# 19) Octo-Mom!

At first it seemed like a beautiful, touching story. The kind of story TLC makes into shows because watching happy families full of dozens of people is precious! Mostly because the rest of us are kind of fucked up.

But glory! A lady in California had eight babies! Eight babies! At one time! Neat-o!

But then... le deluge.

The details started coming out, and Nadya Suleman, 33, was revealed to be so bat-shit crazy that she has single-handedly -- or should that be 16-handedly, there are so many hands we can't keep count -- revived "Things That are Crazier Than Bat Shit" from its dormant state.

We had shit to do. We were hibernating. Sorry about that.

Back to our screed.

Not only did the new Queen of Bat Shit already have six kids and no husband, Suleman got knocked up with eight fetuses -- through artificial insemination -- on purpose!

On purpose people! Sweet Jesus on a pogo stick!

Do you see that ghastly stomach? No wonder she had to have it done artificially! Who in their right mind would want to go anywhere near that horror-show of a stomach? Who is their dad? What man is participating in this orgy of inappropriate?

Note: Not willing enough to actually have sex with her. Just willing to jerk off to Maxim in a bathroom and then let the sailors fall where they may.

(New Rule: If you won't fuck her, don't give her your sperm in a cup! Your kids will not be hot!)

But really now, because every bat shit post about comi-tragic pregnancy has to have a tragic side, because we do, after all, have souls around here...

She already had six children, three of whom are disabled. She was already on welfare, and she used that money to pay for her fancy, totally immoral and about-to-have-his-license-revoked fertility doctor. (Fertility? I'll say!)

Here's where we really sniffle. She did it all because she wanted to have a big family because she was lonely and had a dysfunctional childhood. The horror! No one else ever had one of those! Impregnante us each with 12 children now!

But for the love of god. Get 37 cats. Go smoke crack. Take up bingo at Indian casinos. Randomly start killing people in post offices so that you can make friends in prison. Prison is full of ladies desperate for your attention!

Don't start bringing innocent and now possibly disabled children into this world by the 2/3 dozen because you're issue-fied.

The coup de grace in this harrowing tale of bat shit is this: Apparently it was God that told her to stop having children now. (Nope, not before that!)

Was it God or the fact that after baby 14 your uterus fell out?

Now, furious masses of California taxpayers are paying $12,000 a day to keep each of your litter alive while you talk to Anne Curry and get lip implants. Don't even get us started on this lady's face. Inside sources link this breed of bat shit to Brangelina worship, which opens up a whole other can of... Well, you know.

But for the love of all things bat shit, please Nadya, please never, ever have another baby. Ever. We triple dog dare you. Or we're going to come out there and beat your ass. We mean it.

Photo nabbed from TMZ.com.

#18) Tim Gunn

Because he is only the host of a reality TV show about fashion on basic cable and not an international pop star who has teenage Japanese girls peeing in their pants when he walks by, wearing a cape and under an umbrella with his tiny children running alongside in duck masks, Tim Gunn is not famous enough for the Bat Shit Hall of Fame.

He is, nonetheless, crazier than bat shit.

His look in the photo above would lead you to believe that someone just told them they have amputated a leg. Instead, he is looking at someone wearing something tacky.

The Fringe Festival is running in New York City this week, and on the slate is a little number called "Tim Gunn's Podcast (A Reality Chamber Opera)". The composer has taken Tim Gunn's podcast of the episode of "Project Runway" in which the contestants had to design a gown for Miss USA's trip to the Miss Universe pageant and set it to music. A baritone sings the podcast. Its ludicrousity is overwhelming.

While watching "Project Runway" and the dashing and ever-perfectly-coiffed King of Gay you can see how what he's saying makes sense. Saying that a dress looks like a log, if it does, in fact, look like a log, is fair game. However, when you start lamenting in your podcast about a dress that resembles a log, you just sound batshit crazy. What next? A car shaped like a leprechaun? SAT questions on the August 1987 issue of "Tiger Beat"? A New Kids on the Block Reunion Tour? Oh... wait... shit...

Tim's frail sensibilities and ability to be so horrified by pieces of clothing that are going awry makes you wonder how he handles actual crisis situations. Say, car accidents. Cancer. Starbucks being out of Chai.

I will let Tim Gunn's writing - in his "Project Runway" blog - speak for itself, however, as to why he makes our list:

Kelli is out. She chose Daniel as her teammate. The lion's share of the fabric chosen was black. It was punctuated with leopard (Brooke had cautioned Kelli: "Watch the leopard!") and some odd blue fabric on the bustline that looked like a non sequitur. Daniel was assigned the construction of a black pencil skirt with ruching, but, owing to myriad mishaps, it took two-plus attempts to get it right. Kelli worked on a Kelli-esque bustier top that incorporated the leopard. The day-to-evening transition was offered through a shrunken jacket with a 360-degree peplum: It comes off at night. What was impossible to overcome was how cheap and tawdry the outfit looked, especially the bare midriff: Brooke's character would look like a hooker, not a power broker. Kelli, we will sincerely miss you!

Kelli, you suck. I love you! Wha?

Yet, we do admit that Tim Gunn's particular brand of crazy isn't all bad.

"Tim Gunn's Guide to Style" serves the same purpose in society as TLC's "What Not to Wear," which is getting pudgy women from fourth-class cities to stop dressing like Mormon Fundamentalists and/or whores (future posts), and that is a service to society as a whole.

#17) My Beautiful Mommy

Children's books that are supposed to explain why Mommy is so vain she required surgery to make her feel good about herself are crazier than bat shit.

If Mommy can't handle the fact that using her body to create another human being may make it less "taut" or "toned" than it was in the past, Mommy really needs to see a shrink because she either has a drug problem or she harbors delusions that women are supposed to resemble children from the age of 18 until they are about 65.

After 65, it is mostly okay to have a few wrinkles and let your hair go gray/blonde/silver. Because at that point you are officially eligible for social welfare, i.e. Social Security, and you won't die if you've been a stay-at-home mom with no job for 25 to 45 years and your husband trades you in for an actual 18 or 25 or 33 year old.

We understand the fear that would lead Mommy to want to have that tummy tuck. We really do. But that Mommy is afraid she has chosen a man to be Daddy that will turn around and throw her away when her tummy has been stretched from having YOU, well then, maybe Mommy should have gotten rid of Daddy instead of visiting Dr. Tummy Tuck.

But here's what's crazier than bat shit about this. This book was written by a plastic surgeon who willingly operates on Mommy to make her feel pretty again after having You, and he acknowledges that You, new to Earth, are having a reaction to this practice that needs to be controlled. Ameliorated. You think shit's going down, and this book is supposed to convince you that stitches, surgery and bloody bunches of gauze are perfectly fine, all in the name of holding on to your childhood. We mean Mommy's youth...

Which is something you really don't want your parents to do. Being your parents and all. You know. Looking and acting like they could be dating your friends instead of say, parenting You. You want them to be older, wiser, in control and to know what-the-hell-is-going-on. Because this world is bat shit crazy enough without Mommy changing the size of her lips.

Because here's the thing. Someday, You will find this book on your shelf, nestled between "Horton Hears a Who," and "Goodnight, Moon," and "Where the Wild Things Are." And you'll look at your Mommy and think "Wow. My Mother thinks that she needed to have a surgically altered ____ for us to love her and for her to feel good about herself. I always thought she was just straight up beautiful. God damn, that lady is crazier than bat shit."

#16) Japanese Dance Festivals

Japanese Dance Festivals are crazier than bat shit.

I realize that this is only my second post and it is also about the Japanese. We could have been a bit more economical and lumped Japan all into one category but that didn’t happen so you will just have to deal.

Recently I saw two performances of butoh, a uniquely Japanese style of modern dance developed post-war to help re-establish the national identity and hegemony of a defeated Japan. Or so they say. Do some digging and you’ll realize that the first piece of butoh was about the taboo of homosexuality and involved a live chicken.

Butoh is a style of dance that, like everything else Japanese, is not quite entirely unlike dance. Music? Check. Rhythmic movement to that music? Check. Naked Japanese men painted white and beating themselves rapidly on the head while shrieking? Check. Butoh has a lot of slow stress-poses as well, focusing less on what we regular people would call dancing such as rapid footwork or even a little pop-and-lock, and more on deliberate and intricate control of the body as a whole.

Which works well for the skinny Japanese but not so much for the sweaty hairy white men that were also participating, which just goes to show you that the Japanese are special people.



And speaking of Japanese dancers, in this same festival Eiko and Koma performed one of their classic pieces from a few decades ago entitled “Rust.” We here at TTACTBS have been thrilled that SYTYCD has been showcasing excellent and innovative talent from the contemporary dance world and we thought with the introduction of things like krumping and Bollywood to the competition, this season would be ripe for butoh. And what better way introduce the world to Japanese modern movement than to have two masters like Eiko and Koma perform a seminal piece of dance. Here we imagine how this conversation might go:

SYTYCD: Eiko and Koma, we would love for you to perform on our show.
E&K: We shall perform “Rust”, a seminal work in which we dance as if we were rust on a fence.
SYTYCD: Hmmm, rust you say?
E&K: We will not so much as dance as lean against a chain-link fence and move slowly towards each other for twenty minutes.
SYTYCD: Hmmm, with intricate footwork, perhaps?
E&K: Not really, since we will be upside down on our heads the whole time.
SYTYCD: Dressed as rust?
E&K: Naked.
SYTYCD: But the music –
E&K: No.
SYTYCD: No music?
E&K: The creaking of the fence beneath our creeping, naked bodies is out music.
SYTYCD: You’re crazier than bat shit.
E&K: Us?
Mary Murphy: Hot tamale train!

Bat Shit Hall of Fame - Running with the Bulls

The dudes in this photograph running from angry bulls during last week's Festival of San Fermin are crazier than bat shit.

So much crazier than bat shit that we feel its almost as useless to write about this craziness as it is to elaborate on the finer points of Michael Jackson because really, what are we telling you that you don't already know?

Well, the first thing we can share, having actually taken the above photo, is that semi-drunken men gather along the bull-running course at an alarmingly early hour for the 8 a.m. three-minute "oh-shit-fest" that is the actual event.

At around 7 a.m., the street is still littered with empty cups, beer bottles and spilled drinks and various and sundry shady characters, but then cops with berets ferret them away and a very traditional street-cleaning truck takes to the course to pick up the refuse to at least minimize the damage.

By minimize the damage we mean try to make it so that people don't slip on actual trash while they RUN FROM SEVERAL TONS OF ANGRY BULLS who had been sleeping peacefully until some asshole shot a canon near their heads and some dudes in green shirts decided to heard them along the course... Yeah. They make sure the people and bulls don't slip. Much!Except when that one did, throwing the crowd for a loop and eventually head-butting at a tourist with a camera. Thankfully, the bull wound up hitting the wooden beam in front of him instead of the actual tourist, who probably has a much cooler photograph than we do.

(This was captured on Spanish television, which the Spaniards thought incredibly amusing....)

The day we watched the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, some poor Irish sucker almost wound up getting a hoof on the lower spine. In the initial television footage, it looked like he had just become either paraplegic or dead. Later shots showed that his pants had actually been torn down, so what looked like his ass was actually the space just below his balls. Where the several-thousand-pound bull just stepped in a fit of rage.

Right where your spine should have been, dude. Wow. You should be prayin' to Jesus right about now.

If we need to go on about why this is in the Bat Shit Hall of Fame, perhaps you too should attempt the Running of the Bulls, and let us know how it goes.

If you really think about it, with their ubiquitous white clothes and red scarves, the people and city of Pamplona are crazier than bat shit too for hosting this thing, but God bless España.

#15) Political Apologies

Thinking that saying you're sorry for being an outright racist/bigot/sexist/asshole/pervert and thinking that absolves you for said behavior is crazier than bat shit.

However, politicians in the United States, in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and Bill Clinton's mea cupla, seem to think that they can get away with whatever inane stupidity they want, as long as they apologize for it.

Take Kentucky Rep. Geoff Davis who issued a public apology to Senator Barak Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president this year, for calling him a "snake-oil salesman" and "boy." (Ouch. Asshole.)

He apologized! That's almost like he never did that! Great!

But being the narcissistic creatures they are, politicians today have upped the Apolog-ante on each other, and now they have to apologize for and disavow comments made by OTHER PEOPLE. This is our new favorite political smoke and mirrors game.

It's like when a friend's boyfriend back in the day started telling a story about "some n*gg*r" in front of another friend who was black. And she kept trying to apologize for him. But really, she wasn't the racist asshole.

Case in Point:

Recently Gen. Wesley Clark said the following on CBS news: "I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."

Guess what team? It isn't. No more than fighting in Iraq qualifies today's military to up and lead the country tomorrow. Being in the army qualifies you for a lot of things. Being the CEO of America isn't one of them.

Being older than Alaska and Hawaii and having served for many years in the United States Senate? Those things make you a viable presidential candidate. Having legislative and policy experience? Check! Having demonstrated electability to a national office? Check!

McCain, in a very crafty maneuver, responded to Gen. Clark by telling Obama he could apologize. Because that makes sense. Here's how the New York Times broke it down:

Mr. McCain, at a news conference in Harrisburg, Pa., said he thought remarks like General Clark’s were “unnecessary” and that the question of an apology was up to Senator Obama; but he added that the comments seemed to be part of a pattern.

“If that’s the kind of campaign that Senator Obama and his surrogates and supporters want to engage in, I understand that. But it doesn’t reduce the price of a gallon of gas by a penny” or do anything else to help Americans.

He added a moment later, “I know that General Clark’s comment is not an isolated incident. I have no way of knowing what involvement Senator Obama has in that issue.”

In what issue? In pointing out legitimate facts?

If we said something stupid about John McCain or if we were to say, point out that being able to juggle and whistle at the same time didn't qualify anyone to run Microsoft, it would be absolutely crazier than bat shit for Obama to have to say "I am Barak Obama, and I in no way endorse that bat shit."

#14) Chicken-Fried Bacon

Taking strips of cured pork fat and coating them in batter and deep frying them in crazier than bat shit.

Putting those strips of "chicken-friend" bacon into your mouth, chewing and swallowing is a feat on par with the kind of crazy exhibited by the dudes who win the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest.

This Texan has what has to be the artery-cloggingest restaurant in the entire world. It makes Popeye's look like health food. It makes the 45-million calorie Outback Steakhouse Bloomin' Onion look like celery sticks. It is evidence of a sick and depraved society in which anything goes and gluttony reigns supreme. It kind of makes us throw up in our mouths a little bit, and we thought that bacon made everything better. Fail!

Eating this crap is almost as bat shit crazy as smoking, but it doesn't make Hall of Fame because well, its pretty easy to stay away from Texas and if you happen to consume Chicken Fried Bacon on some weird Acid-flashback munchie binge, you can always purge and pretend that didn't happen.

Bat Shit Hall of Fame - Smoking

No matter how you dice it, smoking cigarettes is crazier than bat shit.

Bla bla bla freedom to do what you want with your body. Bla bla bla no link between smoking and cancer because the tobacco company said so. Bla bla bla. Stop being an asshole.

The arguments dished out by smokers about why what they're doing to their lungs isn't anybody else's business are crazy enough to land the entire practice in the Bat Shit Hall of Fame. Second, note, only to Michael Jackson.

Not only does smoking cigarettes give you lung cancer and kill you, it harms those around you with its noxious chemical sprawl. Cigarettes contain 4,000 chemicals, 43 of which are known to cause cancer and 400 of which are considered toxic including nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde (what that frog in biology class was preserved in), ammonia (window cleaner), hydrogen cyanide (obvious), arsenic and DDT.

Delicious! Please exhale on my baby!

Even worse than killing you, smoking can make your life a living hell, like it did for Debi above, the subject of a 1996 California Department of Heath Services anit-smoking campaign.

After smoking three packs of cigarettes a day for 30 years, Debi had her larynx removed. The larynx is a very important organ in your body. Without it, you can't speak.

Debi also had a tracheotomy, meaning her body was so fucked up from 30 years of smoking that doctors had to CUT A HOLE IN HER THROAT so that she could breathe. In the picture above, Debi proves that addiction to nicotine is so strong that she's actually still smoking, exhaling the smoke through the hole in her throat. If that doesn't make you want to put your tongue in her mouth, nothing will!

Smoking also makes you look both old, because it gives you tremendous, cavern-like wrinkles, and stupid. There is a direct correlation between level of education and the likelihood that you're a smoker.

"Smoking prevalence was highest among adults who had earned a General Educational Development diploma (42.3%) and lowest among those with graduate degrees (7.2%)," the Center for Disease Control reports.

Also, you are probably poor. "The socioeconomic status of U.S. adults is inversely related to their likelihood of smoking," the CDC finds.

Since in America its the smart people who tend to be able to get their hands on the money (or a system of meritocracy that rewards itself, but that's a different story), it would make sense that smoking would be less common among the elite.

Smokers are therefore walking advertisements that they're both dumb and poor. Good job guys!

As we put smoking in the Bat Shit Hall of Fame we'd like to make one more point. The age-old Libertarian argument that since its your body, your life, you can do with it what you will, is crazier than bat shit.

Because guess who's going to be paying your Medicare bills when you're dragging an oxygen tank around because you've got Emphysema?

You're welcome.

#13) Super Pii Pii Brothers

Super Pii Pii Brothers is crazier than bat shit.

In Japan, there are two things that go virtually hand in hand: sexual hang-ups and video games. So it is not surprising that the Japanese would combine the two.

Walk onto any subway in Tokyo and you'll see businessmen either reading badly drawn fetish porn disguised as a "graphic novel" or glued to some virtual reality hi-tech video gaming system that is 7 years ahead of the U.S. and causes American fan boys to wet their pants at the mere thought of getting their hands on something their friends don't have because it is only available in the mythical Nippon. Whew.

Now I'm not a woman, so I don't the problems that come along with having to pee sitting down. Maybe all you women out there are secretly jealous that we boys can whip it out whenever we feel like it and just spray away. Maybe it's some sort of Freudian slip in your psycho-sexual development that causes these thoughts, if you even have them. Or maybe the Japanese are just more obsessed with bodily functions due to their hyper-repressed yet hyper-misogynistic culture that I can't even begin to understand, and have never bothered to try.

Honestly, I don't know.

What I do know, is that Strapping a remote control penis to your waist and trying to aim a continuous stream of virtual urine into fast moving toilet boils, all the while pretending that it "promotes good bathroom skills and allows women to experience for the first time the pleasure of urinating while standing" is crazier than bat shit.

#12) Tanning Beds

Paying for the only thing in the world that is free to all human beings everywhere and will be for approximately 3 billion more years is crazier than bat shit.

Sunlight does not cost money.

We'd just like to point that out first and foremost.

In fact, there are myriad ways that people across the globe have created to actively avoid sunlight and getting tan. However, white people seem to think that being brown is awesome, as long as you weren't born that way.

If you were, you realize the bat shit crazy of white people who then take it a step further and find artificial means of taking nature's great tanning bed in the sky and boxing it and packaging it and sticking a price tag on it.

It simultaneously proves that people will pay for anything while violating the basic economic principal that the cost of something is inversely proportional to its value. If something is rare, it is expensive. If something comes from the sky for roughly half of every single day, paying for it makes you crazier than bat shit.

That there exist "Tanning Salons" where people will exchange cash money for a few minutes laying in what basically looks like one of the creepy Genesis pods from Star Trek III is almost too much to wrap our tiny minds around.

Add to that the skin cancer factor, the premature aging factor and the fact that these people who go tanning are probably going to be the very same ones who use Botox to get rid of the wrinkles they've given themselves and you're nearing Hall of Fame status.