Disinfotainment Today Best of 2005

Announcer: Musical News - dateline, Ft. Hood, Texas. A Judge declared a mistrial in the case of Pfc. Lynndie England today, vacating her guilty verdict. Here's what Ms. England had to say about it...

I Am Not Guilty
by Michael Dare
(picture, oh, I don't know, Alanis Morrissette)

I may be guilty of being a soldier
and doing what I am told
I may be guilty of posing for pictures
and acting a little cold
I stuck up my thumbs and I smiled for the camera
and looked like a really hot babe
But I am not guilty of torturing prisoners
in Baghdad at Abu Ghraib

   Isn't it ironic
   how I can act so cocky
   and drink a gin and tonic
   beside a nude Iraqi

I am not guilty of following orders
I wasn't supposed to follow
I am not guilty of telling white lies
that everyone has to swallow
I am not guilty of shooting a president
nearly as honest as Abe
And I am not guilty of torturing prisoners
in Baghdad at Abu Ghraib

   Isn't it ironic
   how I can act so cocky
   and smoke a lot of chronic
   beside a nude Iraqi

Breathing through a tube
Breathing through a tube
I can see the pontiff
breathing through a tube

Tom Sizemore's failed drug test using an artificial dong. And allow me to point out that the most depressing thing about this incident is that it's Sizemore that's being held up to ridicule instead of judge Antonio Baretto. Why does anyone give a fuck whether some actor is doing speed?

Alternate headlines: Saving Ryan's Privates, Take the Schlong Way Home, Heidi's Salami, Cheater Banana, Too Bad He Didn't Fill it with Chicken Soup.

     It was 1968 and I was still in high school when I got my first job as an usher at the Warner Theater on Wilshire in Beverly Hills, a magnificent stage palace that had been converted to film, holding thousands of people, with an enormous lobby and balcony, ornate and baroque, the likes of which we'll never see again. We wore uniforms and snapped to attention with military precision. My duties consisted of tearing tickets before the film, ushering people to their seats, then standing inside with a flashlight during the film, prepared to pounce on anyone who dared light up a cigarette. I would walk down the aisle, aim my flashlight at them, disturbing all around, and say "please put that out." What power! Paid to be a jerk! Who'da thunk?
    I had to stand guard, a soldier on duty, inside the door of the auditorium, throughout the entire picture, ready to help, reserved seats all the way, examine each ticket, treating each patron like they had a box at the opera, an overture, the light from the crystal chandelier going down, special lights for the magnificent curtain going up and actually getting applause, the film beginning, one preview, no commercials, the film itself, escorting latecomers to their seats with my flashlight, long before those irritating strings of mini-lights that never go out at the fringes of rugs in multiplexes. The Warner Theater was more minimal than mini-mall, it was a guy with a flashlight, me, the terror of torches, illuminating the aisle for anyone on their way to the bathroom.
    This necessitated my standing at attention throughout the film, my legs aching, following instructions not to lean, only falling against the door frame when I knew for certain the theater manager wasn't spying on me from the dark, which he did at least twice during each screening from the backstage area behind the screen where he could see all six doors, upstairs and down, a loyal usher standing at each one, opening the doors for customers and quickly shutting them to let less light in.
    Oh, sure, he could see my body, but there was nothing he could do about my eyes. My eyes were mine and they couldn't help but wander to the screen when they tired of scanning the crowd for glowing cherries from the ends of Chesterfields. I got to see dozens of movies literally hundreds of times, studying them, learning their flaws and their moments of genius, moments I never wanted to see again vs. moments I'd never miss at each and every screening. Even if I was out in the lobby sweeping, I'd run inside to see the winter scenes in Zhivago, over and over, meeting Lara at the dam, Tom Courtney on the train to revolution, over and over, the final scene in The Subject was Roses where Martin Sheen breaks down and says, "I love you, Dad," truly great acting, watching it again and again, mindlessly examining his character arch, making the whole film come together, a single moment of clarity, over and over, Richard Burton walking down the street, his scarf flying in the breeze, at a bookstore, his scarf flying in the breeze, in the back of a limo with a beautiful horny teenager, his scarf still flying in the breeze, one of the funniest moments in Candy which I only noticed maybe the 15th time I saw it, teaching me that there were marvelous hidden things in films if you only bothered to really pay attention.
    I was enjoying the heck out of this job. Even watching the same movie over and over was preferable to most of what was on television because everything, absolutely everything on television, was interspersed with commercials. This was the era of broadcast TV, free for the asking from anyone rich enough to buy a television with rabbit ears, all content brought to you by advertising - absolutely every fucking fifteen minutes - no matter what they were showing, average sitcom, above average western, or serious classic, all were brought to you by somebody who thought they'd get your attention by INTERRUPTING WHAT YOU WERE WATCHING. I hated commercials and considered advertisers the lowest form of life, especially during broadcast movies which it seemed their quest to ruin.
   An article in the paper exclaimed that soon there was going to be "pay" TV which you'd pay for but which would have no commercials. There would still be free airwaves, but TV would be like a utility, a physical cable to your living room, offering potentially hundreds of channels, which sounded a hell of a lot better than 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13, the only stations broadcasting at the time in Los Angeles. This sounded great. I couldn't wait for cable TV.
   Then I went to work. There was a poster outside the theater showing a crying child wearing a Dodgers cap, sitting in front of a television with a coin slot, a caption saying "Daddy says we can't watch baseball because he doesn't have a quarter for the TV." This was their warped version of what "pay" TV was going to look like. Underneath the graphic, the poster said something like Keep TV Free! Sign our petition to stop "Pay Television."
   I was flabbergasted. It was the worst ad I'd ever seen, total misinformation. There weren't going to be any coin slots in televisions. I knew that. Broadcast TV would still be free. Pay TV would only add to what we already had. How did I know? I read the goddam article. While getting into my usher's uniform in the men's locker, I told the other ushers how great pay TV was going to be, then headed towards my daily duties.
    After I swept the lobby, the manager assigned me to man the booth set up for people to sign the petition. It was suddenly my job to get patrons to sign something I was totally against. Everyone who stepped up to sign I wanted to smack and say "What the hell's the matter with you?" I didn't know what to do. The angel on my right shoulder told me to stick to my guns, to tell people the truth if they asked, to let them make up their own minds. The devil on my left shoulder told me to summon up my inner Sheen, become a great actor, just play a role, recite a script, be a commercial spokesman for a product I abhorred. "Do what you're told and keep your job," said the devil. "Don't be a paycheck whore," said the angel.
   It was that moment, seventeen years old, sitting behind that table, reading the petition, which was trying to pass a local ordinance banning cable television, that I realized for the first time in my life I had principles. I could not possibly try to convince people to sign such a thing. I could see the future. I wanted my MTV.
   After a few hours, the manager came up and saw that I hadn't gotten a single signature, despite the fact the film was sold out and thousands of people had passed the table. I was a failure at petitioning. He reassigned me to clean up a drink someone had spilt in the lobby, leaving a trail of brown stickiness all across the front of the theater. When I got back, I'd have to get at least 100 signatures or I'd be fired.
   I grabbed a bucket and mop. I cleaned the inside lobby, followed the trail to the outside lobby, cleaned it, then noticed the trail continued. I was in no hurry to get back. I cleaned the sidewalk in front of the theater, followed it around the corner, mopping all the way to the parking lot where I saw my car. Fuck it. I went home and watched television, cursing at the commercials. Without a job, I wouldn't even be able to afford pay TV if it actually ended up existing.
   Though I didn't know it at the time, movie theaters had lost a large percentage of their business when television showed up in the first place in the fifties, and they rightly feared that cable TV in the seventies would be the death knoll to grand palaces like the Warners, and it turned out they were right. After brief forays back to legitimate theater, with occasional rock concerts, the Warners was torn down years ago. Who knows? Maybe if I'd gathered enough signatures the Warner Theater would still be standing. A conscience can be complicated.

"Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it BECAUSE it is right."
- Dr. Martin Luther King -

Icelandic citizen Bobbe Fischer is being held in a Japanese prison because the United States wants to extradite him for the crime of playing chess in Yugoslavia.

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Sending Condoleezza Rice to China was such a diplomatic success that the Bush administration now plans on sending Natalie Cole to Newcastle, Phoebe Snow to Antarctica, Chris Rock to Gibraltar, and Andy Dick to prison.

You say Hezbollah and I say Hisbollah
You say al Qaida and I say al Qaeda
Hezbollah, Hisbollah
al Qaida, al Qaeda
Let's call the whole thing off.

Hello studio audience and welcome to Satan for a Day. Terri Schiavo, come on down.

Just for showing up, you get a brand new esophagus, perfect for swallowing whatever we feed you. There are no feeding tubes in hell, so try to remember, and if you remember, then swallow. Swallow swallow swallow swallow...

And speaking of swallowing, meet your roommate, Linda Lovelace, who had sort of a different problem concerning things being shoved down her throat. I'm sure you two will have a lot to talk about.

But enough chit-chat and on to the prizes. After fifteen years of lying around doing nothing, we just know you'll appreciate... a set of golf clubs! Of course there are no golf courses in hell, so just relax. In hell, you can't get teed off.

Satan wants you to know he appreciates all the hard work you've put in for him. Lying comatose for such a long stretch of time isn't easy, especially when you're fully cognizant every second. Your parents could have ended your suffering any time they wanted, so wow, they must have really hated you. You'll be able to get back at them pretty soon because, Terri, take a look behind this curtain, yes, it's the room we've got waiting for THEM.

Yep, here it is, Terri, just for you, a fully functional medieval torture chamber. As soon as your parents die, which will be together in a car wreck by the way, they will be put in these cages hanging over open pits of eternal fire where you get to keep THEM alive for fifteen years. Won't that be nice? Who said hell wasn't fabulous? Not me.

One reason your husband wanted you dead was because he's a Catholic so he couldn't remarry till you croaked. You can thank the Pope for that, personally next month, when Linda Lovelace gets moved to another room and the Pope shows up as YOUR NEW ROOMMATE!

Yes, Terri, just for suffering such lovely damnation on earth, you get to wack the dead Pope over the head with a rubber chicken every morning for the rest of eternity. Not only that, but every Easter you get to shove a live bunny up his ass, and each Christmas, Jesus Christ gets to wear HIM around his neck nailed to a cross.

And for being such a good sport about this whole thing, you also get to take over for Satan when he goes on vacation tomorrow. The entire realm is yours to do with as you wish.

So bend over Terri, here comes the trident of destiny, and enjoy your brief reign as lord of the dark forces of the universe as this week's winner on Satan for a Day.

Good girl. Now if you'll just step into this soundproof chamber... Thanks, Terri.

Now that Terri can't hear me, I can let you in on a little secret. Terri's not dead yet. That's right, she's just imagining all of this while waiting to die in a Florida hospital.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Hello studio audience and welcome to Satan for a Day. Today's guest has spend the last week auditioning for the lead in The Terri Schiavo Story. He's the star of Pope Fiction, the nincompope himself, Karol Jozef Wojtyla, come on down.

Just for showing up, you get this life-sized replica of the Papal bedroom, complete with 77 Catholic virgins. Yep, in hell, all religions are equal, and we don't see why you shouldn't be treated at least as well as a Muslim. Martyrs are martyrs and they all get the same prize. Hell on earth is no sex at all. Hell in hell is 77 Catholic virgins.

We know you wore that Yarmulka on earth to protect your head from the divine light from above, but you need to learn something from Vietnam vets who know it's often safer to sit on your helmet. From now on, you'll be needing that extra protection from below, not above, so for the rest of eternity, you get to sit on your Yarmulka.

You know, John Paul, near the end of every Pope's life, he considers changing professions from spokes-Pope to real-Pope, from figurehead of the richest corporation on earth to actual head of the richest corporation on earth. For a moment, we know you actually considered helping the poor by simply giving them money. Pawning a couple rings could have kept some babies alive long enough to have more babies, but instead you spread the word of God while hanging on to the wealth of God, and tax free at that.

So here's what you're going to be working on for a while. We're going to pretend that the Catholic church was just like any other corporation, and you're going to pay the taxes for the whole time you were Pope. Bring it in, boys.

A giant desk full of forms and ledgers and adding machines is rolled center stage. The Pope is strapped to a chair in front of it.

Here's a list of every donation made to the church during your tenure, everything from massive corporate write-offs to dimes in wishing wells, and here's the list of everything you spent money on, everything from missions to jewelry polish. Add the list of real estate you own around the world but don't pay taxes on, and you get to figure out how much you owe to the IRS and every other government in the world.

And that's not all. One thing being Pope kept you safe from was elevator music. Well not any longer. For the next 20 years, the following song will be playing gently in the background...

You're Pope John Paul
What a Pole! What a role! What a life!
No misanthrope
He's no dope. He can cope. He's the Pope

Satan wants you to know he appreciates all the hard work you've put in for him. Presiding over such a massive organization while actually having no power or ability to change things in any way whatsoever has got to be tough, so we've got a special surprise guest just for you. Here's the moment you've been waiting for, the man you've been longing to meet, the man himself, Mr. "Forgive them Lord," is he walking on water or stranded on land, Jesus Christ himself ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it for him!

Enter Jesus, stage left. Jesus has long hair, a scraggly beard, and is wearing a dirty robe and sandals. He is wearing a cross around his neck just to remind him. He takes the mike from Helen.

Jesus: Hi everybody. I've just got one thing to say. Please stop praying to me. There's nothing I can do for you now, believe me. Praying is pointless, just pointless. Please just follow my ADVICE, not ME. You can't see where a finger is pointing until you look away from the finger. The next person who kills or hurts anyone else in my name is REALLY gonna get it.

Thanks, Christ, that was wonderful. And now, Karol, it's time to meet your new roommate, one of our latest arrivals, Johnny Cochran!

JOHNNY: Thank you very much, it's a pleasure to be here, though I'd rather be defending Michael Jackson. You know what I'd do? I'd ask him to fuck his accuser in the courtroom, then I'd tell the jury "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."

HELEN: That was really great, Johnny. And now here's something else that will really grate, Ladies and Gentlemen, every dead catholic singing The Vatican Rag.

Every catholic who has ever died steps forth singing The Vatican Rag, giving absolutely no credit whatsoever to Tom Lehrer...

First you get down on your knees
Fiddle with your rosaries
Bow your head with great respect
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect

Do whatever steps you want if
You have cleared them with the Pontiff
Everybody say his own kyrie eleison
Doin' the Vatican Rag

Get in line in that processional
Step into that small confessional
There, the guy who's got religion'll
Tell you if your sin's original

If it is, try playin' it safer
Drink the wine and chew the wafer
Two, four, six, eight
Time to transubstantiate

So get down upon your knees
Fiddle with your rosaries
Bow your head with great respect
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect

Make a cross on your abdomen
When in Rome do like a Roman
Ave Maria, gee it's good to see ya
Gettin' ecstatic an' sorta dramatic an'
Doin' the Vatican Rag

Enter center stage: Cardinal Richelieu, who mows down the entire chorus in a burst of machine gun fire, saying "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" while giving absolutely no credit whatsoever to Monty Python.

HELEN: NOBODY expects Cardinal Richelieu to respect intellectual property rights.

The Pope is confused, as well he should be. He is mysteriously reminded of his own death. Wavy lines as he rubs his chin and remembers back...

Karol Jozef Wojtyla is a young boy running through a field of flowers when he hears the voice of God...

The Pope is lying on his deathbed. Unknown to him, the editor of Disinfotainment Today has read all of Dan Brown's books. Just as readers of The Da Vinci Code now know that Jesus and Mary were married, so readers of Angels and Demons know that there's a secret passageway leading from the Papal bedroom to outside the Vatican walls. Using the maps in the book as a guide, Disinfotainment Today sent Xarvon, intergalactic journalist and Gonzo investigator, past the Bernini gallery in the Castel Sant' Angelo, through Il Passetto, following the narrow tunnel to the oaken door leading to the Pope's private library where they conveniently placed the Pope's deathbed.

Xarvon noisily burst into the room dressed as Cardinal Richelieu, shouting "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition," giving the pontiff a well deserved heart attack. Wojtyla had never seen Monty Python's Flying Circus and was thus unaware of the blatant rip off, believing instead that the actual Cardinal Richelieu had come to take him away, as well he was. The Pope dies, losing twenty-one grams of weight as his soul drifts downward.

Cardinal #1: I think the new Pope should be better acquainted with the use of props, so I nominate Carrot Head.

Cardinal #3: I think the new Pope should be able to think on his feet, so I nominate Karl Rove.

HELEN: And you've won a free copy of Chicken Soup for the Hell-bent Soul, containing these immortal words from Richard Nixon... "Ointment. That's what you're going to need. Ointment. Make sure you've got lots of ointment."

Now that John Paul can't hear me, I can let you in on a little secret. It's no fun depriving someone of something they've never had. After a month of constant sexual fulfillment, after he's good and used to carnal pleasure, then and only then the 77 virgins are off on another assignment, and Karl gets to spend the rest of eternity celibate. Won't that be ironic?

Be sure to tune in next week for a special celebrity guest star who won't know what hit them. Till then, this is Helen A. Handbasket signing off, and remember, if it isn't swell, it isn't hell.

What are the exact statistics of America’s biological (including gases) and nuclear weapon arsenals, and how do we get rid of them?
Wal

    America's biological and nuclear weapons arsenals are precisely 100% larger than they need to be. We get rid of them on global satellite TV, The Disarmament Channel, where 24/7, any country, or even individual, can verify the destruction of a weapon by simply donating it to The Disarmament Channel who will destroy it in front of the world.
    "Today on The Disarmament Channel, 200 tons of sarin gas from the US will be disintegrated by a mini-nuke donated by China, followed by fireworks."
   "That's right, Katie, but first, a group of Tutsis from Rwanda will be throwing 10,000 Hutu machetes into a live volcano in Oahu, followed by two hours of blowing up skeet shooters in Texas with bazookas."
MD

    Thank you Burke, I happen to know this, but first you should be aware that one of the recessive genes common to the clam is the inability to capitalize the first letter of sentences.
    The male clam shows his penis to the female clam with as little movement as possible. Any sort of movement on the part of the male clam is considered a turnoff to female clams, which is why most male clams just sit there.
    The female clam runs her beard over the male clam's penis until he ejaculates. The female gobbles up the sperm and swishes them around inside with hundreds of eggs of which half get fertilized. She spits them out and they float away to get eaten by tuna (which is why tuna has that fishy taste), unless they find perch in a rock, and the whole miraculous cycle of birth and death and comedy is perpetuated ad infinitum.
    Except for the monoclam. Monoclams fertilize themselves, then give birth to miniclams who form gangs that terrorize the ocean. Many a scuba diver has suffered the consequences of swimming too close to a suicide squad of miniclams bent on vengeance for all that chowder.

Hi Lynette,
I've always assumed so. Half the stuff in Disinfotainment Today wasn't meant for publication and I can't believe I've got the nerve to send it out under any circumstances. Lately, I've taken steps towards turning it into more of a discussion and less of a rant. I assume that every letter I get is part of that discussion. Unlike a blogger, I edit the discussion. The only way I can tell the difference between a personal letter and a letter meant for publication is if you point it out in the letter. I can only keep a secret if I know it's a secret.
MD

if the earth is round and ocean waves ripple on shore to different land masses - like, say, between the U.S. mainland and Hawaii--does the ocean part in the middle?
Paul Krassner

Dear Mr. Krassner,
    What do I look like, a clam? And did I mention that thing about capitalizing the first letter of sentences? What's going on here? Have you looked at your genes lately?
    I'm reminded of the legend of Moses the Clam, who is reported to have seen a burning seaweed, heard the word of the great and almighty lord of the universe, and parted the ocean floor to kill researchers from Chicken of the Sea who were threatening to take away their homeland. Clams always wanted to be the "chickens" of the sea and continue to bear a grudge against tuna.
    To get serious, whenever there's an undersea earthquake that causes tsunamis that ripple out, there's a corresponding dip at ground zero known as the "Corresponding Dip," named after Matt Drudge.
MD

Locke,
Not unless Marilyn has her eyes on that new clerk at the Morongo Market.
MD

Why did Peter Jackson (the director of the Lord of the Rings films) say in an interview with Charlie Rose "One does not re-write Tolkien" while at the same time doing some prodigious rewriting in the 3 films he made.?? The worst being the elves fighting at Helms deep.
Paul

Bill,
Five years ago Satan roasted Ann Coulter over an open spit. I should know because I had a slice of her smoked buttocks, which was delicious. The Ann Coulter you see on television is a hologram broadcast by HAARP (Their new ad line: "We do more than earthquakes!"). Strictly speaking, there is nothing underneath her clothes but stale air and some random clam sperm.
MD

Bill,
Oh, man, would you believe I was cleaning out the basement just last week, I found an old eigenvector of my dad's, and I threw it away? I know it was a "right" eigenvector but I'm not sure if it was prime. Probably not. Sorry about that. Who said you could ask two questions anyway?
MD

Ellen Degeneres describes herself as being "boy crazy" when she was young? What do you think happened?
Tiera Hurlbert

    One of them broke her heart and she blamed it on all boys instead of just the boy who broke her heart.
    My son did the same thing. Years ago I gave him a piece of mincemeat pie and he didn't like it. He didn't come to the conclusion that he didn't like mincemeat pie, he came to the conclusion he didn't like pie, period. For years I'd offer him apple pie, cherry pie, peach pie, and he'd say no because he thought he didn't like ALL pies, not just mincemeat. It made me nuts.
    This Christmas I loaded a forkful of pecan pie with whipped cream and forced it on him. He ended up finishing the whole thing and has gotten over his mistrust of pies, which was my parenting triumph of the week.
    In one way or another, everybody needs a piece of pecan pie with whipped cream shoved down their throat.
MD

Why does non-alcohol-drinking Utah have the highest rate of tranquilizer use? If they're holier than thou why do they need to wind down with pills instead of with a glass of nice Cabernet?
Rita M

Rita,
For the same reason they don't have tall buildings in Utah, to prevent massive suicides of people who find themselves living in Utah.
MD

Why is dirt so small? Who is buried in Grant's tomb? (Hint: A trick question.) A kid will eat ivy too, wouldn't you? Does anybody really know what time it is? Why? (Warning: This question has been known to destroy advanced computers in realities ranging from Star Trek to The Prisoner.) How many flavors of Coca-Cola do we need? Is the autopen Donald Rumsfeld uses to write to fallen soldier's families the same one he used to sign documents that led to Nutrasweet going on the market? In how many Federal Agencies is Disinfotainment Today examined and archived by? Will OJ ever find the real killers? Inquiring minds want to know!
TTFN, Baron Dave

Dave,
In no particular order: every day in the mirror, no way, fourteen, yes, ninety-three, because I say so, absolutely not, to fit between the cracks, and Jimmy Hoffa.
MD

How come guys get so mad when we accidentally injure your cojones? Say while play wrestling, playing sports, moving the wrong way on the couch, or a zillion other situations. At least in my experience, there is usually a couple of minutes of intense, almost psycho like anger. Jeez, it was an ACCIDENT. Not our fault God placed them in such a vulnerable area.
- Veronica Dell, Houston

It's well known that whenever a newspaper "kicked" the French novelist Honoré Balzac with what he considered to be a worthless piece of literary criticism, he crumpled like a leaf and bawled like a baby. Since then, whenever a man crumples like a leaf and bawls like a baby upon being kicked in the "Balzac," it's in fact his personal tribute to the writer of La Comédie Humaine.
MD

Don't you think people in automobiles will be more visible, thus safer, if they use their headlights when it rains?
- Eliot Hall

I assume this is in reference to my mention of the new California law stating you have to put on your headlights whenever you use your windshield wipers. While I certainly agree that you should put on your headlights when it's raining, that's not what the law says. This law is an invitation for a letter-of-the-law pinhead cop to give you a ticket for not turning on your headlights when you were using your windshield wipers to clean off a splattered bug. Don't think it ain't gonna happen, especially in places like L.A., where city extortionists run around giving tickets to people who park on the wrong side of the street on street cleaning day AFTER the streets have been cleaned but before the sign says you can park.
MD

It was easier than sending Southeast Asia on a fact finding mission to Jeb Bush.
MD

An old picture of young GW Bush, showed his eye brows were straight across his nose. I read once it's a sign of dementia, is it true?
- Ole vet

Yes, he just doesn't care who wins. He gets off on watching his creations running head first at each other.
MD

Do you think God condemns the bonobos to chimpanzee hell because of their licentious greeting rituals? Or are they merely acting the way God made them? And if so, why is God pleased with uninhibited hairy monkey humping but offended by uninhibited hairless monkey humping? Is it the hair, or lack thereof? Maybe what really offends God is shaving, not uninhibited humping?
- Jeff

Everything offends God when he's in a pissy mood. If he's omnipotent, he obviously isn't benevolent. If he's benevolent, he obviously isn't omnipotent. This pisses him off even more. Blame the recent tsunami on gas he got from some Indonesian food.
MD

Can an omnipotent god make him/herself impotent? And then what happens?
- Chriss

What's the deal with those stupid scroll-down lists of states that one must use when filling out online forms? I live in New York, it's not too difficult for me to type "NY". I can normally do it on the first, or second try. Who's the brain surgeon that thought that it'd be better for me to open up an alphabetical list of states (many of which I've never even heard of- "Nebraska"?!? Where the Hell's that?), and try and click on "New York" before it whizzes past?
- Len X.

Scroll lists were patented in the 50s. David Rockefeller gets a nickel every time someone uses one.
MD

Why did John Kerry send me an email stating that he was counting on ordinary voters like me to assure that every vote is counted? Who knew he meant it literally? What made John think we'd be able to do what he was unwilling to even try? Do voting irregularities fix themselves, or must central services intervene? Tired of ugly ducts? Has anyone seen Sam Lowery??????
yours in boca raton,
- palantir

That wasn't John Kerry who sent you that message. John Kerry was roasted over an open spit by Satan some time in early October of last year. I should know because my correspondent Helen got his kidneys in a lovely pie. Since then, every missive from the Democratic party has in fact been written by David Rockefeller, who owns the people who own the people who own the voting machines.
I'm supposed to know who Sam Lowery is? According to Google, Sam Lowery was a prominent businessman in Burnt Corn. Burnt corn is something I know about. Why haven't you asked me something about burnt corn?
MD

I'm sorry, I'm no longer answering questions that don't start with a capital letter.
MD

Ever try sleeping with a sheep? They keep you up all night with their relentless demands for mint jelly. I sleep just fine as long as the sheep stay in the refrigerator.
MD

Not very. Clams are notoriously depressed and angry, even steamed. They often need a Valium not to go off the deep end. (Suicidal clams are moving to Ontario since they found there's Prozac in the drinking water.) They'd as soon slit your throat as provide you with tasty nourishment.
MD

Fill in the blank... "If ignorance is bliss, ___________ are the happiest people on earth."

    I'm not interested in a new delivery system that delivers the same old crap. I'm looking to escape from the same old crap. I want you to give me something I can't get anywhere else, otherwise the wheel is spinning but the hamster's dead.
    I represent the free press, in that I put out a weekly newspaper and nobody tells me what to put in it. I've done a lot of research and come to this conclusion.
    There is no vast right wing conspiracy. There is no vast left wing conspiracy. There IS a conspiracy to keep the debate right vs. left when the real battle is up vs. down. The powerful vs. the powerless.
    In the battle between the powerful and the powerless, the greatest weapon the powerless have is a free press. The ability to tell the world what's happening. And right now, the Russian newspaper Pravda, which used to be held up in ridicule as nothing more than the obvious propaganda arm of the Communist party, is currently a freer press than the Washington Post. The greatest global display of actual Democracy in progress this year is not the elections in Iraq, and certainly not the elections here. The greatest global display of actual democracy is a newspaper in South Korea called ohmynews in which more than 20,000 readers sift through all the news and vote on which 10 stories make the cover. This beats Google's news service all to crap. You can tell the difference between decisions made by people vs. decisions made by machines. Wouldn't it be cool to set up something like that in America? Free idea. Do it.
    Back when there was nothing but radio and broadcast TV, the FCC controlled everything. When cable showed up, it was an end-run around the FCC. It was unregulated, no censorship, and just a monthly fee instead of commercials. That's how it was for a while but look at it now. We did the end run around commercial television, but strangely cable TV has just as many commercials as broadcast TV, and they STILL charge for it. How did they do that? Like I said, the wheel is spinning but the hamster's dead.
    Why am I here? I'm looking for someone. I'm not looking for someone who's goal is to sell out to Rupert Murdoch. I'm looking for someone who's goal is to TAKE ON Rupert Murdoch. To me, the only difference between Rupert Murdoch and Monica Lewinski is they're sucking the dicks of different presidents.
    I want to create something which Time/Warner would only buy to bury. They know how powerful the press is, they know it's the only weapon we have to keep the powerful from exploiting the powerless to death. You don't have to be smart to be powerful, you only have to be rich. You can get rich by just stealing everything that's useful and blowing up everything else. You can get away with absolutely anything, the worst possible human atrocities, as long as no one is paying attention. So I'm asking you to pay attention. In 1985, there were 50 companies who owned media outlets. Now there are only six who own absolutely everything. As soon as they sniff a free press, they buy it up and turn it into bologna.
    This just happened to me. I moved to the Coachella Valley just as The Desert Post Weekly was starting out. It was a genuine alternative to the only daily, the Desert Sun, serving Palm Springs and very Republican, backing Mary Bono all the way. I got a weekly column in the Desert Post Weekly that was a hit, ran for a year, then the whole editorial staff was replaced by a crew that turned it into another local throwaway, things to do in town, local matters. Far from being an alternative to the Desert Sun, the Desert Post Weekly now has reprints of articles originally in the Desert Sun. In just a couple months, I went from a weekly column to "please stop submitting your stuff to us. We're not a real newspaper any more."
    This didn't happen because I'm getting worse at what I do. It happened because I'm getting better. Once you're out there and people learn to trust you, the most amazing things just show up in the mail. I've got hundreds of sources around the world, little old me, my inbox packed every day with people with stories that aren't getting out, people with photographs that expose lies.
    Remember when Israel started fencing off the Palestinians? It was all over the news. "In order stave off terrorism, Israel is building a fence around the Palestinians," then they showed a news clip of a fence going up. They showed it over and over for a couple days. It's all the US public saw and they didn't care. Who could disapprove of a fence? To stop those horrible suicide bombings? Sounds like a good idea.
   The very next day I got an email from Israel showing a Palestinian standing next to a cement wall 40 feet tall, a prison wall, more intimidating than the one that used to be in Berlin, completely different from the "fence" they were showing us on TV. I was the first to post those pictures in America. A year later, the media started referring to it as what it really was, a wall, not a fence, but the damage had been done. The American public, who actually paid for the construction of it by the way, thought they were just getting a fence but the Israelis delivered a wall. Isn't that nice?
    TV makes up your mind for you. They want you to care about Terri Schiavo so they show you endless clips of her sitting up in bed and smiling, without bothering to mention that the footage is three years old.
    They are deliberately creating a universal disconnect. They're creating the New Dumb, people who are so overloaded with information that they can't be bothered to check things out, a generation of the gullible who are swallowing enormous lies at a rapidly accelerating pace.
    Colin Powell gave a speech at the UN. Turned out to be bullshit but at the time, it was presented as gold. Nobody questioned a thing until a year later, after the war had started, when the bullshit was so high even Tom Brokaw couldn't ignore it. So you think hey, the press works, the truth came out. Only one problem. Within one hour of Colin Powell's speech, I had already found incontrovertible proof that he was lying, and I said so in my paper that week. What the hell took ABC a year? They've got access to the same information I do. They could have said "Colin Powell lies to UN," but they didn't. There's only one difference between us. I don't work for a major corporation so I can say whatever the hell I want. They can't stop me because they don't own me.
    A free press needs protection and you can give it. A free press that monitors the actions of the powerful cannot be owned by the people being monitored. A free press owned by the powerful becomes a propaganda machine for the powerful. Not one newspaper owned by William Randolph Hearst accepted advertising from or even bothered to review a little film called Citizen Kane and they successfully buried it, at least for a little while. And the same thing is happening now, every single day. Premature burial of stories. The modern Hearsts are bigger and powerful and unscrupulous beyond imagination. And they own everything.
    Except you. All of you here today with your new technology, are in the remarkable position to do an end run around the big six who control everything. Time Warner, Walt Disney, Bertelsmann AG, Viacom, Rupert Murdoch, and NBC/Universal, owned by General Electric. If you use your new delivery systems just to regurgitate what we're already force fed every day, it will be a gigantic wasted opportunity. You're powerful. Exert your power. The first amendment. Use it or lose it.

Chart of the Week

Pamela Anderson is nothing like Adolf Hitler

Action Hitler Anderson

Blew Tommy Lee No Yes
Annexed the Sudatenland Yes No

Next time you are too drunk to drive, walk to the nearest pizza shop, place an order, and when they go to deliver it, catch a ride home with them.

     Virtually every major problem I've encountered on my computer has to do with multi-tasking. Give it one or two things to do and things go smoothly, but crank it up to ten windows open and you're looking for trouble, everything just STOPS and you don't know where it is. Is it the radio? No, the music's still coming through. Could it be the mail coming in? The mail going out? God, not the window I've got open, the one I'm writing in.
   That happens in society too. You never know when that rascally random element is going to throw the best laid plans to shit. I think Mr. Gates deliberately created Windows as a mirror of society. Looks nice in the box. Loads nicely. Everything works fine for a little while and then you have to REBOOT. Everything works fine for a little while longer and then you have to REBOOT again.
    There's a kink in the works and it's you. You're the random element that the computer can't figure out. It's never been asked to do such a particular combination of things before and it's baffled. It's not that you don't get it, it's that it doesn't get you. If you behaved the way the computer wanted you to behave, it would never have to crash. You'd walk hand in hand down the corridors of perfection. Your computer deals with you the way society deals with you. It tells you to stop doing things. First it asks nicely, then it slams on the cuffs. It doesn't seem to understand that you don't work for it, it works for you. It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.
    It's designed by a mind and you've got one of those. It's trying to psyche you out, to figure what you're going to do and be prepared for it, to lay the path and assume you won't stray, whereas we, we sit there, we absorb it all, we try to fuck with it, hey, what would happen if we did THIS! And THAT! There. Now we've trashed the damn thing. Let's start over.
   When parts of society crash, it's RAM vs. ROM all over again. If you're in society's RAM, you're only in memory. When there's a crash, you're toast. Only society's ROM survive because they've been stored in an external device called money and/or fame. The size of ROM in society entirely depends upon the goodwill of those in ROM and their propensity for creating more storage. Since everyone in RAM wants to get in ROM before the next crash, they bounce around randomly hoping a few will land in a bucket. If you land in the bucket, you're saved to an external device. Or you can buy your way in, or get grandfathered in, which is how most ROM do it.
   Sometimes it's just the screen, a component of society that simply needs to be fiddled with or replaced. It's random. There's nothing you can do about it but complain. The media is the complaint department, unless it's the publicity department, and then society's fucked. Every department store needs a complaint department. You've got to at least DEAL with complaints. They're going to crop up. They're the opposite of plants. Ignoring them makes them grow.
    In society, what good is replacing the hard drive if you've still got the same old CPU? Politics stops with the hard drive. Only the owner controls the CPU.
   In society, popularity equals money. Doesn't matter what you're popular for, selling cars, doing what you're told, getting the job done, creating art, they all equal more money with more popularity.
   Some may say that in Windows, popularity don't mean shit, that no matter how many people keep making the same mistake, they won't fix it. To them I say they are wrong simply because this idea conflicts with my pre-drawn conclusion.
   If Windows doesn't mirror society but simply the mind of Bill Gates, one of the richest men on earth, that's even scarier.

   I share with you my frustration over thousands of daily injustices that come my way, each one a little monstrosity, stories that conflict with simple reason, that I simply can't believe were committed by my race, not Caucasian or Jewish but human, simply human, the race that trumps all others. I've been embarrassed to be Caucasian and embarrassed to be Jewish and they don't hold a candle to the shame I feel every day when a fellow biped does something that makes me embarrassed to be human, that causes me to wonder who raised these people or what mysterious glitch in the Homo Sapiens DNA causes such serious malfunction. Every day is another marathon attempt to make sense of it all, to restore a sense of rationality to our paltry existence on this confusing planet where the random element rules and terrible things happen to good people and magnificent things happen to scum, defying any sense of order or justice or common sense.
    It's easy to figure out what fiction means. All the best authors give us a world of meaning, and whatever that meaning, it makes us feel good because at least it clearly means something, unlike the real world where nothing is clear, where right and wrong are infinite blurs, where actions don't just get equal and opposite reactions but unequal and mirror reactions, where absolutely everything depends upon the right place at the right time and not what it took to get there, where dead end streets masquerade as grand opportunity, where so many things appear and disappear in front of our eyes that we can't help but presume the presence of a magician, someone behind the scenes who's pulling this on us, someone who really knows what's going on, because it must be an illusion, it can't be real. If this is reality then reality sucks, and reality can't suck. What would be the point of creating a reality that sucks?
    And what gives me the big idea that I was created in the first place? Why would a deity go to the bother of creating me, a rational being, amidst such chaos? Just to piss me off? I won't be happy until someone answers these questions and it's just pathetic that it has to be me because I am if anything more confused and bewildered than your average individual. I don't get it and maybe I never will, and maybe it's designed that way, the universe needs it's share of ecstasy and pain, of love and hate, fulfillment and frustration, okay, I get it, but why does it always seem that there's so much more pain and hate and frustration than ecstasy and love and fulfillment. Why does the prize have to be so rare? Why can't we all get a little bit of that?

    Here's some non-fiction for you, paraphrased from National Geographic, Volume 189, #3, March, 1996...
   There were once two races of penguins who huddled together during windstorms, one who stood still, and another who constantly moved around. The race of penguins who just stood there died. Only the race of penguins who moved around survived.
   The wind was cold, causing those on the outer rim of the huddle to freeze to death within minutes. In the race of penguins that didn't move, every time there was a storm they died from the outside in.
   But the tribe of penguins who moved around, who all shared their moments on the rim, then moved to the inside of the huddle to warm up, survived even the most extreme weather.

Wouldn't it be nice if mankind could be like that? If we could all spend some time on the edge to guarantee our place in the middle? How about if every poor person was guaranteed one year of wealth, just one measly year, where they knew their every need would be seen to. Give everyone a shining ray of hope. And similarly, how about if every wealthy person was guaranteed one year of poverty just as a reality check, to be reminded what life is actually like for the vast majority of our race, the human huddle, where all we've got is each other to weather the storm, moving around instead of keeping to the middle and casually watching our protectors, the ones we depend on for warmth, gradually freeze to death.

"If evolution was worth its salt, it would have involved something better than survival of the fittest. Yeah, I think a better idea is survival of the wittiest. At least that way creatures that didn't survive could have died laughing."
- Lilly Tomlin: The Search for Signs of Inteligint Life in the Universe -

I pledge to help veterans by doing everything in my power to reduce their number.

I've been pissing on the Koran
All the livelong day
I've been pissing on the Koran
While in Guántánámo Bay
Can't you see the privates leaking
On the sacred text
While the Muslims are all freaking
and wondering what is next.

Soldier won't you pee
Soldier won't you pee
Soldier won't you pee on Mohammed's words
Soldier won't you pee
Soldier won't you pee
Won't you follow up with turds?

Someone's in the jail with Akmed
Someone's in the jail I know-ow-ow-ow
Someone's in the jail with Akmed
Putting on a quid pro quo

while singin' fee fi piddly I o
Piddling everywhere I go-o-o-o
Fee fi piddly I Oh
Urinate with G.I. Joe

I loved it. It was a lifetime experience with which no others will ever compare. It was savagely ripped from the heart of society and laid bare the soul of this paltry existence. Compared to the best things you've ever seen or heard or tasted or smelt or felt, it was beyond description, a glimpse of rapture in a barren desert of simulated torture. I loved it and I don't care what anyone says. If there were anything on this planet that I could whole-heartedly recommend, this would be it. I can't believe you haven't seen/heard//tasted/felt/smelt this. A total pleasure, top to bottom, I can't remember the last time I felt so good. I've seen/heard//tasted/felt/smelt this a dozen times and I can't get enough. All I can say is it works for me. I can't wait to show it to my children. A major classic for the young at heart.

They can play in his park unafraid
Michael is not trying to get laid
And if they should chance to spend the night
He'll respect their innocent delight

He can write a tune that's nice and lilty
You can never prove that he is guilty
He can make a plausible rebuttal
All he ever wants to do is cuddle

He has made a promise you can trust
The jury gave a verdict that was just
He will have to wait till they are men
He won't sleep with little boys again

When it comes to ten o'clock or more
Michael's gonna moon walk out the door
One hand clapping will be Michael's Zen
He won't sleep with little boys again

Might I mention that every parent on earth has shared their bed with their children, so it is basically an acceptable activity, only bad when it goes too far. Unfortunately, one of the first signs that an adult has gone too far is that they have shared their bed with their children, so an acceptable activity is often used as evidence against them.

I've faced some of the same charges as Michael Jackson, having to defend myself for the heinous crime of sleeping with children, and I was guilty. Any parent who turns down their kid who wants to crawl into bed with them when they've had a nightmare is an asshole. All I could say to the court was Yeah, and so what? You want to infer something, infer it. There was nothing they could do because in cases like these, only the participants know for sure if the activity was innocent, and innocence is so much harder to prove. Try proving to a judge or jury that you didn't scratch your head yesterday. Only when it's other people's children and you're a rock star with unacceptable plastic surgery does it begin to look peculiar.

My case was chickenshit next to Michael's. I wasn't on trial for touching children who came to my amusement park and spent the night. That would demand a different tactic, and it seemed to me there was only one perfect defense - Michael had to be seen out on the town with some righteous babes to prove his heterosexual gusto. These charges would never stick against Kid Rock because we know he's bangin' the hell out of Pamela Anderson. I mean if Michael Jackson isn't fucking these children, then who's he fucking? Nobody? Unlikely. He needed to answer the question in a blatantly macho manner. I expected to see him on the cover of People, drunk at a strip club with his paws on Paris Hilton but no, Michael obviously nixed that strategy because he couldn't, not even for one simple photo shoot, pretend he was interested in fucking adult women.

And he got off anyway. They couldn't prove their case because, damn it, Michael was smart enough not to leave any DNA in any innocent orifices. Of course they couldn't prove it. Neither side could prove anything. I don't think the jury found him innocent. I think they found him guilty but didn't give a fuck. It was jury nullification. They judged the law, not Michael. Yeah, he did it. So what? What are amusement parks for if not to give pleasure to children, and who knows what makes kids happy these days?

And imagine Michael's future, a deranged ex-rock star with his face falling off in a delapidated amusement park dreaming of the days when it was full of the laughter of little boys, a curious cross between Howard Hughes, Citizen Kane, and Phantom of the Opera. He's going to be entertaining for years to come.

"For more than six hundred years - that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215 - there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that: in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of such laws."
- Lysander Spooner: Trial By Jury, Chapter I, The Right of Juries to Judge of the Justice of Laws, 1852 -

   Scientists in Arkansas have isolated the gene that causes greed, a gene that wasn't previously known to exist.
   "Most people are generous and kind," said professor Charles Osgood at the Arkansas Center for Genetic Research. "They care about their fellow man," he continued, "they wouldn't harm a fly, and it's all part of the human DNA. We're bred to be that way, it's part of our heritage."
   Osgood claims that every once in a while there's a genetic mutation that causes individuals to care about nothing but themselves. "It doesn't make any difference to these mutants how much suffering they cause as long as it's good for them," he explained. "Can you imagine owning a business that personally made you over $100 billion and still refusing to give your employees health care? It isn't natural, to have so much and still let people suffer. And, of course, the poorer the employees, the less likely they are to be able to afford to shop anywhere else, so the Waltons get the money back anyway."
   It was Alice Walton, daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, who inspired Dr. Osgood to go on his quest. Walton's hairdresser turned out to be vital to the solving of the mystery.
    "So this guy offered me a hundred bucks for a clump of Alice's black roots," said Miles Fromnowhere, owner of the Mein Hair Salon in Bentonville, Arkansas, which houses the headquarters of Wal-Mart.
   Armed with a sample of Walton DNA, Dr. Osgood was able to isolate the scruple gene.
   "There's nothing we can do for poor Alice or any of the living Waltons, who will have to spend the rest of their lives as self-centered monsters," said Osgood, "but thanks to the wonders of gene splicing, future generations of Waltons might actually be able to differentiate between right and wrong."
   Economist Ira Zentit agrees that gene splicing is the only answer. "We've discovered that all those in possession of this errant gene seem to actually believe that money trickles down instead of up, that giving money to rich people helps the economy despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary," he explained. "Give a poor person some money and they'll spend it on something they need, a pair of socks, a meal. It stays in the economy by being passed around. Give a rich person some money and they throw it in the pile with the rest. They don't spend it immediately because all their needs are already met. It doesn't go back into the economy. It's clear that short term economic growth is entirely dependent upon giving the poor more money."
   Science now shows that once they've amassed more than $100 billion in personal profits, most people would lift the restriction on their employees to working no more than 28 hours per week so they won't qualify for employee benefits like health or unemployment.
   Zentit considers the Waltons to actually be dangerous to society. John Walton, who is worth more than $20 billion himself, was the largest single individual contributor to Gov. Jeb Bush in the 2002 Florida gubernatorial race. "That's their version of helping the economy," says Zentit, "rich people giving money to other rich people."
   We wrote a letter to Wal-Mart spokesman Noah Veil for his comments on this issue, but it was to no avail.
   "Once your needs are met, you're supposed to leave the rest for everyone else," says the report from the institute. "We're hard wired to be that way. Look at the rest of nature. Once any animal has his fill - he walks away and all the other animals get to pick at it. Ants gather enough food for the colony. Animals are seldom deliberately cruel to other animals. When a lion kills an antelope, he doesn't enjoy watching it die slowly, and he leaves the carcass for the jackals."
    That's where science comes in. Thanks to advances in gene-splicing, the day may come soon when all workers have health care.

The rules are quite simple. The only way to properly dispose of an American Flag is to burn it. It's called a flag retirement ceremony. Elks and Marines and boy scouts do it all the time, hundreds and hundreds of flag BBQs every day. "The approved method of disposing of unserviceable Flags has long been that they be destroyed by burning," says the American Legion.

Since the physical act of burning a flag to dispose of it is not only proper but mandated, the only difference between an Elk and a Marine and a Boy Scout and the lunatic pictured above is what's going on in their heads. Their motivation. How the destruction is perceived. Respect or disrespect. Is it in a dignified manner. What were they thinking while doing something perfectly legal. The proposed constitutional amendment against flag burning is the first national thought crime.

Since physical evidence is no proof that a crime was committed, if either of the above pictured flag burners were to be arrested under the up-and-coming amendment, all he'd have to say at his trial is "I was properly disposing of an American flag" and that's that.

Just imagine. Imagine an actual amendment to the constitution that forbids thinking bad thoughts while doing a legal act that's done every day by boy scouts. Soon, thanks to congress, you won't have to imagine it. Future generations will look back and notice the day that congress went insane.

"The only 'respectable' way to dispose of a worn or soiled flag is to give it a ceremonial and dignified retirement, preferably by burning it. Ironically, the American Legion and Boy Scouts burn thousands of flags every year in respectful retirement ceremonies. The only difference between their actions, and the actions of a long-haired hippie protester are the thoughts in the minds of the two. Do you want to live in a country that arrests people for 'anti-American thoughts?' I sure don't."
- The Flag Burning Page -

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsel or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams -

    Your education system is an outrage to those of us communicating with the four giant turtles upon which the earth sits. For years we've been trying to get NASA to admit they Photoshopped out the turtles from all their space shots but good luck when Dan Quayle runs the agency. Like good FAA traffic controllers, they know when to keep their mouths shut.
   Just because they're turtles doesn't mean they're not intelligent. I mean come on, their brains are as big as Australia, and there are four of them. I don't think we want to piss them off. They could cause an earthquake or a tidal wave just by stumbling across a nice piece of broccoli.
    The lack of evidence proves my point. That there's a conspiracy against us is the only possible explanation for the startling lack of turtle tracks.

Last week, on June 20th, I made up a fantastic story that scientists had isolated the "greed" glitch in human DNA. The very next day, June 21st, the following story appeared in the New York Times...

"But on the basis of a new study, a team of political scientists is arguing that people's gut-level reaction to issues like the death penalty, taxes and abortion is strongly influenced by genetic inheritance. The new research builds on a series of studies that indicate that people's general approach to social issues - more conservative or more progressive - is influenced by genes."
- Benedict Carey: Some Politics May Be Etched in the Genes -

     My son just asked me what the book I was reading was about. This turned out to be a rather tough question since the book I was reading was Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler. I simply handed him the book and told him to read the first chapter, but if I had dared to attempt an answer, here's what I would have been obligated to tell him...
   Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler is about you, the person reading Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, and chapter one is concerned with nothing more than your preparations for reading the book. "It's not that you expect anything in particular from this particular book. You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything," we are told about ourselves.
   The next chapter, actually chapter two, is chapter one of Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, which begins like this: "The novel begins in a railway station, a locomotive huffs, steam from a piston covers the opening of the chapter, a cloud of smoke hides part of the first paragraph."
   Chapter two, actually chapter three, is about you again. After finishing chapter one of Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, you discover to your horror that you've purchased a misprint, and that the volume consists of nothing more than the first chapter printed over and over.
   You go back to the bookstore to trade it in for a good copy but the book is sold out. Luckily, there's someone else there returning their bad copy, which consists of nothing but another chapter reprinted over and over. You start reading their copy only to discover that it's a chapter from a different book.
   The next chapter is chapter one of Outside the Town of Malbork, which has absolutely nothing to do with Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler except for the fact that you, the lead character in Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, are reading it.
   The rest of the book alternates between your quest to get to the bottom of the mystery of Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler and individual chapters of all the other volumes you find, none of which have anything whatsoever to do with one another. Along the way you ruminate on the nature of the relationship between author and reader while falling in love with the fellow traveler you met in the bookstore. By the time you read a chapter from Leaning from the Steep Slope, a Hitchcockeyed thriller in which an innocent man gets caught up in a jail break, a chapter that ends on a moment of tension that makes you really want to find out what happens next, you, the actual reader of Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, are just as frustrated as you, the main character in Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler.
   Most of us take the actual act of reading for granted, so it's fascinating and illuminating to read something that's about nothing more than the actual act of reading, in which the author shares with you the force of creation in the ultimate look at the man behind the curtain. This isn't a book that allows you to lose yourself in another world. You never, for one single second, can forget that what you are doing is reading Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler.
   Might I mention that this book is never going to get made into a movie? Since the main character is you, no particular actor can play the part. You can't wait for the Tom Cruise version. If you want to experience Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, you're just going to have to read it because it is more a 100% pure reading experience than just about any other book ever written. If M.C. Escher were a novelist, he would have written just such a tour de force. It breaks absolutely every rule of civilized writing. I am in awe of this book, one of the most thought provoking imaginable, an unqualified masterpiece that I recommend whole-heartedly despite the fact that, as John Updike says, it is "a scheme designed to frustrate all reasonable readerly expectations."

   The same can be said of Twenty Bucks, a film from 1992 that has just been released on DVD. In a multiple plot that is strangely similar to one that has passed through the brain of every screenwriter who has ever lived, the film simply chronicles the life of a twenty dollar bill from its start at an ATM to its ultimate demise as a sorry wreck of a bill to be burned by a bank.
   Give that assignment to 100 writers and they'll all come up with completely different stories, so what's our criteria for judging this one? Does it touch rich and poor, generous and greedy, does it pass through the hands of those who barely notice vs. those whose lives it alters, does it get shoved up someone's nose snorting coke and eaten by a fish, does the film in its grand scheme elucidate man's relationship to money in a way that entertains and enlightens. Yes on all counts.
Twenty Bucks wasn't a hit, perhaps because, by it's very nature as a series of short stories, it doesn't have a single main character but a series of main characters who barely have ten minutes of screen time apiece. Luckily, they're all played by fantastic actors, among them Linda Hunt, Brendan Fraser, Elisabeth Shue, Steve Buscemi, Christopher Lloyd, Spalding Gray, William H. Macy, and Gladys Night without the Pips, each of whom you want to spend more time with, thus, to misquote John Updike, the film is "a scheme designed to frustrate all reasonable cinematic expectations," which is perhaps another reason you've never heard of it.
    Originally written in the 50s by Endre Bohem (Gunsmoke, Rawhide), it was rewritten by his son, Leslie Bohem (A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child, Taken, The Alamo, bass player with Sparks!), after his father's death in 1990. Keva Rosenfeld did a spectacular job of directing, and the next time a twenty dollar bill passes through your hands, your mind is sure take you through a journey of your own version of this film.

"The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting."
- Henry James -

Of course we all know that Islamic terrorists were behind the London bombings despite the fact that not one shred of evidence has emerged that connects them to the slaughter other than a phone call and a website posting that could have been anybody. The knees of the media have jerked and the public has jerked along with them. "Of course it was Islamic terrorists," I hear you shout. Who else could it be? Glad you asked.

Theory #1) Publicity Stunt. It happened the same day as a meeting of the Group of Eight, so obviously if you're against the Group of Eight, you're with the terrorists. But they'd never attack their own people just to advance their global hegemony, would they? Nah, it must be Islamic terrorists who hate the Kinks.

Theory #2) Revenge. England invaded Iraq against international law. Could it simply be Iraqi freedom fighters attacking their enemy in a standard act of retaliation for aggression against their homeland?