Humor
TSA and Its Brethren (Going in a Bad Direction Without Wanting To)
After hearing account after account from friends and acquaintances of rude and sometimes abusive behavior by federal officials in Immigrations, TSA, and others, I spoke by telephone to a fellow at TSA in Washington. He was agreeable and helpful, which is not a response one always gets in the capital. Anyway, I subseqquently wrote... »
Baez, Coyne, and Reed (All the Answers You’ll Ever Need)
Last night Vi and I watched for the first time a documentary, shot by my friend Jim Coyne, on Joan Baez and the movement against a war no one any longer remembers, far away, on another planet. It was... »
A User’s Guide to Thoroughly Stupid Foreign Policy (Messin’ Where We Shouldn’t Oughta)
I strain for words to describe adequately Washington’s policy toward Latin America. Candidates come to mind: Imbecilic, moronic, catatonic, Pollyannaish, blind, incurious. No, these are poor creatures and frail, not equal to the task. Retarded? Anencephalic? Those too lack descriptive power. The EEG has flat-lined. The patient is dead. I recently found the following from... »
Don Quixote Lanced Marriage
Failing Institution Marriage is a failing institution. There are some basic factors driving this failure — judicial and societal — but the bottom line is indisputable: For the first time in US history, across all ethnic groups, the majority of women are unmarried and 40% of babies are born to unwed mothers. The judicial reason is... »
And the #1 Cause of Global Warming is…
Last week on Fox News, Glenn Beck interviewed PETA spokesman Matt Prescott about a UN Report calling out the meat industry as the #1 cause of Global Warming. According to Prescott, the report issued by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “found that the meat industry causes more greenhouse gas emissions than all... »
Sympathy Vote: Supporting a Terminally Stupid Man for Toledo’s Mayor
-By Warner Todd Huston Toledo’s mayor isn’t officially mentally challenged, of course. But he is a silly, bitter, idiot of a man… not to insult the word “man.” Back on December 8, good ol’ Carty “the Fink” Finkbeiner announced a grave concern that he had about the outrage by Toledo radio station WSPD. The station,... »
CNN: Cooties News Network
CNN’s Rick Sanchez was orgasmic with schadenfreude as he touted a video of President Bush apparently being ignored by other world leaders at the G20 summit. Sanchez described Bush as “the most unpopular kid in high school… You know the one with the cooties.†I believe this is the first time I’ve ever heard a... »
Letter To CEOs of Fortune 1000 Companies
Dear Chief Executive Officers, We, the shareholders of your companies, have held an extraordinary Internet meeting. We know that government oversight is burdensome, and is after all, an intrusion into affairs that you believe is none of its business. Apparently, it gives our free market the appearance of being somewhat un-capitalistic. At least, that is... »
“Expensive People”: Beautiful perversity
Joyce Carol Oates’ “Expensive People†is a flamboyantly and deliberately perverse comic novel born (!) of a an extraordinary premise. According to Greg Johnson in “Understanding Joyce Carol Oates,†the author wondered if it would be possible to write from the viewpoint of “one’s own unborn, unconceived child, giving grotesque albeit comic reasons... »
The Halfway House: The Spanking Priest and the Sister of Secrets
Take the spirit of an old-time women’s prison picture, a lot of HOT babes whose boobs often get exposed, lesbian sex scenes both nasty and nice, a creepy Catholic “home†for at-risk young ladies, a priest who loves to punish with a paddle, mix in H.P. Lovecraft and a one-eyed, many-tentacled monster, add a... »
Necrophilia as homecoming: Jeff Dahmer Was His Father’s Son
The horror of serial murderer Jeff Dahmer which is most often mentioned is his cannibalism. But if we are to understand the reasons for his crimes, we must remember that it was only late in his serial murdering career that he began devouring body parts. On the other hand, he was consistently necrophiliac. ... »
Cheerful, Bespectacled Hockey Mom Drives Journalists Nuts
In the 10 days since Gov. Sarah Palin was introduced to the world, she hasn’t appeared on Meet the Press so much as once. She hasn’t talked to Barbara Walters and tried to keep a straight face during questions like, “If you were an igloo, what kind would you be?†She hasn’t submitted to... »
The Wondrous Fun of Zoo Atlanta!
Author’s note: This article was written a few years back so some things may have changed. Today’s Zoo Atlanta is a fascinating and busy place where fun and education go hand-in-hand. Megan Winokur, Zoo Atlanta’s public relations manager, says, “I love working here because I learn something new every day and not many people can... »
10 Reasons to Fight Keyword Inflation
How then does one compete in a recessionary climate, when the commodity of keywords is just as inflationary as the price of oil? »
My Father’s Active Retirement
In a previous blog, I wrote about a major disadvantage of fulltime homemaking as an occupation: there is no retirement from it. In that blog, I mentioned that my father is retired from being a cab driver. In the years since that retirement, he has never once expressed any guilt feeling about failing to... »
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why The Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up By John Allen Paulos
In John Allen Paulo’s debut book, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences, this mathematician brought a sparkling wit and astute powers of observations to the widespread problems of math deficiencies and math avoidance. He followed that brief and potent book with several others including Beyond Numeracy: Ruminations of a Numbers Man and A Mathematicians... »
The New Well-Tempered Sentence reviewed by Denise Noe
In this slim volume, Karen Elizabeth Gordon makes learning the rules of punctuation fun as only she can. She deals with the basics in chapters about exclamation points, question marks, and periods. She explores the often frustrating and confusing intricacies of comma placement in a suitably lengthy chapter. She takes on the uses and... »
Newspaper ‘Comedy’: GOP ‘Longs’ For ‘1952′ When ‘Women, Blacks and Gays Knew Their Place’
-By Warner Todd Huston The York Daily Record thinks it has comedy gold on its hands today with a faux “ad” that claims that Republicans are frustrated because they “long for a simpler time, say 1952, when women. blacks and gays knew their place.” The supposedly humorous “ad” says that Republicans want people to die... »
The Transitive Vampire reviewed by Denise Noe
If there is one subject that is usually swallowed like castor oil, it is English grammar. The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed by Karen Elizabeth Gordon, is a successful effort to make this despised subject — as inevitable in our lives as death... »
Prompted By An Increasing Number Of Painful Falls, Congress Sues To Overturn Law Of Gravity
Fresh on the heels of their bi-partisan decision to overturn the Law of Supply and Demand by seeking legal redress from OPEC over high oil prices, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives has set the bar a bit higher. In what many are calling a strikingly bold move, the congressional body has once again united... »
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