CW Fisher's PARAGRAPHICA

Barbie, dead, resurrects for Rudy

2007-07-18T23:02:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-18T16:47:00.001-07:00

The Future of Homeland Security

2007-07-17T23:47:00.001-07:00

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

2007-07-17T23:44:00.001-07:00

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

2007-07-17T23:43:00.001-07:00

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

2007-07-17T23:41:00.001-07:00

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

2007-07-17T23:40:00.001-07:00

Rudy won't tolerate dissent

2007-07-17T23:34:00.001-07:00

Sofa King Cool, Ron Paul's Googleking

2007-07-17T23:12:00.001-07:00

Rudy and The Smoking Building

2007-07-17T23:11:00.001-07:00

Rudy & Mitt: Item?

2007-07-17T23:10:00.000-07:00

The Republican's Answer to Bill & Hill

2007-07-17T23:06:00.001-07:00

X Marks the Sign of the Cross

2007-07-17T23:00:00.001-07:00

Why Washington Quit Smoking

2007-07-17T22:55:00.000-07:00

Impeach

2007-07-17T22:52:00.001-07:00

John Wayne Giuliani

2007-07-17T22:40:00.001-07:00

It's a Brokeback World

2006-03-05T15:47:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-02T11:32:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-16T18:24:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-15T18:10:00.000-08:00

Time to wreck the house

2006-02-13T17:52:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-08T10:28:00.000-08:00

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?

2006-01-24T18:08:00.000-08:00

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

2006-01-24T15:23:00.000-08:00

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

2006-01-23T12:16:00.000-08:00

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

2006-01-19T01:42:00.000-08:00

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

2006-01-16T13:37:00.000-08:00

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

2006-01-12T10:06:00.000-08:00

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

2006-01-07T09:31:00.000-08:00

Alien Porn

2006-01-04T15:21:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-30T04:39:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-29T10:22:00.000-08:00

Sammy say what?

2005-12-28T09:27:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-21T08:21:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-21T06:21:00.000-08:00

Nicole Kidman channels Natalie Wood

2005-12-17T21:27:00.000-08:00

Tempts? or Temps?

2005-12-17T10:52:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-10T04:09:00.000-08:00

Solitaire confinement

2005-12-01T12:51:00.000-08:00

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

2005-11-28T14:28:00.000-08:00

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

2005-11-14T23:28:00.000-08:00

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

2005-11-13T22:58:00.000-08:00

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

2005-10-21T02:42:00.000-07:00

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

2005-10-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

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

2005-09-29T18:19:00.000-07:00

Psoriasis cure: ChapStick

2005-09-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-30T11:54:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-14T20:31:00.000-07:00

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

Dancers

2005-08-13T12:17:00.000-07:00

Photoshop image manipulations by CW Fisher

Liberty gets makeover

2005-08-05T10:17:00.000-07:00

"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.

2005-08-04T16:58:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-02T21:05:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-31T09:00:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-29T15:12:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-28T23:07:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-28T14:36:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-28T12:25:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-27T11:28:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-26T06:02:00.000-07:00

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?

ICE that cell phone!

2005-07-25T05:59:00.000-07:00

There's been an accident they tell you, they need to know your name, but you can't move, can't talk. Emergency personnel are hunting for your wallet and your cell phone; on your phone they search "ICE," for In Case of Emergency. ICE is the heading under which you put your next of kin, doctors, lawyers, cop friends, bookies, brokers, therapists. beauticians, morticians, etcetera. Not having a cell phone myself--I am cellphless--emergency personnel might be forced to call information and lose precious seconds. I would say to these guys, if I could talk, I'd say, "You know, guys, in case of emergency, wouldn't they call you guys?" I really wouldn't want them calling my family, running up my bill--anyway what would they say? Get down to the ER right away so you can wait helplessly and only get in the way? I'd rather they get in the way after I'm dead. I'd wonder, if I could, when we might talk about me and my terrible emergency predicament. I'd say gimme back my phone, you stole my wallet and so forth, trying to get their attention. The reason I'm phoneless is because it prevents exactly this sort of thing.

The difference between shit and shinola

2005-07-17T15:29:00.000-07:00

Shinola was shoe polish. Those who didn't know the difference wore filthy shoes. It has been said that those who wear smelly shoes arrive before they get there and linger long after they've gone. Therefore, a person not knowing the difference between excrement and shoe polish would be one very stupid person indeed. The word shit, then as now, meant shit, which is more than the crap on your lawn and your shoes, it's the shit that you think, talk and say and all the the shit you read, see and taste. And definitely the shit you blog. Everything's shit. Especially Shinola's advertising. Look: the cartoon of a father spanking a son for breaking an alarm clock with a hammer is intended to raise the corners of the mouth while causing one to remember one's own spankings, which were, back then, as American as bacon and eggs, shirts and ties, shit and Shinola. Spanking constituted payback to the father and to the father's fathers. Shinola draws a link between this manly duty (today called child abuse) and the manly duties of fathers and sons to likewise attend to their shoes (today called shoe abuse).

Nippits moveable nipples

2005-07-16T12:43:00.000-07:00

Do your nipples point the wrong way? Are they looking down instead of up? Are they staring at your elbows? Do you have trouble achieving erections? Now there's a cheaper alternative to breast enhancement surgery. Nippits, a product I just made up, comes with a padded bra to hide the actual nipple, plus two Nippits brand artificial nipples with velcrotype stays. This allows an older woman to place her nipples several inches higher than they actually are, perfectly recreating the timeless illusion of bouyancy she and so many others enjoyed in her youth. Got small breasts? Try our magnum nipples! Higher than a half inch tall atop an extra two inches of engorged aereola. Perky midsize models and Sprawlin Mama's also available. Millions of women will soon be saying: Gravity's not the boss of me. Nippits.

Instantly airborne: the personal flysuit

2005-07-15T20:31:00.000-07:00

California falls into the ocean. what do you do? what do you do? Quick, got to be quick--you're already dead, see that? Dead. Because why? Because you didn't work the plan, because you didn't have a plan. Don't feel bad. Nobody else has one either. Fortunately nobody talks about the San Andreas Fault anymore, so it's not an issue, until it happens. But what if you could take an ultralite aircraft and make it wearable, like clothing, only you wear it all the time. Oh, they'll laugh at you, at first, but when you press a button on your belt and you suddenly have a wingspan of 22 feet, they'll back off, but they'll probably still laugh at you, because, face it, people are cruel. But will they laugh on that day when the earth turns to sea, will they laugh as they watch you rise above the moiling catastrophe, sailing east to the shores of New Denver, disappearing to a dot? At this point, who cares if they're laughing at you? They're dead. Damn it. You could have saved millions of people by designing, building and training the first generation of personal flyers in snap-a-wing flysuits with wingspans so enormous they can rise on a sneeze, a slight push of the knees: step off a curb, you're off. Then when the left coast finally tumbles down, Californians, like crows, will rise to become one gigantic black cloud, swarming with people screaming at each other to get out of their way. And, if the wind's right, this terrible cloud will make its way east. East, to new lands, to settle, repopulate, fool around, live a little. And then, when they're suddenly invaded by the Rockie Islands, then they'll be glad I came up with this. They'll say, "Honey? Where's the Snap-a-Wing?"

Pandemic Killer: The Tunnel of Mist

2005-07-13T07:13:00.000-07:00

This may sound crazy but I'm all panicked out on the whole bird flu thing. The front part of my body is all calloused from running smack into trees. This must have been their plan all along at the World Health Organization. Who but the WHO could scream "We're all gonna DIE!!" so loud and so often, only to be ignored utterly, time after time? Those poor boys crying wolf, taking us for sheep. Bah, we say, but! Sheep we are and shall be when the wolf's at the door! Since we know the spread will rise geometrically through airports, why not make a vaccine in misted form that gently fogs the automated walkways that connect terminals? Fumigation would insure everybody gets dosed, and quick, thereby stopping the epidemic before it hits the vertical expontential curve.

Flu masks big joke

2005-07-09T19:57:00.000-07:00

According to my doctor, who is the source and extent of my research for this paragraph, those masks that people wear to stop a flu virus like SARS aren't worth the paper they're stapled onto you with. The reason is holes. They have them. Microbes being small get in. Function failure. The actual purpose of a flu mask is to make us feel better, and this they accomplish handsomely, until you learn the facts, which aren't necessarily represented here or anywhere else in Paragraphica. The power of the placebo is vast and untapped, and will remain so only because people keep telling. Therefore, be it herein proposed two offerings: 1) that flu masks may cover the entire head, tightly banded at the neck and sealed to the flesh with a flexible acrylic weld; hood a seamless supermesh, molecularly built for exacting characteristics; it inflates with positive pressure and exhausts through a nanofilter specifically made to trap, neutralize, contain and catalog all suspicious microbial activity, or 2) put happy faces on existing flu masks to promote the power of positive thinking and other cures that require no insurance.

Seeing Poe in his coffin is sadly apropos

2005-07-08T19:10:00.000-07:00

Edgar Allen Poe, groundbreaking American writer, inventor of the mystery story, remains immortal by his chilling tales, but no case is colder than Poe's. He died in his prime on the streets of Baltimore, dead, said city officials, of alcohol poisoning. Why, then, did the City of Baltimore bury his body in a city park at night, without ceremony, and only after the grave was filled and tamped did they think to send a message on a ferry across the bay to let his poor wife know that her husband wouldn't be coming home for dinner anymore sadly. That his death was likely murder is less shocking than the fact that Baltimore got away with it.

Related articles:
The Murders of Edgar Allen Poe -The Apologist

Poe's Many Poses -Paragraphica

Baby Don't Fall

2005-07-07T15:48:00.000-07:00

Imagine this: this really happened. (Not the picture: the picture's fake. It's actually a statue of a couple of angel boys fighting). This is what's true: woman comes in, she's all shook up, she runs a hotel over there, night manager. Gets a phone call. Baby fell out of a second floor window, right through the screen. Second floor. Baby's fine. Horrible thing--common too, I bet. How many children fall out of windows like this every single day? (You'd think I'd know the answer to that question, but I don't: I'm blogging. I got a license to muse, dude: a license to muse.) Anyway. Here's the product: I made it up: I'm calling it Baby Don't Fall. I was going to call it No, No, Baby, Oh My God No Don't Fall, but it felt long. Just $19.95 for three Baby Don't Fall brand products, the design of which could go in a few different directions: a) foam blocks that fit snugly into the window requiring no tools to install, provided you have the correct window type, otherwise you'll need a contractor and a retrofit and a grant to pay for it once this thing gets out of class action and makes its way through the Supreme Court, buster, or b) an electrified design that produces in the child a tingling, warming sensation--make that warning sensation--although warming's appropriate too. These are just ideas.

Squeeze-a-Preemie

2005-07-07T15:06:00.000-07:00

People that think doctors are so smart are encouraged to look back a few years when they were sticking their fingers in President McKinley's bullet hole and making new holes as they went; when they used to chop off a man's leg with farm implements or any old thing available without even wiping it off first, and no anaethetics nor none of that hand washin' hocus neither--just hot water and towels, and the water's for coffee. No doubt today's doctors run cleaner, but they've been so abused by the pain relievers they meant to give the patient that they've become sharper than humanly possible, which leaves them intensely focused on subjects they can't recall--well, you try coming off Provigil without Vicodin, and/or vice versa. Anyway. Preemies. Used to be the ittybitties were placed in a vast, transparent chamber to be comforted by wires and tubes and soothed with bright light, isolated from human contact, nuzzled through latex, starved of their mothers, absent her heartbeat. Doctors, perhaps trained so well they couldn't see the obvious, struggled to discover why preemies had such a high failure to thrive, never putting it together that all infants, especially premature infants (one would think) have strong desire to return to their womb, having recently been evicted and not knowing yet that time heals about everything, but it takes time, centuries in the case of Western doctors. Infants, to everyone's enormous surprise, like to be held tightly. The clue came not from watching or listening to preemies thriving failures, but by observing the kangaroo, which births its baby early, then pops it in the to-go pouch. From that they came up with a strap device and began a revolution that's been commonplace in all ancient and present civilizations except those of Anglo-Saxon origin, not to be saxist. So bundle them babies? Couldn't hoit. Okay, it could, taken too far, it could, all right.

Men Only! Girls Go Away!

2005-07-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

Men, and most of you know who you are, get the ladies out of the room before you read any further. You'll want to be alone for this. It's private. Any young men out there? Any young men? (This is how Moe Sleazak discovered Henny Youngman). You young guys, you can leave too. This only applies to men over 45. Men, is your prostate killing you? First of all, how would you know? Without an expensive examination and an endless series of tests designed to scare the crap out of you (to soften you up so you'll hand over the deed to your house), you'd have no idea this walnut-sized gland is about to crack your nuts. I'd tell you to sit down, but you're better off standing. Two things to know: 1) keep clean the pipes, masturbate daily, and 2) get your prostate checked and squeezed once a year, or every time you see the doctor. When the prostate is squeezed by means of a finger inserted into the rectum, a fair amount of gism squirts out of the penis, causing the patient to apologize reflexively. Doctors typically sloop your entire buttcrack, missing the rectum completely, then puncture you like a bicycle pump and leave you goopy and unwiped, made to waddle home, reputation smeared. While "we" here at Paragraphica are not medical professionals, we are dedicated do-it-yourselfers, so we offer the following: cover the end of a broomstick with a condom and drain your own prostate. But if your wife catches you, you didn't read it here.

Got E. coli on your keypad? You sure?

2005-07-07T12:20:00.000-07:00

Most adults understand that disease bearing microorganisms come out of their own butt. Those who didn't know this, do now. It is failure to wash after wiping that puts a little piece of us on everything we touch. Lightswitches, door handles and telephones are all likely places to form a teeming metropolis of microbes like dangerous E. coli, and every tiny, turd-shaped coli yearns to return to the bowel from which it was born. Now imagine your keypad. Or don't. Just look at it--and know that inside those dark ruts and cracks lurks you--the very worst of you you have to offer. Is it riddable, this stuff? Yes, says the Chicago Sun-Times. Put your keypad in the dishwasher as the lowest heat, delicate cycle, and let it air dry for a few days. A few days. Sun-Times must be low on news. Maybe they had backups. It's not important. They reported it works. But I say it couldn't have worked, because they didn't use the bleach--if they'd a used the bleach, then it would have worked, but it would have ruined the keypad, which was filthy anyway and should have been thrown out a long time ago anyway--along with every last disease infested sponge in the city, which is basically every sponge that's ever been used once. Can an industry be born of pure paranoia? Sure! It's time to think disposable keypads-- KleenPadz! Flat, easy to keep clean, it's a fullsized touchpad, ridged in the right places for easy navigation and sure footing; of course it's wireless, and cheap, and built to last no more than two weeks, at which point it's upgraded which kills any older versions, but! you'll say: "Look Ma! No more E. coli!" KleenPadz! Why wipe ever again?

Blame Card

2005-07-07T11:11:00.000-07:00

I've seen grown men and women in their peak earning years put a single pack of gum on a credit card, leaving it to compound to $100 per stick long before the balance hits zero or the buyer dies, whichever is first. But now that the credit card lobby rewrote the US bankruptcy laws, we can expect to see a lot more poor people dragging the rest of us down and making us look bad, bastards. What America needs is not another credit card, but a blame card that talks in a loud voice and and shares your financial highlights with the entire world, turns you into a laughingstock at checkout, castrates you in fine restaurants, makes light of your intelligence at Starbuck's--it knows your IQ and the last time you masturbated, what kind of condoms you buy and whether you buy into the whole "large" thing. Oh, yes: you'll think twice before pulling that thing out.

Does Paris have genitals?

2005-06-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

Mounting evidence of Paris Hilton's sex life is clogging the internet now that her selfone is regularly hacked, apparently without her knowledge, which is weird because she has a password. In response to numerous text messages regarding her genitalia and their existence, Paris repeatedly asserted the answer was no, she had no genitalia, she'd been tested for that. Her future husband, whose name is also Paris, asserted that he doesn't have genitalia either. The rumor started when scientists discovered tiny cracks in the woman's hips, shoulders and neck, where her parts are connected, enabling her to appear human though she is polymer. Her hair comes out of the center of her head and can be lengthened or shortened by a knob.

The Dead Drop

2005-06-05T01:32:00.000-07:00

The sight of human beings hurtling to their deaths on 9-11 set many a designer to thinking. Now one guy thinks he has a way to bring people down from tall buildings safely, without elevators or stairs. He proposes a chute made of fabric that can drop from any floor. The bottom of the chute is dragged away from the building and secured, creating an arc that slows falling people, and ends with a slide. Before a person gets into the chute, she steps into a lightly inflated bubble for extra protection and to further slow her fall. These bubbles will run out in the first two minutes, and by the end, people will be diving head first, but they'll likely live. See the plans here.

Spit for Jane!

2005-05-24T11:10:00.000-07:00

Do shallow people have mug shots that show off their pimply chins? Do they make B- movies in skimpy bikinis and rubbery falsies? Do they visit the enemy in times of war, marry the Richest Man in the World, give up "acting," get their breasts biggerized, divorce and write their autobi? And in seeking broader shallows do they return to the screen as flat old ladies to flatter even flatter young ladies? Yes, yes and double yes. Jane Fonda, being all these things, is our first nominee for Shallowest Person in Town.

Suicide Toad Bombers Hit Germany

2005-05-19T15:27:00.000-07:00

On or about April 26, 2005, nearly a thousand German toads crawled out of a pond near Hamburg, swelled up to three times their normal size and exploded, leaving behind only a hazardous toadslick and a slew of unanswered questions. Scientists initially bounced two theories off the mainstream press, which satiated their curiosity completely. They were told the toads were either infected by bacteria from the runoff of a horse stable that was recently built nearby, or they'd become spooked by crows, puffed up in defense, and just got all caught up. The first theory is destroyed only by the ridiculousness of the second. What did the crows say to the toads to make them do something so out of character? If the toads were afraid of the crows, why did they come out of the water? Why would bigness be a defense against crows? The theory about horse manure is a joke in itself, since this "Pond of Death" is of the manmade variety, as would be the stables, and issues of runoff are easily diagnosed and rectified. Yet we've heard no result. So we put forth the following: The toads, once again, are the trumpeters of doom as doom comes in degrees, reaching first the aquatic life and quickly growing legs to ripple through us and also our subsequent generations for all time because what is changed, inalterably, is DNA, the toads and ours, due to radiation, yes, nuclear fallout, blowback, from from the American-made and -delivered Tomahawk missiles tipped with depleted uranium for the purpose of creating just such mutations. Read more.

Poe's Many Poses

2005-05-08T08:56:00.000-07:00

Even stars leak

2005-04-26T21:48:00.000-07:00

Britney had to go to the baffroom and also to get a Dew, and also she had her period because she's puffy and she has her purse which she probably put on the floor that's sticky with the urine of fans in a hurry--or so her mother worried in her blog once long ago. Her thong mutht be thoaked. Have you noticed yet the handcuffs, just in case she tries to get away? Is it me or is this merely very low theatre? Or am I envious? Because who wouldn't want a big black man on their wrist? Occasionally. Not in the stall, of course. But if I were a big black man, I'd wonder why it was that all my life people were always thinking that I was the one--he's the man, officer--and now look at me, handcuffed to this stupid bitch and everybody staying away because you never know what the big black man might do. But I'm no black man. Never have been. Tried. Failed. Now that the teen diva's retired and pregnant, things'll get weird fast. Her momma's going to learn that babies are icky. And Britney'll be dealing with a husband whose better looking than her. Life! This ain't no Disney show.

Fool proofing

2005-04-24T06:24:00.001-07:00

Who would have thought they'd look in the glove compartment?

Don't

2005-04-24T06:24:00.000-07:00

We see it too, but we showed restraint. Then again, we like Hillary Clinton, and we are legion. We see talent. ability, drive, experience, vision, and technique. Should you decide to manipulate this image in some way, the FBI probably wouldn't mind and might even think it's funny--but don't. For if you do what we all know you want to do, you will have chosen the low road, taken the cheap shot, scandalized and insulted the former First Lady, after all our work to make it look like she was eating a beef sandwich.

Drew lacked organization

2005-04-23T15:22:00.000-07:00

Little Drew... who doesn't love Drew Barrymore? Her bent smile. That certain whizziness of hers. She's just so all over.And her poor tattoo. It's a... mustache? No, a butterfly. God. We hope it's not real. The tattoo, not the butterfly. Anyway, she's nice. But she's very disorganized. Notice?

Purple Hands

2005-04-23T14:48:00.000-07:00

purple hands
and yellow face
make me wonder
baby what's my case?

where'd my negro?
have ya seen my nose?
scuse me while I
kiss the beaus

Ashley's Juggs

2005-04-23T14:28:00.000-07:00

Whoa! That's some dancing there! These Judd girls are nuts, eh? Fun loving. And flexible! I was going to give the upside down view, but it's funnier if you just turn your head--and you know you want to. Do it for the exercise, loser. It's probably the first you've moved in days. Why don't you cut the grass? Look at this rosy faced Ashley--this is no ashen faced Rosy. I wonder if her man is from a service. He looks professional. Nonprofessionals don't dance like that. They drop you. Doesn't matter how good looking they are; if a drunk chick throws herself around like this on an amateur, they're both on the floor getting kicked by other drunks. The ratzi's should try this: send in a shill to cut in--get the shot, go. Cutting in in a great idea that should be extended to real life more often. Imagine cutting into some guy's Lexus, or cutting into a lady's salad. First person to Photoshop off her head loses. We like Ashley. It's her sister we can't stand.

The torch is passed

2005-04-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

Courtney Love officially handed Paris Hilton her spent torch, bent crown and a half bottle of Vicodin at an undisclosed location on Saturday. In her thank you remarks, Hilton said: "Courtney leaves a huge ditch that will be hard to fill" and stated flatly that neither she nor her dog are bulemic. Ms. Love, who remained seated, managed to hold the microphone and make unintelligible comments, likely rude, but effective in deflecting attention from the embattled Paris. The grand dame then stood on a barstool with the help of her entourage (who all looked away when they saw she wore no underwear), and made her farewell remarks, reminding Paris Hilton that "alcoholism and drug addiction are not 9 to 5 jobs. It's 24/7. And in the end it costs you everything you've got." Everybody looked at their feet. It took the ever perky Paris Hilton to put it all back into perspective: "But it was worth it, right, Courtney?" Love's answer couldn't have been more poignant: she'd already passed out.

Who is this naked lady?

2005-04-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

Nope. Nope. Nope. Give up?

One Minute Egg

2005-04-23T02:32:00.000-07:00

You're drunk and starving since you haven't eaten since Thursday, or Monday. You got to eat now, before you pass out, so your body won't eat its own organs while you're lying on the floor. What you need is the 1-minute egg. It's so quick and easy you can make it with both eyes open. Get the pan, yank the heat to high, salt the pan, crack the egg, splatter it everwhere and keep messing with it. When it turns yellow, eat it off the pan. Turn off the stove. Collapse in satisfied heap. Seek counseling in morning.

Sky continues freefall

2005-02-19T08:17:00.000-08:00

Outside a small faith-based organization, well-wishers throw rice at newlyweds and a chunk of sky explodes through the roof of the building they'd just left. Inside the FBO, minor damage: a few pews in smithereens, a clean, round hole in the vaulted ceiling, little chunks of bright blue ice everywhere. Whatever it was, nobody was hurt, and it dawns on them how easily the bride and groom could have been obliterated had they merely lingered at the front counter just half a kiss more, had the bride been more passionate or the groom more a showman, had the cashier droned on any more or less--they'd've certainly met their shocking and dramatic deaths about midway down Aisle 3, as planned in Scheduling. Miraculously, in the last few moments of two long, parallel stories, both fated to the millesecond to meet at the intersection of Deviate and Divine, something happened that altered the course of events. He was likely a two-ticket guy who'd spent more than his fair share of time in the can of the airplane. No one knows how many courtesy flushes he might have pulled at 30,000 feet, but on certain Boeing aircraft, sewage has been known to expand from its holding tank and eject from the drain at the bottom of the plane every time the fat man flushes. The sewage becomes a spray that freezes instantly and collects on the tail until it's a blue cannonball that cannot be caught like a bouquet.

SKYFALL HARDLY UNCOMMON

Britain reports an average of 20 "blue ice" cases a year

Adel, Georgia, 1995. Blue ice explodes in a parking lot. A year later an explosion at a box factory leads to a piece of molten metal embedded in an oak desk, likely part of a satellite.

Santa Cruz, 2005. An iceball crashes through a skylight of a boat; the owner sues American Airlines and wins damages.

Hungary, 1802. Ice lump fell, volume of 18 cubic feet.

Scotland, 1849. Ice lump fell, weight half ton.

Evansville, Indiana, 1911. A 2ft-long alligator fell from the sky and landed on the front doorstep of Mrs. Hiram Winchell's home. When it tried to crawl inside, neighbors clubbed it to death.

Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1896. Out of a clear blue sky came a downpour of dead birds--wild ducks, catbirds and woodpeckers--driven inland by a Florida storm, killed by a sudden temperature change over Baton Rouge.

Fremontiers, France, 1814. After weeks of drought, a storm broke, but brought with it a shower of tiny frogs, still alive and hopping.

Leicester, Massachusetts, 1953. Live frogs fell from the sky, covering rooftops and clogging gutters.

Bovina, Mississippi, 1894. During a hailstorm, a gopher turtle encased in ice fell from the sky. Eight miles east in Vicksburg, a block of alabaster fell out of the sky, also encased in ice.

Shreveport, Louisiana, 1961. A crop of peaches dropped on a building site. Workmen confirmed it came from the sky and hadn't been thrown. Meteorologists said wind conditions that day could not have carried them.

Greece, 1500 B.C. The bald Aristotle is brained by a tortoise dropped by a hawk that mistakes his head for a rock.

If you're curious whether frozen sewage contains active microorganisms when thawed, the answer is yes. Dartmouth has been studying the long term fate of such bugs in the frozen sewage of the South Pole. The reason they're concerned is that the caps are melting, and they wonder what might happen when these organisms reactivate.

Thanks to Gopher Central and Fortean Times for some of the better bits of information above.

Exodust

2005-02-17T17:17:00.000-08:00

GOOD NEWS FOR SLOBS. As you may or may not know (or have yet to admit), you sleep with these critters--jillions of them--and have done so every night of your life. Too small to be
seen, dustmites are hard working, flesh eating, sweat drinking machines that munch your sheets clean of the skinflakes that fall off you like manna and then dump a load of excrement roughly equal to flesh consumed. And though their poo began as you, you're allergic to it likely. When you roll over, the sheer physics of your enormous size sucks them high in the air where they tumble and fall a great distance over many minutes to come within inches of your open mouth, which is the size of Lake Erie; you easily inhale millions, they scream down your throat to your lungs, esophagus, stomach, and are lost--back home a great sobbing civilization mourns the loss of a generation--and all of its records--down some snoring, senseless windpipe. On the human scale, it's the dustmite's feces that make us sneezy and wheezy, and until now the only known way to get rid of these dense populations and their self created vast emerging continents was to wash your sheets. Now British researchers have learned that dustmites cannot survive longer than a few hours without water, which evaporates quickly in an unmade bed, while a well-made bed offers a moist, peaceful habitat which they, like you, find perfect for procreation. Sure, send this to your mom, wiseguy, but ask yourself first: Was it a week ago Sunday? Or was it months ago Sunday when you last washed those sheets?

The Houdini of Self Promoters

2005-02-05T17:38:00.000-08:00

Bound completely and clutching the very edge of a balcony with only his chin (in a high wind and nobody around but photographers who frankly were hoping he'd fall) is Free Mason Erich Weiss, a man who had a way of getting people's attention by doing seemingly impossible stunts in which he would nearly kill himself in various ways, thus insuring huge crowds. Yet his stated purpose in life (and remember: he was a mason) was to expose the phony spiritualists who claimed to communicate with dead people. If Erich Weiss, who used the stage name "Harry Houdini," was actually serious, he failed. Today more people spoke with him on a Ouija board than used AT&T. Most callers want to know the truth about how he died. Did his nephew really jump on his stomach while he was sleeping because he was under the impression his uncle was made of iron? These people should leave the poor guy alone. It was the flu or something, plus a punch. He's dead. He would have been anyway by now. Watch the movie with Tony Curtis. It's completely inaccurate and not very good but you can pick it up for less than shipping.

Holy Roller Billy Graham

2005-02-05T16:19:00.000-08:00

Ask Ron K. about the Reverend Billy Graham, he still hangs his head. "Some people got trouble everywhere but inside a casino, and then for other people it's the opposite, which is where I usually am except this one night, I'm winning big and in walks a bunch a suits, head suit's on my shoulder like he's my pet bird, he's smiling, they're taking pictures--I'm thinking FBI? CIA? CBS? MOB? Now he starts talking about Jesus Christ, and I mean Holy Mother of God, you can't hit a man that's talking about Jesus Christ! You can only hope somebody shoots him."

--Ron K., Xertz, NV

Placid Man's identity remains mystery

2005-02-05T09:48:00.000-08:00

IT'S DRIVING US NUTS.

He stood with the family at the Bush inauguration. Who is this smiling man, and what's up with the eyebrow? He's not James Baker, not Janet Reno, not George Will not Steve Forbes and not Neil Bush, especially after examining another angle of the same man. Curious is all. Cabinet member?

Note to Ringo

2005-02-02T13:24:00.000-08:00

Knock it off, man: it's not funny anymore. For pity's sake, the man's dead: stop your pointless charade. If being a Beatle wasn't enough for you, that's understandable: it was years ago; a man gets bored. Look: we can see where it'd be fun to dress up like Yasser Arafat and make appearances; all the attention, the swarms, the riots--it must be just like the old days--but Ringo, reassess: your contribution to music was huge, you practically invented the backbeat, your turnarounds were brilliant because of the beats you didn't play. Let that be enough now, Ringo. Let go. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah?

Bush nearly slaps Rehnquist!

2005-01-29T13:08:00.000-08:00

At issue for Bush: the personal grooming habits of Chief Justice Rehnquist who continues to appear in public sporting self-inflicted haircuts, trailing Listerine. Although Rehnquist has been fighting prostate cancer for more than a year, many believe that under his robes he's been wearing the same bathrobe for as long as twenty years. "Chief," said Bush before the oath got underway, "time you and me had a little talk." Rehnquist's updraft is said to bring to mind an unidentifiable mammal found in the sump pump, reconstituted, so the worst is over with. Not to imply this is a bad thing, or that pungent odors speak ill of anyone. We're quite sure that all the Supreme Court justices stink in their own ways.

SPECIAL EXTRA BONUS QUESTION !

Who is this guy? He's at the top of the picture above. At first we thought it was a puffy, botoxed James Baker III. Then we thought: no, he's the long-hidden younger brother, Neil Bush. But no, he'd be in hiding. Then who is this mystery man? Janet Reno? Maybe that Nanny 911 nanny, Nanny Bitchest? We do not know. Do you?

Myth of Syphilis

2005-01-29T10:05:00.000-08:00

Alcohol and razzmatazz put Al Capone in Alcatraz, but syphilis's what killed him. Syphilis, sweet siren's song of sexual diseases, works on the brain like a baseball bat--only slow as it damn well pleases. For certain diseases, some call on Jesus, where on others they might call on their mothers, but in the absense of either, say neither can be there, syphilitics can't even ring up their lovers. What lover's going to sympathize who's got her own issues on her own thighs? The fact is that taxes put Capone in the clink, but his discharge began one long ago leak. He came home from The Rock before it was a museum and lived eight more years as a human noseeum.

BONUS TRIVIA QUESTIONS

Wouldn't Syphilis be a beautiful girl's name?

There's a reason why this post's in rhyme. What is it?

Every Man His Cross to Kerry

2004-11-05T17:08:00.000-08:00

He got beat up pretty bad, it's true, but there's hope he could rise again. If eleven states violated the Civil Rights Act of 1965 by putting the rights of homosexuals to a vote so as to defame homosexuals and the Democratic Party for the purpose of swaying an election, would this not be electioneering on an impeachable scale?

If Lincoln Ran Today...

2004-11-01T21:03:00.000-08:00

He'd have a handler and a new personality that wasn't so dark. They'd get his teeth fixed, clean up his speech. Instead of saying, "A house divided against itself cannot stand," he'd say: "This ain't no duplex; this ain't no condo: this be our country, jack the fack." Or something similar. He could have fun with it: "I'm a Lincoln, not a Ford." That'd be good. The problem is that Abraham Lincoln was shot dead in 1865. And that makes this just another "musing." Do vote.

The Day After Halloween

2004-11-01T14:17:00.000-08:00

The tricks have been treated. Our stash isn't gone, but sadly, pretty nearly. Ol' Punkinhead shines from the stoop undefeated, defending our homeland sincerely -- 'til some son of a bitch witch pitched Ol' Punkinhead skyward, and, kerplopping, he splattered severely. "Senator Kerry," cried the goop on the sidewalk, "isn't fit to be commander in chief! And I'll say it again! And again! And you know why? Because you'll remember that way! John Kerry isn't fit to be president! What's he gonna do when Osama comes calling? Take a poll? That's what he did! Yes sir, that's right. Couldn't even make up his mind about Osama, had to take a poll! Because John Kerry isn't fit to--" Just then Arnie's mom ran over his mouth.

U.S. Victorious in Iraq!

2004-11-01T09:42:00.000-08:00

War is scored by many measures: by the number of square miles captured, by the amount of damage to superstructures and infrastructures, and, of course, by body count. Fortunately, by all these measures, the U.S. leads Iraq by a wide margin. Unfortunately, wars aren't "won" until one side admits defeat. This is a hard one for most peoples, especially invaded peoples defending their homeland. Think about it: Would you surrender your country without a fight? No, and neither will the Iraqis. Since September 11, 2001 more than 4,000 Americans have lost their lives in the war on terror. Meanwhile, the Iraqis, who did not attack the United States and had nothing to do with the pan-Arabic plots against it, has lost 100,000 people. It may not seem right that Iraq should pay for something somebody else did, but there's no time for that kind of thinking when there's a war on. Somebody has to die to make us feel safer. Hey, how about those Red Sox?

Boo!

2004-10-31T08:30:00.000-08:00

"I'm still here, George. No, don't turn around, you'll frighten the children. Who am I, George? Am I Saddam Hussein? No, I am not Saddam Hussein. Am I Muhamar Ghadaffi? No, I am not Muhamar Ghadaffi. Might I be the ghost of Uday? Or am I Quesay? Or am I Barack Obama? No, no. I am none of these, George. I am Osama. Osama bin Laden, Forgotten One? Yes, yes, that Osama. Osama the Unpursued, your little pet goat. Today I live, breathe and continue my work thanks to your low intelligence and lack of will. Thank you, thank you, George Boosh! Four more years! Four more years! Shh! Don't turn. I must go quickly before you react! Ha! Hahaha! Happy Halloween!"

Lennon & Kerry

2004-10-30T13:33:00.000-07:00

Back when John Kerry was an anti-war activist, he hung with his generation's principal songwriter, John Lennon, who advised the future anti-war candidate to join him and Yoko in bed sometime for cookies and interviews with "Good Morning America." During their visit the two were continually dogged by Robert Blake, who even then was an aging tough guy and now awaits trial for the murder of his wife, a crime for which he hopes to be granted clemency should Mr. Kerry be elected.