George Tenet is a loudmouthed, egomaniacal ass

But he's too ugly for my blog, so I put up a picture of Dennis Kucinich instead. As you can see, Dennis needs a consultation with the stylist who gives John Edwards $400 hair cuts. I'm not sure if it's a toupee or a really bad dye job but the guy needs help.

Former CIA director George Tenet was on 60 Minutes last night. He must have studied at the Bill O'Reilly school of broadcasting. When someone asks a question he doesn't want to answer, he says their name with a hint of condescension, hikes himself up in his seat, and starts talking louder. But he doesn't answer the question.

The asshole sees himself as a victim. The worst thing that could possibly happen to someone is having Cheney repeat a stupid comment you made?

Hey, George, try getting your arms and legs blown off by an IED. Try burying your son or daughter.

We are in Iraq because of idiots like him but all he cares about is not taking the blame. Guess what, George. We blame you!

I'm with Kucinich. Let's cut off The Dick first and trim the Bush later. Slam dunk!

93° in April

Global warming? Feh!

The picture is from this cute website, I Can Has Cheezburger. It kept me entertained Saturday afternoon. It was mentioned in a blog piece about kitty pidgin, Cats Can Has Grammar.

In case you hadn't already figured it out, I have no life.

Turn Ons: Kitties
Turn Offs: Hair balls

Homeland Security

From AlterNet:

Born in Hungary to Jewish parents as the Nazis were rising to power, Feldmar was hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust when he was three years old, after his parents were condemned to Auschwitz. Miraculously, his parents both returned alive and in 1945 Hungary was liberated by the Russian army. Feldmar escaped from communist Hungary in 1956 when he was 16 and immigrated to Canada. He has been married to Meredith Feldmar, an artist, for 37 years, and they live in Vancouver's Kitsilano neighbourhood. They have two children, Soma, 33, who lives in Denver, and Marcel, 36, a resident of L.A. Highly respected in his field, Feldmar has been travelling to the U.S. for work and to see his family five or six times a year. He has worked for the UN, in Sarajevo and in Minsk with Chernobyl victims.

So why has this psychotherapist been barred from ever entering the United States again? Because a guard at the Canadian border googled him. In 2001, Feldmar had published an article detailing his experiments with LSD and other hallucinogenics forty years ago. According to Eugene Oscapella, a Canadian lawyer, lecturer, and policy advisor:

"This is about the marriage of the war on drugs and the war on terror, and the blind, bureaucratic mindset it encourages. Government surveillance in the name of the war on drugs and the war on terror is in danger of making us all open books to zealous governments. As someone mentioned at a privacy conference I attended in London, U.K., several months ago, all the tools for an authoritarian state are now in place; it's just that we haven't yet adopted authoritarian methods. But in the area of drugs, maybe we have."

Under the Patriot Act, anyone who has used drugs in the past can be barred, whether or not they've ever been arrested or convicted. There is also an "ideological exclusion provision." Feldmar is one of many intellectuals and artists who have not been allowed into the US in the last few years. The article on AlterNet lists several examples.

Feldmar thinks his biggest mistake was writing about his experiments:

"I didn't heed the ancient Alchemists' dictum, 'Do, dare, and be silent,'" Feldmar says. "And yet, the experience of being treated as undesirable was shocking. The helplessness, the utter uselessness of trying to be seen as I know myself and as I am known generally by those I care about and who care about me, the reduction of me to an undesirable offender, was truly frightening. I became aware of the fragility of my identity, the brittleness of a way of life.

"Memories of having been the object of the objectifying gaze crowd into my mind. I have been seen and labeled as a Jew, as a Communist, as a D. P. (Displaced Person), as a student, as a patient, a man, a Hungarian, a refugee, an émigré, an immigrant. ... Now I am being seen as one of those drug users, perhaps an addict, perhaps a dealer, one can't be sure. In the matter of a second, I became powerless, whatever I said wasn't going to be taken seriously. I was labeled, sorted and disposed of. Dismissed."

We can all rest easy now, knowing that the Department of Homeland Security is protecting us from thugs like Feldmar. 'Cause we don't need no frigging smart people in Amurrika.

Watch out for those deadly condoms

The article speaks for itself:

ANKENY, Iowa (AP) - Several classrooms at Des Moines Area Community College were evacuated after college officials became nervous about a suspicious package.

College officials called police and postal inspectors after the box was delivered Thursday. What they found inside wasn't a bomb - it was a box containing 500 condoms.

The package was sent to a teacher of a human sexuality class, and was sent by a person who had been a previous speaker at the class, said Rob Denson, the college's president.

It's getting tougher to tell the difference between paranoid schizophrenics and teachers.

Creative Writing

A teacher at Cary-Grove High School in Illinois told her creative writing class to write nonstop and not to “judge or censor what you are writing."

This is what she got:

Blood sex and Booze. Drugs Drugs Drugs are fun. Stab, Stab, Stab, S…t…a…b…, poke. "So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P90s and started shooting everyone…, then had sex with the dead bodies. Well, not really, but it would be funny if I did." Umm, yeah, what to wright about…… I'm leaving to join the Marines and I really don't give a [expletive] about my academics, so why does the only class that's complete [expletive], happen to be the only required class…enough said. The model citizen would stay around to vote in new board member to change the 4 years of English policy, but no one really stays around to vote for that kind of local crap, so whoever gets there name on the Ballet with a pretty face gets to do what the [expletive] ever they want with local ordinance. A person is smart, but people are dumb selfish animals. We can't make rules for ourselves so we vote others to do it for us, but we can't even do that right, I meen seriously, Bush for President? And our other option was John Kerry who claimed to parktake in Vietnam Special Forces missions that haven't been declassified…. [expletive]. So Power Flower Super Mario. Pudge, hook, rot, dismember "Fresh Meat." Most new/young teachers are laid back, and cooperative with students as feedback and input into the curriculum and atmosphere. My current English teacher is a control freak intent on setting a gap between herself and her students like a 63 year old white male fortune 500 company CEO, and a illegal immigrant. If CG was a private catholic school, I could understand, but wtf is her problem. And baking brownies and rice crispies does not make up for it, way to try and justify yourself as a good teacher while underhandidly looking for complements on your cooking. No quarrel on you qualifications as a writer, but as a teacher, don't be surprised on inspiring the first cg shooting.

As the result of his essay, 18 year old Allen Lee has been arrested, kicked out of school, and discharged from his contract to enter the Marines. From the Daily Herald:

McHenry County prosecutors on Friday stood firmly by their decision to pursue two misdemeanor disorderly conduct charges against Lee. The action was criminal because it “alarmed and disturbed” the teacher, Nora Capron, said Louis Bianchi, McHenry County state's attorney.

Bianchi said Capron was reading the papers at home Monday evening when she was “so startled” by Lee's writing that she immediately called her boss.

“It's like someone getting on an airplane and saying to the flight attendant, 'Do you hear that ticking sound?'” Bianchi said. “The guy would be off the plane and charged immediately.”

I think the prosecutor missed a crucial step. Yes, the guy might be pulled off the plane. But wouldn't they want to investigate a little bit to see if there really was a ticking sound? Maybe the ticking would turn out to be somebody's alarm clock.

When a teenager writes a violent essay, you need to ask him some questions. But to arrest him without investigating? If you can't express thoughts and feelings in a creative writing class, where can you express them? What you write is criminal because it "alarmed and disturbed" one person?

By the way, the picture on the left is Cho Seung-Hui. Allen Lee is on the right. I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed the resemblance. Think that had anything to do with Lee's arrest?

Wise old fart

This is what George McGovern said today:

It is my firm belief that the Cheney-Bush team has committed offenses that are worse than those that drove Nixon, Vice President Spiro Agnew and Atty. Gen. John Mitchell from office after 1972. Indeed, as their repeated violations of the Constitution and federal statutes, as well as their repudiation of international law, come under increased consideration, I expect to see Cheney and Bush forced to resign their offices before 2008 is over.

Maybe I'm not dreaming.

Assorted Bonds - happy now?

Duchovny in a speedo, Jackman in a towel

Seattle requested naked men. I don't think I'm allowed to post naked photos here, so this will have to do.

I couldn't find any shirtless photos of Stone Phillips, but I do have Matt Lauer. Ask real nice and I'll post him.

Short and sweet

A few stories from fark.com that lightened my mood:

Maybe there is hope for the future if more teenagers are ready to wake up and get involved. Students at New Egypt High School in NJ walked out of classes on Friday and held a rally to protest the voters who defeated a proposed tax levy for the school.

And here's a way to get revenge on all those people with annoying ring tones on their cell phones. One company has come up with a "push ringer," which allows a caller to push an outgoing ringtone to a receiving caller. Wouldn't you like to make someone's phone play "I'm a Barbie Girl" or "Honky Tonk Ba Donka Donk" when you call them?

And if you need a laugh, this video is Simply the Best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgXzMgPYjMo

And so it goes.

"One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us." ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I've been reluctant to write about this week's mass murder at Virginia Tech, but I want to be able to look back at this blog a year from now to remember what I was thinking. How can anyone not think about this tragedy?

What scares me most: Guns have the NRA, so we all know that sensible gun control laws are not going to happen. Mentally ill people like me don't have Charlton Heston and Tom Selleck to stand up for us.

No, we get the Scientology kooks like Tom Cruise, who condemn psychiatry and tell everybody to take vitamins. "My" celebrity advocates aren't going to get behind more federal funding for sensible mental health treatment.

But the public wants "something" done. What I foresee are laws making it easier to lock people up and keep them locked up without funding the therapy programs and medical research we need.

Speaking for herself and her family, the killer's sister Sun Kyung Cho said:

We are humbled by this darkness. We feel hopeless, helpless and lost ... He has made the world weep. We are living a nightmare.

My heart goes out to them. I know it's not a popular opinion, but the way I see it, her brother was a victim too. A victim of an illness that robbed him of rational thought and an inadequate and underfunded mental health system.

According to an article on Yahoo News, mass killings have become more common in America since the 1960s:

"I know that there were high-powered guns before," [criminologist James Alan Fox] said. "But this weaponry is just so much more pervasive than it was."

Australia had a spate of mass public shooting in the 1980s and '90s, culminating in 1996, when Martin Bryant opened fire at the Port Arthur Historical Site in Tasmania with an AR-15 assault rifle, killing 35 people.

Within two weeks the government had enacted strict gun control laws that included a ban on semiautomatic rifles. There has not been a mass shooting in Australia since.

In the same article, a criminologist with the Minnesota State Department of Corrections blames economics:

Duwe found that mass murder was just as common during the 1920s and early 1930s as it is today. The difference is that then, mass murderers tended to be failed farmers who killed their families because they could no longer provide for them, then killed themselves. Their crimes embodied the despair and hopelessness of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, the sense that they and their families would be better off in the hereafter than in the here and now.

And Fox agrees:

[He] speculates that the increasing popularity of workplace killings, and public shootings generally, may be partly due to decreasing economic security and increasing inequality. America increasingly rewards its winners with a disproportionate share of wealth and adoration, while treating its losers to a heaping helping of public shame.

"We ridicule them. We vote them off the island. We laugh at them on `American Idol,'" Fox said.


Just like on "Survivor," one person can make one decision that changes the outcome of the game. When the rules say anyone from any background can walk into a store, lay down a credit card, and walk out with a semi-automatic weapon and enough ammunition to wipe out all his enemies real or imagined, this is how I look at it:

The tribe has spoken.

If we want different results, we have to change the rules.

Time to GFY, Mr. Cheney

According to The Raw Story, Ohio Congressman and Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucininich plans to introduce articles of impeachment against the dick next week.

Buh bye!

I know it's wishful thinking that he'll actually be impeached. But I would put my money on a resignation due to "health problems." Maybe a heart attack or another blood clot.

I'm suddenly thinking of voting for Kucinich.

Limbo babies & other ridiculous crap

One of my friends wrote a story about limbo babies, so this article on Yahoo news jumped out at me, Pope Revises 'Limbo' for Babies:

Although Catholics have long believed that children who die without being baptized are with original sin and thus excluded from heaven, the church has no formal doctrine on the matter ...

In the document, the commission said there were "serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptized infants who die will be saved and brought into eternal happiness."

It stressed, however, that "these are reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge."

Meanwhile, the Anglicans are still divided about whether or not gays have a place in the church:

The spiritual leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans has said conservative Christians who cite the Bible to condemn homosexuality are misreading a key passage written by Saint Paul almost 2,000 years ago ...

In the passage of Romans that [Archbishop of Canterbury] Williams referred to in Monday's speech, Paul said people who forgot God's words fell into sin. "Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion," Paul wrote.

Williams said these lines were "for the majority of modern readers the most important single text in Scripture on the subject of homosexuality." But right after that passage, Paul warns readers not to condemn those who ignore God's word.

"At whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself," wrote Paul ...

Williams said reinterpreting Paul's epistle as a warning against smug self-righteousness rather than homosexuality would favor neither side over the other in the bitter struggle that threatens to plunge the Anglican Communion into schism.

It would not help pro-gay liberals, he said, because Paul and his readers clearly agreed that homosexuality was "as obviously immoral as idol worship or disobedience to parents."

This reading would also upset anti-gay conservatives, who have been "up to this point happily identifying with Paul's castigation of someone else," and challenge them to ask whether they were right to judge others, he added.

Rosie O'Donnell's gay family cruises will no longer stop in Bermuda. In 2004, 100 protesters met R Family cruise ship at Nassau by shouting anti-gay slogans. R Family's spokesperson said, "We have no hard feelings against Bermuda. It’s just a few church groups."

Last night, I ran across a quote from Kurt Vonnegut that seems to fit here:

"Say what you want about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!"

It might be funny if Dennis Miller said it

It's not so funny when the guy saying it is running for president. McCain was speaking to a veterans' group when a guy in the audience asked him what he would do about Iran. He sang a parody of the Beach Boys' song "Barbara Ann":

Ba-ba-ba-bomb-bomb Iran ...

The worst part is, he's still defending the comment a day later. Maybe it's senile dementia. I've lost all respect for the guy.

There's hope for Suri yet

According to msnbc, Mrs. Tomkat may be trying to extricate herself from steely grip of the freak and his fellow freaksters. She's currently filming a movie in Louisiana and reportedly contacting old friends, making amends with her family, and secretly talking to priests about getting the tomkitten into Catholicism classes.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, one of Scientology's front groups, issued a press release blaming psychiatry and psychiatric drugs for this week's mass murder at Virginia Tech even before the shooter had been publicly identified. They've also sent their "ministers" to VT to "counsel" the victims and survivors. From nydailynews:

"It's shameless, how they milk human tragedy to promote their organization," charges Rick Ross, whose CultNews.net has long tracked the group, which counts Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Kirstie Alley among its members. "These young people [at VT] are experiencing trauma. What they need are qualified mental health professionals."

HollywoodInterrupted.com's Mark Ebner brands the Scientologists as "vultures" who are "hindering legitimate, heroic rescue efforts with their spurious 'therapies,'" such as a "touch assist" - a light massage, which, Ebner says, is "supposed to distract them from their tragedy. It's a form of mini-hypnosis."

"They did this at Ground Zero [after 9/11]," says Ross. "They did this in New Orleans [after Hurricane Katrina]. They look for very high-profile disaster that can be milked for photo ops" to promote the Church ...

Church official Sylvia Stannard ... says the killings demonstrate "these mind-altering drugs" make "you numb to other people's suffering. You really have to be drugged up to coldly kill people like that."

....Ebner argues that the commission "claimed psychiatric drugs caused the Columbine High School shooting. But it came out later that the shooters went wild because they were off their meds."

The white knight?

According to gossip columnist Cindy Adams, the heartbreak kid is thinking the same way I've been thinking the last few months:

GORE lore. Not running but not out of the running. Oozing from his camp is he's lying low to enter as a white knight if the front-runners down the line knock each other out. After everyone else is beaten up he'd come in - like maybe Octoberish - because these days he has no negativity factor. No voting record to overcome, no positions on anything except the environment. And he's got millions. His own. Plus a team because, besides his book, documentary and another book due out on government, he's got concerts coming up, so he can get himself front-and-center onstage, in newspapers, covered by TV and wrapped around clean green fresh air, pure water, the flag and America's future.

Also, this guy already has a whole Internet base in place because he's got his own cable network in 30 million homes. Critics pooh-pooh'd Current TV two years ago when this San Fran-based channel developed the idea to air short videos cranked out by amateurs. Called it clueless, newsless, lifeless. A limp noodle. Well, today smartmouths are eating this limp noodle since it's now worth, give or take a few, a billion dollars.

In other words, he's ready to go . . . If . . .

Hillary, Barack, etc., started hardcore campaigning way too early this cycle. It's inevitable that they're going to beat each other up so much--or people will just get tired of hearing about them--that someone like Al will seem like a pine-scented breath of cool mountain air.

Here's just one example of the disasters still to befall us because Sir Al failed to slay the would-be monkey king in 2000. Yesterday, the Supreme Court upheld the ban on so-called partial birth abortions. From slate.com:

Father Knows Best
Dr. Kennedy's magic prescription for indecisive women.

The key to comprehending the Supreme Court's ruling today in Gonzales v. Carhart upholding the federal partial-birth abortion ban is a mastery not of constitutional law but of a literary type. Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion is less about the scope of abortion regulation than an announcement of an astonishing new test: Hereinafter, on the morally and legally thorny question of abortion, the proposed rule should be weighed against the gauzy sensitivities of that iconic literary creature: the Inconstant Female.

Kennedy invokes The Woman Who Changed Her Mind not once, but twice today. His opinion is a love song to all women who regret their abortions after the fact, and it is in the service of these women that he justifies upholding the ban ...

... With a stirring haiku about how "respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child," the justice interpolates himself between every one of those mothers and every child she might ever bear. Without regard for the women who feel they made the right decision in terminating a pregnancy, he frets for those who changed their minds. ("It seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained.") (The "infant," not the "fetus.") As both the dissenters and my colleague Emily Bazelon have pointed out, this portrayal of a rampant epidemic of regretful women may or may not be scientifically accurate. (The American Psychological Association doesn't think so.) But even if the numbers of women who would truly choose differently if they could choose again are larger than most of the medical literature indicates, one might question whether such women should be the pole star of national abortion policy ...

It's hard to fathom why Kennedy has so much more sympathy for the women who changed their minds about abortions than for those who did not. His concern for Inconstant Females might be patronizing in any other jurist. Coming from him, it's brilliantly ironic. Kennedy is, after all, America's Hamlet. The man who famously worried that "sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line," will long be remembered as the living incarnation of agony and indecision, And today he seamlessly rewrites his Stenberg dissent as a majority opinion that blasts his earlier Casey vote to its core.

I'm no psychologist but in light of today's Gonzales opinion one has to wonder: Is all of Kennedy's tender concern over those flip-flopping women really just some kind of weird misplaced justification for his flip-flopping self?

The fundies must be dancing on their knees. They got exactly what they wanted for kissing Dubya's moronic ass.

Turn ons: Al Gore's beard
Turn offs: Supreme Court justices cock-blocking every woman's right to a womb of her own

Even the horses get stoned

The Rolling Stones are scheduled to play a concert at the Hippodrome in Belgrade, Serbia, this summer. More than 300 racehorses are stabled there. Animal rights activists are protesting the plan to sedate the horses to keep them from getting too stressed out from the noise. (yahoo news)

Speaking of getting stoned, Sanjaya finally got booted off American Idol tonight. Simon smiled with glee.

Sorry about Richie

You had the fried Sambora. Here's some Bon Jovi for dessert.

A Rose by any other name

Here's a strange little dose of reality. Charlie Sheen's sitcom Two and a Half Men (right now the funniest show on TV) features a woman named Rose who lives next door and stalks him. Sheen was sued by his real life stalker Ursula Auburn because she claimed the character was based on her. Rose looks, talks and dresses like Ursula, and like Ursula, she created an unflattering website about Charlie. The suit was recently settled out of court.

The picture is Charlie's ex-wife Denise Richards with boyfriend Richie Sambora. She's famous for her threesome with Neve Campbell in "Wild Things." Also known as the movie where Kevin showed his Bacon.

Richie's famous for playing back up for that BJ guy. You know, the one who actually spends time at the gym.

Was Einstein right?

I saw this story on Colbert tonight and had to google it myself. From the New York Times on Feb. 27:

Now, in a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie, bees are flying off in search of pollen and nectar and simply never returning to their colonies. And nobody knows why. Researchers say the bees are presumably dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or simply disoriented and eventually falling victim to the cold.

As researchers scramble to find answers to the syndrome they have decided to call “colony collapse disorder,” growers are becoming openly nervous about the capability of the commercial bee industry to meet the growing demand for bees to pollinate dozens of crops, from almonds to avocados to kiwis.

And this is from Britain's The Independent:

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

Scientists are speculating that the radiation given off by cell phones and other high tech devices may be interfering with the bees' navigation system. Other theories of causes include mites, pesticides, and global warming.

If we do survive, there is some good news. Men are about to become obsolete. Scientists have a found a way to produce synthetic sperm using a woman's bone marrow.

Turn ons: Brains
Turn offs: Brawn

I'm smart because I watch Colbert.

Or maybe I watch Colbert because I'm smart. According to a survey by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, viewers of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are more well-informed than viewers of the Lehrer News Hour, who are better informed than people who watch Fox News. Or as Keith O calls it, the Fox Noise Channel.

Meanwhile, here's a picture of Brad Pitt's crotch.

Holy shit!

Marcia Brady is 50.

The last vestiges of my innocent childhoold have been shattered.

I already knew Daddy Brady was gay, Greg Brady dated his stepmom, and Keith Partridge was hung. (Still is, according to his autobiography. He claims porn star proportions.)

Lone Gunmen

Today, a lone gunmen killed 33 people at Virginia Tech University, including himself. It's a sign of how much I mistrust the monkey king that I seriously considered, for at least a few minutes, that maybe the CIA or some other mysterious government agents brainwashed the guy and set him up to kill people to distract us from the war in Iraq and Gonzo-gate.

If you think I'm totally insane, consider Operation Northwoods. In the early 1960s, top military leaders in the U.S. made plans to commit terrorist acts, including murders, to manipulate Americans to support a war against Cuba. In the book Body of Secrets, James Bamford details the plot, backed up by government documents released through the Freedom of Information act.

Plans included the assassination of Cuban immigrants, sinking boats full of Cuban refugees, hijacking planes, blowing up an American ship, and terrorist acts in U.S. cities. There was even a contingency plan to blame the Communists if John Glenn's rocket blew up when he was sent into space.

Kennedy defense secretary Robert McNamara and Kennedy himself informed the generals that they would not be executing the plot. Who knows what would have happened if Nixon had been president then? We know what would have happened if Dubya were president. We're living through it now.

Now, all the conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassinations don't seem so far-fetched, do they?

Bamford is also the author of A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies.

Tastes like chicken

Jennifer Lopez doesn't like to be called J Lo anymore. Oh well.

When J Lo was on American Idol this week, Ryan asked her what she thought of Simon's criticism of the contestants, she said she saw herself more as a Paula kind of judge, because "concentrating on the rightness brings more rightness."

She keeps denying that she's getting involved with Scientology, but "rightness" is one of the central tenets of the freak-fest posing as religion. And she even brought her own minder to the show--actress Leah Remini, who's one of Scientology's biggest mouth pieces.

Besides, why else would she have been invited to TomKat's wedding?

In other "sciency" news: DNA tests have demonstrated that the Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur's closest living relatives are chickens. How cool is that?

Turn ons: J Lo's perky boobs
Turn offs: her hubby, aka the control freak Skeletor

The Hohle Fels Phallus

Otherwise known as the world's oldest dildo, recently discovered in Germany. Originally made about 28,000 years ago.

If you're bored, I just heard about a new hobby you could try. It's called pornogami, the art of folding paper into sexually suggestive shapes like genitalia and couples in different positions. There's a book by that title available on Amazon.

Doggy style

Well, Imus just got fired by CBS radio. Here's what Snoop Dogg has to say about it all:

"It's a completely different scenario. (Rappers) are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports. We're talking about hoes that's in the 'hood that ain't doing shit, that's trying to get a nigga for his money. These are two separate things. First of all, we ain't no old-ass white men that sit up on MSNBC going hard on black girls. We are rappers that have these songs coming from our minds and our souls that are relevant to what we feel. I will not let them muthafuckas say we are in the same league as him. Kick him off the air forever."

So who gets to decide which women are hos and which ones are not? Apparently, gangsta rappers like Snoop have appointed themselves judge and jury.

Hot monkey love

In case you can't tell, I'm reading fark.com this morning. Here's another link I found there, from First Coast News. A high school teacher in Lexington, SC, landed himself in jail after a 17 year old student filed a complaint. Everyone in drama class was pretending to be gorillas when:

"The teacher, Mr. Harold Skinner, grabbed a student by putting his hands on his torso from the rear, and then thrust his pelvic into the student several times, acting as a gorilla would act under a sexual type situation," said Sheriff Metts.

Was the act so outrageous or is the kid a drama queen who got embarrassed in front of his friends? I wasn't there so I don't know.

And here's a story for everyone who thinks having a cop in every school will keep your kids safer. Police officer George Helms had been assigned to Hutto High School for two years before he was arrested:

The affidavit said that Helms took several dozen photos of the girl in his office March 6 but that she was clothed.

The next day, the student returned, and Helms asked again if he could photograph her, according to the affidavit.

This time, according to court documents, Helms put a chair in front of his office door and asked the girl to remove her shirt, bra and pants.

He then photographed her topless and gave her $50 "to induce her to stay a little longer," the affidavit states. (statesman.com)

A plane crash waiting to happen

Ever wonder why your plane circled the airport for 20 minutes before it landed? Maybe it was because the only air traffic controller on duty had to take a dump. That's what happened recently in Manchester, NH. While the controller answered the insistent call of Mother Nature, two flights were placed in a holding pattern and two others, including a Life Flight with a pair of lungs for a transplant, were delayed.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Associations says the FAA is not hiring enough controllers to replace the ones who are retiring at a higher rate than normal. From the Union-Leader:

Air traffic controller Regan Mack, 42, said he was five hours into his shift and had been working more than 2 1/2 hours straight when he excused himself to go to the bathroom. The break lasted 12 minutes, according to the FAA ...

Industry standards used to hold that controllers were not to work more than two hours without a break, but the FAA rescinded those standards last year, the association said ...

"When you are responsible for that many lives, having to focus for more than two hours at a time can be somewhat difficult," Mack said. "It definitely degrades your ability to pay attention for so long."

And in another example of "don't ask don't tell," the FAA manager ordered Mack not to blame staffing levels if it ever happened again.

Step away from the rouge!

Nancy Reagan looks a little shocked when Brooke Shields steps in to take her hand and pose. Maybe Brooke is trying to confiscate her makeup bag before she suffocates herself with the stuff.

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite authors, a great humanitarian, suicide survivor, and card-carrying member of the ACLU, died on Wednesday.

Ho's, hos, hoes

Newsbusters noted that there is no consensus on the correct spelling for Don Imus's favorite word. UPI uses "ho's," AP uses "hos" and the LA Times uses "hoes." As of last night, CBS radio and MSNBC TV have both suspended his show for two weeks.

Meanwhile, the Rutgers women's basketball team has agreed to meet with Imus. Their coach Vivian Stringer (formerly of Iowa) said: "While they worked hard in the classroom and accomplished so much and used their gifts and talents, you know, to bring the smiles and the pride within this state in so many people, we had to experience racist and sexist remarks that are deplorable, despicable, and abominable and unconscionable. It hurts me."

What I don't get is why people like Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh get away with making racist and sexist remarks almost every day and it doesn't make headlines.

I always picture red-headed men naked

I think it started with my friend Rich. He was a red head with a red mustache and freckles and I wondered if he had freckles all over and while I was going there, of course I wondered about the pubes.

Around the same time I had a Sociology prof whose hair was sort of reddish. He had a habit of gazing out over the heads of his students while he lectured--he never made eye contact with anyone and for some reason, I always pictured him naked.

There's a guy on a commercial for Pfizer who reminds me a bit of my friend Rich and that's what brought all this to mind. I went to mytimetoquit.com looking for a picture of him but he wasn't there. Willie Nelson will have to do.


Last time I saw Rich, he was leaving town for a new job. Which was good news because he'd been living under a bridge. Seriously. He had been fired from his previous job and when he ran out of money, he didn't want to admit to his parents that he was broke so he spent some nights sleeping under a bridge. He would come into the mall where I worked to use the bathrooms to clean up, then he'd stop by my store to talk to me. A really nice guy, smart and funny, but wounded. I don't know the details but I recognize a kindred spirit when I see one.

Just now, I googled him and found out he's got a good job and he's still a red head and he's got a beard now. I'm so tempted to put his picture here but I wouldn't want to embarrass him. Or embarrass myself if he found out I always imagined him naked.

The jelly bean dilemma

I want some but do I want them bad enough to drive to Walmart to get them? The answer is probably no, especially since it's Saturday and there'll be a crowd. I hate people.

Radio talk show host Don Imus got himself in trouble this week when he called the Rutgers women's basketball team “nappy headed hos." Now, Al Sharpton and others are demanding that he resign.

In an editorial titled "Imus Is Us," Newsweek columnist Mark Starr said:

We encourage these “entertainers” to walk a tightrope along the limits of good taste and then, with unrestrained glee, pounce when they, inevitably, fall off. Gotcha Imus, gonna make you squirm. Of course, not all are “gotchas” are quite as righteous as that one. Indeed “gotcha” can be a rather cynical game. Earlier this week CBS basketball announcer's Billy Packer was targeted, much like Imus, for comments he made in a TV interview with Charlie Rose. After Rose joked about wanting to carry Packer's bags at the Final Four, Packer retorted that he had heard it before from Rose, adding “You always fag out on that one for me.”

Critics ... excoriated Packer for his use of a slur against homosexuals. I am not quite as old as Packer, but old enough to be familiar with a verb that he used correctly—a British-rooted expression that means “to tire” and that has nothing at all to do with sexual preference ...

The flap was reminiscent of one that forced the resignation of a white aide to the black, former mayor of Washington D.C. after he used—correctly also—the word “niggardly”, which means stingy ... The problem with such indiscriminate sanctimony on our part is that it diminishes the power and legitimacy of our outrage when a Mel Gibson or a Michael Richards crosses the line from funny and outrageous to genuinely hateful.

It also reminds me of the time Howard Cosell got in trouble for saying, "Look at that little monkey run." The football player in question happened to be black and Cosell was run off Monday Night Football because his remark was perceived as racist.

My dad and my grandma used to called us "little monkeys." And nobody in our family is black.

But I just can't get excited about anything right now. Not even Cadbury Cream Eggs.

Turn ons: Orange jelly beans

Turn offs: The black ones

I'm crazy, so just keep that in mind

I just read an article on Yahoo News where they talked about seven caves that have recently been discovered on Mars. The researchers believe the caves might be the only places on the planet that would preserve evidence of past or present life. They're talking about microbes.

But I believe (sort of) that Mars was once inhabited by intelligent life. Then their ecosphere was destroyed by some kind of cataclysmic event--nuclear war, global warming? Some of the inhabitants managed to escape to Earth. They may have been our ancestors. They may have interbred with our ancestors. Or they may have passed on some sort of knowledge to our ancestors.

Some of the UFO sightings may be Martians from the past who are visiting Earth in the present. Or they may be the descendants of ancient Martians who live among us.

I've had this theory for a long time. I believe there are secret records hidden in various places on Earth and there may be people in power who are privy to this knowledge.

Or maybe I need to get back on meds.

How Orwellian

It's the United States of America and you are being held against your will indefinitely. You haven't been accused of a crime. You're not even suspected of being a terrorist. So what's going on?

You have a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis. From Fox News:

Daniels has been living alone in a four-bed cell in Ward 41, a section of the hospital reserved for sick criminals. He said sheriff's deputies will not let him take a shower -- he cleans himself with wet wipes -- and have taken away his television, radio, personal phone and computer.

His only visitors are masked medical staff members who come in to give him his medication. The ventilation system draws out the air and filters it to capture the bacteria-laden droplets he expels when he coughs. The filters are periodically burned.

Daniels said he is taking medication and feeling a lot better. His lawyer would not discuss his prognosis. Daniels plans to ask for his release at a court hearing late this month.

Daniels lived in Russia for 15 years and returned to the United States last year after he was diagnosed. He said he thought he would get better treatment here, and hoped eventually to bring his wife and children from Russia. He said he briefly worked in an office in Arizona for a chemical company before he was put away.

He said that he lost 50 pounds and was constantly coughing and that authorities locked him up after they discovered he had walked into a convenience store without a mask.

"Where I come from, the doctors don't wear masks," he said. "Plus, I was 26 years old, you know. Nobody told me how TB works and stuff."

County health officials and Daniels' lawyer, Robert Blecher, would not discuss details of the case. But in general, England said the county would not force someone into quarantine unless the patient could not or would not follow doctor's orders.

"It's very uncommon that someone would both not want to take treatment and will willingly put others at risk," England said. "It's only those very uncommon incidents where we have to use legal authority through the courts to isolate somebody."

And now an unrelated story. Or is it?

Did you know that Britain has 4.2 million interconnected CCTV surveillance cameras? According to Reason Magazine, 32 of them are within 200 yards of George Orwell's home.

Fat Jack's Cabaret

So you open a strip club and the good Christians of Coates, MN, run you out of town. What do you do?

You open a new club a few miles down the road in Bock. And you name it after the mayor who sent you packing.

The people in Bock weren't happy when the club opened in 2002. They picketed; they took away his liquor license. But something strange happened. They realized that people will drive from miles around to see tatas. Bock's two gas stations and its other two bar/restaurants suddenly experienced a boom. Now, folks are happy to have Fat Jack's Cabaret in town.

Read the rest of the story here.

From a related story on law.com:

Municipalities that want to exclude strip clubs must first consider evidence of potential negative impacts such as rising crime or falling property values, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that, although the U.S. Supreme Court has not "expressly decided the issue," its case law suggests that town officials must provide evidence of "negative secondary effects" before passing an ordinance to ban nude dancing.

Oh, no! You mean the fundamentalists might actually have to prove some of their ridiculous claims that sex is bad?