Today the Queen was handed a marijuana posy, worth about $75, street-value, as they say.

While no one was paying attention yesterday, Congress passed an Official Secrets Act, under another name. It is now illegal to publish pretty much anything that would embarrass the government.

You can now buy some of Hitler's hair. On the web, of course. $1,000 each. Evidently Hitler was actually afraid of this happening and ordered his hair be burnt, but his barber moistened his shoe to pick up the hair.

Salon says that 2 1/2 years ago, a letter was sent to Gov. Bush's office confessing to a crime for which two other men are serving life. The letter was ignored.

A Palestinian mob lynched 3 Israeli soldiers. Israel, which gets acrophobia if it inhabits the moral high-ground for more than 5 minutes, responded with a rocket attack. Not quite as impressive as last week, when they sent a rocket into an apartment building (did you see the footage?). And they wonder why no one perceives them as the victims in this (no one who isn't running for political office in the US, I mean).

Daily Telegraph headline: "I'm Sitting on Volcano, Kostunica Complains". Well, you shouldn't have ordered the chile.

I know, I know.

In the supermarket today I saw a bottle of Vampire Cabernet Sauvignon. A product of Transylvania, of course. $6.

I believe I said that Bush was going to beat Gore in the debates and today at least he did. Or really, Gore beat Gore in the debate. I'd almost rather have had him continue with the sighing and eye-rolling, which at least would have suggested that he didn't respond to every opinion poll about his personal style. Bush looked relaxed and confident, suggesting that he's so stupid he doesn't know how stupid he is, otherwise he'd be terrified. Ok to be fair he does seem to have memorized some more stuff about foreign countries than he had last time, although I can't wait to see what the British papers have to say about the assertion that European nations should start helping us out with some troops in Yugoslavia.

Got my sample ballot today. The Green candidate for Senate is named Medea. In fact, Medea Susan Benjamin. I just don't know how you say, "Hey why don't we name her Medea." And then when it comes time to pick the middle name, go with Susan.

I'm trying to decide on all this before I go into the hospital, because I really don't see myself spending a lot of time focused on the candidates for sanitation district afterwards. And BART district. And park district. And high school district. And community college district. I've already picked the candidate for high school district, based solely on the fact that she went out of her way not to split an infinitive in her statement.

I got a mailing from the Republican candidate for Congress here. And here's the clever part: where it said the name of the incumbent Congresscritter, Ellen Tauscher, her name was crossed out and written in was Taxer. Isn't that clever? Doesn't it make you just want to slap the guy?

New Statesman competition

Sayings for our times:

The truly wise leader speaks little, but his spin doctor has to be very eloquent.

It is a poor leaker who doesn't cover his tracks.

He who surfs the net surfs alone.

Polls may go up and polls may go down, but the pollster goes on for ever.

He does not stir who watches moving images.

No skill is important to the man who lacks it; the more so when a woman learns to do it.

The man who buttonholes a guest at a party will have an unpublished novel in a drawer and a great need to talk about it.

Darn a hole in one sock and the other will go missing in the wash.

Why move to the right? The left is already there.

The honest man works, the clever man manages, the wise man goes sick. [clearly written by someone who's never met a manager]

Death is infinite upload.

The search on the internet is the illusion of movement.

The barcode will work on the third swipe.

The Pentium is mightier than the sword.

The child who leaves the Barbie in the box will make a fortune when 50.

You can take an ego trip without seeing a travel agent.

Lech Walesa got a whopping 0.9% of the Polish presidential vote. Maybe Gorbachev'll buy him a beer or something.

As I write, I am listening to the tape of William Hague at this year's Tory party conference. He recently boasted that when he was a teenager, I think it was, he drank 14 pints of beer every day. So a year from now, when he too has been consigned to the dust heap of history, Gorbachev, Walesa and Milosevic are all going to have to chip in. But he evidently did not try any illegal drugs. At the conference, the Shadow Home Secretary Anne Widdecombe proposed a fine and criminal record for everyone found with any drugs at all. She later said that she didn't mean to go after educated people smoking dope at university, but the scum on the housing estates. Since then, a reporter has been asking all her fellow members of the Shadow Cabinet whether they indulged at Uni. So far 8 have, and here's where it gets interesting.
Tim Yeo, Shadow Ag Minister, says that he liked it. Never before in history has a politician admitted to actually liking marijuana. Presumably it's ok so long as it's grown by British farmers.

Speaking of which, did Bush the Younger and Stupider really say during the debate that the US should reduce its dependence on foreign oil by encouraging drilling in... Mexico?

Another day, another debate. CNN’s Bernard Shaw, by no means to be mistaken for George Bernard Shaw, asked both candidates to imagine that they were black and the victims of racial profiling by police. Cheney absolutely refused to imagine himself as black, because it's against the rules of his country club. No seriously, at least it's an honest answer. The next question was about homosexuals, but Shaw didn't ask them to imagine themselves gay, which is really too bad. I'd have paid money to hear them try to answer that one. Cheney actually came out not opposed to gay marriage.

So you're Reggie Kray, in your day the most feared criminal leader in East London. And when you die the New York Times obit helpfully points out just which Monty Python sketch was based on you.

The budget bill for the Department of Agriculture strips of his authority the current (but not the next) undersecretary for natural resources and environment. Evidently one Rep Marion Berry (D-Ark) dislikes him personally and for negotiating with the enemy--those commies at the EPA.

Remember, just because Milosevic is out, assuming he really is, does not make the Serb people any less the steaming pile of yak turds that they have proved themselves to be over the last decade. Montenegro, Kosovo and Vojvodina must be broken out of Yugoslavia. Serbia cannot be small enough for my taste.

Britain's version of the welfare-to-work program is training one woman to be a Britney Spears impersonator. It would have been a more interesting story if it was a guy.

If Gore is practicing "fuzzy Washington math," what would Texas math be? In Bush's case, presumably how much to tip your hooker after you've snorted cocaine off her ass. And yes, that was the best I came up with. Can any of you do better?

One comment that rather describes Dubya, except for the first two adjectives: "He was competent, fluent, pleasant and funny, satisfying every doubt except the most troublesome: what is he for?" Actually written about William Hague at this week's Tory party congress. And Hague is nowhere near as purposeless as Dubya.

With all the preparation he must have put into the debate, he was still an idiot. He knew less about his own plans than Gore did, and it showed, he obviously didn't know that RU-486 has been available in other countries for years, unless that comment about making sure it was safe for American women implied that American uteruses (uteri?) are different than French and British uteruses, like Japanese snow. And he didn't know Russia's position on Yugoslavia. Wouldn't it behoove someone who wants to be president to read a newspaper every so often?

And so repetitive. Both of them seemed to think we needed to hear everything five times before it would sink in. Bush did the fuzzy math thing about four times, according to my fuzzy math, and the crack about how many IRS agents it would take to figure out Gore's tax plan twice. At least he kept the "Mediscare" crack down to one usage, but really.

And all that makeup, on both of them. When Jim Lehrer is the most life-like person in the room, you know you're in trouble.

Debates, elections, whatnot

More from the master of the English language, George W (the W stands for dyslexic) Bush: "I will have a foreign-handed foreign policy." and "I view this [the debate] as a chance for people to get an impression of me on a stage debating my opponent."

Governor Gray Davis vetoes a bill allowing prisoners to be interviewed.

Good piece in Salon on the Texas death penalty and Bush's attempts to avoid being blamed for it.

Evidently one of the reasons that some of the Calif. voter pamphlet arguments is so terrible is that, if a prop. is put on the ballot by the Legislature, as in the very weak campaign finance initiative Prop 34, the Legislature itself gets to decide who writes the arguments against it. That's why the arguments against 34 are solely on the basis that there should be no lmiits whatsoever to campaign contributions, a position we know Californians don't accept since they've voted against it roughly once every two years since 1988, without it ever taking hold, rather than, say, someone arguing that 34 is laughable because it doesn't go far enough.

A letter in the NY Times responds to the criticisms of debates as
favoring style over substance. He notes that the classic example of this is that people saw Nixon sweating and beady-eyed in 1960 and thought that he looked sneaky. And they were right.

Headline of the week, from the Daily Telegraph: "Milosevic Denounces Rivals as Warmongers".

The important issues have been decided about tomorrow's debate. Bush does not get to have a shorter podium than Gore (Bush is shorter, which means he will lose the election), Gore does not get a lapel mike, and the room will be 65F. Let the games begin.

Ronald Edward Gay, tired of being called gay, shoots up a gay bar. He will now go to prison, and his name will legally be changed to Ronald Edward Bitch.

This year Britain raised old age pensions by the stunningly generous sum of 75p/week, which some took to be the equivalent of leaving a 10 cent tip, more insulting than not raising it all. Some of them in protest sent the Treasury checks for 75p. The Treasury cashed them.

Jorg Haider loses a court case in which he argued that it was perfectly respectable to refer to concentration camps as "punishment centers."

Denmark's voters decide not to join the single currency. No doubt the government will make them keep voting on it until they give the right answer, like it did for the Maastricht Treaty. I can't think why they didn't want to join the Europe of Haider and Chirac, whose RPR this week asked him to do the generous thing and declare an amnesty for illegal party financing. The RPR said that they should just say that all the parties did it until the early 1990s and would promise never to do it again. It is not known how Chirac will react, but he was the owner of the largest slush fund of all. And Helmut Kohl took his seat in Parliament again this week (no doubt a double-sized seat), showing up for the first time since his own disgrace. No, I can't think why
Denmark wouldn't want to get into bed with these clowns.

Speaking of clowns, has anyone seen Tony Blair's hair recently? It seems to be going, as Gerald Ford once said of Ronald Reagan's hair, prematurely orange.

California ballot

OK, I'm willing to read arguments that disagree over the effects a ballot initiative will have, but I am not willing to read arguments in the official ballot that lie about the actual details of the initiatives. I complained about that last time, and it's at least as bad now. Most egregiously, the argument against Prop 36, which would decriminalize drug use, says that this would apply to date-rape drugs. It clearly would not (I checked the actual bill). More amusingly, the statements for 32, veterans' home bonds, squabble over whether George W. Bush would qualify with his Air National Guard service.

I also want my own measure next time: for every ballot initiative, you get to vote yes, no, or who gives a damn. If who gives a damn wins (and I refer you to Prop 35, on Public Works Projects. Use of Private Contractors for Engineering and Architectural Services), then every member of the California Legislature gets their salary docked $20,000 for making us do their job for them.

So, the initiatives:

32, vets' bonds. No, as for all bonds (although these are paid back by the veterans themselves, so the principle is less vital here).

33 would allow members of the Legislature to participate in the
retirement system for state employees. Yes, of course. Incidentally, I invite you to read the text of the actual initiative, which actually corrects the grammar of the original law.

34 is the weakest, most pathetic campaign spending limits initiative I have ever seen, ostensibly in order to make it through the courts, but I assume mostly to gut the previous initiatives. And this one won't, or shouldn't, make it through the courts either, since it makes access to the ballot pamphlet conditional on keeping to voluntary spending limits. If you want to see the most cynical arguments ever against campaign finance reform, read the arguments on this one. "No money, no
information" indeed.

35, the afore-mentioned public works projects privatization measure. I have no idea about the merits of this, but I think it's a safe assumption that if someone spent enough money to get this thing on the ballot, it's automatically a bad idea.

36, drug treatment and probation instead of jail for possession of drugs for personal, repeat personal, use. Do you have to ask?

37 redefines certain fees as taxes, requiring a 2/3 vote of Legislature or local voters. Evidently if we don't for this, we'll pay fees on our movie tickets to pay for parks and recreation programs. It must be true, it says so right here in the voter pamphlet. This is the most blatantly pro-big business document I've seen since the Republican platform. No.

38 school vouchers. No no no. And no.

39 would reduce from 2/3 to 55% the vote required to raise property taxes to pay for school bonds, and to authorize the bonds themselves. This is sort of a tough one. Bonds are undemocratic, so are super-majorities, but 55% is just silly and a bit sneaky. It feels like a classic Clinton compromise, like Don't Ask, Don't Tell: it reduces iniquities on paper while retaining something that's bad in principle. The one thing I like about this one is that those votes would have to be during regular elections. I'm tired of those special elections that
cost a lot of money and at which only parents vote.

And that's it. Isn't it nice not to be voting on a new death penalty provision?

Saddam Hussein was presented with a Koran written in his own blood. Hey, that's what the Daily Telegraph said, and who are we to doubt it.

Some of the Dolly the Sheep scientists believe that it is possible for a baby to be created from the DNA of two (gay) men. These scientists must be hunted down and beaten to death before Siegfried and Roy find out about this.

In Britain a lapdancing club has requested planning permission to allow blind people to enjoy the dancing through Braille.

In a stunning, completely unexpected verdict, the Belgrade war crimes court sentences Clinton, Blair, Chirac, Schroder and a few others to 20 years in prison.

Speaking of stunning, remember those planes Iraq sent to Iran early in the Gulf War in order to safeguard them? Well the Iraqis are shocked to find that the Iranians are using them.

The New York Times and Washington Post rather surprisingly are ignoring the current Yugoslav war crimes trial, you know, the one where Clinton, Blair, Chirac etc etc are being tried in absentia.

OK, Lynne Cheney accused Gore of being at some fundraiser where there were comedians or something who she considered to be "X rated." Has anyone seen an example of this x-ratedness?

A bomb goes off in a street market in Islamabad. Pakistani dictator Musharraf condemns this "dastardly act of terrorism." That's what I like about the Indian sub-continent: it's the only place where people still say "dastardly."

Only 15 senators voted against normalizing trade relations with China and never bothering them about human rights again, just as China and the Vatican are about to go to war. China just re-arrested a bishop, and the pope has announced that 120 Chinese "martyrs" are to be canonized on October 1, the anniversary of the declaration of the People's Republic.

Denmark's tax courts have allowed a prostitute to deduct the cost of breast implants as investment to "improve facilities."

Bush the Younger went on Oprah today and admitted that he wasn't too bright but that he won't talk down to people like certain other smarty-pants types he could name. "You can't inspire and unite by thinking that you're smarter than anyone else."

A letter in yesterday's NY Times suggested that Bush's problem is not dyslexia, but that he has heard a lot of words but not read them, because he doesn't read. And thus come Bushisms like this one, from Slate:

"A tax cut is really one of the anecdotes to coming out of an economic illness."-- The Edge with Paula Zahn, Sept. 18, 2000

THE TIMES: WORLD NEWS: UNITED STATES : Gore drawn into political dogfight:

The Bush campaign issued the following statement today: "Following a troubling pattern of embellishing and exaggerating his plans and personal experiences, Al Gore misled Florida seniors on prescription drugs and how it impacts his mother-in-law and his dog."

Some drunken guy decided to get into a race in Moscow with Putin's motorcade, which traditionally zips along at 90. Astonishingly, he kept up with them in his Lada, until they shot out his tires.

So that's what happened to Yeltsin.

If I have this straight, so to speak, Men's Health magazine just ranked universities according to being pro- or anti-male, and I think Santa Cruz topped the list as Male Hatred USA. I have no further comments at this time.

Did Australia really greet each Olympics athlete with a welcome package including 51 condoms? And a medal at the end of the 17 days to those who managed to use all of them. Wouldn't that piss off some countries?

I might actually pay some attention to the Olympics if it weren't for all the athletes thrown out for taking drugs. I say let them in and may the best pharmaceutical industry win. I want to see what the human body can do when enhanced. I want to see someone break the 30-second mile and then burst into flames.

Spot the subliminable (as Shrub puts it) message

The Netherlands legalizes gay marriage on absolutely equal terms, RATS including equal terms for adoption, and divorce.

The EU ends its diplomatic sanctions on Austria, RATS which has evidently suffered enough in the seven month since it installed in power the neo-fascist party of the homosexual Jorg Haidar.
MAJOR-LEAGUE ASSHOLE. OH YEAH, BIG TIME.

And the isle of Lesbos will allow in the tour group of British lesbians. That mayor has been persuaded to withdraw his objections, as long as they don't do anything too openly lesbianic. Unless he can watch.

So who shits while standing on the toilet seat? Evidently Kosovars, according to Haliburton.

Personally, I think the subliminal message RATS was intended to refer to the Emmy rat bastards who preferred The West Wing over The Sopranos, those motherless motherfucks.

Sun, 10 Sep 2000 23:20:00

The Moscow Times reports that Putin stole the last presidential election with millions of altered ballots, switched tallies and fake voters.

The pope performed an exorcism last week.

Tale of woe of the week: Lord Palmer, who can no longer afford to have his silver balustrade polished, is asking for volunteers. He'll supply the sandwiches and wine.

Scientists at the Wellcome Centre for Cognitive Neurology (I think I remember that correctly and if I don't, they could probably explain why) have finally answered the question Why can't you tickle yourself? The answer is that you know it's coming, and the cerebellum is designed to focus not on what you're doing but what potential predators might be doing. And you can tickle yourself: they've invented a robot that you cna use, but only if there is a sufficient (and I think random) gap in time between pushing the button and the tickling.

Scotland Yard is investigating the alleged murder in 1907 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of the real author of Hound of the Baskervilles.

Slate points out that Shrub's latest slogan Real Plans for Real People sounds suspiciously like the Beef Council's slogan Real Food for Real People. Al Gore, meanwhile, is still eschewing real people, but has the android vote pretty much locked up.

Gloria Steinem finally got married this week. Oddly enough, she is not planning on taking her husband's name, although her husband is famous as the man who introduced the skateboard into Britain. The wedding was held at the home of Ms. Steinem's friend Wilma Mankiller. Really.

Most repulsive revelation of the week: Ronald Reagan called Nancy Mommie Poo Pants. And that's before he went gaga.

The Italian Supreme Court, which has never to my knowledge ruled on any matter that doesn't have to do with sex (or perhaps my British news sources are lax in this regard?) rules that it is ok for wives to commit adultery, but during daylight hours only.

I've been meaning for some time to write about Dick Cheney. Before I forget, it was discovered today that Cheney has rarely bothered voting since leaving public service, and failed to vote in the March primaries. But it's this question of the Haliburton stock options that's been niggling at me, until I sat down to think about why. He's promised to forgo his stock options if he gets elected, so that he doesn't have a conflict of interest. (Interestingly, he didn't even make the case, natural for a Republican I would have thought, that what is good for Haliburton is good for the USA.) But the assumption is evidently that it doesn't matter if a candidate has a conflict of interest. Presumably, commitments and decisions made now do not count, so it is ok if he is ethically compromised now.

It also occurs to me that for the first time in, well, ever, neither VP candidate is one who will ever be president or probably even run for president, unless through a death, of course.

There is a French army major who is preparing to skydive from 28 miles up, wearing a space suit, the first skydiver to break the sound barrier. Normal skydiving reaches c.120 mph; he is planning to hit ten times that. How do you say "splat" in French?

Bush-league asshole: at a rally, Shrub called for more "plain-spoken folks" in Washington moments after one of those open-mike gaffes that occasionally make politics so entertaining. Ignoring his comment about the NY Times reporter, does Junior actually classify himself as one of the "plain-spoken folks"? Doesn't he ever see tapes of himself? Someone once described someone (and Bush the Elder might have been the second someone in this sentence) as somebody who had no first language. Plain-spoken, indeed.

Milton Obote, the president of Uganda (former) was once asked whether his policy of eliminating British influences would mean a shift from driving on the left to driving on the right. "Yes, gradually," he said.

Another victory in the current British, New of the World-driven, moral panic about paedophiles: this week a town in Wales successfully drove out a paediatrician. Paedphile, paediatrician, what's the dif?

The school year starts in Russia, now with new improved military training (abolished by Gorbachev in 1991), including a week in barracks every summer for those over 15, including instruction in mortar firing for the boys and bandage-rolling and wailing over the deaths of sailors blown up by their own missiles, not the government will ever admit it, for the girls.

Also, the tax police (the next version of the KGB, mark my words) has opened a cadet school, where 10-year olds and up will learn how to smash in doors while wearing ski masks and carrying Kalashnikovs.

A district judge finally admits that the LAPD meets the legal definition of a racketeering organization and can be sued as such.

Speaking of cults, officers of the Salvation Army, for the first time, will be allowed to marry people who are not also officers of the Sally Army.

And speaking of cults and marriage therein, here is the first sentence of an AP story: "The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church, has been charged with catching too many fish during a visit to Alaska."

More signs of the former colonies getting uppity: Tartarstan (which actually is a current colony) is dropping the Cyrillic alphabet, forced on them by decree by Stalin in 1939. And Estonia just ordered too Russian diplomats out for being spies.

Putin said that that giant tv tower burning down was a symbol, in some way or other, of the failed policies of the past. Actually, as it turns out, the way the fire was handled was a symbol of the failed policies of the present, in this case Putin's obsessive centralization. The fire would have been smaller and less dangerous to the firefighters, had they turned off the electricity to the building, which seems like an obvious decision, but one no one was willing to risk their careers by taking. So someone called his boss, who called his boss, etc, until Putin himself gave permission, three hours later.

The Anti-Defamation League asks Joe Lieberman to stop being so damned religious. Joe the Jew increasingly reminds me of a job my great-uncle once had, to sit in an office and look Jewish. Not do any actual work, just look Jewish. I'm not sure if he had to sound Jewish too, but in his later film extra days he was always ordered not to speak on camera, although I've never been sure how they got him to shut up, which god knows no one else could ever do, but I digress.
4/2/05: hello to all who Googled to this spot looking for information about Joe Lieberman's nudism. Click here for that. Don't say I never did anything for you.

In Nigeria, President Clinton is presented with a ceremonial hoe. How disappointed he must have been to find out that it was an agricultural implement.

In Zimbabwe, Chenjorai "Hitler" Hunzvi is deposed as head of the veterans' organization that has been occupying land. He has been accused of running the organization "like a dictator." Fancy that! Actually, Hunzvi is not himself even a veteran. I think he was in Oxford, or the Texas Air National Guard or something during the civil war.

The UN still has 4,000 victims of the Srebrenica massacre stacked up in a warehouse, that noone is providing the funds to identify.

A Tennessee car dealer is offering a free rifle with every car purchased.

Portugal re-legalizes killing animals in public so that it can take away the tourists who want to see non-wimpy bullfights against Spain, which has finally begun to realize how icky they are (Catalonia banned them last year).

If you think that global warming is bad, you aren't thinking like an entrepreneur and you may possibly avoid going to hell. The fashionable drink in Beverly Hills is now melted Arctic iceberg ($10 a bottle).

5A correction from the NY Times: "In an article yesterday about a visit by VP Al Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman to a Jewish community center in Florida misattributed a Yiddish greeting. It was Mr. Lieberman, not Mr. Gore, who said "Shalom aleichem"; Mr. Gore said, "Mazel tov."

Alert readers will be anticipating a correction of the correction.

I believe I forgot to follow something up. For a couple of weeks after the Philadelphia police beat up that guy, I was asking whether or not he had a gun as they initially claimed, the sole inadequate explanation they offered for their behaviour. As it turned out, the cop who had been shot was shot by another cop accidentally.

A story this week has Shrub intervening to pull an RNC ad before it is aired, attacking Gore with out of context quotes. Keep in mind that this ad was produced by the party and not by his election committee and that previously when such soft-money ads were used against his opponents he claimed that he couldn't control them, or it would be a violation of the 1st amendment. Now he wants credit for doing what he said he couldn't do.

If you are a Christian surfer, you will want to attend Jesus Surf Classics 2000. But then again, you probably aren't a Christian surfer.

This week the British high court ordered the surgical separation of Siamese twins who are, I believe, 3 weeks old. Separation would mean the death of one, but save the other. The parents, who are Christian surfers, no, that can't be right can it, well, they're idiots of some variety, think that God wants the two to stay together. Anyway, the pope has offered them sanctuary.

Watching the convention tonight, I was able to see my Congresscritter Ellen Tauscher. Like UCSC chancellor Sinsheimer (who by the way was evidently important in launching the human genome project, confirming what the Daily Show said about it: In case you're wondering, yes it will be used for evil), who would have preferred to be running a different sort of school, Tauscher practically claimed to represent Silicon Valley.

Gore is leaning awfully heavily on his wife and daughters to try to make him seem human. His son, exploited so effectively in the past, was virtually nowhere to be seen. Today we saw a bunch of photographs allegedly taken by Tipper. Some amateur photographers consistently cut off people's heads, Tipper consistently cut off Bill Clinton, who I don't think appeared in a single one of hundreds of shots.

Also speaking tonight, Louisiana Senator John Breaux, who last week said of Joe Lieberman, "I don't think American voters care where you go to church on Sunday." And a happy shalom to you too, senator.

I've heard at least 6 times during the convention that Gore volunteered to go to Vietnam in order that no one else from Carthage would be drafted in his place. Given that he was given a safe job in Vietnam, and a bodyguard, I don't see how that follows.

Pat Buchanan has his gall bladder removed. Well I could have told you the man had too much gall. They should have removed his spleen as well.

Farewell to Edward Craven Walker, the inventor of the lava lamp. And a nudist. In case you were wondering, he invented the thing in 1963.

One more country which seized bank accounts and such of Jews killed in the Holocaust: Israel.

The British police are trying to create a national DNA database but are finding some serious resistance from...the British police, who really of all people need to be typed so that they can be eliminated as possible contaminants of crime scenes, but the coppers are afraid their saliva will be tested for drugs or that the results might be turned over to the Child Support Agency.

Speaking of DNA, Bush sets another execution date for the guy he gave a stay so that he could have his DNA tested. So we now know that Texas has great safeguards and never executes innocent people. I still say the whole thing was a set-up.

Caught most of Jesse Jackson's speech yesterday. He referred to Lieberman as "one of the good hymies." All right, he didn't, but it would have been less creepy than his introduction of the slogan "Stay Out the Bushes."

Caroline Kennedy (Insert name of lesser mortal she married here) invoked her father, and informed us that her daughter slept with a teddy bear which she called Uncle Teddy. Only a Kennedy would fail to realize how utterly creepy that was.

Today Joe Lieberman gave a rousing speech. Well, it didn't rouse me: I woke up after it had started, but I fell back asleep. He didn't invoke God five million times in this speech, but he did attack Hollywood, saying something about how parents shouldn't have to compete with the culture in raising their children.

I suppose it would be a really cheap shot to insert at this juncture that Israeli Orthodox Jews, continuing a program of arson against sex shops and such in Tel Aviv, burned down a brothel today, killing four people.

I was awake for Tommy Lee Jones's speech, which I actually enjoyed. What is it in this election about good ol' boys in the Ivy League? Tommy Lee talked about huntin' with coon dogs (fortunately, Jesse Jackson was not speaking afterwards. Sorry.) in the context of trying to humanize his old Harvard roomie. Al Gore was also a Star Trek fan, but then so was Alan Keyes. And George "W" used chewing tobaccy while attending Yale Business School.

The Democrats have a trans-gendered delegate, from Minnesota. And no, not the governor.

The Russian Orthodox Church has canonized Tsar Nicholas II and all his awful family. Not, of course, their servants who were also executed--they were just doing their duty, according to the church.

Headline in NY Times: "West Nile Found in Brooklyn". Now that's lost.

Clinton gave another of his Alzheimer's-inducing speeches: four hours later and I can't remember a word of it.

I do like the theme, Are you better off now than you were 8 years ago. Personally, I'm not, but it's still a pretty good theme. With all the sound-bite theft of these two conventions, I can't wait to see who gets to use "There you go again" first.

Hillary said something, and I believe I'm paraphrasing here, about Gore being able not just to talk the stiff robotic talk, but walk the stiff robotic walk.

As I write, it is ladies' night at the Democratic convention. Barbara Mikulsi has said that such women are changing the face of the US Senate. A national tv audience of 3 looked at Mikulski's face on their screens and shuddered.

Don't blame me, she's the one that brought it up.

Fun fact of the day: it is illegal to get a vasectomy in France.

Japan has been influencing small nations to vote to allow Japan to kill endangered whale species by threatening to withhold foreign aid.

Some Japanese want to go to Australia for the Olympics, but being Japanese don't want to take more than one day off work. The result: "banzai tours."

Barbara Boxer spoke a little while ago. Who knew she was still alive, much less one of my Senators?

Shrub wants Gore to distance himself still further from Clinton's sex life, because I don't think any of us have heard nearly enough about what everyone thinks about that. "If he's got a problem with what on in the past, he ought to explain what it is." Shrub has a problem with what on in the past: twenty years of his past is just a blur in his memory. This is the Bush who executed one retarded guy this week, of whom the prosecutor said that he should be executed because he was retarded, and therefore more dangerous, and another guy from whose jury all minorities had been systematically excluded, in accordance with the handbook prosecutors used in Houston until they were caught at it.

Pat Buchanan managed to find a black woman who supports the Confederate flag. Buy that woman and put her on the ticket!

A Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania had Back to School Sale signs over its ammo.

An article in the New Statesman on the British obsession with class, from a South African Oxford don who used to be at Magdalen College, Oxford, which is pronounced just as it is spelled, if it were spelled Maudley. Magdalen was the place that turned down Laura Spence, who had to settle for Harvard, as I mentioned once before. The article talks about the college's old master, Sir Herbert Warren, a great snob. He liked to greet every incoming freshman. One year one of those was the Imperial Prince of Japan. Warren asked him what his name, Prince Chichibou, actually meant. "The Son of God," Chichi said. Warren replied, "Of course you'll find we have the sons of many famous men here at Magdalen." But there was also the labor historian R H Tawney, who once pulled out a chair for a visitor, a guest called Sir Arthur Cholmondley-Withers, saying "Have a seat Mr. Withers." Sir A C-W insisted, "Cholmondley-Withers, if you please!" Tawney pulled up another chair: "Have two seats then."

Dick Cheney, who does not plan to sell off his company's stocks until after he is elected, just as Leiberman plans to run for his Senate seat, was allowed by his oil company to retire 3 years early and still keep all his benefits. This is in essence a $10 million favor, which some might call a bribe, but not me, so sirree bob.

Last year, one Michael Forbes, Congresscritter for NY, switched from the R's to the D's. Yeah, I don't remember it either. This means that the R's, who would really like to defeat the turn-coat, have in their possession outtakes from campaign commercials he shot when he was with them, in which he made farting sounds with his armpits. They are considering whether they might wish to make some use of that footage in this election.

Iran may raise its minimum marriage age for females from 9.

Texas now has more prisoners than California, despite having a population not two-thirds the size (although Walker is doing his best to kill them off, one retarded guy at a time. Didja read the story about the retarded guy who was so eager to please that after confessing to a Texas Ranger, he climbed into his lap? Heartwarming.) 163,000 prisoners each. But Texas has a lot more people than that with concealed weapon permits. Including all those priests. Don't mess with Texas.

Britain has been having one of its little panics over paedophilia, thank to the News of the World publishing the names and addresses of registered sex offenders. Today the 3-year old child of one of the leaders of the vigilantes was found in the street 3 blocks away from home and naked, while his mother was off giving a tv interview.

Two favorite headlines of the day: "Firemen Act as Anteater's Gynaecologist" and "State Outlaws Farmyard Noises."

The rabbi leader of the Shas Party in Israel says that all the Jews killed in the Holocaust were reincarnated sinners. Well, that's ok then. To quote Arnold Schwarzenegger when asked in True Lies if he'd killed people, "Ya, but they were all bad." I've said it before and I'll said it again, that Shas is one bad mother...

In his speech at the Convention, Bush made fun of Gore's use of the word "risky," painting him as a man too timid to take a spin of the wheel and "risk" wrecking Social Security, the big weenie. Now Gore has returned the favor by picking Lieberman, pulling the teeth of Junior's Christian rhetoric.

I'm curious about why this was announced when it was, very early in the morning, one day before it was scheduled, and not one day after Gore said that he still hadn't made up his mind. It doesn't say a lot for his conviction that the prig from Connecticut is the best man for the job.

Nothing I've heard of Lieberman's record today suggests that he is anything other than a Republican, but with a sense of humor. And to answer my first question about a sabbath observant Jew, yes he can push the button and annihilate the world on the sabbath, but he might have to walk five miles through the snow first to do it.

Last comments on the Republican Convention, really

Molly Ivins suggests to Bush's speechwriters that the comment on restoring civility to Washington should have come at least two paragraphs away from his last attempt to shiv the Dems.

And she reminds me that whoever spoke for Utah began "Utah, the only state that begins with U". And ends with "tah". Personally, I preferred Wyoming, "the land of high altitudes, low multitudes and good attitudes."

Dennis Miller points out that the "Leave No Child Behind" night was capped by a speech by Laura Bush, who gave up a teaching job to help her husband's political career.

Miller also says that Al Gore couldn't be more phony if he were a professional Al Gore impersonator.

The Washington Post finally breaks the news that Mary Cheney is gay. Remember, you heard it here first. Incessantly.

The Queen Mum is 100 years old today, and doesn't look a day over dead.

The Republican Convention has inspired me. Later in this month I will have my opportunity to participate in the sacred duty of every citizen to weasel their way out of jury duty.

Convention

In the big news of the day, the skull of anti-Pope Benedict XIII (14th century) has been stolen in Spain and is being held hostage. It has magical powers.

The Republican Convention continues to put all of its blacks (none of whom besides Julius Caesar Watts have been nominated by the party for elective office, you'll notice) right up there on the podium, so that the delegates can feel secure that their wallets won't be lifted.

The Post comments that having it in historic Philadelphia just reminds everyone how far leadership in this country has fallen in 200 years. And Gerald Ford (whose presidency almost looks good in comparison, huh? I mean, he did restore the nation's self-respect with the Mayaguez incident) nearly fulfilled the W. C. Fields nightmare of dying in Philadelphia.

No, Mary Cheney's girlfriend did not show up.

In the primaries, McCain referred to Bush's soft-money-financed machine as the Death Star. At the convention, he was brought on to the tune of John Williams's theme from Star Wars.

Colin Powell said that there was no room in the Republican Party for racists. Evidently all those slots are already filled. (Will Durst joke)

George Bush Senior threatened that if Clinton kept attacking his boy, he would say what he really thinks about him. Am I the only one reminded of the episode of The Simpsons where the Bushes moved in across the street?

Cheney delivered the attack speech. Who would have thought? I especially liked the bit when he said that Clinton, the man from Hope, would be going home to (and here he gave a little shake of his head, evidently hopelessly confused by the thought of someone moving) New York. "It's time for them to go", he reiterated, reminding us that Gore gave the same line 8 years ago in a far more dynamic speech.

Cheney is finally going around defending his Congressional voting record, repeatedly saying that we must remember the context of the times, an excuse last trotted out at the Nuremberg trials, if I'm not mistaken. Next he'll be saying it was peer pressure. Just say no!

He explained the vote against releasing Nelson Mandela by saying that back then we thought that all those black people were communists. He then explained his vote against Head Start by saying that back in the '80s we thought that all children were communists. "My bad!" he added. He defended voting against cop-killer bullets by saying that it was his job to represent the views of the people of Wyoming, and that there were more people in Wyoming who wanted to shoot cops than there were cops. And they vote!

Al Franken points out that while Cheney attacked the Clintons for moving to NY, Cheney himself changed his voter registration from Texas to Wyoming just a few weeks ago.

I was pleased to see Bush claim that he could turn part of Social Security into a stock market lotto without reducing benefits, the equivalent of the Laffer curve but more to the point also the equivalent of the Read My Lips speech, since sooner or later he has to produce this proposal with the blanks actually filled in.

convention

I was distracted earlier by watching tv and writing at the same time and by the heat. Like my refrigerator, my brain simply does not operate well over 100. So sorry about saying Cheney was speaking today. Also, I started to compare Junior's distancing of himself from his own party and especially its Congressional members with Clinton's. And we all know how well that worked. When Shrub arrives in the White House, he will be in for the same rude awakening that Clinton did at the hands of old Washington hands who consider him a carpetbagger.

What I missed realizing during the Gerald Ford video tribute was the number of times it said that he "restored the nation's confidence." Evidently, 25 years on, Clinton = Nixon. Which means that even the R's are now tacitly agreeing that Nixon was evil personified, just as Newt Gingrich, who 2 and 4 years ago was the guy against whom all the D's defined themselves, now performs the same role for R's, who are otherwise trying to airbrush him out of all the old photos, like Trotsky [line lifted from Jacob Weisberg of Slate].

Clinton keeps making comments about Bush and it's driving the Gore folks, and Bush the Elder, bugfuck. George Stephanopalous, the little man with the big name and no particular sense of loyalty, thinks that Clinton is seriously off the reservation, but if Gore isn't willing to slap Shrub down, someone has to. When you consider what it would be like putting Clinton and Boy George in a room together, it becomes crystal clear how unready for prime time the latter is. Clinton would eat him alive. By the way, my prediction: Gore will lose the debates. Badly.

So Cheney will show up tomorrow. There is a lot of comment already about how crappy a campaigner he's turning out to be. But the real question will be whether Mary Cheney's live-in lover will be on the podium.

Haven't seen it yet, but there's supposed to be something in the Wed. NY Times about Bush's really big donors and why their donations haven't been reported. I think reporters should start staking out these high-ticket fundraising events like papparazi, or Michael Moore, and taking pictures of everyone who goes in.

Convention

"We almost lost him" -- the start of a video tribute to the sainted Ronald Reagan. To quote from that period, gag me with a spoon.

This followed a tribute to Gerald Ford which didn't mention Nixon even once, but did make the Mayaguez incident into some sort of triumph. Whip Inflation Now!

I didn't recognize the music introducing Jim Kolbe. Dole, however, was brought on to the tune of When the Caissons Come Rolling Along. Caissons were last used, what, in World War I? This is defence night, leading up to the speech by draft dodger Dick Cheney.

This isn't especially original, but this is Bush's convention, not the Republican Party's. Newt is locked in the basement until it's over, the Clinton impeachment is well in the past, with no one even essaying a defence of it.

Speaking of convenient memory loss [the wonderfully caring Nancy Reagan, someone just said], did you know the German Catholic church, monasteries etc requisitioned slave labor during WW II?

Convention

As I write, and surf, the Republican convention is droning in the background. I should pay more attention to the music introducing the speakers, since someone speaking about education was brought on to the tune of "Don't know much about history". And someone said, and I quote, "Literacy and the Bush family are practically synonymous." To paraphrase a famous quotation, Millie the dog Bush has written more books than W has read.

A Russian company has patented the bottle. Also nails and railroad tracks.

A Lithuanian businessman wants to start a theme park called "Stalin's World", for those nostalgic for good clean Gulag living. Visitors would enter the park in cattle cars. It still sounds like more fun than the mile and a half roller coaster the Japanese just built.

The Washington Post, despite having an article on gay Republicans in today's issue, has still not mentioned Mary Cheney. The NY Times alluded to it, referring to the ABC interview with Lynn Cheney yesterday in which she inned her daughter.

The R platform, by the way , specifically condemns the "gay lifestyle" and supports the ban on gays in the Boy Scouts and in the military.

Obviously I wasn't in the pocket of the NRA

John Tukey, a statistician who seems to have lead a much more interesting professional career than you'd expect from a statistician, and who coined the terms "software" and "bit", died this week.

Congress votes to ban states executing pregnant women, just in case anyone other than Al Gore had a question as to whether that was a good move or not.

Some quotes from the porno team of Bush and Dick (no, I said I wasn't going to do that joke, didn't I?):

Bush: "Secretary Cheney brought people together and helped win a war, which stands in stark contrast to Vice President Al Gore, who tends to divide people to create war." In other words, Gore = Saddam Hussein.

Bush: "Of course I knew his votes. But I also know his record."

Cheney: "this notion that somehow I was opposed to freeing Nelson Mandela is a typical distortion of Al Gore." Well, you voted against a resolution that Mandela should be freed. Where's the distortion?

Cheney on voting against a ban on plastic guns, which even the NRA did not oppose: "Well, obviously I wasn't in the pocket of the NRA."

You heard it here first?

Dick Cheney's daughter is a lesbian. Like we're not going to have enough "Dick and Bush" jokes as it was.

Nothing on this in the NY Times or the Washington Post, but the British papers all have it, not that it was ever much of a secret, and still less so when Bob Woodward cocquetted at the news on tv a few days ago.

Here's a joke you've already heard ten times: Bush-Cheney is the Wizard of Oz ticket, one needs a heart, the other needs a brain.

Cheney is praised as bringing some much-needed gravitas to the campaign, with everyone pretty much ignoring his extreme right-wing record across the board on any issue you care to name. If you don't foam at the mouth or have the uncouthiosity of a Gingrich, you're ok in Mark Shields's book (however, thanks to Shields for reminding us that 25 years ago when Cheney was White House chief of staff, Bush the Younger was snorting coke off a prostitute's ass in a Houston bar. Thus Cheney has become--you will be sick of this observation by the end of the convention--the "babysitter" of a man 4 years younger than himself. Cheney is the adult, Bush has demoted himself to the post of this year's Dan Quayle, where I always said he belonged.

When the pundits say that he chose Cheney from a presidential perspective rather than a campaign perspective, one of the things they mean is that he has given up the option of pretending to be an insurgent outsider storming the Beltway.

By the way, Alan Keyes has dropped out of the race, a stunning development that has completely crowded the Cheney decision, the inevitable failure of Camp David and that cool picture of the Concorde on fire, right off the front pages.

Ya gotta have heart

So Shrub did what I told Kevin two days ago he wasn't stupid enough to do, picked Dick Cheney as veep. Consider me corrected as to the level of Boy George's stupidity. In Washington there are already pools on how many times he'll use the word "heart" in his convention speech. You know, Christ changed my heart, don't judge my heart, etc etc. (by the way, read a Monday Washington Post piece about--maybe Sunday--about Bush's form of Christianity. Remember, most of the religious stuff is coded in a language not intended to be understood by people like y'all and me; it helps to have a guide). This will maybe cut down on that language, since they've already sent in the cardiologists to do just that with Cheney. Scott Shuger of Slate asks whether the statement issued by the doctor that Cheney's condition shouldn't affect his campaigning was maybe not getting it the wrong way around from what a doctor is supposed to be saying. And just to kick it off, Bush called him this morning before dawn. There's nothing like the phone ringing when you're sound asleep to jump-start the ol' heart, right? See Slate for Table Talk today about the Cheney nomination, and another piece about what a bitch Lynne Cheney is.

The good news is that it's no longer illegal to say "sorry" in the state of California, or at least to have it held against you in a civil suit. I look forward to hearing it from Albertson's checkers now, since their cash registers over-charged me two out of the last 3 times. I'm a strong believer in the effects of legislation to improve our lives by altering speech. Remember when Proposition 121 banned "Have a nice day"?

Think big

A 67-year old Russian pensioner is being hailed as a hero after shooting a thief who was stealing potatoes from his allotment.

And Swiss authorities would like to talk to the Russian Prime Minister, known as Misha Two Percent, for the misappropriation of $4.8 billion in IMF loans in 1998.

That's a lot of potatoes.

Message to the Sunday papers: it doesn't count as a restoration of civilian government in Ecuador if the elected president has to leave the country. Come back, El Loco, all is forgiven.

A Chechen rumor that hasn't made the American papers: an actual gunfight earlier this month between the biggest warlord and the defense minister. I believe it was a fight over who hates the Russians more.

South Africa is to start renaming its major cities. Sigh. Pretoria will be Tshwane, which is pronounced to rhyme with Tshwane, I'm guessing.

NATO is finally capturing Serb war criminals from the Bosnian war, by offering massive bounties which are mostly being paid to Serb war criminals who capture other Serb war criminals.

War is Hellibut: Britain is to compensate trawlermen who lost their livelihoods in the Cod War of the 1970s, in which Iceland kicked their pale butts.

Speaking of old wars, you can now buy a Spitfire. A company started making them, sort of half from scrap from old WW II-era Spitfires and half new, for the anniversary of the Battle of Britain. Now they're selling them to you the punter, for a low low one million pounds or so. Some of the parts can no longer be made in the UK. The propellers, for instance, which were made of can you believe it wood, are made in Germany.

A Koranic scholar has written a book called Women in Islam, recently translated into Spanish, where there is a bit of a furore because it tells Muslims (the book is aimed at Muslims living in non-Muslim societies) how to disguise their wife-beating. For the record, wife-beating was legal under Franco.

Putting education somewhere in the top 3, or so

"When I was in college, there were certain words you couldn't say in front of a girl. Now you can say them but you can't say 'girl.'"
- Tom Lehrer, in the liner notes to his newly-released 3-CD set

Shrub's new web site lists his top 3 priorities. Number 3 is "Putting education first."

The big issue in the Meg Ryan-Dennis Quaid divorce case: who gets custody of their guru?

Chicago has kicked out of the school districts an abstinence program run by Moonies which preaches something called "absolute sex," which means sex with whoever the Unification Church assigns to you. Yeah, I'd have thought "absolute sex" would mean something more interesting too.

Sheriff Joe of Maricopa County, Arizona is at it again. This time his idea is putting web-cams at the county jail so that guys arrested for soliciting prostitutes can wave to their wives on the Internet.

I'm still waiting to hear whether the guy the Philadelphia police beat up actually had a gun or not. It can't be taking them this long to find a throw-down gun.

I'm also still waiting for Trent Lott to apologize to Hillary Clinton for suggesting that her alleged anti-Semitic statement was recent rather than in 1974, and was made because she's annoyed at not having locked up the Jewish vote in NY. This is the guy who was caught a few months ago lying about his involvement with the CCC, non? He made the statement on Fox
News, owned by Rupert Mudorch, which also owns the newspaper that broke it, and the publisher of the book in which the claim is made. Synergy!

I'm getting a little tired of being woken up at 7 in the morning by EBMUD, which is rebuilding the sewer system around here. I never know what obstacles I'll have to navigate in trying to leave the house. Last week I found they'd dug a huge trench in front of my driveway without knocking on doors to see if somebody might actually want to move their car first. And right now, there is a large truck parked right up to the driveway, just to make getting out of it as hazardous as possible; yup, I like my left turns like I like my women: blind and dangerous.

Probably a longer run-up than that joke required.

The Bermudan Parliament has relaxed the dress-code for MPs. They will now be able to wear Bermuda shorts.

Last week, the Middle East peace talks started with Barak and Arafat each offering to let the other one go through a door first. And then the news drop-out fell. Do you think they've spent the last week arguing about which one would go first?

In Afghanistan, in the middle of a football match, the religious police seized the visiting Pakistani team and shaved their heads for the crime of wearing shorts.

Hope everyone got a chance to read the article in today, Friday's NY Times on a death squad massacre in Colombia. Your tax dollars at work.

According to the US trade ambassador, on McNeil-Lehrer yesterday, the trade agreement with Vietnam will force them to implement the rule of law and democracy. You really have to have heard it to understand why Americans are considered arrogant assholes the world over.

Ok, Philadelphia PD: did he have a gun or didn't he?

Heinz is soon to produce green ketchup. Like the blue M & M's aren't bad enough.

5 years since the massacre at Srebrenica. 4,000 bodies, or parts of bodies, still waiting for someone to get off their ass and run tests to identify them.

Speaking of DNA, does anyone else think that the news that the only person whose execution Dubya ever delayed for DNA testing turned out to be guilty, supporting his ridiculous assertion that everyone executed in Texas is guilty guilty guilty? I smell a rat, and a large rat, since everything is bigger than Texas.

Israel has dropped plans to sell China weapons it can use to threaten the US to keep it from supporting Taiwan. Wasn't that nice? Evidently they were finally pissing off the very Congresscritters they expect to be able to extort a large bribe from in order to underwrite any peace agreement. Such a nice client state. We tell them to jump, they ask how much are you willing to pay.

The president of Montenegro declares that Yugoslavia no longer exists. And not before time, either.

There is a website, which you could look up, devoted to US currency issued by the states before the Civil War, specifically currency issued by Southern states with images of happy slaves.

A Russian rocket will fly parts to the International Space Station tomorrow, with a big ole ad for Pizza Hut on the side. The article didn't say in what language, but one assumes English since the price given was $1 million.

You ain't seen nothing yet

The Star Wars test fails, unfortunately for the wrong reason. Still, any failure is one for the good guys, especially since the Pentagon had already dummied down the test to the point where it was like a Larry King interview with George W. Bush. In this case, though, it was like Bush broke his leg in a freak chewing-gum-and-walking-at-the-same-time accident on the way to the interview.

The NY Times quotes Gore's "pet slogan" as "You ain't seen nothing yet." Two problems with that: 1) Gore can't say it without wincing at the bad grammar (no problem for Dubya, who a couple of days ago in a school said that literacy was the "basics" of education), 2) after 8 years of Clinton, we have in fact seen everything.

The World Bank rejects funding a Chinese project to settle 58,000 Chinese in Tibet.

OK, here's a story that took 50 years to come out: during the Korean War, there were regular aerial dogfights between Russian and American planes. The Russians wore Chinese uniforms and their planes had Chinese markings, and they shot down several hundred American and South Korean planes.

A week after Tony Blair floats an idiotic proposal for the police to be able to fine drunks on the spot and march them to an ATM in order to collect, his own 16-year old son is arrested, found in Leicester Square lying in his own vomit. Euan gave a false name (well, wouldn't you if your name was Euan) and address (11 Downing Street would be a bit of a giveaway).

A report is released on the plane crash of John John Kennedy. It says that he was the victim of "disorientation." He is a Kennedy, so I assume this means he thought he was the center of the universe.

The Yugoslav parliament changes the constitution to allow Milosevic to become president again. Montenegro is threatening not to recognize the change, so look for another war.

Pitcairn Island, settled by the mutineers of the HMS Bounty a couple of hundred years ago, and whose 44 inbred descendants have evidently not figured out that the coast is clear and they can just leave, is threatening to secede to France. Interestingly, the Times says that Tom Fletcher (yes, descended from who you think) speaks with an 18th century accent.

If you've ever been in a phone-box in London, or indeed have ever been looking for a hooker in London, you probably know that the boxes are festooned with cards advertising prostitutes. Well, London elementary school students have started collecting and trading them. Oh great, a Naughty Nellie rookie card! At least it's less pernicious than Pokemon.

Location location location

The NY Times reports that almost all firecrackers blown up today were made in China, as were most of the little American flags waved around. And to top it off, a Japanese man, a little thin Japanese man yet, has again won the hotdog-eating contest on Coney Island, setting a new record.

With no particular sense of irony, the British Parliament spent Independence Day debating the Queen's budget. One Labour MP noted that Buckingham Palace has 58 bedrooms and 78 bathrooms, and asked "How many palaces does the Royal Family need in order to discharge its functions to the state?" No comment.

In the UK, Texaco has a promotion in which people play some sort of game in order to find 5 sportscars which are buried 20 feet underground. Convertibles yet.

In the very same week as California's Insurance Commissioner, Hugo Z. Firefly, resigns from office for extorting money from insurance companies in order to make himself look good on tv, the governor decides that rather than reducing the car tax, the state will first charge the higher rate and then mail out a rebate check. Davis said that this was because otherwise people would not know they were getting a rebate. This little campaign stunt will cost $22 million.

The KGB is back to its old tricks, blackmailing people to make them inform. The latest victim was a student they were trying to get to spy on an opposition party for them. They got him expelled when he refused. They were threatening to have him sent to Chechnya, so presumably that's the next step. If anybody's up for a "Who lost China" witchhunt, I think it's not too early to start.

Clinton said of the human genome project, which let's face it none of you understand, "We have learned the language in which God created life." Pig Latin, I'm guessing.

A Conservative Jewish synagogue was bombed in Jerusalem this week. Congratulations on your understanding of the idiocy of the human species if you immediately guessed that it was done by Orthodox Jews.

Germany is thinking about destroying the bunkers and tank traps that constituted the Siegfried Line, which held off the American invasion of Germany for so long during World War II. Environmentalists want them preserved because badgers and other wildlife have been using them. Proposals to turn the bunkers into laundromats have not gotten off the ground.

Guatemalans tore themselves away from Sabado Gigante long enough to catch two televised executions by lethal injection.

In the last 6 months or so there has been a minor surge of stories about drugs in Africa. Gore was persuaded to u-turn and stop trying to jack up the price of AIDS drugs to Africa, some drug companies have lowered prices on various drugs. I must have mentioned that while there are all these great impotence drugs and whatnot being produced, no one is working on new drugs for tropical diseases, which are becoming increasingly resistant to
drugs. One of the stories is that the cheapest anti-malarial drug, whose name I still remembered a couple of days ago when I first meant to write about this, used to be manufactured rather cheaply on the African continent itself, and that some of the same politicians (more in Britain than here) who have been pointing out that for just a few cents a head you could save all sorts of people from death, made no objection when the plant that used to produce it in Africa was blown off the face of the earth by US missiles (in Sudan, of course).

The New York Times editorial page comes out in support of the two-party system. Evidently there is so much difference between Bush and Gore that Nader is just being a big selfish spoiler by exercising his right to run for president.

The next editorial is on the Mexican elections, and says that they will be an important test of the country's progress is democracy, while admitting that there is no difference between the two main candidates whatsoever. All hail democracy!

Elian is back in Cuba. Ha ha ha, your magic dolphins cannot save you now!

The Russian high school student, although offered a free scholarship at a university, although one specializing in the wrong field, still has not had her grades restore. Someone needs to parachute in some spin doctors. The local education authority report that marked down her grades included in its four pages 33 spelling and 97 punctuation errors, according to one newspaper.

The Supreme Court upholds Miranda not because it thinks Miranda is constitutionally required, but as part of a separation-of-powers pissing
match with Congress. Right decision, wrong reason.

The Supes also strike down Nebraska's partial birth abortion law, while telling it how to write one they will accept. So not the victory it has been portrayed as.

They also allow the Boy Scouts to exclude gays on the grounds that the courts have no right to examine an organization's claim that discrimination is part of its "expressive message."

That said, I have no objection to the Boy Scouts excluding gays, just so long as they get no government funding and their uniforms are banned from schools.

In South Africa, the parties which were bitter enemies under apartheid, the Nationalists and the Democrats, have merged to form a single party, to be the official opposition to the ANC. In other words, they have submerged all their political differences to form a party based solely on ethnicity. South Africa has finally joined the African mainstream.

School prayer got banned by the Supreme Court again. By the way,
wasn't that Texas law great, allowing the students to vote for a student to lead prayers before football games? Who would have thought that a school sponsoring a vote over whose religion was better would had any problem with the Supes?

Oxford University, which has been the target of government attacks as being elitist, will not give Tony Blair an honorary degree. The chancellor says that Blair has only a "second-class mind." Whether pissing off the PM is the action of a first-class mind remains an open question.

Although that Russian girl's grades remain marked down, she did get that camcorder she asked for. She will now have a permanent record of the day her life's dreams went down the toilet.

In chapter 839 of Hollywood's war against culture and sanity, we come to the planned remake of Alec Guiness's Kind Hearts and Coronets, with Will Smith and Robin Williams.

The Daily Show quoted Bill Gates as saying that whenever something gets too popular, the government tries to take it away--like slaves and Thalidomide, they added.

In 1972 Shrub was suspended from flying for having failed to take his medical. Coincidentally, this was the first year in which his medical would have included a drug test. That is one interpretation. The other is that he simply failed to do it like he failed to do any of the other duties he was supposed to perform in his last year in the National Guard, like show up.

When NATO made the ceasefire agreement with Serbia last year, it deleted a clause from the first draft requiring it to release Albanians held in prisons. 1,300 still remain. If I'm reading this right, last month 143 men who had been arrested at random were sentenced to long terms for the murder of a Serb policeman, which occurred after the arrest of some or all of them.

Check out the Chicago Tribune website for an analysis of all 131 (whoops, 132 since they published this morning) of Shrub's executions. Find out how many lawyers have been disbarred, how many jailhouse informants were used, how many lawyers presented no witnesses during the sentencing phase, including one who didn't know he was allowed to. Find out who "Dr. Death" is. And he is not the forensic scientist temporarily released from a psychiatric ward to testify, or the pathologist who made up autopsies. Thrill to the story of a confession coerced by El Paso police, who had Juarez police break into the home of the suspect's Mexican relatives and threaten to hook their genitals up to generators. (A harmless violation of his rights, according to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeal, which is all Republican and one of whose members made up most of his resume and was caught practicing law without a license in Florida, and all of that was known at time of his election and he was elected anyway and he has since been arrested for ticket-scalping). Very entertaining in the sickest possible way. And how about this for a closing argument: "Ladies and gentlemen," Pena began, "yesterday when I was talking to you all the lights went out. I don't know. Maybe that was a message. Today it rained. Maybe that was a message. Maybe the rain drops are the key issues, but that's what you have to decide today." "The system. Justice. I don't know. But that's what y'all are going to do."

Should be available for a while. Long but well worth it. If anyone can't access it, I'll pass on a copy on request.

Tony Blair is being criticized in embarrassing leaked policy memos for being out of touch, and was heckled last week at the Women's Institute. To prove that he is not out of touch, he is finally going to tackle the fox-hunting issue. According to a report released today, "There is a lack of firm scientific evidence about the effect on the welfare of a fox of being closely pursued, caught and killed above ground by hounds. We are satisfied, nevertheless, that this experience seriously compromises the welfare of the fox."

A twin was born in Britain today, 28 days after the other twin.

In order to place bets, I guess, on which inflated internet company is going to go under next, go to www.fuckedcompany.com. I'm telling you, there is a site for everything.

In another example of democracy at its finest, the other son of deceased President Assad of Syria has put in a claim to be his successor. This will last until someone finds a dictionary with a good definition of "president."

The Supreme Court ruled that a person who was told to wait 8 days with appendicitis cannot sue her HMO because her appendix burst, as this was what HMOs were designed to do, and what Congress intended.

Jehovah's Witnesses will no longer be excommunicated ("defellowshipped") for having blood transfusions, but they're still not supposed to.

Some of Barak's coalition partners are pulling out because their rabbis ordered them to.

Beaver College in Philadelphia is giving in after 147 years of tittering (so to speak), and changing its name, although I haven't heard what to. Clitoris University springs to mind. Well maybe springs isn't the best verb. Evidently some prospective students couldn't get to the college's web site (beaver.edu) because of censorship software.

addendum

The state psychologist in Texas who told the jury that Hispanics are dangerous and should be put to death did the same in other trials. See the Sunday NY Times article on the Texas lawyer who represented more people who have been executed than any other lawyer in the US, in between drinks, and how in at least one case he put up no witnesses, including perfectly good alibi witnesses he had been too busy even to interview, and didn't cross-examine the only state witness.

I've been meaning to say this for two weeks, but it seems that Austria's neo-fascist Freedom Party has always been heavily subsidized by Libya.

That idiot judge in Alabama who insists on posting the Ten Commandments in his court, no doubt in the original Hebrew, is going to be the next chief justice of the Supreme Court there.

The Supreme Court vacated another Texas death sentence, in which the jury was told by the prosecutor, with no objection from the defense lawyer, that Hispanics are inherently dangerous, as is shown by their over-representation in the prison system.

If more proof were needed of the utter contempt politicians feel for the intelligence of the electorate, Congress passed a repeal of inheritance taxes, that fall on the richest 2% of the population, in an election year. I don't know what's worse, that or Dubya's sudden conversion to such popular issues as air pollution and insurance, when his record as governor indicates no such prior interest, meaning that even though he planned to run for president, he didn't feel obligated to do anything, as opposed to making speeches during the election year.

Prince William of Great Britain, Northern Island, Gibraltar and the Falklands, is about to turn 18. Let the media feeding frenzy
begin. Charles has shut the queen out of contact with the prince, in a successful effort to get her to cave and meet Camilla. Philip made a totally gratuitous defense of genetically-modified foods, precisely in order to annoy his son. The dysfunction goes on. Rather surprisingly, I read that Charles was actually present at the birth of William. Typically, Diana thought that he was paying too much attention to the baby, and not enough to her. Does anyone else see a parallel between Diana and Marysleysis, or however you spell it?

Chernobyl is finally to close down. At the employees' farewell party, all beer will have two heads.

The Justice Dept. says that there was no conspiracy in the Martin Luther King assassination. So that's all right then.

The UN is censoring "hate speech" in the Kosovan media.

NY Times headline: Democrats Try to Redefine Gore in Ad Blitz. As a mammal?

An Egyptian court says you can't divorce your wife (I divorce you I divorce you I divorce you) by e-mail.

Further raising the question of just how committed to democracy Japan is, after all those Shintoist statements by the prime minister, it seems that 1/4 of the seats in Parliament were inherited, some in their 3rd generation since the war. And this has been going on for a while. Why didn't I hear of this before?

The media in China are not allowed to use the name of the new Taiwanese president.

The Antiques Roadshow (British version) this week evaluated what turned out to be stolen silverware (worth #20,000).

I haven't looked at it yet, but the site charity.artificial.com evidently rates the panhandling techniques of actual homeless people. The mind boggles.

Clinton offers to extend the Star Wars umbrella over civilized countries, defined as "if you have to ask, you're not."

My cat decided I wasn't eating enough and brought me a bird. The first time that's ever happened, but not from want of trying. Any creature stupid enough to get caught by Turquoise does not deserve to be in the gene pool.

In a man-bites-dog story, an African country, Benin, has apologized to the US for the slave trade. This is actually legitimate, since the Dahomean state (as it was then) based its wealth on raiding parties into the interior, which captured slaves from other states and sold them on. It was also known for its king having a bodyguard composed entirely of women. Topless women, if I'm not very much mistaken.

Compassionate conservatism, Shrub-style: it is compassionate to grant a stay of execution in order to run DNA tests. It is conservative to sweat the guy until 18 minutes before the scheduled execution.

Israel has pulled out of Lebanon. After Kosovo and Chechnya, it has decided that occupying armies are just so '80s; aerial bombardment is the new black. The head of the South Lebanese Army, which took all of 1.3 seconds to disintegrate after its masters left, said that he had thought they were allies and has now realized that Israel only cares about itself. I couldn't stop laughing for five minutes after I read that.

A Texas death-row inmate tried to sell seats to his execution on eBay, until he was caught at it. Oddly enough, no one was buying.

A "black box" has been developed for guns, in the first instance police guns, that will tell when and where it was shot and at what angle.

The Israeli Supreme Court abolishes the law against women reading from the Torah at the Wailing Wall, formerly subject to 6 mos in prison.

A committee of the Arkansas Supreme Court votes to disbar Clinton. I guess it was a bad decision to have slept with all of their wives.

John Gielgud is dead at only 96. Dammit, he was still working, he was too young to die! It'll be interesting to see if the NY Times obit mentions that he was gay. Gielgud was known for gaffes, which may or may not have been. Seated next to the prime minister 50 years ago at a dinner, his opening conversational gambit was, "Where are you living now?" If history records Attlee's answer, I haven't seen it. Similarly, he once asked
Christopher Reeve what he was currently working on. Reeve was at a studio in London, and was wearing a red cape and a blue shirt with a big S on it. According to the Times obit, "If marble could speak, it would have sounded like Gielgud."

And if any of you only remember him from Arthur, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

One of those new regional leaders in Russia was the last member of the KGB to make an arrest for political crimes, in 1988.

Tony Blair's wife Cherie Booth has a baby. For those betting on "Leo," collect at once (the British will bet on anything). It seems that not only was Cherie's father an actor on the British prototype for All in the Family (I like to think playing Meathead, but I've never checked on this), but there were several other actors named Booth in her family tree, one of whom made a bit of a name for himself in 1865.

OK, so I revealed here a month or so back that the racial epithet used by whatever Texas official that was, was "porch monkeys" (which Kevin would really like to know to what that term refers) (that was terrible English, wasn't it?). Anyway, it seems that as a kid, Barbara Bush washed Dubya's mouth out with soap for using some racial epithet. Anyone care to find out which one?

In Britain, an animal rights group attacked a meat factory today, firebombing ten lorries. In non-animal rights circles, we call that a "barbeque."

The ears that wear the crown

Prince Charles was speaking out this week against genetically modified foods. The victim of a botched genetics experiment himself, Charles said "And Monsanto is developing these huge ears of corn. What, what's everyone laughing about?"

13 members of the House voted for increased fuel efficiency standards for cars & SUVs, three hundred and some odd for freezing them, the lop-sidedness of the vote telling you something about how the guardians of our collective interest are no smarter than those acting from self-interest. As to vehicle safety, well, if you could buy a vehicle that increased the likelihood of having an accident in which you killed someone else ten-fold, while reducing the likelihood of death to your own children to zero, you might well consider that to be in your own interests, but the collective interests of society should compel government to stop you doing it. This is why we have a government. Incidentally, when you see the statistics about SUVs hitting smaller cars, you never see stats about what happens when SUVs hit each other--which would be a good start, if you ask me.

Can you tell I was nearly side-swiped yesterday?

Clinton is to forego his plans to address the nation on China trade tomorrow, realizing it would be easier just to bribe members of Congress.

The Sunday Times says that Israel started tapping Clinton's e-mail in 1998. Didn't Ken Starr say something along those lines too?

I mentioned a few days ago that Putin had organized Russia into 7 new regions. He has appointed the heads of those regions, 5 of whom are generals from the Chechen wars or KGB people, at least one famous for his treatment of dissidents. Bad treatment, that is.

Best book title of the day: Speak Clearly Into the Chandelier: Cultural Politics Between Britain and Russia, 1973-2000.

Washington Post headline: "Fire Ruined 5 Historical A-Bomb Buildings".

In Britain, a "Champion for Older Persons" has been named, to advocate whatever for people over 50. He is, of course, 46, which makes him too young, he claims, to know why everyone is now referring to him as Champion the Wonder Horse.

So the IRA finally agrees, not to decommission its arms, but to put them beyond use, subject to inspections. It is the inspections bit that I don't think they've quite thought through. Since they are not giving up their arms, the inspectors must keep the locations secret. Now imagine a black South African, Cyril Ramaphosa, and the former president of Finland wandering around Ireland trying to look inconspicuous.

Vladimir Putin, who we still know very little about and so don't pay enough attention to, has just given his plan to tackle the problem of centrifugal forces. He is dividing the country into 7 regional districts, which precisely overlap with the military districts, with the same headquarters. Not very subtle, really.

The 100th birthday of the Queen Mum in August will be the first royal occasion to sell seats to corporate sponsors. Next they'll be putting Pepsi ads on her oversized hats.

The Pakistani Supreme Court says that last year's coup was legal because the government was corrupt. I therefore feel legally justified in asserting that the current military government is corrupt and that I am now the King of Pakistan.

Los Alamos is on fire. The people of Hiroshima must be laughing their asses off.

A casino in Coachella Valley, wherever that might be (California is all I know, so it's obviously a reservation) has bought a defibrilator.

Chuck Quackenbush, the state's insurance commissioner, had a secret fund of nearly $2 million to fund tv commercials featuring Chuck Quackenbush right before his last election. One said that his department had a billion to return to Californians. He was referring to the assets of 86 failed insurance companies. The filing deadline had expired for 84 of them.

Sierra Leonean rebels are threatening to skin UN hostages alive. And they could do it, too.

Maureen Dowd describes Guliani as a charismatic, drink-the-Kool-Aid kind of leader.

A sumo wrestler is disqualified after his loin cloth falls off. Evidently that's against the rules.

In 1958 the Air Force investigated the possibility, since it was so far behind in the space race, of exploding a nuclear weapon on the moon. On the dark side, with the sun behind it, so that the mushroom cloud (would there be a mushroom cloud in a vacuum? Somehow I doubt it, but the reporter wasn't up on his physics) would be visible from earth. It would also have been a serious plastic surgery job on the Man in the Moon.

Speaking of which, there is an operation to stop blushing. Evidently it's a serious problem for some folks. By the way, I forget what they're calling it, but shyness seems to be the big new psychiatric growth market. You may have seen ads for drugs for this on tv. Anyway, stopping the flow of blood to the cheeks is not as easy as it sounds. It's actually controlled by something or other near the lungs, so this is major abdominal surgery.

A story about someone who collects collective nouns. In case you were wondering, which you weren't: a smuck of jellyfish, a grist of bees, a bale of turtles, a siege of herons.

It's a girl! India has its 1 billionth Indian-type person born today. Indian authorities say they can't imagine how their population keeps growing so rapidly. The girl, whose name I can't remember offhand, but it means faith in Hindi, was born this morning. Her engagement was announced this afternoon.

A town in Cornwall, drawing up a map to hand out to all the tourists, found out that one of its roads was called Cowshit Lane. They are deciding whether to include that on the map.

A long piece in the Friday Washington Post on Texas and the death penalty (hey hey GWB, how many kids did you kill today? [so it doesn't rhyme, shoot me, but not in Texas if you know what's good for you] Why, one, actually). That lawyer who kept falling asleep during trials? 12 of his clients have been executed.

The US Air Force tried to keep secret a report that says that in Kosovo NATO only hit 14 Serb tanks, while claiming 120, 18 armored personnel carriers, not 220, 20 artillery pieces not 450. This won't be a secret to you people, since I said the same thing last June. Newsweek got it this week.

NY Times Headline: Pilot's Rapid Descent Cited in Osprey Crash. That's pretty much the definition of a crash, isn't it?

The US plans to seek the death penalty for the embassy bombings in 1998 in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, although I'm pretty sure neither of those places were in the US. By the way, I wonder how the Sudanese pharmaceutical industry is recovering. The US is never going to admit it was wrong on that one, is it?

Speaking of never admitting you're wrong, Salon has a piece on a probably innocent person Texas is planning to execute next month. He was convicted on a) the fact that he's an asshole in general, b) an eye-witness who the police corrupted by showing a photo alone before they put it in a photo array, c) his alleged fellow-murderers. The fun part of the article is the way the latter kept having to change their testimony, under the direction of the police, when it was simply wrong. That car was proven to
be up on blocks the night of the murder? Well, then it must have been this other car. I said she was screaming but she was found with a gag on her mouth? Um, he must have gagged her after she was dead. And so on.

One detail: the Texas Parole and Pardons Board never actually meets, hold investigations, even has conference calls. They just rubber stamp every execution.

Finally, a report says that cockroaches and other bugs feel pain. The scientists seem to think this will change the way people deal with insects. They are wrong.

San Francisco bans discrimination against fat people, although "sizeism" probably includes people of other sizes and shapes as well. I predict a really tangled lawsuit when a fat person accidentally sits on a midget.

An op-ed piece in the Times notes that while Dubya brags about having ended social promotion, the kids it affects are now in kindergarten. By the way, isn't "social promotion" the perfect term to describe Dubya's whole career to date?

The Zimbabwe attacks on white farmers look like spreading to Kenya.

Had it not been for a sarcastic piece in The Onion, "NPR Listener
Concerned About Sierra Leone," I might have said something here about Sierra Leone, where UN peacekeepers, in another stunning demonstration of competence, today ran out of bullets.

From the table of contents page to the British news section of the London Times:

[26]Impotence 'doctor' is jailed for deception
Potentially dangerous drugs sold to vulnerable clients at inflated
prices

Inflated...prices. Talk about adding insult to injury, huh?

Zimbabwe just imported 21,000 AK-47s for distribution to the police and squatters. This should be a fun election.

The Italian police, living up to their reputation for competence, have failed to capture an escaped prisoner after 46 days. The prison is on an island 1 mile square, and he hasn't left it.

Britain is celebrating a little rock slide in Dover, which means that France is now officially 60 feet further away.

Bumper sticker: Jesus is Coming--Look Busy.

The French Foreign Legion is actively recruiting gays. Make of that what you will.

A nine-year old boy who is the leader of a children's peace group in Colombia goes on tv to call for peace. The next day he is kidnapped. A simple "no" would have sufficed.

At a witches' festival in the Czech Republic, some participants accidentally sort of set themselves on fire, just showing again that witches and bonfires don't go together that well.

Chutzpah of the week award: a woman sends her lover off to pretend to be her husband so that his insurance will cover impotence treatment.

A cute little thing in the Times says that Jesse Helms quietly snuck a provision into an unrelated bill a while back that allows the Senate rather than the president to decide if Russia has inherited the Soviet role in the ABM Treaty, so that at any time the Senate could simply annul it.

In California news with great entertainment value: 1) Willie Brown made a deal with the SF Examiner for editorial support if he let them buy the Chronicle without opposition, proving what we've always thought about the morals of both the Examiner and Willie Brown. 2) The flaming wreck that is the career of Chuck Quackenbush, the former next-Republican governor.

That voodoo that you do so well

I didn't think I'd be returning to this subject so quickly: So New York police ram a plunger up a Haitian's butt, and then the mayor gets prostate cancer. And somewhere in Port au Prince there's a little doll of Rudy with a toothpick shoved up its backside.

Someone was going to make that connection sooner or later, but I thought I'd go that extra step and actually say it out loud.

You can now be gay in Vermont or smoke marijuana in Hawaii. Plan your vacations accordingly.

So whatever happened to Japan's Prime Minister Obuchi, who is on life support except they haven't said a word about his condition in a month? Well, the wife would like to pull the plug, but the ruling party is looking for a badly needed sympathy vote. Look for him to pass into the great beyond just a little bit before the next election.

First I heard of it, but evidently the British had a Jewish Brigade during the Second World War. Est. in 1944, it consisted of Jews from Palestine. After the war ended, they became a death squad, tracking down and executing Germans, while the British turned a blind eye. The Brigade was disbanded in 1946, and they went back to become generals in the Israeli army.

A resort in the Costa del Sol (Spain) is turning off its beach lights between 1 and 2 a.m. so that people can have sex on the beach. Happy hour, they're calling it. So plan your vacations accordingly.

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

Another competition, this one from the New Statesman, modern proverbs:

To err is human, to forgive does not come within the parameters of best management practice.

It's a wise hacker that knows his victim's password.

A problem solved means enemies for life.

He who hesitates causes road rage. [Mine actually; I've altered one that isn't as good]

Let sleeping teenagers lie.

The other man's cappuccino is always more frothy.

A friend in need is an acquaintance.

If at first you don't succeed, reboot.

Better to phone a friend than ask the audience.

A bird in the hand is probably sexual harassment.

It's a long road that has no McDonald's.

A phone is only as mobile as its user.

When the mat's away, the mouse has problems.

The president of the United States was woken up to be told of the raid in Miami. Priorities.

The South Carolina Legislature has voted to stop raising the Confederate flag on the capitol dome. In future, when getting lucky, they will instead put a sock on the capitol building's door knob.

In Britain, a garden was stolen today. Shrubs, cement ornaments, furniture, sundial, pond with 17 fish. No gnomes.

If you want to worry about a six-year old snatched by the authorities, spare a thought for the Panchen Lama, whose 11th birthday today was. He has not been seen in five years, and is being reeducated, imprisoned like the Dauphin Louis XVII, slowly going crazy imprisoned in his own filth, or is already dead.

A lawyer in LA is suing the phone company for listing her under "Reptiles" in the phone book.

Soon, blacks can take a DNA test and find out where in Africa their ancestors were taken from.

Mayor Benito Guiliani called the INS agents who took Elian "storm
troopers." He added, "But Cubans are nothing like Haitians, right? Cause we don't want to insert a plunger up the wrong anus."

Speaking of people confused about their Nazi forebears, the Germans (possibly just the Berlin regional government) have proposed that dangerous dogs be identified by having to wear, and I am not making this up, a yellow star.

Some of the folks in that Miami neighborhood were earning as much as $300 a day renting out parking spaces and so forth to camera crews.

The Supreme Court ruled that a conviction can't be overruled on grounds of inadequate counsel if the defendant has missed the filing deadline at the local level. I'm guessing that the reason they'd miss that deadline is, what, inadequate counsel?

The French dauphin's remains have been DNA checked, and it was indeed him, which means that he was not saved from the revolutionaries at the last minute by the Scarlet Pimpernel. Damn you, television, you have lied to me again!

The Chinese, in one of their increasingly silly attempts to get pandas to mate, are showing them films. Panda porn.

People are now taking sick people to Elian's house so that he can heal them. I say, when we send him back to Cuba, let's make him walk.

Murders in the news today: a guy in an Arizona old age home after a dispute about garden shrub height. The second was only an attempted murder, I now remember. A husband and wife agreed to quit smoking together. He did, she didn't, he got really pissed off and stabbed her in the neck. He went into prison the day after their 31st wedding anniversary, which I'm guessing was a fairly tense affair.

One of those Indian holy men--or is it Indian circus freaks, I can never tell the difference?--bathed in 55 pounds of boiling butter and came out completely unharmed. The Daily Telegraph ran this story under the headline "I Can't Believe It's Not Burning".

Early in the Korean War, the South Koreans executed at least 2,000 political prisoners, and the Americans knew about it, even watched. And successfully kept it secret 50 years.

I don't think I've mentioned this, but the Germans have long had stories that the Americans and British machine-gunned survivors escaping from the Dresden fire-storm. A German historian has disproved this, but the Germans, some of whom claim to remember being shot at, are not convinced.

Janet Reno is said to be looking for the perfect time to transfer custody of Elian. She has a team of experts trying to figure out when he won't be cute any more.