Carded

New York magazine competition, messages for two sides of a business or visiting card.


Michael Corleone. 1. Never ask me about my
2. business card.

Jesus:
1. Cabinets, Bureaus, Desks
2. Water into Wine

Dan Quayle:
1. Please see other side.
2. Please see other side.

Emily Dickinson:
1. I’m nobody.
2. Who are you?

1. Stephen Baldwin
2. No, no, no--_Stephen_.

1. Jack Benny
2. Please return to Jack Benny.

1. A. F. Mobius
2. A. F. Mobius

1. Shirley MacLaine--Actress, Author
2. 100% Recycled Paper

1. Inspector 12
2. Inspected by Inspector 12

Noah Webster:
1. Obverse.
2. Reverse.

1. Philipphilipphilipphilip
2. Glassglassglassglass

1. Lemuel Gulliver
2. No job too big or too small

1. Ishmael
2. Call me.

[NOTE: More New York Magazine competitions here.]

Stupid Hollywood idea of the week: a remake of Barbarella. Drew Barrymore?

So there’s this guy in the part of Poland ceded to Russia in 1940. After the German invasion, he decides, in 1942 to go into hiding in the attic, because it’s scary out there and Germans are killing Ukrainians. The Red Army sweeps in in 1944 and he was thinking about coming out and joining them, but they didn’t give the soldiers leather jackets and he had a cold. “I’ll just wait till spring,” he thought. Germany loses and, well, people who evaded joining the Great Patriotic War were being punished. So long story medium, he’s been living in an attic 57 years and came out because his sister died.

The Daily Telegraph observes that the list of targets Russia has been bombing in Chechnya looks remarkably like the targets NATO bombed in Kosovo. You’ll remember I predicted this a month or two ago.

A truly creepy Hungarian married couple have just had his and hers (or is it hers and his?) sex-change operations.

The Official Monster Raving Loony party in Britain, replaces its late leader Screaming Lord Sutch, with a joint-leadership after the two candidates tied. Alan Hope, mayor of Ashburton, will share the duties with his cat Mandu.

All those East Timorese refugees in West Timor out of the reach of the Australian and Ghurka troops seem to be being held as hostages by the militias. Not good.

Bumper sticker: Earth First. We’ll Ruin the Other Planets Later. Another: Honk if You Inhale.

So an executive at the Disney on-line service used the Internet to pick up under-age girls. I can’t even begin to come up with a joke funny enough to cover that one.

Fascism is on the rise in Austria, if yesterday’s regional election in Vorarlberg is anything to go on. 27.5%. And the German SPD loses its 5th election in a row, Saxony this time, coming in with half the votes as the former communists, who we really need to start calling something better than former communists.

The Sunday NY Times contains the longest list I’ve seen yet of the 50 approved slogans for the 50th anniversary of the communist takeover of China. Also an article about Iceland’s belief in elves. Which are both fun, but the paper still hasn’t found space for the news that Israeli PM Barak wants legislation to re-legalize torture.

Looking through some of my old e-mails, I found that back in May I was complaining about the US training Indonesia in police procedures. I suggested that we were heading towards complicity in the creation of death squads, just like in Central America in the 1980s and South America in the 1970s. I just mention this as preface for the following: I told you so.

In the stupid Hollywood ideas department, Harrison Ford says he’s not too old (58) to do another Indiana Jones movie. The London Times comment was that the next time he finds a valuable ancient relic... And there is talk of reviving Are You Being Served (the horror, the horror), and of reviving Dr. Who--to be directed by the creators of the Blair Witch Project.

New York magazine competition, unusual greeting cards:

So you’re a juror at my brother Vinnie’s trial!

A belated message of forewarning.

Thanks, but do I know you?

Sharing in your profound disappointment with Eyes Wide Shut.

We are so, like, not thinking of you.

I’m so sorry to hear your friend has succeeded.

Welcome back from your alien abduction

Thanks for the alibi.

You’re a girl!

To my husband’s mistress on her 21st birthday.

So you’ve discovered your husband’s computer password.

Congratulations on adopting a highway.

Thank you for the soft money.

Thinking of you as you face damnation.

So you’re the master of your domain!

Here’s wishing you and yours a rapturous apocalypse.

[NOTE: More New York Magazine competitions here.]

The New Statesman’s columnist Suzanne Moore, writing about attempts by British politicians to make themselves liked, says some things that are applicable to American politics. She asks why don’t we just accept that they are ambitious aliens with a very narrow set of interests which makes them good at their job but not necessarily someone we want to be friends with. The things that politicians do in order to be liked are to far outside the realms of normal behaviour that it is very difficult to relate to them as people we might like at all: kissing available babies, accosting strangers in the street, getting engaged for the sake of a career, taking part in sporting events in which they have no interest (see Hillary Clinton in NY).

More pink laundry/bring out your dead/intervention

A British prisoner sues because his shirt turned pink in the wash.

The CBS/Viacom merger, beyond being inherently evil in itself, is another merger whose whole basis is that the government will get out of its way and waive any little anti-trust, media monopoly regulations standing in its way.

Dubya’s entry into the Texas Air National Guard was indeed eased by political intervention. Yeah, yeah, we all knew that, but it seems the intervention came from the (Democratic) speaker of the Texas Lege, who by the way got that job at 26 and was washed up by our age.

My favorite British politician died this week, and by favorite I mean most entertaining. Alan Clark’s obit in Wednesday’s London Times is the most entertaining article I’ve read in some time. The battle to replace him in the safe Tory seat of Kensington & Chelsea will be an interesting one, and possibly the beginning of the end for poor hapless William Jefferson Hague. Michael Portillo is expected to return to Parliament. I think I mentioned a couple of weeks back, or maybe I didn’t, that Blair’s attempt to make Peter Mandelson minister of defence was foundering on the Dark Prince’s homosexuality. Well, it seems that Portillo is now admitting to a few youthful indiscretions along those lines himself. Portillo was Major’s defence minister, when he (as recently as 1996) defended the ban on gays in the military. In 1997, Portillo lost his seat to a Labourite homosexual.

Janet Reno’s decision to appoint John Danforth to investigate Waco just shows that she doesn’t have cable tv, where last week was shown a docudrama of the Clarence Thomas hearings, reminding us of Danforth’s role in that. The scene of him and Thomas praying on a bathroom floor with the Battle Hymn of the Republic, or whatever it was, playing on a tape recorder, was taken from real life.

Why precisely do we need Indonesian permission to send UN troops into East Timor if their illegal occupation was never recognized in the first place?

More British news about pink laundry--evidently it’s just that sort of a news week. A dry cleaner is being sued for turning a tea stain on an expensive silk sheet into a pink tint. The suer is someone who in 1995 won 11 million pounds in the lottery.

Chicago-style politics, Indian-style: it is common practice in India to declare people dead so that you can “inherit” their land. Now the dead not only vote, they have organized a political party, and will oppose the prime minister in his seat at the next general election.

You know how to whistle, don’t you?

NY Times headline: “White House Seekers Wear Faith on Sleeve and Stump”. Stump? Did someone have a thresher accident while campaigning in Iowa?

NY mayor Benito Giuliani is currently serving as a juror in the case of a man whose genitals were scalded. So suddenly this poor schmuck, who maybe didn’t want quite this much publicity for his case, is plastered all over the NY media.

It seems the Germans covered up the fact that aspirin was discovered by a Jew. An obvious joke comes to mind, but I’d best not.

Cliff’s Notes is to do versions of the “For Dummies” books. Civilization has officially ended.

Yet another school has banned Huckleberry Finn: Mark Twain Intermediate in Houston (this is an Internet story, so take it with a grain of salt--if someone knows for a fact that this is real please say so).

From the London Times:

SPANISH schoolchildren on La Gomera in the Canary Islands are to be forced to take classes in the art of whistling.

The island’s government has decided that children will have to learn the whistling language that has been used by Gomeran shepherds for centuries. The language, which is believed to predate Spanish on the island, was developed as a way of communicating across the deep valleys that cut its mountainous terrain.

Children will be expected to learn to carry out conversations between hilltop and hilltop from a distance of up to two miles. Whistling classes will form an obligatory part of primary education and will become voluntary in secondary education.

Experts say that the Gomera silbo, or whistle, is not a language of its own but uses whistling sounds to imitate the syllables of speech. Whistlers use not just the mouth, but also their fingers and hands to vary the tones and increase the distance.

They place their fingers in their mouths to alter the shape and positioning of their tongues. Cupped hands allow the sound to travel further.

The silbo has similarities to the whistle language used by the peoples of the Atlas Mountains in North Africa.

The Gomera whistle was almost lost in the 1960s, when only a handful of shepherds still knew how to communicate with it. Some local historians have claimed that General Franco’s administrators on the island discouraged its use because they did not know what people were saying.

The silbo has since gained great popularity and the island, which has 17,000 inhabitants, has introduced an annual whistling day.

Experts admit, however, that whistling is a somewhat limited way of talking. “You can carry out conversations but there are not many things you can talk about,” Juan Evaristo, a local education director, said.

The California legislature makes it illegal to use a hidden camera to look up women’s skirts.

What the hell is pyrotechnic tear gas anyway?

The King of Buganda gets married, but rescinds the ancient tradition that no one else in the kingdom is allowed to have sex on his wedding night.

The Germans are planning to make prostitution more legal, so that prostitutes will qualify for social benefits. Prostitution is legal in most countries in Europe. In Greece, retirement is mandatory at 55. Of course in Greece, all the prostitutes look like Anthony Quinn.

Mississippi has decided that the Star of David is not a gang symbol and will be allowed in schools. And Christians will presumably continue to be allowed to wear replicas of instruments of torture around their necks, as per usual.

The Venezuelan congress has been to all intents and purposes eliminated today, so the coup is complete.

You can’t go home again

Palo Alto has begun giving $30 tickets to SUVs in parking spaces marked compact.

Russian peacekeepers in Kosovo have been taking lessons from the Germans on how to occupy a country politely. Really. Like, when you search someone’s car, smile at them. As far as I know, they are not showing them Hogan’s Heroes reruns. Next week, the British will teach them not to steal from the car.

Clinton says he has never used cocaine. Um, did anyone ask? There goes the last reasonable explanation for “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Speaking of which, Tony Blair is having a problem replacing the outgoing Defence Minister George Robertson with his old running mate Peter Mandelson, aka the Prince of Darkness. Mandelson is gay, so the armed forces chiefs think it would be inappropriate as long as they’re still banning gays in the lower ranks.

When the House of Lords is reformed, 92 hereditary peers will be allowed to stay on temporarily. They will be elected by their fellow hereditaries, and are supposed to write an essay on Why I Should Be in the House of Lords in 75 words or less. And I am not making that up.

Happy 1 billionth, India!

This week marks one year since the US bombed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. We are still waiting for proof that it had anything to do with bio weapons. All the US can point to is some soil samples, which we always knew were iffy because they were taken by Sudanese enemies of the regime, and because by some reports there isn’t actually any soil anywhere in that industrial region to take soil samples from. Now it turns out that there is no particular reason a bioweapons plant would have been poisoning nearby soil.

Anyone want to start a pool on when Bush has to answer the question on cocaine? And how about where? Larry King? I’m of two minds on this one, since my past record on predicting which scandals were going to be big and which would never be heard from again has been pretty poor. It could be forgotten completely once any real news kills it. Or it could expose the support Dubya has accumulated as being so thin it could blow away, like the cocaine when Woody Allen sneezed at it in Annie Hall (Manhattan?). He’s running on morals which he obviously doesn’t really have, and on a biography because he lacks a resume. Any real candidate would either take this head-on in hopes of getting through it, or talk about actual issues, you know, politics, what campaigns are supposed to be about, except, oh yeah, he has no issues. If reporters wanted to embarrass him, they wouldn’t need to ask him about past cocaine use, but to name the prime minister of France.

Quote of the day: “Life has taught me nothing. Which is as it should be.” Stephen Fry

At some point I mentioned or forwarded something about Indians (Asian Indians) using transvestites to collect debts (pay up or I’ll show you my genitals). Evidently this sort of thing is done by the big companies like Citibank who operate in India and subcontract out their debt-collecting. Since the legal system is for shit, other methods of collection include kidnapping and strong-arm tactics. One Citibank sub-contractor tried to get people to sell a kidney to pay a $750 debt. When that became known they cancelled the contract, only to resume it two years later, suggesting that the company change its name.

The Village Voice says of Pierce Brosnan in the Thomas Crown Affair that he is wooden “but a nice wood, like teak.”

NY mayor Benito Guiliani is now sending out his storm troopers to arrest people without dog licenses.

The CA. Sup Court allows warrantless searches for “community care-taking functions,” in the case in question for entering a home whose door was reported as being ajar [which is evidently illegal now] and spotting drugs. Justice Mosk observes that the fuzz could have performed their community care-taking function by shutting the door.

Singapore, efficient as always, declares all candidates for president but one ineligible and cancels the election.

Dubya says that he has not used drugs in at least 15 years. His handlers say 25, but that is not what he said. He won’t answer questions about drugs, but he would answer this question because it was about background checks. Unfortunately, he was wrong about the requirement of White House background checks, which is not 7 years, but from age 18. Shrub’s incompetent handling of this question is already making some people question his ability to deal with more difficult ones. Also, he said “fuck” in an interview. Sneaking up on him is the possibility of a contempt citation in Formaldegate, in which he gutted the Texas Funeral Service Commission and fired its head when it dared to target a Bush campaign contributor.

Earthquake in Turkey, 2,000 dead. Earthquake in Bolinas, 2 books fell on my head.

I didn’t start out intending that to rhyme.

George Dubya wins a meaningless Iowa poll by buying more straw than anyone else, or however it works, and Lamar Alexander insults the democratic process by resigning the race in response. Alexander, by the way, like fellow loser Dan Quayle, has been unemployed for 6 1/2 years.

The Texas schizo’s execution has been cancelled by the courts, something that Bush didn’t actually have the power to do, given that his appointees on the pardon board voted against it. As Molly Ivins will tell you, the Texas governorship is not like a real governor; he isn’t allowed to do much.

I think Russia is following the American example and planning to win the Dagestan war through air power. The US hit the Chinese embassy, the Russians will probably bomb Tiananmen Square.

In South Korea, today was the day to eat dog. This has been illegal in Korea since shortly before the Seoul Olympics, but that doesn’t stop them. I think I express everyone’s sentiments when I wish all dog-eating Koreans a case of projectile vomiting.

The games coppers play

The head of the German Jewish community dies, his body is shipped to Israel so his grave won’t be desecrated by neo-Nazis. His grave is promptly desecrated by a Jew.

Imelda Marcos has been up to her old tricks and now has many thousands of pairs of shoes again.

Former dictator of Indonesia Suharto, who claims to have only one name, a likely story if you ask me, is sick but is afraid to get medical treatment in a country with, you know, doctors, because of Pinochet being arrested when he went to Britain for medical treatment.

The US has opened a consulate in Ho Chi Minh City on the site of the old embassy from all those 1975 films. The consulate has a sloped roof, so no helicopters can land there.

This should be a national story, but since the Washington Post hasn’t touched it, I’d better pass along that in Monday’s LA Times it was revealed that Stanford University has been using teenaged inmates 14 to 18 in drug experiments, the drug in question being supposed to reduce their violent tendencies. Project Clockwork Orange, or whatever they called it, was obviously illegal, but the Cal Youth Authority claims to have been lied to by Stanford, which is hardly an excuse.

In South Africa, a white woman wins a racial discrimination suit against the state-owned electricity company. Right.

Speaking of racial discrimination, Utah Senator Robert Bennett is in trouble for saying something to the effect that George Dubya is now a shoe-in unless a black woman comes forward with his illegitimate baby. My favorite phrase in the Post story: “Senator Bennett, who is white...” My God, the Republican Senator from Utah is white! However did that happen?!

If you want to be depressed for the rest of the day, read the article on Russian orphanages in the Sunday Washington Post.

Paris has a new restaurant called Gout du Noir, in which all the waiters are blind and the place is itself so dark that one can’t see even anything at all even after an hour. It is for people who want to see what it’s like to be blind and eat crappy food. Or, France being France, who want to see what it’s like to have sex in the middle of a restaurant without being arrested.

In Kosovo, the UN is insisting on implementing the laws imposed on the province by Serbia after the take-over in 1989 rather than reverting to the laws of the autonomous province. It has also given UN soldiers and police the right to hold people for 12 hours just because they feel like it.

Thanks to Georgia’s antiquated divorce law, we’re going to get to hear all about Newt’s mistress, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. Incidentally, David Corn writes that he did indeed try to get that story four years ago but couldn’t get enough of it on the record. Still, it does prove what I suggested a few days ago, that everyone in Washington knew about this including the reporters, but failed to include us in on the secret. I haven’t seen a picture, but whatshername is supposed to look a lot like Hillary. What I really want to know is how people like Newt always seem to have hot and cold running mistresses while I couldn’t get a date for the Millennial New Year with a fistful of E-tickets for the Rapture.

Uzis and floozies

The guy who shot up the Jewish community center was carrying an Uzi. Oh the irony.

Evidently, Gingrich really quit politics because he was himself in the middle of an affair with a (much younger) House staff member. Why didn’t we know this earlier? For example back in 1995 when Vanity Fair mentioned that she and he frequently had breakfast together, which is I guess not that subtle a hint. Reminiscent of the Washington Post, which once wrote about Jennifer Fitzgerald, Bush the Elder’s alleged bit on the side, describing her as having “worked under Mr. Bush in a variety of positions.”

As predicted, Kansas (Official song, from now on: “If I only had a brain”) banned the teaching of evolution from its schools, except for micro-evolution, that is, evolutionary development within species. Alabama has a little sticker on all its books saying that evolution is just a theory and we don’t really know because nobody was there when life first appeared except for Strom Thurmond and he doesn’t remember.

Washington Post headline of the week: “Hate May Have Been Behind Fatal Barracks Beating”

Quote of the week, Marilyn Quayle on George Bush the Younger: “Everything he got, Daddy took care of.” That reminds me of a dirty joke about Quayle that I can’t quite remember. Anybody?

China gets its first condom machines. Previously, condoms were available only to married couples by prescription.

The proposed preamble to the Australian constitution will not after all include the word “mateship”, which is one of those Australian concepts that makes the place so gosh-darned charming. I could give you a lecture on the origins of the idea in World War I, but I think not.

Yesterday India shot down a Pakistani plane over India and/or Pakistan. I say “and/or” because what the American press didn’t quite get yesterday was that the area was disputed, so both sides were correct in their claims.