Huffington Post

With the advent of 24-hour news, there's a whole new world of politics to cover. It takes an obsessive attention to detail to keep tabs on all the states at once.

1. Begin by writing down, in order of admission to the union, the fifty U.S. states as of 2010 (before the Zyzzlvarian Annexation took place). You'll probably want to write down the states' abbreviations too.

2. It's a little known fact that three state capitals were named after the guy who played the most famous crew member of the S.S. Minnow, the guy who performed the theme song to the sequel to a 1972 film about rats, and the author of a book with the subtitle "A Decade In Jeopardy!" (This fact is little known because it's not actually true.) Switch the positions of the states with capitals named (supposedly) after people with the same first name.

3. When one state abbreviation is said out loud, it's the opposite of "full." When another is said out loud, it's the opposite of "forbidden." For each state with an abbreviation mentioned above, take the state that comes *before* the abbreviated state on your list. Then switch the positions of those two states.

4. As long as we're doing the state-abbreviations-that-sound-like-opposites thing, find a state abbreviation which, when said out loud is the opposite of "happiness with what you have with no resentment whatsoever of what those around you have." The fourth-largest city in the state with that abbreviation can be formed by rearranging the letters in the abbreviations of two more states. Switch the positions of those two states.

5. Given the Nth state on your list, let M be the sum of the digits in N. Then the "sumstate" of the Nth state on your list is the Mth state on your list. Find the earliest state on your list for which the first letter of the state's abbreviation is the second letter of its sumstate's abbreviation. Then switch the positions of the state and sumstate.

6. "Shame on you, Mr. Bush! Shame on you!" (This is the Huffington Post, after all.) This quote was broadcast live on national television. Switch the positions of the state from which the broadcast emanated with the state which was the primary setting of a work the speaker released fourteen years earlier.

7. Put two state abbreviations together and add an E at the beginning. Then put the same two state abbreviations together in the opposite order and add an L at the end. If you've got the right two states, you've just formed a two word phrase that roughly means, "Stay away from the governor's residence in Milton." Switch the positions of these two states.

8. If you hop on the right commuter rail line from South Station Boston, the last three stops will all include the same city name. A well-known illustrator born in that city is commonly referred to using his first and middle initials and last name, which makes his name start with the abbreviations of two states. Switch the positions of these two states.

9. Insert an exclamation point in the right place within one state name, and you'll get what looks like a pirate saying another state name. Switch the positions of these two states.

10. Words meaning "condition, "declare," "ogle," "peak," "sell," and "verdant" can be arranged to form the nicknames of two states. Switch the positions of those two states.

11. Exactly one NBA team plays its home games neither in Canada nor in any of the states on your list. The singular form of that team's name is a metal band that released a 2007 album, on which the name of the final track contains the names of two other current NBA teams. Switch the positions of the states in which those two teams are based.

12. The first two letters of the state referenced but not used in the second step of these instructions (you thought you weren't going to use that one, didn't you?) is the abbreviation for another state. Switch the positions of these two states.

13. Call a state "vowelless" if its abbreviation contains no vowels (counting Y as a vowel). Switch the positions of the westernmost state which is both vowelless and borders exactly six states and the westernmost state which is both vowelless and borders exactly five states.

14. Two consecutive states on your list have abbreviations which together form the abbreviation of a part of speech. Another two consecutive states have abbreviations which together form a preposition. Take the second state within each of these two pairs, and switch the positions of those two states.

15. Depending on which single letter you insert between the abbreviations of two particular states, the resulting five-letter word will be the plural of something that wakes up a farmer, something that preserves wine, or something that prepares dinner. Switch the positions of these two states.

16. All right, enough movement... time to trim things down. Before you do, though, label the states from 1 to 50 in their current order. These numbers will remain attached to the states from here on, even if the numbers no longer reflect their position. (So, for example, if you were to remove the first state on the list, the state that would then be first would still be labeled #2.)

17. The abbreviations of two states on your list can be combined and anagrammed to form the name of a film in which a well-known literary character changes his last name to Banning. Delete these two states from your list, and also delete the state that provides the climactic setting for a second film, for which the director of the first film earned his first Oscar nomination.

18. Three states meet at a point near a community called Caney Hollow. Delete these three states from your list.

19. Of the states that have a state beverage which is neither water, milk, nor an alcoholic beverage, delete the two states from your list in which that state beverage was made official most recently.

20. Take the name of a type of meat which, if said out loud, sounds like it means "sorta like the Arabic word for peace," if you use language extremely liberally. (See, liberal! Still making that HuffPo theme work. Occasionally.) Change the first letter of that meat to match the last letter, and the result will be a sequence of state abbreviations. Delete each state in the sequence.

21. In one of the Golden Globe acting categories awarded in 2008 (for 2007 performances), one nonwinner's first name was the capital of a state on your list, and another nonwinner played a title character whose first name sounds like the capital of a state on your list. Delete both these states.

22. Delete two states from your list which have abbreviations that are both formed from the same two consecutive letters of the alphabet.

23. There are a number of cities in the US named Ocean City; the two largest are less than 300 miles apart. Delete the states in which these two Ocean Cities are located.

24. You can place the abbreviation of one state on your list inside the abbreviation of another state on your list to form the name of a 1995 film, the soundtrack of which featured a hit single by The Folk Implosion. Delete these two states from your list.

25. You know how they say, "Don't mess with Texas"? Mess with Texas by deleting it from your list.

26. Without changing the order of the states on your list, separate them into disjoint pairs (first and second, third and fourth, and so on). For each pair, if the first state's number is odd, write down the first letter of the second state's abbreviation. If the first state's number is even, write down the second letter of the second state's abbreviation.

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