You heard it here first: Jorg Haidar is gay!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moscow has its first Ikea store.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Answer: because they don't care.

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

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

2 New York Magazine competitions

1/17/00, children's books:

Goldilocks Does the Three Bears.

Victoria's Secret Garden

Little Crackhouse on the Prairie

The Little Search Engine That Could

Charlotte's Website

So You're Going to Be Tried as an Adult

See Dick

Horton Hires a Ho

Fun with Old Refrigerators

The Caramel Sutra

Why Little Irving Has No Foreskin

Have You Smelled the Muffin Man?

Alice in Wonderbra

How the Leper Lost his Spots

Fear and Loathing at FAO Schwartz

Look, Mommy, a Drag Queen

My Day with Dad's New Trophy Wife

Noddy Goes Postal

Curious George W. Bush

Timothy Outs the Tooth Fairy

A Donner Family Christmas

The Hardy Boys Go To Amsterdam

Where are Waldo's Underpants?

My Mommy is My Sister (Chinatown for Children)

Stuart's Little (But It's Okay)

A Pokemon Passover

You Might Be Adopted If....

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

2/14/00: one-letter substitutions

You've Got Bail

Torched By an Angel

Love me or lease me

New York, the City that Never Sweeps

Boys will be boss

I'm OK, You're OJ

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

These are the mimes that try men's souls.

That will does not kill us makes us stranger.

A horse divided cannot stand.

The truth shall make you flee

Anything you lay can and will be used against you.

Hostile makeovers

Anna and the King of Spam

PMS Pinafore

[NOTE: More New York Magazine competitions here.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The old Soviet navy dolphins have been sold to Iran.

Super Tuesday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pluralses

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

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

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

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

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

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

A syzygy of Scrabble players.

A clique of online shoppers

A sprout of vegetarians

A shul of gefilte fish

A je ne sais quoi of affectation

A coveye of Quayles

A rush of addicts

A polyglot of parrots

A pac of lobbyists

An extra ration of oxymorons

A purge of supermodels

A curry of cabbies

A prenup of trophy wives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CA election & whatnot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, probably.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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