Are you one with Yig, or will be cowering in the corner when the Earth comes under peril this December? Take Yig’s Stalwart quiz and see where you stand in the eyes of the All Father Serpent. Oh, but if you fail badly, you might be devoured.

1. You come across a person who has gotten into a bike accident and is knocked unconscious.
1. Steal their wallet.
2. Call for help and begin first aid.
3. Become a snake.
4. Ingest bath salts and chew off their face.

2. You come upon a small pond where an invasive species of crawdad has moved in and is in the process of destroying the natural wildlife.
1. Feed the crawfish crackers and hotdogs.
2. They are enemies of Yig! Kill as many as you can and eat
   them.
3. Report it to the park service on your iPhone.
4. Ingest bath salts and chew off the crawdad’s insect-like
   faces.

3. Your friend needs to be picked up from the airport.
1. Screw that, the airport’s like an hour away.
2. Show up with some tasty beverages on ice and hit a tavern or a nature spot on the way home.
3. Become a snake.
4. Say sure, but then when his plane arrives accidentally “space it.”

4. Through no fault of your own, you find yourself homeless.
1. Move back in with your ex.
2. Build a house out of pallet wood and ask your ex to move in.
3. Become a snake and curl up anywhere.
4. Couch surf baby!

5. The zombie plague has started. You are about to escape town, when you see two children trapped inside a car surrounded by seven zombies and all you have is a baseball bat.
1. Pretend to not see them and keep sexting your girlfriend.
2. Lure the zombies away and kill them one at a time.
3. Check to see if they eat snakes.
4. Use this distraction to loot a nearby store for canned goods.

6. Your significant other wants you to hold her purse/man purse while she tries on an article of clothing.
1. Toss it on the bench, because that check-out girl is hot and you need to get her number.
2. Hold it, but only at arm’s length as if it’s radioactive.
3. Become a snake and crawl inside.
4. Agree, but only so you can search for loose change.

7. Your friend has fallen on hard times and needs a place to crash.
1. Don’t return his calls and if he comes by pretend you’re not home.
2. Grab a twelver and invite a few people over for a welcome to your sofa party.
3. Tell him he can only stay if he can become a snake.
4. Paying half of your rent and utilities to sleep in the shed sounds fair.

8. You are out camping, you haven’t collected much wood yet, and a storm is approaching.
1. Play The Doors Riders on the Storm and light a doobie.
2. Make sure everyone else in the camp completes answer D, while you dig out a cold one from the cooler.
3. Become a snake.
4. Make a fire, start collecting wood, and get a tarp up.

9. You are on a long road trip when the car breaks down in the middle of a lonely stretch of desert.
1. Blame your friend and complain as loudly as possible.
2. If the car can’t be fixed, gather water and offer to hike back to the nearest town.
3. Become a snake, there should be a few desert rats around.
4. Listen to reruns of ‘car talk’ on the radio until they describe your mechanical problem.

10. You see Jack Primus surrounded by six sickle-wielding Glooms.
1. Help the Glooms kill that pompous prick.
2. Grab a weapon and attack them from behind.
3. Become a snake.
4. Runaway as quickly as possible and report it to The Daily Discord.

Scoring:

For each question answered “A” give yourself 10 rat points. For each question answered “D” give yourself five Rat points.

For each “B” give yourself 10 Yig points, and for each “C” give yourself a bonus one Yig point for just thinking about snakes.

If you have both Yig points and Rat points they cancel each other out. So for instance if you had 80 Yig points but 20 Rat points you would have a Yig score of 60. A person with 70 Rats points and 30 Yig points would have a Rat score of 40.

Rat Point Scale

1-10 – You are Mr./Ms. Anywhere the wind blows…yawn.

11-20 – You aren’t even a good villain.

21-30 – Embrace the dark side.

31-40 – The homeless and small children run from you.

41-50 – Babies cry at the sight of you.

51-60 – Evil organizations are trying to enlist you.

61-70 – You are wondering if you should put the title Overlord before your name.

71-80 – Anti-social personality disorder, why do they call it a disorder, everything’s working according to plan.

81-90 – You’ll return Satan’s call when you get around to it.

91-100 – Cthulhu has just made you the general of his land troops.

Yig Point Scale

1-10 – Oh boy…

11-20 – Someone needs to step up.

21-30 – Go collect some firewood.

31-40 – Okay, I’ll let you water my plants when I go abroad.

41-50 – You make a good babysitter.

51-60 – You want to go camping this weekend?

61-70 – We need to kill some crawdads.

71-80 – We need to kill some Migo.

81-90 – Yig has an assignment for you.

91-100 – Hey Jack, I didn’t see you standing there.

Would you like to learn more about Yig? Click here!

Age related decline is a phenomenon sweeping the nation. You may recognize this subtle foe to establishing and maintaining relationships. For example, “Sure, honey. I can pick that up from the store” quickly turns to…”Umm, why am I going to the store?” Other symptoms include: fumbling around for beers long since consumed, emphatic arguments with inanimate objects—typically of the malfunctioning variety—and accusations of moving items which have remained stationary for years…like, for example, your house.

Similarly, loved ones experiencing this condition may ask several times, “Have you seen my keys?” Not to worry, there is a solution. Mexico is now offering affordable long-term plans available for monthly installments. Flexible tax policies and generous bribes facilitate the placement of your loved one in a “semi-habitable establishment” where infermera Ratchet is always vigilant and people wish their meat contained pink slime filler.

There is a difference between age related decline and Alzheimer’s. The Crank recently summed things up nicely, “If you forget where you left your keys, you’re getting old. If you forget what your keys are for, you have Alzheimer’s.” Never truer words were flash light battery. Sorry, bad Alzheimer’s joke.

I chose this topic because some older people in my life, one in particular, is starting to become really limited…He’s getting dumb…monkey with a gun dumb. So I wanted to know 1.) Is it simply part of the normal aging process?, and 2.) Can I use some of this research material to exploit and demean him?

As most of you are well aware there are some common trends with regards to the aging process—these generally moves through Eric Erikson’s famous stages of development, namely AC/DC to NPR to AARP to RIP. I think that’s all of them.

Many folks start to lose their hair, lose their hearing and lose their brain cells, while each year they pick up those few unwanted pounds…of medical marijuana (going to pot joke omitted by management). Some of the less obvious changes come in the form of hormonal changes. In men this is a more gradual process, hardly recognizable unless you’re my boss, Pierce mid-life-crisis Winslow, who spends most of his time flinking (an unsettling combination of drinking and flirting).

But, for women, hormonal changes can be a potentially more dramatic event called menopause. For those who have not yet experienced this feminine benchmark, it may not be that devastating. Recent studies show how expectations play a key role in the severity of menopause. In fact, some ladies do not seem to have much difficulty with the transition at all. So keep a positive attitude and avoid too much flinking. Of course on the other side of the spectrum…invest in chainmail, gents, and always where a cup.

In general, much of today’s research is more positive about the aging process. We all know some of the negative inevitabilities involved with our life-spans, but much of the news about our level of control over certain aspects is encouraging. Research has recently shown that the elderly can maintain healthy sex lives until their seventies and beyond! It is also believed that, despite age-related brain degeneration, general intelligence remains stable until late in life. This brings a certain accuracy to the term old fuckers.

Whereas many things are forgotten, like names and facts (covered nicely in the latest Crank feature), unconscious memory seems inexplicably intact throughout the life span. So there is considerable good news on the aging front; certain behaviors and dietary choices can actually help delay some of the natural cognitive deterioration associated with aging, as well as age related diseases. I’ve even heard blueberries can have beneficial effects for the aging brain, so that chick who turned into a giant blueberry in Willy Wonka may be fat, but she’s sharp as a tack. Just keep all tacks away from her please.

Individuals can avoid such debilitating diseases such as dementia by simply exercising more later in life. Diet, particularly calcium, can help delay cognitive aspects of aging as well. Still, I’m not sure the Discord crew’s infatuation with Chucky Cheeses is healthy. But there are things you can start doing right now that will decrease your chances of developing some of the most common geriatric brain diseases.

More importantly, I can now—with a keen scholarly accuracy—make fun of my boss for ignoring every important health study. We have always known that healthy lifestyles are important, but current research is stressing how we should maintain those good behaviors into our golden years, aka, long after you’re barred from Chucky Cheeses.

Oh, and sorry Mr. Winslow, flinking is not yet associated with any cognitive benefits whatsoever, but ask your doctor if drunken flirting is right for you.

While waiting for my shrink to digitally write out my meds for the next three months, I asked him a question. What amazed me was the cognizant answer. This new guy is great. He has knowledge and stuff—not like that last one. I spent my $125.00 listening to her bitch for 30 minutes. She had her loser daughter as her assistant. Imagine moving your business and not calling all of your regular clients to inform them. Then berating them when they suggest how a knowledgeable person might be better in that position. Headbob, followed by a “layta beeoch!”

Anyway, back to the current shrink. I asked him a question about memory retention. While I am only 57, I have noticed a steady and almost relentless decline in my memory, particularly names. The comedian Louis Black calls this phenomenon verbal charades. He said whenever he hit 60-ish, his friends got together to shoot the shit, but it eventually always turned into a game of, “Geeh, who was that guy in the movie with, err, whatshername? You know the one with the mole in that movie with the guy from Sopranos? You know.”

Yeah, verbal charades. I am now living the dream.

I wanted to know two things from the psychiatrist: #1 was WTF? And #2, “What can I do about it?” I didn’t think I was getting Alzheimers. I was told if you forget your keys, you’re getting old, but if you forget what keys are for, it’s Big Al time. I just think I’m a bit young for this shit (I say as I use my keys to try to start the microwave).

What the doc said to me makes perfect sense, but first some background info. I was a victim of what I call Galloping ADHD. ADHD stand for Attention Deficit—holy shit, it’s raining!

I was born with a-talkin’ and a-twitchin’ that never stopped. I had the attention span of the average little kitten. I was also, like the kitten, easily distracted by shiny objects. In my case, those shiny objects had four wheels and a V8. I finished High School in three years, with a N.Y.S. Regents diploma and an A average and never did homework. Not once-evah! I did the last period’s homework whilst listening to this periods work. The final period was always study hall, by design.

I was smart, but you had only milliseconds to get your point across to me before I was off to see the wizard. I actually attended college…for three days. It was just like High School, only LONGER. So fucking much for that shit. I eventually found the perfect job for ADHD’ers. Supermarkets. They needed people who could work for union scale, do everything ultra-fast, and do it so it looks like it was done right. Not necessarily done right, just the appearance of correctness would suffice. Oh, and just how many jobs CAN you start simultaneously and never finish? You’re hired!

It wasn’t until I visited a shrink with someone else that I found out I might have ADH— what the hell is that cat up to now?

I was 35, married, and finally given a name for my affliction. I was also given a remedy of sorts. Ritalin. This little pill saved my fat ass, it did.

I was told it would take about three weeks to see any difference. A lot of what I did in my job was repetitive, and this one day was no exception. As I was trying peal some labels off this roll for the cheese—sometimes these labels refused to obey my wishes—I would give the first one three tries and, if it didn’t come off, the whole roll got tossed. I had little patience. 1-2-3-toss, 1-2-3-toss, etc.

Well, this particular day I noticed my coworkers got very silent all of a sudden. As I turned around to see why, I see them all staring at me. My assistant Rob then leans over and with a look of utter astonishment whispers, “Hey Crank, do you see just what the fuck you’re doing?” I look down, and in my hands was a roll of labels.

There I was, like I had all the time on Earth, gently trying to persuade a deviant label off its roll.

After a few tears, I realized one thing: I had never made a decision not based on my ability to work around this friggin’ ADHD. It was another in a line of epiphanies. My life was going to change for the better. The Ritalin, and later Strattera, would bring me somewhere near the realm of “normal.”

Here it is 22 years later and my life did change. I now make a fair living at a computer—something that wasn’t possible for me back in the day. My attention span has improved drastically. There are still things I would not attempt for all the money in the world, but that list grows shorter by the year. Watching golf? There is not enough Ritalin on Earth for me to do that…likewise, sitting in traffic, long phone conversations, or reading complete Zano features. Naah.

But herein lies the return-ass-bite. As I age, the friendly new shrink told me, my short term memory would be the first thing to go, because it’s what I always had trouble with from the onset of my affliction. So I guess verbal charades is here to stay.

I now laugh at myself without having to look in the mirror. People will walk into work and walk over to me and start talking, all the while I’m nodding in agreement and taking notes. When they leave, my coworker leans over to me and asks, “You don’t have a CLUE who they were, do you?”

If I don’t remember their names by the time they’re ready to leave, I usually ask them, “How do you spell your name again?” Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I just know one thing. Getting old sucks ass. But it beats the alternative.

You know, the guy who dresses all in black, big scythe? He was playing chess in that Ingmar what’shisface film?

You know, whatshisname?

Crank