Usually as we’re going through our “All New Items” tab on Google Reader and come to a batch of HuffPo articles, we scroll down as fast as possible for about 10 seconds while closing our eyes and clutching our loved ones, hoping that afterwards we may have finally broken through the hurling asteroid cluster of things like, “Alec Baldwin: UN Trade Envoy Could Talk Up Long-Term Interest Rates” or “Arianna Huffington: This Is Actually Another Publication’s Article That We’ve Copied Wholesale Onto Our Website So As To Get Top Google News Placement.” But today we came across this one called “Terrance Heath: America’s Mountaintop Moment,” and we’ve been trying to scroll through it for seven hours with no end in sight! It is about HMM GUESS WHO, and it’s generative enough for a fun game! MORE »

Before the dawn of the Internet, people used to waste time the old-fashioned way: by playing solitaire on their shitty Windows 3.1 machines. Then Doom and Quake and The Sims and Spore came along, and time-wasting evolved into a very sophisticated and complicated activity that required thousands of dollars of expensive electronics to perform correctly. Thanks to the dude who threw a shoe at George W. Bush, the Internet has seen a flowering of incredibly simple and mindless games that would have been amazing and cutting-edge in 1996. MORE »

You people are very on top of things, aren’t you? You say, “Ha ha it would be funny to have a game like the EcoDriving USA game, only with throwing shoes at George W. Bush,” and voila, here it is! You win if you get to 10 points before you have a seizure. [blogslut]

POWER LINE THINKS IT CAN MESS WITH US: The loser mcloseralots at Power Line have urged their readers to play the car game constantly: “Here’s the thing: so far, Power Line readers are doing very poorly compared to some other sites. Wonkette, actually, is in the lead, and they’re crowing about it, although they also acknowledge that it may reflect poorly on the employment status of their readers.” Oooh, burn! Power Line is now in second place, with approximately one-seventh as many points as us. Keep an eye out. Nate Silver’s Eco Drivers still fucking suck. [Power Line]

NONE OF YOU PEOPLE DO ACTUAL WORK, DO YOU? Click the little picture here and you will see something remarkable: More than 500 of you nuts are playing this little EcoDriving game widget deal, and you’ve accumulated nearly 15 million points. The closest competition doesn’t even have a half-million points, while losers who read Talking Points Memo and Power Line and, presumably, fivethirtyeight.com (Nate’s EcoDrivers?) actually have scores lower than any human math can represent. MORE »

The McCain website has this fantastic new feature in which you design your own “Joe the Plumber” anger bear sign, about taxes. As the example above demonstrates, however, there is high potential for CHILDISH ABUSE with this thing, and so far we’ve submitted nine different signs that the website *promised* to e-mail to us, and none of them have come. Not even our most benign — dare we say courteous? — submission, “I am Walnuts the fucktard.” We give up. Now you people go ahead and try, and if you get any good ones past the filter demons, please send them our way. [John McCain]

Whew, that was close. Goofy old national joke John “Walnuts!” McCain had threatened to skip tonight’s debate unless he, uh, solved the Financial Crisis. Luckily for us, the 500-year-old clown can’t “keep his word” for more than a few minutes, so of course he’ll be at the debate tonight, unless he changes his mind again, which happens often when you can’t remember what you just said and have no idea what you’re talking about, anyway. So, huzzah, we will get to drink on a Friday night after all! Get out your iPhone or whatever and make a shopping list, because it’s time for Wonkette’s Famous Debate Drinking Game! MORE »

Wonkette linguistics operative “Shih Tzu” sends us a variety of hilarious anagrams for “Sarah Palin” and “Sarah Heath Palin.” (She is named after the dead joker, Heath Ledger, which is offensive.) “Sarah Palin gets you Sharia Plan — Palin is clearly a stealth Muslim radical. Sarah Heath Palin gets you Ha Ha, Alpine Trash, which is kind of mean. It also gets you Ahh Shit, Anal Rape.” Well my stars, this Sarah Palin is no role model for our daughters. [Shih Tzu's Live Journal]

Five million years ago yesterday, the Lord Jesus died for our sins and then came back to say howdy and then went away again. For this very special reason America’s First Lady is hosting an event at the White House, in which the children of the nation roll eggs down a hill and learn about ocean conservation. MORE »

Matt Drudge is super excited about this dumb web-video game. “Online shooting game lets kids target presidential candidates,” he typed on Drudge Report today. Tragically, it’s just “virtual paintball” — an even dumber version of the dumb corporate-retreat diversion in which people play some sort of capture-the-flag game and aim the paint pellets at each others’ nuts. Also, the Rudy Giuliani in this game still has his iconic 9/11 combover. [Presidential Paintball]

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) has punished his poor interns by forcing them to put together a terrible flash video game in which you choose your own “CARRIED INTEREST ADVENTURE.” Private Equity is at risk and only you can save it! There’s a “deep throat” in a parking garage warning about how Nancy Pelosi is attacking our pension funds from her invisible Wonder Woman plane and the villain is Charlie Rangel or something and really it’s too utterly insane to even mock. Go play it!

Carried Interest Adventure [Eric Cantor]