Stupid Answers of the Week

In the interest of turning the tables, last week I said "Ask me absolutely any question and I will answer it."

Any question?
Mark D. Bass

Except that one.
MD

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

how do clams reproduce?  i've always wanted to know.
DBurke11

    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.

Is anything I send you in an email fair game for your column?
Lynette

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

Are you competing with that "Ask Marilyn" chick?
Locke Milholland

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

Paul,
The elves didn't fight at Helms deep? Holy shit.
MD

Why didn’t anybody tell me ignorance is no excuse?
Peter McCann

Peter,
Beats me.
MD

Is Ann Coulter really naked underneath her clothes? 
- Bill Moses

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

Where can I find a prime eigenvector ? 
Bill Moses

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

Tiera,

    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
 

Stoners of the Week

     "The Food and Drug Administration has approved a pilot study looking at whether the recreational hallucinogen ecstasy can help terminally ill patients lessen their fears, quell thoughts of suicide and make it easier for them to deal with loved ones.
    "'End of life issues are very important and are getting more and more attention, and yet there are very few options for patients who are facing death,' Dr. John Halpern, the Harvard research psychiatrist in charge of the study, said Monday.
    "The small, four-month study is expected to begin early next spring. It will test the drug's effects on 12 cancer patients from the Lahey Clinic Medical Center in the Boston area. The research is being sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a nonprofit group that plans to raise $250,000 to fund it."
- Lolita C. Baldor: FDA OKs Ecstasy Study in Cancer Patients -

Gallery of the Week

Murder of the Week

     "John Schlesinger, the Oscar-winning director of Billy Liar and Midnight Cowboy, blamed Madonna's 'outrageous' behavior on the set of a film they were making for contributing to his heart attack.
   "His damning comments about the pop singer turned actress are contained in a collection of letters and production notes bequeathed to the British Film Institute by the veteran film-maker after his death in July 2003.
   "The papers reveal that Schlesinger, who worked with Madonna in 1999 on his last film, The Next Best Thing (released in 2000), became enraged by her attempts to change numerous scenes. They also show that Madonna demanded that special effects be used to 'beautify' her appearance.
   "Shortly after completing what was one of the unhappiest shoots of his career, Schlesinger, then 73, collapsed on the doorstep of his London home. He was diagnosed with heart failure and underwent a quadruple heart bypass operation."
- Chris Hastings and Roya Nikkhah: Schlesinger blamed heart failure on Madonna -

Family Values

In California, gays can't get married but they can get divorced.

I Feel So Much Safer Now

In California, it is now a crime NOT to turn on your headlights if you use your windshield wipers, pharmacists can sell a customer up to 10 hypodermic needles without a prescription, employers with 50 or more workers must provide two hours of sexual harassment awareness training and education to all supervisory employees every two years. It is illegal to intentionally install computer spyware which can collect personal information, disable anti-virus shields and otherwise disrupt a computer's function, though the law prescribes no punishment for violators. It is a misdemeanor to film someone in a bedroom without their knowledge (and who said Paris Hilton wasn't contributing to society?), it is illegal to run a boat engine while someone hangs from the stern's swim ladder or platform, it is a misdemeanor punishable by a $10,000 fine to declaw exotic cats such as cougars, bobcats, lions and tigers, owners of unreinforced masonry buildings must post a placard in their buildings that warns "This is an unreinforced masonry building," no more force-feeding of ducks and geese to enlarge their livers to make foie gras, military personnel and other overseas voters can submit their absentee ballots to county registrars by fax, and smoking by inmates and guards is banned in state prisons. 
- New Laws for the New Year -
 

Best Excuse Not to Read Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck's Hometown of Salinas is about to become the most populous U.S. city without a public library.

Stupid Question of the Week

And, of course, that was too much fun, go ahead and keep asking me absolutely any question and I will answer it. Send your questions to stupidquestion@disinfotainmenttoday.com.

Don't Take My Word For It

"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do."
- Bob Dylan -

"Saleem Mata and his wife, Nada Romaya, spent the last hours of 2004 in a two-mile-long line waiting for gasoline because of a fuel shortage. A checkered blanket and a cooler filled with juice and sandwiches rested on the back seat of their car, a taxi that Mata drives every other day. On alternate days, he waits for gas."
- Jackie Spinner: For Iraqis, Not Much to Celebrate in 2004 -

    "Our dirty little secret is that the drug industry already sells its products, right here in the U.S., at the same low prices charged in Canada and Europe. Its done through rebates. These are given to those with enough power to negotiate drug prices, such as the VA.
    "A 2001 study by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen found that drug companies favorite customers paid just a little over half the retail price. This leaves the 67 million Americans without insurance to pay cash, with no rebates, at double the prices paid by the most-favored customers.     "The fight against re-importation of drugs is a fight to continue to charge our uninsureds full price while giving everyone else a rebate."
- Peter Rost: Big Pharmas Dirty Little Secret -

"To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul."
- Simone Weil: The Need for Roots -

"Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world."
- Arthur Schopenhauer -

"People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like."
- Abraham Lincoln in a book review -

"He is great who is not ashamed to admit he does not know."
- Judah HaNasi: Talmud Jerushalmi: Hagiga -

"If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world."
- Thomas Merton -

"Laughter is an instant vacation."
- Milton Berle -

"One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody, everything, every night before you go to bed."
- Bernard M. Baruch -

"Which is better, to destroy your enemies or to turn your enemies into friends? Both are impossible to achieve completely but both accomplish the same goal - less enemies. One fills the world with hatred, the other with love. Pick one or the other and see which one makes you feel better."
- Sofi Lerup -

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
- Buckminster Fuller -

"The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others."
- Vincent Van Gogh -

"Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -

"It is not in our power to explain either the prosperity of the wicked or the sufferings of the righteous."
- Pirkei Avot 4:15 -

"Excuse me, I believe one of your ribs belongs to me."
- Christian Pick-Up Line -

"Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority."
- Thomas H. Huxley -

"The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own."
- Aldous Huxley - 

"It is foolish in the extreme not only to resort to force before necessity compels, but especially to madly create the conditions that will lead to this necessity."
- Benjamin Tucker: Liberty, May 22, 1886 -

"Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war in which the folly and wickedness of the government may engage itself? ... A free Government with arbitrary means to administer it is a contradiction; a free Government without adequate provision for personal security is an absurdity; a free Government, with an uncontrolled power of military conscription, is a solecism, at once the most ridiculous and abominable that ever entered into the head of man."
- Daniel Webster: On Conscription -

"Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and.. the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer." - H. L. Mencken -"The enormous gap between what U.S. leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology."
- Michael Parenti -

"Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that The State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied."
- Arthur Miller -

"When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty."
- George Bernard Shaw -

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"
- Mahatma Gandhi -

"The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses."
- Edward Abbey -

"Often war is waged only in order to show valor; thus an inner dignity is ascribed to war itself, and even some philosophers have praised it as an ennoblement of humanity, forgetting the pronouncement of the Greek who said, 'War is an evil in as much as it produces more wicked men than it takes away.'"
- Immanuel Kant -

"[T]he United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and human rights: one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the public, and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by counterinsurgency specialists. Normally the specialists carry out their actions in remote locations with little notice in the national press. That allows the public to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and economic interests are still protected in secret."
- Robert Parry -

"COWARDICE, n. A charge often leveled by all-American types against those who stand up for their beliefs by refusing to fight in wars they find unconscionable, and who willingly go to prison or into exile in order to avoid violating their own consciences. These 'cowards' are to be contrasted with red-blooded, 'patriotic' youths who literally bend over, grab their ankles, submit to the government, fight in wars they do not understand (or disapprove of), and blindly obey orders to maim and to kill simply because they are ordered to do so-all to the howling approval of the all-American mob. This type of behavior is commonly termed 'courageous.'"
- Chaz Bufe -

    "1) AEGIS: In June, the Pentagon's Program Management Office in Iraq awarded a $293 million contract to coordinate security operations among thousands of private contractors to Aegis, a UK firm whose founder was once investigated for illegal arms smuggling.
   "An inquiry by the British parliament into Sandline, Aegis head Tim Spicer's former firm, determined that the company had shipped guns to Sierra Leone in 1998 in violation of a UN arms embargo. Sandline's position was that it had approval from the British government, although British ministers were cleared by the inquiry. Spicer resigned from Sandline in 2000 and incorporated Aegis in 2002.
   "The Aegis contract has stirred up considerable controversy, even in the shadowy world of private military contractors. A protest by rival bidder Dyncorp - whose bid was deemed unacceptable by the Army - was dismissed by the General Accountability Office, which concluded that Dyncorp 'lacked standing to challenge the integrity of the awardee (Aegis).' Spicer's defendants point out that there is no provision in contract law to deny a contract based on a bidder's 'colorful' past.
   "Critics say that's just the problem. U.S. and international law have failed to address the role of PMCs in Iraq, resulting in a near-total lack of accountability that epitomizes what's wrong with the corporate takeover of Iraq."
- The Center for Corporate Policy's Top Ten War Profiteers of 2004 -

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."
- Mahatma Gandhi -

"Television is for appearing on - not for looking at."
- Noel Coward -

"Your opponent, in the end, is never really the player on the other side of the net, or the swimmer in the next lane, or the team on the other side of the field, or even the bar you must high-jump. Your opponent is yourself, your negative internal voices, your level of determination."
- Grace Lichtenstein -

"We may feel genuinely concerned about world conditions, though such a concern should drive us into action and not into a depression."- Karen Horney - "Sometimes I wish I'd went through those good times stone cold sober so I could remember everything, but then again, if I had been sober the times probably wouldn't have been worth remembering."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald -

"War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood. It degrades and stupefies with the sense that you are not responsible, that 'tis not yours to think and reason why, but to do and die,' like the hundred thousand others doomed like yourself. War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder."
- Alexander Berkman -

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side."
- Aristotle -

"When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do."
- William Blake -

"Every terrorist out there is hoping John Kerry is the next president of the United States."
- Oliver North: Top Ten Most Outrageous Statements of 2004 -

"A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company." 
- Gian Vincenzo Gravina -

"Never test the depth of the water with both feet."
- Kevin Coyne -

"Unemployed parents who love their children as much as the rest of us love ours won't have the same chance to show them materially the love they feel in their hearts. God willing, their kids will understand. But some kids, watching other kids in the television ads, might wonder: Why can those other parents give their kids all that stuff that my parents can't give me? Isn't that a question of values?"
- E.J. Dionne, Jr.: Christmas values - Holiday reflections on those less fortunate -

"Those who are undisciplined become fat. There is something distasteful about their inability to control themselves. To be thin takes control and rigour. It is a Saturday, a working day. It will be like no other. Christmas is for children, and I don't like children. Other people's are fine. But not for me. I have never felt the need to be part of a family unit. Also, imagine if I had a child and he was mediocre. I would hate that. Then again, if he was better than me I might hate that too."
- Karl Lagerfeld (nice guy) -

"I personally think it was not worth it, in the sense that we have paid a high price in blood. And it's increasing. You cannot underestimate the suffering that this has already produced to tens of thousands of American families. Now, that is simply not worth the price of removing Saddam, because we were containing him."
- Zbigniew Brzezinski -

    "To be clear, there is no general constitutional requirement that public school students be taught the truth. For example, suppose a school board mandates that high school American history courses emphasize inspiring moments from our past--entirely omitting the shameful treatment of Native Americans, the enslavement of millions of African Americans, and the internment of Japanese Americans. Certainly, the school board would thereby do its students and the community a disservice, but it would not violate any provision of the Constitution with its highly selective history classes.
   "Nor is science, or even evolution, different. In the old Soviet Union, children were taught Lamarck's view that acquired characteristics are inherited by the next generation--long after that view, as a matter of science, had been discredited. Why? For a political reason: That biological theory fit nicely with Communist ideology about the malleability of man and the natural world. Suppose, for whatever reason, that a contemporary American school board wished to handicap its students by teaching them Lamarckian rather than Darwinian evolution. The Constitution would be no obstacle to such a foolish policy.
   "But given the social reality, "intelligent design" is different. It is an allegedly scientific theory that bears a striking resemblance to religious views. When the government mandates that students be taught such a theory, courts are rightly suspicious.
   "At that point, a court should ask whether intelligent design is, in fact, a scientific theory at all. It should do so, not because of any general obligation on the part of schools to teach science correctly, but simply because if intelligent design is not science, then the inference is almost inescapable that the state is impermissibly acting for the purpose of fostering a religious viewpoint."
- Michael C. Dorf: Why It's Unconstitutional to Teach "Intelligent Design" in the Public Schools, as an Alternative to Evolution -

"If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed."
- Mark Twain -

"Nobody censors speech they agree with."
- Xarvon, alien investigator -

"How different is Costco? Starting pay is $10 an hour, workers typically earn $40,000-a-year after three years on the job, the company covers 92 percent of employees' health care costs, and the Teamsters union provides strong bargaining representation for the workers. Also, while CEOs at other major corporations average 531 times the pay of their lowest-paid employees, Costco's top boss takes only 10 times the pay of his typical rank & filer. His annual salary $350,000 compared to some $5 million a year hauled off by Wal-Mart's honcho."
- Jim Hightower: The Costco Model -

"Done, but with errors on the page."
- Internet Explorer -

Everything Else

Watch George Carlin talk about the "civil" war.

A photographer happened to be sitting on his hotel balcony when the tsunami hit. He captured this series of pictures. (WARNING: When I first visited this site, the pictures were only of the first wave approaching a hotel. A reader has pointed out that since it's a blog, further down the page people have posted truly gross and disgusting pornography. Those are NOT the pictures I'm talking about and you might want to avoid them.)

You won't believe how many fictional timelines have been uncovered by Edgar Governo, the world's greatest Historian of Things That Never Were.