The origins of the perihelion

Welcome back! Unless you've never been here before, in which case: Why didn't you get here sooner, you self-centered b*****d?! Have you any IDEA how hard it is to come in here on a Monday morning and basically release my policies on everything, from taxes to the amount of powdered sugar acceptable for use on donuts, to the entire world?! I'D LIKE TO SEE YOU DO THAT, YOU KNOW? JUST YOU TRY TELLING EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD MY IDEAS?! HA! NOT SO TOUGH NOW, ARE YOU?!

Please forgive me. I've been up all night eating nothing but wood shavings and Caramilk Easter Eggs, and I've got enough sugar inside me to run the Skittles company for a month, provided they are interested in buying sugar that has passed through the digestive system of a weasel. (Who wouldn't be?)
This is part two of our short series on the English language, which is not spoken at all anymore, except for in fragments on forums, as in "Ya no wat im talkin bout n00b dat games da bom!"

FUN FACT: The United States has been trying to crack this code since 1996. So far the codebreaking project has cost $4.1 billion, and produced the following impressive results:

n00b = a small, gnatlike insect

Later in this blog, we're going to be showing YOU how to write a 500-word essay. But right now let's move on to our standard question-and-answer format:

Q: How do you pronounce the name of Nunavut's capital city?
A: God knows.

Q: Don't you just hate the advertisements you see on some web sites, like this: "Congradulations! You are the 100, 000th visitor to this site, to judge from the amount of spam in my inbox! You deserve a medal! In fact, you deserve a parade! You deserve a scent! Why not?! Donald Trump has one, so it can't be too hard to get! What's the problem? Live life to the fullest! Experience awesomeness! Just call our special toll-free 1-800- number (extension #0109) and listen to "What's New, Pussycat?" by Tom Jones for about 200 hours and then take our nine-hundred-question survey about every little aspect in your life (except for some sexually-oriented stuff that, thanks to federal law, we have had to cross out repeatedly and then erase with a blowtorch), and then give us your name, address, and phone number! You may qualify to WIN! Uh, Bob? What's our big prize this week? Oh, yeah! You could qualify to win this beautiful DINETTE SET, COMPLETE WITH AUTHENTIC FELINE URINE-STAINS! Don't delay, call today! ........................................................... Well? WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! CALL RIGHT NOW, OR OUR LOVELY HIRED GOON, HELGA, WILL ARRIVE AT YOUR DOOR AND DESERT YOU IN A REMOTE FOREST CABIN WITH ALL WINDOWS AND DOORS OPEN AND TEMPERATURES BELOW 20 DEGREES CELCIUS AND PACKS OF VICIOUS WOLVES THAT COULD SNAP YOUR SPINE LIKE A TOOTHPICK AND JUST SEE HOW YOU LIKE NOT HAVING THE DINETTE SET THEN, HUH?! JUST SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT THEN!!!!!! I mean, uh.... Enter, and this could be your LUCKY DAY!"
A: Sorry, I wasn't listening. Would you mind repeating that?

Q: Aren't the people who work at the Herbal Essences company full of themselves?
A: That seems like a rhetorical question. But I'll answer it anyway. The plain and simple answer is: Yes. Whereas the Instructions part of other shampoo labels say things like "Stick this on your hair and wash," the Herbal Essences says, I swear: "Massage your hair under a waterfall and get lost in the sensuous lather. Linger in the lush fragrance and exotic pleasure."

Q: Have you, personally, ever seen someone use the word sensuous in everyday conversation?
A: Once, at a funeral. But that's a story for another day.

Q: Doesn't it bother you that fairy tales and nursery rhymes always seem to include some kind of talking object? It could be a tree or a toad or (God forbid) a talking egg which all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put back together, as if they suddenly saw Humpty Dumpty and said to themselves, "Hey, there's a broken talking egg here! Let's put it back together!" Don't you think that, at least in one case, this is going to have a crippling mental effect on a child as he goes on to believe everything he sees on TV and his parents try and try to make him understand that just because the Brave Little Toaster could talk, it doesn't mean that other appliances in the kitchen can speak, and that no, the toaster is NOT just "playing hard-to-get", OR that some day when he's thirty-seven and he's unemployed and he's fad, bald, and divorced with no kids, he's going to be describing this to a shrink in this sort of manner: "I just keep having this nightmare, Doc. This giant egg keeps falling on me and then I shatter into a million pieces, only to be brought back to life by the kiss of a talking toad princess, whose hair I have to climb to prevent a nice young peasant girl from pricking her finger on a spinning wheel, which will send her into a deep sleep, which I can only disturb if I get her shoe back from the ball, but Prince Charming is keeping it under heavy guard in his castle, and I have to correctly guess that his first name is Rumplestiltskin in order to obtain it, and then he'll follow me out of the castle telling me how life is so unfair and how kids always picked on him at school for having such a stupid name, and then I wake up and want to kill myself because I know that I have to most boring imagination in the world. What do you think it means?" And then the Doctor will ask what his first childhood memory is and the man will say, "nursery rhymes", and Dr. Cowen will sit there for up to fifteen minutes saying "Ah" and "I think we're making a breakthrough" and pretending to write on his notepad whereas he is really just going to be drawing a little picture of a dog until the session is over because he knows that he's going to get paid either way. Isn't this a threat to future genrations? IS THE WORLD LOSING ITS MIND HERE?!
Q: You have given this a lot of thought.

And now... Our FEATURE PRESENTATION...

HOW TO WRITE A STANDARD 500-WORD ESSAY: Imagine, if you will, this scenario: You are a child in grade six with C's in every subject. The teacher's position on this is: "Only 183 day until retirement." The teacher assigns a 500-word essay on whatever subject you choose. But how do you write this 500-word essay? And if you are in grade six, you are obviously not eligible to vote,* so why is this scenario even being covered on a political website? Well, never fear! Uncle Willy will show you the way! Remember, this essay can be about any subject you deem appropriate. Unfortunately, the subject you choose will likely land you in detention, so the easiest way would be to just copy this and present it to your teacher:

What exactly does one mean by use of the word “perihelion”, which, although native to the English language, originated out of ancient Greece, which once had a strong military power, and wasted no time considering the consequences of its actions so they could be more productive waging war on Troy, writing drivel about Gods with names like Hephaestus, God of Telling People What Exactly Pharmacies Mean When Their Logos Feature an R and an X That Blend Into Each Other In an Unsettling Manner, or sleeping with its secretary while its wife was away for a four day spa weekend. The Webster’s New World Dictionary, published in August of 1995 by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Incorporated, and published by arrangement with Macmillan General Reference (A Prentice Hall/Macmillan Company), with twenty-five million copies in print, defines perihelion, on page four hundred thirty-seven (peremptory-periphrasis) as “the point nearest to the sun in the orbit of a planet, comet, or man-made satellite”. But is this really enough of an explanation, defined by Webster’s New World Dictionary on page two hundred and ten (expedient-exposition) as “1 an explaining 2 something that explains; interpretation, meaning, etc.”, to account for a complete and successful analysis, defined by Webster’s New World Dictionary on page twenty-one (analgesic-androgynous) as “1 a breaking up of a whole into its parts to find out their nature, etc. 2 a statement of the results of this 3 PSYCHOANALYSIS 4 Chem. an analysis of compounds or mixtures”, of the word perihelion in exactly (no more, no less than) five hundred words, two hundred sixty-eight to this point? Of course not! So, in order to make things clearer, I will ask Webster’s New World Dictionary to define all the words around it until we finish. “perigee: the point nearest to the earth in the orbit of the moon or of a man-made satellite; peril: 1 exposure to harm or injury 2 something that may cause harm; Pericles: Athenian statesman and general (495-429 BC)” This doesn’t seem to be going fast enough, so I think I’ll just end it here, or, as Pericles, who has been described by Webster’s New World Dictionary as “Athenian statesman and general (495-429 BC)”, so elegantly put a long, long time ago, “screw this.” Good night, everybody!
What exactly does one mean by use of the word “perihelion”, which, although native to the English language, originated out of ancient Greece, which once had a strong military power, and wasted no time considering the consequences of its actions so they could be more productive waging war on Troy, writing drivel about Gods with names like Hephaestus, God of Telling People What Exactly Pharmacies Mean When Their Logos Feature an R and an X That Blend Into Each Other In an Unsettling Manner, or sleeping with its secretary while its wife was away for a four day spa weekend. The Webster’s New World Dictionary, published in August of 1995 by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster

*This does not mean to say you won't do it anyway.