Barbie, dead, resurrects for Rudy

Rudy Giuliani is the most powerful transvestite since J. Edgar Hoover. Not that's there's anything wrong with that. But do we really want a dress-up president? The problem with criminals is they always seem to think they can do whatever they want, contrary to you, who can't. Unfortunately for Rudy he can't dress up the truth. It's as obvious as his silky smooth legs. Rudy knew.

Ron Paul Still Leads Google hits

The Future of Homeland Security

Indoors and out, our babysitters can now watch over us everywhere we go. Our poor forefathers never had this luxury. If they had, they probably would have said, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." So take a gander at this. Technology, being democratic, tends to work in both directions. If they can look at us, why can't we look at them? The day is coming when nobody will be safe from the scrutiny of others. Congressmen dallying in prostitution? He's on tape. President has secret plans? Recorded it. Supreme Court Justice too friendly with the Executive branch? It's all in the movie. Let us then journey boldly into the future and reflect back our digital power against the evil-doers.

Not a Joke, America ends soon

It's over, folks! Kiss the U.S. goodbye. The North American Union will end the sovereignty of Mexico, Canada and the U.S. This treaty, already signed, is not about freedom of trade, or freedom of travel, or freedom to work cheap. It's about world government. Power. And biochipping you and me so we won't complain. The NAU could even solve the massive U.S. debt. Yes, the U.S. Constitution will be nullified, your rights will be in jeopardy, bureaucrats will detain you, neighbors will report you, and you'll go along, as we all will, until they drag us out of our homes, at which point we'll rise up indignant, until they beat us to the pavement. In the meantime, have fun indoors. Party like it's 2007. You got three years, people. PS: Shhhh!

The Day Everything Came Together

For a traitor to his country, it doesn't get any better than this. And Rudy was center stage in a key role. In a single day he got rid of three troublesome buildings with low tenancies for a gigantic kickback; he destroyed all the files of numerous investigations into high crimes of the SEC, FBI, CIA and FEMA simply by pulling building 7, where all these agencies had offices; he did his bit for his new client, the international moneylenders, who wanted war and who, like him, were willing to pay for it in human lives; and thanks to his performance on 9-11 where he was impossibly cool only because he was the only person in New York who was not taken by surprise, he became an overnight sensation, a wealthy lobbyist and a strong presidential candidate. Not bad for a day's work. A star is born!

Giuliani, Made Man, Most Clear

It's no secret than Rudy Giuliani is mob connected -- it's a rumor. With legs. Rudy did, after all, submit the name of his good friend Whatshisname, the former NYC police commissioner, for a post in the Bush administration, but he stumbled on the first day of his vetting due to mob ties. He used to be pictured above until I photoshopped him out and added Tony Soprano instead. Tony's better known. And Rudy? Rudy's a transvestite. Which is neither a secret nor a rumor.

Rudy gains among frightened

Rudy won't tolerate dissent

Sofa King Cool, Ron Paul's Googleking

Rudy and The Smoking Building

Rudy & Mitt: Item?

The Republican's Answer to Bill & Hill

X Marks the Sign of the Cross

Why Washington Quit Smoking

Impeach

John Wayne Giuliani

It's a Brokeback World

Remember this the next time you get an idea to change the world. All it takes is a movie. Brokeback Mountain made it hip to be homo, or at least homophiliac, and suddenly everybody's got homo friends, and not just on television but real life. You have them yourself! Who doesn't? And what man isn't frankly just a little tired of waiting for his woman to get over her lesbian thing? Part of what is making men go for it is that nobody ever told them there'd be camping. You can be cowboys. Moove me! I.N.G.B.I.I.W. I could really go for uniforms. If we could just finally strip off that horrid wallpaper word, gay, from our vocabularies forever. Gay is so gay. Lamer than lame, but gayer. Now you can go brokeback. There's nothing gay about being brokeback. You can eat lizards if you have to, drink your own urine, you don't watch football but you play it. Not that you do, but that's the image that goes with. At a minimum, straight guys can always try it out, if not on themselves, on their girlfriends next time they start with the open mouth lesbian kissing in public places thing. We all hoped this was over when Madonna kissed Britney, but it was just getting started, and now they're off having babies. Nobody wants this war, but the brokeback trial balloon strategy could work. Let me know how it works out.

Tie dies

Say goodbye to another fashist precept. The tyranny of the tie is finally ending, according to sources as varied as the Prince of Wales and Saddam Hussein. Now British hospital regulations will prohibit doctors from wearing these germ-infested rags that are rarely cleaned and never sterilized so they won't hang all over everybody's open wounds all day. Good idea! Meanwhile we can't help but notice that the death of ties has been going on for quite some time now, but ties are still required attire in America. This happened because the Bush administration overturned the Clinton dress code, which was looser and involved the removal of excess items. One such dress removed by the Clinton administration is on display at the Smithsonian, with fibers on file at the FBI. Goddam fluids are nasty things. What's next, thongs? Anyway. The Mad Pidgeon got me thinking about all this.

Cheney Bags Quayle

Beseiged marksman Dick Cheney denied rumors he shot Dan Quayle, former vice president under the first George Bush. "I shot quail," Cheney stated flatly, "Quail." Mr. Quayle remains hospitalized, his face peppered with shotgun spray. Or lipstick. We'll know when the tests come back. Such a joker little Danny was, sigh. He was our last cute but incompetent vice president, from back in the day when the veep's only purpose was to ensure the long life of the president. Dick Cheney, meanwhile, is uncharacteristically dark and gloomy, hardly able to get even half his usual half smile, knowing that ultimately he's the guy that pointed the gun that fired the shot that peppered the face of his hunter pal Harry who lay on the ground near the dark Silverado that carried Dick to safety. Ultimately. Well. He just hadda get out of there. What else could he do? They took his gun.

Chertoff explains

Time to wreck the house

The entire world's been in a gray funk that Christmas didn't come close to fixing. We are now deep in the balm of February. Valentine's Day will come and go with or without hope or chocolate. Give flowers, be prepared to have them thrown back with instructions to put em on my grave. Oh yeah. We're nasty these days. Nasty! We need a party. Not a party by and for the party people but parties for the nonpartian people. the most of us in other words. I once called a Hat Party and sent out irresistible invitations. Everybody came wearing hats and it was very, very good. Not so much because it had a theme -- although who doesn't love a clever theme? -- but because it had been a long time since we'd seen each other. This is because, as people grow, they add more and more people to their people pile, which shoves prior people deeper in. Parties resurrect these people for better or worse.

Gorillas seen using tools

It has long been taught that Man is the only animal that uses tools. Women do too, but they don't like to be compared to animals. Crows and jays use sticks as knitting needles to weave thin strips of green wood, and now scientists have observed gorillas fashioning tools from reeds to help them suck up termites. Evolution is closing in, but don't panic: gorillas have a long way to go -- because they're not exterminating those termites, they're snacking on them. Gnoshing. Tragically, even as the gorillas climb the evolutionary staircase, their ape cousins could be extinct within a few generations, but then the same can be said for us. Sigh. They used to say Man is the only animal that goes to war, but that's not true anymore either: chimpanzees do. Then they said Man was the only animal that laughs, but they're most likely just waiting because they want to be the last. The ape in the picture is actually walking upright: she has to walk that way due to a back injury. The tools were added.

Bill & Jerry: Item?

Bill Clinton, the ultimate touchy-feely president touched and felt Gerald Ford when he bestowed upon him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, or whatever dumb excuse he was using to get into Jerry's air space. While I admit to some minor editing, the actual photograph (below) almost stands on its own. Bill was just a closeup guy. Men don't hug each other since he's gone. Men don't even look each other in the eye anymore as it can signal aggression. Mutual growls are acceptable greetings. There is not a bimbo remaining in America. The idea of pulling bighaired women with underbites into any available crevice never caught on with the general public, and now, under George Bush, intimacy of any kind is rare. Sex, on the other hand, is booming. Stripped of love, commitment and pleasure and based on the sports model, sex is now considered a health necessity for all people of any age or sex. Today it is commonly believed that almost everybody is getting some except for you. This is normal.

Peerless restroom

New one-way mirrored Peerless outhouses are a great idea for five reasons:

No. 1. and

No. 2.

No. 3. Peerless puts the fun back into waste elimination! You see them, but they can't see you! HahahahahaHAA! Unless they cup their hands.

No. 4. Peerless blends perfectly with any setting -- invisible to motorists!

No. 5. Peerless plops anywhere -- even the middle of a busy sidewalk! And you better pray that Toyota sees you!

Imagine the thrill of doing your most private business in the center of public life! Perfect for love trysts, even drug deals! The only thing missing inside... is a mirror.

Chia House

For a small amount of money and an enormous amount of time you can grow your own home and move in twenty years later. Goofy as it sounds, researchers at MIT are now studying this building method as an alternative to felling timber. Trees and other plantings are set according to a blueprint and woven as they grow, an ancient technique called pleaching. The outer walls are a crosshatch of vines, with soil and clay filling the cracks to keep out the wind and rain. Presumably you'd have to keep filling these "cracks" as the tree grows. This couldn't be good for the tree, or the "walls," and was my first clue that this idea, though cheap, is stupid. I'm having a hard time imagining this dwelling being anything but miserable and damp, crawling with bugs and rodents. Have you ever heard a squirrel laugh? Would you really want to go in there? Do you know what kind of spiders you're going to find in there? So why is MIT studying pleaching? Is their design intent post-apocolyptic?

For CTRL freaks

You walk by, see three people clustered around a screen, squinting. "Excuse me," you say; you touch the keypad, the typeface grows. You leave. Eventually someone will wonder how you did that. And when you plan to fix it. It's a good way to get punched, so be careful. Retouch the pad and reset and walk slowly backward. If you don't know the keypad shortcut for scaling your screenfaces, it's CTRL + / -. It's a great trick for impressing soon-to-be-feeling dumber people, useful for tired eyes, rich with prank potential. Use the one-handed reach-in to quickly breach the security zone around whatever personal computer you're casually adjusting. Place your right thumb on "CTRL," middle finger on "-" and ring finger on "+" and tap up or down. This affects the size of the typefaces in all programs, but it's changeable at any time, the same way, wherever you are. Try it right now if you don't believe it. Just be sure you remember who controls the plus and minus. The two-handed version is useful for the slow reach around, considered the ultimate CTRL position worldwide. Don't push it.

The "Car Talk" brothers

If you tune to NPR on weekends, you'll eventually hear callers imitating their cars followed by the hilarious commentary of two wiseguys from Boston. That's "Car Talk." For some reason these guys think cars are funny. And they're right! But all these years I've wondered a few things, starting with what they look like. The photo takes care of that. But my second question is a bit tougher: what are their names? They call themselves "the car talk guys," Tom and Ray, Click and Clack, the Tappet brothers, but their real names are Tom (l.) and Ray (r.) Magliozzi and they really are brothers and car mechanics and they really do talk that way. But schlumps they are not: Tom has a degree in chemical engineering from MIT, an MBA and Ph.D. in management from Boston University; Ray has a degree in general science from MIT. In 1999, the Magliozzi brothers gave the commencement address at MIT. Their studio is across the street from MIT. That mostaccioli they're eating is from the cafeteria at MIT. Noise their car makes: ch-ching!

A Little Head

y birth certificate, which is framed and hangs on my wall, describes my head as "thin & narrow," which still kind of hurts. I always knew I had a skinny head, and I had the certificate to prove it. I was a vaginal delivery, extruded, then laid on my side to dry, the custom that year, whereas my brother, born 18 months earlier, was also vaginal, but he was laid on his back and got a big square head. My second son was a planned Caesarian and has a head as round as a bowling ball. Our hat sizes are similar but our shadows tell another tale. I'm a pinhead. We're all smarter than each other in some ways, dumber in others, but I'm a pinhead. I have a friend with a gigantic head, Scottish fellow, you could put two of my heads in his nostrils, but he's not proportionately smarter. These thoughts are only a small sample of the sort of things a pinhead ponders.

Had OJ kept going

Alien Porn

Figures that an alien would crash to Earth and the first thing we'd do is take its pants down. Get a picture. Pass it around the net. We do this because we are the lowest common denominator in the universe. We do it because -- hey -- they do it to us. We do it because it makes us feel good, frankly, about working out. We might not be the best looking creatures but we got this one beat. Alien superiority, what? Shave much? This picture was supposedly taken of an actual alien from the Roswell crash in the 1950s. The experts (and keep in mind there are none) believe these pictures are a cheap hoax, but clearly that's a lie: they were, at a minimum, a very expensive hoax. A cheap hoax would have left the clothes on. A cheap hoax wouldn't bother hand-pluming arm hair and weaving pubic hair and welding the sparse wig pelts to the cast latex body using techniques that weren't invented until George Lucas put his mind to it 30 years later. See more at JPG GOD.

Stalin's Apeman Plan

The secret's out. In 1926 Soviet dictator Josef Stalin launched a program to crossbreed humans with apes and create an army of supersoldiers. Admiring the work of scientist Ilya Ivanov, a famous pioneer in the artificial insemination of racehorses, Stalin ordered him to create "a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat." Then he shipped the newly unfortunate scientist to Africa to impregnate chimpanzees with human sperm. Meanwhile, back in Georgia, Stalin excitedly built and decorated a secret experimental center where he would raise his halfers --but back in Africa not a frickin thing worked, and with Joe Stalin waiting, the pressure on Ilya to perform gives pause. Naturally, Ilya Ivanov was reluctant to return childless, but Stalin was cool, didn't kill him, he knew about chimps. Ivanov took another tack: asked for and easily got human volunteers whom he inseminated with monkey sperm--but when that didn't work either, Stalin shut him down, disgraced him, exiled him five years. Some theorize that Josef Stalin was himself a semi erectus, as evidenced by his narrow, overhanging brow and poor grasp of science. Ilya Ivanov returned to Russia an object of ridicule until he died a year later. Had the monkeyfucker simply shaved a baby chimp, the joke could have been on Stalin: Have you met my son? Of course, this was back when scientists didn't alter their results to suit their wishes as was recently attempted in the exciting new field of stem cell research, which would have really interested Stalin for the same reasons.

First signs of Bird Flu

Sammy say what?

Sammy Davis Jr. was an unusually short, black Jewish man with deplorable penmenship -- until one realizes "To Kirtya Bard Waz, Sammy" is preebonic yiddish. Not knocking Sammy, he was lord of all he surveyed when he was on the dance floor. Other guys could do magic, but Sammy was the magic, baby, he was hat and the rabbit. Imagine living with him. Plus he sang. Did everything at once, the toe tapping, finger snapping, gum snapping, eye popping singing and jumping around all the time. So the truth about his penmanship is a bit more complex that just to say that Sammy had the shakes. He probably wrote it on his knees, which were dancing at the time, and you know he had a cigarette in the same hand as the pen, and he had to be singing which meant he was snapping his fingers. So the end result isn't bad. I bid on this picture on eBay.

How to wash dishes

ipe clean your mind; unlearn yourself of all you know. Start the hot water. Turn on NPR. Wash coffee pot first, using pot suds to make sink suds, and start the coffee as the sink fills: it will be done when the dishes are done. Use enough detergent for luxurious suds or you'll fry your hands and your dishes won't dry. Under the sink are two drainers. Put one in the right sink, the second on the counter, with a drip pan under it. Throw all silverware into the water: wash them last. If the dishes have sat awhile, add a few drop of bleach to the sink (a capful is too much). Do cups first: sink them, use a brush underwater; work fast. If you miss a spot, you'll see it later. Drop soapy cups into right drainer: do not rinse until all cups are washed, then rinse them each under hot water, placing upside down on third drainer. Rinse just enough to get the suds off; if you overrinse, you'll remove the surfactant and the dishes won't sheet dry. Do the dishes and bowls the same way, stacking them in the right sink, still soapy. By the time it's full, your cups are dry. Put them away. Now quickly rinse the soapy stuff and place items in third drainer. Do remaining pots, and put away items as soon as they're dry. Wash silverware with soft brush, underwater, two at a time, churning the water; turn to get both sides; dump in bowl. Lift a handful of soapy silverware and rinse under hot water, turning the bundle; set bundles vertically, ends up, in drainer. Lay clean towel flat on flat surface: array silverware generally along length of towel; fold over ends; roll up, shake. Unroll: your silverware is completely dry. Grab all forks, put away, spoons, knives. Return drainers under sink. Before letting out water, scrub the sink with the brush; drain. Spray all surfaces, including sink, with chlorine. In a one-liter spray bottle, add 5 drops of bleach to water. Wipe all surfaces often, especially where people touch (light switches, handles, faucets). Your kitchen sparkles. Clutter is gone. You are not relieved or proud. You are unconscious of the dishes as work or aggravation. Instead, when you see a new crop, you realize how good it would be to have a fresh pot of coffee smelling up the house and revving your engine. The fact that your kitchen is obviously microbe free is a miracularity over which others will marvel. For you, it's just another one of the many satisfactions of coffee.

Merry X

Nicole Kidman channels Natalie Wood

Tempts? or Temps?

New York's own master of the electric violin, accordianist extraordinaire, recording artist, backup queen, street fimmaker, genius blogger, storyteller and personal muse to growing millions Deni Bonet, who is, as advertised The Last Girl on Earth, recently blogged about backing up The Temps and The Fifth Dimension, two bands that between them couldn't cough up enough DNA to produce an original member. As a show writer I ran into both acts, the Temps in Chicago, the Diments in Spain, and both were like medicine shows: canned. These 40 year old kids, see, they're the brand. The Temps sang with tape; they sang with themselves! The Fifth, or was it The 5th, Dimension was completely out there. Five singers, nobodies, singing bad old music to a European audience that didn't know from the 4th generation let alone these people--the audience thought the show was over, got up, walked out, up, up and away they went, even as the Fabulous Has Beens That Never Were played their biggest hit. Security, on instructions, closed the doors, but the women--imagine women more beautiful than the most beautiful women you've ever seen anywhere--all had to pee, and on top of that the caterer left the dock open and diesel fumes were being sucked into the 16th century building exactly as designed through the miracle of architecture and a thing once called ventilation. We were all being asphixiated, and it was only months after 9-11. So I led the ladies to a larger, even better restroom in the back of the theatre, and on my way shut the kitchen door, got yelled at by the producer for wrecking the breeze and acting like a guard, but I did get a kiss or two, it's honestly true. But every time I think of these fake phony pretender people--hey! The Pretenders!--I smell diesel. (Originally posted July 28, 2005)

Fashism

Solitaire confinement

t started with a deck of cards that somebody left on the kitchen table. I must have thought I had time to kill. The hours I slaughtered on the Solitaire battlefield through the 70's and 80's will ever remain incalculable, but I could probably tell you to the tenth of a second after '95. Hours divisible to months, precious earth time sacrificed to the straightening of jumbled decks. I was only able to cure my Solitaire addiction with the help of Freecell, which was a bit like snuffing a fire with an explosion, but eventually, lack of sleep, food and water, and employment, caused me to wonder: Was Freecell killing me? Seeking my answer online, I discovered Spider, a game of such complexity that one could almost devote one's entire life to unlocking its secrets. And today, I am grateful to report, I'm 100% Freecell free.

Cat Scatting, the Tenth Way

he had two cans of cat food and smelled fresh from the wind, and her hat, which was tied on, made her look like Katherine Hepburn in The African Queen. I wondered out loud if the cat sent her back for the albacore. She said no: she was actually using cat food as bait for trapping feral cats. Feral cats, she explained, are the offspring of strays, often many generations removed from their pet ancestors, ruthless killers of birds, rodents, and spare time of anybody unfortunate enough to adopt one as a pet. She traps the cats, takes them to the vet and has them neutered, sparing generations of future cats the agony of life. I asked who she was affiliated with and she said herself; she just thought it was a good idea, and I couldn't disagree. I told her I was a blogger and wanted to write about her; she gave me her name and number; I put it in my pocket and lost it, and for this I am sorry, but bloggers are the offspring of stray writers, and we live loosely in the wild.

An End to Suicide Bombers

he problem is robes. Robes are perfect for hiding things like bombs. But lose the robes, and there's nowhere to tape a bomb. Especially if you're wearing a snugsuit like the crew of the old Star Trek. Those things conceal nothing, not a knife nor a hairpin let alone a full blown hard on or a half term pregnancy, or, as mentioned earlier, a bomb. The problem is convincing the Muslim world to disrobe. Perhaps as they begin to see their peers walking around all suave with the laydays, color-matched, contoured, sheenin, maybe then they begin to dig the nanoknit sanskrit label thing they got goin on, and maybe then the women look deep within their burkas and wonder why their head's in a bag. One thing's for certain: if they'd throw off the robes and and go out on the street snuggin, they'd first of all be shockingly beautiful, because they are; more importantly, there'd be no question they're unarmed. People didn't used to wonder about that sort of thing until fairly recently, but already we wonder who's gonna blow. Muslim women sporting snugsuits on the street might feel comforted by the knowledge that essentially nobody will recognize them anyway; while at the same time feeling the discomfort of violating religious orders. It's a tall order just to not be shot, shunned or run away from, but it could be the best idea this blogger ever had, or it could be a Ben Stiller movie.

Saddam shame

Powerful people are most susceptible to flattery and therefore easiest to manipulate. Hitler, for example: had someone only been there to be enchanted by his art school watercolors, Hitler's warlust could have been redirected. Flattery could have led Josef Stalin to believe he could act; it could have put him in the movies and sent him off to Hollywood. Same for Saddam, who discovered his lyrical talents only later in life. Saddam was producing the stage version of his second novel when the U.S. invaded. This is how it should be: all the world's leaders should be judged by their acts.If we could flatter them into touring, life'd be peaceful.

Dementia Nit

he trouble with Alzheimer's is that you never know you've got it until it's obvious to everyone but you. Now scientists believe that if they can detect dementia in its earlier stages, patients will have more time to get their affairs in order. First they dye your brain, then they scan it: whatever glows is dementia. They call you over, you look at the screen--it's yours all right, your brain just knows it, and it's radiating like a Christmas tree on fire in a lumberyard, and then there's a pen in your hand, long papers with 'sign here' stickers, and you're back home, wondering why everybody's treating you like you got Alzheimer's. They talk too loud, too slow, smile too hard and speak of insignificia. But lucky are you for early detection, knowing now as you do that you shall live in a cage like a pet, if you behave--like an animal, if you don't. Who could blame you for writing on your wrist the words "BE NICE" as a reminder in case? For more about the imaging test: BBC NEWS | Health | 'Glow' dye to spot early dementia

Men no good

study says a quarter of men leave public restrooms without washing their hands, while only 10% of the woman commit the odious offense. Of course, the importance of handwashing is relative to the situation: all johns are unequal. My father taught me the fundamentals of john hygiene at the home of the Chicago White Sox, old Comiskey Park, where smack down the center of the long men's room ran a self-draining porcelain trough surrounded by crowds of beered up pissers in a hurry, guys squeezing around it on both sides, trying not to look around too much, or breathe, and when they were done, they scrammed, still dribbling, partly because it was the bottom of the third, but mostly because, man, you had to get out of there. I took one look at the scene and decided I had to go poo. So my dad showed me how to "shoulder in" and open doors with no hands, how to "kick flush" and use toilet paper to delatch the stall door, and why it's important, for the same reason, to turn off the faucet with a paper towel, if you were to wash your hands--which we weren't since it was the bottom of the fourth. I learned a lot that day. I saw Willie Mays and yelled, "Hey, Willie, you're looking mighty black today!" which taught me not to do that. But mostly I learned that if you don't touch anything, you don't have to wash your hands, unless you're with someone you know, and then it's best to make an elaborate show of it. Also it's a good idea to get in the habit of subtly wiping your hands on your pants after you step out of any public restroom in case you're being observed.

Where it came from: Research uncovers a dirty little secret - The Boston Globe

Supremes so far

Psoriasis cure: ChapStick

ChapStick, plain old ordinary ChapStick, is getting rid of my psoriasis better than steroidal prescription creams. I could feel it working from the moment I rolled it on my cracked and bleeding knuckles, which have been sheathed in an armor of dead man's skin for the last eight years. Psoriasis itches, cracks, bleeds, stings and causes people to walk out suddenly after asking you to make them a sandwich. Chapstick costs under two bucks, lasts a week and fits neatly in the watch pocket of any pair of jeans. In less than a week, my scales became smooth and pink as new skin. My thanks to its maker, Wyeth Consumer Healthcare of Madison, New Jersey.

Drink more coffee or die

You say you're up to three cups of coffee a day and you're jittery, you can't sleep, your palms are clammy and you're snapping at people like a wet toaster? Step it up to six cups and we'll talk. Apparently you haven't heard the news. Coffee, when taken in large, regular doses throughout the day, is the richest source of cancer-killing antioxidants by a factor of four over its nearest competitor, tea. Antioxidants, as you may know, round up and liquify the crazy-ass free radicals that run around telling all the cells in the neighborhood that it's okay to remodel and add on -- then they call in their own contractors and pretty soon everybody's got a big houseful of rooms, but there's no neighborhood anymore, no street. But coffee kills these agents of cancer, hot or cold, decaf or full throttle, as long as it's roasted, it's good.

Read more: Coffee is, gulp, healthy! | The Apologist | CW Fisher

Rummy has a way of talking

Strange, tortured servant, elaborate co-conspirator, willing editor of the way things are, Mr. Rumsfeld, your time's up.

Dancers

Photoshop image manipulations by CW Fisher

Liberty gets makeover

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-toss't to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door. Wipe your feet before you come in, and let's get a few things straight. Whatever country you came from, we're bigger, we're better, we're richer and smarter and if you follow our rules, we'll crush your enemies like bugs, or, if you prefer, crush you like a bug. It's up to you. But understand that at the U.N., your vote matters only a fraction of ours, which is how democracy works. And if you don't like it you can yearn our huddled mass." --newly revised plaque on for Statue of Liberty, recently renamed Statue of Limitations

Bolton is wrong for the U.N.

Bush must be crazy. What's he see in this guy that we don't? Sure he sings okay, but the hairpiece is so 97. While we keep hearing that he's mean and abusive and nobody likes him, Bush sees just the guy for the job. Makes you wonder what kind of job Bush has in mind exactly. Apparently he wants an unambassador. Maybe the prompter said 'UN ambassador' and he read it wrong and stood by his word. We'll see. Now can somebody get this man a rag, please? He's got toothpaste all over lip.

Undisabling the frail

Imagine slipping Steven Hawking into a robotic suit that doubles his strength and lets him walk. In no time, he's beating you in tennis, lifting cars and toppling buildings: it's payback time. No more Mr. Sci Guy. Now a less lethal robotic suit is under development at Tsukuba University in Japan that gives elderly or frail people a way to get out of bed without help, or walk unassisted. It straps to the body like a suit of armor and detects nerve signals from the brain whenever you try to move your limbs; a computer passes akong the signals to the relevant motors, and your arms and legs are moved. Designer Yoshiyuki Sankai said "the big goal... is to expand or strengthen the physical capability of humans." No mention of "frail" humans. That's because big ideas tend to get bigger and bigger, but point those ideas at weaponry, and they explode. How strong can we get? How impervious to bullets or flame? When will they be ready for military use? When will the cost come within range of the average police department? Is science fiction still considered a literary genre?

Ashcroft recollected

He was America's first singer-songwriter televangelist Attorney General and perhaps the only politician ever defeated by a dead man--which shot him straight to the top of the Bush administration. Who could forget John Ashcroft in the days and weeks after 9-11, his tireless briefings, his endless repetitions of how little we knew. Dude, we said, we are missing the show. But he was on TV, so on he went. A Christian man, not afraid to say it, a singing man, not afraid to sing it, a believing man with a faith so intense he was capable of singing from where he stood without care or consideration for the comfort of others, thus branding himself a delusional narcissist in the minds of some, a mere curiosity in others, and the most frightening man since J. Edgar Hoover to all of us. There was no line in John Ashcroft's mind separating God and Country, Church and State; it was all part of the glorious miracle of his rise to power. One image of John stands out above all, the one he himself painted in his song about the chickens flying over his beautiful countryside, in the morning, in his America. There are tingles that go up the spine, tingles that go down, and there's always the possibility you're being waved, of course. But when John Ashcroft sings, what most people experience is found in the shudder family. A shudder is an involuntary shake involving the head, neck and shoulders in the form of a wave at a ball game that may be accompanied by a shiver, like being gripped by icy claws by some screeching thing, which could, at lesser levels, appear to mimic a tingle, while being, in fact, a shudder. For now, rejoice, be glad, and add a new member to the cast of bombastiers whose bombast will outlast them all in legend, in song, on the pages and stages of historical fiction, that most oxymoronic of all genres, fresh as Gore Vidal, ancient as Greece, where bozos are made behemoths, and chuckleheads kings.

Rumsfeld's sign language

US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is not quite the talker he used to be, partly because he ran out of things to say that were true, and partly because he's losing interest in the job as people tend to do when their tenure draws closed, and partly because he's only half in the loop. So he's taken to talking with his hands, which allows him to appear eloquent without saying much. "Hands up" has become his favorite. In this photo, he recounts an experience with a lap dancer. Later he told a story about "Ten Little Indian Boys," and before he left, the ever playful Rummy threatened to strangle the photographer. And he didn't say much, except that it's no longer a global war on terror but ah, the ah, coalition against the extremist, extremism, the battle for world, oh, he couldn't remember but something with extremist in it is what we're doing now. Then he did his impression of a mime in a glass box.

On Message with Karl Rove

There is such a thing as bad karlma. It's never wise to thumb your nose, especially at a press photographer, since photographs repeat themselves. The antidote to bad karlma is good karlma, and it all begins with telling the truth. I'll start. I copied several photos for the image at left and gave no credit to the photographers or originating sites because I do not know how to perform this operation in the manner I'd prefer, which is small, unobtrusive, vertical, and snug, and while I realize that ignorance is nine-tenths of a good excuse, pleading ignorance is always stupid, and so I won't be roped. I am categorically and uncategorically guilty on all counts of this crime and many others like them, and I beg of you, Karl, someone, anyone, stop me, stop me now: give me the tech, give me training. Treatment. These puking guys, Karl? You think I hurt you? I stole the puking guys so long they are like way off my history, man. But ah. This whole area is an area where I could frankly use some help. Now you go!

Read: Rove must stay -- The Apologist

For those not knowing shit from shinola

It's something most of us have suspected about ourselves at one time or another, usually that time of our lives before we learn what shinola is: that we had a deep seated, secret ignorance of the meaning of the phrase--and knowing, as we always knew, that we'd probably never know the answer, we threw it in frustration at all the blockheads around us so that they too might be infected with this often lifelong secret truth: they we don't know shit from shinola. Because we never looked it up. Fools! Now shinola dares present The Lincoln Highway. I might not know shinola, but I know shit when I see it. I speak now not as a man but as a man who lives but minutes from the original, actual Lincoln Highway, and I wonder how it is that a shinola can present it, let alone depict it as place where scaredy boys get mugged by cutiepies in robber suits. I wonder too how come there's an NBC RED NETWORK. But then I realize I don't know shit from shinola.

"The difference between shit and shinola" --Paragraphica

What makes Courtney blush

No, it's not surgery! She just missed with her lipstick is all. Cameras caught Courtney Love, 108, on her way back from the post office, dressed in clothes she picked out herself. "I just threw this on," she said. "I'm going to throw it off in a minute. Is there any Bacardi in your van?"




For more on Courtney Love:

Love, Courtney -- The Post-Depressionist Almanac

The Torch is Passed -- Paragraphica

Microwaveable Iraqis

If you're an Iraqi citizen caught in the wrong crowd in the year 2006, the U.S. has a big surprise for you! You'll be microwaved nearly to death! The keyword nearly is what makes this weapon of less destruction so arousing to the U.S. military, already hard at work on portable ray guns. The U.S., which isn't stupid but merely incapable of learning, still hasn't figured out that, by publicizing their new "less lethal" weaponry--what it looks like, how it works, status of newer versions, timetable for rollout--you kind of give the enemy a good idea. How hard can it be?

For more: Microwaveable Iraqis -- The Apologist

Like sisters

Take away that bowtie out of Rose Marie's hair, and she's a dead ringer for the future former US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Though they might be miles apart on the issues, they're exactly alike in one respect: they look like each other in an unflattering way. Other than that, they could be sisters. The one's a quitter, the other never gives up. Rose Marie is still appearing as herself (--how weird is that? ) But not Sandy. Sandy's "special." More at The Apologist.

One for Darwin: tuskless elephants

Those who doubt Darwin's theory of evolution should get a load of an evolving breed of tuskless elephants in China, where poaching has altered the gene pool. While a 2% tuskless population is considered the norm, that number has shot to 10 percent. And since only males with big tusks are shot, the remaining males are the tuskless--and now their kids are turning out the same way. Used to be tusks were macho, the chicks dug 'em, still do, probably even more--the whole danger thing--but nowadays the only boys at the dance are the ones that look like girls. With four girls to every boy, the boys are enjoying luck like they never had it before. Luck, luck, luck, luck, luck, luck, luck, all day long and all night too. It's ridiculous anyway. Who would order poached elephant?