This explains why we see Sarah Palin carrying a baseball bat, but not why she uses it to beat intelligent people over the head with it. More on this story on the 11:00 newscast.

Department of Self-Deprecating Humor: "Not only that, but a class in good sentence structure for me. Spell-checker won't help me avoid redundancy, clumsy syntax and redundancy."

Sticks create an unrealistic standard of beauty for chimps.

Maybe I'm just weird, but I'd think a stick would be much more useful for beating the shit out of somebody than a baby would be.

@4 - Believe me, you start beating a guy with a baby, he'll do whatever you say.

I'll have to try that some time.

There is no free will. Instinct is all. We are as the ants and birds.

Many young female chimps are hoping for the special edition Malibu Stick this Christmas -- one covered in brown mud from Lake Tanzania.

I wonder if those sticks think math is hard.

Waiting for the "Stop with the gender stereotypes!" response.

@10 - The chimpanzee sexual revolution is probably still a few years away.

But I thought Barbie was all about doin' grown-up shit like drivin' convertible 'Vettes and having a trophy boyfriend? Young girls might play baby with dolls the way a chimp coddles stick, but Barbie was a freakin' astronaut ferchrissake.

I was crazy about dolls as a child -- the Barbie kind, not the baby kind. I also had a stick doll. It was literally just a twig, but I packed it around and took it on adventures and cried when I lost it. I still remember my mom telling me I could just find another stick, but I said I had to have THAT stick. I went through plenty of dolls, but I never replaced the stick.

Never wanted kids, though.