Yes, this is a metaphor. A metaphor for your hopes and dreams, once bursting with excitement and potential, now just… burst.

And as metaphors go, it’s much more restrained than what we were initially considering. But hey, everybody does the Hindenburg. And we think you’ll agree that Oh the Humanity — of my bracket! is a bit much.

Instead, a simple Pfffffft! seems to capture the sentiment.

So get up, dust yourself off, change your shorts, and let’s defy reason again with The Stinque Losers Braquet!

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Title: “Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives”

Author: Jim B. Tucker

Rank: 33

Blurb: “Readers will meet a boy who describes a previous life on a small island. When Tucker takes him to that island, he finds that some details eerily match the boy’s statements and some do not.”

Review: “First, I’d like to take skeptics head-on: you may scoff at the subject matter but you probably have no real knowledge of it. You — we — are part of a primitive civilization and know next to nothing of the nature of existence. For hundreds of thousands of years man looked at birds in flight and dreamed of flying. There are people alive TODAY who were born before man could even figure THAT out, the relatively simple dynamics of flight. So, don’t be so dismissive of what you don’t understand and assume you ‘know’ what’s possible and impossible. As Plato advised, ‘a wise man knows he knows nothing.'”

Customers Also Bought: “Kennedy’s Last Stand: Eisenhower, UFOs, MJ-12 & JFK’s Assassination”

Footnote: If the people alive today are only 6 percent of the people who ever lived, who gets the open reincarnation slots, and what does everybody else do while they’re queued up?

Return to Life [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]

Title: “Get What’s Yours: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security”

Authors: Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Philip Moeller and Paul Solman

Rank: 1

Blurb: “You’ve paid all your working life for these benefits. Now, get what’s yours.”

Review: “I would rather consult with someone instead of reading this.”

Customers Also Bought: “Being Mortal”

Footnote: While a current House of Cards subplot covers a Democratic Preznident scheming to screw over Americans for political gain — which, granted, is not inconceivable, if you consider Bubba’s welfare “reform” — the predominant narrative of Social Security eventually going “broke” relies on (a) the presumption that anybody will be left in fifty years after global warming fries our crops and swallows our coasts, and (b) pretending that the problem isn’t easily solvable by, y’know, fairly taxing insanely wealthy people. Sooner or later this New Gilded Age shall pass, and Americans will come to their senses.

Get What’s Yours [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]

Yahoo giveth, and Yahoo taketh away. Looking forward to a new season of Community? Great! Stay tuned! Also looking forward to trashtalking your friends on a convenient service that isn’t owned by a billionaire megalomaniac with a taste for undermining democracy on three continents?

Buzzzz!!! We’re sorry. This year’s March Madness is brought to you by Fox.

But life is compromise, and you’re already enjoying Simpsons and Justified, so we strongly doubt your Existential Karmic Balance is going to be disturbed much by a few weeks of crying Loser! Loser! Loser! at online acquaintances whose guessing skills compare poorly to yours.

Which is why we invite you to join the New! Improved! Morally Compromised! Stinque Braquet, hosted as always by Braquet Queen Mellbell.

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Title: “The Mystery of the Shemitah: The 3,000-Year-Old Mystery That Holds the Secret of America’s Future, the World’s Future, and Your Future!”

Author: Jonathan Cahn

Rank: 83

Blurb…

Is it possible that there exists a three-thousand-year-old mystery that…

• Has been determining the course of your life without your knowing it?

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Title: “Green Eggs and Ham”

Author: Dr. Seuss

Rank: 58

Blurb: “Sam keeps asking persistently.”

Review…

A local dealer pressures a buyer into ingesting a strange substance for “free”. During 80% of the book, the protagonist clearly says “No”, but the substance dealer continues to pressure. In the end the protagonist is defeated, ingests the substance, and shows signs of addiction proclaiming outrageous ways in which he’ll take this new substance. There is no evidence that the antagonist will continue to provide free samples of the substance once the main character is addicted.

This is done in rhyme & marketed to children.

Customers Also Bought: A violent picturebook about assaulting fathers.

Footnote: Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of your diet.

Green Eggs and Ham [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]

Title: “Handwriting: Printing, Grades Preschool and Up”

Author: Brighter Child

Rank: 99

Blurb: “Children will have fun learning to print!”

Review: “I expected something different, I guess, but this is just lined paper with a line of capital letters to trace at the top, and half-way down, a line of lower-cased letters to trace of the same letter. It’s not very engaging for my son.”

Customers Also Bought: “Handwriting Without Tears Block Paper”

Footnote: Although we learned to type in junior high — in a classroom filled with girls — we spent most of our adult life as a voracious consumer of pocket notebooks and pens. Until five years ago. When we bought an iPad. We don’t even write checks any more. It’s all online. At what point does handwriting become as quaint as another of our junior-high classes, taking apart and reassembling a lawnmower engine?

Handwriting: Printing [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]