Some must-reads in the Friday Washington Post (which can be accessed at least a day or two later, if need be). In the world section, there's a story about massacres of Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War, by, of all people, South Korean troops. And a story about Quebec, which I've mentioned before, about how all the orphanages turned into insane asylums because there was more federal money in it if they were, and the nuns (all social services in Quebec being run by the Catholic Church, which from all reports was represented in Quebec entirely by paedophiles and sadists) started treating these perfectly normal orphans and illegitimate children like mental patients, drugging them and electro shock and so on. In the national section of the Post, there's a long but entertaining story about St. Elian of Little Havana and exile politics, with guest appearances by famous Cubans like one of Nixon's Plumbers. No one mentioned Ricky Ricardo, though. Hey, isn't it about time Bush or Gore named Elian as his running mate?

In other horror stories, Israel finally released one of its Lebanese hostages, this one after 10 years (and 4 years held by the Lebanese Christian militias before that). The only country in the world in which torture is a recognized aspect of the judicial process and hostage-taking is announced government policy. I saw Netanyahu a few days ago in an interview with Israeli tv, telling improbable stories about how he happened to have in his possession all these expensive gifts given to the nation of Israel by foreign leaders.

Thus proving that all politicians are criminals. More cases in point: the Republican who asked Bill Gates, now touring D.C. (the Washington he owns only half of) drumming up support, why Microsoft hadn't given more money to Republicans. It hardly gets more blatant, unless you count Japan, which has chosen as its new prime minister one of the thieves in the Recruit scandal a little over a decade ago, one who walked away with a million dollars in ill-gotten gains. And Helmut Kohl, now trying to suppress Stasi tapes of him taking bribes as long ago as the mid-70s.

The good news: Tennessee did not execute anyone this week, making it still the only Southern state not to have executed anyone recently. One of the targets was a man who was involved in a shoot-out with police, although it's pretty damn clear that the cop who was killed was actually shot by another cop. By the way, if and when Pennsylvania gets around to executing Mumia, remind me to tell you what I know about that case; no one story ever includes all the sordid details, of which there are a great many.

Today's NY Times had an article about consultants who help school districts make Medicaid claims (some of them semi-fraudulent) in exchange for 20% of the rake-off.

The street betting in Pakistan on deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif getting the death penalty tomorrow is 4:1. His wife is already threatening to take his place. We've seen a lot of these Asian widows/daughters taking over from dead male relatives, but this may be the first time it's been suggested before the event.

I haven't decided yet how I should feel about the situation in Zimbabwe, where Mugabe is encouraging squatters to terrorize white farm owners into giving up their land. Put that way it sounds clear enough, and ex-colonialists or not, some of these families have no doubt been there since most of our ancestors came to America, but they do own a rather huge percentage of the good farmland. If the government seizes it, as Mugabe failed to get approved in a referendum just a month or two ago, it will all go to Mugabe's friends where it will be left to rot. Still, it's hard to have to side with the imperialists. Britain is making plans to evacuate the country of whites, and Mugabe keeps calling them gay, today specifically naming junior foreign office minister (something like an assistant secretary of state in the US) Peter Hain of being gay, which I'm pretty sure he's not. Hain earlier in his life was an anti-apartheid activist forced out of South Africa, where he was born (I should probably say that he's white).

In theatre news, Kathleen Turner appears naked in a production of a stage version of The Graduate.

Dubya thanked Kansas for voting for him in the primary yesterday, except there was no primary yesterday: it was cancelled in February.

The Wall Street Journal points out that while Gore piped up on the issue of Elian Gonzales, he won't express an opinion on the fate of Microsoft. I think a truly Solomonic decision would involve splitting up Elian and sending Bill Gates to Cuba.

A mother went to testify to the character of her 18-year old son, just convicted of murder in North Carolina. Except they stopped her at the door for being 3 times over the legal limit.

The Project Censored report is out. You can find it in this week's Bay Guardian and no doubt on its own site. Some of the top censored stories you heard from me, on Kosovo and such. They mention the relationship between multinational companies and 3rd World violence, a recent theme of mine. The one story that was new to me said that the American Cancer Society not only spends most of its money on its own bureaucracy but also won't say anything about the actual chemical causes of some cancers and that it sides with drug companies. Another story is about the neglect of research into drugs for tropical diseases like malaria.

Dubya: "Reading is the basics for all learning."

Last week Dubya vowed to remove the federal "cuff links" from local schools.

Maine passes a law renaming every place with "squaw" in the name.

From one of the countries responsible for the $1.79 it cost for each gallon of gas I put in my car today: the United Arab Emirates sentences a woman to four months imprisonment because she cast a spell on her husband and sister-in-law, causing them to be possessed by a demon. The court appointed a committee of religious scholars to hear the demon's testimony.

Really.

A German general says that the Serbian "plan" to ethnically cleanse Kosovo was pretty much a fake. Those maps we saw as proof last April were drawn up by Germans, and the name of it, Operation Horseshoe, wasn't even rendered correctly, as the Germans evidently didn't know that the word horseshoe is slightly different in Croatian than in Serbian, and used the former.

The Scottish police, who already take DNA samples of prisoners convicted of rape and burglary and such, are now taking them from those convicted of racial offences. There's something rather ironic about DNA being used in this way.

The queen was in Australia this week. At one pre-school, a three-year old boy who hadn't had the benefits of the months of training in how to treat a monarch, repeatedly asked her "What's your name?" She failed to answer. If she had, I have no idea what she would have called herself. I'm Liz; Mrs Windsor; I'm the fucking queen, that's who I am....

Courtesy of the NY Times and the US Supreme Court, the exact description of one part of the body which is supposed to be covered in strip clubs in a Florida county (they were less forthcoming about the legal description of a nipple):

"The area at the rear of the human body (sometimes referred to as the glutaeus maximus) which lies between two imaginary lines running parallel to the ground when a person is standing, the first or top of such line being one-half inch below the top of the vertical cleavage of the nates (i.e., the prominence formed by the muscles running from the back of the hip to the back of the leg) and the second or bottom line being one-half inch above the lowest point of the curvature of the fleshy protuberance (sometimes referred to as the gluteal fold), and between two imaginary lines, one on each side of the body (the 'outside lines'), which outside lines are perpendicular to the ground and to the horizontal lines described above and which perpendicular outside lines pass through the outermost point(s) at which each nate meets the outer side of each leg.

"Nothwithstanding the above, buttocks shall not include the leg, the hamstring muscle below the gluteal fold, the tensor fasciae latae muscle or any of the above-described portion of the human body that is between either the left inside perpendicular line and the left outside perpendicular line or the right inside perpendicular line and the right outside perpendicular line. For the purpose of the previous sentence the left inside perpendicular line shall be an imaginary line on the left side of the anus that is perpendicular to the ground and to the horizontal lines described above and that is one-third the distance from the anus to the left outside line, and the right inside perpendicular line shall be an imaginary line on the right side of the anus that is perpendicular to the ground and to the horizontal lines described above and that is one-third of the distance from the anus to the right outside line. (The above description can generally be described as covering one-third of the buttocks centered over the cleavage for the length of the cleavage.)"

The Uganda cult death toll has beaten out Jonestown, although it is still well below the Crusades. There are still several thousand people unaccounted for.

Since the mayor of Miami and the mayor of Dade County (I know, that doesn't make sense, but that's how I remember his title) have effectively seceded from the union, I say that there is a simple solution to the Elian Gonzales issue: give Miami to Cuba.

----------------------------------------
New York Mag competition 3/27/00

Epitaphs:

It's a Plot--Oliver Stone

Afterthought--Rene Descartes

Not to be--Hamlet

So what's the deal with tombstones?--Jerry Seinfeld

I am dead. Dead I am.--Dr. Suess

Forest Lawn 90068--Tori Spelling

William H. Gates has performed an illegal operation and been shut down.

George Washington. Born: the Fourth Monday in February. Died: December 14, 1799

R.I.P.E. --Dan Quayle

If I'm not entombed / You must exhume--Johnnie Cochran

Celebrity
9:45 p.m.-10 p.m. --Andy Warhol

For a horrifying look at Sweden's 1935-75 sterilization campaign, using laws copied from the Nazis, see the Friday London Times.

Canada may repeal a 1756 proclamation offering a bounty for Indian scalps in Nova Scotia.

Oslo, Norway will allow Muslims to broadcast the call the prayer, and will allow atheists using megaphones to proclaim "God does not exist!"

The same Shas party rabbi who's been calling for the death of the Israeli education minister last year accused Supreme Court judges of having had sex with menstruating women. No word on how he knows this.

DNA tests say that there is no trace of Neanderthals in Homo sap.

I was quite excited for a minute until the story turned out so much less interesting than I'd hoped. The first case of sexual harassment in space. Except it wasn't, it was on the ground in a reproduction of the Mir space station, in which astronauts were stuck for 110 days. Evidently they had a millennium party that got a bit out of hand and one of the Russians assaulted a Quebecer. The Russians are saying it's a cultural difference, that for the Russians a kiss on the lips is just like a kiss on the cheek. She's saying, he stuck his fucking tongue down my throat. Still, it would have been a real story if it had happened in space.

If the Russians aren't big on political correctness, how 'bout them Swedes, who just introduced a maternity military uniform for pregnant officers.

After all that talk about Chile being allowed to try Pinochet themselves, Congress passed a law giving former presidents complete immunity from prosecution.

Clintonism of the week: This is from the Bloody Sunday inquiry in Britain. General Robert Ford says of his leaked 1972 memo, "The suggestion to shoot a few leaders was not a suggestion to kill them."

The House of Lords has just had defibrilators installed.

So 550+ Ugandans are murdered by cult leaders who promptly disappear with their money and it barely even makes the papers. You really have to wonder.

You heard it here first: Jorg Haidar is gay!

I should feel guilty about knowing and enjoying the fact that this particular "charge" is what could really damage the fascist asshole, but I don't.

The new status symbol among billionaires is evidently sleep. 8, 9 hours a night.

David Trimble wins the challenge to his leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party, but they put a new condition on re-entry into a power-sharing executive for Northern Ireland: the Royal Ulster Constabulary, long a symbol of occupation, remain that symbol by retaining its name and the crown on its insignia and so forth. An entirely symbolic measure is to be the make-or-break condition for peace in the North. These people are idiots. On the other hand, last I heard they were still looking for a new new name for the RUC when Northern Ireland Police Service was shot down for what should be obvious reasons.

The British military has a new toy: a £25,000 pound sniper rifle capable of taking out a tank.

Speaking of toys: the Israelis plan to safeguard their new border if they hand back the Golan Heights by the use of nuclear landmines.

In 1972, 3 members of Black September were captured at the Munich Olympics. I'm a little unclear on the details, even after reading the Observer's story twice (www.newsunlimited.co.uk if you want to give it a shot), but the Germans evidently faked a plane hijacking in order to hand them back (Black Sept. were threatening a bombing campaign if they weren't released) not 8 weeks after the massacre. One is still alive. This is the reason the Israelis spent all that effort tracking down Palestinian terrorists and the occasional waiter (oops) and killing them.

If you'd like some more oil companies to boycott, how about the ones including BP and Amoco, but also Exxon and some others, who financed the 1993 coup in Azerbaijan that put dictator wannabe Aliyev in power. BP has close connections with MI6, so I'm assuming that that coup was one of ours as well as Britain's. Which makes it one of Clinton's.

Thai elephants, fired from their logging jobs and making themselves obnoxious begging in the streets, have now been given new careers as artists. That was a really sentence I just wrote, wasn't it? But true, of course, and their paintings are going for quite a bit of money. They're evidently rather like De Kooning's.

Moscow has its first Ikea store.

But does it have democracy? This is the question asked in two op-ed pieces in the Sunday New York Times. You know, will Putin operate democratically, will democracy win in this election. The obvious answer is no. Putin refused to run for office, accepting only a coronation. He has refused to campaign, refused to advertise, refused to debate and refused to issue a platform. There may be an election tomorrow, but there cannot be democracy without some sense of what is being voted for.

The real question is, who are those idiots in Russia who are reassured that a government run entirely by KGB hacks, as Putin is threatening to install, will clean up corruption? Who says the KGB isn't corrupt? You only have to look further up this page: Aliyev was KGB, and he sold out his country to British Petroleum and Standard Oil of Indiana.

Various people have been vandalizing oil pipelines in Nigeria, so the government has set up a special police force to shoot them (that's what it says, not arrest them, shoot them). So it must be about time to boycott Shell again.

Fun fact of the week: people whose penises have been amputated because of cancer report having phantom erections.

The spiritual leader of Israel's Shas party issued what can only be described as a fatwa against the education minister. I was expecting to hear today (no I wasn't, but let's say I was for the sake of argument) that Shas was expelled from the governing coalition or asked to repudiate the statements, since calling for the murder of your coalition partners is usually not considered to be (yes I know, but I'm going to do it anyway) kosher.

According to the TV Guide, the following two game shows, whose descriptions I am putting down verbatim, believe it or not, premiere Monday on the USA channel:

Crush: In this game show, contestants question three acquaintances and try to guess which one has a crush on them.

Friends or Lovers: Contestants must choose between their best friends and their lovers when the two clash, then go on vacation with the partner they chose.

The apocalypse is at hand, people, and it's listed in the TV Guide. Whatever tv executive thought, Hey, let's turn the Jerry Springer show into a game show! made more money last year than you did.

Other stupid ideas: a gentleman tried to smuggle a 16-inch boa constrictor in his underparts when he flew into Paris from Colombia. Ignoring the obvious is that a boa constrictor in your pocket joke, who puts something called a constrictor in their underwear?

Taiwan just voted out of office the only foreign leader whose name Dubya could guess at in that quiz.

The British government plans to let insurance companies require genetic testing and charge people higher rates accordingly.

Clinton is to visit his 62nd country while in office. He must have the coolest passport in the world. India is throwing all its beggars out of wherever it is Clinton's going, Pakistan has banned all demonstrations forever, and god knows what Bangladesh is doing. At least he's not going to China where they always put all the dissidents in jail before the visit of any US official, leading you to ask why the Americans show up at all.

Answer: because they don't care.

The British government is planning to change some of its laws to deal more effectively with repeat criminals. So it's setting up focus groups, as is the Blair government's wont. With convicted burglars.

Robert Mugabe says that the British government is promoting homosexuality throughout the world and only Zimbabwe is standing in its way. Damn you to hell Hugh Grant, we will thwart your evil schemes. (I know Hugh Grant isn't gay, but doesn't he seem like he should be?) Personally I think Magabe's just over-compensating, like Tony Randall. I mean would a straight man rename Salisbury, Rhodesia as Harare, Zimbabwe? I think not. Actually, they both sound pretty gay now that I'm thinking about it.

2 New York Magazine competitions

1/17/00, children's books:

Goldilocks Does the Three Bears.

Victoria's Secret Garden

Little Crackhouse on the Prairie

The Little Search Engine That Could

Charlotte's Website

So You're Going to Be Tried as an Adult

See Dick

Horton Hires a Ho

Fun with Old Refrigerators

The Caramel Sutra

Why Little Irving Has No Foreskin

Have You Smelled the Muffin Man?

Alice in Wonderbra

How the Leper Lost his Spots

Fear and Loathing at FAO Schwartz

Look, Mommy, a Drag Queen

My Day with Dad's New Trophy Wife

Noddy Goes Postal

Curious George W. Bush

Timothy Outs the Tooth Fairy

A Donner Family Christmas

The Hardy Boys Go To Amsterdam

Where are Waldo's Underpants?

My Mommy is My Sister (Chinatown for Children)

Stuart's Little (But It's Okay)

A Pokemon Passover

You Might Be Adopted If....

===================================

2/14/00: one-letter substitutions

You've Got Bail

Torched By an Angel

Love me or lease me

New York, the City that Never Sweeps

Boys will be boss

I'm OK, You're OJ

The first thing we do, let's bill all the lawyers

These are the mimes that try men's souls.

That will does not kill us makes us stranger.

A horse divided cannot stand.

The truth shall make you flee

Anything you lay can and will be used against you.

Hostile makeovers

Anna and the King of Spam

PMS Pinafore

[NOTE: More New York Magazine competitions here.]

Presidential candidates have been saying that it was a disgrace that military families were on food stamps. Yes it was, not because they are paid too little but because the USDA evidently calculates eligibility in such a way as to exclude all the free housing those people get.

I've received my census form and I'm trying to decide what race I'm going to be. I'm thinking of writing in "none". Or perhaps something from the Star Trek universe.

In 1941 the Census Bureau told the government where to find Japanese Americans for internment. I may have to rethink the idea of listing my race as Romulan.

The Finnish Prime Minister is taking a week's paternity leave.

So, to what extent was the Bosnian civil war a matter of ethnic conflict and to what extent a decision by Tudjman and Milosevic to carve it up? Well, the new Croatian president has discovered a secret hotline to Milosevic. If we're really lucky, there are tapes somewhere.

The Vermont "civil unions" look about as good as marriage to me, including a couple of elements I hadn't thought of. The funny part is that there will be a divorce procedure. Imagine the state making it difficult to get out of a gay marriage! One benefit: immunity from testifying against one's spouse, or civil co-unionist or whatever they're supposed to be called.

NY Governor Pataki has a gun idea I swear I've never heard of before and should have, indeed should have thought of myself: require that all guns sold be test-fired and their ballistics recorded.

A Swiss town got to vote on which immigrants get to become Swiss citizens, in one of the creepiest ideas to have come out of this creepiest of countries. The voter pamphlet included information that included the number of children and amount of savings of each applicant. In the end, most were voted down, including all of the Yugoslavs, and only Italians were voted in. A rep of the racist People's Party said, "The people from the Balkans are too far from our thinking." Religious hatred, ethnic cleansing, yeah I could see how that would be just too foreign for you,
Adolph.

Aborigines in Australian jails are to be allowed to eat emu and kangaroos.

Italy's Court of Cassation says that sex in a parked car is part of the Italian way of romance and not a crime. Including sex in a parked car with a prostitute. Part of the problem is that Italy is a nation of mama's boys who don't leave home until they're married, so have no place to have sex. The other problem is that Italians drive really small cars.

The old Soviet navy dolphins have been sold to Iran.

Super Tuesday

Ah yes, Super Tuesday. I put on my cape and tights and flew to the polling station to vote. In the booth I changed back into a mild-mannered average citizen, putting on my glasses so that no one would recognize me (this is why I've gotten so little done lately -- I've been saving the world from Lex Luthor. Well, it's very time-consuming).

Actually, none of that was true, except for the bit about changing out of my tights in the polling booth. In reality, I limped to the polling station, having fallen downstairs the night before and severely boobooing my little toe (not so little at the moment) and coming [ ] close to hitting my head on concrete, in which case I'd have probably wound up voting for Gary Bauer unless I got medical attention in time.

Yup, falling downstairs is pretty embarrassing, right up there with those Canadian fighter pilots who were grounded because they were too fat for their parachutes to work.

Election results: the California people have voted themselves fucking idiots once again.

The Supreme Court, with its usual concern for due process and being innocent until proved guilty and all that shit, votes 7-2 that prosecutors can tell the jury that a defendant's testimony is untrustworthy because he attended his own trial, as is a) his constitutional right and b) mandatory in some states, and therefore heard other witnesses and could have tailored his testimony--absent any proof that this actually happened. Next up: the Court's decision on the "he has beady eyes, doesn't he?" prosecutorial theory.

Pat Robertson says of McCain: "That kind of anger, the concept that there are people who are agents of evil, that kind of thing isn't civility in politics." This is the guy who said God was going to destroy Florida because of the queers?

Bumper stickers seen yesterday: “Dog is my co-pilot.” “Oh, evolve!”

The Serbs, planning to sneak in just one last war before the US presidential elections, is blockading Montenegro. In fact, they're even preventing Serbian troops entering Montenegro, since the government there has promised real money (Deutschmarks, not dinars) to any soldier smuggling food in, and there have been many takers.

"Red Ken" Livingstone is running as an independent to be mayor of London, and I am very happy, although the Tory candidate seems to have sewn up the people-who-have-gay-sex-in-public vote by saying that police should look the other way.

The Italian Supreme Court has ruled that unwanted footsie does not constitute a sexual advance.

Dubya has received the endorsement of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Poutine, who doesn't actually exist. A Canadian satirist gave the news to Governor Smirk, who was very pleased and is not known for his knowledge of the names of world leaders. Poutine is a Canadian fast food chain.

The French government has refused to give even a symbolic one franc compensation to the victims of the Vichy regime (I'm not sure whether that's one franc each or whether they would have been expected to divide it) because that government is "null and void." So that's ok then. It gets better. According to the interior minister (who I used to have some respect for), the victims would suffer if the government admitted liability because they died for their country, which would now be identifying itself with the regime they fought against.

On a completely unrelated subject, an Austrian project to get ex-soldiers to speak to schools has caused some controversy because no one is going to screen out old SS and Wehrmacht.

The governor of whatever that state is with the shooting by the 6-year old said that parents and teachers should take aim at the problem of violence.

The Yakutia region of Russia (no, I've never heard of it either) has made English the national language, to spur internet development.

Thatcher sends Pinochet a 500 pound silver plate in a design cast in 1588 to celebrate the defeat of the Armada. She refers to the defeat of Spain's attempt to impose "judicial colonialism" on Chile. Thatcher, of course, likes Pinochet so much because he assisted Britain to retain its hold over the Falkands-Malvinas. Not big on irony, is our Mrs. T.

Pluralses

Clinton blames the Republicans for the 6 year old shooting the girl, because Congress failed to mandate trigger locks. If there had only been a law, those law-abiding folks in the crack house would no doubt have obeyed it. In tonight's debate, Bush raises the specter of a jackbooted trigger-lock police force breaking into people's homes to check for trigger locks.

Mexico, which was just cited as satisfactorily cooperating with the US on drugs, last summer stopped polygraphing its drugs police because they all kept failing.

Jacob Weisberg writes in Slate that Bradley thinks of the race as being only about his own self-worth, but has actually done his party the service of sharpening up Gore's campaigning skills. "Bradley leaves the race thinking of himself as Al Gore's better. Most of us will remember him as Al Gore's appetizer."

The Scottish Parliament holds its first debate in Gaelic in 600 years. On what subject, I don't know. Nobody does, since no one speaks Gaelic. They might as well have held it in Ferengi.

And Jack Straw, in another in a recent string of idiotic decisions, releases Pinochet.

----------------------------------------
NY Mag. competition. Group names:

A syzygy of Scrabble players.

A clique of online shoppers

A sprout of vegetarians

A shul of gefilte fish

A je ne sais quoi of affectation

A coveye of Quayles

A rush of addicts

A polyglot of parrots

A pac of lobbyists

An extra ration of oxymorons

A purge of supermodels

A curry of cabbies

A prenup of trophy wives

There is a challenge before the CA Supreme Court of the way in which primary ballots are to be counted. I've said all along that it was unconstitutional for the legislature to negate the effects of a ballot initiative, but then I am smarter than at least 7 members of the Court, so who knows. The problem is that the entirely symbolic vote I was thinking of could turn into a real vote, and that it could happen retroactively, depending on when the Court decides. What to do, what to do.

And a reminder: this is a primary to decide who will be the candidates for each party for each position. If, for example, you have a Congressional district like mine in which there are 3 Republicans running but only 1 Dem and a Natural Law, the only vote that means anything is for a Republican. One result of this, and I'd be curious to know what other people's experiences are of this, is that some of the junk mail I'm getting does not specify party. I've heard from 2 of those Republicans, and neither mentions it. Also, their material is pretty broad. My mother's experience is the same, but we both live in districts that are nearly equally D & R. What I'm wondering is whether registered Republicans are getting different material from these candidates that a) specifies their party, b) goes more into Republican issues.

Khaddafy has the right idea: he just abolished Libya's central government.

Russia is trying to get countries to send it nuclear waste for dumping an reprocessing (and pay for the service, of course). Who do they think they are, South Carolina?

Calif. Governor Gray Davis has now officially gone mad with power. Who would have thought. He has said that all judges he appoints are obligated to share his views and resign if they suddenly decide that they oppose the death penalty or support gay marriage.

Indonesia, with a singular lack of understanding of the history of the twentieth century, has hired Henry Kissinger as an adviser on the transition to democracy.

When McCain attacked the Christian right, he specifically exempted homophobe and general asshole James Dobson, presumably as part of the price for his endorsement by homophobe and general asshole and dwarf Gary Bauer. Also, one of McCain's major supporters, Lindsey "No it's not a girl's name" Graham, who you learned to hate during the Clinton impeachment, denounced Dubya's visit to Bob Jones University, although Graham himself has an honorary degree from it. Incidentally, why is the main controversy about BJU (and doesn't a university with such an informal name as Bob sound like a laidback Santa Cruz kind of a place?) the anti-catholicism of its presidents rather than its racism?

Molly Ivins's current column takes Bush to task for his commercials saying that he "passed" a patient's bill of rights, which actually passed over his dead body and after he vetoed the first one, it was passed again with a veto-proof majority and went into law without him signing it.

Robert Mugabe, the increasingly asinine president of Zimbabwe, has been touring the flood damage in two helicopters. There are only 3 helicopters doing actual rescue work. There are also a couple of dozen air force copters, but they're all in Congo fighting that stupid proxy war.

From the wonderful world of sharia, the 3 northern Nigeria states that recently passed sharia just revoked it after quite predictable religious rioting. And Saudi Arabia executes someone, by beheading, for sorcery. (Note to Daily Telegraph: when you say someone is executed for sorcery, a little more detail might be appropriate. If anyone sees anything, please pass it on).

Bob Herbert reports that Dubya said "I know how hard it is to put food on your family."

CA election & whatnot

The Washington Post has a headline that Mexicans are stunned at the murder of the police chief of Tijuana. Given that a previous police chief was killed on the same street, it seems unlikely that it comes as that much of a surprise.

The latest in 10 Commandments gimmicks, as passed most recently by the Indiana legislature, is to post it in classrooms alongside other "historical" documents like the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence. Nice try.

The Supreme Court will decide the constitutionality of a lovely practice, drug-testing pregnant women without their consent and then reporting them to the police. Is there an actual question here?

McCain and Bradley are preparing to go out in a final burst of glory. McCain said what everyone thinks about the Christian right, which must feel good. Now tell us, what do you really think about the North Vietnamese? And he calls Bush a Pat Robertson Republican who will lose to Al Gore. By the way, he said will lose, not would lose, which is an admission unto itself. Bush says that he is a problem-solver and McCain is a finger-pointer, whatever that means. And says that Reagan was never so divisive, so far as he remembers. Of course he spent the '80s in a drug-induced stupor, and probably remembers Reagan as the guy who beat off the invasion of giant spiders from the Crab Nebula.

And Boo Bradley is running really hard in... Washington state. Ignoring, oh say, New York and California, just so that he can say he won one state when he has to pull out.

OK, the California election. It seems that I was wrong about 29 being the evil twin of 1A. It's actually the puny younger brother, and should be voted for in case 1A is defeated.

Also, I finally have an opinion on Prop 25, campaign financing. The need for campaign financing is shown by the fact that Governor Beige is raising money he won't have to disclose the source of for another year and can use for whatever he wants, including defeating this proposition. But this one ain't it. Too many loopholes and, the killer provision, unions are restricted to the same limits in total as a single individual person.

Prince Charles was in Trinidad this week. They just could not get the man to limbo.

I'm sure you all want to know just what Monica Lewinsky's deal with Jenny Craig is. Well, she's paid by the pound. $25,000 per pound she keeps off for a year, to a maximum of 40, and more for a second year. They can weigh her at any time and she doesn't have to do anything she considers immoral.

The Utah House of Reps votes ban discussion of birth control in public schools and that children be taught that "any sexual relations outside of marriage constitutes criminal conduct." One presumes the latter is not actually true.

A jury in Albany acquits four NY city policemen of shooting Dialou, whose name was not spelled that way, but never mind. The trial was marred only by the fact that when the foreman of the jury reached into his pocket to bring out the verdict, one of the cops yelled "Gun!" and the rest shot him 682 times.

If you wish to consult an actual South African witchdoctor, his website is woza.co.za. I know what woza means, but I can't remember if it's from Zulu or Khosa.

UCSC committed suicide today, if you haven't heard, voting to require grades. No decision yet on whether narrative evaluations survive, but if so they will be gone within five years, I would guess.

George II's ads, the only ads he's running here so far that I've seen, are directed at McCain, telling him that he can disagree with him, but can't attack Bush's integrity. I can't for the life of me think why he thinks his integrity is out of bounds. He looks very determined in this ad; his eyes are squinting and you can hear this little voice in his head telling him "don't smirk don't smirk don't smirk."

The Paris newspaper Liberation has horrified French snobs everywhere (60 million and counting) for praising the cuisine of a restaurant with an imported Scottish chef, introducing some of the worst cuisine in Europe to the frogs-leg crowd, such as chicken in 7-Up, chocolate-filled ravioli, and the height of Glaswegian cuisine, the deep-fried Mars bar.

At the Harlem debate, Gore still refused to ask Clinton to sign an executive order ending racial profiling and accused the state of New Jersey of "practically inventing racial profiling." That's right, ladies and gentlemen, the former senator from the state of Tennessee is accusing New Jersey of racism. Bradley was too polite to bring up that whole lynching thing.

Bush II keeps talking about Democrats "hijacking" the Michigan primary to vote for his opponent. I hope Al Gore stuffs those words back down his throat when he starts appealing to the voters who might actually elect him president in November, the ones to the left of Pat Robertson. More to the point, did anyone tell him that 35% of Michigan's registered voters are independents? This is what happens in a state with open primaries. He should really watch who he keeps insulting.

I've been thinking about diplomatic immunity today. The feds recently arrested an INS agent who spied for Cuba. Actually, if he told Cuba anything, it was about some of their military people who were thinking of defecting. That may be wrong, but why should it be illegal? That the US is trying to bribe members of another country's military may be one of our secrets, but really he was just telling another country that one of their citizens was about to commit a crime. Now if he'd told Colombia about drug traffickers...

OK, so they arrest him and then tell his Cuban diplomatic contact to leave the country. The Cuban refuses. He is after all, the witness for the defense. He's got a point. Should the US be allowed to make its case by deporting witnesses for the other side? But if he has diplomatic immunity, should be be able to testify when there is no perjury penalty hanging over him? In either case, the US has given him until Saturday to leave, at which point he reverts to civilian status. My question is whether they can then arrest him for spying. The real question is, of what does diplomatic immunity consist? Does it turn a crime into a non-crime, in the way that a police officer is allowed to speed? Or is it more like a statute of limitations, where something remains a crime, but the perp can be prosecuted on one side of a line but not the other? If that is the case, then he can be prosecuted the minute his immunity lapses.

The thing about presidential elections is that everyone is so busy with politics that they forget about politics. We now know what pretty much everybody thinks about the bigotry of Bob Jones but have any of the candidates mentioned that of Haidar? Was anyone asked about China's new threat of war with Taiwan if it doesn't start negotiating pronto?

Chicago has a new ordinance allowing the cops to order loiterers to disperse and order them to stay away from sight and sound of a given spot for three hours. Just in case you didn't think this was giving arbitrary power to the police that would only be exercised over minorities, the ordinance only covers the bad part of town.

Bush and McCain are accusing each other of running "negative smear campaigns." As opposed to the positive smear campaigns.

Pakistani soldiers have been chasing wild boar over the border into India, wreaking havoc with local farmers. Could this war get any sillier?

Yes, probably.

Twenty years ago this week J.R. was shot on "Dallas." Also Archbishop Oscar Romero.

A lesbian couple legally marries in Britain. One was born a boy and has since had a sex change operation. By the same loophole, somewhere there is a woman Catholic priest who I haven't heard anything about in five years. Do they still have catacombs under the Vatican?

The pope was in Israel, in an event that didn't require one-tenth of the news coverage it received. Vis a vis the Holocaust, he asked today, "How could man have such utter contempt for man?" He added that the Catholic church usually prefers that utter contempt be directed towards women.

To some people, the issue of the papacy's silence on fascism in the 1930s might bring up the question of what it has to say about the rise of the fascists in Austria. Well, there's a story in tomorrow's London Times about a bishop in Austria who did in fact speak out and has been forced to go into hiding in the face of a hate campaign, out of fear for the safety of her children. The Times didn't say what the bishop's religion was, but I'm betting not Catholic.

Interestingly, the pope evidently thinks that Jesus was born 2,000 years ago.

He stood next to Arafat, the only other world leader with a really atrocious command of the English language who nonetheless insists on speaking in English.

Clinton is still on the sub-continent. His trip to a Bangladeshi village was called off because of concerns his helicopter would be shot down by missiles which were those originally given to the Afghans by the US to kill Russians.

Mississippi becomes the second state to ban adoption by homosexuals. It occurs to me that I don't know how you define homosexuality in a legal sense. Florida was the first.

Well wasn't that a vicious little primary? Who was it who set the rule that Gore and Bush can smear their opponents but not the other way around? At least when they turn on each other neither one will be constrained in any way, since they're already down in the mud. Bush Bush Bush. Never has one man looked so smug with so little cause. Except for Clinton, Starr and Guiliani. Poor McCain has now been branded an out-of-wedlock father, a corrupter of children, an abortionist (for supporting fetal tissue research along with 92 other Senators), a tax raiser (tobacco taxes, but the ads didn't say that), the candidate of the Democrats and fags...

More on the great-grandmother Bush will execute this week: it seems that the person who could have been the witness to prevent her getting the death penalty was actually her lawyer. See, he had been the one to advise her to try to collect the insurance on one of her several, um, missing husbands. This means that she wasn't planning to gain by his death, which is what got her the needle, but her lawyer then was also her lawyer for the trial, so he would have had to give up the potentially lucrative media rights in order to be a witness. Mr. Ethical, a major alcoholic, was later a DA who tried to sell exemptions from the death penalty. But this is Texas, where snoring is not considered proof of ineffective counsel, so don't expect much from that.

Mark Shields commented that the National Right to Life group has proven itself the wholly-owned subsidiary of the official Republican party by its smears of McCain, who is as anti-abortion as they could wish for.

Bush is now a "reformer with results", which will doubtless prove to be as meaningful a label as "compassionate conservative."

A follow-up: a while back I mentioned that the South Carolina Republican party had been criticized for not opening polling booths for its primary in black areas. I don't know if that situation is changed, but the D's realized that if they were going to criticize the R's, they'd better not do the same. Then they realized how expensive it would be, and cancelled the primary.

Speaking of primaries, it's time for the Californians on this list to make up their minds who they're going to vote for for president. Remember, the vote doesn't count in any meaningful way unless it's in the party in which you are registered. So you can technically vote for Alan Keyes to make mischief for the R's, but under the compromise by which the parties decided to ignore the express will of the voters, they would get to ignore you. This only applies to the presidential race. If you want to change your party registration, the deadline is Feb. 7.

Speaking of circuses, one of the first things his caring relatives did for Elian Gonzales after he came to this country after watching his mother drown, was take him to Disneyworld and stick him on a boat in a ride. He was heard to ask whether it would sink. Worse, it was It's a Small World. No fit guardian would subject a child to It's a Small World at the best of times.

The EU, en masse, told the Austrians not to let fascists into government. Finally, the EU is good for something.

And the governor of Illinois is planning to actually pay attention to executions and maybe stop them altogether, because they keep convicting innocent people. Put that way, it's entirely reasonable, but I don't see any other state doing it. I understand that Michael Moore sent a brass band to join one of those little Fry the Guy parties they hold outside the prison during executions in Texas, and some cheerleaders--George George, he's our man, if he can't kill him, no one can!

The Times & Post are downplaying it for some reason, but Britain just convicted a doctor of 15 murders. He killed old patients, some of whom he got to leave him him money. And he didn't kill just 15, he killed as many as ten times that number. Don't know if they were National Health patients. They also have a doctor over there who is defending, nay proud, of having cut the perfectly healthy legs off a couple of people with strange ideas of what is sexually arousing. And a doctor last week took out a patient's good kidney, leaving the ailing one. There's a simple solution when such things happen--at least, depending on how many kidneys the doctor still has left.

So those are the stories I've been reading for the last week in preparation for my doctor's visit today. Which turned out ok.

T-shirt seen on sale in Berkeley: “Fuck your Valentine.” Who buys these things?

Bush Lite said of McCain that "You can't take the high horse and then claim the low road." No indeedy, you cannot.

On Nightline Friday he corrected Ted Koppel, no, you can't call them anti-abortion, they are more properly called pro-life. A minute later he referred to the other side as anti-life.

We just can't elect another president who pronounces nuclear as nook-yu-ler. We just can't.

Speaking of anti-life, this week Boy George gets to execute his, I believe, 120th, a great-grandmother of all things.

Has anyone else noticed that the California ballot contains one initiative against gay marriage (22) and another that would pretty much create them (21)?

Anyone else seen those ads against Props 30 & 31 featuring a discussion of how to jump in front of a car and then collect insurance? What did they call it, curb jumping or something? Winner of this year's Reefer Madness award.

King Letsie of Lesotho gets married and says that he will only marry the once. Of course Lesotho doesn't have that annual topless women dancing event like Swaziland, whose king always seems to pick up a new wife each year.

Prague refuses to name a square or street after Kafka. Insert your own joke here, I can't be expected to do all the work.

During yesterday's Republican debate, Governor Smirk said that his economic policy was to make the pie higher. Something like that.

Dubya now has a campaign finance reform plan, which somehow magically only affects stuff that McCain might ever have done, and not anything he has ever done. Last month of course campaign finance reform was evil because it would hurt the Republicans and help the Democrats. Now he's got one of his own, without evidently needing to explain why this u-turn is anything other than a cynical ploy to steal McCain anti-establishment voters. Or does it have something to do with those stories that he's running out of money?

At Clinton's press conference today, some reporter asked if he had any advice for his wife on how to connect to women voters. 'Cause if anyone knows how to connect to women, it's Billy Bob. I can't remember what his answer was, but it probably wasn't anything to the effect that if Hillary connected with women, he wanted to watch.

Czech prime minister Zeman says that there is no place for women in his cabinet.

Under sharia law, the eldest male relative of a murder victim gets to personally execute their killer. In Afghanistan this weekend, a ten year old shot his father's killer four times with a rifle in a sports stadium.

At tickettoheaven.com you can buy, for a mere $10, a ticket that gets you into heaven. I'm guessing Greyhound.

New product, available soon: Crop Circle Beer, brewed entirely from barley grown in fields with crop circles.

The next story is about how if you really want to screw up a situation beyond imagining, it requires a lawyer. Which reminds me. I've been reading the ballot statements for superior court judge, and none of them are written in decent English. "Respect and courtesy are the way I treat victims of crime, jurors, witnesses..." One guy ends "I have a wonderful wife and two beautiful children. We ask for your vote." Well, I might vote for the wife and one child, but two seems excessive.

Governor Smirk is now accusing McCain of taking special interest money. Of course no one has more of that than Shrub, and everyone knows it, so the point is to increase the cynicism and apathy of the electorate, reduce turnout and slide through unnoticed.

Putin to reestablish military training for school boys (and girls to a lesser extent), including lessons in patriotism. The good old days. Remind me, didn't Yeltsin promise to abolish the draft?

Haidar's illegally-gotten estate is worked by underpaid immigrant workers. It just gets better and better. (Please note that I just used Dubya's technique of pointing out the hypocrisy of my opponent, of which I complained two paragraphs ago).

Prince Charles is thinking about becoming a King George rather than a King Charles.

George II says that Bob Jones University's ban on interracial dating is not based on hatred or bigotry. So that's all right, then.

China orders that Tibetan women be sterilized after two children, in violation of previous promises.

Northern Ireland devolution, RIP, age 72 days. I told you so. Well I did.

Another reason to vote for gay marriage in California and elsewhere: the demagoguery about the "marriage penalty." Which is actually a penalty for only a bare majority of married couples filing jointly, as it turns out. In the context of this mailing list, that means that the rest of us will pay higher taxes to subsidize Kevin's chosen lifestyle. Say thank you to the good people, Kevin.

Another Israeli soldier was killed in Lebanon by a missile. What you don't see in the US media is a discussion of where those missiles came from. Remember Iran-Contra? Remember the TOW missiles given to Iran in exchange for hostages, a deal brokered by Israel? Well guess what...

Other countries' troops are being sent to "support" French troops in Kosovo. Which actually means doing their job for them, since by all reports the French have been incredible cowards, even by French standards.

British soldiers in Kosovo are still in tents. They could have used the Serbs' barracks except the US insisted on bombing them all. Not because they were of any military use, having already been abandoned by the Serbs, but because they would look good blowing up on CNN.

The Bay Guardian says that P G & E donated $50,000 to Prop 21, the one to put juveniles in adult courts and prisons.

Today the British Parliament voted to reduce the age of (male) homosexual consent to 16. This gave a lot of Tory MPs the opportunity to see how many times they could say buggery in the course of a ten-minute speech.

Don Imus said that Forbes spent $100 million to make himself a laughingstock. The New York Times says that is is "a harsh formulation." It was actually $70 million.

NY Times headline: Bush and McCain, Sittin' in a Tree, D-I-S-S-I-N-G

Finland elects a single mother president. The US is making great progress in that direction, as there are now fewer straight white guys running for president than there were last week.

The East German illegitimacy rate is now over 50%, about twice that of the West.

Jorg Haidar today offered to compensate Austrian Jews who were victims of Nazis. Of course he linked it with compensation for Austrian Nazis who were victims of the Russians. He has also demanded compensation from the Czech Republic (would that include Slovakia as well, I wonder?) for Sudeten Germans expelled after the war.

The embargo on Austria is already breaking down. Princess Whosis of the Belgium went there, although Prince Charles cancelled a planned visit. But the right wings of several European countries are not cooperating. Tory MEPs, for example. And the Bavarian CSU is going out of its way to be friendly with the new Austrian government, because 1) they are assholes, 2) they have links with the other party in the right-wing coalition.

Tony Blair's attempt to give freedom to Wales through devolution and then given them slavery by imposing his own First Minister on them failed spectacularly today.

Russia gives the monopoly over Chechnya's oil and gas reserves to the last remaining state-owned company. Also, they're talking about leaving Grozny in ruins...well, they'll do that in any case...and remove the capital to the 2nd city.

It seems that in 1862 Abe Lincoln offered the command of the Union armies to Garibaldi, the Italian who led the country to unity. Only, Garibaldi wanted a statement that the war was to end slavery, and Lincoln wasn't willing to do it.

Spain lowers the minimum IQ to get into the military from 90 to 70.

Vietnam is going to pave the Ho Chi Minh Trail and turn it into a freeway. There's a joke there about turning the country into a parking lot, but it isn't worth the effort.

Israel has announced it will ignore its agreement not to kill civilians in Lebanon.

This Chinese guy who's been living in the US 20 years goes to China with $25,000 in charity money for the victims of Tienanmen Square. They arrest him and demand that he turn all the money over to them or they'll put him in prison. He agrees, leaves the country, the check he wrote is stopped. Now they're threatening his 78-year old father with taking away his house unless he gives them the money.

This week's Bay Guardian (in paper or on the Web) looks like having some useful articles on the California propositions. Even for non-Californians, some of it looks like fun reading.

Greece is *still* trying to pressure Macedonia into changing its name, this time to Northern Macedonia.

And the good news from the pharmaceutical industry is that Eflornithine may go into production again. It cures sleeping
sickness, an especially nasty disease that unfortunately for them, only effects poor people in Africa. So no one's made it since 1999. But since it also eliminates facial hair in rich white women, there's now a market that the industry cares about. How'd you like to explain that one to the Africans?

Correction of the Week

"Because of an editing error, an article on Tuesday about the court case in Chile against Gen. Augusto Pinochet misidentified the ocean into which the military apparently dumped the father of Viviana Diaz, a woman who leads a group of surviving family members. It was the Pacific, not the Atlantic."--The New York Times, Feb. 3, 2001

From London Times, best topic sentence of the week: “A HOSPITAL apologised to patients yesterday for selling their skin for chemical warfare research.”

From the Daily Telegraph: “An American student sold his soul for $400 on an internet auction site yesterday.”

California primary

So I've been reading the election booklet, and here are my thoughts and recommendations.

First, the arguments are getting wackier each year. Something has to be done to make them at least honest. Where is Gary Wesley, attorney at law, when we need him?

1A Indian gambling. Yes, we just voted on this. Evidently this will allow the use of video slot machines, the crack cocaine of gambling. Well that's what it says here. Vote yes.

Bond measures, 12 through 16, no as always. No reason to go into debt during an economic boom.

12 is evidently to "buy more land for insects, rats and weeds that your family will never get to see or use."

13, say the people against, is not *that* Prop 13. They actually feel they have to say that. And don't wear platform shoes and mood rings to the polling places, people, it's not 1978. The people for say that "Without it, we all face a very uncertain water future." As long as it doesn't have Kevin Costner in it.

15, for crime labs, aka the O J Simpson Initiative. "If it were the opponents' father who was murdered, sister who was raped, or child killed by a drunken driver, we believe there would be no argument against Proposition 15."

16, for Veterans' homes: one statement beings "Pear Harbor, Iwo Jima, Omaha Beach...Khe Sanh, Kuwait, Bosnia..." Yup, the only mention of Vietnam is one designed not to be understood by anyone who wasn't there. We want to help veterans, but not *those* veterans.

17 to legalize raffles for charities. The opponents present it as a "professional gambling operator's dream" although the Prop specifically says that the money has to actually go to charity and the operator has to belong to the charity. Vote yes, or no, who cares.

18, the hand of George Deukmejian reaches out of the political grave on this one, which would make all sorts of things into "special circumstances" for the purposes of death penalty. Vote no, of course, but note that it would make kidnapping or arson or lying in wait in relation to murder a special circumstance, even if it was always intended to be a murder, rather than a real kidnapping or arson. In other words, it's really one crime, murder, but they're trying to treat it as two crimes for the purpose of inflicting a death penalty. Dishonest, but par for the course. Note one of the opponents was B.J. on MASH.

19 increases penalties for murder of BART police & Cal State police (but not UC, for some reason) to those for the murder of, ya know, real cops. Vote no, but note that the arguments against are entirely fictional, saying that the Prop does things like let BART impress people into a posse and fine people $1,000 who refuse, and that it covers bomb threats and falsely reporting crimes. The actual text of the prop is quite short and mentions none of that.

20. Allocation of the lottery to school districts, telling them how to spend it (a % on textbooks). First, who cares, second, let the districts make their own decisions. So vote who cares, I mean no.

21. Every election has an atrocity, and this is it. Especially after the figures on what LA does to juvenile criminals in the adult court system, this would require trying as adults a lot more 14 year olds, requires registration for gang members just like sex criminals, imprison juveniles before trial, bar sealing juvenile records and, here's my favorite part, allowing the cops to release the name of juveniles arrested, before any actual charges are even made. Oh, and more crimes count towards 3 strikes, although without trawling through the 13 pages of this initiative, I can't tell you which ones. Spitting on the sidewalk, no doubt. No no no no.

22. No gay marriages. The statement in favor was written by a 20-year old Hispanic woman, and is not the only personal statement on this ballot, the other being a thing by a recovering gambling addict against Prop 1A. This is a trend that should stop at once. Anyway, Ms. Santacruz says "Marriage is an important part of our lives, our families, and our future. Someday I hope to meet a wonderful man, marry and have children of my own. By voting Yes on 22, I'm doing my part to keep the dream alive. If it fails, I will have to marry a big bull dyke." I made up that last sentence. Lady, you're 20 and Hispanic; tick tock, that mustache isn't growing any smaller.

23. A None of the Above ballot option. If anyone knows how this got on the ballot, tell me. I suspect a dirty trick. It is non-binding, so Mr. Above can never win an election, so it is politically meaningless. But it would siphon votes away from the Greens, Libertarians and such, who might subsequently lose their ballot status like Peace and Freedom has, which is where the dirty trick comes in. The argument is written by 3 California citizens who usually don't vote, and think many more citizens will register and will vote in order to cast a pointless vote. I've cast more than my share of pointless votes, but this is too pointless. No.

All together in an Australian accent: Proposition 22: No pooftas! Proposition 24: there is no proposition 24.

Prop 25 campaign spending limits. I need more time on this one. There are voluntary aspects to it, including a fine on people who break a voluntary pledge, and there is something about millionaires being able to spend whatever they like, a reference which I think means that this is Ron Unz's initiative.

Prop 26 removes the requirement of a 2/3 majority for school districts to issue bonds, and gives money to charter schools. You know, I was going to say yes on the theory that 2/3 is undemocratic, but if it's just to issue bonds, which I don't believe in anyway, I think I will recommend a no vote. Both sides on this one have typewriters whose CAP key keeps sticking.

Prop 27, a voluntary declaration of adherence to term limits can be put on the ballot next to a candidate's name. Term limits are bad, politicizing the ballot form is bad, and I believe other states that tried this had it struck down in the courts. No.

Prop 28 to repeal to Prop 10's cigarette tax and anti-smoking programs, has an amusing statement by the sponsor, the president of Cigarettes Cheaper! That's his exclamation mark, not mine, so it's rather surprising he gets through a statement and a rebuttal with only 2 of them, 3 if you count the sentence that you can call them at 1-800-Cheaper! I didn't know my telephone even had punctuation marks. Evidently "The primary use for Prop 10 funds has been to publicize Rob Reiner." Although elsewhere he says none of the money has been spent. As the aliens told Woody Allen in Stardust Memories, if you want to benefit humanity, just make funnier movies, Meathead. Mr. Exclamation Point also says that Prop 10 money will be spent on a Brave New World approach to raising children wherein bureaucrats will take over from parents. Sounds like Epsilon thinking to me. Vote no.

Prop 29, the evil twin of 1A. No.

By the way, James Doohan, who played Scotty, just fathered a child at 80. I dinnae know how much more of this my testicles can stand, captain!

Jorg Haidar is threatening to use the Austrian veto on everything in the EU to *make* them talk to Austria. This is actually rather promising, I think. If he still doesn't get his way, he'll invade Poland.

Actually, that would probably be against the paper the Austrian president (who was actually lobbying other EU countries to protest events in his own country) made them sign, saying that democracy is good and fascism is bad. Now if only President von Hindenburg had thought of that in '33.

A by-election in Wales sends into Parliament its first earring-wearing male MP (Plaid Cymru party)(which is pronounced exactly like it's spelled, except not).

I actually know the perfect country for Haidar to rule. The water off Sicily is bubbling and they're expecting Graham Island to rise again. Last seen in 1831, when it was claimed, according to the London Times, by Britain, France, and Italy (which did not exist at the time, so that was remarkably prescient).

In my continuing search for alternative ways to render George Walker Bush's name, I am adding two more:

Governor Smirk.

Boy George (after the tendency of his mother and father to refer to him as "my boy").

I will continue using Dubya, Bush the Younger, Bush Lite, and
Shrub. Collect them all.

Web sites

Christian nudists.

alienresistance.org. Evidently you can stop aliens from anal-probing you by just saying the name of Jesus.

tencommandments.org. On why we need to make the 10 Commandments the basis of US government. Read the essay on how the US Constitution actually turns people into homosexuals.

All of these sites are serious, and are compiled on ship-of-fools.org (or com? I forget). Enjoy.

In case the sanctions on Iraq weren't beginning to look silly enough, a bunch of Jordanians (I believe) have brought a bunch of pencils to the border in violation of the sanctions (graphite can be used in military applications). Not Gandhi making salt, but a pretty effective stunt, I thought.

Don't remember if I followed up on the NY psychics thing: as soon as it was found out, they stopped it, of course.

A NY Times letter suggests Elian should stay in the US so that he can receive all the therapy he'll need for what's been inflicted on him by his Miami relatives.

Went into my bank the other day and noticed bottles of ketchup at various spots along the counter. I had to ask, even knowing that the answer was going to be stupid. I was told that it was to advertise loans so that one might "catch up" on one's bills. Even stupider feeling than me for asking: the guy who had to repeat that 30 times a day. Stupider still: the person who came up with the idea. Stupider still: the person who bought the ketchup, because they bought a brand that calls it catsup, ruining the whole pun.

A British MP is stabbed with a samurai sword.

The New York Times today broke, on page 1 yet, a story about the city putting welfare recipients to work as telephone psychics. If they're not already clairvoyant, they are given intensive training.

Speaking of stupid banking ideas, the state bank of Zimbabwe had an idea of having a lottery, every month, in which they'd give away money to owners of accounts, with extra tickets going for each, oh say $5,000, in those accounts. The first winner: President Mugabe, who no doubt owns half the money in the banks.

And no, I'm not making up the welfare psychic thing.

George Burns ran into Lilian Gish one day. "I thought we were dead," he said.

Dubya says he is humbled by the vote in Iowa. He said it with a smirk, although a smaller one than usual. In four years, we could really get sick of that smirk.

The Supreme Court, in one of the spectacularly idiotic rulings it has been making this month, 5-4, says that redistricting conducted with a discriminatory intent is ok, so long as the minority voters are not put in a worse position.

In Britain a private members' bill to guarantee the right of parents to smack their children failed by a majority of 70.

Evidently Gary Bauer had a fundraiser at the home of the McCaughey septuplets. Have yourself photographed with a sept, only $250. Weird weird weird. I suppose this is the Christian right's idea of the ideal American family, after we get rid of that pesky Roe v. Wade. What next? Alan Keyes holding a fundraiser at a freak show? For $500, get a picture of yourself standing next to the candidate as he bites the head off a live chicken.

Alan Keyes says his favorite movie is Star Trek: Insurrection. Trust him to like one of the odd-numbered movies (in-joke for Trekkies, you know who you are).

Every day brings in new evidence of Americans' inability to reason from the specific to the general (or induction, as we college-types call it). Some idiot legislator from somewhere was on McNeil-Lehrer (I was listening on the car radio, sorry for the lack of specificity) talking about the need to grant Elian Gonzales citizenship so as to remove his case from the jurisdiction of the INS into that of the courts. What do you want to bet she's one of those behind that awful immigration bill that removed to a large extent INS decisions from the oversight of the courts? Suddenly the INS are being portrayed by the right wing as the same jack-booted thugs as the ATF and the FBI. But only in the case of this one brown-skinned type.

Speaking of racists, there goes Austria again. Pay attention to that one it could get nasty.

Bushisms / finger shots

One of those creepy 107-year old Japanese twins died. Aren't they the ones who used to call Mothra?

Letter in the Sunday NY Times about Microsoft's market value now equaling Spain's GDP: "Hey, I've been to Spain. Windows 98 works better."

So the Chechens didn't really capture that general after all. What's the point of even making up an easily checkable lie? At least when the US military lied about the performance of Patriot missiles or Sudanese chemical plants or who they were killing in Kosovo, it usually took weeks or months to find out, by when it's evidently ancient history (god knows what you call the sort of history I work on).

I'd been dismayed by the German SPD's incompetence in office, its squabbling and its inability to win a single state election. I figured all those years out of power would take a lot of time in office to overcome, learning the job and so on, and they didn't look like having it. Thank god for financial scandals, huh? The Hesse elections might even have to be re-run since the CDU spent illegal money. And how about Kohl defying the law and his own party, which is threatening to sue him, by citing his "honor." His honor is a pretty small thing to hide behind, and he's such a great big fat thing. The worry, though, is that the CDU could break up or be too badly depressed in subsequent elections, to the benefit of the far-right racist parties.

In my continuing quest to bring you the latest news of Shrub's inability to speak the English language, here are excerpts from the London Times:

Ben Macintyre reports on the mangled messages from the Republican front-runner

GEORGE W. BUSH had the audience eating out of the palm of his hand until suddenly, in the middle of a riff about free trade, he appeared to launch an unprovoked attack on a species of small dog.

The world will be a better place, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination said, when "all the terriers are torn down".


Mr Bush is also prey to what might be called the jammed compact-disc stutter, when he gets impaled on a single word. "We must all hear the universal call to like your neighbour just like you like to be liked yourself." Then there is the grand word glitch, triggered by his occasional forays into the deeper bits of the dictionary. Three times in two days, Mr Bush said that, if elected, he would never "obsfucate". It is a measure of the Bush charm that when the candidate finds himself up a blind verbal alley being assaulted by his own syntax, he is as amused anyone else.

"Bumble through OK?" he grins.

After more than seven years of syntactical precision by Bill Clinton, it is refreshing to have the Bush-isms back, and a candidate who does not obsfucate but say things how they are is.

The Supreme Court rules that it's ok for judges not to clarify their instructions when the jury asks. Why on earth don't these juries just refuse to come to a verdict rather than say, oh well, I guess we should vote for the death penalty just to be sure

The Chinese are holding Falun Gong members in psychiatric hospitals.

A doctor in NY is being sued by a woman for carving his initials on her stomach after a caesarian.

Dan Burton will hold hearings in LA on stuff the Soviet Union did during the Cold War. He says it's because some of the stuff happened in California so CA will want to hear about it. However, most of the hearings will of necessity be behind closed doors. And all those federal employees will have to be flown to the coast to testify. But at least Burton will get a free plane ride to California so he can play in the Bob Hope Classic at Palm Springs.

The Bush campaign is accusing the Forbes campaign of doctoring a photo of Shrub in an ad, to make his ears look funny.

Quote of the week: "These people [refugees from Russian bombing] used to live in a great country where no one asked them if they were Chechen or Ingush or Dagestani," Russia's Deputy Energy Minister, Khodzh-ahmed Arsanov, said. "Everything we're doing now for them is free - the gas, the electricity. The bombing is free too, but we have to find the money for that from other budgets."

There are now 1.2 billion under-nourished people in the world, and 1.2 billion fatties.

The Supreme Court upheld segregation of prisoners with HIV, including exclusion from religious services and educational and work programs that reduce prison time.

See article in Slate on the arguments in a case about the no-protest zones around abortion clinics.

Rumor has it that Chechen rebels are paying the Russian army not to bomb certain towns.

The D's have a Bush Stump Speech Search Engine, to show how scripted and repetitious he is. He's never once mentioned cocaine.

An op-ed piece in today's NY Times captures what is most obnoxious about the Elian Gonzales thing with an apt comparison to the wholesale removal of Amerind children from their parents earlier this century on the theory that the government could do a better job than dirty Injuns. Which may be the case with Elian's mother, who subjected her kid to the worst form of child endangerment, but you know what I mean.

Washington Post says that after the invasion of Grenada, the US found Maurice Bishop's body and had it secretly buried to prevent it being a rallying point.

Whenever British Home Secretary Jack Straw decides to release Pinochet, the Chileans will try to race him to the airport before the Crown Prosecution Service can file its appeal. Worse, Straw's decision is based on medical tests he will not release, or even say what is supposed to be wrong with Pinochet. And the head of the medical team just came out and said that they were misrepresented by Straw.

Y'all remember that state prosecutor in Moscow, investigating Yeltsin family corruption, of whom possibly faked videos, naked and with teenage prostitutes, were aired on state tv? The man in charge of that particular operation, which was blackmail at the very best, was Vladimir Putin. The prosecutor has a book coming out shortly.

Those suspicious apartment bombings were also probably Putin's doing, one month after he got the KGB job. This past week they just found three more explosive devices, right about the time the media started getting critical of the stalled war.

Salon says that the Drug Kaiser actively hid his office's subsidizing of anti-drug messages on tv from congress. And that it's almost definitely illegal to run those programs without disclosure under the 1950s payola laws, that require the "Ted Koppel's shoes were provided by Hush Puppies" disclosures.

Last night on Nightline, they were discussing Elian Gonzales with his father. "When Elian comes home, will you allow him to bring that puppy?" "Yes, he looks delicious." My favorite Bad Transition moment was that right after the line "And then things got ugly", or something like that, they switched to the image of Janet Reno.

This morning Chris called me up to tell me to watch Jerry Springer. They had midget KKK members on. In the upper left corner there was a little box that said "exclusive." I should bloody well hope so. This provoked a theological debate, with Chris saying that America would be punished for this program, while I said that this was the punishment for some past misdeed, possibly the genocide of the Amerinds.

Speaking of midget KKK members, the Republican party in South Carolina, which evidently pays for and administers its own primary (the New York Times thinks that SC is the only state where primaries are run by the parties, but didn't bother to do the research), is not bothering to have many polling stations in black precincts.

In Britain, a professional footballer is playing wearing one of those prison monitoring ankle bracelets.

From the obits page comes news that Bob McFadden, the voice of the parrot who said "Ring around the collar" in those 1970s commercials you all remember no matter how much you drink to block out the memory, has died at 76.

An interesting article in Salon. In 1997 Congress authorized a 5-year, $1 billion buy of tv commercial time for anti-drug messages. Part of the deal was that it would pay half price. As the economy improved and all those dot.coms started advertising, the networks wanted to get out of the deal, so the office of the Drug Tsar is letting them buy their way out by negotiating insertions of anti-drug messages into programs. This is not just on the little shows, and it is all the networks, and the Drug Caesar is literally negotiating script changes, as in, a story line on Beverly Hills 90210 is worth $500,000-750,000. This is evil, and must be stopped.

First, I want to announce that I have been bought out by Time-Warner-Turner-AOL-Satan.com. My next e-mail will concern the need to eliminate the capital gains tax.

Taking advantage of Gore's sloppy language on "litmus tests" on gays in the military for appointments to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (and by the way isn't Joint Chiefs of Staff the most homoerotic name of any government organization?), when it should have been obvious to everyone that all he meant was that his appointments should carry out his policies, the Republican National Committee is running commercials attacking him saying "The only litmus test ought to be patriotism." In future on-line dictionaries--doubtless sponsored by my new sponsor, the media giant which I understand celebrated the deal by putting the names of all the executives involved into a hat, and whoever's name was picked out got to go home with Jane Fonda--under the word "irony" there will be a link to that commercial.

A German newspaper says that Vladimir Putin was expelled from West Germany for spying in the 1970s, when he was pretending to be a Tass reporter.

4 debates down, 1,996 to go. At last Friday's debate, Gary Bauer was asked the question that tripped up Dan Quayle, about what he'd tell a family member who had been raped and got pregnant, and wanted an abortion. Fortunately, it seems that it wouldn't arise, because under a Bauer presidency, there would be no rape. Yes, he actually said that.

Stupid criminal of the week, so far: the guy who robbed a bank in Connecticut and was caught behind the bank, where he'd stopped to count his money.

At a performance of Aida in Italy, the lead tenor's flu made it impossible for him to continue half-way through, so they called up someone sitting in the audience, another tenor I hadn't heard of either, who finished it. Is there a tenor in the house?

China has banned the perfume Opium, because it encourages spiritual pollution and reminds them of their humiliating defeat in the Opium Wars.

911 calls of the week: actually 999 in Britain, where a woman watching wrestling on telly called the police because the one she supported was losing. And god knows what they dial in Denmark, but someone there set off a whole sea rescue operation, although it seems it was his toy boat that sank in the bath tub. Alcohol is believed to have been involved in that one.

During the funeral for Jordan's King Hussein, there was a joint Israeli-Jordanian secret service operation to collect Syrian President Assad's pee to find out how sick he was.

A document released under Britain's 30-year rule suggests that the Cold War actually came to an end right after the invasion of Prague in 1968. Russia was contemplating following up with an invasion of Romania, where Ceaucescu had criticized the Czech invasion. Had it done so, Yugoslavia would have defended Romania, Britain would have defended Yugoslavia, and god knows where it would have ended.

Florida speeds up its death penalty appeals process, with an eye to reducing the time spent on death row to 5 years. Of the 87 people released from death row, and prison, since 1973 because of innocence, the average stay on death row was 7 1/2 years. In the words of Jeb Bush's death penalty adviser, "let's rock and roll!"

If the reporters won't hound Dubya about his cocaine use (and a reporter who asked a seemingly innocuous question at yesterday's debate, what their biggest mistake of their adult life was and what did they learn from it, was roundly booed), they should make him say who he thinks goes to heaven. He refused to exactly say that non-Christians don't, but it was clearly what he thought. I think voters should know what he thinks of them.

Asisi bans feeding the pigeons.

What on earth is going on in Chechnya?

Misuse of power of the week: Rep Dan Burton for subpoenaing Elian Gonzales. I think he should be made to carry it through and actually call the kid to the stand. What could he ask him, who his favorite power ranger is?

A weird lite news day. This is an edited-down version of the table of contents to the Daily Telegraph's international section.


[21]War crimes suspect met by protests in Australia
KONRAD KALEJS, the suspected Nazi war criminal, returned to Australia
from Britain yesterday amid angry protests by Jewish students
demanding further investigations into allegations against him.
[did anyone catch the I think justice minister of Australia saying that they wouldn’t put him on trial because Australia doesn't do "show trials"? Incidentally, I don't think a Latvian should be called a Nazi war criminal, since he's unlikely to have been a member of the party.]

[24]Internet threat to Israel, say rabbis
ISRAEL'S leading orthodox rabbis have issued a ruling banning the
internet from Jewish homes, arguing that it is "1,000 times more
dangerous than television" and threatens the survival of the country.

[27]Head of foot cult is stepping down
THE leader of a Japanese cult who read his followers' fortunes in the
soles of their feet said yesterday that he was resigning on advice
from God.

[28]Bungee ride rebounds on counsellor
THE screams of thrill-seekers on an inner-city bungee ride are proving too much for the patients of a trauma therapist whose consulting rooms are next door.

[29]News in brief
* Rapist and victim, 11, both guilty, says judge
[this was in Maryland--the rapist is 24]
* Red card for women's football
[one of the I believe 3 Nigerian states that have now adopted sharia law finds women's footie to be unIslamic]
* Mob attack after circumcision
[Kenya--the circumcision (male) was performed at a hospital instead of by a witch doctor]
* Farmer kills drunken pigs
[Somewhere Eastern Europe, Bulgaria maybe. He thought they had a horrible disease, but they'd been getting into the waste of a distillery]

As I write I am watching the hilarious Republican debate. At the start of yesterday's Dem debate, Peter Jennings said "This is the first debate of 2000." So after today, it'll be 2 down, 1,998 to go. Read the Jacob Weisberg report on this debate in Slate, it's hilarious reading.

Alan Keyes is a loon. I don't have anything funny to say about that, it's just sad.

Dubya referred to the little Cuban kid as Alien Gonzales.

The first millennial baby is already undergoing open-heart surgery in New Zealand. Always a good sign.

The "Secret Society of Happy People" has announced its holiday, National Admit You're Happy Day.

It's on my fucking birthday.

It is now legal for California drivers not to use hand signals when making turns and stops. You were all using hand signals, weren't you? Besides the obvious one?

In Scranton, a billboard for a shoe store, Shoestrings, the billboard measuring 14 X 48 feet, said on it "Bring in this ad, and you'll get a free pair of shoes." Presumably intended as a joke, but some people did. The store gave them their shoes in exchange for getting the sign back.

A story for former Manhattan Beach residents, who will understand: a gym that opened there this year advertised "Join before 3-7-99 and we will pay your next parking ticket."

Alan Greenspan, economic dictator for life. Why is it that in order to be credible, Democratic presidents have to appoint Republicans to the Supreme Court, Republicans to the Fed and Republicans to head DOD?

So John Anderson will probably be on the California ballot. I might just vote for him, since I was too young to in 1980 (although I was a Barry Commoner fan that year). Of course now he's too old, but what the hell. I'd like to vote for Bill Bradley's wife for First Lady without actually having to vote for Bill Bradley. I think we should get the Constitution amended to allow for this. Of course in 1992 this would have meant that Bill Clinton would have been elected president and Barbara Bush first lady. Sounds like the makings of a sitcom. Oh well, don't mind me, it's way too late at night.

Now Barak wants $14 billion in US arms, including cruise missiles, and real-time access to US spy satellites. I don't think the US can afford for there to be peace in the Middle East. Alternately, those countries could just sign a peace deal because peace is good for their countries, without extorting the massive bribes.

So who was it who, out of the goodness of their heart, paid for Linda Tripp's plastic surgery? Off the top of my head I can think of only a few million better causes, but that's me.

Speaking of fatsos, who would have thought Helmut Kohl was corrupt? The president of Israel has also just been found to have taken a rather large bribe.

But on the integrity side, the parents of Britain's millennium baby did not accept the hundreds of thousands of pounds they could have done. They want their baby to have privacy. Some day the kid will look back and become deeply depressed.

The political games-playing re Elian whatsis, the Cuban boy, goes on. All 6 Republican candidates support his being kept in the US. The Clinton admin wants to make it go away without their ever having to take an actual decision, by getting the father to come to the US, at which point he has the legal right to leave the country with his son. Your mother has just died in front of you and you were found floating in an ocean, what will you do now? I'm going to Disney World! If he were Haitian he'd have been expelled as an illegal alien long since.

As part of the peace deal, if it ever comes, Syria wants to be removed from the US list of states which sponsor terrorism.

Dubya has presided over 113 executions. In the week following the Iowa primaries he is scheduled to execute 3 who were 17. Guess what else they all have in common? If you said, they are black, pat yourself on the back for your excellent understanding of the judicial system.

The Clinton Admin is calling on the Supreme Court not to hear an appeal of the discrimination in Alabama prisons (and others) against HIV-positive prisoners, who are barred from educational and religious and recreational programs, including work-release programs which would get them out of prison faster.

All those British couples competing to have the first kid of the millennium minus one and have it be on tv and stuff, and who wins but a premie. Actually I think they fixed it and that a black kid really won. Also in the running, someone who not only wasn't competing but didn't know she was pregnant.

Other millennial freaks: 3 pairs of twins in America and one in Bulgaria with the kids born in different centuries. First marriage, in New Zealand--televised. First massacre: Natal, South Africa.

On the millennium, the ashes of Graham Chapman of Monty Python were fired on a rocket over a Welsh mountain.

As in Britain, one of the contenders for first millenial baby in Germany was born to a woman who, at 11:30, didn't know she was baby, felt a pain, went to the hospital, and had the baby 15 seconds after midnight. But the probable winner was an unmarried 18-year old.

Some idiot who has officially changed his name to DotComGuy will live off of the Internet for the next year in Dallas. You can watch him on the web, assuming you have even less of a life than he does.

Australia and New Zealand are currently battling it out over who has the millennium baby.

Personally, at midnight I was watching a discussion over the future of Britain and the EU on C-SPAN, if anyone was wondering.

I got the first newspaper with the year 2000 on it and, as I was afraid, it just looks fake, not like a real year at all, rather like the new twenty-dollar bills.

There is fighting in the Spice Islands in Indonesia. I’m not sure, since there hasn’t been much reportage on it, but I think it’s because they just found out that just because they’re the Spice Islands doesn’t mean they get the Spice Girls.

There was a secret plan to build Belfast’s millennium beacon out of decommissioned terrorist weapons. Unfortunately, no one turned any in.

I just ran another check on my computer and found that while it recognizes the year 2000, it does not recognize 2100, when I still plan to be using the computer, if only to piss Kevin off.

A goodbye to the oldest person in the world, who died just before the millennium minus one, at 119. And to anybody else who happens to be raptured.

And a big hello to President Putin, which is Russian for Gerald Ford.

Shouldn’t it be the bi-millennium? Anyway, for those not of the Christian faith, which as far as I know is all of us, the millennium, according to South Park, is the day every thousand years when Jesus comes out and if he sees his own shadow, we will have a thousand years of peace and contentment.

Jesus will appear on the Mount of Olives, and you can watch it on web-cam. Well, you can if your web-server isn’t an incredible wimp like mine, which is shutting down for a day just to be safe.

With increasing mutterings about whether the Russian apartment building bombings were just a Reichstag/Tonkin Gulf-type incident, the Russians miraculously arrested some of the culprits yesterday. Very believable.

So on Monday Turkmenistan abolishes the death penalty, and on Tuesday it names Niyazov president-for-life. I’m sure this amounts to some sort of collective statement about life imprisonment, but whatever.

Guatemala elects a president who is a confessed multiple murderer and, worse, a crony slash puppet of Efrian Rios Montt of evil memory. And it wasn’t even close. In Peru, Fujimori is also giving that president for life thing a go. And in Venezuela, the first thing former failed-coup leader and now elected-president Hugo Chavez does when there’s a national disaster is start wearing military fatigues. At least in the good old days immortalized by the movie Bananas, when these assholes seized power through coups rather than elections, you could kid yourself that the locals would probably prefer to live in a democracy.

A perhaps unfortunate headline in the Washington Post: “Tipper Gore Has Lump Removed.” But he’s still running for president, right?

NY Times headline: Scientists Place Jellyfish Genes into Monkeys. It’s good to have a hobby. And their hobby is Tampering in God’s Domain.

Britain discovered it first, because of their tradition of the Queen sending telegrams to people on their 100th birthday: the YXCX Bug. Computers made Y2K compliant no longer recognize the year 1900, which they now think is 2000. That sound you’ll be hearing a week from today is every computer in the world singing “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do...” in chorus.

A news update from my vacation period.

Texas removed a death row inmate from intensive care two days after he attempted suicide in order to execute him. Dubya’s 113th execution, I believe.

A Zimbabwe couple have a bet as to which of them is infertile. A judge allows the wife until Feb. 22 to have affairs without risking divorce in order to win the bet, which is I believe for $200.

Forbes accused Dubya of being weak on abortion because a stretch of Texas highway is named after a doctor who performed abortions (and whose son is in the state legislature).

A second and third Nigerian state adopt sharia law.

The US wished Panama a merry isthmus (I know, I know).

I said it in one of these very e-mails: Kenneth Starr’s office did not have the authority to waive Maryland law. Tripp and Starr’s people get into a he-said-she-said in court over the alleged promise of immunity, raising the question of why it wasn’t on tape. The members of the Starr Chamber say that what they told her is that they would make it almost impossible for Maryland to convict her, which sounds rather like obstruction. Fortunately for MD, Tripp bragged about taping Monica to her bridge group, and had an Xmas party to which Monica was invited so that all her bridge cronies could look her over.

A robber was caught after holding up someone at an ATM machine. The machine was located in the lobby of the 77th Street police station in LA.

India discovers a prisoner who’s been sitting in a cell since 1963. They postponed his trial due to his mental instability, and forgot to get back to it.

The pope apologizes for the execution of Jan Hus in 1415.

A new law bans crush videos, in which women in high heels crush small animals. Something else you probably read here first, back in 1996 or so.

Two Brits become the first gay couple jointly listed as father on a California birth certificate, with no mother. They hired one woman to bear the in vitro embryo from another woman--reproduction as three-card monte. You can tell they spent too long in Cal. because the kids (twins) are named (shudder) Aspen and Saffron.

Macau goes back to the Chinese, if you consider something that was a Portuguese colony for three plus centuries to belong to China. No one will miss the Portuguese, as ever the worst of all European colonialists. There are a lot of casinos, though, as befits a reservation.

If Barak manages to negotiate a peace deal with Syria, which would evidently cost the US tens of billions of dollars, he will have to use some of that money to bribe the Shas party in order for it to pass the Knesset. Shas’s religious schools have been going bankrupt and have been forced into such expedients as selling videos of a fake exorcism (I hadn’t even known that Jews had exorcisms; I’m picturing Linda Blair spitting up matzo ball soup).

As the Russian elections show, genocide is just good politics.

In one of the great public relations moves of the war, Russia creates a puppet Chechen militia unit under a puppet former mayor of Grozny, who they found, conveniently enough, in a prison serving a term for embezzlement.

Unity in Northern Ireland achieved at last: the first move of the new Stormont Assembly, literally the first, is to vote itself a 30% pay rise.

Emma Thompson has her first child, named, until she can come up with something better, Jane.com.

A church in Little Rock has set up a drive-through Nativity scene. Now normally I’m against drunk driving....

The Daily Telegraph has another of its odd little juxtapositions. One story says that paintballing war games has led to a rise in serious eye injuries. The next says that marijuana improves the vision, that scientists have discovered the ingredient that causes Caribbean fishermen who drink a rum & cannabis concoction to say that they can see in the dark. I think I may just cancel my Thursday opthamologist appointment.

Some of the best political news this year, in case you weren’t paying attention, is the Newt Gingrich divorce. It will give us lots of opportunities to hear about Newtie’s sex life (shudder shudder), but the political part is that his decision to contest it, and allow every sordid detail to be examined publicly, means that his political career is dead forever.

On the other hand, Bob Dornan’s son is thinking about running for Congress.

At the first debate he bothers showing up for, George Dubya says over and over that if Texas were a country it would have the 11th largest economy in the world. He also said that he was the only one of the candidates who had ever signed a tax-cut bill. Great, he signed a bill. He can sign his name on a piece of paper. That qualifies him to run the fries machine at McDonald’s or graduate from USC, but not be president. Still, if word leaked out that there was going to be a test on name-signing at some point in the presidential primaries, it would explain why Quayle dropped out.

New Zealand has the world’s first transexual MP.

How nice that at the Seattle conference on world trade, the US got to display one of its best exports--crowd control weaponry.

Bumper sticker seen in Berkeley: The truly educated never graduate. I don’t think I’ll repeat that one to my mother. The bumper sticker was on a beat-up old Peugeot, if you were wondering.

For everyone on your Christmas list: a book called Meditation for Dummies.

The IRA now has control over education in Northern Ireland. Mostly Protestant education, actually, since the Catholics mostly go to private schools. The rumor is that truancy or throwing spitballs will now be punished by kneecapping.