Tune out The Collapse of our Country with Easy Readings from The Filthy Encyclopedia!

Intimidating Ski Run Names- The more I’ve skied the more I’ve come to notice that the severity of ski run names moves in unison with their difficulty. The beginner runs, marked by a green circle, have frivolous, gentle names like “Snowy Meadow”, “Care Bear Cascade”, and, “Goose Down Pillows Resting on a Bed of Marshmallow Bliss”. Intermediate runs are still relatively benignly titled, but a noticeable step up from the childlike innocence of the green circles. These trails have names like, “Alpaca Ridge”, “Menthol Breath”, and, “ICE, But All Your Papers Are in Order and The Party is Weak on Immigration”. Now we approach some of the more challenging routes down the mountain: the black diamonds. Single black diamond runs are named, “Frostbitten Arthritic Fingers”, “Fentanyl Blizzard”, and, “Beware the Jewish Yeti!”. The final—and far and away the most deranged and demonic—pathways down the mountain are the double black diamonds. Their names invoke widespread fear and result in many a shat-in neon snowsuit; names such as, “Baphomet’s Butthole”, “AIDS valley”, and “Grim Reaper’s Grundle”. “I’ve had it up to here with all of these intimidating ski run names. I was going to send it down a double black that didn’t look too bad, but then I saw that it was called, ‘In-Laws Extended Stay’ and I was petrified!”

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Psychiatric Hospitals- Cozy, cute rehabilitation centers like the one McMurphy was sent to for being an a-hole in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Imagine an alternate take on that film where the main character isn’t some Irish catholic played by Jack Nicholson, but rather a neurotic Jewish man by the name of Moishe Murphy played by Richard Kind. Instead of using his bravado to mobilize the other basket cases to revolt against Nurse Ratched, Moishe Murphy timidly lets Nurse Ratched know that he doesn’t want to take his medication because it’s making his eczema flare up. He tries to get Chief Bromden to dominate the paint in the pickup basketball game, but Moishe has to walk off within the first 5 minutes of action due to his debilitating asthma. In his grand act of rebellion, Moishe Murphy calmly knocks on Nurse Ratched’s office door and lets her know that he will be getting his lawyer involved if they don’t remove the celery pieces from the tuna salad. Eventually all the other residents start siding with Nurse Ratched because they just can’t take Moishe’s constant whining and complaining. The movie ends with all the residents voluntarily getting lobotomized so they no longer have to consciously endure Moishe’s kvetching.

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Syracuse- A miserable city full of misanthropes that the American Dream never quite reached. Realizing that fellow upstate NY city Buffalo was able to put herself on the map by introducing a beloved, trademark dish—the Buffalo wing—the city council of Syracuse have decided to rally the city’s culinary institutions to develop their own “Syracuse Wings”, with the best recipe taking home a grand prize of $10,000. Popular dive bar Plumber Fred’s was the first entrant, and their recipe consisted of a gray, cement based sauce with minced garlic from a jar and cigarette butts, all smothered in dirty charcoal-colored snow from one of the city’s streets. Italian joint Marco No Takio the Measles Vaccine submitted their own wing sauce comprised of the grease poured from a grease trap at the Wetzel’s Pretzels in the Destiny USA shopping mall, the tears of an Asian-American woman who was harassed and told to “SPEAK ENGLISH!” when ordering a sub from a local sandwich shop, self-tanner stolen from a snooty Syracuse sorority girl from New York City, and oregano. The final entry came from Cal’s Custody Battle Bar, with their dish containing the dust from somebody’s last-gasp scratch-off ticket purchased with their final dollar spritzed over with the eau de porta potty of an Albanian drag racer and corner pharmaceutical salesman.