At first, the new E-40 & Too Short video — for a song from Function Music, one of the two collaborative albums the Bay-Area rap legends are set to release next month — reminded me of the Village People.

But then I realized, it’s really more like Grease.

And really, every time I think of the title Function Music, I can’t help but think of “Schoolhouse Rock.”

This is because I’m very, very old. But not as old as E-40 and Too $hort! They are 44 and 46, respectively. Good old rap.

Because of what happened in the first half of the 20th Century, Germany has some laws against Nazi activity. While such laws would never be tolerated in the United States, because of our precious freedoms to be full-time jerks whenever we want, Twitter is now censoring these littlest Nazis within German borders while letting their important tweets appear in the rest of the world. “Never want to withhold content; good to have tools to do it narrowly and transparently,” Twitter’s robot lawyer said. It’s a first for the global service that lets people type silly little things instead of doing work.

Another one of those bummer days. But James Wood talks writing, The Walkmen and New Order play, and nerds have some Jeapardy. It’s all on our events calendar, and you can subscribe to this on iTunes.

I am a member of the Public, and I am interested in staying Healthy during this current Cold and Flu Season, so please, for my Health, and the combined, aggregated, and agglomerated Health of this Great Nation of ours, go wash your hands. Seriously, this is how it all starts, you and your hands, touching everything, and then, eventually, my hands touch the stuff you touched, and then no matter how good I am about not touching myself in Bad Places — which for the purposes of this discussion include, but are not limited to, the eyes, ears, nose, and throat — I wake up with a Cold and/or Flu. Thanks a lot.

Then there are all the things you and your hands touch: doorknobs, and all the stuff in the restroom, and salad bars, and money. Although right now there’s no way I touch enough money for it to be a way that I’m gonna get the Cold and/or Flu, but if you are someone who works in an Industry where they have to touch money all the time, man, maybe you should wear gloves or something, because money must be the dirtiest thing out there to touch, bleagh. I mean, everybody touches money, right? It gets passed around for years and years, right? Think about it, you can look on your money and there’s even a date stamped or printed on it showing you how long that particular piece of money has been passed from human to human until it ended up in your palm for you to pass on to the next victim. That’s got to be the dirtiest thing you touch all day, money, unless your job involves routine exposure to like, garbage or dead animals, or you work in a hospital, but if you do that stuff you take precautions, yes?

It’s like, anybody can walk up to you and hand you a dollar they just had in the most horrible place, germ-wise, and you’d be like “hey, wow, thanks, a dollar!” Or did you ever find some money lying on the sidewalk? Did you leave it there because it’s on the dirty filthy sidewalk, or did you scoop it up and go blow it on a slice of pizza or maybe some Starbucks or something? I mean, if it was a five or a ten, Starbucks-wise. Man, think about it, the people at Starbucks could be touching everybody’s money and then touching the coffee cup you touch, right? And places that have the “Take a Penny/Leave a Penny” cup? How scuzzy is what’s in there, eh? I wonder if anybody worries about this and ends up washing their money? Or putting that hand-sanitizer all over it? I think hand-sanitizer is bad, though, I think it’s like, accelerating the rate of mutation of the Cold and/or Flu and helping turn all that stuff into the Super Cold and Flu bug, you know? Do you clean your money? You can, I guess, since the coins are washable and the paper money is made out of linen or something, so you could totally launder it, in the non-criminal-enterprise sense of the term. Have you rubbed at your eye, ear, nose, or throat at anytime since you started reading this? See, you should go wash your hands.

Along with the hand-washing, I employ a method of Positive Visualization where my Health is concerned, always thinking about what got touched by who, so I can avoid touching it or wash my hands afterwards, and I don’t need you and your Negativity poo-pooing all over my Best Practices with regards to protecting myself from you and the possibility you are a vector of the Cold & Flu. Nothing personal. Go wash your hands.

I’m not obsessive-compulsive about this stuff. I’ve totally eaten food after I dropped it on the floor, you know? I mean, not, like, soup or pudding, or anything extreme, but I take certain calculated-risk chances because I know that I have been endowed with a battery of natural defenses against all the teeny-tiny little microbes or bacteriums or whatever that end up making us, The People, sick with The Cold and/or Flu, and that’s all I care about right now, because it’s the fucking Cold and Flu Season, and there’s no need to upset the Balance of Nature and increase the odds of some Common Cold and/or The Flu finding its way into my Temple, you know?

C’mon, you need to go and wash your hands. It’s not unreasonable to do this, it’s common sense, and besides helping me, it will also help you to avoid the Cold and Flu, but if your prophylaxis was sketchy and it’s too late, you now need to not come to my workplace sick with your sick breath sicking sickly sicknesses all up inside my office breathing-air which, during Cold and Flu season, ends up being sick-building-recycled more than usual because nobody will toughen up and put on a sweater or a warm hat indoors so we can crack a goddamn window just to get some fresh air coming into the building, which, if it isn’t technically a sick building, is basically at this point a building where people come in sick and sniffly and phlegmy-cough on stuff and breathe all over the place and then touch all the surfaces of everything I touch in the whole wide world with their sick-touching hands.

I’m not even saying you have to go and get a flu shot, because I know a lot of people think they are gonna get sick or a sore arm or be injected with Government Mind Control Agents if they get a flu shot for the H1N1 and the H3N2 and the Influenza B and whatever. Fine, don’t get a flu shot, but if you plan on not getting a flu shot, and you plan on walking the Earth among Humans, you better practice some prophylaxis so you don’t spread the filth and pestilence to me, because that is what important about the Cold and/or Flu Season, keeping me healthy, OK? If you are feeling flu-ish, stay the fuck home, man. Get on the couch, watch some of that Maury Povich show, wow, there is like an unlimited supply of couples who cannot agree on who is a baby’s daddy, Jesus H. Christmas in July, why do I think I can get anybody to take prophylactic measures about rhinovirus? I’m doomed.

Previously: The Hyphen-American Dream

Mr. Wrong can converse with you via many medias. He is currently suffering through a rhino-cold.

Legendary maniac Larry King will emcee the third presidential debate. Think about this. Our grand 2012 debate season began with a confused shark-eyed zombie, moved up to a cool and serious lady for the Biden-Ryan thing, and then got all ethical and fact-checky with Candy Crowley. The only possible “big finish” is to bring in a hundred-year-old Vaudeville/CNN star from the Golden Age of Radio for the final debate. Will David Lynch direct? It will be the most historical moment in Larry King’s career since he found something weird in his slipper this morning and also thought he heard the great Walter Matthau speaking through a poinsettia in the solarium …. Oh, wait. Larry King is just hosting the “third party debate”? So no Romney, no Obama? That’s not even worth a blog post, although it’s apparently worth hundreds of actual news articles.

If You Think Other People Are Actually Interested In Your Artistic Take On Life, You’re Probably Crazy: Study

“People in creative professions are treated more often for mental illness than the general population, with a significant connection between writers and schizophrenia.”

★★★★ Two blocks of dazzling, zigzagging brightness went by before first exposure to the full, direct sun. On the sidewalk of 28th Street, groves of potted palms tossed in the wind. The chill blew along the street, toward cut sunflowers, knee-high evergreens, tightly furled banana blossoms. Unprecedented light poured into the office, till everyone with backs to the windows got up and closed the shades, to keep the glare off their screens.

“Physical exams are one of the most common and familiar medical procedures in the world. A sweeping new study suggests they might also be the most worthless. Researchers at the Cochrane Review looked at more than 16 studies with 182,880 patients — all of whom were offered a general check up, but only some of whom who accepted. Those patients were followed between four and 22 years, depending on the study, to look at death rates for each group. The big takeaway: ‘There was no effect on the risk of death, or on the risk of death due to cardiovascular diseases or cancer.’”
 — Oh, I feel so much better about not going to the doctor now. I mean, in the end we all die anyway. Why waste time sitting in your underwear under fluorescent lights waiting for someone to berate you about your drinking and smoking habits?

Photo by Paolo Calvog, via Shutterstock

“Kiernan Shipka helps me make waffles; Mark Bittman of the New York Times yaps vegetarianism; J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr wrote us a theme song!; James Beard Award winner Christina Tosi of Momofuku/Milk Bar shares a pie recipe and Brooks Headley of 4-star-earner Del Posto offers a crostata recipe; There’s a remix of the David Lebovitz donuts vid that is excellent!; there are babies baking; the premiere of BabyCakes Pretzels and Sandwich Bread! There’s just so much… most everything on video!”
 — Awl pal Erin McKenna, proprietor of BabyCakes

, has a new app with a bunch of recipes and other fun stuff. There’s a trailer here, and you can get the app here. Which you should.

by Sarah Sprague

Flipping through the October Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer, I couldn’t help but notice there was a lot of pumpkin going on in there. How much pumpkin? Let’s break it down.

Cover: 3 items, 2 pumpkin (pumpkin bread Mix, pumpkin ice cream)

Page 2: 3 items, 0 pumpkin

Page 3: 3 items, 1 pumpkin (Honey Roasted Pumpkin Ravioli) (*1 Butternut Squash, almost pumpkin)

Page 4: 3 items, 1 pumpkin (Pumpkin Cream Cheese) (* Toscacno Cheese with Cinnamon — pumpkin-esque)

Page 5: 3 items, 0 pumpkin

Page 6: 4 items, 1 pumpkin (Pumpkin Spice Granola) (Listing for plain pancakes, but not pumpkin pancakes? TJ’s has pumpkin pancake mix. Bought some last week.)

Page 7: 4 items, 2 pumpkin (Pumpkin Flavored Greek yogurt, Pumpkin Spice Rooibos Tea)

Page 8: 3 items, 0 pumpkin

Page 9: 4 items, 1 pumpkin (Pumpkin Macaroons)

Page 10: 3 items, 0 pumpkin

Page 11: 4 items, 1 pumpkin (Organic Canned Pumpkin)

Page 12: 4 items, 4 pumpkin (Pumpkin Butter, Pumpkin Soup, Pumpkin Spice Chai, Pumpkin Pancakes & Waffle mix. Phew, there it is.)

Page 13: 2 items, 2 pumpkin (Pumpkin Chocolate Mousse Cake, Pumpkin Pie Spice)

Page 14: 4 items, 1 pumpkin (Pumpkin Cheesecake)

Page 15: 4 items, 0 pumpkin

Page 16: 4 items, 0 pumpkin

Page 17: 3 items, 0 pumpkin

Page 18: 4 items, 1 pumpkin (Pumpkin Spice Cake)

Page 19: 4 items, 0 pumpkin

Page 20: 4 items, 2 pumpkin (Pumpkins-on-a-Stick, Pumpkin Flavored Dog Treats)

Page 21: 4 items, 0 pumpkin

Page 22: 4 items, 1 pumpkin (Pumpkin Ale)

Page 23: 2 items, 2 pumpkin (Pumpkins, Pumpkin Walks Into a Bar cereal bar)

Back Page: 3 items, 1 pumpkin (Pumpkin Spiced Coffee)

Conclusion: Trader Joe’s October Fearless Flyer is 27.710843373494% pumpkin

Sarah Sprague writes about football and food at sarahsprague.com and KissingSuzyKolber. She refuses to buy anything pumpkin flavored before October. Pie-chart pie bought at Trader Joe’s, not listed in flyer. If you enjoy great pie charts (and why wouldn’t you?), you should also visit here.