Caption this! (Arab League special edition)
Moammar Gadhafi, who apparently has taken pleather to new, exciting places, gets all street with the amazingly birdlike Syrian President Bashar Assad...
|
|
|
|
commented on Real 101 rainbow
Chris Weinkopf commented on They're coming back for Kucinich!
Carl W. Goss commented on Corruption at the Polls -- Hillary STOLE New Hampshire!!!
jonathan dobrer commented on Snow in Baghdad!
Rob A. commented on Where's the mistletoe?
commented on Producers Are People Too
Ken commented on It's the war on Thanksgiving that's really alarming
Michele commented on Rage against the machine
Dante commented on Dropping F-bombs at work is therapeutic
Moammar Gadhafi, who apparently has taken pleather to new, exciting places, gets all street with the amazingly birdlike Syrian President Bashar Assad...
A little Monday morning fluff, courtesy of GQ's "The Whipped List." Their No. 1 most emasculated man? Mr. Madonna, who used to be the man's man director of "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and then got, er, "Swept Away." Plus, as they note, Guy Ritchie is now making a documentary to go with Madonna's Kabbalah fad.
Other funny bits on the list include Rupert Murdoch's arm candy Wendi Dang, who "once asked him in front of colleagues, 'Are you going deaf, old man?'" And on the political front, GQ picks John Edwards:
"After Ann Coulter referred to the former senator and failed presidential candidate as a 'fa---t,' Edwards did the stand-up thing: He let his wife, Elizabeth, call in to Hardball and tell the right-wing harpy off but good. John, meanwhile, looked like a man holding his wife’s purse."
Ah, but in the name of emasculated bipartisanship, Rudy Giuliani also comes in on the list:
"If the former New York mayor is serious about ever running for office again, he should think twice about paying his wife, Judy, a six-figure paycheck for 'writing' speeches she’ll later interrupt with her phone calls."
Yikes. Just reading that quote makes me wince. It comes from lawyer-to-the-cameras Gloria Allred, who today will be -- you guessed it -- holding a press conference denouncing TSA for forcing a passenger at LAX to remove her nipple rings before boarding a flight. According to Allred, this is some sort of terrible violation of civil rights, although TSA defenders say that, depending on the nipple ring in question, this could just be consistent with the practice of barring passengers from bringing sharp objects, chains, etc. onto planes.
Either way, sounds painful to me. And yes, a little overboard. But seeing that TSA won't even let you bring a nail clipper aboard an airplane, we shouldn't be surprised. If national security can't handle mile-high nose-hair trimming, it probably can't handle Axl Rose nipple rings, either.
Then again, maybe TSA should make an exception here. Taking nipple rings off the banned list could inspire countless al-Qaida to take various sharp objects to their own nipples -- an excruciating fate they richly deserve.
All ... I ... can ... say ... is ... WOW.
Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow!!!
And may I add -- WOW!
But you need to go see it for yourself.
Then when you're all done, go read this. (H/T Rod Dreher.)
That's George with President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Liberia, just one step away from a full striptease...
As General Patton said of war, I say of elections, “G-d help me, I love it!” The West Virginia Caucus that Huckabee won and Romney cried foul over was, indeed, a little less straightforward than it at first appeared. Romney dissed McCain for throwing support to Huckabee in order to deny Romney his rightful win. Of course, no one has a right to a vote or a win. We still use actual voters (or, I guess, caucusers?!). However, it now seems that McCain’s folk influenced Huckabee’s folk into getting the support of Ron Paul’s folk in return for letting three Ron Paul fans be delegates. In essence, they traded votes to another team for future draft choices. Wow! This is somewhere between Machiavellian and elegant.
Wanting to seem like ordinary folk, Mitt Romney stopped into a KFC while on the campaign trail in Florida today and, as you see, ordered a combo (white meat, according to the AP, which is no surprise). Video caught Romney proceeding to peel the skin and precious breading off the fried chicken (if you want healthy, um, order the Tender Roast), then eat it with a knife and fork.
All I can say is he'd better steer clear of Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles campaigning in L.A., or he's bound to get jumped by a bunch of purists.
The AP's tongue-in-cheek lede: "Mitt Romney's body is a temple..."
From the AP:
"STEPHENVILLE, Texas - In this farming community where nightfall usually brings clear, starry skies, residents are abuzz over reported sightings of what many believe is a UFO.Several dozen people — including a pilot, county constable and business owners — insist they have seen a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it."
Hmm... just as Kucinich got his recount in New Hampshire. Coincidence, you say? And just as he could use a few extra loyal campaign workers to overtake HillObama. Coincidence?
Maybe his extraterrestial buddies are helping him round up the evangelical vote:
"'People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times,' said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot who said the object he saw last week was a mile long and half a mile wide. 'It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts.'"
For the first time since anyone there can remember, according to AccuWeather! Which makes for a perfect Feel-Good Photo Friday...
Thank goodness for Dennis Kucinich!
The Ohio congressman who is, according to some reports, running for president, has blown the whistle on what might have been major fraud in the New Hampshire primary! Kucinich is demanding a hand recount throughout the state, citing "serious and credible reports, allegations and rumors” of voting irregularities, as well as the fishy fact that Hillary Clinton won even though the polls clearly said she would lose!
Gotta love Dennis -- at least he's consistent.
Unlike other Democratic nutballs, who allege voter fraud and demand recounts whenever a Republican stages an upset, Dennis has the decency to apply the same ridiculous standard to his own party.
Most of the Democrats who screamed bloody murder after the 2000 and 2004 general elections -- on the basis of "credible reports, allegations and rumors” (i.e., some drunk says he wasn't allowed to vote because he couldn't remember how to spell his last name) and erroneous polling -- have been remarkably quiet since Hillary's surprise win this week. But not Dennis. He knows the real truth -- about Diebold's machinations, about how cops in Portsmouth weren't letting hipsters vote, about how every election official in the state is really on the DLC pay roll ...
And you know what? I respect him for it.
There's something refreshing about an honest-to-goodness paranoiac -- as opposed to a dishonest-to-badness cynic who exploits paranoia to undermine the integrity of elections for nakedly partisan reasons.
You go, Dennis!
Literally, actually. Yesterday I had lunch with Pakistani Consul General Syed Ibne Abbas. On the way out of the house, I grabbed a pair of Anne Klein python sandals -- with thick rubber bottoms and a patent footrest -- that I'd bought about five years ago at the Saks outlet yet hadn't worn in about three years. As I sat in Abbas' office, chatting about all the cool issues of the day, the consul general suddenly picks up his phone and calls in his secretary. She rushes in; he points to a small pile of blackish debris on his pristine beige carpet. With horror, I looked down at my shoes -- both soles were cracked and crumbling. With additional horror, I looked over my shoulder to see I'd left a trail of shoe bits through his corner office, down the hallway, all the way out the door of the consulate.
Then, as we walked out of the Westwood building toward a restaurant for lunch, my soles completely came off. Who knew rubber disintegrated? Especially on Saks-quality shoes? I know now... (Many thanks to everyone at the consulate for being so understanding in my sole-shattering moments!)
I have no idea how I get on these mailing lists, but somehow, I do, and so I am the proud recipient of the invitation to the right, which I now share with all of you.
Now, be honest: Is there really a better way you can imagine ringing in the new year then to take in some East German punk rock and raise some dough for Dennis Kucinich? Does life get any better than this?
And to think, at midnight, when all your lame friends will be kissing their sweehearts, singing "Auld Lang Syne," or watching the Big Ball drop, attendees at this soiree will get to participate in a *LIVE* video conference with Dennis and Elizbeth K! Just imagine: You can ask the Kuciniches anything you want -- about WTC #7, hemp farming, Roswell -- you name it!
As far as I can tell, there's only one downer: the "scrumptious vegetarian buffet." You'd think for $108 you'd at least get some real food.
Oh well, rocking the vote has its costs!
I admit, Boris crossed the Hamsters Guild picket lines to work on this short -- which actually had a purpose, as my video Christmas card (can you think of a better way to impress State Department sources??). And the little fluffball did it in one take, with only one piece of peanut from the food service truck. Of course, by the end of rolling around on furry surfaces he was so full of static electricity that if I'd sent him down to the Chevron to pump gas he most likely would have spontaneously combusted.
Surely no one other than the loved ones of Shirley Lee Williams,72, is more upset how her body was overlooked in a crashed car in Tarzana on Saturday than the emergency responders who missed finding her crumbled form under the passenger-side airbag. When family members discovered she was missing, authorities checked the car that had been towed to a yard where they found her body.
It's a horrifying story, made only less so by coroner's statement that she probably died minutes after the crash. And many people will be expecting the authorities to do something so that this never happens again. But before people go hogwild condemning the police or EMTs or coming up with laws requiring that another form be filled out for each accident, we ought to consider that sometimes mistakes are just that. In my early days as a reporter, I've been to too many accident scenes to count. And the men and women who respond do everything they can to help in chaotic, gruesome and often dangerous situations. This was a freak accident that is getting so much attention precisely because it is so freakish and rare.
Indeed, the most suspicious thing is why Williams' son, the driver who crashed the car into the side of a building, didn't tell authorities his elderly mother was in the car. You'd think he might have been concerned enough to ask if she was alright.
But be sure that from now on, rescuers are going to be looking under every airbag for possible victims. Maybe even in trunks, under seats, in glove boxes, cargo holds...
Well... they are both single...
Hunter S. Thompson used to say that elections are the Super Bowl for political junkies. That's must be why immediately following debates the question that is asked is, "Who won?"
I know we call it a debate, which denotes discussion and considering opposing arguments. That would lead to a winner. What we really have is 90 minutes of self-promotion and front runner flagellation. That's not a debate - that's the "Real World Washington DC"...with a fraction of the nudity and public drunkenness (but that could change after the Iowa caucus - yeehaw!).
Anyway, the new thing for those that watched the 'debate' on Fox was the "Voter's Voice" chart.
It's the real time opinion of Republicans watching the debate. It soared for Romney and shrank for Paul. The it went back up for Huckabee and down for Giuliani. And then I wondered if the voters were listening to the debate or reading the crawler. "Clinton leads in NH by 31%." Down. "Meanwhile, Chertoff says terrorist threat from abroad not abated." Up. "Islamic terrorists enjoy pouched kittens for religious festival." Huh? You know crawler stuff...
My point is: leave it to Fox to fast track opinion over content.
And its like the super hot blond anchors on Fox - can't see how it's relevant - but it is effectively distracting.
The Daily Telegraph has a story about the hottest Christmas gift for naughty kids -- and adults who loved their Legos but were never able to shape them into illicit items.
"Forbidden Lego: Build the Models Your Parents Warned You Against" was written by a couple of former Lego designer/development guys who could never get the corporate OK for their automatic Lego gun and continuous-fire Lego ping-pong ball launcher.
And if anybody tries to blame the Lego gun for inspiring the next angst-ridden degenerate who decides to go on an AK-47 spree... well, don't even go there. It's just Legos.
"And you Sir, are no JFK..."
In his 'I'm a Mormon, but..." speech, Romney used the phrase "The religion of secularism.'
Which is a contradiction in terms. An oxymoron. Like 'real politician'.
Let's see other one's we can come up with!
I've got:
-Food of Anorexics
-Library of Illiterates
and
-Hope of Nihilists
Oh look - it's Christmas in November!
I don't celebrate Christmas. I'm a God-fearing atheist which makes all religious holidays for me - complicated.
I just like to give presents. It's good for the economy and my interpersonal relations with my friends and well - relations.
What are they getting this year?
Paul Potts CD is going to all of my relatives that can still hear. Serious.
If you haven't seen his youtube audition on Britain's Got Talent, go now. Even if you hate opera, talent shows and Simon Cowell - you'll love Potts. His 1st audition brought me to tears. That's why its on the list.
Next:
Mark Penn's latest Microtrends:The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes.
My reasoning is that I have brought it up in conversation about 4 times since this past Sunday, so by my standards that makes it worth a page turn. It has to be my favorite book by an economist since Freakonomics. Not that I sit around reading books by economists...because that would make me a geek.
And last for the rest of the people I know, people I don't really know, people I don't really like, people that I someday might know, people that are people that know people and snarky media savvy types all - I give you (wait for it)....
The OJ Trial '08: the Juice is Loose in Sin City!
Did you ever in a million years think there would be ANOTHER Simpson Trial? Two wasn't enough? Did anyone see that coming? Think of all the jokes and quips and easy punchlines and lazy set-ups coupled with a collective deja vu that we are in for. Oh it's not just recycled Clinton jokes and reruns during the writers' strike. We have a pop culture/crime infotainment Groundhog's Day loop that we are all on together.
So hold on.
It's a gift. And just in time for Christmas.
Can we please end war in our time? This is not a rhetorical question, but a plea for sanity and proportion. War as a metaphor for any conflict, great or trivial, diminishes the great issues and inflates the smaller ones.
I think we can probably blame LBJ for starting this with his War on Poverty. This was followed by the War on Drugs, the War on Illiteracy and the War on Teen Pregnancy. I do not believe that we can say that we won any of these wars.
The War on Christmas, the name of which we can most likely stick on Bill O’Reilly, has been going on for some years. It is doing about as well as all those other “wars.” It is a war that, were it actually happening, I’d be happy to lose.
As a Jew I am not offended by Christmas, Christmas trees, crèches and most Christmas songs—Grand Ma Got Run Over by a Reindeer being the exception, but that is based on esthetics not theology. Chris is right that there is nothing intrinsically offensive in people celebrating the holidays and holy days of their own traditions. It is even richer and better when we include each other—not in order to convert the other but simply to share our traditions and festivals.
Now apparently that arbiter elaganta, Pamela Anderson, doyen of all things tasteful, is trying to move us from those our traditional Thanksgiving bird to tofu. Has she no compassion for how the tofus suffer? Can she not hear the plaintive cries of the soy as it is harvested? I do think that I understand her strange and protective reaction to our domestic turkeys with their artificially enhanced and unnaturally large breasts. Well, it is kind of self-explanatory.
Once we get rid of war, can we please eliminate the over-used suffix of “Gate” for any error or scandal? Okay, that is rhetorical. But at this season of hope and Thanksgiving, I’m entitled to dream.
If Chris thinks the War on Christmas is worrisome, he should check out the War on Thanksgiving waged by Pamela Anderson and PETA who want to end this American tradition of slaughtering turkeys and eating them every fourth Thursday of November.
The holiday season can be especially hard for those who find themselves homeless," says Anderson. "And it's murder on turkeys. With so many healthy and delicious options nowadays, it's easy to have a holiday meal that gives even turkeys something to be thankful for."
Worse, still is Peta's video from a Butterball slaughterhouse here.
Surely the sinister people at Tofurkey are behind this.
Caption contest announcement:
Pecker to pecker...
One in the hand is worth two in the Bush...
Turkey to Turkey...
Bush given the bird...
Bush gets a bris...
Bill Clinton's revenge...At least he had Monica...
Okay readers, now it's your turn.
OK, I can live with the fact that our schools are some of the worst in the nation, and our homes are some of the most unfordable, and our air is pretty darn bad to boot. But if there is one thing in which California ranks tops in the USA, I would have sworn it was in personalized, vanity license plates.
Maybe it's just because I spend so much more of my time on the road here (sigh), but I've never seen so much vehicular personalization anywhere as I have in the Golden State. And it's not just the plates. It's also the license-plate frames (including such charmers as that classic, "I hate Barbie, that b---- has everything!"), window decals (the urinating Calvin seems to be ubiquitous in these parts), and, of course, bumper stickers (actual sticker I saw this morning: "My kid sold your honors student all the right answers to the test!").
For better and -- quite often -- for worse, Californians, ever an individualistic bunch, make vehicular expression an art form.
So I'm surprised -- and quite skeptical of -- this survey that finds that among all 50 states, California ranks only #22 it terms of the percentage of registered vehicles with personalized plates. Twenty-two? When has California ever ranked in the middle (and not the bottom or the top) of anything?
I blame East Coast bias for this faulty "study." This is an indignity, an affront, and an outrage. To the researchers who came up with this nonsense, the people of California have only one thing to say:
Every once in a while, some intrepid scholars labor to discover what should have been obvious in the first place. In the latest example, researchers at the University of Maryland have documented that the high-fat Atkins Diet -- eat all the cheese and meat you want, but hold the the bread -- can jeopardize your heart and raise your cholesterol. The New York Post reports:
The Atkins Diet raised the study subjects' bad cholesterol by an average of 16 points, and brought on symptoms of hardening of the arteries, a precursor to strokes or heart attacks.
Wow, whodathunk?
Well, to the UMD researchers' defense, this one wasn't so obvious to the millions of Americans who bought into the no-carb diet at its peak. Remember the Carl's Jr. burgers wrapped in lettuce? Because you know, the only thing dangerous about a fried, greasy bacon-double-cheeseburger is ... the bun.
I remember when my stepfather briefly tried this approach to dieting, and ended up in the emergency room with kidney failure days later. Sure, it could have been a coincidence, but ...
Moral of the story, of course, is that there's no such thing as an easy diet. Well, at least for now. I'm still holding out hope for the brownies-and-Diet Coke plan -- nobody's debunked that yet!
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No. Look up in the sky. It’s a falling cow.
It’s just not safe to go anywhere, or be anywhere. Charles and Linda Everson were minding their own business when their minivan was struck by a falling cow. The cow had fallen (or was she pushed?) off a 200-foot high cliff. The cow weighed in at about 600 lbs. A more exact weight would have been difficult to ascertain, the cow having lost both liquid and solid weight as the result of the fall. Still, about 600 lbs of cow falling 200 ft can put a dent in your day in your van and in the cow.
This is what happens when cows jump over the moon but don’t think through their landing. Needless to say. The scene on the ground was udder chaos.
There's always time to be Paris Hilton the jailbird, complete with stuffed Chihuahua stuffed in a prison-stripes handbag!
The Russians try to unravel the mysteries of gender differences:
"A woman does not have a man’s habit to scratch her noggin when she thinks of an answer to a confusing question, for example. Women do not like to show they are confused. They never want to ruin their hairdo with that gesture either.Women will never understand why footballers stand in a line with their hands crossed before a penalty kick during a match. In addition, women never shudder when a male character gets kicked in the groin in a movie.
...After taking a bath, a woman grabs a towel and makes a turban on her head from it, at least for one minute. The reasons of such a weird Oriental ritual are unknown.
A woman does not get mad when her underwear gets stuck between her buttocks. Women joyfully wear those items of torture called bikinis."
It's kind of a slow news day, hence I'm posting my computer wallpaper. "Rage Boy" is a perennial protester in Pakistan. He's been captured by many different wire photographers, on different days, different Kashmiri protests, with the same expression every time. He just screams to be on one of those inspirational "TEAMWORK"-style posters in offices, except his would be "ANGER." No one does it like Rage Boy!
From Moammar Gadhafi's Darfur "peace talks" today, which weren't really talks because rebel leaders didn't show up, and one side can't sit there and make peace with itself:
"'The government of Sudan is proclaiming as of now a unilateral cease-fire in Darfur,' said Sudanese chief envoy Nafie Ali Nafie. 'We shall not be the first ones to fire arms.'...Chief U.N. negotiator Jan Eliasson and his African Union counterpart, Salim Ahmed Salim, told reporters several rebel leaders were expected to 'trickle in' during the next few days. While slow to start, the talks aimed to build a dialogue that could lead to a more solid peace deal, they said."
An editor here just wondered aloud if Boutros Boutros-Ghali ever went to Walla Walla, Wash.
The Kaneko Sangyo Corp. of Japan has invented a product that could revolutionize life in Southern California -- the backseat car commode. Reuters reports:
Drivers stranded by tectonic movements or stuck in tailbacks simply assemble the cardboard toilet bowl, fit a water-absorbent sheet inside and draw round the curtain.The product is small enough to fit inside a suitcase, the company said.
Imagine, no more having to leave the 405 parking lot to relieve yourself when, after hours spent idling, nature's call can no longer be ignored. This could be a life-saver!
That said, I shudder at the thought of motorists' careening down Ventura Blvd., cell phone in one hand, cheeseburger in the other, while, um, doing their business in the potty.
SoCal driving could soon be getting even uglier ...
Just got this kind e-mail from everyone's favorite Objectivists over at the Ayn Rand Institute:
In celebration of the 50-year anniversary of Atlas Shrugged, and as a token of appreciation for your valuable work as an intellectual, the Ayn Rand Institute would like to offer you a free copy of Ayn Rand's great novel.
Thanks for the generous offer, but is it really in the spirit of Ayn Rand to give away copies of her book -- for free? That sounds almost ... altruistic.
(The Rand devotees shudder...)
I love this story:
"New research from the British University of East Anglia suggests that dropping a few choice curse words at work might be a good way to let off steam. The researchers say swearing can be an effective way to reduce anxiety and increase social solidarity, and they suggest executives take note.'For some people, the use of profanity is a way to create collegiality,' Yehuda Baruch, professor of management at the institution's Norwich Business School and one of the directors of the study, told ABC News. 'For others, it's a way to relieve stress.'
'This is a message to managers,' Baruch continued. 'When people feel better, the group feels better. It's a win-win situation.'"
Granted, nobody needs to tell a journalist to go ahead and swear to let off steam. But the results of the study may have also to do with the fact that British swear words are so much more fun...
Chris has attempted to stage an intervention regarding my appreciation for Vladimir Putin's biceps, and as I'm not a complete addict I am listening and acknowledging what he's saying. I know Putin's a complete bastard. I've recently written as much. Putin might still be hot because of the bad boy thing, or it could be the fond memories of my hot Marxist boyfriend in college. (People wonder how James Carville and Mary Matalin work, but I understand the sparks completely after having a leftist love.)
But yes, it could be time to move on. In fact, I have felt the twinges of attraction while writing about Latin America this week. Not for "Caliente Vicente," who's cockier than a rooster-fighting championship, but for his successor -- who looks like a cute little accountant and wears his sash well:
We already know that you can't let your children play with anything -- that will give them lead poisoning. Now we learn moms can't kiss them either, as that will, too.
The Houston Chronicle reports:
More than half of 33 top-brand lipsticks recently tested contained detectable levels of lead, according to a report released Thursday by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a coalition of environmental and public health groups advocating toxin-free products.
I'm thinking we should start up a pool to see who can guess what the NEXT lead-contaminated product will be. I'm putting my money on M&Ms. You read it here first!
Ever had one of those mornings where you're in such a rush to get to work that nothing can stop you? Maybe on the freeway you feel a little bump under your tires, or some odd debris splashes onto your windshield, but you just assume it's trash and keep on driving?
Here's a story to turn your stomach, courtesy of The San Francisco Chronicle:
Hayward -- Authorities say they may have trouble identifying a body found on Interstate 880 before dawn Thursday because it was repeatedly struck by passing cars for about an hour during the morning commute.The first call to the California Highway Patrol that something was amiss came before 6 a.m. The caller reported a dead dog. Officers arrived at southbound I-880 in Hayward nearly an hour later and made the gruesome discovery.
On the ground was a human ear. The CHP immediately called for the freeway to be closed. It was 6:50 a.m., less than a half hour before sunrise.
The remains of the man were strewn across five lanes and 1,000 feet of highway, CHP Officer Mike Davis said. It appeared the body was first hit at about A Street.
There was so little recognizable from the body that identifying him is likely to require someone coming forward to report a missing friend or relative, investigating officers said....
Since the incident, the CHP has received about 80 phone calls from witnesses or drivers reporting hair or blood on their cars, Davis said.
Egads. God rest his soul. Another horror story from the state of long commute ...
Diet soda drinkers beware! Remeber those scary emails from the late 1990s about aspartame that was circulating and seemed obviously kooky. Well, maybe it wasn't so nutso after all. A story at Salon.com today about a new book "The Secret History of the War on Cancer" indicates pretty much everything will kill us, including aspartame. Plus it's kind of Rumsefld's fault. Here's the bit about aspartame:
In 1977, Richard Merrill, who later became dean of the University of Virginia Law School, was the chief counsel of the Food and Drug Administration, and he formally asked the U.S. attorney to convene a grand jury to decide whether or not to indict the producer of aspartame, G.D. Searle, for misrepresenting "findings, concealing material facts and making false statements" in aspartame safety tests.This is not some left-wing group. This is the actual chief counsel of the FDA asking the U.S. attorney's office to convene a grand jury. It never happened, because by the time the grand jury was ready to be convened we had a new president. That president was Reagan, and within a month of Reagan taking office, he had a proposal from a guy you might have heard of named Donald Rumsfeld [who was then chief operating officer of Searle].
And Jan. 22, 1981, one day after Reagan's inauguration -- one day -- Searle reapplied for FDA approval. Prior to that, ever single request for approval was turned down by all the scientists ever looking at the data. That's a fact. There's no dispute about that fact. And then, it gets approved May 19, 1981.
Noooooo! Not my Diet Coke!
This just arrived in the inbox:
Dear Sir,I am Harem Samson from Mountain View College - Philippines. I am a working student here for a year and a half because my family couldn't afford college fees. I am bored with my student life because I must spend eight to ten years to finish a four year course. All I want is to focus in studying, not both working for my studies and at the same time studying. I want to help my family earlier because I feel pity to my mother who is the only one working for our family.
I am sending you this message because I am searching a person who can possibly help me. I am seeking for a person who can pay the college tuition for me. I really appreciate and accept even a little amount from you Sir. This second semester, I was assigned in ANNEX to be a laboratory assistant there but I can't take a unit subject because I have still an account unless I can pay it.
I hope that you could help me Sir. From the time I've press the send button to send this message, I also send my prayer to God that He will answer my prayer to have a sponsor for my studies. Have a nice day Sir and God bless us all!
Yours truly,
Student
Dear "Student":
Come on, if you're really going to try to separate your readers from their money, can't you at least use a little more creativity? Say you're a Nigerian prince or something, and you need my SSN to wire $17 million to my bank account. Or tell me about the orphanage in Nepal that desperately needs vaccines that only you can provide. If all else fails, at least promise cheap ED drugs. Something.
But as it stands, this effort just won't cut it in today's competitive world of SPAM. This sort of thing might have flown in, oh, 1999, when people still fell for e-mails warning about the under-reported deodorant-breast cancer link. But today's e-mailers are more sophisticated. To get fleeced, they need something a little more clever -- like a fake tech-support letter from PayPal. They're not going to take pity on a supposed Filipino collegiate they've never met before who signs his letters "Student."
Finally, I googled your name. Is this you? Or is some scammer in Encino pretending to be Harem Samson?
Yours truly,
Price Abu-Baba
Nigeria
Oh sure, they're environmentally conscious and cost-efficient, but there's a dark side to those zippy Toyota Priuses: They can be lethal to the blind.
Really. I'm not making this up. The Associated Press says so, so it must be true:
Because hybrids make virtually no noise at slower speeds when they run solely on electric power, blind people say they pose a hazard to those who rely on their ears to determine whether it's safe to cross the street or walk through a parking lot."I'm used to being able to get sound cues from my environment and negotiate accordingly. I hadn't imagined there was anything I really wouldn't be able to hear," said Deborah Kent Stein, chairwoman of the National Federation of the Blind's Committee on Automotive and Pedestrian Safety. "We did a test, and I discovered, to my great dismay, that I couldn't hear it."
The tests -- admittedly unscientific -- involved people standing in parking lots or on sidewalks who were asked to signal when they heard several different hybrid models drive by.
"People were making comments like, 'When are they going to start the test?' And it would turn out that the vehicle had already done two or three laps around the parking lot," Stein said.
Apparently some of the more rabidly green haven't taken kindly to the blind folks' complaining:
NFB President Marc Maurer said he received an e-mail from an environmentalist who suggested that the members of his group should be the first to drown when sea levels rise from global warming.
Now, now, no need for such testiness. Clearly there's an easy resolution to this problem, one that protects the environment without imperiling the visually impaired, and I call on FF's Prius owners -- Mike and Mariel -- to lead the way: Start leaning on your horn wherever and whenever you drive.
Then you'll sound just like every other driver in L.A.!
It's not just the San Fernando Valley any more.
Pockets of secessionists are popping up around the country, and many are meeting this week in Chattanooga, Tenn. Attendees include distressed liberals from Vermont, Confederate sympathizers from the South, disgruntled Hawaiians, angry Alaskans, and even some of our fellow Californians.
It all may sound a little wacky and fringe, and indeed it is, but it still ought to be taken seriously.
Jonathan wrote a great post a few months back about how civilizations tend not to fall in a single, cataclysmic instant, but crumble, slowly, over time. The same is true for countries. We tend to assume the United States will continue on as it is forever, but history gives us no reason for such confidence.
And when you look at the strong political and social divisions in this country, it's easy to imagine how our unity could be shattered. Even after the 2004 elections, some despondent Democrats grumbled about splitting blue America away from red. Mariel wrote a tongue-in-cheek column about it -- a joke that worked precisely because it connected to a greater truth.
It's largely our prosperity that still holds us together, and if something were to happen that, all bets for "one nation under God" would likely be off.
Oh, the joys of a journalist's e-mail inbox. In mine this morning, there was an official release from LADWP explaning why the water and power hikes are a good thing (which was sent by a person who makes $75,000 a year for shilling a public utility -- a factoid from the from the salary database, right next to one from the California Budget Project about a preview for its upcoming study called: A Generation of Widening Inequality: The State of Working California, 1979 to 2006.
Immortality. What does it mean? When Woody Allen was asked if he hoped to find immortality through his work, he replied, “No. I’d like to achieve immortality by not dying.”
This seems too much to ask for, so I’d just like to thank our Daily News for granting me work-related immortality. I am now cited in the Wikipedia dictionary, the Wiktionary.
We all know the put-downs. If you look up ugly in the encyclopedia you’ll see his picture. Substitute for ugly, stupid, drunk, cheap or tawdry and you get the idea. I was hoping, if ever cited, to have it under Noble Laureate, Pulitzer winner—or even better Lotto winner. But no. Or maybe I should say, “Not yet.”
Go to the Wiktionary and search “Truthiness.” There I am, along with the link to my April Fools column In Praise of Fools. I guess this is better than getting to say, “If you search the Wiki under fool, you get Jonathan.”
Paris Hilton has caught up on a few months of partying after her harrowing jail experience, and is ready to do good for humanity as promised. So she's going to Rwanda. "There’s so much need in that area and I feel like if I go, it will bring more attention to what people can do to help," she told E! online.
Right... because we just realized that Rwanda has problems and need Paris, who probably envisions sweet children waiting to flock to her side like in a Sally Struthers commercial, to tell us that. Paris, who probably thinks the Hutus cut a hit single with Justin Timberlake, and Tutsi is the hottest jeans designer since 7 For All Mankind. I'm not so sure this photo op -- expect Paris in the Banana Republic chic, safari cliche khakis and white shirt -- is good for people who have already suffered enough. Paris should take a cue from "South Park" and send a fat check to get her free Teiko sports watch -- or she should volunteer as a peacekeeper in Darfur.
So I was stopped on Santa Monica Boulevard, under the 405 overpass, waiting to turn south onto the freeway, at about 11 p.m. the other night. Also stopped under the overpass, stopped and waiting the next lane over in the opposite direction, was a California Highway Patrol car. I looked over and realized that the chippies were driving with their headlights off. So I tooted the horn, rolled down the window and pointed at their headlights, saying "Your lights are off." The officer driving looked quite embarrassed, flicked on the lights and muttered "thanks" as his partner began ripping on him.
Driving without lights -- something you might expect from the LAPD, but not our beloved chippies!
This T-shirt, now on sale at Wal-Marts everywhere, has created a stir among anti-domestic-violence groups for making light of stalking, which is anything but funny to its victims. And that's a fair complaint: One demerit to Wal-Mart for poor taste. (It's not the first time.)
But what's really surprising here is that Wal-Mart thinks there is a market for shirts like these at all. It's probably right -- the company didn't make its billions by misreading the wants of American consumers. But who in their right mind wears a shirt like this? Does one really think proclaiming "I'M A STALKER" is a great way to make friends, win respect, succeed in the workplace, or attract romantic interests?
Maybe anti-domestic-violence groups should be applauding Wal-Mart for selling these Tees. They probably keep the rest of us safer by allowing the wackos to self-identify.
Here's the lead from a Daily News editorial, The bike path not taken, that ran on Monday, Sept. 17:
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
AH, but what a bigger difference would have been made if, in his 1920 poem "The Road Not Taken," Robert Frost had to choose not between two roads, but between two stretches of the same bike path - one in Los Angeles, and one in Burbank.For all his enthusiasm for conquering the unconquered trail, we suspect even Frost would have opted for Burbank.
And here's the lede from a column by the Boston Globe's Joan Vennochi, dated Sept. 23:
THIS IS a real Robert Frost moment for Massachusetts.Two roads diverged, as the poet famously wrote. One directs the Commonwealth to casino gambling, its promise and pitfalls. The other keeps Massachusetts on the well-worn and unpopular path of conventional taxation.
Governor Deval Patrick placed Massachusetts at this crossroads when he endorsed a proposal to introduce three resort-style casinos. But the path to this point was cleared long before he took office.
Hmm, seems this poem has made the cultural shift from "art" to "cliche." Maybe it's time for a new literary reference. Just don't call something "Orwellian" -- that one's been beat to death.
Yesterday's Rudy post got me thinking about where that saying came from. First time I heard it was in a B-52s song. Second time was the title of a very bad movie 1991 with Keanu Reeves and the late River Phoenix (who, fyi, would be 37 now if he hadn't ODed and probably a kick-ass actor nicely matured into a sensative Brad Pitt type). Because it's Friday and because I couldn't get the answer to my own question, I settled for this YouTube blast from the past. Enjoy! I did.
I've got one question about the new, purple-festooned $5 bill:
Do we get to collect $200 when we pass Go?
The following story has a moral: Alcohol and rattlesnakes don't mix.
After drinking a six-pack of beer, Matt Wilkinson of Portland, Ore., decided to impress his girlfriend by sticking a rattlesnake in his mouth. The Associated Press reports:
Wilkinson, 23, had downed a six-pack and his ex-girlfriend asked him for a beer. He handed her one, not realizing the snake was also in his hand."She said, 'Get that thing out of my face,"' Wilkinson said. "I told her it was a nice snake. 'Nothing can happen. Watch."'
So he stuck the snake in his mouth.
"It got a hold of my tongue," he said.
Amazingly, Wilkinson survived, thus sparing himself the posthumous indignity of what would have been a certain Darwin Award. But it was close.
Now, does anyone care to guess why the woman cited in this story is his ex-girlfriend?
|
|
