I love the way Bill struggles to stay in character, and the little "wardrobe malfunction" cracks me up.

Good luck to them both!

Now, let it be known that I have nothing whatsoever against Peter MacNicoll. In fact, I'd bet he doesn't play games with his taxes. But the actor has played so many roles in which he's just a little bit, um, "out there," that I can't help wondering about the guy whose signature will appear on all that monopoly money the gummint is so busy printing.

INVESTMENT TIP: Learn who supplies ink and paper to the Bureau of the Mint, and buy their stock. Ditto for the company that supplies paper to Congress.

What they are really thinking.

A couple have been arrested for allegedly having sex in a crowded train carriage.

Other passengers en route from Liverpool to London appear to have sat in embarrassed silence as the 41-year-old woman allegedly committed a sex act on her male partner.

The pair were arrested by police on arrival at Euston station. Officers are believed to have been called after a guard on the Virgin intercity train spotted the couple on CCTV.

Businessman Gregory Sim, 49, has been charged with unacceptable behaviour while the unnamed woman, from Essex, has been bailed while inquiries continue.

A spokesman for British Transport Police said the session took place on Wednesday, October 22, at 2.45pm.

'The man, Gregory Sim, from Richmond, Surrey, has been charged with unacceptable behaviour on a train and is due to appear at City of Westminster magistrates on November 16,' he added.

Quizzed by reporters last night, Mr Sim confirmed his arrest but refused to give any more details.

SEYMOUR, Tenn. - A woman who lives near the Smoky Mountains used a musical instrument to scare away two men who broke into her home. The Knoxville News Sentinel quoted a Sevier County Sheriff's Office report that stated the victim awoke to find two men in her home in Seymour on Saturday morning. Her child was asleep in the home.

Deputies said the woman used part of a brass musical instrument to hit one of the men and both intruders fled. It couldn't immediately be determined what kind of instrument she used.

She got a license number, though, and police later charged two men with aggravated burglary.

From the web site of a manufacturer of RV parts and accesories. (Name obliterated in the interest of avoiding lawsuits):

Our culture at xxxxx is to relentlessly push the envelope in our quest for the most innovative, highest performance and unparalleled quality products. Employing leading edge engineering tools like computer aided design, fatigue testing, finite element analysis and advanced quality planning, we constantly explore new ways to take our products to ever higher levels in quality and performance. Our mission at xxxxx is to build the most valued, reliable, durable and easy to install products in the marketplace.

So many buzzwords in so little space:

• culture
• relentlessly
• push the envelope (btw the expression, coined in the aerospace industry is "push the edge of the envelope").
• innovative
• leading edge
• advanced quality planning (one of hundreds of bullshit terms used in the "quality assurance" racket).
• "take our products to ever higher levels..."
• mission

The product, incidentally, is mostly made out of cast iron. I swear, you would think they were producing faster-than-light spacecraft, wouldn't ya?

LONDON  -  [A] Beijing-based billionaire has splashed out a record $500,000 on 27 bottles of red wine, London-based Antique Wine Company said on Saturday.The anonymous Chinese entrepreneur bought [who cares about the details?] "It is the highest price that has ever been achieved for a single lot," Managing Director Stephen Williams of the London- based Antique Wine Company told Reuters on Saturday." I don't think he has bought this as an investment -- he has bought it to drink," he added. "The fine wine industry is completely immune from the global credit crunch." The client's biggest previous purchase was 30,000 pounds ($59,880) for a case of 1982 Chateau Petrus.

So, do you figure that this anonymous Chinese entrepreneur has made his pile selling tchotchkes to Wal-Mart? Stuff nobody really needs, to be bought by people who ought to spend their money on necessities.

How is Obama planning to protect us from predators such as this? Hard-working Americans are having to make do with Mad Dog 20/20 while this guy drops $18K a bottle on some snobbishly pedigreed stuff that is still nothing more than fermented grape juice.

It's mad, I tell you, mad!

Now, it appears life has begun to imitate art, sixty years after the novel's publication. 

Florida's TV Channel 6 reports that a pets-only funeral home has opened for business in Pinellas Park. According to the station's May 17th dispatch:

The Pet Angel Memorial Center offers human touches to help pet owners mourn their animals, including viewing areas and a space for services. The service is part of a growing interest in pet loss services." We started the business because I don't have two-legged children," Pet Angel Memorial owner Colleen Ellis said. "All I have is four-legged children and I wanted her treated in the same way as the human funeral business, which is the business I come from." A new poll shows more Americans believe animals go to heaven. The funeral home will take care of all pets from dogs to iguanas, the report said. The services range in prices from $150 to thousands of dollars.

Now, if you can decipher the clumsy writing, you'll see that the owner of Pet Angel Memorial Center is a woman who has been in the human mortuary trade and has decided to branch out to a niche where there is as yet no competition.

But wait! ...

I had filed this absurd little story away, hoping to find a "hook" from which to comment. And damn if someone in Germany didn't come through. I was in the midst of a discussion about when and how it is appropriate to play Taps, on a forum run by Bugles Across America. My main question was whether Taps ought to be reserved for the military funeral honor rendered a veteran, and whether it would be more appropriate to play some other selection for general rememberances, such as the season opening of a yacht club (which had been proposed). The discussion drifted into the matter of whether a police officer or firefighter merits the playing of Taps at his funeral, if s/he is not a military veteran. I argued no, based upon the fact that at least in this part of the USA, the police and fire folks have their own funeral ritual, which involves Amazing Grace being played by a bagpiper or pipe band. I found myself in the minority, being attacked from both sides of the Atlantic when a couple of BAA members dropped the bomb that Hell, they'd even play Taps for the burial of a dog that had "served" in the military. (Never mind the question of that being involuntary servitude on the part of the dog, or of whether this practice insults human soldiers by equating them with canines.)

Next thing I knew, someone had mentioned the K9 Memorial Cards website, dedicated to "all working canines and law-enforcement horses." Shortly thereafter, I learned that there is actually a Canine Veterans' Day, apparently the creation of one JoeTheDogTrainer. As Joe explains, the US K9 Corps was officially created on March 13, 1942, and his goal is to have March 13th officially recognized by Congress as a holiday. (So now, we've even equated dogs with Martin Luther King, Jr.) "Joe" suggests that "you could decorate your local dog park that day, and simply be there to tell people why, or get your Mayor to make an official proclamation that day to pay tribute to the dogs, or help us to get names on our petition to Congress... I have made a list of additional ideas on our menu, and you are certainly welcome to send me your own ideas."

My German adversary included a press release that says this newly-minted holiday would "honor all the dogs of all our wars, to include the present war on terror. It will be a day when many breeds, plus mix breeds [mighty generous of them] are celebrated, as all have served in times of war. And because of 9/11 this day will also celebrate the honorable service of Search and Rescue Dogs, Police Dogs, Customs Dogs, Border Patrol Dogs, Secret Service Dogs, ATF Dogs, FBI Dogs, and more, as all are now involved in guarding our precious freedoms against terrorists.

Sorry to say, that just does not wash with me. Dogs used for these tasks do not "serve" because they made (or are capable) of exercising the free will to make a decision. The animal-rights weenies might even say they are "enslaved," and God help me, I think I agree.

Moreover, I think this mission-creep on the part of the buglers' association demeans the memories of those humans that we honor on Decoration Day and Armistice Day.

Suffice it to say that mine is the minority opinion: according to BAA it's appropriate for any bungler bugler to play Taps on any occasion whatsoever. Attempting to reduce the argument to the absurd (not a real stretch), I observed that next we'd be having Taps and funeral honors for all those bunnies and mice who gave their lives in service to the chemical/biological warfare defense labs of the Free World. And that the year after that, I fully expect to see funeral honors rendered to those mass graves--petri dishes--full of bacteria and viruses who sacrificed all.

The story has an interesting coda: I was dismissed from Bugles Across America by no less than The Founder Himself. As my father would have said, I've been thrown out of classier joints in my time...

The Seattle Star-Tribune reports that one of those hypersensitive born-again Christian protest groups finds Starbucks' new logo absolutely pornographic.

Here's the offending picture.

 

The Resistance, a Christian group out of San Diego says the new image "has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute,"  according to Mark Dice, founder of the group. The Resistance claims more than 3,000 members nationwide and has found a place  advancing various conspiracy theories.

Starbucks says the logo is based on a sixteenth-century Norse woodcut: a two-tailed mermaid, or siren. Bare-breasted and Rubenesque, that siren is meant to be as seductive as coffee itself. It's a somewhat bowdlerized version of the company's original logo from 35 years ago, on which you could actually see--gasp!--nipples. Most recently, the company has been using a stylized version of the Norse mermaid, as shown below.

These Christers, as Sinclair Lewis called them, are quite talented at discerning sexual content just about anywhere. Which might explain why so many of them have such large numbers of children. I'm of the opinion they ought to pray more and keep their pants zipped. 

Next, we have this tasty Reuters story about how obesity contributes to global warming.

A "study" done by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine claims that obese and overweight people "require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat," adding to food shortages and higher energy prices. This bit of pseudo-science actually found its way into The Lancet, which I have always assumed is a peer-reviewed journal.  The, um, scientists went on to say that because thinner people eat less and are more likely to walk than to rely upon automobiles, they occupy some sort of environmental high moral plateau.

I think they are missing something important. The ultra-thin, environmentally hip crowd includes a large proportion of vegetarians and vegans. A diet heavy in vegetable matter produces more intestinal gas than one laden with meat and fat. Thus vegans fart more copiously than normal people, and everyone knows that human flatulence is simply saturated with sulfur dioxide and methane, two of the most notorious "greenhouse gases."

Continuing on the subject of Obesity...

Philadelphia's CBS Channel 3 reports that if you are more wealthy and foolish than you are hungry, you can spend a hundred bucks on a cheese steak sandwich. Reporter Nicole Brewer tells viewers that Chef James Locascio, of Rittenhouse Square's Barclay Prime, created this "haute" cheesesteak, which includes butter poached lobster and shaved truffles. Locascio is quoted saying the sandwich has "every ingredient you want to try in a life time in one." Apparently without regard for whether you can actually taste lobster when it's combined with the other ingredients, and assuming there is something about the truffle--at $900 a pound--that makes it more desirable than the dozens of less expensive, and tasty, mushrooms that might be used. Of course this is not merely a sandwich: it's a status symbol, a paean to conspicuous consumption.

Brewer, on camera, sampled one of the sandwiches and pronounced it worth the price. Of course, you can bet the TV station picked up the tab.

To my cheese steak discerning eye, the thing looks puny and the roll looks overbaked. I may harbor a prejudice because I grew up two blocks from the place, and went to sleep every summer night to the aroma of sauteeing onions, but I don't think you can beat Captain Harvey's of Dundalk for steak sandwiches. True, the price of a half-sub has zoomed to nearly seven dollars, about double what it was a decade ago. But for your money, you get something about the size and heft of a truck driver's forearm, and infinitely more delicious. There is no eat-in, and I would recommend you wear something to protect your clothing from dripping juices. Last time I bought a Captain Harvey's sandwich, I ate my fill and had enough left over for a couple of hefty steak burritos for the next day's lunch.

Finally, this is not especially humorous, but it does involve someone who is overweight and tends to lunacy...

The new June edition of the Baltimore Beacon reports that President Bush signed into law last month S.845, known as the "Safety of Seniors Act of 2007," noting that Ms. Mikulski is a co-sponsor. This law, in the words of Beacon reporter Barbara Ruben, "authorizes new programs to help prevent falls among older adults." So we are now the beneficiaries of a program that is expected to cost at least $178 million over the next two years. Though I suspect the true beneficiaries will be the public health mavens who will be well paid to try to figure out who falls, where, when and why, and what troublesome architectural constraints can be put into place in a misguided effort to prevent it.

Mikulski bloviates, "Falls don't discriminate. This is a serious public health problem..." Except, of course that until the research is done, nobody knows how serious a problem it might be. Plus that little grammatical faux pas in her first sentence.

Dear Ms. Dorsey:

I am in receipt of your postcard that says there are some communications from Johns Hopkins that I am not receiving.

I have had several discussions with representatives of the Office of Annual Giving, which heretofore have been of the most amiable nature. Please consider this my final, and non-negotiable answer to that postcard. There are but two chances of my giving money to JHU: (1.) Slim  (2.) None The institution collects upwards of 3/4 billion per year in Federal tax money.  I consider my involuntary contribution, as gobbled into the gaping maw of the IRS and excreted through the cloaca of Congress to be more than sufficient. Moreover, JHU openly and willingly accepts hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from the Soros clan, and Michael Bloomberg, among the wealthiest of the USA's ultra-wealthy parlor socialists, and enemies of Consitutional freedom.  I will not voluntarily have my hard-earned dollars commingled with those of such execrable people. Out of concern for your student volunteers, I suggest that you be certain any and all of them refrain from telephoning me, now or in the foreseeable future. I assure you that any such telephone calls will be met with the most vile insults I am capable of dredging up, and we wouldn't want to hurt the little darlings'  feelings, now would we? Wishing you absolutely everything you deserve, I remain,  

 

Stan M------- 

I promise that if I receive a phone call from your campaign, whether it's a live person or one of those robot callers, you can count on my casting a vote for someone other than you.

If election day rolls around and all of you have pissed me off, I intend to write in myself in lieu of voting for one of you SOBs.

vershteht?

The "handsome father" (I swear, that's what the Geographic's caption called him) is sporting an ornament crafted from the shell of a living turtle! Apparently the turtle is able to grow a new shell. The caption continues, "This pendant resembles a New Zealand Maori decoration intended to represent a human embryo and to give women fertility.

 I suppose this guy's wife would need some help with fertility. What woman in her right mind would lie down with someone sporting this artificial booger?

Whatever you do, DON'T let your teenage sons see this. I will not be held responsible for having given them a new idea for a way to gross out their parents...

By this, I refer to the legal name-change notices in The Jeffersonian, our county's newspaper of legal record. Most of the change of name docket is done pro se, and the reasons that petitioners give for requesting a change are often funnier than the name changes themselves, some of which are downright hilarious.

Since the last installment of this entry, I've seen a number of petitions that have been filed by transgendered people in the process of completing the change to their desired gender. I don't think it fair to make fun of most of these, as I find the entire matter of "gender reassignment" just imponderable. Suffice it to say, that it always surprises me to see someone apply for a name change on these grounds, where the initials of the new name do not match those of the old. Don't these folks own a single monogrammed item?

Still, there was this one:

Trevean Raynard Lee wants a name change to Treashay Renee Lee on the following grounds: "I am a transexually [sic] live[sic] as a female but still living by male and I don't feel since I'm living female why still be call Trevean."

Aside from the fact that Trevean/Treashay must have been too excited to proofread the application, I have to ask how many people would know that "Trevean" is a man's name, while "Treashay" is that of a woman?

Aside from that, I have collected these gems:

 Olivine Hinds Angela Alain Tchuigoua Tchapda has applied for a name change to Olivine Chaps Angela Alain Chaps. Grounds given for the request are "I do not like the meaning of my name." God knows, if ever something needed further explanation, this does.

Felicia Nwakaego Ezimora applied for a name change to Nwakaego Felicia Ezimora. The rational: "Petitioner's recent application to the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates to be allowe to take the examination that will qualify her to practice medicine in the United states was denied because she used the [desired name] in the application and her medical degree and manuscript [sic] from her school in Russia shows the petitioner's name as Ezimora Felicia Nwakaego [which, you will note, is the third permutation of these names]. The Board has advised the petitioner that she will only be cleared to take the examination if the court issues an order that both [sic] names refer to one person, the Petitioner.

I just hope she gets things sorted out before writing any prescriptions or performing surgery.

SOUTHWORTH, Wash. (AP) - A man trying to loosen a stubborn lug nut blasted the wheel with a 12- gauge shotgun, injuring himself badly in both legs, sheriff's deputies said.

The 66-year-old man had been repairing a Lincoln Continental for two weeks at his home northwest of Southworth, about 10 miles southwest of Seattle, and had gotten all but one of the lug nuts off the right rear wheel by Saturday afternoon, Kitsap County Deputy Scott Wilson said.

"He's bound and determined to get that lug nut off," Wilson said.

From about arm's length, the man fired the shotgun at the wheel and was "peppered" in both legs with buckshot and debris, with some injuries as high as his chin, according to a sheriff's office report.

"Nobody else was there and he wasn't intoxicated," Wilson said.

The man was taken to Tacoma General Hospital with injuries Wilson described as severe but not life-threatening.

"Nobody else was there and he wasn't intoxicated." In short, he was just plain stupid.

I wonder whether he will be charged with unlawful discharge of a firearm.

This kind of work calls for what auto mechanics call the "blue tipped wrench." Though I don't think this guy ought to be playing with fire, or even sharp objects.

Allow me to start:

"What's as useless as the teats on a boar?"

MOSCOW (Reuters) - On a holiday created to unite his country, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a veiled warning that foreigners were seeking to split up the vast country and plunder its resource wealth. [How many Mexican illegals are in Moscow, do you think?]

"Some people are constantly insisting on the necessity to divide up our country and are trying to spread this theory," Putin told military cadets during a speech in Moscow on Sunday, Russian news agencies reported. [Apparently the grown-up soldiers were too busy.]

"There are those who would like to build a unipolar world, who would themselves like to rule all of humanity," Putin said, a phrase he has used over the past seven years of his administration to mean the United States. [Damned if it doesn't sound as though he's talking about the United Nations.]

Putin... also said Russia was well respected by admirers as a stabilizing world factor. [Yeah, right.]

...

Sunday was National Unity Day, an Autumn holiday created by Putin's administration three years ago to replace October Revolution Day, formerly the most patriotic celebration in the Soviet Union, when tanks, missiles and troops filled Red Square.

...

A Levada Centre poll of adult Russians showed only a quarter of adults could correctly identify why they have Monday off from work.

A further 48 per cent had no idea whatsoever, while the remaining poll participants confused the holiday with the National Day of Reconciliation or Halloween. [And evidently the remaining 27% were too drunk to answer.]

...

"Some think we have too much resource wealth and should divide it," Putin told the cadets. [This could be President Bush speaking...]

"They themselves have no wish to share their own riches, and we should take that into account." [Like our liberal Democrats.]

You don't suppose Mr. Putin boosted that speech from President Bush the last time he was at Camp David, do you?

SPARTANBURG, South Carolina (CNN) – At a campaign event Saturday, Sen. Barack Obama called his distant cousin, Vice President Dick Cheney, "a crazy uncle in the attic."

Obama was referencing the recent revelation by the Vice President's wife, Lynne Cheney, that he and the Vice President are distantly related.

"For the first time in a long time, the name George Bush will not appear on the ballot," he told the crowd of about 500 people at Converse College in Spartanburg.

If cousin Dick is the "crazy uncle," what does that make Obama? Now I'm really confused. Next thing you know, Obama is going to announce that he's his own Grandpa.

"The name Dick Cheney, my cousin, will not appear on the ballot," Obama said. "We had been trying to hide that cousin thing for a long time. Everybody's got a black sheep in the family. A crazy uncle in the attic."