Saturday, May 26th, 2007

"[At his Thursday morning press conference, after] a bird deposited a wet, white dropping on the upper left sleeve of his jacket, Bush invoked the terrorist group al-Qaeda 19 times and suggested it was going after individual reporters' kids.

 'They are a threat to your children, David,' he advised NBC's David Gregory.

 'It's a danger to your children, Jim,' Bush informed the New York Times' Jim Rutenberg. This last warning was perplexing, because Rutenberg has no children, only a brown chow chow named Little Bear. It was unclear whether Bush was referring to a specific and credible threat to Little Bear or merely indicating there was increased "chatter in the system" about chow chows in general."   Dana Milbank

Friday, May 25th, 2007

We've all heard of lawsuits...the stuff of Urban Legends...like the one about the guy who crashed his Winnebago after he put it on cruise control and left the driver's seat to make himself a cup of coffee. The Legend (and it is only a legend) is that he sued the RV manufacturer for not explicitly warning him not to do such a thing...and won almost two million dollars from a 'runaway jury'. 
But, while we're all more than sympathetic to a parent in mourning, the father of St. Louis Cardinal's pitcher Josh Hancock has reportedly filed a wrongful death suit on behalf of his late son's estate...a suit that has the 'ring' of an Urban Legend but is true, at least according to the latest issue of Sports Illustrated: 
Josh had a blood alcohol content of nearly twice the legal limit, was speeding, was talking on a cell phone, was not wearing a seat belt, was in possession of marijuana and, evidently, did not even brake before he crashed his Ford Explorer into the back of a tow truck on an expressway. Yet, in spite of all these factors listed in the police report of the April 29th accident, Dean Hancock is suing 1) the bar that served his son the alcohol, 2) the motorist whose car had stalled on the expressway (for not properly maintaining his vehicle) and 3) the driver of the tow truck who was assisting the stalled motorist (for taking too long to get the stalled vehicle out of the lane) when Josh's car came upon the scene. 

Thursday, May 24th, 2007            Bob Dylan Is Sixty-Six Years Old

“I loved getting those calls. Since my wife passed away, I don’t have many people to talk with. One gal in particular loved to hear stories about when I was younger. I really enjoyed those calls. I miss the good chats we used to have.
 It’s lonelier now.”

Richard Guthrie, 92

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007                Happy Birthday, Robin!

"All I ever wanted to do was serve this president and this administration and this department!"
Monica Goodling

"...she proceeded for the next 30 or 45 minutes to bawl her eyes out about, you know, personal stuff...and then cry more, and more, and more, and more!" 
From yesterday's Congressional testimony by Department of Justice official David Margolis 

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007

The punch line to a long joke I first heard about thirty-five years ago is, "Well...I guess it just wasn't your day!"

But there was no humor on Valentine's Day, 1884, for our Nation's 26th President. In the early morning hours of that day, at the family spread in Manhattan, Theodore Roosevelt's mother succumbed to typhoid fever. She was forty-eight years old.
In the same house not twelve hours later ...yes, that very afternoon, on the fourth anniversary of their engagement...his young wife (Alice was not yet twenty-three) died from what is now called preeclampsia, a complication of childbirth. Two days earlier she had given birth to the couple's first child: a healthy girl who was named after her mother. This girl grew up to be (none other than) Alice Roosevelt Longworth. She was unconventional by any measure and lived to be ninety-six years old! Among many quotations attributed to her is this one...a classic:

Monday, May 21st, 2007

Does advertising just keep getting bolder? And how much bolder can it get than to assume facts not in evidence? Take the latest pitch from the makers of Imodium A-D: "is your diarrhea under control?" The television ads feature a young, tall, trim, bright-eyed blonde woman (certainly not the type one associates with a loose stool---subliminal message: 'if this predicament could befall a beautiful specimen like her...even in elegant surroundings, then just think how much more likely it is to happen to an ugly ole broken-down slob like you (the TV viewer)...on yer fat ass on yer lice-infested couch in yer shitty living room!'). The woman is in a panic-driven search for a toilet. The ad has the aura of a dream, a la the film 'Memento'. It's not clear if she's in a bus station, an airport, a restaurant, a fancy hotel or someone's well-appointed home...but she's dressed to the nines and she's not in her home and there's tons of other people milling about! In her frenzy, she encounters only 'occupied' (gray) public stalls and locked (white) private doors. Clearly, the intent of the advertisement is to strike fear into the individual who believes that she (or he) might ever find himself (or herself) similarly 'indisposed' in polite company. And, clearly, the only way to avoid such a humiliating experience is to never go anywhere or...to take Imodium A-D!

The Internet version of this pitch goes somewhat farther than the TV, featuring a 'bathroom finder'! I'm not making this up! All you gotta do is type in a Zip Code (or City and State name) and you'll get a list (with a map) of all the public toilets in that locale...'To put your mind at ease---even if your diarrhea is under control'! But there's a disclaimer: "McNeil-PPC, inc., and the Bathroom Diaries, LLC, will not be responsible for any loss or damage caused by reliance on the information contained in the Bathroom Finder."
Incidentally...just for chuckles, I typed in my home Zip Code only to discover that, if I find myself out'nabout in these parts, I'm SOL!

Sunday, May 20th, 2007

A new word for you: cyberchondriac!
Here's the plural form...in a sentence: "Ninety percent of hypochondriacs with Internet access become cyberchondriacs."

“Most people think life sucks, and then you die. Not me. I think life sucks, then you get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a new dog, you get a new wife, you owe ten million dollars in medical bills but you work hard and you pay it all back and then -- one day -- you have a massive stroke, your whole right side is paralyzed, you have to limp along the streets and speak out of the left side of your mouth and drool but you go into rehabilitation and regain the power to walk and the power to talk and then one day you step off a curb and BANG you get hit by a bus...and then you die. Maybe.”
 Denis Leary

Friday, May 18th, 2007

"In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence (and work is achieved by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence)."
Laurence J. Peter, (1919-1988)

Thursday, May 17th, 2007

Newsflash from the Associated Press! Dateline Washington DC: There's more worrisome news about vitamins! Taking too many may increase a man's risk of dying from prostate cancer! The study, involving 300,000 men, is the biggest yet to suggest that high-dose multivitamins may harm the prostate and it's the latest chapter in the confusing quest to tell whether taking vitamins helps a variety of conditions or is a waste of money...or worse!

Now consider this snippet of dialogue from 'Sleeper', the 1973 Woody Allen movie... 

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007                Happy Birthday, Maggie!

Studs Terkel is ninety-five years old!

Tuesday, May 15th, 2007

"As a Christian, I feel that role modeling the gay lifestyle is damaging to the moral lives of children.

  Tinky-Winky is purple — the gay-pride color; and his antenna is shaped like a triangle — the gay-pride symbol! He carts around a red handbag but speaks with a male voice!"

Jerry Falwell, (1933-2007), whose "paternal grandfather, Charles William Falwell, embittered by the death of his wife and a favorite nephew, was a vocal and decisive atheist who would not go to church, and ridiculed those who did." NYT 

Monday, May 14th, 2007

A man has only to murder a series of wives to become known to millions of people who have never heard of Homer.

 Any of us can achieve virtue if, by 'virtue', we mean the avoidance of 'vices' which do not appeal to us.

 Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead.

  Robert S. Lynd (1892-1970), sociologist co-author (with his wife, Helen) of 'Middletown' (1929) and 'Middletown In Transition' (1937). 'Middletown' was, actually, Muncie, Indiana. On the subject of mass (newspaper and magazine) advertising, Lynd observed that "the trick is to make the reader emotionally uneasy, to bludgeon him with the 'fact' that decent people don't live the way that he does. Then the poor sucker will sacrifice everything to buy, buy, buy! "

Sunday, May 13th, 2007