We’ve been blissing out the past couple weekends to podcasts from The Nerdist — thanks, Apple TV! — and somebody mentioned in passing a classic Onion video we somehow missed the first time, but are proud to present on this, the first day of the Zombie Apocalypse 112th Congress.

• 40 years ago: Dad finally relents and lets us read Mad magazine. Worst parenting mistake he ever made.
• 38 years ago: Do you do the Rich Little Nixon or the David Frye Nixon?
• 37 years ago: Fucking Watergate hearings. Bring back the Match Game!

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Boomers start turning 65 this year, meaning a larger portion of America will consist of lawns you are advised to get off of.

Baby Boomers Projected to Drain Medicare [ABC]

We’re not sure whether A.G. “Son of Pinch/Grandson of Punch” Sulzberger has a nickname yet — so let’s go with Ponch — and we can’t even get a precise fix on his age, although the New York Times heir clearly dropped in 1980 or 1981. We’re obsessing over that detail because of what appeared below his byline this week, regarding The Last Picture Developer:

In the last weeks, dozens of visitors and thousands of overnight packages have raced here, transforming this small prairie-bound city not far from the Oklahoma border for a brief time into a center of nostalgia for the days when photographs appeared not in the sterile frame of a computer screen or in a pack of flimsy prints from the local drugstore but in the warm glow of a projector pulling an image from a carousel of vivid slides.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING US?

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We alluded to this yesterday, but we thought we’d trot it out for a closer look:

“Conservationists write me these nasty letters because I support an industry like this,” the former vice presidential candidate said, after taking a chainsaw to an Evergreen Timber tree. “They write me these nasty letters using their pretty little pencils on their pretty little stationery not realizing. Where do you think your pencil and your piece of paper came from, people? It came from a tree that was harvested.”

It all falls apart upon inspection, of course. Who, besides your mother, writes letters these days? And who even owns a pencil, much less writes hatemail with it? (We prefer crayon when addressing screeds to Shrub, but that’s because he has a habit of ignoring printed material.) And if you’re going to write hatemail, you’re probably not going to use the flowery stationery. Unless it has a prominent Recycled symbol at the bottom, just so your target knows you care about the medium of your invective.

But forget about all that, and just admire the economy of Palin’s straw man: With a few quick dashes, she’s created a world, a universe of paranoid fantasy.

And nobody credits Palin for the quality of her work. At least, until a Lesser Wingnut tries to cop her moves, only to discover that only Jordan can fly:

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If we were a Blog of Record, we would feel obligated to post the latest Talibunny Trivia — OMG Sarah Palin actually said “refudiate” on the teevee! And everybody in Alaska hates her! And she lies about environmentalists! — but since our Official Editorial Mandate is “Publish whatever the hell amuses/interests/disgusts/horrifies/baffles you, or short of that, whatever crap you can scrape together on deadline and pretend like you meant it,” we are pleased to bring to your attention the Anchorage Daily News 2011 Alaska Moose Calendar, which happily validates every stereotype we’ve held about Alaskans from the moment we learned at a frightfully young age that our mother grew up in Juneau.

“The other day, as we were musing around a conference table, someone asked a straight forward and seemingly naïve question: why don’t people read print newspapers as much as they once did?”
—INMA

• Inky fingers.
• Parade no longer dependable source of cutting-edge content.
• Publishers censored controversial Family Circus strips one too many times.

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