super Bowl ad (unintentional) was all the free publicity that the New Orleans power company received.
PETRI: Hard to argue with that! Pepco felt a great weight lifted from its metaphorical shoulders.
CZIKOWSKY: F. Scottt Fitzgerald’s Baltimore house and the Washington Post building are for sale. Which would you buy, and why?
PETRI: Well, I’ve already been inside the Washington Post building.
Based only on the odds of finding a secret cache of bootlegged gin, I would go in on the Baltimore house...
CZIKOWSKY: First you want to tape bacon on cats to where they can’t get to the bacon, thus driving them insane. Now Republicans are talking about the benefits of a few dead cats in homes. Where does this madness end?
PETRI: I don’t know, but I am pretty sure Edgar Allen Poe has already written something on the subject.
Thereby hangs a tail, as the other hand would say.
CZIKOWSKY: I take offense to any disrespect shown for Warren Harding. That Tea Pot Dome thing was beyond his control and overall in the scheme of things not that big a deal compared to what others did. OK, so he fooled around with a German spy and initially opposed entering war with Germany, but no one is perfect.
PETRI: And he had very striking eyebrows?

CZIKOWSKY: So voters defeat George H.W. Bush for President yet believe his son George W. Bush might be better. Why do people assume that the defeated candidate’s son Tagg Romney is going to be so much better than his father, a father who actually achieved quite a bit in his life? Why do we elect the children of politicians and give them more breaks than we do their parents who accomplished far more? That goes for both parties, all you Kennedys, Tafts, Stevensons, etc. that have been running around out there.
PETRI: And don’t forget that Mitt himself is the son of George.
I think we’re mostly getting enthused for the eventual inevitable Tagg because of the potential “Tagg, you’re it!” headlines. But I think it might be getting “we” confused with “I” again.
CZIKOWSKY: It has become easier for us to go to war when only volunteers are sent to fight and only they and their families are the only ones directly impacted by war. Yet if an enemy ever took down Facebook, that enemy will feel the wrath of an angry nation.
PETRI: I’m not sure.
Recently I saw someone describe Facebook as being like when you check the fridge to see what’s there even when you aren’t hungry. I think there’s some truth to that, But we’ll still be on it for years to come.
CZIKOWSKY: PBS shows us what British life is like. Does England have some equivalent network, and what do they show the British to appreciate American culture, “Jersey Shore”?
PETRI: Honey Bubue, I think. (To borrow a friend’s coinage.)

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, February 7, 2013
CZIKOWSKY:I understand women who love pain read the “50 Shades” trilogy. The real pain was in reading it, correct?
HESSE: Correct. The pain was mostly in the heart, or, if you are an aspiring writer, due to the stream coming out of your ears.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, February 12, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I am less disturbed by the news there is an ape that loves to watch porn that I am by the realization that somewhere someone thought it might be a good idea to give porn to an ape.
PETRI: The shame! He’s never going to finish the complete works of Shakespeare now!
CZIKOWSKY: Dating Hades would have the advantage of being able to visit where he lives and seeing all the great late authors.
PETRI: Oh, that’s true! As long as he didn’t feel you were using him. And if Achilles in the Odyseey is anything to go by, they’d all be bitter and angry.
CZIKOWSKY: Are most humor writers late for things?
PETRI: Punctuality is the thief of time, as I think Oscar Wilde said.
Judging by the sheer numbers of humorists who have jokes about unpunctuality, I would guess it is a pattern.
We got our start trying to make endearing excuses for not turning up, or something! Also “discontented muttering irreparable childhood damage something something.”
CZIKOWSKY: I so what to hear a Pope say the words “Simon says...”

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, February 13, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: When you’re the Heart Attack Cafe and your spokesman dies of a heart attack outside your cafe, you’re  not having a good day, are you?
HESSE:Well, he was the unofficial spokesman.
CZIKOWSKY: What is this “leave your call phone and laptop in the other room?”
HESSE: I know. It will be confusing at first.
CZIKOWSKY:The Ewok winning the Dog Show reminds me of my friend who has a dog that reminds people of Chewbaca. He always jokes that his dog is “part Chewbaca”. Anyway, they got a telephone call from their elementary school because his daughter gave an oral report on her family that told everyone she has a part Chewbaca pet. Kids do listen to what you say.
HESSE: Oh my word. Do we also share the same brain? Because I ALSO compared the winning Westminster dog to an Ewok.
I’m really getting worried that we’ve been spending too much time together, gang.
CZIKOWSKY: My wife thought sheep had the white wool and lambs had the black wool.
HESSE: Excellent.
CZIKOWSKY: I was really upset by the Twitter leaks that ruined the surprise ending that Lady Sybil dies at the end of the State of the Union address.
HESSE: Aaahahahaha.
CZIKOWSKY: How the greats fall: Muskie cries. Ford trips. Dean yells. Rubio drinks water.
HESSE: Aww, at least the guy had a good sense of humor about it.
I felt for him. Here he is, giving his speech, and you know that suddenly he needed a drink of water. And once that thought crosses your mind, there is no going back. It must be heeded.
CZIKOWSKY: I always thought Bolo was a kind of tie.
HESSE: I think that’s a YOLO.
CZIKOWSKY:There is a YouTube video of a 17 year old Monica Hesse delivering an excellent and humorous analysis of what it is like to be...uhhh...even from the video I am not certain what the correct term is...let’s say below average in physical stature. Is that you, filmed what I guess would be about three years ago?
HESSE:This is a weird story.
When I was in high school, I was pretty tiny (I’m still tiny, but I was really Olive Oyl tiny), and as part of a creative writing prompt, I wrote a moderately funny essay about it (but it’s not funny, it’s really bad).
After I graduated, somehow this essay was placed on the Internet. Where people began to find it. And use it as an audition monologue for shows. I don’t know how this happened, or who put it up there, because it definitely was not me. But every few months I’ll get an email from someone in Australia or Oklahoma asking where they can get a copy of the play that the monologue is for. They can’t. Because it doesn’t exist. Its just a stupid creative writing exercise written by a teenager more than a decade ago.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, February 19, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I drew a cartoon called “Stickman”. The stick people wore clothes because the inability to discern they were wearing clothes made it part of the humor: “That sweater makes you look fat”. “Hike those pants up.” A naked stick figure was presented with private parts covered by a flower pot. You will note this goes against the early Disney philosophy that cartoon characters do not wear pants.
PETRI: This is in response to a question I posed. I think it depends on the context in which the stick figure is presented. The ones at bathrooms I always assume are fully clothed.
CZIKOWSKY: i need to ask you a favor. I have had a little bit of an unlucky streak at gambling. I know I will soon hit a lucky streak and win back what I have lost. Yet, until then, could I please borrow a billion dollars?
PETRI: I think you are confusing me with someone else. China is in the other chat.
CZIKOWSKY: If Antwerp now loses its place as the center for diamond cutting, I think we should make Washington D.C. as they new center. You do know how to cut diamonds right?
PETRI: Oh yeah. Totally. Just hand me a diamond and I will cut the heck out of that diamond!
CZIKOWSKY: The exception that proves the rule: The subject of young male fantasies (in comic books) always wears short tights. Yes, Robin opens up a whole different discussion.
PETRI: Speaking of which, did you see that Frederic Wertham’s “Seduction of the Innocent” involved  great deal of fabrication to concoct his thesis, according to a researchers who just dug through his original interview notes
Big surprise there given how sound his thesis was.
CZIKOWSKY: What are bacon pants? Do you wear them or could you eat them?
PETRI: “Why do we have to choose?”, as Lady Gaga might inquire.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, February 20, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: Last week you asked if we shared the same brain as we had the same thoughts on a dog show. Since then, I have thought that would be a fascinating idea. Although it has been done in several science fiction writings, it would be interesting if your brain would take over my body as I slept. Which is fine with me. I am sure my body leads a far more interesting life when you run it than when I get it. Although, if you would, please cut back on the Chunky Monkey ice cream, You’re making me fat.
HESSE: We are still sharing the same brain, because the second book of YA series (I’m still writing it now, literally nobody else has read it) just MIGHT have a plot point similar to them.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, February 26, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: What do you think? Should Mark Hamill go to the dark side and sign wiht Disney?
PETRI: Given what my answer was for Harrison Ford, I think you can guess my answer to Mark Hamill...
CZIKOWSKY: I am glad the Postal Service is launching a clothing line. We all know that deep dark female fantasy is a guy dressed like Cliff Clavin.
PETRI: it’s like a civically-minded version of those delivery men who are always showing up at the openings of movies!
CZIKOWSKY: I am glad someone finally pointed out that fish is often mislabeled. Many of I restaurants I go say say it is “fish” when it really is “cat”.
PETRI: Many of the Ikeas I go to say it is meatball...
CZIKOWSKY: Instead of playing the “Jaws” theme (at the Oscars), I think television should show a computer generated tiger devouring the person who run overs. That would be more fun to watch than some boring extended speech.
PETRI: Honestly, I wasn’t bothered by any of the speeches’ length. If anything I wanted the Sound Wizards to talk more!
If felt as though they were interminable when I was younger, but you could argue that with every passing year, each moment you ive feels proportionally shorter and nothing in later life will be as interminable as waiting thirty minutes for the bus when you were ten.
CZIKOWSKY: Would you go for more speeches and less music, or keep both and tell people to set their Tivos to run longer?
PETRI: I have an idea:
No host! Just giant, tasteful gifs of Tina Fey smiling slowly between each award. This would save time and enable us to make it through the entire Bond theme oeuvre...
CZIKOWSKY: Why can’t Tina Fey and Amy Poehler host everything? In fact, they should give the next Inaugural addess in 2017.
PETRI: Heck, I’d settle for George Takei!
CZIKOWSKY: If Javert does come searching for you, at least you may be tipped off by the sudden singing you hear outside.
PETRI: Maybe we can incorporate Javert’s horse somhow. Does he have a horse in the book? Or does Russell Crowe insist on a horse wherever he goes, the way some actors demand color-sorted M&Ms?
CZIKOWSKY: I read that Britain has no national holiday. This makes sense as most national holidays center around celebrations of either defeating the British or gaining their independence from Britain. I believe the Brits should defeat themselves so they have something to celebrate.
PETRI:They have, uh, Guy Fawkes Day...which is close.
CZIKOWSKY: If you are going to a wedding in a shark suit onesie, we need to see a photo of that. Are all the bridesmaids wearing shark suit onesies? Then we really want photos. If the minister takes too long, will you start humming the “Jaws” theme?
PETRI: We would all be in shark suit onesies, but we can’t agree on a color! June! So difficult! And you just know someone’s mother is gong to show up as a hammerhead, just to be difficult.
CZIKOWSKY: How can you not agree on a color for shark suit onesies? How many colors of sharks are there?
PETRI: Well, there’s grey...
BUT REMEMBER, THERE ARE FIFTY SHADES OF GREY!
(Apologies for all the caps. I am flinging around with wild abandon.)
CZIKOWSKY: Wow, there are 50 shades of grey, I find it hard to chain myself to this concept. We should thrash out this concept further.
PETRI: I think,, in a way, everyone (here) is a glutton for punishment.
CZIKOWSKY: Yes, we are all glutens for punishment. Force us to eat cupcakes and cakes. More, more, more. Let us eat cake! You did say gluten for punishment, right?

GENE WEINGARTEN, Washington Post Columnist, March 26, 2103
CZIKOWSKY: Is this an OK joke about overweight people: I saw two heavy set women and I went up to them and told them “I love your accent, are you two girls from Scotland?” One turned to me and corrected me, “That’s Wales, you idiot.” A immediately apologized “I apologize for being politically incorrect. So, are you two whales from Scotland?”
WEINGARTEN: I like it! Because it is a comeuppance. But I bet other people don’t like it. Middleground, I think.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, April 5, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I was going to ask why you have two Jabba the Hutt suits but I realized I have two Chewbacca suits in case someone spills something on one of them.
PETRI: Well, precisely! One for work, one for christenings.
CZIKOWSKY: According to my computer, if one searches for Google images of “ponies wearing caps”, there are none.
PETRI: I couldn’t believe it, but my search was no more fruitful! I did find those little guys in sweaters, but that was as far is it went.
CZIKOWSKY: After searching for the lack of “ponies wearing caps”, of course, one can then amuse any self by searching for “cats wearing caps”.
PETRI: I don’t know if it was unintentional, like my “him/it” slip earlier, but I like the phrase “one can then amuse any self”...(“Even Hyde will be into THESE pies.”)
CZIKOWSKY: O, everyone gather around. This mean we have an important mission. We must create the first photographs ever on Google of “ponies wearing hats”. The future of society depends on us!
PETRI: Stop the dashes and the dots. Get that pigeon back!
Let’s go to the photoshops!
CZIKOWSKY: Photoshop? Why, I expect ponies actually wearing hates will be the next new fad.
PETRI: Hey, humans wearing horse hats had been a thing. Why not ponies wearing human hats? 
Could happen!
CZIKOWSKY: You cap my pony, my gang will have to cap yours.
PETRI: HORSE BRUTALITY!
CZIKOWSKY: There is a restaurant in Harrisburg, Pa. that once a week offers “free bacon” from 4 to 6 pm. If only there were people who like bacon...
PETRI: Hold the phones!
Actually, the phrase “hold the phones”---that’s getting into “selling like hotcakes” territory. What’s the modern equivalent?
CZIKOWSKY: The modern phrase to “hold the phones” is “stop the ticket tape”, because retro is the new fad
PETRI: “Figure out how to halt this fixed gear bike” doesn’t have quite the same zing to it.
CZIKOWSKY: I melt cheese on top of my cheese, and then I put that between two slabs of cheese and then I dip that into cheese spread, and then I sprinkle cheese on top of it, and then I eat it. My doctor says I need a new diet.
PETRI: You should call it the Russian Action Cheese---”its a cheese mystery inside of a cheese enigma. Sprinkled with cheese.” As Churchill would doubtless have said.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, March 7, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I have ordered your book “Stray” from the British Amazon site, where I have no idea what pounds convert into but I suspect I have paid several hundred dollars in shipping costs. That, though, is not my fear. My fear is you will do a book signing at Barnes and Nobel and their security will see me holding a British Amazon copy and they will seize me and send me to Guantanamo and I will never be seen again. If you ever do a book signing, will you please sign for those of us with British copes of your book?
HESSE: Oh, right. You can pre-order my book, bot only on British Amazon.. And, yes, I will personally sign it for you.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, March 12, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: You know what movie they should make: “Argo”. No, not the only they already made: they should actually make the fake movie from the actual script that they used as the cover for the fake movie. Come on, wouldn’t people like to see that?
PETRI: Or they could make “Argo: The Story of Jason”, which is actually pretty dynamic, all things considered, and for once has Hera being helpful rather than hinder-ful to a Greek hero.
But, yeah, I’d see it. Then again, I’d see “Oz the Great and Powerful”, and I hear that’s TERRIBLE.
CZIKOWSKY: I see that new TV series “The Bible” is getting good ratings. I haven’t seen it yet. People tell me the book i better I see there is a sequel called “The Book of Mormon”. I cant wait to see the theater version of the book. Does anyone know if the author plans any further books?
PETRI: I don't know if the author does, but there is what L. Ron Hubbard describes as an authorized sequel “closer to the author’s vision” by L. Ron Hubbard that I can hook you up with if you will just sign over all your possessions to me.
I’m really hoping “The Bible” and “Vikings” do a crossover episode where a monk has to run into “The Bible” and grab as many characters as he can and run them to safety before the pillaging starts
(I have watched neither of these shows).
CZIKOWSKY: Someone recently asked me the oddest question at a Metro station. They asked if the Metro goes to Disney World. That got me thinking: Is there a connection in Arlington to Disney Word?
PETRI: I totally understand this, though, because the interior does somewhat resemble those Disney World tube-train things, if my dim recollection of visiting when I was 6 and equally dim recollection of returning when I was 22, serve.
CZIKOWSKY: It is my observation that if there was a War on Christmas, that Christmas won.
PETRI: I’ve been concurring in that opinion for the past two W’s on C, but nobody else seems to have noticed! Heck, I’m more concerned with the War on Thanksgiving. It’s a holiday too, Every Commercial Ever!
CZIKOWSKY: Only three people in the Falkland Island voted for independence from the United Kingdom. As Che once stated to Fidel, this is not a good sign for the revolution.
PETRI: I think one vote was mysteriously lost! Probably a penguin ate it.
“YAY, STATUS QUO!” as I assume everyone in the Falklands Islands is chanting now.
CZIKOWSKY: I hit a few likes on Facebook and the “China Daily” ad has changed to correspondence courses on learning moonshining.
PETRI: All set!
CZIKOWSKY: Shamrock shakes taste like the green beer from last year’s St. Patrick’s Day with a five year old mint added to it. In other words, it is one of the most delicious things you’ll ever have.
PETRI: Aha!
CZIKOWSKY: i had the reverse problem on Christmas greetings. I am a Christian and for the first two years where I worked, the boss made a special effort to come visit  me and wish me a happy Chanukah.
PETRI: Ha! Oh no! Sometimes bending too far over backwards is just as embarassing as falling flat on your face.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, March 19, 2103
CZIKOWSKY: What would you think if robot squirrels could invade the homes of American citizens without court ordered warrants and steal bacon from their refrigerators without due process of the law?
PETRI: The horror...the horror!
CZIKOWSKY: So Michelle Shocked is shocked that Ian McKellan is marrying Patrick Stewart. I am shocked Michelle Shocked doesn’t realize that God hates us all equally.
PETRI: I didn’t realize Michelle Shocked was!
I had to Google her. Apparently she used to identify as a “Fornicator with a capital F”. And no, he’s marrying him TO someone else, it turns out.
CZIKOWSKY: Michee Shocked tweeted that God hates homosexuals. The Ian McKellen comment that he was marrying Ian McKellen was correct but as you note, only in that he would be officiating.
PETRI: Something tells me she’s always shocked.
CZIKOWSKY: Gay marriage rates much higher than do members of Congress. So, if you are a member of Congress and you are at a party and want to be popular, you would do better telling people you are gay than telling them you are a member of Congress.
PETRI: I think, technically you’d do better telling them you were a gay marriage.
CZIKOWSKY: Ivy League alternative: that is a good way in which to put.
PETRI: That is a good way offputting.
CZIKOWSKY: Sea cruises are awful, The toilets don’t work, they run out of food, and there are tigers in the life boats.
PETRI: Or at the very least, metaphors.
For some reason, all these hours of panicked coverage of the Poop Deck on CNN have actually inspired more of a desire to cruise rather than less. It’s probably the best way to go camping---unknowingly, by doing a bait-and-switch and transforming the cruise into worse-than-woodland conditions.
CZIKOWSKY: You may think you outgrow hunting for eggs, but in a few decades, you’ll be able to hide your own Easter eggs and you will be able to enjoy hunting for them because you will have forgotten where you hid them.
PETRI: As long as you put them in a Special Place Where You Won’t Forget Them, that’s guaranteed!

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, March 26, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for whom.
PETRI: Let’s roll!
CZIKOWSKY: If Bill Gates wants to create the New Generation condom, I first would suggest he not call it the Next Generation condom. The Next Generation is what the condom is supposed to prevent. Also, what happens if a Next Generation condom doesn’t work? Does one shut it down and turn it back on?
PETRI: Yeah. I agree! It sends the wrong message, somehow.
You can call tech support, but invariably they just ask if it’s pugged in, then sigh, and in inquire if you have any teenagers in the house they can talk to.
CZIKOWSKY: Did you see the official response is that Punxsatawny Phil correctly made his prediction but that his predictions have been misinterpreted? Even a groundhog has spin. When he stated there will be an early spring, it all depends upon your definition of “an”.
PETRI: I was in favor of letting him live until he released that spin! No more. He must be made an example.
CZIKOWSKY: If I have to pay a lot of money to see the Supreme Court, I just bet the t-shirts and souvenirs are also expensive.
PETRI: And I’m sure smoeone has been assiduously making novelty shirts that say something like ‘I STOOD OUTSIDE THE SUPREME COURT FOR FIVE DAYS AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY ORAL ARGUMENT ON MARRIAGE EQUALITY.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, April 2, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I believe I have two gay marriage compromises that could settle the issues: 1.) Since corporations are people, how about we let anyone marry any other person or corporation? If that does not work, and people insist that marriage be only between a man and a woman, how about 2.) Let two men and two women marry and they may sort it all out afterwards?
PETRI: I see what you’re doing: you’re trying to sneak in polygamy while no one is looking!
I think the first option would play will with the Rogers Court.
I mean Chief Justice Chase T. Rogers of Connecticut clearly.
CZIKOWSKY: I’m glad Bryce Harper hit two home runs on opening day. Of course, we are going to expect him to hit two home runs in every game.
The most likely culprit of food poisoning: Bacon, There, somebody had to say it.
PETRI:
That was the unkindest cut of all!
No, I am pretty sucre it was meatloaf. Thinking back on it, it’s too Greek Tragedy level perfect for it to have been anything else
I was so proud of that dang meatloaf.
I baked it myself, using two pounds of ground beef. It served seven. It required an hour in the oven. It was a thing of wonder. It shone, resplendent under its half-can of Hunts’ Meatloaf Sauce, like something resplendent that shines under a half-can of Hunts’ Meatloaf Sauce I ate it by myself, but I telephoned all my relatives about it to prove to them that I was a real adult. “I just baked a meatloaf”, I informed them. “That’s right. Serves seven. I’ll eat for a week.”
Then again, a day later, I felt nothing.
That day after, however, I was racked with nausea, and the day after that I cheered up enough for Easer dinner and then spent all of Monday regretting it, vividly.
The meatloaf is still in the refrigerator because I don’t have the heart to chuck it.
CZIKOWSKY: You do realize you have to eat the rest of the meatloaf, if only to show it was the meatloaf and not the bacon that got you sick.
PETRI: Clearly! Clearly!
This seems like a good idea. Just narrow it down.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, April 9, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I believe I have a political compromise that will work politically in Virginia: Gays can marry in Virginia, but then can’t have sex.
PETRI: And this will be a good way to get on track to ban all kinds of sex, which is really what the people of the Great State of Virginia require...never mind that slogan
I think I can see the AG approving of this position.
CZIKOWSKY: Are you still allowed to dance the “Time Warp” in Virginia?
PETRI: That was never permitted.
CZIKOWSKY: I think one should attempt to communicate with squirrels. Although the last time I was in a park mimicking squirrel sounds and attempting to wave my tail to communicate with their tales, park security took me away.
PETRI: See, what you need is a government grant.
CZIKOWSKY: I believe the reason so many people like “Mad Men” is they wish they could have jobs where they can just sit around all day and think while drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, and having affairs with co-workers.and people they interview. Sadly,those days of advertising being like that are gone, and the only profession where one can still do that is journalism.
PETRI: What is advertising like these days? I always think it’s changed and grown demure, and then the Super Bowl comes around and it seems like everyone’s on some substance I didn’t know you could ingest without dying.
CZIKOWSKY: We are all anxiously waiting: Was your meatloaf still good, or did you finally throw it away without trying some more, or is it still in your refrigerator reaching that point where maybe you shouldn’t see if it was made you sick?
PETRI: So, I doggedly ate my way through about half of it just to get my money’s worth, and my stomach grumbled and took it. Then I threw it away.
CZIKOWSKY: Why don’t the Nationals ever have racing Vice Presidents? Nelson Rockefeller versus Hannibal Hamlin versus Dick Cheney versus Joe Biden should draw in lots more fans.
PETRI: And don’t forget Andrew Johnson and Gerald Ford!
CZIKOWSKY: Barack, dude, Kathleen Kane, Attorney General of Pennsylvania, is way hotter.
PETRI: People keep saying this. I’m not sure these are waters into which he wants to wade any deeper.
CZIKOWSKY: Did you hear the IRS may monitor your Facebook and other social media accounts, just to verify the business deduction is not pictured as a non-business item. So, no more using your filing cabinet for storing your alcohol and for use as a squirrel haven.
PETRI: Dang it!
But in theory, that’s work related. Right?
CZIKOWSKY: I had an intern who was reprimanded for whistling too loudly. Sigh, some people don’t appreciate the arts.
PETRI: Send that intern to North Carolina for the (whistling) contest! Tis not too late to seek a newer world!
CZIKOWSKY: Was it you who arranged for a date between Taylor Swift and Jedi Squirrel? I can’t wait to hear what song emerges from that.
PETRI: I will download that single!
Taylor Swift. Single. Releases Taylor Swift single. As they say.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, May 7, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: Speaking of movie pasts, who wants to tell 20th Century Fox that it is now the 21st century?
PETRI: Shhhh, they’re hoping you won’t notice!
Although on more recent films I have seen just “Fox” with searchlights...
CZIKOWSKY: i love the video of you whistling. I also want to know abut the other video---the one where your music does not come on. What was it like being on stage and realizing there were technical difficulties? (I blame the liberal media conspiracy for your technical difficulties Or is it the right wing media conspiracy I’m supposed to blame? I get them confused.)
PETRI: It was my own fault for not having a CD with my accompaniment in good order and trying to improving with my IPhone. So the only media conspiracy was me, against myself.
CZIKOWSKY: For stores, waiting on the phone for 40 minutes means the kid working there has a 5 minute attention span and forgot about you 35 minutes ago. Hang up. Now, if it were an airlines and you are attempting to redeem frequent flyer miles, it is part of a game to see if you will hang up. If you stay on the line long enough they will give in and let you use your miles.
PETRI: Yea, if you’re still on I would advise you: put the phone down.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, May 28, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I hate those spoilers on Twitter, Now “Arrested Development” has been ruined when those who have watched all the episodes already told the world that twist where Kristin Shepard kills Lady Sybil.
PETRI: HOW DARE YOU!
CZIKOWSKY: How is that we decide to commemorate ad hail as a great author, indeed raise our glasses and toast to their literary glories, perchance exalt their skills as authors and wordsmiths and communicators of their ideas, to those who repeat themselves over and over and over and over and over and over again as if there is greatness to be found not in the minimalist writing style, but in the dragged out repetitious style of Victor Hugo, first name Victor, last name Hugo, middle name irrelevant, and thusly we find a wealth of words for the same ideas expressed by presentation after presentation of the same information?
PETRI:That’s exactly what I was trying to say ealrier so let’s include it and seven more paragraphs like it! Well played, sir.
CZIKOWSKY: To dream of bacon, perchance to sleep with bacon, how could that be immoral, aye, where is the Carolina rub for my brisket, I chance a thought of bacon, and cry out, MacBeth, MacBeth, MacBeth, MacBeth, where have they hidden thine bacon? My horse meat for some bacon, I beseech the: The world is askew until bacon is mine.
PETRI: Well, that was definitely Bacon, not Shakespeare.
CZIKOWSKY: Has anyone heard of this new book “50 Shades of Grey”? Is it about photographic color techniques?
PETRI: Well, it wouldn’t be a ComPost without some mention of this book.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, June 4, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: Did you ever try the sandwich with 16 slices of bacon in Las Vegas?
PETRI: I didn’t, although I kept walking past the place with its tempting “300 Pounds or More? Eat Free.” sign.
CZIKOWSKY: The place that offered anyone weighing 300 pounds or more eats for free is the place with the sandwich with the 16 slices of bacon. How could you have missed it? If you eat the whole sandwich, they wheel you outside in a wheel chair. If you don’t finish the sandwich, they paddle you. (Honest. This is not a joke.) but I know you could probably eat tow of those sandwiches, no problem.
PETRI: That’s on my list for next time, as well as “Show Up at Elvis Chapel Weddings And Volunteer to Be The Person Who Objects.”
CZIKOWSKY: You need a good line, such as “He can’t marry her. He married me at the Jerry Lee Lewis Chapel this morning.” If we ever are in Vegas at the same time, let me please hopefully be the first to propose to you, that we go to an Elvis chapel to get married, and then break up when we discover we’re cousins.
PETRI ‘YOU DIDN’T TELL ME YOUR WIFE WAS SITLL ALIVE IN THE ATTIC!”
CZIKOWSKY: Are you an only child? I’m an only child. Both my parents were only children, which I understand is rare, so people always want to study me, take blood samples, places wires on me, etc.
PETRI: I always joke that “my parents decided to cut their losses”, which gets you The Usual.
CZIKOWSKY: Anyone remember when “horses with hats” was a Google-nope? Because of our efforts, we have begun a revolution. There are now over 27,000 Google hits for “horses with hats”.
PETRI: TEAMWORK!
CZIKOWSKY: Did you cause Rosie the Swiffer to disappear?
PETRI: We cleaned up that mess and quickly! With help from Swiffer.
CZIKOWSKY: Today’s Post is a real downer. It informs that once you get your college loans paid off you will be in the midlife category with the highest suicide rate.
PETRI: Uh. Er. Wow. You’re right.
But on the bright side, “jazz hands, perform tap-dance.:”
CZIKOWSKY: Are you going to be the next Dr. Who?
PETRI: Yes, please.
Its supposed to be a lady, right?
Also: this creates fun potential for a Wrinkle in TIme crossover where instead of a woman, it’s a very maternal octopus creature.
CZIKOWSKY: Out in the hinterlands where I live, donut sandwiches are not a new thing. They have been around for awhile and like when the first D.C. urbanites moved in, we accepted then and learned to like them. Now I see the concept of donut sandwiches is going nationwide I have one key question: Are the donuts used for the sandwiches heated? That is the trick. You don’t just slice a donut and put stuff in between it. If you heat it the donut tastes and feel pretty much like a regular sandwich, only a bit sweeter.
PETRI: It was heated That still didn’t do it. I think the basic problem with it was I like a hot glazed donut, and I like bacon and eggs, but combining them didn’t really do the trick.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, June 11, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: My wedding story is I was getting married in Vegas by an Elvis impersonator when some crazy woman we’ve never seen before ran in and yelled “he cant marry her, he has a wife chained in his attic.”
PETRI: HA!

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, June 13, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: My concern is if the government is reading my emails that they will announce to the public how boring I am, to which I will then criticize them for the waste of tax dollars for taking the time to read my boring emails.
HESSE: It’s a vicious cycle.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, June 25, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: Want to hear a good knock knock joke. I know an attorney who tells a great one.
PETRI: Isn’t “good knock knock joke” a contraction in terms?
Prove me wrong.
CZIKOWSKY: It was interesting reading about the controversy over the photographs of models wearing what famous people wore when they committed suicide. Then I realized, this is an aspect of journalism that never gets covered. There has been commentary on how female politicians are often mentioned by what they were wearing. It would be creepy but interesting if articles started mentioning what people were wearing when they died. “She wore a Pierre Cardin chiffon dress when the vehicle hit her”, “she died peacefully at home wearing her Jimmy Choo shoes.”
PETRI I also want to start a movement to describe the clothing of male politicians, so remind me, the next time I'm covering something to observe that, “Rick Santorum, correct in pinstripe twill, is now the head of a movie studio” to pick one example.
CZIKOWSKY: If you write what the females are wearing, you should mention what the males are wearing. I was going to ask who you are wearing, but then I realized it is hard to ask that without sounding creepy.
PETRI: Ed Gein.
CZIKOWSKY: I am Sanctuary with Leebow rising and Gemstone descending, and I wish to know if I am better suited to date Paula Deen or Jodi Arias.
PETRI: The spirits are suggesting Casey Anthony as a possible third option, but this is why I should probably lay off the spirits.
CZIKOWSKY: I think “Downton Abbey” should realize they need to publicize their operations, so they hire the staff of “Mad Men” to run their advertising campaign, who then hire Honey Boo Boo as their official speaker.
PETRI Dang it. I’d just forgotten all about Honey Boo Boo!
CZIKOWSKY: Anyone with a casual knowledge of statistics wound not buy a lottery ticket I was finally convinced by friends to buy one ticket just so I could say I bought one once in my life. The ticket was a $12 winner. My friends then convinced me to use my winnings to buy them lunch. Lunch cost over $40. I hate the lottery.
PETRI: Ha!
This is why I had to resort to selling poetry on the Vegas strip instead of the I Know How I Can Make Money Gambling, That’s How! plan I’d initially embraced. I made $11.50 and promptly lost the $11 playing Spin The Magical Dollar Wheel.
CZIKOWSKY: I know it is in the 90s there, but you do have a sweater to wear, right?
PETRI: Always.

GENE WEINGARTEN, Washington Post Staff Writer, June 25, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: Thank you for mentioning the medical condition of upper inner thigh chaffing from pants. Surely medical research can develop a way to prevent this.
WEINGARTEN: One chatter suggested wearing pantyhose under the jeans. I’d sooner chafe.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Reporter, June 27, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I see a bear was captured in D.C. It may only responding to a personals ad from a red panda.
HESSE: I was simultaneously relieved to see the red panda returned so quickly, and also slightly disappointed that the whole ordeal ended before we could enter the truly weird speculative territory of where the red panda might be going, and with who. (“The panda is with Edward Snowdon” theme seemed to peak and play out very, very fast.)
And, naturally, the whole “Is calling this a panda just false advertising?” debate. Panda looked decidedly raccoonish.
CZIKOWSKY: I googled my ex. It was horrifying to learn the truth about my ex. My ex is now a member of Congress.
HESSE: Oh, but we know who holds the real power. If she wrote or said anything embarassing during the course of your relationship, she lives in fear.
CZIKOWSKY: I know you don’t follow sports, yet if you ever get the chance to interview Bryce Harper, please find out his views of Ringling Brothers entertainers.
HESSE: Okay!

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, July 2, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: Are you entering the Lincoln contest? They always said he had a high pitched voice. You’d make a cute Lincoln. One key question: Can you kill vampires?
PETRI: Lincoln is not an impersonation thats in my vocabulary. I was planning to go offering my services as a Mary Todd, and then midway through whatever Lincoln was doing, run up and start hysterically screaming at him and have to be subdued.
But I’d need a better outfit.
CZIKOWSKY: As Paul Lynde pointed out, the soldiers did not wear chiffon It wrinkles too much.
PETRI: You’re Going To Be Wrinkled Anyway.
CZIKOWSKY: I see the Post is selling date of birth editions of the Post. (You must have a huge attic with lots of left over papers going way back.) Shouldn’t one really buy the paper for the day after one was born? True, if you buy a paper from when you were born, yet get to read what people were reading while waiting for you to be born, Yet if you read the next day’s paper, you find out what else happened the day you were born.
PETRI: That’s a good point, I think it’s more “Oh, Look, This Paper Emerged The Same Day I Did” rather than “This is a record of the Doings In The World”, which unless you were born on a particularly memorable date, have a good bit of overlap from one day to the next.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, July 30, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I am working on a script for a new horror film called ComicNado. A group of comics in a retirement home in the Catskills eat way too many beans and a huge twirling blast sucks then it and then throws them out onto an unsuspecting public who are tortured by their old jokes. I hope to retire with this script.
PETRI: Incorporate a few more massages for the leads and that sounds like “Grown Ups 3”.
CZIKOWSKY: I have become suspicious of natural food once I realize that so many people die from natural causes.
PETRI: Deep waters. Deep waters.
CZIKOWSKY: The MIT studies remind me too much of a Monica Hesse novel, Fiction is becoming reality.
PETRI: It did have a distinctly Hessian ring to it, unless a distinctly Hessian ring is :help we’re being attacked by George Washington’s troops on Christmas eve.”
“curls up into a nerd corner and dies”
CZIKOWSKY: I am reading shat is purported to be the first biography of General George Meade in several decades. It seems that the press hated Meade because he hated the press and even tied one journalist backwards on a horse and had the journalist banned from his camp forever. The press tends to not like this. Yet supposedly Meade’s leadership in Gettysburg was crucial yet the press held up others in better light as the press liked them better, even though one General disobeyed orders and his men were slaughtered and the General who got a lot of the credit wasn’t even there as Meade had replaced him just a few days prior. So even in Gettysburg we can blame the press.
PETRI: I think I recognize one of your references---Sickles definitely moved is men out way further than they needed to be because he claimed his current line position iMpaired his visibility, and that led to the Peach Orchard slaughter.
My favorite part of the Peach Orchard (stop me if I’ve told you this: It’s one of those facts I’s so excited by that I forget whom I’ve told it to) is the fact that this orchard was famous for canning hundreds of peaches every year.
After the battle, the guide dolefully informed us, hey only managed to can 12 jars of peaches.
Which, to me, begs the question: Who is this intrepid canner climbing over the bodies to grab the twenty-off remaining peaches? Who was sitting there reaching over the dead and murmuring “NO THE CANNING MUST CONTINUE AT ALL COSTS”.
CZIKOWSKY: OK, so the presumption of horoscopes is that everyone in the world will have one of 12 different types of day that day. Is that how this works?
PETRI: When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound that unreasonable, especially when you consider that its pool of people is narrowed to the Newspaper buying or subscribing public who usually don’t have the type of day that revolves around say, building a big bonfire and hoping the planes come.
CZIKOWSKY: Has anyone researched what Abraham Lincoln’s horoscope was on the day he was shot?
PETRI: “You will reach untapped levels of creativity today! Support the arts!”
Actually, that would be interesting. Did they even have daily horoscopes at the time? I don’t know.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, August 6, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: If Major League Baseball had only let Alex Rodriquez receive his full $250 million from the Yankees, Rodriquez could have bought the Washington Post.
PETRI: Hey, still better than Dan Snyder!
CZIKOWSKY: According to Gene Weingarten, buying the Washington Post is about 1% of Jeff Bezos’s wealth. Buying a copy of the Post is about 1% of my wealth.
PETRI: It’s weird when, in related terms, your entire life’s work is someone else’s equivalent to finding $100 in a jacket he hasn’t worn in awhile.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Reporter, August 15, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: What is Syrian Electronics? Is that a new subdivision of the Washington Post? Was it alright to place an order of electronics with them and to give them my credit card number?
HESSE: Probably want to make sure you included your home address, in case they had any follow-up questions.
For everyone who hasn’t been paying attention, the Syrian Electronic Army has been hacking news organizations this week.
CZIKOWSKY: For those who fear sharks, jellyfish are the more likely culprit of what will ruin beach outings. Sadly, my scripts for JellyfishNado did not have quite the same appeal as did someone’s else’s script.
HESSE: Hmmm. Worth re-pitching it as “Peanut Butter and JellyfishNado”?
CZIKOWSKY: Thank you for the link to the updated dictionary. I literally died reading it.
HESSE: Welcome to your ghost!
CZIKOWSKY: I always knew you were Cupcake, but I never realized the Hostess connection in-between. Now If I can only figure out why people call me Twinkie.
HESSE: Cause you’re so sweet, obviously.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, August 28, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I learned everything there is to know about real estate in three days. Although I am worried they don’t give you at least an associate degree after completing Trump University. And where is the school’s football team?
PETRI: Really, where is the football? This is the true question.
CZIKOWSKY: I believe in free speech, yet I believe people should use their real names when publishing comments online. I believe it is the anonymity of comments that allows people to develop alternative personas where they do not restrain their comments to what should be appropriate If people are allowed to just rant and rave at will, those dirt bag jerks will take what we pretend to be a democracy and will turn it into a fascist socialist state where zombie rule.
PETRI: True, using your real name does seem theres a greater incentive for people to behave themselves, because it can all be traced. The again, there’s always some sliver of people who won’t behave themselves, the same people who always rant at you on Facebook, and I have a sneaking suspicion that those are the type of people who tend to comment in the first place. I think it was Cmdr. Taco who noted that the line where the piece stops and the comments being might be labeled :Here Be Monsters”----only a certain type ventures beyond.
CZIKOWSKY: Isn’t running for higher office already a D.C. Olympic event?
PETRI: Truth.
CZIKOWSKY: If the Olympics comes to D.C., will filibustering become a Olympic event? Will Rand Paul go for the Gold?
PETRI: i’d like to see him go at it with Wendy Davis.
CZIKOWSKY: So, Miley Cyrus has grown up. At least Justin Bieber remains a kid and ins’t doing anything fooish. Right?
PETRI: “overturns small table, walks out.”
CZIKOWSKY: We at Barnes and Noble wish to insist that books are not obsolete. Also, is anyone here a good bankruptcy lawyer?
PETRI: NO BARNES AND NOBLE STAY WITH ME DON’T GO TOWARDS THE LIGHT
CZIKOWSKY: I have a Twitter account that I gave up one year and five months ago. I have tweeted nothing in that time. I am amazed I am still getting followers. I receive two new followers just today. Seriously, who follows a dead Twitter account?
PETRI:Twitter vultures?
CZIKOWSKY: The realization that Polly Ticks is the Squirrel Bopper has stunned me. It is like when I realized Clark Kent is Superman.
PETRI: i KNOW!

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, September 3, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I got it. They way people may go to see the “50 Shades” movie without feeling any shame would be to entitle it “Star Wars: Episode 50: The Shades of Grey”.
PETRI: :(
CZIKOWSKY: I got it (maybe). Here is how audiences will be willing to be seen going to the “50 Shades” movie: ShadesNado. I tornado sucks up billionaires and...Hmmm, maybe this needs a little more work.
PETRI: Please, this is a family kindling.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, September 10, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I know some people criticize us for being on the computer so much that we ignore our babies. Yet babies are resilient. They are fine. By the way, I have a quick but important question. Did I mention that I have two babies or three?
PETRI: Definitely plural, but beyond that I couldn’t say. Try calling them and see where the ringing comes from? (I have no idea how children work.)
CZIKOWSKY: You cow tippers are all liars!
PETRI: How much do you tip a cow?
a.) Well, they say it doesn’t affect quality of service.
b.) Ignore the cost of drinks! Just tip on the food bill.
20 percent is now standard.
CZIKOWSKY: I have never seen anyone who claims they were cow tipping, so I can’t challenge them on it, I always thought, no so much about the weight of the cow, but the fact I would not expect a cow to stand here and take it. I have known of a local farmer who was killed by a bull, so I would not recommend people trying. It is now good to know it can’t be done, except if one has a really anorexic and stupid cow but enough about Paris Hilton.
PETRI: She always speaks highly of you!
The two main point of objection were:
-cows don’t sleep on the feet, horses do.
cows tend to be fairly alert.
cows can brace themselves.
i can’t imagine one guy to tip a cow, but six people of moderate strength?
CZIKOWSKY: Ordinarily, I would recommend that you, Squirrel Bopper (who has some experience with animals) and I get together and see what happens when we try to tip a cow.Just remember, there will be photographers, so wear your nicest shoes.
PETRI: We just need to find a cow that’s on board with this idea.I did call the zoo and asked if we could use of their cows, but the very nine lady on the other end said “we definitely can’t do that.”
CZIKOWSKY: Cows do sleep on the ground, which means a standing cow is awake and not prone to like being pushed upon. Cows may predict the weather If you see all the cows on the ground, that means it is going to rain. If you see all the cows standing, it is not going to rain If you sees some of the cows standing and some on the ground, it means it might rain, it might not.
PETRI: In the immortal words of Jon Arbuckle, Reckon it’s rain. If not, it won’t.”
CZIKOWSKY: Someone from Chicago doesn’t know about cows? Well, here is what one needs to know. Cows cause fires that burn down entire cities. The end. P.S. That actually wasn’t true, but blaming cows is an old tradition. In fact, I believe cows are behind climate change and the trade deficit.
PETRI: COWS RUIN EVERYTHING.
Maybe we can work into a frenzied mob who, at noon go rushing out to push cows with wild abandon, shouting, “THIS IS FOR MRS, O’LEARY!”
CZIKOWSKY: Yes, you can blame the cow instead of blaming the dog, but remember, there has to be a cow in the room.
PETRI: It’s like an elephant in the room, but you talk about it occasionally.
CZIKOWSKY: If you can’t tip a cow, can they be sucked into a tornado and then spread into the population in an action film called “CowNado”?
PETRI: I would definitely watch this.
CZIKOWSKY: A movie you’d like to live in: A tornado sweeps thousands of pigs and then sends them twirling into the general population in the aciton film “BaconNado”.
PETRI: Is it strange my first thought is “That sounds delicious. I really should have had breakfast.”
CZIKOWSKY: Next problem: What would the strength of the wiring be required to bungie jump the average cow?
PETRI: Get MythBusters on this!
CZIKOWSKY: I used to work in dairy. To make a long story short, we sold raw milk. Once, the cows cae upon someone’s illegally planted marijuana plants and ate all the plants. I asked an expert and I was told the milk was affected by the pot. So, here is to medicinal marijuana milk. P.S. It may be possible to cow tip a stoned cow. They’ll sort of fall over on their own, actually.
PETRI: That’s amazing!
Now that’s a farm I’d like to see advertised on television. There were all those ads about the best milk coming from contented cows, but this really takes it to another level.
CZIKOWSKY: The President’s speech might interfere with the season opener of “Sons of Anarchy”. Does he really want to upset thousands of bikers?
CZIKOWSKY: We farm boys resent the insinuation that we run off with cows and sheep and goats and chickens I mean, seriously, chickens?
PETRI: I know! They’re lookers, but NOT PERSONALITY whatsoEVER!
CZIKOWSKY: Old joke that still might work: Kinky is using feathers. Disturbing is taking the whole chicken home to meet your mother.
PETRI: I balk-balk-balk at this.
CZIKOWSKY: Cow tipping works for Dennis Rodman. The cow sees Dennis Rodman coming and falls over in hysterics.
PETRI: That’s, I think, always the case.
CZIKOWSKY: I envision a Monty Python-type scenario where someone from PETA runs out and protests our discussions about harming cows.
PETRI: My first consideration in all these scenarios would be to keep the cow from harm.
Maybe plant a mattress, or something.
CZIKOWSKY: Gene Weingarten is discussing tipping over a statute. Is the Post in some tipping over theme today?
PETRI: Just the tips!
CZIKOWSKY: A bull looks at a cow and says “she is beautiful. Why, she’s got 50 shades of gray.”
PETRI: Ah, it’s the 50 Shades portion, right on schedule.
CZIKOWSKY: The President's speech might interfere with the opening episode of "Sons of Anarchy". Does he really want to upset thousands of bikers?
PETRI: Are there really that many upset-able bikers, though? I always think that shows like “Sons of Anarchy” and That Gritty Prison Drama, “Oz”, might slightly overestimate the vigor of the Motorcycle Gang culture, but I don’t have any stats at my fingertips to support this hunch.
CZIKOWSKY: Soylent Green Slime is cows!

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, September 19, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I want to raise enough money through Kickstarter to flu to North Korea to film a music video of my tuba solo. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard a tuba solo. How do my chances look?
HESSE: Not good.
CZIKOWKSY: Remember, corporations are people, too. If people steal their WiFi, they may become depressed and suicidal We need to cheer corporations with more tax breaks.
HESSE: Oh, you.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, September 26, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I wore my “The government has no right to know how boring I am” shirt during the National Book Festival. Not one person asked me about it. I then realized I am so boring that people don’t want to ask about how boring I am.
HESSE: i was too busy trying to get out of the pouring rain on Saturday at the Book Fest to notice what anyone else was wearing.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, October 15, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: Charlie Hunnan has been removed from the “50 Shades” movie.It seems fans thought a biker cold not play the role of a billionaire. I feel the need to explain to people what acting is. Charlie Hunnan is not the character he plays on TV. He is an actor. He actually is a British actor using an American accent on the show. I am sorry fans judges Charles Hunnan by his current character. I do not know if he would have been good for the part or not, as I do not know the part. Yet I believe he was judged for the wrong reasons. Frankly, I hope Eddie Deezen gets the role.
PETRI: Yes, I saw this! Petitions do get results, or something.
I thought he was good in “Pacific Rim”.
Maybe they’ll drum Matt Bomer in by force now.
CZIKOWSKY: People write how the British are most willing to accept actors in different roles. Charlie Hunnan is British. Thus the Brits would accept him. Of course, we Americans believes billionaries should be manly, masculine people, like Bill Gates.
PETRI: And Zuckerberg, who, if I had to describe him in five words is “98 Pounds...Of Raw Man.”
CZIKOWSKY: The first role of fight club is...well, I can’t talk about that. Never mind.
PETRI: Heh. I see what you did there!
CZIKOWSKY: If you could be in a large rom with nothing but bacon and Tang...wait, you are not even going to listen to the real of this question, are you?
PETRI: NOPE!
CZIKOWSKY: I overheard someone use the expression “gander of salt”. I guess this person like her duck very salty?
PETRI: Two ganders were walking down the street. One was a salted...gander.
CZIKOWSKY: One Halloween I dressed as Groucho Marx. Everyone thought I was Gene Weingarten.
PETRI: That is why the cigar is so crucial!
CZIKOWSKY: I tell people I am arriving at their Halloween party dressed as Lady Sybil and then I don’t show up.
PETRI: STILL TOO SOON!
CZIKOWSKY: How does one make a soylent green costume?
PETRI: So Queen Victoria said to the single capon who had sat down beside her, “We are not a mews!”
CZIKOWSKY: I’m a masochist. I am dressing for Halloween as a member of Congress.
PETRI: Wow, you really are a masochist.
CZIKOWSKY: I am going to Halloween dressed as a fox. That way, if anyone asks if I have anything to say, it will all be downhill from there.
PETRI: YATTA DAAATA DAATA CHOW YAATA DAATA
CZIKOWSKY: I need help remembering a song. It’s a dance song, you know, with tye words “night” and “over” in it. You know.
PETRI: I could have helped you if the second word were “all” but “over”---I just don’t know.
CZIKOWSKY: After the conclusion of what is now known as World War I, a Treaty was signed amongst all the nations at war. Congressional Republicans refused to grant President Wilson permission to sign the Treaty. Most analysts believes it was not the Treaty they objected to but they wish to embarrass the Democratic President Woodrow Wilson. Congress did not give the President permission to sign the Treaty until the next President, Warren Harding, was elected. Harding singed the Treaty ironically long after defeated Germany had already signed. I am glad this lesson in history has been noted and will never happen again.
PETRI: Yes, thank you for repeating that bit of history so we won’t have to!

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, October 17, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: Do we get a discount on our taxes for the days the Federal government was shut down? Also, is it me, or have the pandas put on some weight?
HESSE: Baby panda is definitely more roly poly than he was pre-shutdown.
CZIKOWSKY: This is to the woman who had guys look over her profile. Do her guy friends know any guys they could recommend she date? Or do people only date people they meet online these days?
HESSE: In the romantic comedy version of this, starring Katherine Hegel, she would actually end up falling for one of the guy friends.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, October 22, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: Which literary characters would you send a response to if they were listed on an Internet dating site?
PETRI: Well, as we’ve established pretty much no one from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”.
Cyrano de Bergerac, definitely. But he probably gets all the catfish loving after combining his personality with Christian’s picture. “I thought I was talking to a handsome cadavier, but when we met, it was this other guy!” “Did he have a big nose.” “Yeah!” “Me too.” “Me too.” “Whoa how many of us are there?”


ALEXANDRI PETRI, ComPost Writer, October 29, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I never want to go to a health care operation named Kaiser. To me, it just seems one removed from a health care operation named Fuhrer.
PETRI: I would definitely go to a health care operation named Archduke, though.
CZIOKWSKY: In honor of National Cats Day, the buffet down the street will be serving...no, wait, that’s not right.
PETRI: To Serve Catkind.

ALEXANDRIA PETRI, ComPost Writer, November 20, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: Ever since I’ve begun dressing as Warren Harding, I have hoped that someday someone will have a party of Woodrow Wilson impersonators and people wearing bear costumes. Is this normal?
PETRI: See, before Twitter, I would have this idea and make notes on a pad somewhere and then nod right off and wake up the next morinng to found “Mustache of Disappointment” written in an illegible scrawl, but now I am able to share it with literally tens of people.
This being said, I think I found the perfect Woodrow Wilson impersonator to bulld this kind of evening around. He really looks incredible.

ALEXANDRIA PETRI, ComPost Writer, December 3, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I need your help settling a family argument that ripped apart our otherwise happy Thanksgiving dinner, My Republican uncle clais that the correct term for our health care system is Obamabinencare to which my solid Republican Uncle corrected him and told him it is Hillarycare. My Democratic Uncle says the correct term is Romneycare. My Grandfather, a historian, confused everyone by calling it Bobdolecare. Will you please settle this dispute? What is the correct term for our health care system?
PETRI: All are incorrect. The correct term is Pelosicare, with the emphasis on the “O”.

CHRIS CIlLLIZZA, Washington Post Managing Editor, December 6, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: As a linguist trying to understand political science, I find it interesting(in the 2013 version of “The Sound of Music”) that the Germans who spoke with a Southern American accent would indeed turn out to be pro-America yet the Germans who spoke with a British accent would be the ones more likely to want to go to war with England.
CILLIZZA: So....

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, December 10, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I am surprised as to how critical and cynical we have all become. Instead of appreciating things, we tweet an message critical comments about everything we see before us. We have become collective “mean girls” and “bullying guys” and “bitchy swing both ways”. Frankly, I believe it is time we stop instantly making fun and dissing things and other people. I believe we should learn to appreciate the good things that are out there  that are in the world and to appreciate the attempts of others to being something in our lives. I am tired of all the negativity. If you snot nosed critics don’t stop being the brainless dunderhead fools that you all are, this world will never get better.
PETRI: It sounds like you read the Tom Scocca essay on smarm! Or if you didn’t, it sounds like you should.
CZIKOWSKY: I see where yelling is bad for children. I agree. From now on, I will calmly tell them to stop being brainless, dunderhead fools.
PETRI: People are still struggling with this question over at HaxPhiles.
CZIKOWSKY: The hills are alive with the sound of critics. With rants they have writ for a thousand years.
PETRI: Maria presents the same problem every time.
CZIKOWSKY: Somewhere in LA, there is a person sitting at a desk thinking “I gave the green light to a TV show based on those caveman commercials, then I decided to have a live broadcast of “The Sound of Music”. Now what shall I approve next?
PETRI: I thought those green lanterns were supposed to be guardians of galactic justice!
*groans*
CZIKOWSKY: Here is my dream adventure. I always wanted to go on the merry go round. Not on one of those horses that moves up and down, of course, but maybe sitting in the carriage.
PETRI: Whoa, that’s pretty far out. Who are you, Holden Caulfield?
CZIKOWSKY: I have just one question. What does the spleen do?
PETRI: Maybe it filters the blood?
Nah, man, that’s just crazy.
CZIKOWSKY: Every time I hear a glockenspiel, I find myself thinking “Needs more accordion.” I have a fever.
PETRI: Shhh, don’t make any jokes that would be construed as an invitation for Will Ferrell to show up on set, or he totally will, like some kind of publicity tour. Blood Mary. It’s really spiraled out of control.
CZIKOWSKY: If we are not allowed to have Will Ferrell, how about Ron Burdundy, Ron Burdundy, Ron Burdundy?
PETRI: 60 percent ofthe time that works every time.
CZIKOWSKY: Whata do you think of that great new song “Never Gonna Give You Up?” or how about “Got My Mind Set on You”?
PETRI: Those I’ve heard of.
CZIKOWSKY: What do you have against xylophones? I love my xylophone. Oh, wait, xenophobes. That’s different. Never mind.
PETRI: “I go a xenophobe for my grandchildren by mistake, and, wow, it’s been awful. He’s still in the backseat and I’m trying to figure out what to do with hi, Periodically he murmurs something about “Those people”.
CZIKOWSKY: X is for X files, and that the truth that’s out there.
PETRI: I want to believe!
CZIKOWSKY: There needs to be a live broadcast of the play “Xanadu”.
PETRI: YES.
With skates!
CZIKOWSKY: If I ever have a daughter, I am naming her Xalexandra.
PETRI: Well, there we go! Everyone’s problem solved except the problems of your child trying to explain her name’s spelling to strangers and on standardized tests.
CZIKOWSKY: My gut reaction is to go with what John Lennon stated (about the Beatles’  butcher album cover). The early Beatles were mostly out for laughs and I suspect that was a silly way to change the Beatles myth that Lennon admitted was tiring him. It was either that or pose nude on a wrecking ball.
PETRI: My favorite Lennon item is a book called “Skywriting By Word of Mouth” that is literally a collection of things he wrote on napkins to amuse Yoko that she then published as a Compilation of Deep Lennon Thoughts but---no disrespect intended to things written on napkins---you really can tell that it was originally written on a napkin.I can’t tell if he’d think it was a great joke that it was published or be baffled that it’s still in print.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, December 12, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I heard on a national TV show where someone was explaining what a “selfie” is. Someone then asked what you call it when another person takes a photograph of two people. No one on the show knew. FYI: It’s called a “photograph”.
HESSE: Oh, don’t tell me this, No no no no.
CZIKOWSKY: To be fair, the national TV show where they didn’t know what it was canned when a person takes a photograph was Kathie Lee and Hoda. It was cold in Manhattan, and they have been hitting the warmed cider a bit earlier than usual. I expect any day now they will look into the street and wonder what those horseless carriages are called.
CZIKOWSKY: They should unlock the urban dictionary at government offices I have had times when people have called me or spoken to me where I needed a translator like that to know what it was they just said. It makes a big difference if they are praising you or condemning you and you have to know or find the public lingo.
HESSE: It’s true. Sometimes the sties that workplaces assume must be time-wasters are actually very useful.
CZIKOWSKY: What would you do if you wake up tomorrow and realize you are an 18 year old and being Monica Hesse is a dream you were given to dream
HESSE: Oh man. So exciting! I’d have a whole decade more time than I thought I had
Actually, I think about this sometimes. If you were given the ability to go back to another point in your life and live it again, would you? Plus side” A chance to do better and avoid the mistakes you made the first go round. Minus: So many heartbreaks/lean years/cruddy apartments/stupid fights to have to navigate through again.
CZIKOWSKY: I would choose to live my life over if I had that chance knowing what happened in life, I have no regrets, because I have always realized that given what I knew when I made the decisions, I made the right decisions. If I had known the outcomes ahead of time, I would have definitely made different decision. Yet, the bad outcomes do not keep me up at night because I still believe I always made the best know available decisions.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, December 17, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: The NSA should rename itself Santa. That way we would be ore apt to accept their constant monitoring as to whether we are naughty or nice.
PETRI: Just replace Rudolph with a delivery drone, and you’re all set!
CZIKOWSKY: Brian has returned to life. Is Brian the Messiah?
PETRI: Took him two whole weeks and a Christmas episode, though. They don’t make them like they used to.
CZIKOWSKY: Yes, it is me, the dyslexic guy with poor eyesight who probably types something that autocorrects “test” to “toast”. Back when I matriculated in college and masticated toast, I used to put my wick on the table and wonder who that doppleganger was. Did I make it through that without too many typos?
PETRI: It makes perfect sense to me!
CZIKOWSKY: Of course there are college toasts. You are aware that at Penn football games there is a tradition of throwing toast onto the field. “Here’s a toast to dear old Penn.”
PETRI: Those are Penn games? I thought that were Rocky Horror showings.
CZIKOWSKY: Here is your guide to what you throw and the event. Rice: weddings and to kill birds. Rice and confetti: Rocky Horror shows. Confetti: When someone lands on Mars and returns. Toast: Penn football games. Yale students: Harvard football games.
PETRI: Ha!
I don’t know we’d be able to lift a Yale student, but, sure, I’ll take it.
CZIKOWSKY: Vitamins are not absorbed properly like in food. You should get your protein from bacon. You should get your vitamins from bacon.
PETRI: Bacon, bacon, now and forever!
MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, December 19, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I just read on the Internet that 1 in 200 women claim their births are virgin births. I then realized, there could very well be millions of messiahs waling around, Each will then claim to represent the one true religion. Our word will then be divided into competing religions at war with each other. In other words, the world will be the same as it is now.
HESSE: Virgin births is going to become pretty cliche, soon. I hope people are more creative with heir explanations soon. Like, alien impregnation. I’d like to see more of that.
CZIKOWSKY: I just searched the Internet for Blble themed hotels. What I first found was a hotel in England that removed the Bibles in all their rooms and replaced them with “50 Shades of Grey. I just hope no one checks in there seeking salvation.
HESSE: I bet al the guests are SO MAD. But that a lot more copies of the “50 Shades” get stolen then were stolen of the Bible.
CZIKOWSKY: Instead of Wisconsin how about a reality show in an Illinois town, thus giving it more appeal to both the MidWest and the EAst, and for a normal town, houw about Normal? Now, if we could only find an interesting family for a TV reality show in Normal, Illinois...
HESSE: The Illinois half of my family are community organizers. They’re probably planning a festive protest on Christmas day, followed by the annual family racket-ball tournament.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, December 31, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I came across the new social interaction site called MySpace. Do you think it will catch on?
PETRI: Hey, maybe social interaction sites are like cuts of skirt, and they all come back around eventually if you’re patient. Can’t wait for the resurgence of AOL Reference chats.
CZIKOWSKY: My family spent its Christmas analyzing George Washington. What does your family do?
PETRI: How did you get into this chat, ME?
That is our tradition. Every year we discuss George and his choices, re-watch a 1984 CBS miniseries about Georg Washington starring Barry Bostwick (all 8 hours of it!) and try to invoke George Washington into any and all arguments that arise. “Should I get a job in Minnesota?” “George Washington never had a job in Minnesota.” This is less tradition than it is a maybe a condition we should get checked out.
CZIKOWSKY: I am glad I discovered twerking in 2013. Twerking is when one stuffs a turkey with bratwurst, right?
PETRI: That’s turwursting! Or, rather, turbesting, because it sounds amazing.
CZIKOWSKY: I believe 2014 is the year Obamacare will be repealed, China lands a person on Mars (most likely a dissident), Miley Cyrus releases a gospel album, and Justin Bieber retires for good.
PETRI: Oh, if only Bieber would. I keep hoping he’ll grow faint and flicker as fewer and fewer people believe in him, sort of like Tinker Bell, but he keeps popping up on Twitter, apparently vibrant.
CZIKOWSKY: They used to tell us we could not use our cellphones during takeoffs and landings because it could interfere with the pilots’ communications with the control towers. Now they say we may use our cellphones during takeoffs and landings. Do the airlines want us to die?
PETRI: No, they figured out it is fine. It turns out that someone on a plane using a cellphone during takeoffs and landings is hazardous only if that person is the pilot.
CZIKOWSKY: I told my friends that it is a tradition to leave money on a window sill on New Years Eve. It will bring good fortune in the new year. I know it works for me. Last year, I walked around my friends’ windowsills and collected over a hundred bucks
PETRI: That s a great tradition! I’m telling my friends it’s car keys.
CZIKOWSKY: Why is there no William Henry Harrison Presidential Library? Surely he wrote at least one letter while he was sick.
PETRI: He’s been preparing for this role all his life!
After you cast Jonny Lee Miller as Benjamin Harrison in the follow-up biopic after Harrisons become hot Hollywood commodities.
CZIKOWSKY: After you cast Jonny Lee Miller as Benjamin Harrison, you then cast Lucy Liu as Grover Cleveland.
PETRI: I’m sure she’ll disappear into the role!
CZIKOWSKY: General Ewell could have had OCD (when making bird noises). Of coure, no one reported the condition. They needed the eggs.
PETRI: HA, VINTAGE PUNCHLINES FOR THE WIN!
CZIKOWSKY: If pigs turn out to be so intelligent that they find a means to communicate with humans, would you still eat bacon?
PETRI: Not all bacon, just the bacon of the pigs who disagree with me!
CZIKOWSKY: “You gave my daughter herpes, and she gave it to a boy at school.” That is a conversation I fear happens when I saw the plush disease dolls at Comic Con. I wonder how many people bought them for children without reading the name of the toy. Or think of the thank you notes: “Thank you for the gonorrhea, I love it.”
PETRI: But cholera’s so cute!

 ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, January 14, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: I wish to announce my latest academic research. If you block two lanes of traffic with traffic cones for four days, I have concluded that may cause traffic jams. I am glad I did this study.
PETRI: Thank HEAVENS you’ve come! Quick, tell the Governor.

ALEXANDRIA PETRI, ComPost Writer, January 28, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: We old timers are glad to ruin Facebook for you youngsters. By the way, did you like my photographs of my operation scars? Also, how about that photo of Grandma drunk at the neighbor’s cookout? Now, I better not see any photos of you chugging from a keg or in bed with any of those Twilight characters, which, by the way, we old timers just loved that movie series. Now, how may we ruin Twitter?
PETRI: NOooooooo
Already it begins!
Please leave us Twitter! Take MySpace instead!
CZIKOWSKY: MySpace? That is so 2005. We old timers killed that years ago. Hey, we give back. Enjoy several more years of Beatles music releases and Marvel movies.
PETRI: I like the Beatles and the Marvel movies. I could listen to or watch either all day lon! It’s just the Marveling at the Beatles that gets old quickly.
CZIKOWSKY: I always wonder why celebrities like Chelsea Handler (most lately) state that can’t find anyone to date them. I would date her I also have a pet centaur that would love to date her.
PETRI: A pet centaur? Isn’t that a violation of some kind of convention? Or at the least, unconventional?
I have to admit that when you said “pet centaur” I am picturing a goat-sized centaur in a small grassy enclosure gamboling about, and I’m not sure my mental image is ready to date yet. Let him go to college and get to know himself first.
CZIKOWSKY My pet centaur went to college. every fraternity voted not to extend him membership. At least he graduated with a degree in Accounting and got a good job on Wall Street.
PETRI: I feel like that was a big mistake on the frats’ parts. You’d think he’d have been wildly sought after. What frat would not love a centaur? He’d add a whole new layer of verisimilitude to the toga parties.
CZIKOWSKY: It’s hard to compete for women with a centaur at parties. Let’s just say that some of us are not built like a horse in certain areas.
PETRI: Whom are you inviting to your parties, Catherine the Great.
CZIKOWSY: I had long believe the Catherine the Great story about her and a horse is false. Yet I will state that when I took Russian History, my Professor taught about the era of Catherine the Great, He ended his lecture, started to leave, and then returned and announced “For those of you who are wondering, It’s true.”
PETRI: And on THAT note...
CZIKOWSKY: Hey, an Amazon drone just delivered a new shirt to me. I wonder who sent it to me. Shall I put it on? I wonder what is so magical about it?
PETRI: Are you allergic to centaur blood?
Also check to make sure it’s not made of gluten, because sometimes people update myths weirdly to make them sound relevant to a modern audience.
CZIKOWSKY: In a one God society, it is interesting to note that don’t make Gods like Zeus anymore, do they?
PETRI: And thank God for that.
CZIKOWSKY: Where does one find a poisoned shirt? I have searched Google and every distributor appears to be out of that item.
CZIKOWSKY: I dare say, thou has a Motley Crew of characters in this story about a man who doth used to be named Prince and the Kings of Leon.
PETRI: Aaah, we’ve unleashed something and I don’t know how to leash it.
CZIKOWSKY: Ask not for whom The Animals roar, for it is the B 52s for whom one makes us feel as the Grateful Dead.
PETRI: “starts hitting buttons at random”
CZIKOWSKY: Remember, tonight, every time President Obama says “Bob”, every one has to drink.
PETRI: Aw.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer Feruary 4, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: I am learning a lot about birds from the news. I learned that if a sea hawk meets a bronco the sea hawk actually gets the better of the bronco. Who knew? Yet if an owl meets a bus, the bus gets the better of the owl Well, I am now off to read about a flock of orioles preparing to meet in Florida in a few days.
PETRI: We live in a great ear for augurs!
Did you read about how they caught the owl? Also, if the toll of addiction hadn’t been awul been awful recent before, the headline “Snowy owl doing well at rehab facility” is kind of funny.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, February 18, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: This morning, I heard the very disturbing news that our nation has a clown shortage. What is becoming of us? How may we entice more young people to enter clown colleges sow we may meet the demand for clowns? Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with this national crisis?
PETRI:What will America be without the clowns?
A darn sight less creepy, that’s for sure.
But seriously, we need to rectify this. First they come for the clowns, then we lose the Elvis impersonators!
CZIKOWSKY: Do you think our nation is ready to pass ObamaClown?
PETRI: I can staya on my parents’ clown plan for a few more months!
CZIKOWSKY: I never understod people who are afraid of clowns. I don’t want to belittle their fear but I just don’t get it. Clowns make children laugh. Except for that one that was a mass murderer and a few that were molesters, what does anyone have to fear from clowns?
PETRI: Also, the one that is standing upstairs when the babysitter’s there and she thinks it’s a statue BUT IT’S NOT A STATUE.
CZIKOWSKY: I am celebrating the memory of William Henry Harrison, the only President to attend the University of Pennsylvania, who had the foresight to do nothing but get sick and die during his Presidency That teach us that at Penn.
PETRI: “Say with me, class: The longer the Inaugural speech the shorter the Presidency.”
CZIKOWSKY: When we celebrate Presidents, we do not include John Tyler. We ignore him even on his birthday. Poor guy, I expect we have given him a complex of something.
PETRI: I like Tyler! He was the first surprise President, and he held it together pretty well consider that, historically, no one liked him.
CZIKOWSKY: When I was President of the United States, I made my own clothes, and I wrote all my speeches, and I answered all the phone calls coming into the White House, and I also did all the wor of the Secretary of Agriculture as well.
PETRI: Which let you no time to actually be President!
CZIKOWSKY: You know, William Howard Taft was considered “plush cuddly”.
PETRI: Built for comfort jus like his bathtub.
CZIKOWSKY: I hope someday to see a campaign ad end with “I am (name of candidate) and like hell I approve this message.”
PETRI: “In fact, this message was forced on me over my loud protest! I in no way approved any part of this ad! I don’t even want to run for this office! (THIS message approved by (name of candidate).)”

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, February 25, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: I read the story about a woman who threw a duck at a man, I wonder: when she threw it, did anyone yell “Watch out?” Or anything else?
PETRI: I want a follow up story where a woman throws two ducks and a goose at the same man.
CZIKOWSKY: This may create an interesting political dynamic. What if one political party has a distinct advantage in ducks over the other party? This could drown the other party.
PETRI: My favorite part of the story is the fact that is all takes place in Anaconda, which makes everyone involve about ten times as epic, being referred to as Anaconda Woman and Anaconda Man and Anaconda Police Chief. This sounds like a domestic dispute in Nightvale.
CZIKOWSKY: Oh, no. Moviefone’s life line has been discontinued and no longer rigns in this world. Now we’ll have to search for movie listings on the Internet like everyone else. Someone told me once that movie listings used to be in something called newspapers, but I believe that is a myth.
PETRI; Next someone will tell you that people used to print strange hand-drawn pictures and words on two pages of a newspapers every day, each telling a joke or story with familiar, sometimes animal characters! One of them was about a retired lady who liked to meddle, and one was about an Arthurian prince with a complicated family life, and one was a viking whose wife viewed pillaging expeditions as shopping trips. This happened for years and no one thought it was weird?

There’s always Fandango.

GENE WEINGARTEN Washington Post Humor Writer, February 25, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: What is this about public hair? Who cares if someone is to let it grow like Einstein or totally shaved liked Charles Barkley? How is one’s public hair such a matter of discussion?
WEINGARTEN: You are a person without a soul. A damaged individual. It is as though you have been inexpertly lobotomized.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, February 27, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: It seems race matters less to younger people Indeed, many young people accept mixed race dating. Many are children of mixed race parents. I am genetically Asian Italian and I look caucasian. I have a very light skinned African American friend. She joked we could never have children together because we would have Black Asian kids running around saying “But we’re white.”
HESSE: I think you’re partly right. I think race “matters” less to young people in some ways, but I also think that young people are more aware of subtle racism and inequality. So in those ways discussions of race matter more. Which is a good thing.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, March 4, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: If the infallible Pope, a well as Vice President Cheney as printed in the Washington Post, have used the “f” word, does that mean the “f” word is now a permissible word to say?
PETRI: As long as you’re infallible!
CZIKOWSKY: I would note that middle school students indeed do not have fully formed impressions of the world and are more apt to rely upon stereotypes. Yet,I also find it interesting that females tend to learn faster at earlier ages and they tend to be the better students in elementary years. What I further find interesting is middle school students often presume the males are more deserving of the more intellectual pursuits when their life observations have been that the females are smarter.
PETRI: Hmmm, that’s an interesting thought! This is where my single-sex educaiton puts me at a disadvantage, because I can’t remember what the perception was in the classroom. I guess my only question there would be to whether the class’s perception of who’s doing the best and learning the fastest matches the teachers’ perceptions. However much they actually are revealed to know once called upon, boys are historically pretty good at raising their hands in class, and even if the girls are actually reigning in the grade book, unless they are also the sort of classroom-dominating Hermione types who do not hide their lights under a hushed basket, I wonder if middle schoolers notice that they are out performing the guys.
CZIKOWSKY: Anyonr remember when John Kennedy stated “I am a jelly donut”? Anyoe remember when they found Ted Kennedy’’s profile on Mars? Anyone remember when they found a jelly donut on Mars? Is anyone else beginning to see a pattern?
PETRI: Wait, I’ve got it, I’ve got it:
EVERYONE’S A JELLY DONUT.
No, wait.
THE KENNEDYS ARE JELLY DONUTS
No, wait.
APPLE COMPUTERS ARE THE ILLUMINATI
Er,
THOSE LIGHTS IN THE SKY ARE A JELY DONUT
No, hang on.
Uh.
CZIKOWSKY: We are not crazy. We know the Ted Kennedy profile was easily explaied by coincidental shadowing. ALso, the jelly donut on Mars is also easily explained Martians like jelly donuts.
PETRI: They’re only human, after all.
CZIKOWSKY: The John Travolta name generator tells me I am “Joey Travolta”.
PETRI: Sounds suspicious to me.
CZIKOWSKY: Years ago, we did an unscientific study based upon previous observations on Philadelphia buses. If you are the only person reading on a bus and there is a seat next to you, the person who likes to chat with others almost always picks the seat next to the person reading.
PETRI: I did read a study once saying that if you wanted to look approachable to people on the subway, the best thing was to read a newspaper, and the worst thing was to stare at your phone, For whatever that’s worth.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, March 6, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: I am processing this (court ruling upholding up-skirt photography). If I take a photograph of Alec Baldwin in public, that is fine. If I take a photograph of Alex Baldwin with his wife Hilaria Baldwin,  who is also a public person with a radio show, that is wrong. Yet, if I take an up skirt photo of Hilaria Baldwin, that is OK.
HESSE: Correct. Also correct. None of us have any idea how to spell Alec Baldwin’s wife name.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, March 11, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: As you work for the Washington Post, have you found that the hundreds of people who you supervise ever call you “boss”?
PETRI: No, but only because you mentioned it, I had no idea I supervised hundreds of people and have been governing through benign neglect.
CZIKOWSKY: From your hundreds of employees: “Hey, dude, you ruined it for us. We used to be able to do whatever we wanted.”
PETRI: GET BACK TO WORK, YOU.
CZIKOWSKY: I have been seeking a book I remember from childhood about a rabbit. I determined it may have been “Rabbit Hill”, an award winning book in the 1940s that was removed from shelves in the 1970s due to its racism. I ordered a copy for one penny, and it arrived. It was not the book I am looking for. Which I guess is good, as it would have been embarrassing if a lost treasured memory of a book was about racist rabbits. I upped the search and spoke to a children’s literature specialist and looked at over 100 books. I still have not found it. If I ever do I will inform you.
PETRI: I’m glad it wasn’t about racist rabbits, too. That’s always a shock when you discover a book you loved as a child was actually a pamphlet issued by the Daughters of the Confederacy.
CZIKOWSKY: After I have searched through hundreds of books looking for the right book about a rabbti, just for fun, I am going to turn to the librarian and proclaim “you know, maybe it was about a chipmunk.”
PETRI: HA!
I look forward to the GIF of what happens to the librarian’s face when you do.
CZIKOWSKY: Did CPAC take a stand on rocket cats? By the way, I am opposed, although I suggest CPAC might enjoy 16th century ideas. I am a member of the Pro-Cat lobby, as you might tell.
PETRI: CATPAC would be a great group. Picture a pack of cats ambling through the halls of government, rubbing shoulders and influencing lawmaking. Tell me you wouldn’t anonymously donate large sums to that.
CZIKOWSKY: CATPAC. I love the idea. I am already purring.
PETRI: There could also be FATCATPAC, or your more sinister hobnobbing needs.
CZIKOWSKY: CATPAC wants to elect more cats to Congress. You already saw how a cat held people hostage Want to see a group of cats hold legislation hostage?
PETRI: Yes, actually! That sounds amazing! I would definitely watch that on C-SPAN.
CZIKOWSKY: Cats are perfect for politics. Cats know how to claw their way to the top. Cats know how to win by a whisker.
PETRI: Then again, they don’t tow the party feline.
They are about as easy to herd of members of your caucus.
And a lot of people might dread seeing the halls of government turned into a cathouse.
CZIKOWSKY: I got it! We let Justin Bieber stay in America, but he has to adopt the terror cat.
PETRI: This actually sounds like an ideal solution.
Justin Bieber, terrorized by a giant cat = EVERYONE WINS.
CZIKOWSKY: Cats are not a “colony”. Each is an independent royalist.
PETRI: I think of them as antonymous collectives.
CZIKOWSKY: Did you notice, at CPAC, after Chris Christie left, that two lanes of highway were blocked?
PETRI: Is this an arterial blockage joke, or an aortal blockage joke?
CZIKOWSKY: I notice you overturn tables when you get mad. Does this tend to terrorize the co-workers around you who are now afraid to leave their cubicles? Are you a cat?
PETRI: I should probably go do some fun human things that I am always doing as a human being---such delightful pursuits as watching the Screen of Face and opening the white humming box where there is sometimes meat.
Later I will go fraternize with other two-legs like myself and we will make our voices resonate, and then I definitely WON”T have a hairball because WHO EVEN DOES THAT, RIGHT?
Certainly not us two-legs.. Ha ha ha ha hack ha ha herrkgl.

GENE WEINGARTEN, Washington Post Columnist, March 18, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: I heard someone use the term “lady burps” for female farts. I believe there is a cultural origin for this but I don’t know who first said it. Maybe it was you?
WEINGARTEN: No, but I endorse the term, in much the same way when it becomes clear a rodent larger than a mouse had done some damage to something inside the house. I agreed with my wife that we no doubt have “rabbits”
This is an ad for the Danish Lottery, and the best lines reads, “Six out of ten win.”
CZIKOWSKY: The news that restaurants subscribe to a secret publication that has information and photographs of food critics has got me thinking. What if one were to write such a magazine, but include such things as “Gene Weingarten, secret food critic, along with your photograph ad a description of how you tend to write great reviews of restaurants that offer to pick up the check because “you’ve been such a wonderful customer.: Just kidding I know you are ethical and would never do that. Yet, it would be funny if you did, and you then went to the restaurant it was sent to, and then see how they react...
WEINGARTEN: Yeah, it’s an interesting idea that I’d never do. I know of a lawyer---friend of a relative---who does something horribly unethical when he travels. He calls good restaurants and makes conversations as the food wrier for the local newspaper. (He pays the bill, but he gets fawned over and no doubt catered to, via the food.) Maybe it’s my training---journalists are strongly discouraged at peril of our jobs from ever doing anything deceptive in pursuit of a story---but I find this trick of his deeply dishonest.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, March 25, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: My research tells me that the Chicken from Hell was made extinct by the Sandersaurous from Kentucky.
PETRI: The Sandersaurus was a fearsome beast, but what makes you so sure it was not in fact the Chickfilaoptrerix? It seems likely to me that they were walking the Earth at the same time.
CZIKOWSKY: The Sandersauros killed off the Chicken from Hell. It knew the right combination of herbs and spices to ill the chicken beast. The Chickafilopterix was too busy warning that homosexuality would lead to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
PETRI: DIDN’T IT?
See, this is why everyone needs equal time on Cosmos.
CZIKOWSKY: We of the James Bond Washington Post Sex Club want you to know that you are our favorite columnist. You may be surprised to learn that are are actually quite a large organization. We have two members already. We bow to you, our faithful leader.
PETRI: This is actually an illusion to something I tweeted yesterday, because I was completed baffled by the fact that two people had discovered the blog by Googling “www jamesbond sex wp”.  One might have been regarded as some kind of horrible mistake. Two sounds like a club.
CZIKOWSKY: Men’s room etiquette: There is no conversation, ever. If there is a fire, you let people burn to death rather than speak If you speak, it will presume you are a United States Senator trying to pick up.
PETRI I assume tapping is right out, too?
CZIKOWSKY: There was a great video Gene Weingarten had a few years ago. Essentially, it explained men’s bathroom etiquette. There are five urinals. The first man to enter takes either the first or fifth urinal. The next man takes the urinal at the other end. The third man takes the middle urinal. A fourth man waits until on e of these three urinals are vacant. No one ever uses the second and fourth urinal. THey are just for decoration. And no one talks, ever.
PETRI: I am learning a lot!
CZIKOWSKY: Sure there are sinks in the bathroom. We just thought they were decoration. Like the 2nd and 4th urinals.
PETRI: *shudders*
CZIKOWSKY: On the serious side: I once set up a male co-worker with a woman. I thought they would be perfect together. One day, I noted the co-worker does not wash after using the facilities. That alone make me change my min and tell her I don’t think he’s right for her after all.
PETRI: Yeeeooogh.
Thank you for doing the honorable thing.
CZIKOWSKY: Good work, men We have once against continued our deception that woman believe we do not interact in bathrooms. They shall never learn we have beer and wine stashed in our bathrooms. Women must never find this out. Good work, men, at keeping women at bay on our secret. Wait, did I just write that out loud?
PETRI: A-HA!
CZIKOWSKY: This is the librarian invited to this chat I can confirm there were no children’s books on men’s urinals in school libraries in 1969-70.
PETRI: (Audible laughter on my part.)
CZIKOWSKY: When I went to school, men talked in bathrooms. We discussed our current topices. It is until we were studying the Native Americans and I went up to a fellow student and asked “so how’s Little Big Horn going for you?” that it was decided we should all be in silence from then on.
PETRI: And that’s a chat!
CZIKOWSKY: The Verizon router is called a jetpack For a moment there, I was worried I had misunderstood what it was called and all of you think I am some cray person who thinks one can blast off from the backyard and fly to work. With my dog Astro. I checed. Verizon does call it a jetpack.
PETRI: WORST. JETPACK. EVER.

GENE WEINGARTEN, Washington Pot Humor Writer, March 25, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: In a previous discussion, Monica Hesse stated her belief that 99% of women wearing low rider ears that reach “the plumber’s effect” that exposes the upper part of their derriere-crack are unaware that happens and would be shocked to find this out. Does this strike you and readers are correct or incorrect?
WEINGARTEN: It strikes me as incorrect, but only because, as a man appreciative of---and susceptible to---the female form, I have always believed that women know EXACTLY what they are showing, and how much, and when, in all places and at all times. But inasmuch as Monica is an actual woman, who presumably is better aware than I am of what women know and when they know it, I am prepared to be told I am wrong.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, March 27, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: Gene Weingarten recently stated he doubted your belief that women are not aware when their low rider pants expose some derriere-crack yet he is willing to be convinced by you that they are not aware when this happens, since you are female and he is not. Do you have a statement to convince Gene?
HESSE: Only that women are very helpful to each other. We will go up to strange women on the subway and whisper, “Your bra strap is showing” or “You’ve got something on the side of your pants”, or, in this case, “Your pants. Your pants have fallen down.”
In all of my years of being female and witnessing many, many exchanges like this, I have never seen a woman say “Cool, but it’s on purpose.” She always turns deep red, mouths a heartfelt “Thank you” and immediately pulls her pants up.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, April 1, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: So, when are you getting your Kim Jung Un haircut?
PETRI: When it is mandated by actual law and not just Internet rumor law and not before!

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, April 3, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: I did not fall for a single April Fools joke. On unrelated news, did I tell you I learned I won the Nigerian sweepstakes?
HESSE: Cool. Are you taking us on the cruise that you also won, despite not entering it?

GENE WEINGARTEN, Washington Post Humor Writer,April 8, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: I saw your inquiry about butt dialing. I once did something similar, yet the phone was in my front pocket. I did not have the heart to tell this person I accidentally dialed, yet, technically, I penis-dialed her.
WEINGARTEN: Nor should you have. This is referring to a tweet of mine wondering whether it is at least a little exciting for a buy to realize that woman has butt dialed him. The front pocket development might raise the heat a little more
This does remind me when I was a kid---thinking late 50s, early 50a, girls’ pants seldom zipped up the front. I remember zippers on the side or rear. Why the heck was that?

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, April 22, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: Wow, to imagine that the Earth is 3,000 years old today. Oh, and I am one of the 1 in 4 who do not believe the Earth revolves around the Su. The universe revolves around the Earth, silly, Just look a the sy. Oh, and repeal Obamacare.
PETRI: It’s turtles all the way down.
CZIKOWSKY: A trending story is most people do not believe the big bang theory Turtles are in the running!
PETRI: Very, very slowly.
CZIKOWSKY: I am very sorry you find yourself apologizing a lot. I am truly sorry. Here, i am from New England, I can make you an elderberry pie.
PETRI: Elderberry! That’s the kind of berry I respect the most!
I’m sorry.
CZIKOWSKY: I am easily confused. If you go to sites like WebMD or whatever it is called, it states that nothing other than a flu shot reduces the likelihood of getting and the duration of the flu. Yet, if you read about elderberries, it states that elderberries it states that elderberries reduce the likelihood of getting and duration of the flu. I believe elderberries deserve more respect. Maybe the elderberry growers need to get a lobbyist or something.
PETRI: I would love to see what Big Elderberry and the lobbying arm of elderberries looked like. I assume they would throw big events on Pi Day.
CZIKOWSY: I am looking at an official map. Where within the District of Columbia is the town of Washington? I can’t find it anywhere. Help. I can’t find Washington.
PETRI: You should talk to the Other Chatter’s girlfriend.
CZIKOWSKY: “The doctors did all they could, yet Alexandria retrocessed on the operating table. Fortunately, Washington it through the operation, yet it had to absorb Georgetown.”
PETRI: That’s a narrative behind which I can get.
CZIKOWSKY: When traveling to Moscow, is it customary to tip the KGB agent who followed you around the entire trip?
PETRI: No, no, in Moscow, KGB agents tip you.
CZIKOWSKY: I came from a town so mall, we sold tourists maps of our town with one straight line and an arrow to the line with a caption reading “You are here. That’s it.”
PETRI: Why were there tourists? Did ou have Historic Baseball Things?
CZIKOWSKY: People come to my town to see where nothing happened We were so fortified during the Revolutionary War that the British did not attack Granted, they made of their biggest atacks on the port across the riveer from us but they left us alone. I think something happened in our town in 1934, but no one remembers what it was.
PETRI: One of my favorite things in all of the District is a plaque in Upper Georgetown over the library that says “On This Site in 1897, Nothing Happened.” I would like to lead a tour there.
CZIKOWSKY: My request is that they place a historic sign in Harrisburg, Pa. keeps being denied. Harrisburg placed an important part in Presidential history WHen Vice President Teddy Roosevelt was speaking in Buffalo, he learned that President William McKinley had been shot. He left for Washington, pausing ony for a bathroom break in Harrisburg, Now, I think that deserves a sign, don’t you?
PETRI: Certainly one way to update George Washington Slept Here,
CZIKOWSKY: There is (or used to be, I don’t know if it is still there) a sign on a tree in Key West that read on a certain date “Ernest Hemingway pissed on this tree.”
PETRI; I’d believe that.
CZIKOWSKY: When I worked at the Capitol, I made a sign for my door that read “No One Important”. I later learned my door was added to the tour.
PETRI: That’s great!
CZIKOWSY: I like how you put the soundstage where they faked the moon landing on the moon. Well, that explains how NASA got its funding from Congress. “We’ll fake the landing, but it will be really, really expensive...”
PETRI: Right? It makes the most sense of an theory I have yet heard presented!
CZIKOWSKY: What are your plans for Charlotte Bronte’s birthday? Me, I am going to avoid standing next to a mantle, as I hear that can kill you.
PETRI: At least Bromwell died doing what he loved.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, May 6, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: I was riding the Metro.I saw someone who looks nothing like you. I asked “Are you Alexandra Petri?” She replied “No.” Was that you?
PETRI: Yes.
CZIKOWSY: I learned something yesterday. Waving the French flag during Cinco de Mayo does not always go over well.
PETRI: I’m only semi for that. Poll me, and you’ll find I’m against it.
CZIKOWSKY: Speaking of running up the flagpole, I haven’t seen a good flagpole sitter in years. Who decided that watching people sit on flagpoles no longer is good entertainment?
PETRI: Justice Scalia, I think.
(Oh, this is going to be awful, I can feel my enthusiasm flagging already.)
CZIKOWSKY: I love Star Wars Day. My favorite was the war between Joan Rivers and Kim Kardashian.
PETRI: I liked the one between Betelgeuse and Sirius, myself.
CZIKOWSKY: I could not get a date to the Nerd Prom. Then I realized, that must mean I am Super Nerd! Right? Right?
PETRI: Yes! Only true nerds can’t get a date to nerd prom and spend it studying instead. Be square, minus four A’s, see how your dating odds increase.
CZIKOWSKY: Are you joining in the boycott of the Beverly Hills Hotel? Will you pledge that you are not going to book a suite there?
PETRI: I won’t boycott the Beverly Hills Hotel! I can’t even afford to sleep on a boy cot at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
But seriously, that is what I like to call a first-world boycott. You do you, Mia, but---if ony I could afford to not book a suite there. Then again, I’ve been definitely not booking a suite there for years Maybe I’ve been boycotting the Beverly Hills Motel my whole life without knowing it.
CZIKOWSKY: My career advice for the day: f you like to restore cars and your paint yours purple, don’t then choose to go into bank robbery.
You’re welcome.
Also, to the guy who robbed a bank and then waited to catch a bus: Rethink your career options. Fortunately, you may have time to do so.
PETRI: That’s sage advice, based on thyme and offering a great dill to ponder.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, June 3, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: As a member of the Holy Order of the Internet, I am upset that people discriminate against our religion. First you create laws prohibiting us from engaging in our sacred texting while driving a vehicle. Now you criticize public officials being sworn into office in our holy book, the Kindle. We shall rise someday and show the world the truth. The Internet is our savior!
PETRI: You take that back!
The Internet’s not our savior, it’s a very naughty boy.
CZIKOWSKY: We should have naming rights for hurricanes. “Tropical Storm WalMart Weekend Sales is gaining steam while Hurricane Test Drive a Chevy is hitting the Florida coast”. Of course Tropical Storm Verizon would turn out to not be what it advertised.
PETRI: Then again, when what you’re advertising is a hurricane, that’s good news.
CZIKOWSKY: I want to make hundreds of plastic life-like sharks. Then, during a tornado, I want to place them in the tornado’s path Who is with me on this?
PETRI: I think you’re on your own.
CZIKOWSKY: If I heard Hurricane Soylent Green was headed my way, I’d leave.
PETRI: You mean...Hurricane PEOPLE?

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPos Writer, June 24, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: We’ve had the Washington Senators. How about a team named the Washington House of Representatives? Or the Washington Federal Tax Court?
PETRI: Or the Washington Acronyms!
CZIKOWSKY: Four word story: Box. Gravity. Foot. Hospital.
PETRI: Okay, I think the trick is to fight my desire for verbs.
Man. Plan. Canal! Panama?
CZIKOWSKY: It was reported that the Redskins owner took a copyright on the name “Braveheart”. Will the new mascot by Mel Gibson?
PETRI: We could just call it the Washington Slurs and split the difference He could still mascot if he wanted to! Has he worked since “The Beaver”?
CZIKOWSKY: Sports teams are supposed to instill fear into opponents. May I suggest the most fearsome name of them all: The Washington IRS Agents!
CZIKOWKY: Four word story. Supercalifragilisticexpiadalidocius. Too damn long.
PETRI: Words words words! Sickening.
CZIKOWSKY: Four word story. Sea Jane. Jane swim.
PETRI: Swim, Jane, swim.
CZIKOWSKY: Four word story. See Dick. Dick arrested.
PETRI: Bad Richard, Bad!
CZIKOWSKY: A four story construction story. Cost overrun. Need more cash. Now. Or die.
PETRI: “shudders”
CZIKOWSKY: If it was a clipping noise you heard on the subway, it might have been me. Oh, and I wasn’t clipping my nails. I was clipping my ear wax.
PETRI: Guys, I will TURN THIS CHAT AROUND right now if we keep going donw this road.
CZIKOWSKY: I’d like to see you turn this chat around. How would that work? Would the words on this page spin around?
PETRI: You’re about to find out!
CZIKOWSKY: What is this play you wrote and why should I see it?
PETRI: Well, first up we have “Miss Emma’s Matchmaking Agency for Literary Characters”, which is exacly what it says on the tin. Daisy Buchanan! Dorian Grey! Sherlock Holmes! Medea! They’re all in it, and some of them even meet their match.
(Take a gander: SQUAWK! would be a potential story, maybe.)
CZIKOWSKY: What literary character would you match up with me?
PETRI: Well, that is the question. Apart from To Be Or Not To Be, of course.
CZIKOWSKY: As I always say “Bing it,, Jeeves.
PETRI: Very good, sir.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, July 1, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: Does a beer poop in the woods? Why, does an EPA employee poop in the halls?
PETRI: I am still not over this story and I don’t know how everyone else in the world has moved on, unaffected, with their lives, when there is an actual poop bandit on the loose in Denver.
CZIKOWSKY: Did you see the Sunday Kid’s Post. Children were instructed to look up to great soccer players, like the featured Louis Suarez. Was that bad timing?
PETRI: This wouldn’t have happened in Jackie-verse.
CZIKOWSKY: I could use some workplace advice. While at work, I accidentally fell and my teeth landed on an employee for another company Everyone thinks I deliberately bit him. How may I explain that it was an accident?
PETRI: Man, the Cleveland sales meeting! It always gets wild, doesn’t it?
I would fall back on my acting skills. I hear they are a prerequisite in your line of work.
CZIKOWSKY: Those Cleveland sales meetings can get heated. My fellow attendees were yelling at me for wearing my Redskins jacket last night. They said it was offensive, so I left. By the way, since I left our event, does anyone know if the Indians won or lost last night
PETRI: Well, to Custerverse...
CZIKOWSKY: A Belgium waffle hesitates before shooting for a goal. An American waffle trips while running for the ball.
PETRI: And their Nutella is supposedly different.
CZIKOWSKY: What do you think of the new political tactic where you try to convince the voters that your opponent is dead, even when he is still alive? I am not certain if that strategy has been totally thought out. Yet it does make for interesting press inquiries: “Are you still alive?” “Can you prove you are alive?”

PETRI: “Can you pass the Turing Test?
“Okay, how about the Bechdel Test?”
CZIKOWSKY: Well, I did travel back in time and I did kill Hitler. Brad Pitt and I traveled back in time and killed him with a bomb in a theater. We returned and there is absolutely no difference in the world, except for some reason the Kardashians are now famous.
PETRI: Huh.
Yeah, afer the whole “A Sound of Thunder” explanation of time travel, I expected the Inglorious Bastards to flash forward to a future where everyone has flying skateboards but is strangely angry. And then---nope, nothing.
CZIKOWSKY: Nazis time traveled a century ahead of us. They are developing a technique where they will soon travel back into time and kill Churchill. Spoiler alert: next weeks discussion will be in German.
PETRI: Achtung! Achtung! Schadenfreude! Aufklarung!
Well, I’m out, That does explain what they were doing on the moon in that one movie.
CZIKOWSKY: Wouldn’t a problem with time travel be that so many people keep going back and changing things that soon nothing ln life would have any meaning. Which is sort of where my life is now, but I digress.
PETRI: “Sad trombone plays in the corner of the multiverse”
No, I don't know. I think it can be depressing or hopeful. If it’s always in flux, there’s no point it’s in flux from. Somebody with Science in him or her correct me on this theory but if people were always going back and everything was always changing, it wouldn’t feel any different that it does right now. If you are part of the stream, you would still feel it was the same stream you’d always been part of and nothing in it would be different for you. It would only seem different from without. Mabe every day the world would totally repopulate itself with new memories and more things are constant and others are variable, and all you can do is live you day. Maybe everything that can happened has happened. Or maybe it is happening.
Or maybe...dang it, who gave me Maureen Dowd’s waffle?
CZIKOWSKY: I just time traveled. Spoiler alert: Lady Sybil lives.
PETRI: Man, I had forgotten all about Lady Sybil. (I remember Dre, however, and do not act like otherwise!)
CZIKOWSKY: Unions and contraceptives both lost in recent Supreme Court decisions. I presume this means we may expect an enlarged future generation of non-union employees.
PETRI: Meanwhile, in the multiverse, this ruling did not happen. And elsewhere in the multiverse, a wild-eyed Chief Justice Ginsberg, drunk with power, her outlawed all religion on the ground that it used to be rude to women.
CZIKOWSKY: I have time traveled, and I am so ashamed of myself. Please, let me apologize. I had no idea Justin Bieber would happen.
PETRI: YOU
You...DID...this.
CZIKOWSKY: If I am a Christian Scientist and I start a company, may I decline to provide health crae to my employees because I believe seeing doctors is against my religion?
PETRI: You know, I was curious about that. The ruling seemed from what I read to hinge on what the employer believed about the medical treatment they were being asked to cover, rather than what the treatment actually scientifically did, and that seems to open a pret-t-t-y wide gate to people whose religion states that the only way to deal with illness is by prayer and the laying on of hands and the blessing of Zachary Comstock.
CZIKOWSKY: I saw a protest sign that read “If men could get pregnant, birth control would be bacon flavored.” Forget the politics. How do you get bacon flavored birth control?
PETRI: That will have to be next week’s order of business. Win-win-win for everyone involved.
CZIKOWSKY: Who at the Washington Post is most likely to be an alien robot?
PETRI: Off hand I would say IG-88, our ombudsman.
CZIKOWSKY: Facebook informed us that the Archduke of Austria was assassinated one hundred years ago. And they waited until now to tell us?
PETRI: I love BREAKING ANNIVERSARY stories like that.
BREAKING! The Titanic Sank 100 Years Ago.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, July 8, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: I am upset at Facebook ads. Ever since I clicked that I like the Nationals and the Redskins, Facebook has been showing me ads for anti-depressants.
PETRI: It’s some of that emotional manipulation that Facebook has become famous for lately!
At least mine isn’t telling me about Ivy Singles any longer.
CZIKOWSKY: Today is Global Forgiveness Day. I am not sure what my globe does when I am not looking at it, yet if it requires forgiveness, then I forgive it Unless it uses my credit card at night. Then we need to talk.
PETRI: I FORGVE THE GLOBE.
CZIKOWSKY: As a relative of Warren Harding, I find it distressful that family secrets are about to be exposed. As it is good to get ahead of the story, let me please comment on some family secrets. First, Warren’s advice to a happy marriage is to keep a woman satisfied at least four times a day may be among those released. Believe me, it works. His advice that it is fine to have an affairs was not among his best advice. It may have got him killed. Also, we are quite convinced that the Tonya side of the family is not related to us at all. I hope that comes out. No comment on his advice about cigars. The nation has already been through that one.
PETRI: I like that there is a “Tonya side of the family.”
“Oh, a Harding? Of the Warren Hardings or the Tonya Hardings?”
CZIKOWSKY: I never understood Cinderella. Do all women have completely different shoe sizes?
PETRI: Her stepsisters must have had truly grotesque feet!
CZIKOWSKY: Cinderalla in the 21st century...And then the prince declared “I must find the woman who fit these Google glasses.”
PETRI: “Incredible! It’s EVERY woman.”
CZIKOWSKY: Story changers: “Nah, I’ll go barefoot. - Cinderella
“I think I’ll have an orange instead.” - Snow White
PETRI: “What is this? I’ve never seen one of these things before! They’ve been outlawed in the kingdom my whole life! And I’m certainly not going to touch it with my finger. - Sleeping Beauty
CZIKOWSKY: I bet there is a bar in Fantasyland where princes gather and exchange complaints about the women they married after having only met them for brief moments before marriage. Similarly, I image princesses get together and tell tales about their lazy rich husbands who do nothing all day long.
PETRI: That bar is located in a Sondheim musical.
CZIKOWSKY: I was asked to be an unpaid contributor to a web site. Recently they told me that I have been promoted to unpaid columnist I have one question: At what point do you get paid?
PETRI: 92nd day. Assuming you successfully guess the name of the malicious gnome, come to the office not walking and not riding, not clothed and not naked, not hungry and not full, and find the other slipper.
CZIKOWSKY: Dorothy Parker was portrayed in the recent Broadway play “Act One”. I recall she stated that there are only two things to do in Philadelphia: Drink and see the Liberty Bell. She then added she wasn’t into history. So, anyone up for a Dorothy Parker tour of Philadelphia?

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, July 10, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: So, the Mayans may have been right all all, yet just a few years off. Some suggested the Mayans were predicting a new world, not the end of the world and that they were predicting when the Earth’s magnetic filed will flip again.. I read today that scientists are finding the magnetic filed has been weakening over the last six months and that the flip may be beginning. OK, so it may a few years or so. Still, let’s hear it for the Mayans!
HESSE: Oh, good for the Mayans. Now, be honest with me and please don’t make fun when I ask. If the Earth’s magnetic filed flips, what practical application does that have for all of us living on the planet? Anything? Seasonal change? DO WE ALL GET TO START WALKING UPSIDE DOWN?

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, July 15, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: Are you familiar with Intelius.com? If not, you should check it out. It lists Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post. Your secret is out, pretending to be writing as a Millennial. Although, I must say, you look terrific for your age.
PETRI: Ha! How did that happen? Intelius.com thinks I am 65. I am not, although I hope to be someday!
They must have seen my old picture.

ALEXANDRIA PETRI. ComPost Writer, August 5, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: There is a Political Action Committee named Americans for Intercourse. Who is their opposition?
PETRI: Lysistrata, I would guress.
CZIKOWSKY: Did you hear about the teacher who was fired for writing about homophones? I had never heard of homophonic tendencies until I was in grade school and homophones were indeed forced upon us. I still wake up screaming in bed about there (or is it their?) being “to and “two”.
PETRI: This is the sinister homophone agenda and it has crept into our elementary schools. Yet homophonophobia likes yours is frowned upon.
CZIKOWSKY: The War of 1812 indeed needs a new name. Since it lasted two years, I believe it should be renamed the War of Circa 1813.
PETRI: Circa 1813 would be a good name for a restaurant.
CZIKOWSKY: There indeed was a restaurant in Philadelphia that loved cats. In fact, Health Department inspectors found several in the freezer. Therefore, every time I eat chicken in Philadelphia, I remark “Good, tastes like cat.”
PETRI: I’m not sure “loving” is the same as “having in the freezer”, but if Criminal Minds has taught me anything, it is that not everyone feels as I do.
CZIKOWSKY: I wonder if Cathy Rigby could play Billy Elliott?
PETRI: Only one way to find out!

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, August 19, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: If a message falls in the woods, will it be retweeted?
PETRI: Not if it falls in the forest during off-hours.
But it might get a favorite or two.
CZIKOWSKY: Have you put up your Halloween decorations yet? Time is wasting.
PETRI: Really?
I love Halloween, in-ordinarily. I have some cobwebs in my hallway, but they were put there by real spiders, not hung intentionally by me.
CZIKOWSKY: I see there has been a two decade long research at Harvard on ending aging. It sounded interesting until the researcher said something about biting the neck and...
Seriously, though, it was stated we could live maybe up to 150. Well, Harvard graduates could. Not sure about the rest of us.
PETRI: On the bright side, a world full of 150 year old Harvard graduates would not be a world anyone else would want to spend time in.
CZIKOWSKY: What is this “Star Wars: of which you speak? Is it one of those talent competition shows?
PETRI: OUT
OF THIS CHAT
RIGHT NOW
CZIKOWSKY:  What should we call ourselves as your followers?
Dishes?
Greaters?
Whatever we decide, we need to get leather jackets with the name of the back.
PETRI: Hamsters?
No, that’s too today.
CZIKOWSKY: I like that we could be the Petri Dishes. You dish it out, we dish it back, and we do so while dishing others.
PETRI: Here’s an option!
CZIKOWSKY: Since you pronounce your name to rhyme with “try”, we could be the Triers. We decide who in the public eye is innocent or guilty or whatever we make up about them.
PETRI: Lars Vors could be our second member!
CZIKOWSKY: If we al get leather jackets, we should pick a cool name, like the Bombers. Only we would never be let onto an airplane ever again.
PETRI: Well, who needs those airplane people and go-getters anyway?
CZIKOWSKY: Post Its?
Postettes?
Smart Alexes?
PETRI: I secretly like all of these and am flattered that we’re even coming up with them?
Baconians?
CZIKOWSKY: Baconaters. A terminator who eats bacon and discusses in this chat.
PETRI: This is like a better armed Baconian!
CZIKOWSKY: Petridactyls
AlexOnePetrobies
AlexanDrama Queens (might not go well on male leather jackets)
PETRI: Petridactyls is adorable-sounding, though!
CZIKOWSKY: I like Petrified Wood. We could pick a cool name, like the Evening Petrified, or the Morning...oops, never mind.
PETRI: Right.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, August 26, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: My new school announced it is being run like a business. I did not mind this at first, yet I am a little concerned that they have me all day at the door greeting people.
PETRI: Ha!
As long as they don’t start relocating production to take advantage of a favorable tax climax.
CZIKOWSKY: They found what looks like a thigh bone on Mars. Earlier they found what looks like a donut on Mars. Here is my theory: Donuts killed off the Martians.
PETRI: Do you read “Brewster Rockit, Space Guy”?
Mm, donuts.
CZIKOWSKY: Baseball has been very, very good to me. Golf, I no understand. We spent one gym class in my four years in high school on golf. We spent the entire period learning how to grab the club. They we each got three swings. I missed the ball each of my three swings. I then retired from golf with these final stats: 1 at bat, 1 strikeout.
PETRI: I am still sore because what felt like 80% of my swings missed the ball entirely, and those are not muscles I’m accustomed to using at all.
Then again, at least the ball isn’t moving. Baseball always stymied me because the ball was moving.
CZIKOWSKY: If half the world dies from ebola, here is the big question: Will the Washington Post survive the decline in readership?
PETRI: The Washington Post subscribers will be spared.
CZIKOWSKY: I challenge you, Gene Weingarten, and Dave Barry to sit on a flag pole for 8 hours or else you have to send me a check for $100.
PETRI: HEY! I WROTE ABOUT THIS THREE WEEKS AGO!
CZIKOWSKY: My flag pole sitting wasn’t for ALS. It was a a check sent to me. I really need the money.
PETRI: Well, in THAT case.
CZIKOWSKY: Why did the chicken cross the road? Because the chicken borrowed money from the road and never paid it back.
PETRI: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Because the egg crossed the road and the chicken didn’t want to come second.
CZIKOWSKY: Why did the chicken cross the road? To go to the theater and see “Star Wars” rather than spend the afternoon in his mother’s basement.

GENE WEINGARTEN, Washington Post Columnist, September 2, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: The solution to the preventing someone on an airplane from reclining the seat in front of you: Wear a fat suit that prevents the seat in front of you from moving Problem solved.
WEINGARTEN: Good idea! But the person next to you will have to kill you.
CZIKOWSKY: I also do not believe the Weingarten Curse (that people named in Gene Weingarten columns died soon afterwards.) Yet, there are several politicians you could mention in your column..
WEINGARTEN: I must admit I am curious about what Putin is up to…

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, September 9, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: I guess for the first time someone (with the passing of Joan Rivers) asked St. Peter “who are you wearing?”
PETRI: Yes, indeed.
CZIKOWSKY: I am upset Stephen Hawking discovered how to destroy the universe. Now we just know some high school kind in his mother’s basement is going to be ahead and end the universe. I but that ruins the next season of “House of Cards”.
PETRI: Aw, but he said the equipment needed to be about the size of a planet.
CZIKOWSKY: Sure, the equipment may be the size of a planet, for, like the calculator and telephones, they’ll find a way to make them smaller...
PETRI: Moore’s Law!
CZIKOWSKY: Who stores their nude photographs in a cloud? Wouldn’t they get wet from the moisture?
PETRI: I keep waitin fomr someone to do a strange radical comment of “The Cllouds” but using the iCloud somehow, but after that sentence I have no idea what direction the adaptation would take. Maybe Strepstades would send Phidippides to school to learn to get his documents out of the Cloud, or put them into the cloud, or hack his creditors, or something, and then....
Hew, wait, where’s everyone going?
CZIKOWSKY: When I read that Jack the Ripper was known for being into, as it was described back then, “self-abuse”, I at first thought they meant he was a cutter or something like that. I later understood it meant he was more like, how do you say, like Hans Solo.
PETRI: Wow, you really had to work at that, and I congratulate you. With both hands!
CZIKOWSKY: Tom the Butcher just wrote a book which seems to be about a serious study of the psychological effects of illegal drugs such as LSD. To test the book, is the entire Post staff now trying LSD to see if the book is correct? If you are all on LSD, will we be able to see if affecting your writings or should it look the same?
PETRI: Should look about the same, except
PETRI DISH
PETRI RADISH
PAT RADISH
PAT SAJAK!
RADISH
They’re trying to tell me something
I just know it.
CZIKOWSKY: “I am Mr. Zhtorzykymorgcigt. The “c” is silent.

PETRI: At least one of them’s silent.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, October 7, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: Have you thought of giving a free accordion concert at Union Station?
PETRI: Now that ‘s a tale or modern horror!
I’d do it.
I need to retrain my accordion muscles, though.

GENE WEINGARTEN, Washington Post Columnist, October 7, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: I was typing on my computer when he person on an airplane reclined his seat. This gave me little room to type. The reclining person asked if I would stop tying as it was bothering him.
WEINGARTEN: hahahah!

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, October 14, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: Ever since I returned from Liberia, I haven’t been able to shake this fever. Oh, well, I am no letting that stop me from my tour of the Washington Post offices.
PETRI: Did you say “my tour of the Washington post offices?” That’s what you meant, right?
Capitalization, saving lives since 2011.
CZIKOWSKY: Wait, Agatha Christie wrote a book about Ebola spreading in the Washington Post offices I missed that book.
PETRI: SHHH NO SPOILERS!
CZIKOWSKY: Why is everyone  in D.C. upset because some Giants quashed some Nats? Of course the Giants are going to win out, they are much bigger than itty, bitty bugs What did you all expect?
PETRI: “sighs heavily”
“resumes staring off gloomily into the middle distance”
CZIKOWSKY: Did you read the article about the Seahawks player who complained about the airline food and how the Orioles got better food. Well, maybe the Orioles deserve better food.
PETRI: This makes me wonder in the animal kingdom who eats better, an oriole or a sea hawk I think probably a sea hawk.
CZIKOWSKY: Gene Weingarten keeps stepping on my toes. I have come to realize that Gene Weingarten is God. Have you read his new book and, if so, what is your reaction?
PETRI: I haven’t yet!
I tremble at the prospect of being a god to any dog.
I am always a terrible God. When I played the Sims, my people would never get fed on time, and I’d forget to construct doors so that could get into the bathroom and consequently they’d spend most of their time waving their arms and omitting plaintive cries.
CZIKOWSKY: These are your Sims. We remember you, You didn’t know we were real, did you, and that all was part of some warped experiment? You used to starve and beat us. Don’t think we haven’t forgotten you.
PETRI: I never starved or beat you! I swear! Drowned you, maybe, and set your homes on fire, but never starved or beat.
If Sim Herman Melville is among you, please tell hi hat I’m sorry, but it was not my fault that he picked a day when he was in a bad mood to go through the aging cycle. That’s on him.
CZIKOWSKY: Bananas. There is a very easy test that everyone can take. Try to peel a banana from one side. Now try from the opposite side. (I have to tell myself o stop trying to rip it apart from the middle.) Which is easier? Question resolved. Oh, by the way, trying to open a banana from the middle is NOT easiest.
PETRI: PULL TAB ALL THE WAY! PULL TAB! ITS WHAT SEPARATES US FROM OUR SIMIAN RELATIVES! PULL TAB!
I think the Proper Opening and Eating a Banana is the closest argument to the Proper Toilet Paper Orientation Debate, in terms of strength of testing and irreconcilability of the two parties.
CZIKOWSKY: The worse part of a 113 year old woman getting a Facebook page is her seeing the drunken orgy pictures of her 93 year old daughter.
PETRI: And all the times she inadvertently tags herself as Grandmaster Flash!
CZIKOWSKY: Oxford commas? Heavens, no. only use Cambridge commas.
PETRI: Hey, that reminds me of a joke. Why do Cambridge students hate apostrophes?
Because they’re Cantabridgians! (Cantabrigians).
I said it was a joke, not a good joke.

GENE WEINGARTEN, Washington Post Columnist, October 28, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: I always thought the term Immaculate Conception was when a football bounces off a player’s head and into the arms of another player who then runs the football for a touchdown.
WEINGARTEN: Understood. Man that play was amazing. It bounced straight back.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, November 11, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: As we discuss the war on Christmas, what about the war on Thanksgiving? I believe we focus so much on Christmas that we forget there is a holiday between Halloween and Christmas, and that is Veteran’s Day, and, ahhhh, I think that’s it.
PETRI: Yeah! There’s a lovely live concert on the mall!
Beyond that, nothing.
I remember some holiday where my relatives gather to drink and leave things unsaid, but I think that’s just Christmas.
CZIKOWSKY: I could tell before they announced the vote count hat legalized pot had been approved in D.C. I could smell it in the air.
PETRI: Me, I read tea leaves.
CZIKOWSKY: RE: Ebola. My Italian restaurant has taken bowls of cereal off their morning men. They realized they were losing customers every time the owners would yell out in his thick Italian accent “ who e wants e bowl a cereal.”
PETRI: Wow, you really had to work for that one!

ALECANDRA PETRI, Washington Post Writer, December 2, 2014
CZIKOWSKY:To really confuse people, the next Star Wars movies needs a cameo from William Shatner as Captain Kirk.
PETRI:
CZIKOWSKY: This is the severed hand. Please let me live my retirement in peace. I am tired of fans trying to take me down. Sure, I will give an autograph but for once will a fan hold the paper while I am trying to write?
PETRI: Hi, severed hand! Do you have any comment on hooks?
CZIKOWSKY: Please, those posting from articles onto Twitter, remember the character limit. I just read a tweet linking about someone’s passing. the article reads “I note that (name) has passed away I am glad to have known (name).” What appears on Twitter is “I note that (name) has passed away. I am glad”
PETRI: And now, this chat, too, shall pass away. I’m gla

GENE WEINGARTEN, Washington Post Columnist, December 2, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: So, whe they run the 2014 New York Giants greatest moments rell, it will consist of one catch, and then end. Correct?
WEINGARTER: Correct.
You’ve all seen this, right?
Well, he’s apparently been doing that for some time.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, December 2, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: Does anyone know how to get a chemical smell out of a furry costume? I am...ah...asking for a “friend”.
PETRI: Take that, Hax!
I would say “febreeze” because febreeze will get the smell out of anything (source: four years of working on a drag show during college---hey, those men in hells are becoming a chat theme!--where we used it on everything from just regular clothing to a giant mesh potato suit) but if it’s the kind of chemical that could be dangerous to inhale I do not want you...r friend to be just stuck masking it and I am not sure what to tell your...r friend.
CZIKOWSKY: From the Furry Convetion...There is an Orea McFlurry? I shall look into that. Oh, wait, it is an Oreo McFurry. Never mind.
PETRI: You mean, your furry friend will have to look into that.
Great, now “furry friend” is a phrase with an ambiguous meaning, too.
CZIKOWSKY: You did drag shows?
PETRI: The Hasty Pudding theatricals! They’re musicals, performed as musicals were traditionally performed in the 18-somethings: by guys dressed as men, ladies, and the occasional buffalo, making puns constantly. I wrote a couple of them with my roomate.
CZIKOWSKY: Speaking of furry friends, were they any bears in your drag shows?
PETRI: A potato, an elephant, a big bird, and a unicorn. No bears, to my knowledge.
Oh, wait, you mean...
Mm, still no.
CZIKOWSKY: Has whoever designed the new format tested printing from it? When I print, it loses several lines at the top. Also, printing from this new format uses way more paper. This new format could lead to the deforestation of Earth.
PETRI: I have to say, though, if people printing from the new format led to the deforestation of Earth. I’d be flattered. It’s like when your cat brings you a dead bird. You don’t want it to happen, but, as a newspaper, you’re touched that it was done for you.
CZIKOWSKY: Exactly where was Ronald McDonald on November 22, 1963.
PETRI: I don’t know, but I think it’s time we rewound that Zapruder tape and found out.
(Does anyone else hear that MacGruber theme whenever Zapruder is mentioning, resulting in something like “Zapruder! Feeding complex conspiracies through video analysis! Zapruder!”
CZIKOWSKY: Jolly good, methinks this new spell cheque indeed has British colour to it.
What I originally typed was “Dagnabbit, what is the durn problem this spellcheck thingy?”
PETRI: Indubitably! This is a lorry of another colour.
CZIKOWSKY: Forget Dickinson, did you hear what Megyn Kelly did to Mike Huckabee?
PETRI: How could I f**get?

IMMIGRATION

EUGENE ROBINSON, Washington Post Associate Editor, June 19, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: Our history has been one of current residents fitting allowing more immigrants into our nation. History also yes us that we have grown as a nation by allowing more immigrants. Indeed, more so today in a global economy, I believe the nations that will grown will be the ones that attract an increasing labor supply, not those that they shirt them out. I hope we realize this.
ROBINSON: I hope so, too. Our skill in welcoming immigrants gives this country a huge competitive advantage, and it would be instance to give this up.

EUGENE ROBINSON, Washington Post Associate Editor, June 26, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I believe immigration will be important to our economic progress. In a global economy, the countries that will grow economically will be the ones that attract what has become a worldwide labor supply. Plus, when I read the analysis of some Economists that our Federal budget if held constant over time, will be 100% for debt repayment in 50 years One way to avoid that, state the same economic forecasters, is to add 50 million taxpayers above current population projections. We really should be seeking to add more immigrants every year. History shows us that second generation immigrations tend to be very productive, and that could solve our projected economic crisis. Our economy actually needs more immigrants.
ROBINSON: That's basically right. Immigration is a great strength of our economy, one that other industrialized nations do not enjoy. For one thing, it keeps our population from aging as fast as the rest of the industrialized world.That really boosts our economic prop sects in the long run.

INTELLIGENCE

ROBERT BAER, former Central Intelligence Agency operative, DAYNA BAER, former Central Intelligence operative, and IAN SHAPIRO, Washington Post Features Writer, March 3, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: Does the CIA provide marriage counseling and, if so, do you have a sense how good it is?
ROBERT BAER: When you actually get the nerve to go in and present your problem I found the CIA to be great, bent over backwards to help. They once set my wife up in a job in Brussels when there was a threat and soon posted me nearby. Psychiatrists were on duty. And always available.
CZIKOWSKY: While some organizations discourage internal relationships, might you, or might you not, advise CIA employees to look within the CIA for marriage possibilities?
DAYNA BAER: I think that although it is not said internally...having a relationship with another CIA employee is encouraged. It just makes it easier all around.
ROBERR BAER: If you're going to make a clandestine career in the CIA, it's better to have a CIA spouse, so you can gossip at night over a glass of wine and not be anguished you're spilling a secret.
CZIKOWSKY: I presume there is more stress in marriages involving a CIA covert employee than a non-covert employee. Do you know if this is correct? Does anyone collect data on divore rates among CIA employees and analyze which types of occupations are more vulnerable to divorce?
SHAPIRO: Good question. The CIA does not keep stats on divorce rates. In my article, former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden says he looked into divorce rates there because he had suspected that the agency's clandestine division was having marital problems. He and his wife Jeanie Hayden began trying to think of ways to help employees and their spouses out. Jeanine helped launch a voluntary training program for new spouses that they said helped ease couples into their new lives. The Saturday sessions, called "Living and Managing Covers for Spouses", involved role playing role playing that gave the non-agency spouses tips to prevent them from inadvertently exposing their husband's or wife's occupation. Also, the former Director told me that he pushed agency employees not to keep building up vacation time and not using it---he required them to use their vacation time, if not, they'd lose the extra days. The agency does look out for its employees and their families.
CZIKOWSKY: What general public impression do you find that the public has about life and marriage in the CIA which is incorrect?
DAYNA BAER: Well, it's not all wheel-kicing and car chases and ninjas! There are many adrenaline filled moments but there is also tons of bureaucratic and tedium and boredom. But it's also filled with a lot of camaraderie. And that these people feel really left out.
ROBERT BAER: I'd like to add my two cents. These wars take a terrible toll on our military, State, the CIA, and everyone serving there, and especially on marriages. People don't wait around forever.
CZIKOWSKY: What is your opinion of the movie "Syriana"? Were there things about the movie that you felt left the public with a sales portrayal? I do realize Hollywood is not concerned with reality but with entertainment.
ROBERT BAER: My, it was terribly complicated, wasn't it? The part I liked best was that the Barnes character had been around the block but was still naive. Stupid at times. Just as I was. He saw things not there and missed others. The best line was from the director, "if the character doesn't know what is going on, why should the audience?"

INTERNET

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post StaffWriter, April 25, 2012
CZIKOWSY: "The Interet is not Oz. The Internet is Kansas." I have to tell you, that line is one of the best lines I have heard all year Thank you for writing it.
HESSE: I'm really glad you liked it. Thank you for noticing.

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, July 10, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I heard on the radio that over 60% of tweets are by women. I checked my followers are discovered that indeed two thirds are women, although a couple of them want me to send them money for some photographs of themselves, so maybe those shouldn't count. I also found it interesting that about 5% of my followers are animals, including a snake and a bird. One of my male followers should also be put in the questionable category as it states his ashes are following me. Is it me, or am I still not totally getting this Twitter fad
PETRI: I like Twitter because it allows you to compliment people who have done good things on the Internet, in real time. You read an article or watch a movie and you can dash to your keyboard and say, "Sir, I rally enjoyed that line of dialogue you had in "The Amazing Spiderman!" and your tweet will instantly go to the actually person....'s team of carefully assembled publicists, who will probably ignore it. But it's a good thought.
Also, lots of ink has been spilled on the subject of Twitter's liberating power for women in comedy. I've spilled some myself. But that's an interesting stat!

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, March 28, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: How could anyone not like all those beautiful red box profile photos with the two lines that are appearing on Twitter, Facebook, etc? I like the the various versions, such as the one with two matzos as lines, the one with a dog stating how dogs don’t judge, the one with Bert and Ernie, etc. I wonder how many different ones there are.
HESSE: Kentongo.com has a fascinating blog post about how the red pixels of the red equals sign deteriorate the more times the sign is re-blogged---so you can tell how early it was uploaded on how clear the image is.
CZIKOWSKY: I did not realize the pixels deteriorate that quickly. I have been observing the different shades of red and I just presumed there were from different sources. Who knew they were (warning: very bad pun ahead) 50 shades of red.
HESSE: I am only forgiving you this atrocious pun because I am glad you are reiterating how interesting it is that pixels deteriorate.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Reporter, September 19, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: Did Martin Manley die to keep his memory alive through the web site he created? If he could not have created the web site, would he have still chosen to commit suicide? I don’t have the answers. I just wonder.
HESSE: Interesting question. As in, he didn’t want to die without the knowledge that he would be remembered---and if he didn’t have the verification of being remembered, then he wouldn’t have decided to die?

JENNIFER SENIOR, New York Magazine Contributing Editor, February 20, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: Do you see future movements in how Internet use will change parenting? It seems children are spending greater amount of time on the computers yeet I wonder if this amount has maxed out or not.
SENIOR: This is an excellent question, one that comes up repeatedly when I talk to parents. Let me say this: First of all, one of the reasons children---teens in particular---enjoy their screen time is because it’s some of the only non-scheduled time they’ve got. It was Mimi Ito, an anthropologist at UC Irvine, who first pointed this out to me. So, paradoxically (and I’m reluctant to prescriptive here, because my book certainly isn’t; it’s descriptive), one thing parents might want to consider is creating more free time in the kids’ schedules, just for hem to muck around. (Also, the less tight a leash they put on their kids in the real world letting them see friends in outside enviromnents, etc., I’m guessing the less time they’ll spend on Facebook.)
Here’s another way to look at this question, though, which is to ask how the Internet has changed our approach to parenting. I think there’s a plague of contradictions out there. If you want to find out how to treat a second degree burn, quickly, the Internet’s probably ideal (as is calling 911). But for more personal and idiosyncratic questions, it can be a minefield, and a source of real anguish, I find. Also, on a side note: I find Facebook family photos singularly tyrannizing. Remember all those perfect pictures of kids sitting in pumpkin patches during Halloween? Remember, a number of them were having meltdowns on the car on the way there.

MILITARY

CHRIS CILIZZA, Washington Post Managing Editor, April 25, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: I saw the photograph of Secretary Hagel with the robot. I am wondering what types of situation they expect this to be useful. I notice it has two legs, which is not always the most effective means of transportation. Would be the robot be immobilized if one leg is immobilized?
CILIZZA: The example give was Fukushima, a nuclear incident where a scene is too dangerous for humans to go into.

POLITICS

ALEXANDRA PETRI, ComPost Writer, July 10, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: I figured out how politics works. I was reading in The Fix where over 60% wrongly stated what the Supreme Court decision on health care is and that over 60% do not know who Rob Portman is. Then I realized: this explains American politics. A solid 30% of voters follow issues know who the leaders are, and I bet most have positions on issues and who they support and it will take a lot to get them to change their views. Then there is a solid 60% of voters who barely pay attention and when they do, they can't remember what they heard. These are the people who have no idea who they are going to vote for and probably couldn't tell you the day afterwards who they voted for. These are the people for whole political advertising is meant. That is our democracy.
PETRI: And I'm always slightly reassured that most people don't feel completed to pay attention to everything. That means you feel that life will keep going if your guy loses. In spite of what all those ads keep saying.

BRIAN BAIRD, former Member of Congress, and CHARLES DJOU, former Member of Congress, August 9, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: How much does fund raising affect Congress?
BAIRD: If I could make a single change that would improve our country, it would be campaign finance reform. I would eliminate all personal expenditures and direct contributions. Then, if basically one can achieve a modest amount of petition support, you would receive a fixed amount of money that you could spend on your campaign. A pernicious effect of fund raising and campaign contributions is they are destructive to our nation. They take time for members of Congress who would rather spend time with constituents or studying issues. They take away your independence and they cause people to pander to special interests, either through questionnaires or public statements. It is terribly destructive in politics and frankly on the people who really run for good teases but the political funds side diverts your attention.
DJOU: This is something where I am going to break ranks with my political party.. brian is right The amount of fund raising to get elected and to stay in Congress is ridiculous. If you ask me what I would rather be doing than being in DC dialing for dollars, that is pretty much simple. I would rather be in Hawaii. I'd rather be on the beach in Hawaii. Brian's right. We've got to figure out a way to reduce the level of special influence groups. Campaign finance reform in terms of public financing is one way to do it. I think special interest groups have taken too much influence on Congress because members of Congress have been going to the extremes. They value the sound bite and not problem solving. I do think there was a time in Congress where members of Congress could more easily ignore the special interests because what was valued on the news media and by the American public was finding solutions to the problems of our country. But that is not valued; what is valued is unfortunately running to the extremes. I think that, over the long term, which is required is more Americans to vote, rather than less of 50% of those eligible voting. I have long been a champion of finding ways ti get more people to vote. Brian is in a stet that has a great absentee ballot voting, We have to look at efforts like that that include more voters and less of the extremes.
BAIRD: And I would note that we have a redistricting commission, not perfect by any means that reduces gerrymandering and allows more realistic and rational distribution of where the seats are.

GENE WEINGRTEN, Washington Post Columnist, July 20, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I have a major problem with the trend in politics as being more and more negative. As Chris Cillizza has pointed out, 70 percent of political ads are negative ads It is harder to get good people to run for political office when they realize that their reputations will be destroyed in the advertising media. Soon, the only people who run for office will be those who enjoy having their reputations destroyed...and I think I now understand Anthony Weiner.
WEINGARTEN: I actually agree with you. I don’t know what the solution is because one thing EVERYONE knows in politics is that going neg works. It is absolutely universally understood.

GENE WEINGARTEN, Washington Post Columnist, November 5, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: Did you see the article about the State Senator who stated he would support slavery if that is what his constituents wanted? I believe we should start a petition in his district that he wear his underwear on the outside. What do you think?
WEINGARTER: Somehow I knew he was going to be a Republican.
This is a terribly stupid interpretation of the legislative process. Legislators are partially elected to represent their constituents, but not entirely. They are also elected (in theory) because their constituents trust their character and their wisdom. Sometimes, a legislator needs to do what’s morally right, or what’s best for the country as a whole, even if he knows his constituents would disagree. It’s a complicate calculus. But it’s part of why he or she was elected. Only a child doesn’t see that.

CHRIS CIlLLIZZA, Washington Post Managing Editor, December 6, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: Your observation that a potted plant is winning against Tom Corbett is correct. There are Democratic candidates with single digit name recognition who hold double digit leads over Corbett. I don’t count Corbett out yet because I predict with he will run with the simple message that he did not raise taxes. It he keeps hounding on that issue, he could survive in what may be the most politically conservative of the Northeastern states.
CILLIZZA: Maybe. But it seems to me a major long shot.
His numbers are stunningly bad.

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

CHRIS CILLIZZA, Washington Post Managing Editor, July 27, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: Did you see the poll where more New Yorkers prefer Hillary Clinton over Cumomo for President in 2016?
CILLIZZA: Did. I think she is just more popular and better known. Being Secretary of State is a largely apolitical job...and her popularity rations are through the roof.

CHRIS CILLIZZA, Washington Post Managing Editor, May 9, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: I have what may be an incorrect observation. I saw Elizabeth Warren speak recently. It was the first time I’ve seen her. I thought she was great. She is an excellent speaker who knows how to make strong arguments for her beliefs. Yet I did not feel like she was Presidential candidate material. Why Because she did not work the crowd. SHe came in the back and left through the back. Presidential candidates shake hands. Perhaps there was some reason such as scheduling that prevent her from working the crowd. Yet, successful Presidential candidates schedule to include working the crowd. Is this a useful observation?
CILIZZA: Right, she is more college professor than professional politician. That is, of course, part of the reason people find her so appealing.
And I remember in early 2002, Barack Obama was pretty awkward when interacting with crows. He worked on i and got better----so it is doable.
All that said, I don’t think Warner is running for President.

TERRORISM

PETER BERGEN, CNN National Security Analyst, May 2, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: Do we now believe that al Qaeda is not the collection of independent cells, as sue theorized in the past, but that it does nave more of a central command?
BERGEN: Not any more. Al Qaeda is an organization that is in deep trouble as bin Laden himself realized in the internal memos he wrote to his key lieutenants and that were recovered in the Abbottabad compound.
CZIKOWSKY: Besides the death of bin Laden, to what degree has al Qaeda been dismantled? Are we reducing the effectiveness of al Qaeda?
BERGEN: If al-Qaeda was a stock, I would have started shorting it from about 2009 forward.

SABRINA DE SOUSA, State Department official, and MARK ZAID, attorney for Sabrina De Sousa, July 12, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: What reason is the State Department giving for not granting immunity (to Sabrina de Sousa in her trial in abstentia in Italy), and what are the reasons you believe they have not?
DE SOUSA: This is an excellent question. The US State Department refuses to provide anyone with an answer and the US Congress refuses to investigate the same.
I would really like to know why the President granted immunity for Col. Romano and not me?
The US, under two Presidents, have a very bad precedent in not protecting their officers serving as their representatives overseas.
CZIKOWSKY: If you were in court in Italy, is there anything you would do differently from what is being argued on your case's behalf?
ZAID: That is a very good question. Although the filing of the lawsuit in 2009 (or perhaps simply the publicity surrounding it) persuaded the US Government officials to provide Sabrina with private Italian criminal defense, it unfortunately came too late in the game. The trial was virtually over and it was difficult to present any new arguments. Much of the time had been spent trying to undo the damage on appeal but thus far it had not worked. (In fact, the last appellate review resulted in an increase in Sabrina's jail sentence!) The Italian court will be seized with the case this week and we will see what happens.
The Italian legal system is quite different from the US, which is not to say it is better or worse, just different. "Evidence" that could never have been allowed to be presented in US criminal course, such as heresy, is apparently permitted in Italy. The article sets forth the entirety of the sparse evidence presented against Sabrina in Italy. I will let the readers judge whether they think this is sufficient to prove she had anything to do with this rendition.
CZIKOWSKY: There seems to be a pattern. In the torture cases of Iranian prisoners, those high in the command were not punished and those lower down were sacrificed, in my opinion. Is there a way to show this pattern and make the public realize that we have decision makers making bad decisions?
DE SOUSA: There is indeed a pattern. But that pattern needs changing.
Take two cases for example. The Italians convict a US government diplomat's contractor's military at the cost to the Italian taxpayer. The US response? Silence; degrading comments like the US is not responsive for the actions of some foreign court and refusing to acknowledge that the Rendition ever took place!
In other words...what are the Italians smoking?
The Spaniards, on the other hand initiate an investigation into Bush/Cheney and six top officials including those who wrote laws arguing that torture is legal. (Enhanced interrogation techniques).
US reaction: Swift. The Obama Administration immediately pressured the Spainards to drop the investigation.
In the meanwhile...regarding the Milan Rendition-you the American taxpayer continues to fund a cover-up.

WRITING

GENE WEINGARTEN, Washington Post Columnist, June 26, 2012
CZIKOWSKY: That was great advice to the person who asked about writers block. Write anything, even if you think it is terrible, It gets your mind going until you might hit upon ideas. Please you may find something useful that could be reworked in what you wrote while getting your brain in gear.
WEINGARTEN: Yeah. The real enemy is indecision.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, January 30, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: My topic suggestion is how to get a book published in today’s book market. If only we knew someone who has recently written a book...
HESSE: I have no idea of how to ge a book published. You think I’m joking...but I feel like everything that happened to me was a complete fluke. And, I think that other authors would tell you the same thing. Every experience is completely different, and the only solid piece of advice is “Write the book.”

GENE WEINGARTEN, Washington Post Humor Writer, February 26, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: I had an idea for a similar book (to the one Gene Weingarten announced he is going to write about events on a random date.)Yet I had a specific day for a specici reason. I want to do a history of the date that Ronald Reagan had his operation (July 12, 1985) and Vice President Bush was acting President for part of the day. I wanted to write the definitive history of the Bush Presidency. I actually shopped the idea around but no one bought it. Now, since Bush later became President, a book about his partial day Presidency seems less interesting. Stil, I think someone should write about the FIRST Bush Presidency. If you are willing to change your date, I encourage you to take that this date. If you do not want to change your date, I hope a publisher will contact me.
WEINGARTEN: Noted.
To change the date would be entirely change the idea of the book. Saying just change the date is like saying: Okay, Mr. Capone, you can still write “In Cold Blood”, just make a small change so it is not about a murder in the American heartland but a history of soybean farming in Brazil.
CZIKOWSKY: This is one of the rare times I find myself in disagreement with you. You recommend boycotting the new Superman comics because they are being written by someone who actively opposes gay marriage. Now, I will not be reading the Superman comics because I don’t read them in the first place. I also support gay marriage Yet I will not boycott the comics because of the politics of the person who wrote or drew them. I am one who separates entertainment and the life of the person who created the entertainment. I can enjoy a movie, play, book, piece of art, etc, even knowing the person who created or performed the work married his daughter or murdered someone or spouted racist remarks in public, etc. I may condemn someone’s actions yet I can separate their works from their action. That is just my opinion.
WEINGARTEN: And it’s a good and worthy and interesting opinion, worth discussing. This is a about a movement to boycott the new onlie Superman series because it is written by Orson Swift Card, an anti-gay bigot.
The issue in a nutshell: Is it okay to patronize the work of an artisht whose values you despise?
A few weeks ago I quoted what I consider to be a beautiful poem by Ezra Pound, titled “In a Station of the Metro”. Here it is:
“the apparition of those faces in the crowd,
Petals on a wet, black bough.”
It’s gorgeous and deep, I think. Also, Ezra Pound was a Nazi sympathizer. He made pro-fascist, anti-American radio broadcasts during World War II.
He was also the editor of T.S. Eliot’s “Love Story of J. Alfred Prufrock”, a poem I love and admire almost beyond all reason. “Prufrock” likely never would have been published, and certainly would have been a lesser work, without the impact of Ezra Pound, the Nazi.
So, it’s all complicated no?
Here’s the thing. I have no problem reading and extolling Ezra Pound’s work because he is...long dead. He doesn’t materially benefit from anything I buy or say about him.
Plus, his sins are so remote in time it is as though they never were.
It’s a little different with someone who is a current celebrity, whose fame and pocketbook are so directly affected by decisions made by us all in the marketplace. Would you have gone to see a performance by Michael Richards in the few months after his racial tirade? If you had, could you really argue that you were NOT voting with your money that what he did was forgiven?
So, I think there is a consideration here. The question is, just where should it be applied? I may disapprove of Woody Allen marrying his step-daughter. But that’s a decision made in his life, he is not out there at fund-raisers advocating daughter marriage. He is not an outspoke proponent of incest. Speaking for myself: I’d happaily see a Woody Allen ovie even if I disapproved of his conduct in his personal life. I on’t have to like the artist to enjoy his art.
To me, Orson Card is different. This is not about the private conduct of his life. He’s doing actual damage. He’s giving bigots a role model, and an outspoken one. He’s TELLING people that gays are pervs. He’s on a soapbox. I think that is loathsome, and I think that reading his stuff, buying his stuff, to help make him famous and rich so he can have an ever bigger audience is an endorsement of what he’s doing with that soap  box of his. You’re voting that it’s okay/
So, yup. I know reasonable people might disagree.
Meanwhile, here’s an interesting takeaway on all this: When you “google” “Ezra” the first  name that drops down is “Klein”. The second is “Pound”. That’s having arrived, folks.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, May 16, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: Does the new Dan Brown novel provide a compelling reason why the dying man would leave instructions in code?
HESSE: I don’t know. How do you define compelling? “Because otherwise there would be no reason for the 200 pages of plot.” Does that count as a compelling reason? Then yes.
It was really interesting in reviewing the book, to think about the difference between “good” and “readable/compelling”, and the different values and properties that those two words imply.
I would love examples, in fact, of books/movies that are:
a.) Readable but not very good.
b.) Good but not readable.
c.) Good and readable.

MONICA HESSE, Washington Post Staff Writer, June 6, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: How is this idea for a book? We may have to wait 13 years before it gets printed. Sure, the cicada emerge and die, and leave their husks behind. But this time, they come back as cicada zombies, and they won’t leave....
HESSE: Hang on, let me get my agent on the phone.
CZIKOWSKY: In my opinion, a rape joke is almost never appropriate, even though I recently caught myself telling one. When the sexual assault officer was arrested for sexual assault, I remember commenting “at least he stayed within his field. Then I realized if you make fun of the perpetrator, that may be fine. There is an old joke about a Nazi commander scolding his troope for getting and rape and kill orders confused that should be doubly offensive, yet I remember people defending the joke because it makes fun of Nazis. Anyway, I throw this out there into the mix. In sum: Never make fun of the victim, that is never funny.
HESSE: It’s an age old rule of comedy and satire, isn’t it? It should always be punching up, always thumbing its nose at those in power. It should never be mocking the weaker person. That’s not funny, just mean.

SHELIA BRIDGES, author September 26, 2013
CZIKOWSKY: What is a bald mermaid, and what would you wish to learn from a bald mermaid?
BRIDGES: If you look at mermaids throughout the history of folklore, they are usually described as beautiful, somewhat sexy, sirens of the sea who lure mariners and men to safety or peril. They are often portrayed as complicated and are always shown with long flowing hair. Having always had a fascination with the ocean and all things aquatic, for me it begged the question: Is it still possible to be all of these things as a woman without hair. I believe it is.

MITCHELL GOLD, Design for Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Co-Founder, and BOB WILLIAMS, Design for Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Co-Founder, February 27, 2014
CZIKOWSKY: I wish you both all the best on your book “Who We Are”. So, who are you? Or, more appropriately, what are some of the key points you want us to learn from your book?
GOLD and WILLIAMS: The purpose of our book was to talk about our sense of style and how you can get it, and also talk about how we like to live life...how we run a business and how we give back and are part of every community we touch. It’s a view into our personalities and how we love to eat.