What the...

It takes something extra special for the staff at PODM's Norway desk in Jackserhier Rhode Island to stop downloading porn, sit up and take notice of something but the news out of Oslo was just the ticket. With award season in full swing our president has pulled a rare two fer, the Olympics for Chicago and the Nobel Peace prize. With Roman Polanski likely to receive the Los Angeles District Attorney's coveted "Life Time Achievement Award" at ceremonies later this year at Corcoran, Americans can't help but swell with astonishment at this recognition of our cultural and political leaders.

To put this honor into perspective only two sitting presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson have taken home the gold from Oslo. Roosevelt of course brokered a peace treaty between Japan and Russia that ushered in an era of peace that lasted until September of 1945. Thanks to TR's efforts neither country has engaged in any serious conflicts since. Wilson was honored for his efforts on behalf of The League of Nations, the international organization that has prevented war since 1920.

Jimmy Carter won the Nobely in in 2002 for wearing a sweater, rolling over for the Ayatollah and turning Hati into the smooth running democracy it is.

America's Veeps Charles Dawes and Al Gore have won the esteem of the Nobel committee as well. Dawes won for the coincidentally named Dawes Plan that enabled Germany to stabilize its economy and worked like a charm until January of 1933. Gore picked his up for discovering the internet, global warming and losing Florida in 2000.

Since its inception the Nobel prize has honored the men and women that averted World War I and afterwards honored the people that helped avert World War II. Its a tribute to their efforts that the sixty years since have been marked by international harmony and accord.

We at PODM salute the Nobel committee for its continuing tradition of recognizing the well meaning and ineffectual people whose efforts on behalf of the cause of peace have wrought such disastrous consequences. We salute Mr. Obama for his many achievements in this arena and confidently expect his efforts to have similar outcomes.

Sexual Healing

What a great year it has been for piquant celebrity sex with David Carradine passing at the end of a rope with a handful of junk to Mackenzie Phillips revealing how much of a daddy's girl she was, its hard to imagine how anything could top that. We are jaded, the weekly release of sex tapes, nudie pictures and interesting sexual felonies has rendered us insensitive to all but the most spectacular rutting by our celebrity overlords.

I've been waiting for the Farrah Fawcett boxed set of sex tapes to be released, you know there has to be a library of them lying around, but her reputation is in ethical hands of Ryan O'Neal so I'm sure nothing nothing tawdry will see the light of day.

Take the case of Roman Polanski a convicted rapist of an underage girl. Many of his friends in the industry have informed us that in their opinion that thirty years of being a fugitive from our killjoy justice system is punishment enough. Apparently the statute of limitations runs out whenever a successful director might be in the mood to cast you in his next movie if he gets to walk on whatever crime he committed.

Unfortunately some people have failed to see the poignant plight of Polanski who after all only drugged a thirteen year old girl in order to sodomize her. Who hasn't dreamed of talking a teenager into taking nude photos under false pretenses then taking advantage of her in the home of a celebrity friend. It was only by the accident of birth, wealth and lying about potential career possibilities that Randy Roman found himself in the situation where he could succumb to the charms of a child that was clearly asking for it.

If our intolerant justice system has its way the artist and pervert Polanski might find himself in one of our institutions for men where physically superior star struck convicts with scripts to sell might take advantage of his sweet sensitive nature and turn him into their catamite play thing against his will. It could cost thousands of cartons of cigarettes to prevent our Roman from experiencing sodomy from a different perspective. Having unwanted sex thrust upon you (Or in Roman's case, into you.) is never okay, unless you are a thirteen year old girl confronted by a powerful celebrity that needs to butt slam you.

Little Miss Attila has taken the contrarian point of view and pointed out some flaws in the Polanski advocate's logic. Europe, specifically the French have officially condemned our provincial insistence that rapist and child molesters answer for their crimes, a position that we ignore at our peril. We at PODM abhor conflict and would like to offer a compromise in order to avoid an international firestorm. God knows Los Angeles can't afford anymore firestorms especially a French one that could devastate the restaurants and coffee houses of Brentwood and Bel Air.

Roman Polanski is fond of Europe and was a Polish national at sometime in his past what would be more appropriate that he serve his time for child rape in Polish custody according to their laws and customs. I'm just saying...

9/11

The Bravest by Tom Paxton

Bukharin

A bit of luck this week, I've finally got the Obama program into my stupid, racist, fascist head and I didn't have to spend anytime in some American Gulag or have my head wrapped in a plastic bag so a member of the American Volunteer Service (Or Young Pioneers or whatever they're calling the Obama Youth.) doesn't have to waste a bullet.

I get it. Its time for us conservatives (I don't know how I got to be conservative, I'm the most profligate person I know.) to step out of the way with our woolly headed slippery slope arguments and let the Progressive Express chug through on its way to creating heaven on earth even if it looks like heaven is a siding in Auschwitz. Fun fact: Totalitarians love trains. Under our hapless old democracy Amtrak has become a bumbling embarrassment to European intellectuals and emblematic of failed transit policy, maybe one of the Czars (or Tsars) will make it run on time.

My liberal friends tell me there is nothing wrong that can't be fixed with the application of more money. Health care will be administered by the same kind folks that made Medicare the smooth, efficient, trouble free operation it is, maybe with the velvet touch of the IRS thrown in just to leaven the fun. There might be some bumps in the road, the government seems to have trouble with simple things like handing out free money for clunkers but I'm assured the details will be worked out just as soon as they hire some more bureaucrats.

I'm confident our representatives and senators are studying, researching and reading every detail of the health care bills to make sure nothing slips through the cracks.

I am holding my breath to see how they tidy up the messes at the Departments of Education and Energy. We are so close to being energy independent and getting our kids educated. If only rich conservatives would only be a little more generous and get out of the way. With a couple or three more trillion dollars our bureaucrats will get back behind their desks and begin fixing the organizations they have run into the ground.

They need us to shut the f**k up. (When did we start spelling fuck with asterisks?) Hopefully the administration is busily consolidating its power so it can crack down on the recalcitrants and cranky kulaks that fail to understand that all this is for their own darn good. With all their critics safely tucked away they can deliver on the promised change they believe in.

Which brings me to the tragic-comic life of the bright, well meaning, idealistic, hypocrite and cynic Nikolai Bukharin. As everyone knows Buhkarin was an intellectual apologist for Communism and crony of Stalin, Lenin and Trotsky as well as Zinoviev, Kamenev and other people you've never heard of. He wrote a lot of propaganda justifying the worst of the Bolshevik program then enjoyed a laugh or two with his politburo buddies when it turned out he was bullshitting. He had an unfortunate habit of jumping on bandwagons late and not getting off in time which caught up with him in 1929 when he disagreed with Stalin on the NEP (That's the New Economic Policy for you in the back row.) and lost.

Later on he was tried and convicted for being an asshole that Stalin got tired of arguing with but he kept at it, writing long letters to Stalin ("Koba, why do you need me to die?") in which he argued that the revolution was great, killing millions of Kulaks made sense and of course counter revolutionaries had to die but not him. Stalin considered what he had to say then had him shot, packed his lovely wife Larina off to the gulag for twenty years and kept the letter in his desk until he died either as a memento of their friendship or as a handy source of a good laugh.

I always think of Buhkarin when the politically correct sands of the progressive program shift. My progressive friends always assure me that that sort of thing just can't happen here, dissent will never be criminalized and they'll get it right this time. Of course they will, they're bright, well meaning and idealists but then again most have no idea what a kulak is and have never heard of Buhkarin.

Sara Jane, Squeaky and John

Hi I'm back. Due to injuries incurred during a work related Fijian strap match... Ahhh... Who am I kidding, nobody is reading this.

Investigative reporter Oscar Alonzo Welderhunt is investigating the scandalous availability of free Internet porn. To date he has filed thirty eight servers with research material, developed an awesome tennis serve and an equally awesome bone crushing handshake. Although disabled by carpal tunnel syndrome recently, after the the wrist transplant he expects to get back to work on the article which he is determined to complete within the next sixteen or seventeen years or until he finds a girlfriend.

The release of Squeaky Fromme sparked some interest from the over medicated editorial board at the PODM news center in Bizquick Washington. It is believed that for the first time in history we have three unsuccessful presidential assassins walking around free, four if you count Arthur Bremer who took out presidential hopeful George Wallace in the prelims! Squeaky, Bremer and Sara Jane Moore are free as birds that are being monitored by their probation officers and John Hinckley continues to get more unsupervised walking around time from the wacky house he's in.

With this kind of talent on the streets we think there is one possible outcome: A Reality TV show, bad news for Republicans and good news for NBC. Squeaky is the star of course, she seems as wacky as the day she went in and of course she has a supportive family. Sara Jane is less telegenic but who can forget Estelle Getty in Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Hinckley has the Jodie Foster connection and the looks that made him the heart throb of the sedated distaff inmates at St Elizabeth's Hospital. And he has a song out.

Arthur Bremer is the wild card in this deck of jokers, the court said he was sane but he's been quiet and you know what they say about the quiet ones. As of now the show is untitled although "Run for Your Life", "One in the Pump" and "The People's Choice" are top contenders, "The Assassinettes" was scrubbed once Bremer became available. Keith Olbermann is a lock as MC.

Of course this begs the question:

Has anybody here, seen my old friend Sirhan -

Can you tell me where he's gone?

He shot some people and the DA called it wrong,

But I just looked around and he's gone.

A correction

As hard as we try at PODM sometimes we make a mistake. In a previous post we ended an interrogatory sentence with a period. This cannot stand. Embale Privot, Editor in Chief of Punctuation was reassigned to the PODM call center in Fetlock New Jersey.

In other house cleaning news, researcher Roswell Bentadene has taken a leave of absence to address a personal issue. During the all night Wite-Out huffing party we traditionally hold while we put an edition to bed he incorrectly identified the author of the Harry Potter series as Henry Rollins, the correct author is of course Henry Rawlinson.We apologize for any confusion that might have caused.

We at PODM expect nothing less than excellence from our staff if you don't count some hygene issues, chemical dependency and other mental health problems. We hope you'll continue to make PODM your number one source for irrational, bizarre and irrelevant commentary.

The Children's Hour

Sorry to be so tardy posting, I could plead the exigencies of employment but in fact I was catching up on my napping. A big shout out to my researcher Roswell Bentadene, who despite being disappointed that the stimulus package that PODM received didn't cover his promised bonus, still made his usual yeoman like effort at fact checking.

I am shocked, shocked I say to find that my old friend John at Write Enough is dropping good money (Well, American money anyway.) on the latest Harry Potter opus. For those of you that have been living under a rock these films are based on the bildungsroman novels of Henry Rollins, former lead singer of Black Flag, and concern the efforts of a group of apprentice wizards and witches attending Hogwarth Prep to recover a magical ring of fire stolen by Gollum and Valdemorte. Apparently they use their magic powers to defeat evil and allow Frodo to destroy an army of muggles, a plausable enough concept, but danger lurks in the details. These are adolescents armed with supernatural powers and we all know what has happened to Smallville since those strange teenage visitors from another planet started setting up shop.

Its a conspiracy to subvert our values and distract us from the actual danger young people with supernaormal abilities actually represent.

Have we learned nothing from British horror movies from the sixties? If Village of the Damned was such a fluke why make Children of the Damned? When I hear apple cheeked youngsters waxing rapsodic about witches and wizards I recall that Twilight Zone Episode where Billy Mumy wished everybody into the cornfield and The Lord of The Flies and am terrified! You may scoff, guffaw and chortle at my concern, just rent The Children of the Corn, parts 1 through 666 and be afraid, be very afraid.

We at PODM have no problem with actual magic. If someone wants to sit around and make quarters come out of someones ear for drinks and then hit on bored housewives who think a night at the Magic Castle is a night out, that is all well and good. In the hands of children though its like giving your credit card to a Democratic legislator and telling them to have a good time.

Isn't it time we returned to our traditional values regarding witchcraft and burned a few of the lovable tykes at the stake.

As told by an Idiot

I am writing this from a hospital bed in the PODM ward of the the PODM wing in PODM Memorial Hospital in Biglanyard Pennsylvania due to injuries received while changing a tee shirt with a knife in my hand. I urge my readers not to attempt this at home and especially not to attempt it while driving. And talking on the phone.

We are saddened by Sarah Palin's resignation earlier especially for the many commentators and pundits who found her such an easy target for their contradictory billingsgate. I am haunted by the vision of the wise old men and women of the media having their heads explode due to an excess of spleen they cannot vent. With only Bush, Chaney and Conservatives under the rubric of Republicans left to abuse what will they do, what will they do?

The biggest loser has to be Todd S.Purdum who just dashed off a 10,000 word piece on Palin for Vanity Faire full of the predictable obloquy and ad hominem attacks usually seen only at PODM and the reasoned discourse of progressive blogs. Mrs. Palin's resignation renders all those sandbags he dropped kind of irrelevant. All that detail and and research he could have lunched on with his like minded friends friends wasted. Of course there is hope, liberals never tire of beating a dead horse, recalling Nixon and Reagan here, provided the horse is thoroughly dead and they can gather in sufficient numbers to club it safely.

Mr. Purdum, who displays an eye for detail regarding feminine apparel, (No ad hominem attacks here.) tells us:

...Palin makes her way slowly across the crowded ballroom—dressed all in black; no red Naughty Monkey Double Dare pumps tonight—

Well that should disqualify the women! Not only does she own two pairs of shoes, she actually wore something she thought was appropriate for the event. Thank God the Republic was spared the horror. Later he asks:

What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life? Why did so many skilled veterans of the Republican Party—long regarded as the more adroit team in presidential politics—keep loyally working for her election even after they privately realized she was casual about the truth and totally unfit for the vice-presidency?

So unlike Joe Bidden I suppose who is only "casual about the truth" when it comes to speeches by Neil Kinnock. Bidden of course piled up many years in the Senate where he administered his office staff and provided us all with many amusing gaffes. Palin by contrast administered a city and state, albeit not one as robust and big as say Arkansas or Delaware but a state none the less. I guess being Vice President requires more of a record than the Presidency as exemplified by that office's current occupant. If only she had gone to Harvard.

When Purdum runs short of innuendos about trouble in the McCain/Palin camp he harvests second hand anonymous quotes:

...news organizations were reporting that anonymous McCain aides saw Palin as a “diva” and a “whack job.” Many of the details that led to such assessments have remained obscure.

I'll bet. There's a lot more about abstinence and abortion, the shibboleths of Purdum's audience. Apparently they believe she got a pass based on her looks but just isn't up to men's work. He tells us she comes across as arrogant, uppity and disrespectful. I wonder if Purdum were profiling a man he might consider those traits strong, decisive and visionary but Palin of course is "erratic". There is speculation about her postpartum depression which would raise an unholy howl across the land if it was done to a Democratic woman. He mentions her passing consideration of the abortion issue on learning her amniocentesis results contained abnormal cells but can't resist delivering a stern back hand to her for believing that abortion is wrong even though her actions were consistent with that belief.

Its a long tedious read but instructive on how to construct a meandering hatchet job.

I always liked Palin she was different from the usual crop of political phonies that strut and fret their hour upon the stage and then are heard no more. I can't speculate about Purdum's agenda except that he did it for the check, figuring there was a well of animosity he could pander to.

I think the elite hate Palin because she actually is the genuine article, an American citizen with all her foibles intact, thrust upon the stage without being vetted by our rulers who had opinions and ideas that didn't fit their narrative. Palin is like us with all our attendant failings and concerns and voiced them in the face of withering criticism. Palin is like us except in one area, she has courage. She kept her family together, how quaint. She was true to her beliefs and rose to a high level in her second career only to be mocked by hand wringing hypocrites and mediocre entertainers, how unexpected. Whatever her failings her story deserves to be told, it is a tale of an America alienated from their political suzerains, full of sound and fury, perhaps signifying nothing but waiting for a better idiot than Purdum to tell it.
.

Jacko in the box

Hi I'm back, employment ain't what its cracked up to be.

In all the brouhaha over the deaths of Billy Mays and Gale Storm I missed an event that went unnoticed by the media. Pop icon, accused pedophile and endless source of morbid media curiosity Michael Jackson, seen here shortly after his death, passed away on June 25th to an out pouring of grief unseen since the death of Princess Diana, another denizen of tabloid Valhalla.

Mr Jackson will be sourly missed, he gave us many fine examples of pop anthems to unrequited teen love, a piquant outlook on child molestation and terrifying bits of terpsichorean excess that in a lesser human would have prompted a diagnosis of shaking palsy. Would any one today be moon walking or rhythmically grabbing their crotch without the pioneering choreography of Michael Jackson. Step back Jerome Robbins, Balanchine, Hermes Pan, Agnes DeMille, Martha Grahm (She also invented a popular cracker), Isadora Duncan (She worked for Telefunken.),Ted Shawn, Ruth St. Denis, Bob Fosse and Deney Terrio, step way back, a new Colossus has joined the pantheon.

Sadly we at PODM must raise a few quibbles. (Actually it was Senior Editor Emeritus Franklin Erasmus Buzzkill, address all complaints to him at: PODM World Headquarters in Kitschaskiny Florida.) In the past we have lost more than a few immortals of Pop, two Beatles, God knows how many Beach Boys, Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendricks, Jim Morrison all exited in interesting and untimely manners. Lets face it Cass Eliot, Karen Carpenter and Michael Hutchence departed this vale of tears in a manner less mundane than heart failure. Bobby Fuller inhaled gasoline and Lynard Skinner died in a plane wreck. (Plane crashes are a fairly common cause of Rock and Roll deaths but I included them to give my spell checker a work out.) I could go on but I'll let these guys do it.

Of course Michael Jackson was no ordinary Pop star despite Mr. Buzzkill's curmudgeonly complaints and the tributes continue to pour in: Wal*mart has declared that in Jackson's honor they will have little boys pants half off this month (I know its an old one but when are we going to get to use it again?) and from beyond the grave Farah Fawcett claims she asked Saint Peter to help young boys everywhere, so he killed Jacko. Reggie Jackson (No relation) has claimed he was honoring Michael while playing right field because both Jackson(Michael) and Jackson (Reggie) wore a single glove for no apparent reason.( Yeah, I know its another old one but again, when are we going to get to use it in the future?)

Fortunately Mr. Jackson's legacy is in the capable hands of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson (no relation) so we can rest assured nothing exploitative or self serving will occur. Time has stopped at Neverland, fortunately not at bed time which we are reliably informed is when the big hand touches the little hand. So until we find the stone rolled back from Mr. Jackson's tomb and he moon walks across the reflective pool, farewell Michael farewell.

Other members of the Jackson family, Stonewall Jackson(No relation), Shoeless Joe Jackson(No relation), Andrew Jackson(No relation), Jackson Browne(No relation), Kate Jackson(No relation), Samuel L. Jackson(No relation), Phil Jackson(No relation), Shirley Jackson(No relation), Milt Jackson(No relation), Jackson Pollock(No relation), Randy Jackson(No relation), Glenda Jackson (No relation) and Henry "Scoop" Jackson(No relation) could not be reached for comment.

No word yet if Jackson will be buried beside long time companion Bubbles.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Porlock

On the advice of counsel I am pausing posting on PODM, or as he said, "Some things are better left unsaid". I am actually going to earn a living although that depends on what your definition of "earn" is. In the meantime I'll be working on several unfinished projects in my Porlock File, things currently incomplete because of unwanted, irritating and trivial interruptions such as visits from bill collectors, the death of bizarre cultural icons (?) and opium salesmen. Okay some weren't that unwanted.

I grow old... I grow old...
Do I dare to take a stroll,

In rooms where women come and go talking of former DHS secretary Thomas Ridge,
Who went visiting Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

A Walk in the Park

The other day I posted a comment on Mark Sanford's alleged gambol in Appalachia, it was full of brilliant snarky comments about this tempest in a tea pot. In light of recent developments (He was in Argentina with a girl.) I attempted to up date the post including comments like "The Bull of the Pampas" and "In Patagonia, Mark Sanford a stately pleasure dome decreed..." and in a move characteristic of the staff here at PODM, promptly lost it.

Our regular readers may find our usual incompetent hijinks risible but the uninformed may go huh, especially if they bother reading any of my other posts. Sadly it was choke full of the sort of witticisms and libelous fun PODM is known for, if any litigators or aggrieved parties actually downloaded a copy please forward it wrapped around one of the bricks you throw through the stately smoked glass doors of the PODM International Building in Whitlow Minesota.

FTC you later

The usually serene Little Miss Attila seems a bit shupoofed about the proposal to have the Blogosphere regulated by the alert, competent and efficient folks at the FTC. This is reasonable as she blogs regularly and is trying to make a living at it, we at PODM have a different view and look forward to being edited by the same folks that write those griping government publications overseen by the lawyers at the FTC. This is sound allocation of resources by an agency that was able to track down Bernie Madoff after mere years of being told about his operation by a succession of snitches and handled ENRON so well.

Who hasn't stayed up all night with some government page turner like Social Networking Sites: Safety Tips for Tweens and Teens , How To Protect Kids' Privacy Online: A Guide For Teachers or the ever popular quarterly Litigation Status Report . I'm sure they will improve the quality of discourse on the web especially at PODM where we are only doing this because its part of the terms of our parole.

This regulation is desperately needed to prevent the tens of dollars consumers spend on the blogs they read from being siphoned off by unscrupulous sites. Remember free speech is a right only if no one is willing to pay for it.

Not a cough in a car load

All the talk about health care has caused me to investigate taking up smoking again. If seventy percent of my income is going to go to pay for a bloated universal heath bureaucracy I want to get my monies worth.

I always enjoyed smoking, it was one thing I was truly good at. It helped me concentrate, gave me something to do with my hands and made me look grown up, best of all it provided me with an impetus to get out of bed while I hacked the tar out of my lungs. I, of course, abandoned my carcinogenic friends for health reasons but if the government is picking up the tab, who cares?

I went to the CVS drug store (How ironic yet disturbingly apropos.) to purchase a deck of tobaccoy goodness and discovered that buying cigarettes these days is quite the adventure. Back when I was introduced to the leaf by a young Marine stationed in Subic Bay, (Ahh to be young and foolish with 30% of my lung capacity intact again.) smokes came in two varieties toxic and and extra toxic. My brand of choice was Camels, lung cookies the way God intended, unfiltered and liberally dosed with added nicotine.

These days Camels come in a bewildering number of styles and flavors, some with filters, some in tins like Altoids, some mentholated and with all sorts of names. Here's a list I cribbed from Wikipedia:Camel Filters, Camel Filters 99's, Camel Lights,Camel Lights 99's, Camel Menthol,Camel Menthol Lights,Camel No. 9,Camel No. 9 100's,Camel No. 9 Menthe,Camel No. 9 Menthe 100's,Camel Regular,Camel Special Lights,Camel Signature Infused,Camel Signature Robust,Camel Signature Frost,Camel Signature Mellow,Camel Turkish Gold,Camel Turkish Royal,Camel Turkish Silver,Camel Turkish Jade,Camel Ultra Lights,Camel Ultra Lights 99's,Camel Wides,Camel Wides,Lights,Camel Wides Menthol,Camel Wides Menthol Lights,Kamel Red,Kamel Red Lights,Kamel Red Menthol,Kamel Red Menthol Lights and others.

Marlboro's were less daunting but still came in an impressive variety of types. Marlboro was always a favorite of mine because I rather fancied myself as a cowpoke that needed oxygen.

I finally chose Marlboro Mediums, so named I gather because they help you get closer to dead people.

PODM does not believe in tears

No crying over this slice of The Onion. Apparently the good people at The Onion have been reading PODM! While the person profiled is fictitious I think they've grasped the fundamental editorial philosophy we embrace here. In the words of Emma Lazarus, "give us your tired, your poor and we at PODM will mock, ridicule and trivialize everything they believe in, hold sacred or love. It is gratifying to see our work appreciated by one of the top 500 or so humor sites on this back water we call the web.

Knotty but Nice

The casual reader of PODM might think, based on recent postings, that the site was some sort snarky military misinformation center for dummies which in fact it is. We at PODM like to think we embrace the whole spectrum of human ignorance, the triumph of stupidity over the obvious and the agony of watching stunningly straight forward and easy concepts going down in flames. We don’t limit our selves to misstatements of fact, callous mockery of the wretched or flamboyant flourishes of rhetorical wreckage, sometimes we just cop a squat and crap allover something good, sound and sensible.

That said, I know nothing about military things, unless you count the Civil War, (Currently I am in a conundrum over why Lee had to be informed about the unmarked road that lead to a point on the Eleventh Corps’ right flank at Chancellorsville. They had been occupying the ground since Fredericksburg and Jackson had Jedidiah Hotchkiss mapping the Shenandoah Valley since spring 1862. Was Lee remiss in not having a thorough topographical survey done of the area behind the Rapidan River fords and does this hint at the sloppy staff work that characterized Lee’s performance at Gettysburg?.) British Naval strategy of the War of 1812 (The British severely underestimated the difficulty of maintaining sailing ships on blockade station when their bases in Bermuda and Halifax were so widely separated.) and Custer’s Last Stand (Don’t get me started). It is also clear I know nothing of composition because if I did I wouldn’t have put three lengthy parenthetical thoughts in such a short sentence.

At least that’s settled and now for sex.

The respected thespian David Carradine passed recently under circumstances that can best be described as awkward. It appears that Mr. Carradine was done in by and has done for auto erotic asphyxia what Clinton and Lewinsky did for the blow job and Anderson Cooper did for tea bagging, thrusting (perhaps an inappropriate term) an unexpected, unwanted and unnecessary subject onto the public forum for discussion.

I know nothing about auto erotic asphyxia except that Albert Dekker, also died while enjoying its lethal pleasures as did Michael Hutchence the lead singer of INXS. It is notable that these three were performers, the various authors and politicians that died in the throes of Eros had the courtesy to die while another person was present.

I for one applaud our celebrities when they pause in their effort to demonstrate the drab banality of our tepid little lives by pursuing outlandish forms of public sybaritic debauchery. By spending a quiet evening enjoying a session of vigorous masturbation that went disastrously wrong Mr. Carradine has once again confirmed to me how sheltered a life I‘ve led. I don’t know why he would do so in Bangkok where if you have American money the prime minister will bring a girl to your room but if we have learned one thing from this tragedy it’s that auto erotic asphyxia requires a spotter.

Know your knots.

Several of the Blogs I read are exorcised of the David Letterman/Sarah Palin imbroglio most contending that political family members should be off limits where smutty lewd comments are concerned. I’d like to point how much fun these folks are to ridicule. Billy Carter, Margret Truman, Lou Hoover, Lemonade Lucy Hayes and Nell, the late wife of Chester A. Arthur all provided the humorist of their time with filthy off color material. Who can forget Wilson Mizner’s immortal jibe, “That Florence Harding... What a slut!” which brought down the house where ever he played. Aren’t we risking the rich national tradition of calling our leaders’ spouses skanks, sluts and round heeled pigs that would blow a poodle for a quarter and give ten cents change?(Too much?)

Are we to forgo the hours of risible fun the Kennedy’s provide with all their associated wives, mistresses, children, cousins, in-laws and organized crime connections? How about Pat Nixon, Betty Ford or Martha Mitchell? Nancy Reagan took a few for the team and Barbra Bush was a stand up gal, even if her husband did put her portrait on the one dollar bill.

Bill Clinton of course kept the focus off Chelsea with his unprecedented string of howlers but even he gave us a stupider brother we could all laugh at. One of the Bush girls got up-skirted by the paparazzi, we haven’t seen that kind of thing since Hustler printed those shots of Jackie Onassis.

I suppose it seems unfair to go after Sarah Palin because she is so much like ourselves and unlike the pompous, self important royal families we coronate every four years. You can imagine her leaning over the back seat to give Bristol and Willow a couple of whacks when they won’t stop fighting. It’s hard to picture Lady Bird doing the same to Luci and Lynda. Also Palin has achieved the impossible, successfully balancing the demands of a career, a husband and a family, something feminism promised but couldn’t deliver. To jibe her about her family’s idiosyncrasies is a little like teasing Lance Armstrong about his testicles.

We are gambling with our entertainment future here. If we don’t want people to make fun of the relatives of the clowns we elect, maybe we shouldn’t vote for people that come from circus families.

"Non, je ne regrette rien" pas de deux

Whew! Sometimes the gainful employment thing just gets in the way of regular blogging, I hear some people do it for a living but I know that's crazy talk.

I showed my daughter a video send up on Bonnie Tyler's immortal classic "Total Eclipse of the Heart"on Write Enough. I thought it was hip, funny and original but her reaction served as an convenient update of how out of date and passe I really am.

At any rate some days the fish just jump into the barrel and invite you to go dynamite fishing, that would be the case of this item of interest. The French it seems have ventured out side their borders and set up their first new military base in fifty years. I imagine their last one was on some unfortunate Pacific atoll as they've been reducing island paradises in that region to radioactive rubble since about then.

Their new base for La Force Frappe is in Abu Dhabi which I am reliably informed is named after what Fred Flintstone said when he started his car, it will increase their presence off the pirate ridden Horn of African at least until some Somali buccaneers capture their navy. This action begs the question why would such a risk averse military ( And lets face it they have very good reasons to keep their army and navy away from potential adversaries.) venture so far from the protection of Belgian Army?

With the French emphasis on speed and flexible response, I believe that by pre-positioning their men and material at, as it were, the sharp end of the spear, they serve as a force multiplier for bulky conventional arms mixes that can be called up from allies or even Metropolitan France. By maneuvering in tandem they can advance on multiple axis until they are cut off, left without supplies and forced into a degrading, humiliating surrender. In other words it keeps them from having to wait for some Persian Panzer column to make its way from Tehran so they can rollover.

The outcome of this effort will probably be either they sink one of our ships accidentally or we sink one of theirs not so accidentally, having the French as an ally is a lot like having Barney Fife for a deputy, he has a badge but you don't want to give him more than one bullet.

Passages

We here at PODM would like to pause for a moment to mark the passing of a man of the people, a man of vision, a man that will be missed. I refer of course to Velupillai Prabhakaran, seen here in happier days in his official portrait for 26th annual Tamil Tiger smörgåsbord, golf tournament and pointless violence awards banquet brochure.

Prabhakaran was a shy, quiet and unassuming murderous thug as a child and didn't commit his first murder/assassination until1975 when he was twenty one. He founded the LTTE ( Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) to establish a socialist state for ethnic minority Tamils and like every good socialist immediately started killing anybody he could get his hands on. He piled up an estimated 100, 000 bodies during the course of his war for the liberation of disinterested Tamils and turned a once prosperous island paradise into a humanitarian catastrophe.

Liberal ball washers have noted his many innovations in the field of terrorism, female suicide bombers, forced conscription of teenagers into his army and the air, sea and land capability of his liberation army. The L.A. Times described him as "innovative and ruthless" a description usually reserved for the founder of a successful business empire based on a clever kitchen utensil. I guess the headline, "World well rid of Maniac" is reserved for Dick Cheney. The Christian Science Monitor wonders whether the the LTTE can continue with out a sadistic charismatic mad man to lead them. The Guardian laments that Prabhakaran's vision of an earthly socialist heaven was "tantalizingly close" but holds out hope that overseas Sinhalese will support some other psychotic megalomaniac and keep the good times rolling.

Adios Velupillai Prabhakaran, you never missed a meal but your obsession with a socialist home land for Tamils impoverished them, killed off their best hope for the future and guaranteed a generation of repression in retribution for your "liberation" army's excesses. You sowed the whirlwind baby and got for it precisely nothing.

Bulletin: CVA needs new lunatic to run asylum

In news that reinforces my conviction that the left is playing with a deck that has less than the usual compliment of cards, prominent member of Iraq Veterans against the War and Colorado Veterans Alliance (CVA) founder Rick Duncan, nee, Richard Glen Strandlof apparently made a few trifling additions to his resume. He claimed to be a USMC Captain and graduate of the Naval Academy who was in the Pentagon on 9/11 then severely wounded in Iraq.

The good people at The Gazette in Colorado Springs noted these discrepancies:

The U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., said the school has no record of a 1997 graduate named Rick Duncan.

Marine Corps spokeswoman Capt. Amy Malugani found no record of Strandlof or his alias Duncan serving in the Corps, and that the unit Strandlof claimed to have served with in Iraq doesn't exist.

But wait there's more:

The group said it found that Strandlof had been a patient in a mental hospital in Washoe County, Nev., at the time of the roadside bombing in Fallujah, Iraq, that he claimed left him severely wounded.

The blog This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here noticed that besides claiming to be the gay commander of a Marine Battalion Rick said an Iraqi IED was responsible for a plate in his head, his hip replacement and the loss of a finger. They also observed that Mr. Duncan, nee, Strandlof still had ten fingers left despite the loss.

It appears that Mr. Strandlof's transparent deception was either a desperate plea for help by a troubled individual or he was just plain stupid.

Members of CVA did contact the FBI when they noticed the discrepancies in his story I wonder if it was the fingers that tipped them off. The guy's history was a complete fabrication that he parlayed into fund raising and lots of news coverage, it seems the "Main Stream Press" was completely gulled by this charlatan, you would think due diligence would require fact checking, like maybe just a little, like some maybe. It couldn't be that his anti-war narrative dovetailed with their preconceived notions about the war, could it?

Here's a summary of his lies according to The Gazette:

Graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., in 1997
Commissioned as an officer in the Marine Corps, attained the rank of captain.
Survived the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon.
Served three combat tours in Iraq.
Severely wounded in a roadside bombing in Fallujah.
War injuries resulted in his having a plate in his head, synthetic ribs and a hip replacement.

Oh yeah, and they're investigating if he embezzled $25000 in funds he raised to send packages to soldiers in Iraq.

Vatican Mafia

Sorry to be so tardy posting, I’m in a Fijian Strap Match with the jack booted Scientologists at Earthlink over my Internet service. I believed the money I sent them was supposed to allow me to get on the Internet occasionally. They disagree and think I sent it because they are nice people. It appears that Earthlink is winning.

That said I am gratified that Hollywood has broken its creative drought as far as villains go, I am of course referring to the Vatican in the movie extracted from the Dan Brown masterpiece “Angels and Demons”. With all the talk about fire, air, water and earth I thought perhaps an eighties Funk band Earth, Wind and Fire had taken over the Holy See but I was wrong , it was just some bullshit to put into the mouths of the Illuminati, the dark masters that control our lives and are doing such a splendid job of running the world.

It’s understandable why Hollywood latched onto the Catholic Clerics as arch enemies of good, they wear a bewildering variety of hats, they swish around in menacing floor length cassocks while behaving like Roman Polanski and Woody Allen.

I love baddies, when Anthony Hopkins growls “Oh Senator… Love your dress…" to Diane Baker in "Silence of the Lambs" I get all fertumlt. For a long time baddies have been rogues; rogue cops, rogue CIA, rogue businessmen, even rogue terrorist as in Alan Rickman’s remarkable slice of ham in "Die Hard". Of course that franchise hosted a remarkable bunch of rogues; rogue mercenaries in "Die Harder" , Alan Rickman’s rogue Euro-trash brother Jeremy Irons in "Die Hard 3" and finally a rogue computer geek in "Die Hard 4".

I am not referring to “The Rogues” a fine piece of televised fare starring Gig Young, Charles Boyer and David Niven, so shut up.

It’s been a while since Hollywood cast a member of a readily recognizable denomination as evil incarnate, usually it’s limited to rogue priests bent on blowing smoke up Damien’s ass prior to the Apocalypse, crazy Protestants like Carrie’s mom or bigoted fundamentalist that don’t understand that kids gotta dance. I am okay with that if it keeps them from making the movies they want to make.

Hollywood treads delicately around the racial character of baddies as well. Over the years whole categories of baddies have vanished like Indians as in Native Americans that ambushed the wagon trains and India Indians that ambushed Victor McLaglen, Cary Grant and David Niven in “Gunga Din”. If you don’t count WW2 era movies involving Key Luke there hasn’t been a decent purely Asian baddy since Fu Manchu. Modern war movies make the Japanese seem like bumbling allies that accidentally bombed the Arizona and we over reacted when we declared war on them.

Terrorist are okay baddies as long as they are Irish or vaguely European with just a hint of German because they’re all Hitler loving, bat shit crazy, militarists, but an Arab terrorist is verboten, that’s a word I heard Euro-terrorist use. As far as Hollywood is concerned the guys that hijacked the planes on 9/11 may as well have been members of the Skagerrak Liberation Army.

If villains belong to an obvious racial group, they are immediately branded a Mafia, as in Jamaican Mafia, Russian Mafia and Japanese Mafia. In Movies like The God Father and The Sopranos the actual Mafia, the one with Italians in it, the Mafiosi are complex characters, usually likable and not evil cut outs with one dimensional motivation. Tony Soprano was a concerned father as well as a murderous thug when he dispatched Big Pussy, whereas the Russian Mob would be just as soon send Viggo Mortensen over to gut you like a cat fish in front of the kids. This is possibly because the real Mafia does business in Hollywood and one doesn’t bite the hand that is stuffing money into your pocket.

You have to go back to Murder Incorporated to find a really reprehensible Jewish baddy and even then Peter Falk played Abe Reles. It's hard to picture our beloved Lt. Columbo as a soulless psychotic even knowing as much as we do about him now. Of course Jewish actors managed to play baddies by impersonating other ethnic groups that they shared an affinity, like Abner Biberman as Chota in the afore mentioned Gunga Din. It's similar to the shared affinity Hollywood recognised between the Chinese and Swedes when they cast Warner Oland as Charlie Chan.

Black people got to be the best of baddies first in that racist peon “Birth of a Nation” Woodrow Wilson adored, except that all the black baddies were white guys in black face which seems like an insult and a jip. There weren’t any good black baddies after Melanie got ambiguously bothered in Gone With The Wind until Danny Glover played a serial killer on a train and Densel Washington played a rogue cop.

Oh yeah and Candyman. And the five or less players in those Dirty Harry movies and something Robert Hooks did in the seventies, without IMDB I’m screwed. Damn you Earthlink!

Aloha Akbar

Good news for Religion of Peace fans but especially those in Hawaii, the lickspittle state legislature in an outstanding case of toadying for potential tourist dollars has declared September 24th "Islam Day". At least I hope its old fashioned toadying, I pray they don't actually believe the justifications put forth.

The bill seeks to recognize "the rich religious, scientific, cultural and artistic contributions" that Islam and the Islamic world have made.

Aside from creative beheading, spontaneous spousal abuse, IEDs, suicide bombings and Cat Stevens I'm stumped. I know they invented alcohol and Hashish, for which a grateful world applauds them, but its been a millennium or so since they've wowed us with anything. I hope they get on their horse and come up with something soon because if Vince is right about those ShamWows the era of invention is drawing to a close. I don't hold out much hope, if it weren't for Brits and Americans showing them where (and how) to suck oil out of the sand, they'd mostly be remembered for having some great beach front property and buggering TE Lawrence.

I suggest we go nation wide with this "Islam Day" thing its way too much fun for Hawaii alone. We could hold parades where they can deplore the Great Satan, behead their female kin and blow up national monuments. I think its been a long time coming since we have days where we honor Christians and Jews for "the rich religious, scientific, cultural and artistic contributions" they made to a little thing I like to call Western Civilization.

Oops! I've just been informed we don't have any Christian or Jewish days, something about the ACLU and the separation of church and state.

Apparently Christmas is OK because it is devoid of Christian content, and Easter squeaks by because commemorates the miracle where our Savior made a bunny lay eggs to call attention to global warming.

I always thought religion was a matter of personal conscience but thanks to the Hawaii state legislature I realize just how wrong I have been. I am glad to stand behind people that consume a diet based on legumes then kneel down and pray five times a day facing Mecca, and not just because I enjoy bashing sincerely held religious views, they are the only folks I know that take more breaks a day than UAW workers and Obama is putting an end to that.

Of course I kid, I send up these prayers for tolerance in the hope that the boobs who don't get it will see the title of this Blog and understand it is satire, and the ones that do get it will realize I mean every snarky, sarcastic word.

Ling Carter

The long time editor in chief of Interesting News Items, Ling Carter, has left a comment on our article that gave a long term perspective on Swine Flu, Pirates and Torture, titled We're All Dead. We at PODM appreciate that he took time out of his busy schedule to give us his opinion, we know that with his interest in professional badminton, jurying numismatic competitions and his on going work looking for a cure for gingivitis he has little discretionary time especially for a publication like PODM which is generally considered unfit to lick the boots of anyone on the Internet.

The firm that audits our circulation cites Ling for increasing our readership by 25%, it rocketed from 4 to 5 readers when he commented. Perhaps more worrisome, while the audit does count several of the voices I hear in my head it doesn't include the dog I got from David Berkowitz that tells me what to write about. I assume he's a regular reader.

We're All Dead

The one thing I’ve learned in 47 years of blogging is you have to jump on a subject as soon as it surfaces or every other blog will have it covered better and funnier than you have. That’s why I’m jumping on Swine Flu now I figure there will be two or three days of interest in the pandemic before millions start dropping dead in their tracks and it all becomes passé.

But first these two farts in the whirlwind: The pirate guy and torture.

You may remember the pride of Poopchute Somalia, Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse Whatever, he was the blood thirsty but incompetent cut throat his fellow cut throats sent to the USS Bainbridge to negotiate ransom for the release of Captain Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama. After some American Seals finished the preliminary negotiations with his compatriots, Mr. Whatever thought he had won an all expenses paid one way ticket to the Federal Court in New York City and showed up states side with a big old grin on his face beneath his saucer shaped eyes and jug handle ears. He apparently neglected to read the small print on the ticket stub.

Prior to his arrival my friends and boon companions had been inclined to call down the wrath of Hell on the Pirates of the Horn but the photos of Mr. Whatever won their hearts and cleansed their minds of any common sense so suddenly it was like talking to a bunch of girls that decided Richard Ramirez or some other serial killing psychotic was dreamy. He was after all accused of the second most forgivable crime of our time, abducting and threatening an American. (The first most forgivable crime is the killing of Americans; we after all drove them to commit the crime with our dysfunctional foreign policy and arrogance. Of course it’s still a heinous crime but it would be patriotically remiss not to place all the blame on the dead Americans who after all are symbolic victims as compared to the real victims, the hijackers, who suffered… I could go on forever but I’ll let some one at the Huffington Post do it instead.)

From Monster to 90 pound teenager with jug ears, saucer eyes and big ass grin all in one rendition flight, apparently he was less pleased when he heard the charges he faced and started crying like the grinning, jug eared, saucer eyed 90 pound teenager he is. I’m sure he’ll cry just as hard when he discovers how popular grinning, jug eared, saucer eyed, 90 pound teenagers are on Rikkers Island.

He’s in New York now represented by only his public defender and how many battalions of attorneys the ACLU has been able to put on the case in short notice. In other words he’ll be out in no time.

I’m sure his defense will involve cruel and unusual treatment which seems to be the only sort of treatment the United States dishes out these days. Mr. Obama and Mr. Chaney are in a pissing contest over some memos that Mr. Bush received from counsel regarding torture, specifically water boarding. The public argument seems to be whether torture of any kind should be used at any time or just when Jack Bauer deems it appropriate. There is concern whether our use of torture will infuriate our enemies and cause them to be less restrained in their use of beheading, suicide bombing and IEDs. I suspect it will be agreed that the United States will torture only when it has to and our enemies will only behead and bomb innocents when they want to.

The best thing about this exercise is the frequently stated concern by both sides about how this will affect the ability of lawyers to do their job. They may want to make this appear to be about national security but it’s really about the Lawyer's Guild protecting its work product.

Now, the Swine Flu. In1919 a great flu swept across the world and killed 40 million people, you’ve never heard about because it happened during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson but he didn’t do anything about it so it must not have been too important and besides you went to public schools.

The flu virus is very mutable that’s why you have to get a new vaccine every year. Its also very contagious and air born unlike hemorrhagic fever which is conveyed by fluid contact or Zommbieism which can be spread by the bite of a zombie or skin contact with certain unspecified chemicals the Army experimented with back in the sixties.

There is no effective treatment for the virus beyond moderating the symptoms; Medical Science has been too busy with Acid Reflux, Restless Leg Syndrome and Male Pattern Baldness to look into something as mundane as lethal flu. Because the virus is so mutable and so small when an infected person sneezes in your face you're exposed to millions of varieties of infectious particles some virulent and some not. If you get a moderate case you live otherwise you may die, its the luck of the draw, 36,000 Americans die of flu during a normal season. Dying of flu can be as pleasant as drifting away in the swirling hallucinations of flu caused pneumonia or as distressing as coughing up blood and necrotic lung tissue. Either way you’re screwed.

There are effective ways to control the spread of epidemics especially quarantine. Quarantine as you all know is derived from either the French, Italian or Latin word for forty and refers to the number of days your ship sits in port before anyone one or thing can get off if your port of origin had plague in it. It implies that the place doing the quarantining can prevent the quarantined from off loading their ship load of plague ridden goodness, this flu originated in Mexico, you do the math of the likelihood of closing that border.

Quarantine requires the suspension of all your rights and privileges as a citizen to be effective, fortunately Mr. Obama will have no qualms in that regard. An epidemic is the situation the word emergency was meant to describe, not some foreclosed houses in Palmdale, but it requires brutal determination to limit its destructiveness. We’ve been here before and I don’t mean in 1919, in the 1980’s AIDS was killing gay men and many cases were linked to sexual behavior in bath houses so public health officials proposed closing the bath houses. This offended activists who didn’t want their God given right to buggery infringed and twenty some years later over a million are dead, more are infected every year and the band plays on.

Hopefully this swine flu will just be a blip in the history of flu, in 1919 when it took seven days to cross the Atlantic on a steamer it managed to kill 40 million. I don't see how it can get any funnier than that.

It's in our Jeans

I was alerted by an article on the Little Miss Attila blog about an article by George F. Will in the Washington Post in which he rails about the ubiquitous tide of denim on the sartorial landscape. He is clearly against America's preference for jeans and would prefer it if we all grew up, started wearing dockers and put on a tie, this from a man who wore bow ties until recently. His conversion to cravats suggests he finally learned to tie a four in hand necktie and could eschew the clip ons. That leaves Dave Garroway, Louis Farrakhan, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, and Tucker Carlson to be taught the Windsor knot.

With so many bad choices Americans can make; T-shirts that say I'm with stupid, baseball caps caps worn backwards by people that clearly are not catching the next inning, hoodies with the "designers" name as motif and the tramp stamp tattoo, why Will decided to blast jeans as an example for the decline of Western Civilization seems odd. One clue why is in the opening sentence, "On any American street, or in any airport or mall...", this rhetorical flourish shows Bill has never been on an American street, an airport or mall in living memory but still wants to be considered one of the folks. He disparages running shoes as well but not so vehemently, perhaps he wears them around the office and changes into the Ferragamos when he's getting into a cab.

He suggests we adopt Fred Astaire as our fashion exemplar, I'm sure Bill will be wearing spats, a top hat and tails the next time he catches a Southwest flight to Vegas.

The adjective that frequently jumps to mind regarding George Will is fustian and I am afraid this column falls into that category. I suspect he was trying to be funny but like Anderson Cooper joking about the homosexual act of tea bagging while displaying a more than a passing knowledge of the practice, the article reveals more about the author than the article intended. In this case Will comes across as a second rate Mencken, a curmudgeon but without the Sage of Baltimore's quaint anti-semitism and racism.

(Anderson's tea bagging references were meant to disparage the recent Tea Party demonstrations but also managed to expose our media elite's familiarity with gay sub-culture. It'll be fun to hear what they have to say about felching when that subject comes up.)

Mr. Will takes a nuanced view of things, his baseball book, "Men at Work", celebrated the work ethic of professional ball players, a class of people notorious for their slovenly and outlandish clothing, without once mentioning the fact.

Mr. Will thinks Jeans wearing Americans are unauthentic unless they toil in the soil or are panning for gold, there may be other professions that can wear denim but the only one he mentions wranglers on the old Chisholm Trail, it may be time for George to get out of the office and see what other things Americans do for a living.

Celebriticans

Our long national nightmare is over, Fran Drescher is going to Washington. Finally our nation's issues and concerns will be addressed in an annoying nasal hiss by an irritating, pretentious shrew other than Hilary Clinton. Following the demise of that fine piece of television, "The Nanny" and the equally fine "Shacking Up", Fran contested with Caroline Kennedy for an appointment to Hilary Clinton's vacant Senate seat. As you may recall New York Gov. David Paterson confronted with such an embarrassment of political riches appointed Kirsten Gillibrand to the seat, apparently because Jamie Foxx and Madonna hadn't thrown their hats in the ring .

After the debacle Fran found herself working in a bridal shop in Flushing, Queens until her boyfriend kicked her out in one of those crushing scenes.What was she to do, where was she to go, she was out on her fanny. So over the bridge from Flushing to the Sheffield's door, she was there to sell make up but the father saw more, she had style, she had flair, she was there, that's how she became the Nanny. Who would have guessed that the girl we described was just exactly what the doctor prescribed? Now, the father finds her beguiling, watch out C.C., the kids are actually smiling, such joie de vivre, she's the lady in red when everybody else is wearing tan.The flashy girl from Flushing, the Nanny named Fran.

But aside from that, the "entertainment" "industry" and politics seems to be a natural meld, people in both require baths of gratuitous applause after mundane accomplishments, unearned respect for limited attainments and the trappings of dignity overlaying what is essentially a job in the carny. Ms. Drescher is a fine actress and no less qualified than Mary Bono Mack, Al Franken or Nancy Pelosi to be in congress, its just sad we couldn't look a little harder to find someone better. The hacks already elected get their opinions from the same tainted well of agenda driven media hype that Fran does, so nothing will change except that the conventional wisdom will be brayed at us in a voice that has all the charm of the noises baby seals make when they are being clubbed to death by Canadians. Fran, like her erstwhile compatriots, has no original ideas to press, thank God, or agenda higher than how to look her best in the official portrait but I can't think of anyone I know that isn't smarter than Fran, although I assume she's smarter than Mary Bono Mack, Al Franken or Nancy Pelosi.

What are we to make of Kal Penn, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Al Franken who decided to run based on a high opinion of their own opinions? Not much, a high opinion of their own opinion is what drives the claptrap in Washington right now, with celebriticans at least the claptrap will be delivered by better looking people. At least the world which Jay Leno described, politics being Hollywood for ugly people, will cease to exist

Whatever the celebriticans keep marching along collecting unearned public office like those gift bags they get for attending an award show. It's reward for their contribution to the passing circus that keeps we the people stupid, passive and docile.

Of course if Kinky Friedman or Jessie Ventura run for anything, I'm there.

It's called Swat Valley for a reason or the softer side of Muslim extremists

The Religion of Peace is back in the news recently and this time it's video of a young woman receiving a well deserved thrashing at the hands of the Taliban . Unfortunately our Taliban friends have gotten a lot of this fundamentally wrong. I have reviewed the video and made a few suggestions. Please bare in mind I am a graduate of the Vienna Institute for the Disciplining of Young Girls for No Apparent Reason so my opinion carries some weight with the international bodies that jury competitive wife beating. Our motto at the Institute was: "One for fun, one to stun and one just to show them you mean business."

1) The men are dressed in flowing robes with what looks like a giant cinabon on their head. That's fine for late night or being in Stanley Kubrick's immortal film "Eyes Wide Shut" with all your Scientologist friends. (Actually try that, you might enjoy it.) Next time leave the robes at home and go with a casual leather jodhpurs and jack boot ensemble, maybe shirtless with a leather hood to lend an air of menace. Nothing sends a shiver down the spine like a shirtless man in a leather hood wearing leather jodhpurs and brandishing a cat-o-nine tails.

2) There are no degenerate European aristocrats in formal evening wear in the audience! What, there wasn't a team of Italian soccer players nearby you could dress up? Nothing sends a shiver down the spine like a shirtless man in a leather hood, wearing leather jodhpurs and brandishing a cat-o-nine tails in front of an audience of degenerate European aristocrats in formal evening wear.

3) The guy with the whip was way too uninvolved. He needs a name like Gunther or Dieter and to have a maniacal look in his eye. Nothing sends a shiver down the spine like a shirtless man named Gunther or Dieter in who's eyes you detect a maniacal glint even though his face is covered in a leather hood, is wearing leather jodhpurs and brandishing a cat-o-nine tails in front of an audience of degenerate European aristocrats in formal evening wear.

4) The victim was a good choice, a naughty seventeen year old girl is just the sort you want to bring down your whole repressive regime on. Nubile is always best when you are trying to make a serious point. Unfortunately you missed a chance to score with western observers, when you let the girl wear slacks and a burka. I repeat a burka, its hard to believe anything happens under a burka let alone something naughty. For truly global impact, the girl should have been dressed as a Japanese school girl, had her skirt pulled up and panties pulled down to reveal garter belt and stockings, her hands tied behind her back then bent over a high school desk and spanked. Nothing sends a shiver down the spine like a shirtless man named Gunther or Dieter in who's eyes you detect a maniacal glint even though his face is covered in a leather hood, is wearing leather jodhpurs and brandishing a cat-o-nine tails in front of an audience of degenerate European aristocrats in formal evening wear watching a naughty Japanese school girl who has had her dress pulled up and panties pulled down to reveal a garter belt and stockings, her hands tied behind her back then bent over a high school desk and about to be spanked. Or maybe it's just me.

Earth Hour minus one

I enjoy protests which is what Earth Hour was supposed to be as opposed to the fatuous publicity stunt it is. It reminded me of when everybody held hands across America back in the seventies or eighties or nineties, which ever decade it was when Americans were out of their pea sized, drug addled brains. Oh how often I have wished I could have arranged for the last person in line to grab a high voltage line and we all could have learned the importance of being in contact with someone who was well grounded.

Earth Hour was supposed to raise awareness or protest or speak truth to power about global warming or climate change or global cooling or pollution or conservation or animal cruelty or something. (I think I could be persuaded to oppose animal cruelty if PETA would persuade more models to walk around naked in protest. I'm just saying...) At any rate we are supposed to turn off the lights to remind us to stop using oil and other fossil fuels which will make the lights stay off all the time, which would just about solve everything.

Now I love to protest, I wouldn't be what I am today, a bitter, middle aged man without employable skills if I hadn't been protesting during college instead of studying. Speaking of protests, what's wrong with kids these days, sure they're opposed the war but I didn't hear about any coeds gunned down at Kent State this time around. You're all a bunch of slackers! You aren't going to generate many good songs that way, it takes a body count to get Crosby, Stills and Nash off their duffs and writing.

I love protests and marches, its away for you and your friends to demonstrate (Yeah, I know.) your sincere and principled concern for an issue you don't want to waste any time doing something about. You get to hear people no more qualified than yourself lecture you on the urgency of a crisis they had no idea was going on until their basic cable package started including the Discovery Channel. Its activism lite, you don't have to go to meetings with skinny bearded guys or intense chubby women and best of all you can shave. Protests keep police crowd estimators employed and gives politicians parades they can get in front of and pretend they're leading.

I'm not a nut bag, OK maybe that isn't completely true but I don't advocate spilling tankers full of oil on sea birds no matter how much fun it is. Oil is a complex compound we have turned into a myriad of products, there is no organic analogue for Plexiglas or PVC so conserving this limited resource is a good idea. The problem is not that we are using it up at an unreasonable rate or doing stupid things with it, hydrocarbons are one of the most recyclable things around and even its most disposable products have secondary uses. (Think about that when you are picking up your dogs poo, although if you live by me I know you don't bother.) The problem is there are too many people using fossil fuels and until somebody addresses how we reduce the numbers sucking on the straw, pollution, congestion and fossil fuel usage will grow no matter how many lights we turn off.

I hope Earth Hour and Earth Day get to expand into an Earth Month where everybody does without fossil fuels for the good of the planet, ah the bliss of no electricity, no fertilizer, no transportation, no food. We could follow that up with Earth Year and discover the kind of lives our ancestors enjoyed without heat, clean water or a life expectancy. Behold a pale rider? Hell's Bells that's how we'll all have to get around without fossil fuels, it'll be like the best Christmas ever and we'll all get ponies because we'll need them to get where we want to go. It could be followed by Earth Famine Decade or Earth Destitution Century to put some natural order back in our civilization, after all why should Islamic Fundamentalist get to be the only ones living in the sixteenth century. I'm sure the Earth will appreciate it.

A Very Special Olympics

The President of late has run afoul of the parents and advocates for children that go to school via the short bus. Imagine my surprise when I learned we were all supposed to take the Special Olympics seriously, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I mean what are we to make of kids in wheel chairs being tossed into pools and told to swim or that competition where you ski and shoot and ride a horse, oh wait a minute that’s the Pentateuch or Biathlon or whatever and real people do it in Finland.

I assume that one solution would be not filling the little tykes in on what all the laughing behind their backs was about, thats what we did with Clinton and Bush. After all there should be a place where adult liberal sophisticates can safely snicker at the unfortunate with out being upbraided for being the callous bigots they are. With George Bush out of Washington how are Bill Maher, John Stewart and Stephen Colbert going to keep coming up with bright, fresh, politically savvy original material? They’ll have to mock the stumbling, drooling and funny looking folks that haven’t been elected to Congress yet, that’s how.

Now I have nothing against Down’s Syndrome athletes competing in whatever they choose, except curling and synchronized rowing because they clearly have an intelligence edge on the folks that do that for real. A very good friend and second most flamboyantly Queenie homosexual I ever knew, Waylon Flowers once told me “Don’t Taunt The Wretched!” and I have always tried to follow that advice. (Actually it’s more like a 500 way tie for second for the Queenie crown, sorry Waylon.) Although that begs the question, who is more wretched: the kids who are just having fun or our gifted President who it seems could medal at the next Special Olympics Spontaneous Public Speaking competition, although Biden is certain for the Gold.

From now on I will refrain from using Idiot, Retard, Imbecile, Shit For Brains, Moron, Hydro Cephalic Crap Head, Quarter Wit, Half Wit, Nit Wit, Melon Headed Nit Wit, French Brained Nit Wit head, Boob brain, Bean Brained, Bungle Headed Moron with a side of Retarded, Mullet Headed B B Brain, Stupid fucking Asshole Nit Wit, Badger Brain, Taco Flavored Doritos Nit Wit Bubble Brain and Dummy when referring to the challenged folks at the Special Olympics. I will reserve these words for the dim bulbs and pellet heads in the general population that aren’t in the Special Olympics and when I’m driving.

I hope we can now watch the Special Olympics with new found gravity and watch the equestrian sailing, rhythmic weight lifting and ice fishing finals with the seriousness they deserve except when that vacuum headed shit melon Bob Costas is doing the commentary.

Presidents' Day

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, you can see it in the eyes of children and on the faces of their parents, it is a special season and it only comes once a year. It’s Presidents’ Day, the holiday where we honor our chief executive by giving them the same birthdays, like race horses and English Royalty.

It kind of hacks me off that I never get write about this holiday because I’m busy doing my taxes, (That’s right, I’m not an Obama cabinet selection.) and if ever a holiday deserved 3000 over wrought and sarcastically ironic words from me its Presidents’ Day.

Both of you who are reading this have probably suffered through my Presidents’ Day Song Medley and know how enthusiastic I am about boring people into a coma with facts about obscure presidents; like how Franklin Pierce kept a small shaved monkey under his desk that he would introduce to dignitaries as his son. (I’m kidding; Pierce is not an obscure President.)

This is an important holiday with lots of history attached; it’s more than just an excuse to hold a white sale although for the life of me I can’t think of another reason right now.

It used to be that we only had to remember Washington and Lincoln, conveniently born within a few days of each other during Black History Month and each with a special place in the hearts of black Americans, one for freeing slaves beyond his control and the other for freeing slaves he controlled albeit after his death. But there are forty two other presidents to be remembered, (Let’s settle the Cleveland issue once and for, Cleveland was a pair of identical twins both named Grover and the Baby Ruth bar was named after his daughter who went on to have a spectacular career with the New York Yankees setting many batting records.) and not all were born in February or even memorable in their own time ( Garfield during his own bullet shortened term was referred to by members of Congress as: “That guy a disappointed officer seeker plugged.”) so a remedy was needed.

Briefly, celebrating every President’s Birthday was tried, but it was a logistical nightmare, Calvin Coolidge was born on July Fourth and Chester A. Arthur’s birthday frequently conflicted with Columbus Day. Also it was thought that taking the additional 42 days off each year would undermine the economy; postal workers, government officials and GM workers disagreed and continue to observe the extra holidays to this day.

At any rate our dark overlords cobbled together Presidents’ Day, conflating Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays into one nameless pointless holiday to ensure bankers and bureaucrats weren’t over worked. My imaginary family and I will celebrate this year in the traditional Presidential manner, I will make promises I have no intention of keeping, pretend I care about the lives of others and hit on cocktail waitresses when Hilary isn’t looking.

So enjoy your Presidents' Day, it has no songs associated with it, no parades, no games, no events, you don't even get to plant trees but enjoy it any way and please join me in promoting a new holiday, Vice-Presidents' Day on July 11th. Its the day sitting Vice President Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton and the last time one of these non-entities did anything useful while in office.

The Tortoise, The Ant and The Country Mouse

I got a complaint about the last post I put up about three children and their miserable fiery death. They said it was a bit angry, I said the Blog is called Products of a Diseased Mind. They said I had a responsibility to moderate my writing for the impressionable, I said if I haven't driven someone to a tower with a high powered rifle, a bucket of chicken and a can of Brasso, I haven't done my job. They said if I had the courage of my convictions I shouldn't hide behind the anonymity of the Internet, I said thats what the Internet is for, to insult, offend and slander people anonymously.

We could have gone on like this but as Finch in the Sham Wow commercial says: "We can't do this all day," so I scraped my tale about a Labrador Retriever that gets sucked into the intake manifold of an F-16 and gets his doggy guts blasted over the tarmac like so much puppy chutney and posted this family friendly chestnut from the slush pile.

The Tortoise, The Ant and The Country Mouse

In a land far away, at a time just past now, in a bar called Ye Olde Coach House, that was noted for its cool quiet calm as opposed to anything “Olde” or coach like about it, three characters from various fairy tales, parables and morally uplifting stories gathered to relive the past. The tortoise, the ant and the country mouse would regale everyone around the bar with accounts of their long past achievements eventually boring their fellow patrons beyond mere tears and causing them to repent their lives.

The quality of an evening at Ye Olde Coach House could be judged by the number of times the discharge of a firearm punctuated the night. Almost nightly one or more customers would end the torment of listening to the biographical ramblings of a reptile, insect and rodent to seek a happier destiny by punctuating his skull with a bullet. In another time or place Ye Olde Coach house might have suffered for patronage in light of its sinister reputation but there were always more recruits willing to test their mettle for the cheapest well drinks in town.

Normally a reptile, insect and rodent wouldn’t have much to discuss much less drink about except as it related to who was going to eat whom but this is a fable and the county it takes place in is notoriously lax in its supervision of alcoholic beverage serving establishments since most of it revenue comes from servicemen on leave.

Each animal had a moment in the spotlight, and taken applause from a hypocritical public who demanded moral rectitude from their icons while they wallowed in a sump of comfortable corruption. To refresh your memory, the tortoise had won his famous race against the heavily favored hare through a combination of persistent plodding and sustained effort. The ant had thriftily stored up wealth for the long lean winter unlike his careless friend the spendthrift fiddling grasshopper. Despite the blandishments of his city cousin, the country mouse had turned his back on the material appeal of the city fleshpots for the wholesome values of the country. They were held up individually and collectively as icons of virtue and like Roman conquerors they returned to receive their praise from the mob. Unfortunately at the time of their triumph no slave rode in the chariot with them, holding their laurels above their heads and reminding them that fame is fleeting.

The fleet of fame had definitely sailed for these guys, they were has beens. They still got invited to appear on telethons and sometimes they were hired as guest attractions by the local triple A ball team; having them stand around and shake hands was cheaper and safer than giving away beer or bats. An unbiased observer would agree their time had passed; the bloom was off the rose and their glory days were long passed. If Arthur Miller were writing this they’d all have been traveling salesmen.

What made their pathetic lives even more galling was that their counterparts, the hare, grasshopper and city mouse had all gone on to success in other fields. The hare had gotten some coaching and gone on to lead his team to the league championship an unprecedented six times while having sex with an astonishing number of partners even for a rabbit. The grasshopper was so successful in his music career that on his last world tour he had filled Wembley Stadium and for an encore led a swarm of other like minded grasshoppers and locusts that denuded Somalia of its grain crops, causing widespread devastation and starvation. The city mouse had established a fabulously successful publishing empire anchored by a magazine he edited that featured photos of nude young female mice and generally lived the life of a degenerate Italian playboy except that he was rodent vermin and spread the dreaded Hanta virus in his feces.

The three spent their lives waiting and discussing their past with who ever came through the swinging doors. They complained about how unfairly life had treated them. But mostly they drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank.

One day a man named Hickey came into their saloon to drop off some ice and exposed the petty meaninglessness of their drab empty lives with irony and biting insights. Incensed they fell upon the interloper, killed him and then devoured the still twitching corpse. Normally that would have been the end of it but the death of Hickey started them thinking: Their lives were indeed dead and meaningless except for the earlier specified triumphs. After some soul searching accompanied by a commensurate amount of drinking they discovered the psychological roots of their existential ennui:

A.) Incestuous relations with an insane prostitute mother.

B.) A drunken, abusive religious fanatic father.

C.) Inability of society, family and/or self to accept homosexuality.

D.) A&B but not C.

E.) B&C but not A.

F.) A&C but not B.

G.) All of the above

H.) None of the above.

This galvanized our unlikely trio and they resolved the next day to start running guns to worthy Central American revolutionaries. Like latter day Ernest Hemingway’s they would all take notes and keep diaries and any one who survived the adventure would see to it that their story got told. Of course their wives, creditors and employers frowned on this sort of behavior so after sheepish apologies they shook off their hangovers, abandoned their crazy dreams and continued their lives of noisy desperation.

In a more forgiving culture they might have carried on like this for years but fortunately this occurred in a land where the personal right of every person to carry a hand gun was respected. After one night too many, the barkeep, tired of mopping up after suicidal patrons bored to despair by the endless self examination and angered by the trio’s incessant boasting about killing his dear friend Hickey, snuffed them all. The jury didn’t bother deliberating; many recalled Hickey as valued member of the community and a friend, while the deceased victims were an insect pest, an animal valued primarily as an ingredient for stew and an unpleasant but un-endangered species of turtle. The barkeep was released with the thanks of the court.