Making Lemon Aide

I would be very tempted to vote for them. Seven candidates for the new Women’s Party standing for election in the October 21st elections in Poland have posed nude for a campaign poster, shielded only by a sign that reads in Polish, “Everything for the future…and nothing to hide.” The party’s founder, Manuel Gretowska, explained, “We are beautiful, nude, proud.” But then she quickly added, “This is not pornography. There is nothing to see in terms of sex.” But then why point out that the ladies were not wearing bathing suits behind the sign?
*

It sounds to me like a direct attempt to deal with that Madonna slash whore dichotomy that Madonna has exploited so well in her own career, and it shadows the absurd Republican noise machine’s alleged concern over Hillary’s cleavage displayed on the floor of the Senate. Women have been stigmatized as too emotional and too compassionate for executive positions for the last 4,000 years, while sex appeal clearly helped Jack Kennedy and Bill Clinton attract the bimbo vote, and probably got Warren G. Harding elected President as well. So why shouldn’t women, handed lemons by biology, use their tits to attract a few ‘Mimbo’ votes? (Which is not to suggest I have even noticed if Hillary has a cleavage, …which she doesn’t.) I would say the Polish Women’s Party is just looking for a little lemon aide.
*
As anyone who has ever eaten at a franchise steak house in America can testify, a lot of what the menu defines as “steak” ain’t steak. (i.e.,Ground Round is never steak!) But as the price of real steak goes up retailers and customers are desperately searching for an affordable alternative. In Britain a suspicious investigative reporter for an ITV program (“Undercover, Mum”) actually subjected so-called steaks from 15 JD Wetherspoon’s and Greene King’s Hungry Horse franchise pubs and found that while the occasionally hard to chew product was beef it was not from the huge healthy British Herefords or Angus cattle the diners might of imagined. Instead the beef was from something called a zebu.
*
Also known as “the humped cattle”, zebus originated in India and have been cross bred in North and South America and Central Africa. Their long droopy ears and dewlap chins are adaptations to hot muggy mosquito filled climates like central Africa and Brazil and Florida in the U.S. but that does not improve the palatability of their meat. The Hungry Horse denied that any of their rubber-like steaks were zebu. But JD Witherspoon’s took a different tact. They responded to the program by pointing out that the, “zebu is…taxonomically identical to any other bread of cattle.” Yea; and Hilary Clinton is taxonomically identical to George Bush, but that doesn’t make him any easier to swallow.
*
People who call in sick to work on a regular basis are also taxonomically identical to the average person, but the average person is likely to consider these folks to be flakes or bums. But a Berlin psychiatrist has redefined all these lazy good-for-nothings as “laborophobics”, whom he identifies as people who suffer from an irrational work-related anxiety disorder which strikes people who do not suffer from general anxiety disorders; it is characterized by “…panic, hypochondriac fears, work-related worrying, (and) post-traumatic stress…”. In fact Dr. Micheal Linden suggests that laborophobia accounts for half of all workers on long term sick leave. Me, I haven’t had an honest job for years. And I’m a writer. Hillary is a politician. And I would say that George Bush is evidently a narrow minded, bone headed, self centered, self obsesse, idiot. And probably a laborophobic as well.
*
Death can be a major employment challenge, even more so than laborophobia. Still when Judge Robert Barnet in Muncie, Indiana, received a faxed copy of an obituary from the local newspaper, the Star Press, for defendant Shawnda Hatfield, who was awaiting sentencing in his court after being found guilty of kiting a check against her former employer, he was a little suspicious. And when he checked the contact number left in the obit for the Florida crematorium listed in her obituary, to confirm Shawnda’s timely demise, he grew even more suspicious. The number had a 765 area code, which is the same code as that used in Muncie, and not a 239, or a 305 or any other area code used in Florida. The mystery (such as it was) was solved when sheriff’s officers knocked on the front door of Shawnda’s home in nearby Dunkirk, Indiana, and who should answer the door but the recently cremated Shawnda. Judge Hatfield then sentenced Shawnda’s ash to four years in jail.
*
Sometimes the good Lord doesn’t just give you lemons; sometimes it rains lemons. Such was the fate of the citizens of the tiny Andean village of Puna, Peru. On September 15th something “glowing” smashed into the ground just outside the village, leaving behind a 44 foot wide crater, 16 foot deep, and something else as well, something that made 500 village families sick, dizzy, with headaches, scratchy throats and vomiting. Seven police officers, dispatched to collect samples of the space invader from the now water filled crater, also suffered from the same symptoms and had to be admitted to a hospital. Pravda, the Russian news agency, reported authoritatively that the object that fell to earth was the remains of a nuclear reactor from an American KH 13 satellite, spying on Iran. It was leaking radiation, said Pravda, and was what was making the villagers sick.
*
But scientists from Peru’s Mining and Mineralogical Institute disagreed, identifying the object as a typical Chondrite iron meteorite. And while there clearly were odors emanating from the crater, they admitted, they said they detected no radiation. And people who had not visited the crater were suffering along with those who had gotten close to the hole.
*
But any concerns about invading bugs from outer space or radiation from a spy satellite were forgotten as when Marco Limachi stepped forward. He was the district authority on the scene and he knew just what had to be done. First a roof had to be erected over the crater so it could be protected and "studied" year round because, “…we want to sell the crater’s image…”. Porfirio Aguilar, director of tourism in Puno, even suggested that Peruvian authorities should get together with neighbor and sometimes enemy Bolivia to cooperate in promoting tourism to the area. In fact, I can almost see the posters at the new “Puno International Spaceport, where everything is for the future…and nothing is hidden.”
*
Except, as the old strippers used to say, you should always keep something hidden, else why should the audience come back tomorrow? Just ask Hillary; she knows how the game is played. And by God, this time she intends to play it to win.

- 30 -

UFO, and your momma, too.

I am an atheist, and yet I have this fantasy that come judgment day God is going to send all the born-again-s and Catholic fanatics (like our current Pope) straight to hell, and, of course, they will go quietly because that is God’s will. And then he will send all other religious believers (Islam, Hindu, Jew and Methodist) one after the other, straight to Hades as well. And they, too, will go obediently because that is God’s will. And then, toward the end of the day, God will dispatch all the atheists to hell and we too will go quietly because we will have to admit that we were wrong.
*

And then God finally gets to the agnostics and he pauses for a moment. The agnostics smile, thinking God will respect their respect for his greatest gift, the human mind, and how like Mother Theresa they are, since she too doubted. But then God simply orders them, “Go to hell.” The agnostics are outraged. “You can’t do that. It isn’t logical!” they shout. God ignores them and repeats his order; “Go to hell.” The agnostics shout even louder. “We lived good lives not because we feared you, but because we believed in the values of honesty and morality for themselves. And didn’t that make us more honest than all those simpering Christian and Islamic hypocrites?” And God says, “Go to hell.” The agnostics are shocked. “But we were good people”, they wail. “We were good for the right reasons.” And God asks, “Who told you that reason had anything to do with anything?” The agnostics whine, “But we thought…” and God shouts them down, one last time; “Go to hell.”
*
Okay, it’s not a pleasant fantasy, and it betrays my core Midwestern pessimism more than anything else, and my firm belief that no matter what I do right I’m going to get screwed in the end. But I’m getting better. In this fantasy everybody else gets screwed, too. Still, I think that most of the anger in this world (including my own) is because people never receive what they truly think they deserve to receive; i.e., this lunatic blogger, Black Velvet Buce Li, who is actually the dopey looking white dude on the right named Greg Letiecq. The guy on the left who looks like a night manager at Dennys is the Republican Governor of Virginia. Now Greg, or Bruce, thinks illegal Hispanic ice cream vendors are spreading leprosy across Northern Virginia and that five illegal Hispanics in Manassas gang-raped a white woman - I guess because Hispanic men are no different than black man – all they dream about is having forced sex with skinny whinny no-butt white women. I tell you, it seems to me at times that most southern white idiots aren’t just bigots; they are also obsessed with rape fantasies. These guys should see a psychiatrist, by court order if that’s what it takes.
*
According to the Washington Post, a noted “liberal biased” newspaper, Bruce used to be an insurance salesman but now he works as a “computer programmer’ for the defense industry – a programmer being the modern day catch all description that could mean a multi-millionaire genius or a keyboard drone. And I just don’t think Bruce has the time to be a genius, he’s too busy trying to scare everybody within earshot. Of course, he thinks he’s a genius – which is usually the first sign that he is not. Says Bruce; “We’re inspiring people. A lot of people felt like there was nothing they could do.” Do about what, you may ask. I did. It turns out that what Bruce – or Greg – is worried about are illegal aliens. But the truth is Bruce has no idea what true aliens are. .
*
Alfred Webre has an idea. It’s the wrong idea, but he’s still closer to reality than Bruce. On Monday of last week Alfred held a media event at the National Press Club and called for a “truth amnesty” for illegal aliens; extraterrestrial illegal aliens, that is. Alfred is talking little green men. He wants E.T. to phone home and use the federal government’s phone card. It is an idea, says Alfred, “…recommended by the extraterrestrials themselves.” Great; now we’re taking policy planning suggestions about the aliens from the aliens? Who the hell do these E.Ts think they are, Rupert Murdoch?!
*
But, as I said, I don’t think even Alfred knows what a true alien is. The peasants in the little village of Carancas, near Lake Titicaca, along the spine of the Andes in Peru: now, they have an idea. A meteor landed in their laps over the weekend, and this “alien”, this extraterrestrial invader, left a crater 65 feet wide and 22 feet deep. And everybody who looked into the crater and breathed in the strange smells coming out of the hole got sick - and not the good sick, but the bad sick, with headaches, projectile vomiting and diarrhea. Okay the story didn’t mention diarrhea, but how often do national news stories discuss diarrhea? I’m sure it’s a lot more common than the national news media would have you believe.
*
Aliens from outer space making people sick sounds a bit far fetched. But it seems the bureaucratic scientists at NASA are also worried. They shipped some Salmonella into space last September on the Shuttle, and when the little buggies got back they killed 90% of the mice who ate them, compared with a 60% death rate in the mice control group. That’s right; a short stint in micro-gravity makes the Salmonella bugs twice as deadly to mice. This is not good news for mice. As for humans, well Salmonella is never good news for us. It’s that old diarrhea problem again. And in the techno-babble of NASA induced talk, changes in 167 of the buggies’ genes were not directly caused by the micro-gravity of orbit, but they were indirectly caused by the micro-gravity of orbit - what ever the hell that distinction means.
*
I swear to God, you can always find something to be afraid of, if that’s what you are looking for. Super Salmonella can still be stopped with proper cooking procedures and a little common sense. Just follow this basic rule; before you put something in your mouth, stop, look and smell it first. And when in doubt, don’t eat it. And the villagers in Peru are probably not suffering from a space virus, but mass hysteria, which can kill you just as dead as a real disease. But you don’t suffer from hysteria unless you want to. And with the unemployment rate among “legals” at 4.8%, it seems that every illegal in this country that wants a job has a job – sometimes two. What the hell are we worried about, Judgment Day?
*
Hey, I’m an atheist and even I worry about Judgment Day. It’s not logical, and I don’t believe in it, but I still worry about it. Whereas Bruce is the one who ought to be worried about it.
- 30 -

GETTING SQUIRRELY

I believe the horror officially commenced on September 6, 2006, and it began in the midst of a deceptive calm. Groundskeepers at the Forest Hill Cemetery in Eau Claire, Wisconsin had noted for some time that vandals were stealing the small American flags left to honor veterans’ graves. The assumption was, of course, that the offenders were hippies or communists or just local punks, perhaps the spoiled offspring of wealthy but inattentive parents or the troubled youthful offenders of local poverty plagued middle aged offenders. But on this late summer afternoon as Mr. Dave Ender mowed the grass between the tombstones he spotted a flash of red, white and blue amongst the limbs of a nearby tree. He investigated and discovered a large and intricate “drey”, or squirrel’s nest, constructed from the tattered and masticated shards of dozens of miniature American flags. The vandals had been identified. But Mr. Ender’s only reaction was one of admiration. “The little rascals”, he thought, “They’re just amazing.” Yes, rascals indeed; and not merely amazing, but horrible, too.
*
Less than a year later, in August of 2007 visitors to the Manchester Crematorium, on Barlow Moor Road in Chorlton, England, were frustrated to discover their floral memorials to departed relatives were being ripped from their pots and devoured, leaving behind the scattered crumbs of chrysanthemums and carnations scattered about. The staff assumed the rodents were after the sweet nectary of these plants, as they would ignore roses or other non-nectar flowers. So they began to treat those flowers with pepper spray to discourage the rodent-al assaults. And it worked, for awhile. But this year no concentration of pepper spray is enough to discourage the bucktoothed little vegetarians. The “Super Squirrels” of Chorlton have become “pepper spray resistant” and there was no stopping them now. Botanist John Steadman, at the nearby Fletcher Moss Gardens, claims to have never heard of squirrels eating flowers before but says the local rodents have been known to eat entire sugar packets from lunch bags. Squirrels on a sugar rush; and they have even been video taped having consumed fermented pumpkins in America. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ikH9ZRcF2Q&mode=related&search) If anyone cares to take notice, it seems to me that the wake up call for doomsday has been given. It’s time to roll out of bed and meet your maker. And I think he’s pissed. And he may be a squirrel…a great big, grey one, with sharp bitey teeth and maybe a bazooka.
*
Humans are singularly ignorant of the 300 + species of squirrels in this world. Webster’s dictionary gives a horribly generalized definition. Squirrels are either “any of various arboreal rodents of the genus Sciurus and related genera of the family Sciuridae, having a long flexible bushy tail…” or “…any of various other rodents of the family Sciuridae,…”. It is a definition that makes a mocker of the adage, “know your enemy”. The word itself comes down to us through French (1327) from the Latin (Vulgar) “Sciurus”, which comes from the Greek “slirouros”, meaning “beast that sits in the shadow of its own tail”. The verb “to squirrel” meaning to save something for later use was not recorded until 1939. Oddly, that same year saw the first use of the word as a second person perfect adjective, when Winston Churchill was quoted as saying, “Hitler seems a little squirrelly to me.” The problem is that the small rodents are ubiquitous and as such we assume we know them. It is a level of hubris that may well spell our doom.
*
This year, on the playground of a Florida preschool, a small child and a Highway Patrol officer were assaulted by an average everyday squirrel, a creature most humans would take no notice of. According to Maritza Diaz, director of the Children’s Academy Daycare Centre, in Orange, the little grey assailant settled on three year old Kevin Santiago, perhaps because he looked helpless. The boy was innocently sitting on the swings when “The squirrel attacked him and didn’t want to get off…” Kevin was bitten 9 times, despite attempts by the staff to rescue the boy by “…throwing things at it to try and get it off,…” Thank goodness no one on the staff was caring a gun or little Kevin might have had his head blown off. As it was the boy was saved when the Florida Highway Patrol office who was attending a nearby accident scene heard his screaming and came running. When he arrived the squirrel immediately leapt on the cop. After biting the officer several times (and one other adult victim) the rampaging squirrel made his escape. Kevin was admitted to a local hospital for treatment. The adults were treated and released. And the incident was immediately forgotten; but not by the squirrels.
*
In San Jose, California, on May 9th a single squirrel turned an entire First Grade classroom into a nightmare on Elm Street - except it didn’t happen on Elm Street. Just after 8:30 am, as students and adults at the Evergreen Elementary School were preparing to leave on a field trip, the small grey assassin slipped into the room via an open door and ran up the leg of one of the mothers. According to Will Ector, a school district spokesman, the first victim was “…trying to get it off and another parent was trying to assist…one was nipped on the fingertip and scratched on the arm and the other was bitten on the arm.” The errant rodent nibbler then “did a loop around the (blood soaked) classroom and ran out the door”, where he encountered his third victim, an innocent 11 year old girl, whom he immediately bit on the arm. He then made good his twitchy nosed escape. The school went into immediate lock down which evidently prevented any further assaults. The victims were given medical attention and treated with antibiotics, but not given rabies shots because, as the Santa Clara County Vector Control District Manager explained, “Generally speaking, squirrels are not the type of animal that can survive an attack by a rabid animal. They are prey animals…” It was the kind of comforting speech often given by movie experts to explain why Godzilla or the zombies or the Killer Squirrels are not going come back, usually just before they return and eat the expert.
*
Nearby Cuesta Park has become a hotbed of insurgent squirrel activity, with six attacks in the last few months. This spring 4 year old Andrew Packard was on a picnic with his mother when she handed him a muffin. Instantly a squirrel assaulted Andrew. In the boy’s own bone chilling statement, “'My mommy said the squirrel sneaked down behind me and he was hugging me, but when he kissed me it was really a scratch.”. His Mother, Jennifer Packard, told the San Jose Mercury News, “'It was such a horror. To hear your child screaming the way you've never heard before - it was just bone chilling. As a little kid, …you just wonder if he'll always have fear.” The boy, now with red scratch marks all over his body, is probably too terrified to enter any park with trees. And local wildlife rehabilitator Norma Campbell offered no comfort when she warned against any futile attempts to cull the local squirrel populations. “For everyone you take out, two more will come in”. But is there really nothing we can do to defend ourselves?
*
Apparently no: according to the newspaper “The Derrick”, last November ,30 year old Postal-woman Barb Dougherty was on her route in Oil City, Pennsylvania, when, stepping off a porch, a squirrel went postal on her. In dramatic testimony she explained, he “…jumped me.” Thinking quickly, Barb “…pulled him off.” She was treated for scratches and released. The squirrel was tested for rabies. A postal service spokesman said, “In the 230 years of postal history, I’ve never personally heard of another squirrel biting.” My guess is, he’s just not listening very closely and he’s not nearly as old as he implies. In Winter Park, Florida, the Orlando Sentinel reports, 3 year old Carson Cox was bitten several times by a squirrel assailant on the calf while playing soccer in the park, a few moments before 19 year old Dylan Osborn was attacked and bitten on the leg, and John Hindman was scratched and bitten on both arms, in what was spree rodent assault.
*
And the Sevier County Courthouse in Arkansas was damaged by what the Texarkana Gazette called a “kamikaze rodent” that short circuited a transformer, causing an explosion and a loud bang. County Judge Dick Tillman downplayed the significance of this assault on a government building, pointing out the power never went off and the lights merely flickered. In a droll attempt at distracting humor, Tillman added, “The dispatcher said the computers have been acting funny with the monitors flickering. (But) I don’t think it’s going to cause a problem unless the flickering makes the dispatcher dizzy and she has a seizure, falls out and hits her forehead on the desk.” Less drolly, the Chief of the Billard Volunteer Fire Department, in East Texas, admitted it was a suicidal squirrel attack that caused a 30 acre brush fire that damaged 11 cars, a motorcycle and a house. He said the squirrel walked out along a power line and then jumped to a transformer. This caused an explosion which killed the squirrel and blew his smoldering corpse to the dry brush on the ground. The chief admitted, “I’ve fought several fires in the past that were started by squirrels.” So perhaps word of the secret war is slowly getting out.
*
Squirrels have successfully shut down the NASDAQ stock exchange at least twice and caused numerous outages at prestigious institutions like the University of Alabama. On average about 25% of all power failures nationwide (about one in four) are inspired by suicidal squirrels. And yet we still refuse to recognize these rodents are at war with us, preferring to avoiding admitting their intelligence, instead refereeing to them, in the words of one expert, as “clever and persistent”, as if we were unaware that may be an even more dangerous combination than just smart. In fact squirrels are such a threat to our infrastructure that if Osama bin Ladin were a squirrel, we might actually be hunting him.
*
In another terrorist incident with shadows of 9/11, a recent Americans Airlines flight from Dallas to Tokyo was forced to make an unscheduled stop in Honolulu, after the flight crew heard what they described as a “skittering noise” from above the cockpit. Wisely the crew decided to investigate. The passengers were put in local hotels for the night while mechanics tracked down the Texas squirrel bound for the Far East. He was found and killed, his murder justified as rabies testing. But could there have been another reason the authorities wanted no living witnesses to the squirrel conspiracy?
*
It is clear that this is already an undeclared international war going on. In the German village of Passau a woman in her home was assaulted by a rambunctious rodent. In terror she ran outside and down the street, eventually literally shaking off her attacker, who next assaulted a builder, and when he proved too robust the attack-squirrel attacked a 72 year old pensioner. But this time the little bastard had picked the wrong little old man. Grandpa managed to beat the killer squirrel to death with his crutch. In Jyvaskyla, Finland an allegedly cute squirrel is displaying an amazing level of brand loyalty. He enters a chocolate shop twice a day to steal a treat called a “Kinder Surprise”. Still in the store he carefully opens the foil package, eats the chocolate, and then runs away with the plastic “surprise”. Exactly what he does with all of these surprises has not been reported, but I would advise the owner that squirrels can live anywhere from ten to twelve years. That could mean something like six thousand “Kinder Surprises” the owner will need to supply just to keep one squirrel happy over his lifetime. Why would any owner suffer such an expense?
*
Perhaps the answer and the ultimate core of the attack squirrel conspiracy was revealed when Finnish baritone Esa Ruuttunen, perhaps best known for his powerful performance as Telramund, was viciously assaulted while on his way to rehearsals of the new Finnish opera “Kaarmeen hetki (Hour of the Serpent) at the Helsinki Opera House. He suffered a concussion and a broken nose amongst other injuries when yet another suicidal squirrel literally leapt into the spinning spokes of his bicycle. It was clearly a case of an excessively outspoken squirrel.

- 30 -

I'VE SEEN THIS MOVIE BEFORE

I woke up from a nap Monday afternoon to a Faux News report that the FBI had labeled Britney Spears as a “person of interest” in their investigation of the conspiracy to hire O.J. Simpson to murder Kevin Federline. Okay, maybe I got that a little mixed up but…did somebody set off a daja vu bomb while I was sleeping or am I just a little late in developing my long anticipated schizophrenia? This O.J thing is like the ultimate re-run of a re-make of “The Press Frenzy that Ate Reality”. Good God, somebody put out a contract on Kevin Federline? Why? Like the puddles under the soft serve dispenser at Burger King, eventually Kevin will evaporate on his own leaving behind merely a floor stain. Why go to all the trouble of killing him? But in the meantime, assuming somebody was interested enough to plan a rubbing out the Fed-ex, was it Britney or just some music lovers? Or maybe it was some teenagers from the mall, looking to eliminate the one celebrity who makes them look committed by comparison. Or maybe The Juice was hired to remove that insipid smirk off The Fed’s face. I’m telling you, it’s been a hell of a week according to Faux News, and the week has barely started.
*
It’s not like we have anything serious to think about right at the moment, like a war or anything. On Monday Faux Broadcasting issued the most amazing statement, that “Some language during the live broadcast” -of Sunday night’s Emmys award show- “may have been considered inappropriate by some viewers. As a result, Fox’s broadcast standards executives determined it appropriate to drop sound during those portions of the show”, as when Sally Fields, the ex-Gidget, took her Emmy in hand and said there would be a lot fewer “fucking” wars if mothers ran the world. At least that’s what I think she said.
*
Faux’s justification instantly brought to mind two questions. First: Faux has standards? They even have executives who are responsible for these alleged standards? Then where the hell were those standards when all that sluttish sex obsessed pseudo news was pouring out of Bill O’Reilly’s mouth over the last ten years? As everybody knows, Fox is the home for family values and titillation TV. And the second question that comes to mind, regarding the propensity of mothers to not start wars, evidently Ms. Fields has never seen the 1993 HBO film “The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom.” I saw it, and having seen it I would say the average Texas cheerleader’s mom is quite capable of starting a war, and that might even go double for a white trash mom from Louisiana now living cracked out of her bald head in sun baked Tarzana, California.
*
Tarzana was carved out of Edger Rice Burroughs’ old estate, and named after his heroic ape man hero. It’s a drowsy sort of place, pocked marked with hidden multi-million dollar mansions surrounded by modest track homes. And the spine that connects Tarzana to the rest of The Valley is Ventura Boulevard, lined with nail salons and beauty parlors, always willing to loan a loony-tunes superstar customer a pair of Brittany shears.
*
I think Britney might be about to start some new hostilities, since, according to Faux news, (and who could doubt the veracity of a network that employs Geraldo Rivera?) as of Tuesday afternoon Fed-ex was about to be awarded custody of their two children. That makes four kids he has sired by two separate women, one of whom he didn’t marry - and she is the happy one - and at the moment, according to Faux, he’s the sane choice as a parent; an unemployed 27 year old ex-dancer, ex-rapper, ex-actor and ex-whipper-snapper.

Brittney, the ex-singer ex-rehabber, the woman who according to the Washington Post walks the fine fashion line between vulgar and Bjork, now has an ex-lawyer and an ex-agent as well. The little onion head is a long way from her beginnings on the Mickey Mouse Club, and Walt Disney must be rolling over in his Frigidaire. He was the guy who wouldn’t let little Annette Funicello wear a two piece bathing suit in the Beach Party movies, and the last time Brittney was covered by that much fabric was when she used an umbrella to beat up on a photographer.
*
It’s enough to make your head spin. Especially after the LAPD found no substance to the murder contract on K-Fed and the judge

then ordered Britney to undergo twice weekly drug tox screens but otherwise did not modify the 50/50 custody split of their children. For all the angst and hoopla not a single headline about this young couple on Faux this week turned out to be correct

*

Later on Tuesday Faux began running the on screen

banner, “O.J; mentally ill or just arrogant?” On Wednesday morning local time the arrogant and or mentally ill O.J. Simpson was bonded out of jail and flew out of Las Vegas on a commercial flight while one of his alledged victims and accusers was arrested and jailed on an outstanding warrant for “stalking”. In other words, it was business as usual at Faux Network; just about as accurate as they are fair and balanced.

*

Good Lord, is the Faux audience ever going to wake up and smell the prosac?
- 30 -

BABY, I A' LOVE YOU

I did not kiss my wife good morning this am because her eyes were puffy and she had a small knot of snot seeping from her nose. Through bleary eyes she warded off my attempts at affection, saying, “I have to brush my teeth. My mouth feels like it had Napoleon in it all night. And he did things.” What things the midget megalomaniac might have accomplished overnight in my wife’s orifice I did not inquire. But it reminded me that one afternoon Napoleon announced that he wanted to go rabbit hunting. He had never before expressed an interest in hunting, but his servants knew what to expect if there were no rabbits for the impatient emperor to execute come the dawn, so they bought up every available rabbit in the Paris markets, about 3,000 of them, and released them on the intended hunting ground. This might have been a reprieve from being hasenpfeffer on some French peasant’s stove, but unfortunately most of the rabbits had been hand raised in hutches and their sudden night of freedom must have been horrifying for them. So the next morning, when Napoleon stepped from the Imperial carriage musket in hand eager for the slaughter he was met by a stampeding hoard of desperate bunnies that saw him as their savior. Like Beethoven, they were mistaken. Disgusted by this mob of over fraught fuzziness, the Master of Europe beat a hasty retreat.
*
It seems as if nobody calls their babies “Napoleon”, anymore, but it may be coming back into fashion, as in Napoleon Dynamite. In ancient Celtic the name means “son-of the lion”, and what with 4 babies born every second and about 245 born every minute world wide, the chances of a new Napoleon at least in name would seem assured. But the world’s best shot at a genetically Celtic hare-a-parent just got a vasectomy. Mick Philpott, a 17 year old unemployed truck driver chose this ultimate form of birth control after the birth of his 16th child (by his wife, Mairead, age 26) and his 17th child (by his mistress Lisa Willis, age 23). Amazingly, these two ladies, who live with Mick in a 3 bedroom apartment, account for only ten of his children, while five other femme fete-gals popped out Mick’s remaining 7 offspring. And not one of the 17 is named Napoleon.
*
Mick’s apartment is provided by government welfare (in addition to about $72,000 in childcare payments) and he insists he is looking for work, if not an actual career. But I would suggest he’s already found what he’s good at, and he’s even found somebody who will pay him to do it. Meanwhile, in India, 90 year old Nanu Ram Jogi has just fathered his 21st child. Not only has he bettered Mick Philpott’s record numerically, but Jogi was married to all of the 4 women who caught his sperm, making him a comparative moral saint. He explains his accomplishment very simply. He says, “Women just love me.”
*
Out of the 10, 800 babies born every day in America a disturbingly large percentage are without a legally identified father. In Britain that number reached 50,000 newborns last year, and an English think tank has proposed a $450 fine for any birth certificate filed without a father listed. Allow me to point out the obvious, which is that everybody knows who Mick Philpott is, and fear of notoriety does not appear to have discouraged him, or his partners in crime from becoming a burden on the state.
*
There are about 60 million Brits at the moment with about 60,000 born every year, and yet 2 month old Katie-Lee can only be described as one in a million. Her mother, Steph Pleasance, says even the midwife asked if the newborn was wearing a wig. But there, atop the infant’s scalp is what cannot be described as a full head of hair, or even an ample mane, but a fright wig of orange fleece. This kid looks like she’s wearing a 1960’s shag carpet. She resembles the stand up comic Carrot Top. Her grandfather admits “I was shocked when I first saw her.” He also admits to having considerably less hair on his own head than his newborn grandchild did. And after two months the hair has neither fallen out nor changed color. One might almost suspect there was a clown in the woodpile, if that joke were not fundamentally offensive in so very many ways. .
*
Given a choice nobody would want a baby with orange hair, not even Bozo’s mom. In New York City, as in much of Western culture, the most popular sperm comes with an implication of blond hair and blue eyes. But suddenly those very genetic traits are in short supply because the U.S. Health Department has banned the importation of human sperm from any country that ate British beef during the “mad cow” scare, and that means that healthy Scandinavians cannot spill their seed on our soil. And that means that Americans looking to produce a test tube Scandinavian look alike are out of luck. The head of one of the six sperm banks in the big apple explained, “Our problem is we can’t get enough sperm. And the quality of sperm is not getting any better.” Now, where have I heard that complaint before?
*
The problem in Caracas, Venezuela, turns out to be not the start of life, but the finish. People, it seems, are just dieing to get out of the Caracas morgue, or so says Carlos Camejo, a 33 year old man who awoke after a traffic accident in horrific pain because the medical examiner was trying to sew him back up, after having started the autopsy when they realized Carlos was bleeding into the big gash they were making in his body, which dead people are not supposed to do. His wife arrived to claim the corpse, only to find him on a gurney in the hallway, complaining about the pain. My guess his wife told him, “You don’t know anything about pain, buddy, until you give birth to a baby.” And one with blond hair, I’m betting.

*

At the time of the accident Carlos must have been rubbing a very big rabbits foot.
-30-