Here's a preview of what you'll encounter in Oh the Humanity.

One valuable section, "Obliterating Yourself With Alcohol-Responsibly," lends advice on how to use the "confidence tonic" to improve upon your usual stammering and awkward self. Another, "Humor: Harnessing Your Inner Wayans Brother," teaches you how to make jokes that don't suck. And, in "Can I Be Too Curious?" Roeder offers such sage advice as: "1. Avoid asking strangers where they like to be nibbled. 2. Avoid asking them to confirm their gender. 3. Avoid asking them to confirm your gender."

Jewcy: Humor writing is vacuous. Do you think so?

Jason Roeder: Spoken like someone who's never read a single word of a "You Might Be a Redneck" desk calendar.

Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of publishers who will take a chance on a humor book that doesn't seem to have loud novelty value. The humor sections of most bookstores are clogged with books that are really more like extended greeting cards. If you've ever opened a Shoebox Greeting and thought, "Man, I wish that dismal punch line pertaining to how decrepit I am at age 40 could go on for a hundred more pages," I have some fantastic news for you, my friend.

Don't get me wrong. I haven't exactly written Crime and Punishment myself, but I don't think a humor book has to be literary fake vomit, either.

J: What's the funniest thing you've ever written?

JR: Honestly, I'd say my master's project from journalism school. It was slapdash and superficial and awful. It might have been 20 pages. My advisor said that it wasn't even journalism. I said, "Thank God."

My favorite intentionally funny piece is probably my first: "I Enjoy Taunting Insomniacs." Insomnia used to be a problem for me, a huge one. A few years ago, I was into my third day without sleep. I had either begun to hallucinate, or Technicolor amoebas had moved into my apartment. I sat down and typed out 500 words of verbal abuse from the perspective of someone who just enjoyed a full eight hours and decided to brag about it. It's the only piece I've ever written that provoked more than one email with "You Dick" typed into the subject field.

J: As your book tells us, it turns out that empathy helps in making friends. Here's what you have to say about it: "Sometimes we can draw on our life experiences to empathize with someone. For example, a friend of mine recently described how frustrating it was trying to get through to his uncle with Alzheimer's. Although no one in my family has that terrible disease, I remember an unproductive conversation I had with an L.L. Bean customer-service representative who insisted there were no hunter-green chamois pajamas in stock. On another occasion, I was unable to get a waitress's attention immediately. So, although I couldn't relate to the specifics of my friend's situation, I knew his emotional struggle all too well."

JR: We all have more in common with each other than we think, shared emotional, if not factual, histories. When a homeless person raises his Styrofoam cup, I know the only change he really wants is my two cents' worth! So, I tell him how down-and-out I was when my DSL wasn't operational for seven straight hours before it suddenly just started working again for some reason. The way he hurls garbage at me says, "I'm not so alone, after all."

J: The New Yorker published your writing in a Shouts & Murmurs column last fall. That must've been a shitty day in the life of Jason Roeder.

JR: Oh, certainly. You get the acceptance email, and you spend the rest of the day with a trembling shotgun against your chin, wondering if you're man enough to do what has to be done. Actually, a clip in The New Yorker is a good thing, though any time I hear someone say that the stuff in Shouts just isn't that funny or should be funnier, I realize that I'm now probably part of the complaint. And when critics point out how infrequently women appear in Shouts & Murmurs, I recognize that I contribute to the imbalance. The reason I say that is because I have a penis.

J: You recently moved from Boston to New York. Which is better?

JR: First of all, I have no allegiance to the Yankees or Red Sox. I think I'll side with whichever team switches to football first.

It's hard to choose a favorite because I've only been in New York a couple of months. I'm still contending with the transition and feel like a tourist in many ways. I was on a date a couple of weeks ago, and the woman chided me for not detesting "sanitized" Times Square quite as much as I'm apparently supposed to. I guess I see her point. It took me more than an hour to get a hand job at M&M's World.

J: In regards to gay marriage you write, "What could be more transgressive than wanting to participate, as billions of others have, in one of civilization's most ancient institutions?"

JR: Well, I hope in my lifetime that gay marriage will cease to be a social issue, and I think the longer it exists, the tougher it will be to argue that the institution of marriage is being contaminated by it. Then again, the most recent census reported that 74.3 percent of Americans are credulous dildos, so who can say?

I remember how there'd be some important gay-marriage-related vote at the statehouse in Boston, and you'd see a photo of a righteous busybody evidently not needed in the workforce holding up a sign that read something like, "God Made Adam And Eve, Not Adam And Steve." I would've loved to have held up my own sign that said, "God Didn't Make Adam And Eve, Either, Bitch." Why not bring up evolution while you've got a fundamentalist's attention?

J: What's up next after "Oh the Humanity" tops the Times' Bestseller list?

JR: The second stage of the Apocalypse, I would imagine. And possibly a novel.

J: Besides world peace, what's your hope for the future?

JR: I'm not ready for world peace, not until Cyprus apologizes to me. You know what you did, Cyprus.

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Name: Gabe Rotter Age: 29 Occupation: Screenwriter/Novelist

Duck Duck Wally is Gabe Rotter’s new novel about a thirtysomething overweight dork who ghostwrites songs for the world's most famous gangster rapper, Oral B. In the opening scene he accidentally takes a piss on the orange velor jumpsuit-clad leg of a rapper named Funk Deezy. This sets in motion a string of Lebowski-esque events involving blackmail and dog-napping.

Jewcy: Any book whose chapters are designated "Chizapters" promises either great fun or great horribleness. I'd put your novel in the former category. What did you do before you became a comic novelist? I know you went to film school and had been working in television.

Gabe Rotter: Before I wrote DDW I was working as a writer’s assistant on the X-Files and writing pretty crappy screenplays. I wrote about four scripts that were very cool in concept, but very poorly executed. Mostly dark, suspense thrilled type stuff. Unfortunately, none of them were terribly suspenseful or thrilling. But more than that, I wasn’t excited about them. I remember thinking, “Man, if this ever gets made into a movie, is this something I’m going to be proud to tell people that I wrote?” The answer was resounding “No.”

J: As for this being your first novel, so many young novelists want to write the modern-day This Side of Paradise but you seem to realize, quite refreshingly, that we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously.

GR: Wait – are you saying that Duck Duck Wally isn’t the modern-day This Side of Paradise? Interview over. Nah – that’s absolutely correct. My goal was certainly not to write the great American novel or to be the next Fitzgerald. I only wanted to make my friends laugh, my parents proud, and have something I could be proud to put my stamp on.

J: Aside from Larry David, you don’t really see Jews lampooning black culture. There seems to be a general wariness among whites to try and pay back the Def Comedy Jam race comedy in its own coin. And after the Michael Richards scandal, I can’t imagine it’s a popular theme right now… How’d you arrive at the idea?

GR: I guess it all sort of just evolved as I wrote. I had the idea for the character Wally first, before any of the plot details. I was inspired by a P. Diddy lyric. He says, “Don’t worry if I write rhymes, I write checks.” This made me wonder who was penning his rhymes, and I just found it funny and ironic to have a fat, schlubby, loser-ish (yet loveable) white guy who goes through life as essentially a doormat, totally invisible to everyone around him, being a ghostwriter for a hardcore gangsta rapper. The disenfranchised male is always my favorite type of character.

J: Any thoughts of turning DDW into a movie?

GR: Absolutely. I think the one plus I got from my years of writing crappy screenplays was that I definitely have a very cinematic point of view. One of the first things everyone says after reading DDW is always, “This has got to be a movie!” The book is currently being considered by several companies in L.A. for film adaptation. To me, a movie would be totally fun, but anything that happens from this point on is really icing on the cake!

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The Forward’s Bintel bloggers ask if Hitler dug Jewish music. [The Jewish Daily Forward]

REMEMBERING A JEWISH-BORN CATHOLIC CARDINAL THE NEWS: Jean-Marie Lustiger, a Jewish-born convert to Catholicism who became a top Vatican figure, died this week. [Jewish Telegraph Agency] As he lay in a Paris hospice, Cardinal Lustiger reached out to his longtime friend Rabbi Israel Singer. The Jewish-born Catholic official, who served for decades as a conduit between the Vatican and the Jewish community, called Singer, a former senior official of the World Jewish Congress and a major player in the effort to build Catholic-Jewish ties. Singer flew to Paris and the two met several times before Lustiger succumbed to cancer on Sunday. He was 80. "He was completely conscious and aware," said Singer, who called Lustiger by his Hebrew name. "Some of the conversations were 25 years old. They were very moving." THE CHATTER: Speaking of Jews pining for communion, Jewcy writer Aaron Hamburger explores his own love affair with Catholicism. [Jewcy] If a Jew can become a top Vatican figure, then why can’t Bugs Bunny be Jewish? David Kaufmann, of the Forward, asks this pivotal question. [The Jewish Daily Forward]

JEWS MUST ACT LIKE LEO AND AL GORE THE NEWS: Rabbi Steve Gutow, the executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, writes in a JTA op-ed that energy conservation and reducing greenhouse emissions are an obligation Jews have to the world. Gutgow writes, “The Jewish community is right to make Israel's safety and thwarting Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons top priorities, but energy independence and global warming are equally important in the long run and deserving of the same level of attention.” [Jewish Telegraph Agency] THE CHATTER: Jews should not only be concerned with passing on a healthy planet to their children and grandchildren but also the potential impacts of global warming on the nation of Israel: “A national assessment conducted by the Israeli government in 2000 raised the specter of Mediterranean Sea level increases in the narrow coastal strip where 60 percent of Israel’s population lives, changes in rainfall patterns that could disrupt agricultural production and major drops in water supplies.” [The Jewish Week] Could the fight against global warming finally stop the Darfur genocide, which has been called the world’s first “climate-change conflict”? [Canadian Coalition] Or, in the wonderful spirit of bigotry and lunacy, we could all just listen to CNN cable TV and syndicated radio host Glenn Beck. [Grist]

Beck said Gore using "same tactic" in fight against global warming as Hitler did against Jews. [Media Matters]

Al Gore's not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. The goal is globalization. The goal is global carbon tax. The goal is the United Nations running the world. That is the goal. Back in the 1930s, the goal was get rid of all of the Jews and have one global government. You got to have an enemy to fight. And when you have an enemy to fight, then you can unite the entire world behind you, and you seize power. That was Hitler's plan. His enemy: the Jew. Al Gore's enemy, the U.N.'s enemy: global warming.

BAT MITZVAH GIRL DOES THE UNTHINKABLE
THE NEWS: Samantha Resnick donated $100,000 worth of Bat Mitzvah money to the Jewish National Fund to build a new playground in Sapir Park in the Arava Valley of Israel. [The Jerusalem Post] THE CHATTER: JBloggers say she’s a Bat Mitzvah girl who gets it. [Israel Forum] Google’s gone screwy: “crazy russian extreme street climbing video” was one of the links that showed up when I searched “Samantha Resnick.” Check it out. Warning: it’s cool but will almost certainly give you a headache. [Google Video]

ALSO IN JEWISH NEWS: In a groundbreaking move to recognize the experiences of transgender Jews, the Reform movement has published several prayers for sanctifying the sex-change process. [Jewish Telegraph Agency] Isaac Larian, an Iranian Jewish immigrant, set out in 2000 to create an alternative to Barbie. Seven years later, his line of Bratz dolls is a billion-dollar industry with a new motion picture in theaters. [Jewish Telegraph Agency]

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My favorite sexist food blogger Marvo, from The Impulsive Buy, reviews Wendy's Baconator:

Wendy’s Baconator has a name usually reserved for those college students who fully take advantage of the all-you-can-eat breakfast bar in the dormitory cafeteria or the wingmen who takes home the fat chicks.

In this day and age of Ciabatta bread and chipotle peppers, the Baconator’s simplicity is comforting, like freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and milk or nestling my head in between the voluptuous bosom of a woman.

Of course, what’s not comforting about the Baconator is its nutritional values, which makes the Big Mac’s seem small, like a penis after being dunked in the cold water.

Thanks, Marvo. Always looking for an image of a reproductive organ dunked in cold water when I'm sitting down to eat. Marvo referred to the Baconator's nutritional values, so for you health-conscious readers, the Baconator provides a good portion of your daily calories, 830, and probably many days recommended fat intake (51 grams of fat, 22 grams of saturated fat). Eat with at least half a bottle of ketchup and one of them Wendy's Frosties.

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A British airline mechanic who claimed he was sleepwalking when he had sex with a 15-year-old girl has been cleared of rape.

Senior Aircraftsman Kenneth Ecott, 26, wept after a jury took two hours to find he was not responsible for his actions. Mr. Ecott did not deny having sex with the girl, but said he had no memory of it happening. Instead he insisted he had a condition known as sexsomnia in which sufferers carry out indecent acts in their sleep. It was this affliction that made him climb naked on top of the girl at a friend's birthday party sleepover in Poole, Dorset, the Bournemouth Crown Court heard.

The girl screamed when she awoke.  

Ecott's girlfriend even took the stand to support her beau. She said Ecott often fondled her in his sleep. Right, sexsomnia. Or just the normal actions of a pervert rapist who should be behind bars.

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The first nine-tenths of Ignatieff's essay, far from being an honest self-examination, is a collection of vague aphorisms and bong-poster koans. It hums with the comforting murmur of lobotomy.

Rees is particularly unimpressed with Ignatieff’s new professional status—from Harvard academic to Canadian politician—being used to justify his initial support for the Iraq invasion:

Right off the bat, he's saying: "It was right for me to support the Iraq war when I was an academic, because academics live in outer space on Planet Zinfandel, and play with ideas all day. But now, as a politician in a country that opposed the war, I'll admit I screwed up, because politicians must deign to harness the wild mares of whimsy to the ox-cart of cold, calculated reality."

Also in Mideast news:

From the JTA: A poll found that most Israelis favor expelling illegal Sudanese refugees. Egypt, Israel and the Sudanese Israel should think twice about sending Sudanese refugees back to Egypt, where they are treated barbarically, argues a Jerusalem Post editorial. [The Jerusalem Post] Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf pulled out from a council of hundreds of Pakistani and Afghan tribal leaders aimed at reining in militant violence. [The Washington Post]

In her first novel, Dalia Sofer tells of a Jewish family in Tehran during Iran’s Islamic revolution. [The New York Times Book Review] Prime Ministers from Iraq and Turkey both station troops in Iraqi Kurdistan to control the Kurdish rebel group PKK. [Iraq Slogger]

The PKK may be facing tough times ahead, and not only from the Turkish military. In a dramatic turn of events, Kurdistan's Prime Minister Negervan al-Barazani on Tuesday confirmed the presence of a limited number of Turkish troops inside the governate, explaining they are in northern Iraq with the permission of the Kurdish regional authorities. Meanwhile, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki signed a memorandum of understanding with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, agreeing to join with Anakara in combating the Kurdish rebel group that has long enjoyed sanctuary in Kurdistan.

Mahmoud Abbas’ close adviser, Jibril Rajoub, is holding secret talks with the Gazan Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamad. [Debka]

19-year-old Saudi, Ahmed Abdullah al-Shayea, was recruited as a jihadist and volunteered to go to Iraq as a fighter. Once in the Iraqi capital, he refused to be a suicide bomber and instead was coerced by Al Qaeda into driving a fuel truck through central Baghdad. Militants blew up a nearby truck behind in order to ignite Shayea's. Shayea lived to tell the tell from a Saudi rehabilitation center. [MSNBC/Newsweek]

"I realized that all along, I was wrong," Shayea said in an interview with the Associated Press recently at a hotel in Riyadh, where he was taken for a media encounter before being returned to interior ministry custody. "There is no jihad. We are just instruments of death." Now 22, Shayea may yet have a life. The Saudi program holds out the promise of release, with jobs and help in finding a wife, for jihadis who are judged truly repentant. If Shayea qualifies, as he is on course to do, he will probably be the first suicide (or is it "homicide") bomber to survive his own detonation and win his freedom.

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• The best 20 movie endings include "Reservoir Dogs" and "Lost in Translation." [Entertainment Weekly]
• Barry Bonds breaks all-time home run record with #756 [The New York Post] and Queens resident Matt Murphy, 22, caught the ball.
• Here's something you should know about Bonds: He is under investigation for perjury by federal authorities. [NPR]
• "The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US treasuries if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation." [The Daily Telegraph]
• Presidential hopefuls McCain, Obama, Clinton, Edwards and Biden wrote in to the Jerusalem Post regarding how they'd deal with Syria. [The Jerusalem Post]

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