Stupid Answers of the Week

There are more than 130 e-mails in my "Answer These Immediately" folder. Last week I asked What excuse should I give the people I'm replying to months late?

a) my head was stuck in a mangle
b) my dick was stuck in my scanner
c) ?

The Answers...

c) The obvious, my dick was stuck in my head, or; 
d) My dick was mangled by trying to stick it in my head and then scan the result into my computer, or; 
e) Kinky dickheads, busy scanning their manglings, are always late answering their e-mail. 
Have I passed my SAT's now, or do I have to bribe you with a few more bucks?
-RSJ 

My brain was stuck in the '60's.
- Charles Watkins 

I've been keeping an eye on Martha Stewart's sourdough starter these past few months! Who knew it would be a full time job? Anyway, the yeasty beasty is back home now. Both of them. 
- Marta Martin

     Due to an unavoidable scheduling conflict I missed the return transporting Mother Ship after interrogation and procreation therapy concluding my annual alien abduction excursion thereby extending my absence from this atmosphere.
    During my prolonged detainment I attempted to respond to your requests promptly using alternative communications only to discover all the U.S. satellites currently occupied by Military Forces fully engaged in manufacture of false intelligence to foment Arab warfare initiatives. As an alternative, my alien captors offered full access to human telepathy communiqué as my last option, which I capitalized full exponential.
    Please allow for my response to reach your consciousness as those who are not experienced in such expedient communiqué may not realize they have received a response. Meditation and review of all mental messages will relocate my response to you in full.
    In the future my alien abductors have instructed that my absences may extend longer than previously anticipated due to advancing demand for procreational material of the stature and quality I provide. Humans have a measurable expiration and we are all doing our very best to please those who need most.
    Thank you for your cooperation and I am happy to have served you so completely. Please tell your friends to anticipate my responses in this method, as I do enjoy the efficiency and effectiveness of telepathic communiqué being far preferable.
    Happy thoughts,
- U. R. Stuck 

Send them an email demanding to know why you haven't heard back from them regarding your urgent reply...the one you never sent.
- Tim Omachi 

Don't answer them either, if they were important they would have written again.... 
- Patricia B -

     Dear correspondent;
    Many thanks for your e-mail of (insert date here), which I have just now received. As you may know, I have recently been conducting experiments with quantum tunneling, and they have apparently been a complete success all my network cables now have a time dilation effect of 600/1, and a quantum probability of 0.06. The upshot of all this is that any inbound data travels in slow motion, whilst any outbound data travels faster than the normal universal rate of time. You have just received this e-mail 6 minutes before I sent it, but your reply will not reach my PC for over 10 weeks. I know that this may prove inconvenient for some, but I would ask you to be patient in the name of scientific research.
- Nick Kent

     Immediately is a relative term, all other things considered.
    Relative to everyone else I have blown off for an inordinate amount of time, you are getting heightened priority, considering all other things that have intervened since I received your admittedly crucial correspondence. For instance, (without limitation by specific reference thereto) I lost my cap snaffler.
    My alibi gift to you, 
- Palantir 
PS You wouldn't want me to have to bust a cap on you now, would you?

     URGENT!!! THIS NOTICE SEND VIA ANTIQUATED CYBERSPACE COMMUNIQUÉ TO ENSURE DELIVERY TO EACH ADDRESSEE WITH "READ RECEIPT REQUEST" VERIFICATION:
    Upon safe return from quasi-annual alien abduction, I promptly proof read my extensive message file to verify telepathic reply to each request when the urgent notice of an impending Pacific tsunami (verified at; http://standeyo.com/Reports/041222.EQ.warning/050308.Deyo.EQs.html) and the Earth Magnetic Field Reversal (notice posted below) communiqué received via Covert Governmental Operations in Remote Viewing required my immediate attention and preparation.
    Instructions to fortify and protect the alien abductor's interests by preserving my procreational materials assuring future availability and "just in time delivery" are requested.
   "Memory is said to "reboot" when the magnetic fields go down... like when your computer is shut off without "saving" your work. So keep the harmony. Drink the special water that was specifically designed for this time in history ! And prepare mentally as well as physically and spiritually for come what may."
    THIS NOTICE IS TO ALERT YOU THAT IN THE FUTURE YOU MAY REACH ME AND SEND YOUR DONATIONS TO THE NEW SUBTERRANEAN SURVIVAL BUNKER IN THE CAYMAN ISLANDS. If you care to continue sucking air and a detectable pulse, you may join me there at your own discretion under personal advisory of my World - Universally Renown Procreational deviation. If you'd like to create your own survival locale supplied by http://www.vitagenesis.com/corporate/content.asp?page_id=2 please feel free to contact me at my Cayman location anytime and we will see what comes up? 
Best wishes, 
- U. R. Stuck

And the winner...

I am currently outside of Barstow, driving along the edge of the desert with my attorney, and there is this problem with bats.
- james and katherine allard 

Stupid Question of the Week

Pepsi has a new commercial where a Roman soldier says "I have a Pepsi for Spartacus," and then they show the scene from Spartacus where the slaves stand up one at a time and say "I'm Spartacus." Stanley Kubrick would not approve. What other commercial uses of Stanley Kubrick movies would he not approve of?

Example: "Come play Lotto with us, Danny. Forever and ever and ever."

Send your answers to stupidquestion@disinfotainmenttoday.com.

Not So Stupid Question of the Week

Edutopia, The George Lucas Educational Foundation's new magazine, is looking for reader voices and comments for their next issue. The question is: What five things would you do to save public education? 

Send your 25- to 100-word replies, or even suggestions for future questions, to sage@edutopia.org.

Examples:

1) Fuck Jar Jar
2) Boycott Star Wars III
3) Compare Darth Vader to your own father
4) Fuck Jar Jar again
5) Now that new high schools are being built without lockers, where can you hide your stash?

Gallery of the Week

Quick, Use Four Countries in One Sentence

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.

Emboldened Shakespeare

Sonnet CXXIX.

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.

Apology of the Week

In an essay entitled "Spoiler Alert," about the case of Terri Schiavo and the film Million Dollar Baby, I admitted that I had starved my mother to death in order to prevent further suffering. The article should have been titled "Won't Get Food Again." I apologize for anyone who might have been offended by my lack of bad taste.

Blackmail of the Week

Toby

     "Unfortunately, on June 30th, 2005, Toby will die. I am going to eat him. I am going to take Toby to a butcher to have him slaughter this cute bunny. I will then prepare Toby for a midsummer feast. I have several recipes under consideration, which can be seen, with some pretty graphic images, under the recipe section.
    "I don't want to eat Toby, he is my friend, and he has always been the most loving, adorable pet. However, God as my witness, I will devour this little guy unless I receive $50,000 USD into my account from donations or purchase of merchandise."

Depressing note from those of us trying to work for a living: It would seem that this guy has already raised more than $18,000. Go look at the site, but if you give him a penny, I'm going to have to kill you and eat you.

Don't Take My Word For It

"An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it."
- Don Marquis -

"If you cannot convince them, confuse them."
- Harry S Truman -

"Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll give it a shot. Say I'm working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. So I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never had a problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', 'Send in the marines to secure the area' 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number was called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some guy from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass. And he comes home to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile my buddy from Southie realizes the only reason he was over there was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish to scare up oil prices so they could turn a quick buck. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And naturally they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the job interviews, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin' 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what do I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. Why not just shoot my buddy, take his job and give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president."
- Will: Good Will Hunting -

"Today, video cameras are lightweight and digital technology has cut out the need for processing. Having captured a firefight on video, a soldier can create a movie and distribute it via e-mail, uncensored by the military. With editing software such as Avid and access to Internet connections on military bases here, U.S. soldiers are creating fast-paced, MTV-style music videos using images from actual firefights and killings."
- Louise Roug: Extreme Cinema Verite - GIs shoot Iraq battle footage and edit it into music videos filled with death and destruction. And they display their work as entertainment. -

"Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them."
- Albert Einstein -

    "Imagine if family values meant loving your relatives instead of hating homosexuals. Fundamentalist ministers who were a little less obsessed with intra-gender affection would finally have time to rail against real abominations, like spousal abuse. One out of every four American women has been beaten by her husband, so here's a new family value worthy of consideration: Don't hit Mom. Honoring this avant-garde principle would fortify our collective moral fabric infinitely more than discharging gays from the military.
    "Imagine if the numerous parts of the New Testament where Jesus commands his adherents to aid the poor were not written in ink that is illegible to right wingers. According to Christ, poverty isn't a manifestation of vice any more than affluence is an affirmation of virtue. When religious conservatives start emulating their Holy Savior Who Reigns In Heaven instead of their Fat Junkie Who Lies On Radio, America will become a better place.
    "Imagine if we aspired not to be the most powerful country but the most humane. Think of how people in other lands would react if instead of telling them what to do, we asked what we could do. Viewed from a purely self-serving standpoint, our country would garner more influence by saying, 'We'd like to help' than by screaming, 'Surrender or die!' Of course, it's much harder to plunder when you are not kicking ass, but at the risk of sounding unpatriotic, I have come to the conclusion that plundering may be overrated."
- David Podvin: IMAGINE -

    "It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.
    "'Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.,' a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of 'another success' in the Bush administration's 'drive to strengthen aviation security'; the reporter called it 'one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history.' A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.
    "To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The 'reporter' covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.
    "Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgment of the government's role in their production."
- David Barstow and Robin Stein: Under Bush, A New Age Of Prepackaged Television News -
 

"Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."
- Nick Diamos -

"There are two types of people - those who come into a room and say, 'Well, here I am!' and those who come in and say, 'Ah, there you are.'"
- Frederick L. Collins -

"[I]n my view the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended."
- Rowan Atkinson -

     "Who else on the American landscape has been 'suicided'? James Forestall? Probably. Marilyn Monroe? Probably not. Margie Schoedinger, the woman who accused George Bush of rape? Maybe. There is always that lingering doubt... Then there was that reporter Gary Webb who was investigating drug-running connections involving CIA. Why would someone hot on the trail of a blockbuster story want to off himself? And what about Jim Hatfield, the author of Fortunate Son?
    "Well, there's a quick and obvious way to find out if Hunter S. Thompson killed himself: An autopsy! Double-duh. Did Thompson have gunpowder on his hands? What angle did the bullet go in? Did they find the gun right near the body? What kind of bullet was used? Was the shell found? And why aren't we being told this stuff?"
- Jane Stillwater -

"I don't really know Iraq. I made a point of getting to know it a lot better. It was a very advanced, progressive country, had, what, 90% literacy, health care for the whole entire population. They were doing well, prosperous, high literacy. Many more book stores per capita in Iraq than there are in this country. Many. No more. We bombed their children. We killed their husbands and wives and we bombed them, and we saw her, and we're going to do it again. Just random killing like that, mass killing to force a population to get rid of Saddam so we can move in and take over and control the oil, God damn it, if that's not evil, I don't know what would be. You know, Bush, he's really the evil one in here. Well, more than just him. We're the Nazis in this game, and I don't like it. I'm embarrassed and I'm pissed off. Yeah. I mean to say something and I think a lot of people in this country agree with me. A lot more never say anything. We'll see what happens to me if I get my head cut off in the next week by - it's always unknown Bush [inaudible] strangers who commit suicide right afterward. No witnesses. They have a new kind of crime."
- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson on Democracy Now! -

"For the key to a teaching, for oneself, is always in oneself; the Teacher, through the teaching, only reveals the way to it. This is why, even after the death of a Master, there is hope for those who come to his teaching never having known him."
- D.M. Dooling -

"Palestinians are warning Israel's security wall could block efforts to restart peace talks. Officials say Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today approved a final route for the barrier. It will enclose a part of Jerusalem that Palestinians want for a capital and part of the Palestinian town of Bethlehem."
- Palestinians oppose Israeli final plan for wall -

"New Rule: Stop giving me that pop-up ad for Classmates.com! There's a reason you don't talk to people for 25 years. Because you don't particularly like them! Besides, I already know what the captain of the football team is doing these days: mowing my lawn."
- Bill Maher: New Rules -

"The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return."
- Gore Vidal -

"For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
- Jonathan Swift -

"I was a coward not for leaving the war, but for having been a part of it in the first place."
- Camilo Mejia -

"I've seen the horror that we were causing every day in Iraq. I have been part of it. We are all just murderers. We kill innocent Iraqi civilians all the time. That's the way it is. I believe they need to withdraw all foreign military troops in Iraq right away. And I say this about other soldiers: to avoid punishment or reprisals by the military, they don't want to talk and admit that killing terrorists is not our mission. It's to kill innocent civilians."
- Jimmy Massey: That's me, a marine, a murderer of civilians  -

"Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice."
- John Adams -

"Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your Honor. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse."
- Mark Twain -

    "Hillary Clinton is keeping unusual company these days. She was in Iraq with John McCain. She co-sponsors legislation with South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was one of the House managers pressing for her husband's impeachment. And this week, she stood shoulder to shoulder with two of the Senates most right-wing members, Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback, to introduce a bill to examine the impact of the dreaded evil media on children, the kind of legislation that normally sends shivers down every liberal spine.
    "What's Hillary up to? She's laying the groundwork for a presidential run in 08, and she's paying attention to the voters. Post-election focus groups revealed that what concerns parents is not the Jerry Falwell agenda of opposing gay marriage but how to raise children in a sex-and-violence-soaked culture. Hillary is not a newcomer to the issue. As First Lady, she sponsored a children's television summit at the White House, and she was a big proponent of the V-chip to screen out unwelcome programming. In her book, It Takes a Village, she has a chapter called, Seeing Is Believing, where she blames the deadening effect of television for contributing to the alienation of young people."
- Eleanor Clift: What's Hillary Up To? The former first lady is frustrating the right by proving different from the caricature they made of her -

"We don't understand the importance of our attitude. My attitude at any point is like the sunken part of the iceberg. I start out from the conscious affirmative part which is like the tip. I'm quite surprised - and unprepared - to meet resistance from this unconscious part. Yet my attitude is largely governed by this resistance. You have to see the resistance. You have to be more aware of the wish to not work - at the same time as you are holding the wish to work."
- John Pentland -

"Our situation is not outside, where a man is moved by surface events, nor is it inside, where a man is taken by emotion and tyrannized by his functions. It is a precise balance, an equidistant position that allows me to appreciate and understand that I am these two lives."
- Michel Conge -

"We all manage to gather a certain number of pearls of insight as we stumble along, but to find a string to lace them on is extravagant good luck."
- William Welch -

"Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
- Albert Einstein -

"Man does not cease to play because he grows old, he grows old because he ceases to play."
- Drew Lachey -

"No one can earn a million dollars honestly."
- William Jennings Bryan -

"In great affairs men show themselves as they wish to be seen; in small things they show themselves as they are."
- Nicholas Chamfort -

"Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors."
- Thomas H. Huxley -

    "There are two strands of conservative politics warring here. There is the evangelical Christian side that wants to impose its will to keep you alive at all costs, and then there's the side that wants to make every policy decision based on the concept of freedom. The first wants to tell you whom you can marry, what you can watch on television, what you can put in your pipe. The latter wants to free the whole world from tyranny, of which government control over the bodies and medical choices of its citizens is one example.
   "If the right to die is consistently denied, if doctors feel they cannot help patients and their families make this decision, if spouses and children feel that they will face publicity and perhaps even prosecution, then our hospitals will fill with people hanging on to the merest semblance of life, people who, if they could, would beg for release."
- Crispin Sartwell: Your Death Should Be Your Choice. If the right to die is consistently denied, what does freedom mean? -

   "I once got irritated by a fellow reporter who was writing stories about a 'cancer-causing pesticide,' as she inevitably described it. I called the Environmental Protection Agency and got the real skinny on the pesticide. Yes, if you drank water with a certain amount of this pesticide in it every day of your life for 72 consecutive years, the EPA's computer model said it was likely to increase your chance of developing cancer by a small fraction of 1 percent. Of course, the natural background rate of cancer is about 20 percent. And the EPA fellow said the computer model might not be true at all, because all the test data were based on mice, not people.
   "There does seem to be a consensus that the Earth has warmed a small fraction in the past few decades. The unanswered question is, Is this part of a natural process, or is it caused by man's activity? Many environmentalists and most governments in the world have said the answer is that man is pumping too much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. That's what the Kyoto treaty is all about.
   "Unfortunately, the evidence for this is thin. In the past, the Earth has cooled and warmed entirely on its own, long before there were enough humans to make a spit's worth of difference. It is ridiculous to suppose that something as complex and as incompletely understood as the atmosphere could be translated into an accurate computer model. It also ridiculous to predict what the Earth's temperature will be even 10 years in the future, much less 50 or 100 years."
- Charley Reese: State of Fear -

"In my opinion the trouble with you, in the present instance, is perhaps chiefly due to the fact that while still in childhood, there was implanted in you and has now become ideally well harmonized with your general psyche, an excellently working automatism for perceiving all kinds of new impressions, thanks to which 'blessing' you have now, during your responsible life, no need of making any individual effort whatsoever."
- G. I. Gurdjieff: Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson - Chapter I: The Arousing of Thought -

    "The composition of a coherent historical narrative is no easy task. Fortunately, the aspiring historian of the current U.S. war in Iraq can draw upon earlier narratives to ease the burden, merely substituting a word here and there in order to make the text accord with the specific names and places that are now pertinent. As the following illustrative statements show, however, basic patterns tend to persist, so one need not suffer through a protracted new search for how a particular war has come to be fought. My textual changes to apply the model to the present war appear in brackets...
   "By inciting hatred of [Saddam], by crying up interventionist pretexts, by encouraging the rebels to prolong their struggle, by entangling America officially in [Iraq’s] affairs, the interventionists bent themselves to the task of turning passive, if promising, sympathy [for oppressed Iraqis] into active, fighting support...
   "Of the mendacious warmongering journalism of the American press, suffice to say that everything that would inflame public sentiment against [Iraq’s regime] was prominently reported, exaggerated, or fabricated...
   "There was nothing subtle about [Bush’s] dealings with [Iraq]. From the start he claimed the right to dictate [Iraq’s] conduct . . . and to intervene by force should that conduct fail to meet the American government’s approval...
   "Although the [9/11 attacks] produced no clamor for war [against Iraq], it had made the great majority of Americans impatient for the first time to see matters settled in [Iraq], by American intervention if necessary. The American ultimatum [to the Iraqi government] was harsh. Had [Bush] been seeking a peaceful solution, the [Iraqi] concessions certainly provided the basis for one."
- Robert Higgs: Plus Ça Change... A Template for the U.S. War in Iraq ("Notes on the Spanish-American War," from Walter Karp’s Politics of War, with certain words changed) -

"People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up."
- Ogden Nash -

"I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness."
- James Thurber -

    "President Bush certainly does not believe one should be able to 'own' one's body, certainly the most essential of all forms of ownership. He's sent federal agents into California to arrest a woman trying to reduce chronic pain by using a plant (marijuana) grown in her own backyard, an act the good citizens of California had declared legal by direct vote.     "President Bush believes people can and perhaps should lose their jobs because of what they do in the privacy of their bedrooms. He has moved aggressively to overturn state laws allowing the aged to die with dignity under their own control.
    "Ownership of personal information? President Bush opposes policies that require companies to gain permission before they use my personal information for private gain.
    "Ownership of public information? The Bush administration has restricted access to public information - information the public has paid to gather to an unprecedented degree. In his first two years in office, for example, he classified more than 4 times the number of documents as Bill Clinton did in his first two years...
   "He firmly believes that we don't own those things that most of us would indisputably believe we do own - our bodies, our privacy, our dignity, our bedrooms. And to add insult to injury, he just as firmly believes that we can own those things that most of us would argue are not ours to own - air, words, folklore."
- David Morris: Who Owns What? -

    "For some odd reason, Newsweek assistant managing editor/designer Lynn Staley thought it would be a good idea to create an image that combined a photo of Stewart's face with another photo of someone else's body.
    "Go figure... According to Staley, the idea was to portray Stewart as she 'may appear' upon her release from prison. 'The piece that we commissioned was intended to show Martha as she would be, not necessarily as she is,' Staley explained."
- Rory O'Connor: Manufacturing Martha - Newsweek's latest cover features a fake photo of Martha Stewart. Any wonder people are losing faith in the news? -

"California's attorney general sued the Bush administration Thursday over its management plan for the Giant Sequoia National Monument, home to two-thirds of the world's largest trees. The federal plan adopted in December would illegally allow commercial logging in the 327,769-acre central California preserve, the suit alleges."
- Don Thompson: Calif. AG Sues Over Giant Sequoia Plan -
 

    "When Israelis heard for the first time about Bush citing Sharansky as his guide and mentor, they gasped in disbelief. Sharansky? Our Sharansky?...
    "For years now, he has peddled the idea that peace with the Arabs is impossible until they become democratic. In Israel, this was dismissed as just another propaganda gimmick serving the Israeli government's opposition to any peace that would mean an end to the occupation. Since Sharansky is totally ignorant of Arab affairs and has probably never had a serious conversation with an Arab, it is hard for Israelis to take him seriously. As far as I know, nobody does, not even among Rightists.
    "His highly unoriginal contention that 'democracies do not make war against other democracies' is a perfect alibi for the United States to attack Iraq, Syria and Iran, which are, after all, no democracies (while dictatorships like Pakistan and Turkmenistan remain good friends). The idea that the teachings of this particular political philosopher are the guiding star of the mightiest leader in the world, the commander of the biggest military machine in history, is rather frightening."
- Uri Avnery: Bush's Guru -

    "When they took control of the House after the 1994 elections, Republicans vowed they would be different than previous Congresses. They promised they would manage the House in a way that fostered what they called 'deliberative democracy,' which they defined as 'the full and free airing of conflicting opinions through hearings, debates, and amendments for the purpose of developing and improving legislation deserving of the respect and support of the people.'
   "[T]en years after their 'revolution,' House Republicans have completely abandoned this standard of deliberative democracy they set for themselves. Furthermore, they have abandoned any other principle of procedural fairness or democratic accountability. In the opinion of many non-partisan observers of Congress, the 108th Congress not only matched the worst abuses of earlier Congresses; it set a whole new benchmark.
    "This report examines in detail how, over the past two years, the Republican leadership ignored the House Rules and the basic standards of legislative fairness and regular order with an impunity that is unprecedented in the history of the House of Representatives."
- Louise Slaughter: Broken Promises: The Death of Deliberative Democracy, In the 108th Congress, House Republicans became the most arrogant, unethical and corrupt majority in modern Congressional history -

    "If you listen to the presidential debates, you can't figure out what they're saying, and that's on purpose. The last debate was supposed to be about domestic issues. The New York Times commented that Kerry didn't make any hint about possible government involvement in health care programs because that position has, in their words, 'no political support.' Well, according to the most recent polls, 80% of the population thinks that the government ought to guarantee health care for everyone, and furthermore regard it as a moral obligation. That tells you something about people's values. But there's 'no political support.'
   "Why? Because the pharmaceutical industry is opposed, the financial institutions are opposed, the insurance industry is opposed, so there's 'no political support.' It doesn't matter if 80% of the population regard it as a moral obligation: That doesn't count as political support. It tells you something about the elite conception. You're supposed to vote for the image they're projecting. That's not surprising really. Just ask yourself, 'Who runs the elections?'
   "The elections are run by the same guys who sell toothpaste. They show you an image of a sports hero, or a sexy model, or a car going up a sheer cliff or something, which has nothing to do with the commodity, but it's intended to delude you into picking this one rather than another one. Same when they run elections. But they're assigned that task in order to marginalize the public, and furthermore, people are pretty well aware of it.
    "For many years, election campaigns here have been run by the public relations industry and each time it's with increasing sophistication. Quite naturally, the industry uses the same technique to sell candidates that it uses to sell toothpaste or lifestyle drugs. The point is to undermine markets by projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information - and similarly, to undermine democracy by the same method."
- Noam Chomsky: The Toothpaste Election - Both Parties Try to Exclude People from Voting-

    "The BBC has bowed to an Israeli demand for a written apology from its deputy bureau chief in Jerusalem, Simon Wilson, who was barred from the country for failing to submit for censorship an interview with the nuclear whistleblower, Mordechai Vanunu. Mr. Wilson was allowed to return to Israel on Thursday after signing a letter to the government acknowledging that he defied the law by ignoring demands from the security service and military censors to view tapes of an interview with Rm. Vanunu after he was released from 19 years in prison last year.
    "The climbdown has angered some BBC journalists, who say it will compromise their work in Israel."
- Chris McGreal: BBC says sorry to Israel -

    "Cuts in food programs for the poor are getting support in Congress as an alternative to President Bush's idea of cutting billions of dollars from the payments that go to large farm operations...
   "Republican committee chairmen are looking for savings in nutrition and land-conservation programs that are also run by the Agriculture Department. The government is projected to spend $52 billion this year on nutrition programs such as food stamps, school lunches and special aid to low-income pregnant women, and children...
   "Bush is proposing to withdraw food stamps for certain families already receiving other government assistance. The administration estimates that plan would remove more than 300,000 people from the rolls and save $113 million a year."
- AP: Congress looking at cuts in food programs for the poor -

    "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.
    "'Who gives the orders? Where do contractors fit in the chain of command? Who is responsible if things go wrong?' Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) asks.
    "Not only do PMCs fall outside the Military Code of Justice but, thanks to another order passed by Paul Bremer (CPA order #17), it's not clear that they could be prosecuted under Iraq's own laws. That's because the order grants foreign contractors, including private security firms, full immunity from Iraq's laws, even if they injure or kill an innocent party."
- The Center for Corporate Policy's Ten Worst War Profiteers of 2004 -

"Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."
- Sir Winston Churchill -

"[I]t does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
- Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, 1782 -

"The older we get the younger old is."
- Meg Ivan -

"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."
- Friedrich Nietzsche -

"Always get married early in the morning. That way, if it doesn't work out, you haven't wasted a whole day."
- Mickey Rooney -

"If you want to raise a man from mud and filth, do not think it is enough to keep standing on top and reaching down to him a helping hand. You must go all the way down yourself, down into mud and filth. Then take hold of him with strong hands and pull him and yourself into the light."
- Solomon ben Meir ha-Levi of Karlin -

"You know when it's bedtime at Michael Jackson's house? When the big hand's on the little hand."- Carrot Top - "In its original meaning, pornography was literally 'writing about prostitutes,' from the classical roots [Greek word that won't show up] and [another Greek work that won't show up]. It was, however, a made-up word coined in England about 1850 that had a spurious air of age and scholarship about it. There is no evidence that anyone at that time, or earlier, was writing about prostitutes per se except as they figured as characters in written erotica of that epoch. It quickly came to mean writing about anything sexual, especially in a base manner, when the creation, presentation, or consumption of the material was for sexual stimulation. The term now refers to sexually related material of all kinds, both written and graphical. The term 'pornography' often has negativeconnotations of low artisticmerit, as compared to the more esteemed erotica. Euphemisms such as adult film, adult video and adult bookstore are generally preferred within the industry producing these works (namely the adult industry). Pornography can also be contrasted with ribaldry, which uses sexual titillation in the service of comedy."
- The History of Pornography -

"The more learned and witty you bee, the more fit to act for Satan will you bee."
- John Cotton: 1642 -

    "You'll need two helpers (...call them Julie and Mina). Sit in a chair, blindfolded, and ask Julie to sit on another chair in front of you, facing the same direction as you are. Have Mina stand on your right side and give her the following instructions: 'Take my right hand and guide my index finger to Julia's nose. Move my hand in a rhythmic manner so that my index finger repeatedly strokes and taps her nose in a random sequence like a Morse code. At the same time, use your left hand to stroke my nose with the same rhythm and timing. The stroking and tapping of my nose and Julia's nose should be in perfect synchrony.'
   "After thirty or forty seconds, if you're lucky, you will develop the uncanny illusion that you are touching your nose out there or that your nose has been dislocated and stretched out about three feet in front of your face. The more random and unpredictable the stroking sequence, the more striking the illusion will be."
- Create a Fake Phantom Limb -

"Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic."
- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn -

"Every day it's-a gettin' closer. Goin' faster than a roller coaster."
- Buddy Holly -

"A new online magazine purportedly posted by al-Qaida's affiliate in Iraq has launched an effort to recruit Muslims to rid Iraq of infidels and apostates - its names for Americans and their Iraqi partners. The colorful, well-designed magazine is named Zurwat al-Sanam, Arabic for 'The Tip of the Camel's Hump' - a reference among Islamic militants to 'the epitome of belief and virtuous activity.'"
- Rawya Rageh: New online magazine urges jihad in Iraq -

"This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew."
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe -

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use."
- Ernest Hemingway -

    "Make no mistake, the inequitable nature of the bill - bending over backwards to help the credit card industry while sticking it to American working people who fall on hard times - is no accident. Time and again over the last week, the Senate shot down amendments that would have made the bill a bit less mean-spirited. They denied proposals that would have made it easier for military veterans, the sick and the elderly to qualify for bankruptcy protection. They even rejected an amendment that would have put a 30 percent ceiling on the interest rates credit card companies can charge. Thirty percent - that's more than Paulie Walnuts charges. But 74 U.S. senators - including John Kerry, Harry Reid, Barack Obama and Dick Durbin - clearly thought that wasn't high enough. Quick, somebody send those guys a Bible bookmarked to Deuteronomy 23:19: 'Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother...'
   "The bankruptcy bill is morally bankrupt. And so is any senator who votes for it."
- Arianna Huffington: the Senate Opens Fire on U.S. Consumers -

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."
- Mark Twain -
"http://www.dareland.com/emulsionalproblems: This. Man. Is. Brilliant. B.R.I.L.L.I.A.N.T. A purveyor of vastly intelligent, hilarious and balls-honest anecdotes. Samuel Clemens smiles down from heaven on this man. Oh! And did I mention the amazing things he does with Polaroid photographs? Not digital manipulation, not collage, with the actual Polaroid itself, manipulating the emulsion as it develops. My mind is blown... and I am reminded, humbly, that I should never attempt to write a review on a Saturday morning before breakfast."
- Wysdom -

    "For anyone who actually reads the Bible, there is a certain irony in the current debate over installing the Ten Commandments in public buildings. As everyone knows, the second commandment in the King James edition of the Bible states quite clearly: 'Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth below, or that is in the water under the earth.' It is doubtful that the prohibition on 'graven images' was really concerned with images like the engraving of George Washington on the dollar bill. Rather it cautions against endowing a physical object, be it a 'golden calf' or a two-ton slab of granite, with spiritual power.
    "In short, it is the spirit of the commandments, not their physical representation in stone or even on a parchment behind a glass frame, which is important. In trying to publicize the commandments, the self-styled Christian Right has essentially forgotten what they are really about. It has also overlooked the fact that there are several different versions of them. The King James Bible lists three: Exodus 20:2-17, Exodus 34: 12-26, and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. Catholic Bibles and the Jewish Torah also offer variants."
- William Thatcher Dowell: American Wahabbis and the Ten Commandments -

"Come see the violence inherent in the system. Help, help, I'm being repressed."
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail -

    "About what happened outside, I only knew that in Baghdad it had rained. The car ran safely in a muddy area. There was the driver and the same old abductors. I soon heard something I didn't want to hear. A helicopter flying low over the area we had stopped in. 'Don't worry, now they will come look for you... within ten minutes they will come.' They had spoken Arabic all the time, some French and much broken English. Now they spoke in this way, too.
    "Then they got out of the car. I stayed in that condition of immobility and blindness. My eyes were stuffed with cotton, and covered by sunglasses. I was motionless. I thought... what do I do? Should I start counting the passing seconds to another condition, the one of freedom? I had just started counting when I heard a friendly voice: 'Giuliana, Giuliana, this is Nicola, don't worry, I've talked to Gabriele Polo, don't worry, you're free.'
   "He took my cotton blindfold and sunglasses off. I felt relieved, not for what was going on, which I didn't understand, but for Nicola's words. He kept talking nonstop, he was uncontainable, a flood of friendly words and jokes. I finally found comfort, almost physically, a warm comfort I had long since forgotten.
    "The car proceeded on its way, through an underpass full of puddles, almost skidding to avoid them. We engaged in incredible laughter. It was relieving. Skidding along a road full of water in Baghdad and maybe have a bad car crash after all I had experienced would not be really explainable. Nicola Calipari sat by my side. The driver had notified the embassy and Italy twice that we were heading to the airport, which I knew was controlled by the American troops. It was less than one kilometre, they told me... when... I remember only fire. At that point a rain of fire and bullets came at us, forever silencing the happy voices from a few minutes earlier.
    "The driver started shouting we were Italians, 'We are Italians! We are Italians...' Nicola Calipari dove on top of me to protect me and immediately, and I mean immediately, I felt his last breath as he died on me. I must have felt physical pain, I didn't know why. But I had a sudden thought: I recalled my abductors' words. They said they were deeply committed to releasing me, but that I had to be careful because 'the Americans don't want you to return.' Back then, as soon as they had said that, I had judged their words to be meaningless and ideological. In that moment such words risked to take the taste of the most bitter truth away. I can't tell the rest yet."
- Giuliana Sgrena: My truth (La mia verit) Translated by Eva Milan -

"A guy comes back from an audition and says, 'Mom, I got the part of the White House reporter who asks tough questions.' She says, 'You go right back and get yourself a speaking part!"
- Dan Fillin rewritten by Michael Dare -

    "Born in Georgetown, Siquan to an illegal alien worker from Mars, Bush was named in honour of his mother, George H. Bush, who is at the same time his grand-daughter. He was raised by a random Mexican Orange Terrier named DiDi (after the cartoon character from Dexter's Laboratory). In his childhood, he had a painful vitamin deficiency as a result of refusing to eat his vegetables, prompting his later in life wholehearted support of stem cell research to make celery more amiable to children. He has two daughters: Lady and Lewinsky.
    "Some citizens of the famous desert-filled state of Minnesota say that George W. Bush acquired his ultimate ESP powers by snatching a secret jewel from the previous owner, the teenage virgin goddess Winona Holowitz. Legend has it that he pulled off the feat while the virgin goddess was soundly asleep and dreaming a dream within a dream in which she was thinking of dreaming about a dream of herself. You can see the jewel bulging out of his back when he turns around.
    "He went on to marry Mozilla Firefox in 1915 but murdered her in her sleep because he thought she was a gay man. This inability to differentiate between his comely young wife and a gay man also manifests itself in the complete uselessness of his proprietary method for sexing bees."
- The Uncyclopedia: George W. Bush -

    "The Uncyclopedia is the greatest achievement of mankind at the height of his splendor. Great thinky thinkers think that perhaps the whole of existence was thunk into being so that in one particular bit of the multiverse, crazy, up-jumped, Ninja-obsessed, hard-drinking monkeys might create the thing you see before you now. No, not your hands. No, that's not it either. Look up at the screen. There. Much better.
   "Uncyclopedia is an encyclopedia full of misinformation and lies. Absolutely no POVs are enforced at Uncyclopedia. You can make sense if you want to, be sarcastic if you want to, be dry, or even informative. Everything goes. If you have a question about it, it's probably okay unless you're destroying things. Try to think about whether Voltron in a drunken state would approve.
    "The mission of Uncyclopedia is to provide the world's misinformation in the least redeeming and most chaotic way possible. Offense is exceptionally likely, expected, and to be renowned while reading the Uncyclopedia. Perhaps the only rule at Uncyclopedia is to avoid mass spamming so that the pages can be hated by specific groups on their own basis, rather than because there's a disgusting man holding his anus. Ridiculous and graphic contexts should be kept to their own categories."
- Uncyclopedia: About -

"At 1022 degrees, steel reaches a point of elasticity, and at 1320 degrees it attains plasticity. Elasticity means that when the steel is bent, it returns to its original shape and will spring back. Plasticity means that the steel is permanently deformed and does not return to its original shape. (FEMAs report even stated that the WTC fires burned at, or below temperatures in a typical office fire. So, if we know that hydrocarbon fires can only reach a maximum temperature of 1517 degrees Fahrenheit, how could they possibly have melted this steel, when the melting point of steel is 2,795 degrees and the boiling point of steel - when it becomes a molten liquid - is 5,182 degrees Fahrenheit?) The steel would have had to be heated to 1320 degrees to be weakened to 20% of its original strength. Since the fires did not reach any of the critical temperatures needed to melt the steel - and didn't even come close to these temps, how could the buildings collapse due to plasticity? The towers were rated to bear five times their rated strength. Even if the steel was reduced to 60% of its rated strength, it would still be able to support three-times its rated strength and would not have been weakened sufficiently to cause the collapses. The core columns were robust structures of steel and concrete. If the towers collapsed due to plane impacts and subsequent fires, then the 47 steel/concrete core columns should have been left standing. Remember, the damage to the towers was NOT uniform and the fires did not burn uniformly."
- Lisa Guliani: Me, Art Bell, and 9-11 -

    "Researchers are now finding that the active ingredient in antimicrobial soaps and personal care products causes nerve damage. This really isn't surprising: I've been warning readers about this for years. The ingredient is called MIT (methylisothiazolinone), and it is found in antimicrobial soaps, hand soaps, dish soaps and a surprising number of personal care products. People buy these personal care products thinking they're protecting themselves from infectious microbes. They think it makes them immune to viruses and bacteria that might be found in their bathrooms or kitchens, and thus they believe in the mythology of using antimicrobial soaps to create a sterile environment in their own homes.
    "This mythology has been promoted by the manufacturers of these products who, through clever advertising, propagate the distortion that bacteria on the kitchen counter and in the bathroom are responsible for making people sick. But the reality is that we don't live in a sterile environment anyway: the only thing that prevents you from getting sick is a healthy immune system. We are exposed to bacteria and viruses literally hundreds of thousands of times each day. It is our immune system that takes care of these threats and keeps us safe, not antimicrobial soap...
   "[M]ost people still use dryer sheets in their dryer. These sheets really serve no function other than to spread perfume all over your clothing. They're perfume sheets. And these perfumes are not essential oils harvested from flowers out in a wild field somewhere, they are synthetic chemicals, manufactured in a chemical plant, and many are highly carcinogenic. So after washing their clothes to get out all the dirt, people are then coating their clothes with a product that deposits a thin film of toxic chemicals onto their clothes. In other words, the clothes were cleaner before they went through the washer and dryer. And now that they come out of the dryer, they are dangerous to your health, because now they have been soaked in a toxic chemical cocktail. And people put these clothes on every single day, then walk around and produce sweat which moistens the clothes, and that accelerates the diffusion of such chemicals into their bloodstream through their skin. They do this and then they wonder why they are diseased. They think their laundry is clean because it smells like perfume."
- Mike Adams: Dangerous chemicals in personal care products compromise health -

"If you can't be a good example then you'll just have to be a terrible warning."
- Catherine Aird -

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