Who's Going to Hell This Week?


Helen A. Handbasket is a game show host
on the 3rd level of hell. She asks...
What do you expect from hell, journalism?

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.

Have we got some surprises waiting for you.

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...

To the tune of I Married Joan

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. 

He hands the mike back to Helen.

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

Enter Johnny Cochran, stage right. He takes the mike.

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 grabs the mike amidst a chorus of boos.

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...

GOD: Karol Jozef Wojtyla, I want you to head my corporation.

KAROL: Whatever you say, boss.

GOD: Of course whatever I say.

More wavy lines.

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.

More wavy lines...

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

Cardinal #2: I think the new Pope should be able to think on his feet, so I nominate Karl Rove. 

The Pope wakes up on a game show in hell. 

More wavy lines...

The Pope wakes up again on a game show in hell.

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

CUE STING MUSIC:

HELEN: Good Pope. Now if you'll just step into this soundproof chamber...

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.

Stupid Answers of the Week

Last week's question...

If Terri Schiavo got to be Satan for a Day, what would she do?

Suddenly come out of her permanent vegetative state and advocate every  liberal program the neocons hate; indulge in constant public criticism of  BushCo, DeLay, Frist, etc., for their rank hypocrisy. She can say she talked to Jesus and they're all going straight to hell: "The road to hell is paved with conservative Christian Republicans, especially politicians and TV  evangelists - Jesus says they are all allies of Satan." Then she could ask for a visit from Jack Kevorkian to euthanize her, "I can't believe how you've screwed up this world in the fifteen years I've been in a coma," she'll tell reporters, "I'm bailing out! What do you mean Kevorkian's in jail -- for what?"
- RSJ 

UM, START A NEW DIET??? 
- Neil R. Murray 

Well lets see perhaps exchange places with the people that allowed her to get that way.... 
- Patricia 

She would put her parents, Randal Terry, and the Bush brothers into an apparently vegetative state while granting them full consciousness. Oh, yeah, and she'd put them in a home for criminally insane necrophiliacs. For all eternity. 
- Peter Gates 

Terri should punish the God Vishnu who has the thousand-petalled lotus flower emanating from it's naval, who dreams-up this world (and us), and Brahma who sits on the lotus flower - at the controls of this world. They both should have to do a major "time-out" as penance for the suffering in the world they create and supervise. If a God is going to dream and creates billions of people, plans should be made ahead of time so that the dream is a pleasant one, free of strife and pain. I think Vishnu and Brahma act irresponsibly and ought to pay for this poorly planned stunt we live in! 
- Bill Moses 

She would take who-ever her make-up person is and make them orally clean out the shower drains in the ugly person's section of hell. I mean if you want some-one to appear alive you MUST give them a little blush! But don't go overboard though, you don't want some lovestruck fundy getting the wrong idea and leaving his common law wife and 12 children for the foxy coma babe. 
- GTracy

Stupid Question of the Week

Brought to you by Peter in Brooklyn...

When the Rapture comes will obscenely fat and ugly people fly up to heaven naked? Or does being obscenely fat and ugly preclude any chance of flying up to heaven? And, without being presumptuous, suppose I want to keep my clothes on? 

Send your answers to stupidquestion@disinfotainmenttoday.com.

 
 

Bullshit of the Week

Lawyers for the movie studios and record producers say file-sharing networks that allow users to make copies from one another's computers are "inflicting catastrophic, multibillion-dollar harm" on the entertainment industry. "The record industry has lost 25% of its revenues" since millions of computer users began downloading free music, industry attorney Donald Verrilli Jr. told the Supreme Court. 

This a crock of shit and here's why...

Let's say you own a movie theater and someone sneaks in the back door and watches a showing. If the show was completely sold out except for that one seat, and you had a potential customer outside prepared to pay cash for that seat, a customer whose money you couldn't accept because the only potential seat was filled by the sneak, then, and only then, could you claim that the sneak represented an actual loss of income. But if the theater was half empty, if there was no line outside waiting to get in, if the sneak themself snuck in because they were broke and had no way of paying for a ticket, the theater owner can't possibly claim that the sneak cost them one single penny. 

Does this mean that theater owners shouldn't lock their doors? Of course not. It's just that any claim of thousands of dollars of lost income due to sneaks is entirely theoretical unless they can prove that the sneaks would have actually bought tickets had they not snuck in.

Same with downloading songs. The record industry's claim of millions of dollars of lost income is entirely bogus unless they can prove that the downloaders would have actually purchased the songs had they not downloaded them for free.

In my case, this is definitely not true. I download songs all the time using Limewire. Don't use Morpheus because it installs Solid Peer adware that's incredibly difficult to get rid of. In any case, Morpheus is one of the programs that's before the Supreme Court of the US at this very moment, NOT because they install vicious adware to your computer that causes ads to pop-up every fucking second, not because of the irritating and illegitimate things their hideous program does, but because of the one thing it does that's actually useful. You can listen to songs, songs you wouldn't have bought in a million years. It's just like radio only instead of having to WAIT to hear the song you're interested in, you can search for it and hear it right away.

Someone's got to explain to me why taping Stairway to Heaven off the radio for free is perfectly fine but downloading it with Morpheus is a potential felony. If the Supreme Court had any credibility left, they'll be sure to lose it if they make the wrong decision in this case.

     "Britney Spears may consider file-trading a threat to her royalty stream, but there are other musicians who would be delighted to find they had become a peer-to-peer hit. Getting heard is the challenge for most bands; once they have fans, there are lots of ways to make a living off them, from touring to T-shirts to CD sales. Even legends like David Byrne are on their side. As he put it in a National Public Radio interview, 'Most artists see nothing from record sales. It's not an evil conspiracy, it's just the way the accounting works. So as far as the artist goes who cares?'
   "What's at stake is the realm of ideas, sliced and diced a million ways. The peer-to-peer music sites are the closest current approximation to the celestial jukebox we all want. Kazaa, for instance, has 25 million unique tracks, dwarfing iTunes' measly 1 million. BitTorrent has more videos than Blockbuster. Much of it is pirated, to be sure, but a significant portion of it is videogame highlights never intended to be moneymaking in the first place. The problem is that we don't know how to stop the piracy without chilling the creativity.
    "The main flaw in the case against Grokster is that the action attempts to criminalize a technology rather than a specific use. It also fails to distinguish between commercial content and noncommercial content. Restricting these powerful new distribution tools to fight piracy would hobble the new emerging creative class too...
   "The Supreme Court should recognize that there is a silent majority in this case, made up not of pirates or the pop stars but the millions of individual talents who risk getting caught in the crossfire."
- Chris Anderson - editor in chief of Wired magazine: The Grokster Case's Silent Majority -

Satan Doesn't Want You to Know

Cabbage leaves contain powerful anti-inflammatory compounds. When applied to joints, these compounds relieve pain and swelling fast. Use a rolling pin or knife handle to bruise one or 2 large, outer, dark-green leaves from a head of green cabbage, then warm the leaves in a microwave, steamer, or oven. Wrap them around the joint, cover with a towel, and leave in place for 15 minutes.

Don't Take My Word For It

"It often happens that I wake at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must talk to the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope."
- Pope John XXIII - 

"Wisdom is knowing the difference between pleasure and satisfaction."
- Gary V. Carter -

"Success only breeds a new goal."
- Bette Davis -

    "Democracy n: A country where the newspapers are pro-American.
   "Checks and Balances: The system whereby the campaign checks of the few balance the interests of the many.
   "Free Press: 1. Government propaganda materials covertly funded with a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayer money but given out for free to the press and then broadcast without any acknowledgment of the government's role in their preparation. 2. Newspapers that obscure the truth on behalf of corporate and government interests for free.
   "Mandate: 1. The opinion expressed by about a quarter of the eligible voters. 2. The opinion reflected in an electoral-vote margin smaller than in any 20th century election other than 1916 and 2000. 3. The opinion expressed by the smallest popular vote margin obtained by a sitting president since 1916.
   "China: See Wal-Mart.
   "Peace n: What war is for.
   "Wal-Mart: The nation-state, future tense.
- Devil's Dictionary of the Bush Era -

    "The New York Times was almost apoplectic Sunday over a human rights 'report card' issued by China's Foreign Affairs Department on the United States.
    "That report, a response to the annual report on China's human rights situation issued by the U.S. State Department, called attention to a number of areas where the U.S. is in violation of universally accepted norms of behavior.
    "Having lived for two years in China - a fascist-style military dictatorship where the law is simply another tool of repression for those in authority, and where people are routinely locked up, tortured, deprived of their livelihood and even their lives for such transgressions as posting comments on a website, protesting a corrupt boss or conducting prayer services in a private home, and a place where perceptions of America can be pretty bizarre - I was expecting something comic after reading in the Times that the report on the U.S. 'approaches caricature.'
   "In fact, putting aside whom it was doing the talking, the report was pretty damned accurate, and devastating.
- Dave Lindorff: Human Rights in the US - China's Report No Caricature -

"Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be."
- Rita Rudner -

"In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them."
- Johann von Neumann -

"A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor."
- Victor Hugo -

"If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun."
- Katherine Hepburn -

    "If you have non-native weeds, grass, trees, or shrubs on your property (and everyone does) you're in trouble. Under invasive species provisions currently sitting in the Senate's version of the transportation bill, your property could quickly become the target of radical environmentalists and federal bureaucrats. The bill's name is the Safe, Accountable, Flexible and Efficient Transportation Equity Act or SAFETEA 2005 (*please note* that it does not yet have a bill number)...
   "Currently, the SAFETEA act contains provisions to minimize invasive species. This is the foot in the door to federal control of ALL so-called invasive species -- something that the greens openly covet.
   "Under the Senate version of SAFETEA, the federal government will dictate to the states what types of grasses and plants are allowed to be planted next to roads. This has nothing to do with science or the environment. This is about LAND CONTROL and MONEY FOR RADICAL GREEN GROUPS...
   "Imagine the Endangered Species Act on steroids. Now multiply its devastating effect on property rights one-hundred fold. That should give you a pretty good idea of what invasive species legislation will mean for property owners in every state, county, and city in this nation.
    "Invasive species is the radical greens key to controlling every square inch of land in the United States. And SAFETEA is the just the beginning."
- Tom DeWeese: president American Policy Center -

    "A $5-million TV ad campaign by People for the American Way portrays the Senate filibuster as a noble tool of American democracy. The ad uses footage from Frank Capra's classic 1939 movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - a famous scene in which the hero, played by James Stewart, engages in a 23-hour filibuster to prevent his expulsion from the US Senate on trumped-up corruption charges.
    "Real-life filibusters are another matter, however. They can be used for good or evil. In fact, segregationist Southern senators used filibusters to preserve the poll tax and block civil rights and anti-lynching legislation for generations. Among the real-life practitioners were the late Senators Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi."
- A Fictional View of the Filibuster - Liberal groups ad features movie hero Jimmy Stewart. But historic reality was often ugly. -

"I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either."
- Jack Benny -

"I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding."
- Samuel Johnson -

"Around this country there are many hospices whose sole purpose is to care for their dying patients at the end of their life. They do it with compassion and professionalism, thereby affording their patients mercy, grace and most of all dignity as death approaches. This notion that pulling a patients feeding tube is starving them to death is reprehensible. The doctors and nurses give pain medications to those who may feel pain and they prescribe drugs such as Zanax if a patient is feeling any anxiety during the death process. By stating that patients such as Terri Schiavo are being starved to death is totally uncalled for and it lessens and degrades these health care professionals who care for these most vulnerable patients. At the end of my father's life while in hospice care at home where he was no longer able to take in any nourishment or water, he was medicated so that he could pass peacefully and these professionals who helped my father did so with the utmost respect for him and for my family."
- Mary MacElveen: Mercy, Grace and Dignity at the End of Ones Life: The Terri Schiavo Legacy -

    "The average American in the year 2005 lives a fragile existence, in a struggle for survival that can be ended by missing a few paychecks. The carrot at the end of the stick which was formerly known as 'the American dream' has been replaced by a whip that can best be described as the American nightmare of homelessness, and slow, early death. You no longer work to achieve a better life for yourselves and your children. You work to keep a roof over your head, and you pray that you don't lose it. You became a slave when fear replaced incentive as your motivation to work, but I still suggest that you work while you can, because if the company you work for can't send your job overseas, the U.S. government is allowing 2000 people per day to enter this country illegally, because they're willing to do your job for less.
    "It doesn't matter if you're a 'white collar' or 'blue collar' employee. If you're an American, you're too highly paid. There are billions of people who want your job, and your government is doing all they can to see that you lose it to them. You see, were not really Americans anymore. Now we're just anonymous faces in the 'global village,' because our government has sold our nation to foreigners and international bankers, and the new bankruptcy law has doomed the American citizen to a life of debt slavery. They'll insist that illegal immigrants are only doing jobs that Americans refuse to do, and you'll probably believe it, because if you're watching the TV that shovels that crap, you probably still have your job. The illegal immigrants are doing jobs that Americans always did, and every unemployed American I talk to can't find a job anywhere. And just like the European immigrants that flooded this country before the economic depression of the 1930's, today's illegal immigrants also have no gripe with a government that has allowed them work for high wages in America, and send billions back to their homeland. Nor do they care very much about our constitution, bill of rights, or way of life. They're only here for what they can grab, and our government has welcomed them with open arms, because they're grabbing it from you.
    "You're already working much longer, and much harder, to achieve a much lower standard of living than the previous generation, and 25 percent of working Americans no longer even get a vacation. The Social Security retirement age has been raised to match the life expectancy of American males, so apparently, you're also expected to work until you're dead. When you do finally get a vacation, they only trip you'll be taking will be in a pine box, and that's only if you're one of the lucky ones. Most of us will only get the state-issued canvas bag that gets tossed into the pit with all the others. If you don't mind the fact that you'll be working until you're dead, you might also want to consider the fact that you'll get nothing for your labor, because this nation's economy is about to crash like a freight train, and when it does, everything you've worked for will vanish. After the depression gets ugly, and your family has made the adjustment from three meals per day to three meals per week, the newspapers will blame your hunger on 'the economy,' as if it were some magical force that uncontrollably ruined a couple hundred million lives. Nothing could be further from the truth...
   "I'm not asking that you waste the time or paper required to write your congressman, because they don't care what you think anyway. What I am asking you to do is to remember something. When the economy does crash, and you're forced into the street. I want you to remember that this isn't your fault, and its not the result of a 'bad economy.' Please remember that you're poor, hungry and homeless, because that's where our government wants you to be, and they intentionally destroyed the U.S. economy because they want you to suffer, and beg. And regardless of how bad things get, never sell your rifle."
- Jolly Roger: The New Slavery -

"Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive."
- Henry Steele Commager -

"There are no boundaries in this struggle to the death. We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, for a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory."
- Ernesto Che Guevara -

"Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder... the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish their corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace... They are continually talking about their patriotic duty. It is not their but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches."
- Eugene V. Debs -

"Any event, once it has occurred, can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian."
- Lee Simonson -

"He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery."
- Samuel Smiles -

"You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it."
- Art Buchwald -

"The problem with the global village is all the global village idiots."
- P. Ginsparg -

"Democracy is an abuse of statistics."
- Jorge Luis Borges -

"If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner."
- H. L. Mencken -

"Liberty is being free from the things we don't like in order to be slaves of the things we do like."
- Ernest Benn -

"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is a good thing. Fleas are interested in dogs."
- P. J. O'Rourke -

"Suffering is overrated."
- Bill Veeck -

"In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world."
- Franz Kafka -

"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us."
- Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) -

"It is a luxury to be understood."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson -

"I have so much to do that I am going to bed."
- Savoyard Proverb -

"Our planet is the mental institution for the universe."
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe -

"Time is the best teacher. Unfortunately, it kills all its students."
- Jean de la Bruyere -

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." 
- Friedrich Nietzsche -

"Every discovery decays into a certainty, and every idea into an ideology."
- Christopher Spranger: The Effort To Fall -

"The shortness of life, so often lamented, may be the best thing about it."
- Arthur Schopenhauer -

"Life is a zoo in a jungle."
- Peter De Vries -

"Thanks, for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business. Thanks, for a nation of finks." 
- William S. Burroughs -

"Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation."
- Robert Frost -

"The best advice I can give is to ignore advice. Life is too short to be distracted by the opinions of others."
- Russell Edson -

"I only drink to make other people seem interesting."
- George Jean Nathan -

"A good listener is usually thinking about something else."
- Kin Hubbard -

"We have convictions only if we have studied nothing thoroughly." 
- E. M. Cioran: The Trouble With Being Born -

"Usually, terrible things that are done with that excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things."
- Russell Baker -

"For two thousand years, Jesus has revenged himself on us for not having died on a sofa." 
- E. M. Cioran: All Gall is Divided: Gnomes and Apothegms -

"Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."
- Don Marquis -

"For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed."
- Clifton Fadiman -

"Suicide is the sincerest form of self-criticism."
- Donald Kaul -

"Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups."
- John Kenneth Galbraith -

"I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it."
- Ashleigh Brilliant -

"Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim."
- Bertrand Russell -

"A joke is an epitaph for an emotion."
- Friedrich Nietzsche -

"One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they're hanged."
- Heinrich Heine -

"The modern press itself is a new phenomenon. Its typical unit is the great agency of mass communication. These agencies can facilitate thought and discussion. They can stifle it... They can play up or down the news and its significance, foster and feed emotions, create complacent fictions and blind spots, misuse the great words and uphold empty slogans."
- Commission on Freedom of the Press: A Free and Responsible Press, 1947 -

"Once upon a time the rich captured too big a lump of national income so that there was not enough income left for the rest of the population to buy all the economic pie their efforts had produced. This left the rich with a big lump of savings and no place to put it because the bulk of the population were left with insufficient purchasing power to generate enough total demand for goods and services to make domestic investment of that lump of savings in domestic expansion and innovation worthwhile. Why expand capacity or develop new products if no one is buying all that is produced already? More precisely, the marginal efficiency of investment (the investor's yield) was, for most potential investment schemes, simply not as high as the interest rate (when discounting expected cash flows associated with each project.) So, up against a wall at home, the investment banks, charged with making that lump of savings earn a return, find they must seek to invest that lump abroad."
- John Hobson (1858-1940) -

"If it was necessary to tolerate in other people everything that one permits in oneself, life would be unbearable."
- Georges Courteline -

"Never mistake motion for action."
- Ernest Hemingway -

    "Never mind that authorities have offered to slash the fine from $300 to $90. Michael Prendiz says he doesn't deserve the rap.
    "Michael, 14, was popped by deputies on charges of unlawful consumption of a lollipop on a Santa Clarita Transit bus. The infraction falls under Section 640b of the California Penal Code, which affirms local ordinances outlawing smoking, eating or drinking on public transportation."
- Amanda Covarrubias: Lollipop Fine Leaves a Sour Taste -

"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering."
- R. Buckminster Fuller -

    "The daughter of a truck driver has brought a federal lawsuit today against Halliburton, the primary contractor providing logistical support to the military in Iraq. April Johnson is seeking redress for the wrongful death of her father, Tony Johnson, who was killed almost one year ago near Baghdad International Airport. This is the first of several lawsuits by truck drivers and their families against the Houston-based company.
    "Johnson, a truck driver from Riverside, California, was one of 19 drivers carrying fuel for the United States military from Camp Anaconda to the airport. The convoy drove straight into a major gun battle on April 9, 2004, on what has become the world's most dangerous highway. Two hours later six drivers had died, one was kidnapped and one had disappeared. Only 11 made it to their destination alive that day - the first anniversary of the United States defeat of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq."
- Pratap Chatterjee: Driving Into Danger -

"A person of genius is admired, a person of wealth is envied, a person of power is feared - but only a person of character is trusted." 
- cartoon by Woody Barlettani who runs a hot dog stand in Reno, Nevada -

"So close to Jesus, He told me that the sanctity of marriage between a man and a non-penised person doesn't count for squat if we can score with our base by pushing the husband aside and involuntarily cramming a feeding tube down his wife's throat."
- Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian -

"First Lady Laura Bush stated that she and the President as well as their  parents all have living wills in case they become incapacitated like Terri Schiavo. So - what are in their living wills? Do they want to be kept alive in a permanent vegetative state or do they want to be allowed to die? It seems to me that in preparing a living will that the Bush's don't want the government, congress, Terry Randal, and Jesse Jackson to make the decision for them. They want the family to make that choice."
- Marc Perkel -

"We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security."
- Dwight David Eisenhower -

"The only security for the American people today, or for any people, is to be found through the control of force rather than the use of force."
- Norman Cousins -

    "Maher Arar, a 35-year-old Canadian engineer, is suing the United States, saying American officials grabbed him in 2002 as he changed planes in New York and transported him to Syria where, he says, he was held for 10 months in a dank, tiny cell and brutally beaten with a metal cable.
    "New federal aviation records examined by The New York Times appear to corroborate Mr. Arar's account of his flight, during which, he says, he sat chained on the leather seats of a luxury executive jet as his American guards watched movies and ignored his protests.
    "The tale of Mr. Arar, the subject of a yearlong inquiry by the Canadian government, is perhaps the best documented of a number of cases since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in which suspects have accused the United States of secretly delivering them to other countries for interrogation under torture."
- Scott Shane: Suit by Detainee on Transfer to Syria Finds Support in Jet's Log -

"I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him."
- Galileo Galilei -

    "On the night of December 18, 2001, a Gulfstream jet, tail number N379P, landed at Bromma Airport in Stockholm carrying eight hooded Americans in business suits.
    "They took custody of two Egyptian terrorist suspects, Ahmed Agiza and  Muhammed al-Zery, who had been arrested that day by Swedish security  police. They cut off their clothes, handcuffed them, inserted sedative  suppositories, put nappies and dark overalls, blindfolds and hoods on them  and bundled them on to the jet. The operation took just 30 minutes.
   "At 2.35am next day, the jet, after refueling at Dulles airport in  Washington, landed in Cairo and the suspects were handed to Egyptian  authorities. Then, they vanished.
    "The operation was part of the CIA's highly secret and increasingly  controversial practice of extraordinary rendition, where terrorist  suspects, some snatched off streets in daylight, are sent abroad for  interrogation, often to countries with a record of using torture."
- Tim Reid: Flight to torture: where abuse is contracted out -

    "'I can't believe this is happening in our country,' said Rebecca Boettcher, one of the Melbourne protesters and the mother of a former Marine who served in Iraq. Boettcher, 57, was near tears as she and five others named in a Brevard County Sheriff's Office report on the Jan. 20 demonstration went to the sheriff's Melbourne office Monday.
   "They were seeking the files deputies had secretly collected on them -- files the department must deliver, completely and promptly. And they wanted to know why the sheriff's report tagged them as 'persons of interest.'
   "Of interest for what?
   "'Protesting in an anti-government assembly,' says sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Andrew Walters.
   "In other words, the sheriff's department calls a peaceful expression of opinion about Bush's policy on Iraq, Social Security and the environment 'an anti-government assembly.'
   "And considering the group included moms with kids, a woman in a wheelchair and people up to age 85, Sheriff Jack Parker's claim that they might be 'here to harm our community' is both absurd and a dangerous indication of police's abuse-of-power mindset.
   "In case Parker and Walters slept through civics class, let us remind them: Such activities are the true essence of a pro-government demonstration -- as in government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And if 36 citizens showing concern over Bush's policies is enough for law enforcement to videotape, follow home and create dossiers on them, then where does law enforcement draw the line?
   "Nearly half of all voters last November expressed opposition to the Bush administration at the polling booth.
   "Are they next?"
- Florida Today: Spying on citizens, Brevard law enforcement surveillance chills the precious right to speak out -

"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers."
- Mignon McLaughlin -

Everything Else

Despite the fact that the California constitution specifically says that state laws take precedent over federal laws, cities around the state are trying to block pot clubs.

If you hurry, you can buy someone's angst on eBay.

In Montana, it's a felony for a woman to open her husband's mail, in Arizona, any misdemeanor committed while wearing a red mask is considered a felony, and in Utah, it is a felony to persistently tread on the cracks between paving stones on the sidewalk of a state highway. And don't get me started on the Federal drug laws that make possession of certain plants and minerals felonies, or under how many circumstances a peaceful protest can be considered a felony. Don't forget that in the United States, people convicted of felonies may not, under any circumstances, operate Bingo games. The point is that when you think the word "felon," you know, the ones who can't vote, it might not quite be the deranged psychopath you envision.

I can't believe you don't know how Lee Strasberg saved my life.

If you disagree with anything in this issue of Disinfotainment Today, please save me the trouble and kick your own ass.