Sex sells everything. Including Jeep replacement parts.

Disclaimer: you cannot order those legs from this catalog.

In fact, this cover doesn't fill me with confidence about anything in this catalog. It's all fake. You can tell from the shadows that the Jeep and the landscape are two separate images that were edited together. Given the weird way the sun is hitting that dog, it must have been cropped in from a third source. And that totally unnecessary lens flare is straight-up a Photoshop filter (Render > Lens Flare > 50-300mm Zoom).

The inside is a little more honest. It's mostly replacement top hardware, electrical wiring, and light bars. Though there is a $29.99 "Cabana Multi Stripe Beach Towel with Jeep® Logo" on page 286 that probably just exists as an excuse to put a model in a bikini. Seems legit to me.

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A man was run over by a deer on April Fool's Day. This is not a joke. I never joke about deer.

The man, one Cary McCook, had just gotten out of his truck and was minding his own business when he was hit by the deer. He wasn't in the middle of a forest, either, but was standing in front of a hotel. Nowhere is safe from the Great Deer Uprising, people!

However, this wasn't a premeditated mugging. It happens that this time, the deer was fleeing man's best friend. Good dog! That means that Mr. McCook wasn't a target as much as he was collateral damage. There's friendly fire in all wars.

First bigfeet joined humanity's opposition to our deer oppressors (as we learned last month), and now, dogs. That's both ends of the animal kingdom. What's next? Ticks?

The tide is turning against you, deer. Give up while you still can.

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Last week, the Athens Banner-Herald ran a news story about deer/vehicle collisions on state roads, including my favorite road, US Highway 29. The story ended with this line:

"In three instances, deputies had to shoot the badly injured deer."

Think about that. Imagine a scenario in which a police officer "had to" shoot a deer. What do you see? Does it look something like this?

It should. Those collisions weren't accidents. They were yet another offensive in deer's eternal war against humanity.

What if, instead of shooting them, the officers had given the "badly injured" deer medical attention and let them go free? How many days do you think would pass before that deer attacked another car? What if next time, it was your wife's car? Or your daughter's? Can you really afford to take that chance?

Deer. They'd do it to you.

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I have been watching, with some amusement, the current wave of clown hysteria that is sweeping the country. The news is overflowing with examples of clown-inspired chaos in Georgia alone. An 11-year-old Athens girl took a knife to school for self-defense in case of a clown outbreak. Troup County had to close schools after kids reported clowns abducting people in unmarked vans. Here in Newnan, a traveling carnival worker was arrested for scaring people in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Things have gotten so out of hand that the White House had to address the matter in a press briefing.

Apparently, waves of "creepy clown" sightings have washed across America off and on for the past 30 years, but they have historically been written off as hoaxes. However, things are changing in the Internet Age. In social media, fear spreads faster than reason.

[EDIT: Check out AtlasObscura.com's interactive map of "creepy clown" news items in America.]

This is all mass insanity. Killer Clowns From Outer Space isn't a real thing. Why are we wasting time clowning around when a much bigger threat is on the loose? No, I'm not talking about Donald Trump. (He's a different kind of clown.) What I am talking about is deer.

The Great Deer Uprising continues unabated. The United States National Park Service says that the deer have amassed armies "more than 10 times greater" than common around the battlefields of Monocacy, Manassas, and Antietam. Once again, the fate of the Union hangs in the balance. Rather than wait for the deer armies to make the next move, the NPS is deploying sharpshooters. The bloodiest battleground in American History is set to run red again.

Once the deer are back in their proper place, then we can worry about clowns or whatever else you've got. In the meantime, humanity has a war to win.

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"Authorities in Arkansas have arrested three men from Georgia in connection with a disturbing video involving a deer being beaten with a textbook."

That's the opening line of a news story Fox 5 Atlanta ran three weeks ago. I, too, find this video disturbing. I hate to see a good book ruined.

As the story goes, four young men — three of whom hailed from Carroll and Douglas counties here in Georgia — hit a deer with their car. Deciding to keep the deer as though they had shot it, they loaded it into their car. That was their first mistake.

Deer are not our friends. Deer are the Enemy. They destroy our crops and suicide bomb our cars. The last thing you want to do to a deer is give it a free ride.

After playing 'possum to get into the car, this duplicitous deer returned to life when its rescuers' backs were turned. It probably would have succeeded in stabbing the humans to death in their own car if not for the quick-thinking action of one of the young men, a native of Villa Rica, Georgia. This hero fought back with the only advantage mankind has over the dastardly deer: knowledge. He repeatedly hit the deer in the face with a college textbook.

At last we learn why textbooks cost so much. Not only are they full of boring trivia, in a pinch, they can also beat off wild animals. If I'd known that while attending college, I might have spent my student loans on books instead of pizza.

Eventually the deer was subdued and left in a ditch on the side of the road. The men, who filmed the encounter and put it on Facebook, are being charged with "wasting wildlife." That's a fancy name for littering.

While these four men should have known better, it's not too late for you to learn a couple of lessons from their misadventure. One, never pick up a hitchhiking deer, even if it's playing dead. And two, carry a textbook with you at all times. I recommend Art Through the Ages, but you can use whatever you like. Deer can't read.

I don't believe you.

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I am not the least bit embarrassed to admit that I went to college with Mack Williams. This is clearly the work of a Georgia boy.

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My mother thinks this blog should be nothing but poodle comics. My friends think it should contain more embarrassing pictures of Walter. I think I should probably talk more about comic books and football. But what does the public want from Wriphe.com?

To settle this argument, let's look at the keywords that drew people to Wriphe.com in the past 12 months. The top five keyword queries, seriously, were

1. gay Batman
2. Rock Hudson
3. men in spandex
4. Batman gay
5. spandex man

Without question the three biggest category searches that brought people from Google to Wriphe.com in 2012 can be summarized as "men in spandex," "are Batman and Robin gay," and, in a distant third place, "is Mio safe to drink?" In fact, if you Google "spandex man," my image from August 15, 2005 comes first in the Google image results.

Really, I don't know if that says more about my blog content or about what people are looking for on the internet. Whatever the case, I'm sure that this post isn't helping.

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I was taking my poodles for a walk in the early evening twilight when I saw something I had never seen before in the woods just off the road. Thinking quickly, I grabbed my cell phone and snapped this amazing picture:

Can you believe my horror at seeing that here, in the city? My heart was racing! After looking into the depth of my soul with its piercing gaze of doom, it disappeared into the woods, and I rushed home to document the incident for the world.

Although, come to look at it, that's not a very good image. My cell phone camera photo is grainy in the low light. Hold on, I'll use my l33t computer skills to digitally enhance the image:

See? How am I supposed to sleep at night knowing that those, those... creatures could be lurking just outside my fence? This was supposed to be a nice neighborhood. Who let those things in here?

If years of watching horror movies have taught me nothing, it's that no one believes anything until you show them a good picture. Anyone can manipulate digital images these days. I'd better take my description of the beast to a professional sketch artist:

That looks like... ah! Deer! The deer are invading my neighborhood! Won't somebody do something! Somebody, please, think of the poodles!

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Grooming a poodle outdoors on an unusually warm January afternoon yesterday, I heard the unmistakable siren's call of an ice cream truck in my neighborhood. That sort of thing isn't surprising in Newnan. I hear ice cream trucks all summer long. Just not in January. Never in January.

What kind of ice cream truck would bother operating in the coldest month of the year, even if there was a surprisingly pleasant break in an otherwise bitter winter? What ice cream truck operator would have such a poor business model, bothering to incur the cost of gas and product for one day in January? Could there be some motivation other than profit? I wonder....

No! Drop that Spider-Man® Bar!

It's just those damn dirty deer and their latest tactic in the Great Deer Uprising of 2010: luring kids into eating delicious frozen snacks all year long! Popsicle® brand Spider-Man® Bars are both delicious and vegetarian. If Newnan's youth become addicted, their families won't need to hunt deer for sustenance anymore. It's so insidiously clever, it just might work!

You may have won this round, deer, but you haven't heard the last of humanity. We'll be back. For more delicious Spider-Man® Bars! Yum!

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Crafty Georgia hunters have already solved the problem of wildlife that has learned to shoot. The best way not to get shot with your own gun by your prey? Don't go near your own gun. The Augusta Chronicle reports:

Someone actually built an Internet-controlled network of Web cameras and shotguns aimed into a food plot on a Georgia Power Co. right-of-way last fall. ... According to a Nov. 19 bulletin from the Georgia Information Sharing & Analysis Center, "three shotguns were set up on a platform and linked to a Web-accessible camera system that allows the guns to be fired via an Internet connection."

Of course, if you're not around your gun, how are you going to stop the wildlife from just taking it and using it against you? While at first thought, this may sound like a fine plan, but it has 2 major drawbacks.

1. All this is really doing is helping wildlife avoid a 5-day waiting period at their local gun shop, and
2. Having guns connected to keyboards really helps hoofed animals bypass trigger guards.

So keep your guns where you can reach them, hunters. You're going to need them.

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