1) Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelenskyy made an impassioned speech to a joint session of Congress to remind American lawmakers that Ukraine’s struggle against Russian aggression is the struggle of every free country in the world. Only 86 of the 213 House Republicans attended the speech. What did the others feel was a better use of their time?
a) rewatching The Man in the High Castle
b) waxing their cars in a blizzard
c) calculating how much distance they could put between themselves and former President Donald Trump before it would hurt their reelection chances (HINT: how many of them have denounced him lately?)
2) At the end of his speech, Zelenskyy was given a standing ovation. During the standing ovation, Republican Representative Matt Gaetz showed Republican Representative Lauren Boebert something on his phone. What was it?
a) a pogrom scene from The Man in the High Castle
b) pics of his junk (the kind 1-800 Got Junk would find too icky to help him with)
c) the Smith and Wesson winter catalogue
3) Republican Representative Andrew Clyde also didn’t stand during the ovation. When Republican Representative Jim Jordan encouraged him to stand, he refused. What kind of a lowlife do you have to be to refuse a gesture that even Jim Jordan knows you should make?
a) a Bill Cosby’s kind of people kind of lowlife
b) a close personal friend of Harvey Weinstein kind of lowlife
c) a party it up with Ghislaine Maxwell kind of lowlife
d) an “I need a shower just contemplating the question” kind of lowlife
4) Blood samples from 14 NASA astronauts who flew in missions between 1998 and 2001 showed mutations in their DNA. All of them. Every single one. So, how come we don’t have the Fantastic Four yet?
a) the astronauts were exposed to cosmic radiation, but they weren’t exposed to the right kind of cosmic radiation (you know: the mutatinganing kind)
b) we do, but the government has been covering up the fact while sending them on covert ops missions to North Korea (they, uhh, may not be as fantastic as advertised…)
c) nature doesn’t have Stan Lee’s imagination
5) If something is “stochastic,” what are we saying about it?
a) it needs more beer
b) it needs more vodka
c) it needs more of a random alcohol that can be analyzed statistically but not precisely predicted
6) Grand Tour host Jeremy Clarkson apologized for a column in which he wrote that he dreamed of a day when a woman would be paraded naked through British towns while crowds chanted “Shame!” and “threw lumps of excrement at her.” To whom was Clarkson referring?
a) Queen Elizabeth II
b) Betty White
c) Meghan Markle
7) Why in the world would Clarkson write such a thing?
a) he was proud of his knowledge of Game of Thrones and wanted to show it off
b) he was dropped on his head when he was a child (so, a few hours before he wrote the piece), and it affected his judgment – you should have seen what he intended to write before the editor talked him out of it!
c) you know what it’s like to be the musician who keeps on playing after the song has ended and the rest of the orchestra are putting their instruments away? Well, now Clarkson does, too
8) According to its own long-standing rules, the Internal Revenue Service must audit the president’s finances while he is in office. No audits were completed for any year Donald Trump was president; in fact, only one was even started. Why?
a) IRS auditors were intimidated by the lasers coming out of his eyes
b) IRS auditors thought Trump made the right move when he fired Herschel Walker on The Apprentice, so they trusted his judgment
c) IRS auditors were too busy looking at the returns of people who couldn’t afford hordes of accountants and lawyers. Honestly, if Congress was serious about them auditing Trump’s tax returns, they should have given the IRS more resources to do it!
9) The IRS had the resources to audit the tax returns of all eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency and the first two years of the presidency of Joe Biden. How well does the organization’s excuse for not auditing Trump hold water?
a) about as well as a pail that has just encountered a hobo with a shotgun
b) about as well as a sieve the size of the CN Tower
c) about as well as the IRS not allowing me to deduct my water bill as a dependent – those people are heartless bastards!
10) Congress has released six years of Trump’s tax returns. What is the worst thing that they reveal?
a) he has all the business acumen of a crackhead porcupine
b) his dad had to bail out Trump’s businesses while he was in office – and his dad had been dead for decades!
c) he paid less in taxes than you did, and you have one one millionth of his self-proclaimed wealth (or one one hundredth of his revealed actual wealth)
11) Bowing to the results of a poll on his leadership, Elon Musk has announced that he has a plan for finding a new CEO for Twitter. What is his plan?
a) mercilessly troll any potential candidates on Twitter, ensuring that nobody will want the job
b) drive the price of the stock of the company lower than any of the answers to question 3), ensuring that nobody will want the job
c) announce that he will be running for president in 2024, ensuring that any candidates qualified to be Twitter CEO will be running for that position instead
12) Reports have suggested that in his quest lust to become Speaker of the House, Republican Kevin McCarthy has agreed to abide by the demand of the House Nutbar Caucus that a resolution signed onto by only five members will result in his removal. How long can he expect to last as Speaker?
a) less time than it takes to skin a safety deposit box
b) what’s shorter than a nanosecond?
c) he thinks he’s going to become speaker? Ha ha ha ha – oh, wait, you’re serious, aren’t you?
13) If I fell in love with you, would you promise to be true and help me understand?
a) I don’t know…I fell in love before, and I don’t want anything more…than just holding hands…
b) sorry, but I can never be true: you see, I suffer from Jacobson-Yakamoto Syndrome, which causes me to lean 15 degrees to the left whenever I think I’m standing straight
c) birds, bees, five tier wedding cake – what’s to understand?
14) What is the proper punishment for people who use the term “pedagogy” instead of the word “teaching?”
a) teaching grade school
b) forcing them to watch endless reruns of Room 222 and Welcome Back Kotter until they are ready to renounce linguistic pretension
c) tenure
15) Fill in the blank: Star Trek: The _______________ Generation.
a) Greatest
b) Z-est
c) Random Text
16) How does one become a “thought leader?”
a) thinking would probably be a good start
b) leading also probably fits into the plan somewhere
c) by gaining a million followers on social media and telling them what to think
17) Do vultures ever get constipated?
a) yes; that’s why they always carry a bottle of mayopectic wherever they go (it also makes for tastier carrion sandwiches)
b) no, they were born with that face
c) not going to use this as an opportunity to make a lawyer joke. Not going to use this as an opportunity to make a lawyer joke. Not going to use this as an opportunity to make a lawyer joke. Not going to – dammit!
18) What is “dynamic pricing?”
a) you thought the cost of concert tickets for popular musicians was an arm and a leg? Promoters can now, at their discretion, add eyeball and spleen fees. Dynamically…
b) why your hydro bills are going through the roof
c) if you have to ask…
19) Toronto Mayor John Tory has suggested he will propose increasing the city’s policing budget. What is his reason for this?
a) $1.1 billion just doesn’t go as far as it used to
b) one of the officers who cleared the homeless out of Trinity-Bellwoods Park broke a nail – obviously, twice as many cops are needed to keep each other safe during such actions
c) crime sells, baby. Crime sells…
20) What is the best way to deal with a state of “permacrisis?”
a) take a “permaValium”
b) telling yourself that a crisis is a period of time in which dramatic change happens, a period with a beginning and an end, so there can be no such thing as a permacrisis – yeah, you just keep telling yourself that…
c) I’m not too worried – I just frost the tips…but, uhh, that’s a whole different can o’ perma, isn’t it?