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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Asisi bans feeding the pigeons.

What on earth is going on in Chechnya?

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dubya referred to the little Cuban kid as Alien Gonzales.

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

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

It's on my fucking birthday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A news update from my vacation period.

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

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

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

A second and third Nigerian state adopt sharia law.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Zealand has the world’s first transexual MP.

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

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

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

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

“Ice Spice” wins the New Zealand election, beating out “Big Spice.”

$50 billion on the Stealth planes, and it can now all be flushed down the toilet, since the Chinese have figured out how to beat it. What the Pentagon planners didn’t think of was the growth in computing power, evidently. The planes may be semi-impervious to radar (as long as they don’t make any sharp turns or open a door to drop a bomb, as I recall) but do make disturbances in ordinary radio and tv waves. These disturbances can be very cheaply monitored, and the pattern figured out through a computer. It’s not only easy, but it’s pretty cheap.

So now that the Iron Curtain is down, a lot of Israeli schools send out parties of students to visit the death camps, which is personally my idea of a waste of a good trip to Europe, but that’s me. The problem is, they’re teenagers. On a field trip. So these kids, from a kibbutz yet, after an afternoon’s entertainment at Treblinka, get back to the hotel and they order up some stippers. This is the latest national scandal in Israel. Incidentally, there were male strippers for the girls and female strippers for the boys, so that famed kibbutzim equality is still going strong.

For any of you now needing to read about a more depressing family than your own: a woman just died in Britain, age 53, who has been in a coma since 1965 following a car crash. Her mother cared for her for 25 years at home.

On tour, the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia (est 1879), not selling that many tickets, had to busk on street corners for food in Swansea (Wales).

New Zealand is having an election where the heads of both major parties are women. It has been dubbed the Xena election.

So is Yeltsin playing sick to get out of signing the unification treaty with Belarus? or to escape responsibility for atrocities in Chechnya? Or is he actually sick? Or drunk? Or in withdrawal from the drugs they used to prop him up at that conference in Turkey?

The Kuwaiti parliament fails to approve votes for women. Iraq has sold Scud missiles to Congo-Kinshasa. Florida to have “Choose Life” license plates.

A letter in the NY Times on the case in Michigan of a kid convicted of a murder committed when he was 11 suggests that if 11-year olds can be tried as adults, they should have a jury of their peers as well.

Yesterday I mentioned a nicotine vaccination that will never see the light of day. Today I read of a study showing that certain types of female infertility are traceable to teenage girls wearing too-tight clothing. Whoever wrote this study must be tracked down and killed before they spread it any further.

Ambulances in Romania have installed taxi meters. They will charge the same per-mile rates as the local taxis, but are not supposed to collect from the unconscious or DOAs.

The London mayoral race gets even more interesting as Lord Jeffrey Archer quits as Tory candidate (and unfortunately returns to his career as novelist) after it comes out that he suborned perjury in a libel case that netted him 500,000 pounds (and he only paid the prostitute 2,000 to leave the country). The Tories, who like the Bourbons never forget and never learn, have nominated another adulterer (at least 5 times that we know of) to replace him.

Amazon.com stops selling Mein Kampf to Germany.

“O Come All Ye Faithful” was evidently meant as a covert coded rallying song for Bonnie Prince Charlie in the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion.

An article in Salon reveals jokes Bush the Elder planned to use against Clinton in the 1992 election to show his ignorance of foreign affairs, being a mere governor and all. Every joke can be used against Shrub, of course.

Someone has invented a vaccine against nicotine. OK, so some scientists will get very rich and this invention will never be heard of again, but its potential is interesting. For existing smokers, it would do nothing to help their nicotine addiction, but would make sure that cigarettes didn’t assuage it. It’s potential is more interesting for children. Vaccinate your 12 year old (it’s an annual vaccine) and make sure he never starts smoking.

Tony Blair’s wife is going to have a baby, the first baby born to a sitting PM in 150 years (that baby being Bertrand Russell’s father). The British media are going wild, including trying to figure out where it was conceived (yesterday they thought Tuscany, today France). It brings up the question, how different would the Clinton presidency have turned out, image-wise, if he had knocked up Hillary in 1993? The last kid born in the White House, a still-born, was born the week of my birth.

An article a couple of day’s ago in the NY Times on Gore’s several-year stint as a newspaper reporter commented that he lost interest in the job after a corrupt city councilman he’d helped set up in a bribery sting was acquitted. According to a friend, “I think it destroyed his feelings about justice”. So Gore went to law school instead.

The future smells like socks / Party like it’s 3111

A name has been put to the author of the Protocols of Zion. Something Russian, you could look it up. The guy had quite an interesting life in the secret societies and secret services of Tsarist Russia, exile and whatnot.

I think this is a follow-up, since I think I remember some time ago mentioning a California woman who got a lottery ticket worth over $1 million, promptly divorced her husband of 25 years without telling him, and got sued by him. The judge just awarded all the money to him.

California will allow homosexual couples to adopt.

This week’s Dave Barry column is about his visit to his son’s dorm room. An enjoyable trip down memory lane, except that it sounds like my apartment. Barry says that it’s ok, because they are not there to do housework, they are there to prepare for the future. Which is going to smell like socks.

Congress accused IRS agents of having a quota system. So it set up an inspector general’s office, which will evidently have more investigations of IRS agents next year than there will be audits. How do we know this? Becuase the inspector general’s office has set up a quota system. Before you laugh too hard at the irony of it all, realize that the Republicans’ castration of the IRS means that it is no longer willing to do almost any audits, and those only of poor people (really), and that many rich people now cheat on their taxes with impunity. By by budget surplus. I guess Forbes will get his flat tax after all, but the old-fashioned way, through individual deceit and government complicity.

Trent Lott killed the new organ donation rules in a flat-out grab by the less-urban states for organs. Unseemly and it will kill people, but changing the system so that the more needy get the organs would also mean killing off the transplant expertise in the smaller states, which wouldn’t be good either. We should look at how the blood supply works to see if that system, which is the free-market version, works. Did you know that, by the way? Blood is siphoned off from donor-rich states like Iowa, by the Red Cross which operates as a rather vicious Microsoft-type monopolist, and sells it to the highest bidder, places like NY City.

This is a very important day, the last day on which all the digits of the date (11/19/1999) are odd numbers, until New Year’s, 3111. Party appropriately (oddly, I guess).

Russia has severely chastised the Czech Republic, whose, I forget, president, foreign minister, whatever, met the foreign minister of the Chechen Republic. Russia says this constitutes interference in its internal affairs. Irony is just lost on the Russians, isn’t it?

In Interview, a Little Help on Chechnya
Friday, November 19, 1999; Page A34
(Washington Post)

Texas Gov. George W. Bush has spent much of this week promoting the foreign policy speech he will deliver today in California, giving numerous interviews to television and print journalists to talk about his worldview.

In a telephone interview with the Associated Press on Tuesday, the Republican presidential front-runner read from a draft of his speech that said he would take action “if the Russian government attacks innocent women and children in Chechnya.”

Asked whether that was now happening, Bush moved the phone away from his mouth and shouted, “They are attacking women and children, aren’t they?”

Answer in hand, he resumed the interview and said, “Condi Rice is shaking her head in agreement.”

Singapore puts a couple in jail for a year for smoking marijuana--in Australia, while they were on vacation.

The Queen’s Speech was today. You can’t get tired of all that truly silly ceremony. I especially like the bit where the Queen’s rep, Black Rod (that’s a person, not Clarence Thomas’s nickname for his Little Justice) has the door to the Commons slammed in his face and has to knock three times before they let him in. The queen uttered a split infinitive, which is Tony Blair’s fault and a sign of declining standards everywhere. But then, a nurse addressing the General Synod of the Church of England told it that the homeless lead “shitty” lives. Incidentally, I have said nothing up to now about the race for mayor of London, but it’s the most entertaining political story around and will go on for months. Go Red Ken!

THE END IS NIGH DEPARTMENT: The new Jane Austen movie has had to have some of the sex scenes cut to give it a PG rating.

Donald Trump has successfully passed his first hurdle on the road to the presidency--learning how to shake hands. In the past he’s always avoided the practice, preferring that people bow to him.

A thing I was reading about types of knowledge that will be useful in the future included a bit by the novelist Julie Burchill, who said “There is a lot of cant from the government about the importance of flexibility and not expecting to have a job for life, but this is yet another way of weakening and disorienting the working class, so that eventually they’ll take any job at any price. You don’t see the likes of Tony and Cherie Blair [substitute the Clintons if you like] ever being flexible; they decided what they wanted at a very early age and went for it. The same is true, I bet, of the little Blairs, all of whom were probably hot-housed from the moment they could walk. Once again it’s one law for the rich and another for the poor.”

So a guy’s dog is missing. He takes out an ad in the paper. The ad says, “Here, boy.”

The NY Times review of the movie The Messenger says that “Don’t shoot The Messenger” would have been sound advice.

For the last few years, as you all know, the US has been deporting people through the use of courts that are given secret evidence the defendants and their lawyers aren’t allowed to see. Some of the documents from one such trial have been released. Well, first, it sounds like even the judge didn’t get to see all the evidence. Some of it was sourced as from a friendly intelligence service, and the man is Egyptian, so it was probably his own government framing him in order to get their hands on him. But the best part is the gov said that if he was released after being held three years, it would improve his credibility among Arabs.

Read Molly Ivins on the crap loaded onto the minimum wage bill.

Read, well maybe the Friday LA Times will do a better job than the Thursday paper of analyzing the newly-released files of the California state legislature’s version of HUAC. If anyone knows how precisely sex education in Chico schools was supposed to be communist-inspired, do drop me a note. Unless they’re thinking of Chico Marx. Probably not as energetic as sex ed in the Harpo school district, much less the Groucho school district, but there you are.

Congress brilliantly halved the money to employ Russian nuclear scientists, and eliminated the money to destroy Russian chemical weapons. What are those idiots thinking?

The stupidest member of Congress, Helen Chenoweth, evidently plans to retire.

Mayor Benito Giuliani today said that “The use of soft money has been turned into an art form by the Clintons.” And if there’s one thing we know, it’s that Giuliani doesn’t like anything soft being turned into art.

Still nothing in the New York Times or elsewhere about the Nato bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. And speaking of lack of follow-up, I was really expecting the news a few weeks ago that 100,000 rape kits were gathering dust without any tests being performed would have produced some sort of reaction by now. Evidently politicians are not anti-rape anymore. Still speaking of lack of follow-up, the pope went to India last week, and was met by a lot of protests by Hindus complaining about forced conversion. This gave us the amusing spectacle of the pope speaking out for religious freedom, well his religious freedom anyway.

That reminds me, I heckled a Jew for Jesus on campus today. Evidently if you turn to Jesus you get the gift of the holy spirit. That just proves that Jews for Jesus aren’t real Jews. Jews could get it for you wholesale, but would never give it away. Anyway, even though this got more coverage in the British papers than the American ones, for obvious reasons, no one bothered to investigate or even ask what the Hindus might have meant by forced conversion.

Hillary was in Israel today campaigning for the Jewish vote in New York. I haven’t seen the New York Times yet (where the hell is that paper, anyway?) but the Washington Post’s report doesn’t even begin to suggest what a cluster fuck this event was. The London Times article was much clearer. She was stony faced while being lectured by Arafat’s wife, among other Palestinians, about Israeli atrocities. She let herself be escorted around occcupied East Jerusalem by the Israelis. She tried to work the crowd at the Wailing Wall, which is evidently a bit of a no no. Her guards and the Israeli guards “desecrated” the women’s section of the Wall, people praying were shoved out of the way, nobody told her that you’re not supposed to turn your back on the wall (like the Queen of England, I guess) (or like Bill Clinton, but it’s just common sense not to turn your back on him).

The London Times has an article about the last British cavalryman alive to have wielded a sword in battle, at the Somme in 1916.

Bradley refuses to take his pop quiz, tisk tisk. Gore is no doubt eager to remind the teacher to give him his pop quiz, but is a little hesitant because he’s not sure if that’s alpha male behaviour or not.

Guatemala is evidently about to elect as president an admitted killer (2 he shot in a bar fight in Mexico) who is also a member of the party of Efrain Rios Montt.

The New York Times says that Clinton was a couple of days away from beginning the ground invasion of Kosovo when Milosevic surrendered.

Tajikistan’s dictator Rakhmanov, a name Dubya surely does not know, was just reelected by an entirely legitimate and above board 96%, in a turnout of 98%.

Epsilon male: London Times headline on the story about Dubya’s failure to put names to world leaders, including the one whose coup he praised: “Bush Has Blank Spot for World Leaders.”

The results of the House of Lords elections are in. Baroness Strange can continue to bring flowers. Lord Onslow (It would be as vainglorious etc) also wins, as does Conrad Russell, a historian, so there, and son of Bertrand Russell. I’m reading a biography of his great-grandfather right now, as it happens.

Oregon rejects a referendum that would have allowed conviction for murder by 11 of 12 members of a jury, so there may be some sanity left in the world after all.

An I told you so: a few weeks back I said the way to embarrass Dubya was not to ask about cocaine but to ask him to name the prime minister of France. A Boston station asked him to name 4 prime ministers. He got one.

Check out the Molly Ivins column in the Star-Telegram about the Colombia war. Again, she says what I said months ago.

Yet another NY Times editorial about the New Isolationism. There isn’t really a new isolationism, in that no one is advocating that the US abandon the international arena. Some are advocating that it abandon its international responsibilities, but that is another matter entirely. What they are saying is that the US won the cold war and can do anything it wants, including forcing other countries to do whatever we want them to, but without any pretense of ideology, or any of the duties that accrue to power. And that is my final word on the New Isolationism.

Monty Python once envisioned elections fought by the Sensible Party, the Slightly Silly Party, and the Very Silly Party. I think we’ve got something like that now. I saw several headlines about the new Argentine president that used the word “boring.” Now about three years back one of the genres that could be spotted in my e-mails was the wacky South American politician story. You couldn’t be elected mayor of Lima or president of Ecuador without getting married inside a lion’s cage and calling yourself El Loco. Now the old election-o-meter has swung back to the boring party. I think this country needs to scrap the existing party system and switch to the Boring Party and the Entertaining Party. Gore versus Ventura. Hell, the only way Gore will ever get elected president is in a massive reaction to four years of rule by the Silly Party. A modest proposal for 4 in the morning. Or 3 in the morning, but I’m entirely in support of the guy in the Czech Republic who’s trying to stop Daylight Savings Time in court. He calls it genocide, I’m not quite sure why, but I know what party he supports.

I understand the website of the Florida Supreme Court has pictures from an execution. Those whacky guys! One execution just got postponed because the guy now thinks he’s Jesus or something. A state legislator offered to build a cross himself.

The Russians finally admit that they knew all along what happened to Hitler, and he’s evidently not in Argentina. They kept the bones, burning and disposing of most of them in the German sewer system in 1970. The skull is still somewhere in KGB files. Is this a perfect Halloween story or what?

So the US & NATO went into Kosovo, killed 1,500 or so civilians through bombing, in order to stop the massive genocide going on. So where are all the bodies? Where are the mass graves? We can find these things from orbit now, so where are they? Well, they’ve turned up some bodies so far, maybe 1,400, and it doesn’t look like there are going to be more than a few thousand.

The newest country in the UN--evidently it slipped in last month without my noticing--is Nauru. Nauru’s economy is evidently no longer entirely dependent on bird shit, since they’ve evidently mined it all, and is now based on laundering Russian mob money.

In 1857, faced with the entry of the British, the Xhosa (of South Africa--Nelson Mandela is one) came up with the brilliant idea, well actually a 15-year old girl had a vision, and killed all of their cattle, 200,000 head, and stopped planting crops. Oddly enough, this resulted in many of them starving to death. Naturally, they blame the British and yesterday sent Prince Charles a bill.

Clinton signs pork-laden DOD budget, saying “I cannot allow our national security needs to be held hostage to this budget battle.” Ah, an arms-for-hostages deal. Come back, Ollie North, all is forgiven.

Pat Buchanan said yesterday “The backsliding toward hyphenated Americanism must end.” Buchanan, a fascist-American, then went on tv and divided blame for Auschwitz between the Nazis and oddly enough the Russian NKVD.

AP article from Franklin, Ohio: “A high school teacher has been reprimanded for offering as a writing assignment the question: “If you had to assassinate one famous person who is alive right now, who would it be and how would you do it?”

NY Times headline, “For Her 52d Birthday, the First Lady Feels Like Raising a Million, and Does”. At the fund-raiser, Mia Farrow read from Hillary’s book It Takes a Village. You cannot make stuff like that up. Nor would you want to.

Fairness and Accuracy in Media reports that the Observer story about the US intentionally bombing the Chinese embassy in Belgrade has still not been picked up by the evening broadcasts of the 3 networks, the NY Times, US Today, etc...

Things to read: Molly Ivins’s analysis of the dangers of the new banking/insurance re-monopolization bill; Jacob Weisberg’s piece in Slate analyzing last Friday’s Republican debates.

Pat Buchanan is not worried about running against The Donald, insisting that the Reform Party nomination is not for sale. Um, right. I forget, who have they nominated in the past?

Obit of the week, Van France, who wrote the Disneyland manual “for teaching Disneyland employees precisely how to smile”. To quote the NY Times: “Among graduates of Mr. France’s Disney University are the comedian Steve Martin and Ronald Ziegler, Richard Nixon’s press secretary.”

Now that we’re seriously entering the business of transplanting hearts and lungs from pigs to humans, Britain will require transplantees to promise not to have children. We should be going further and requiring sterilization; this is too seriously dangerous to fuck around with.

----------------------------------------


A New York magazine competition, calling for brief smart-aleck reviews:

Eyes Wide Shut: And keep them that way.

The Making of the President: No, it’s not what you think.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High: Some assembly required.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Two thumbs off.

Misery: doesn’t love company.

Unfinished Business: Mediocr.

The Stranger: In bookstores today. Or yesterday...

The Dead: You better believe it.

Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: You’ve read the title, now read the book.

Witness: Amish-mash.

Das Kapital: It’s the economy, stupid.

The Prince of Egypt: Passover.

The Last Emperor: Deja fu.

Hamlet: Mundane.

[NOTE: More New York Magazine competitions here.]

follow-up

A few days ago I sent out the annual Turner Prize article, which mentioned a piece of “art” at the Tate Gallery featuring a bed with stains and rumpled sheets and whatnot recalling the four days the artist spent sick on it.

Today, some Chinese performance artists stripped to their underwear and jumped up and down on the bed, having a pillow fight. Everybody’s a critic.

More peers’ campaign statements

Russia is saying the Grozny market they bombed yesterday was an arms market. Right.

More of those 75-word manifestos by peers seeking to be elected to retain their seats in the House of Lords (earlier post here), culled from a couple of papers:

The 13th Earl of Seafield, a Tory Old Etonian, used Latin to argue his case: “Being a small and happy bison farmer with aspirations above his station has not yet been a bar to energetic service of Country and Sovereign through an independent chamber. Si fractum non sit, noli id reficere [If it ain’t bust, don’t mend it.]”

Lord Pender, an old Etonian former Army officer, is admirably succinct and has put forward the shortest manifesto containing one word: “Duty”.

The veteran Liberal Democrat peer, Lord Avebury, sets out his stall as a “full time member, Buddhist, cyclist, Camberwell resident, paterfamilias”.

Earl Alexander of Tunis: ‘By the living God who made me, but I love this country. My father fought for her all his life and I too have worn her colours with pride. If it is given to me to remain in your Lordships’ House I will struggle with all I have to offer.’ [You’re a better hereditary peer than I am, Gunga Din]

Earl Arran: ‘With a sometimes over zealous and triumphalist Executive, a Second Chamber of independence and good sense, of reflection and correction, is so important to the respect for Parliament by the British people. Such lifeblood of independence I will fight to preserve.’

Earl De La Warr: ‘Attendance record poor. Reason - full-time job in City (Director of Corporate Finance Department of a European Investment Bank), not lack of interest.”

Earl Granard: ‘Vote for a conservative counterbalance to the ‘Trendy’ modernising influence of The Lords Spiritual. Is nothing sacred?’

Earl Lauderdale: ‘Chairman European Scrutiny Sub-Committee F (later D) 1974-79 notorious therein for requiring crisp clarity instead of verbose ‘officialese’ in Committee reports.’

Lord Seaford: ‘Being a small and happy bison farmer with aspirations above his station has not yet been a bar to energetic service of Country and Sovereign through an independent chamber.’ [Now, wait, is *he* small and happy or are the bison small and happy?]

Cross-benchers

Viscount Alanbrooke: ‘The THIRD REICH was defeated largely through the strategic planning of Sir Winston Churchill and Field Marshal The Viscount Alanbrooke, CIGS and Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. Alanbrooke was awarded a HEREDITARY peerage in 1946. His massive contribution to the continuance of our freedom can be respected by ensuring that the Honour conferred on him by Monarch and People should be maintained in the exact detail intended for perpetuity.’

Lord Amwell: ‘A working class hereditary peer - rare species. A chartered engineer and the House’s only chartered geologist.’

Baroness Arlington: ‘My determination and resolve has been immeasurably strengthened by the sudden death of my husband who played such an important part in supporting me this year when I took my seat.’

Lord Catto: ‘For the last 40 years since my father died I have considered it morally wrong, purely from accident of birth, to presume to become a member of a legislative body. On the other hand I strongly support a bicameral system with a small number of representative hereditary peers included to maintain and support the monarchy and the great traditions of our country.’ [So what the hey]

Lord Craigmyle: ‘I came to your Lordships’ House in the same spirit as I would have accepted jury duty, or call-up in times of war. Had I wanted to stand for election, I would have tried another place, long ago.’

Labour

Lord Rea: ‘Initially a reluctant peer, I now attend and sing for my supper regularly.’

So has anyone heard of this California state senator Pete Wright who is sponsoring an anti-gay marriage initiative and has a gay son and a dead gay brother, mentioned in tomorrow’s Washington Post? The son is evidently writing op-ed pieces about what a bigot his father is. I’m just guessing that Orange County is involved in this story somewhere.

Russia, still following NATO’s Kosovo playbook, bombs a maternity hospital.

Britain, to make Jiang Zemin at home during his state visit, has been beating up protestors and taking away Tibetan flags. One protestor who probably won’t be beaten up: Prince Charles, who is boycotting the state banquet.

Women MPs in Britain are getting a breastfeeding room. I’ll bet Congress doesn’t have that.

Did you know that nuclear weapons are illegal? Evidently the International Court of Justice ruled that in 1996. Today, a British court let off some women who snuck onto a Trident submarine base and started wrecking the place, on the grounds that the nukes were illegal.

Elizabeth Dole pulls out of the Presidential race, citing lack of money, and calls for the passing of stringent campaign finance reform. I kid, of course. Now the elections will be sadly lacking her message and her issues, which had something to do with being chosen as vice president and being a woman (although she did always look like a man in drag to me).

A report is released listing most of the 23 countries in which the US stored nukes in the ‘50s. What doesn’t seem to have made the American papers is that less than 10 years after the end of World War II Luftwaffe pilots had effective control over nuclear warheads. This ended in 1960, when we figured out how to put The Club on them.

Jesse Helms is holding up the nomination of former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun as ambassador to New Zealand because she opposed the United Daughters of the Confederacy using the Confederate battle flag.

Russia is finally ending its military occupation of Latvia on Thursday. Yeah, it was a surprise to me too.

A Teheran court sentences someone to have his eyes gouged out before he is hanged.

David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, says that the sectarian marches are just good old fashioned fun for the whole family, folk festivals if you will, which one day will be major tourist attractions. I can just see it. The Macy’s Anniversary of King Billy Kicking the Crap Out of the Bloody Papists Day Parade. Just needs the addition of large helium balloons of lovable cartoon characters like Bullwinkle, Snoopy and Ian Paisley.

Lords have mercy

In Britain, the new Liberal Democrat spokesman on women’s issues is a man. He says that this is appropriate since it’s men who cause most of women’s problems. For example, he himself is divorced.

The neighbors of Hugh Hefner are complaining that his parties use up all the parking spaces in the neighborhood.

So how did France get hold of Carlos the Jackal five years ago? It seems they made a deal involving sending military equipment and satellite photos to Sudan, which I need hardly tell you is a terrorist state.

I mentioned a while back that hereditary members of the House of Lords were asked to submit 75-word statements on why they should be elected to the 92 spots allotted for hereditaries on a temporary basis in the reformed House. Some of those statements have been submitted. These are culled from the Times and Telegraph.

Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is campaigning on a platform of muzzling cats in public to prevent the “agonising torture” of mice and little birdies.

Baroness Strange reminded peers that the Lords would be a duller place without her. She brings flowers every day.

The Conservative peers Lord Morris and the Earl of Onslow made it clear that the whole thing was simply in bad taste. “It is hardly for me to attempt to proselytise my candidature; it is a matter for my peers,” Lord Morris said. The Earl of Onslow declared “It would be as vainglorious to proclaim a personal manifesto, as it would be arrogant to list any achievement.”

Viscount Torrington, at 56 a relatively junior member of the Lords, risks allegations of unsportsmanlike conduct by implicitly drawing attention to the age of his rivals. He said: “I believe that I am young enough to continue to contribute with enthusiasm and energy to (the House of Lords’) work.”

Lord Geddes demonstrates a populist touch by adopting the slogan “brains; breadth; brevity”, and Lord Montagu of Beaulieu stresses his knowledge of issues including the New Forest and the historic vehicle movement.

(Note: more campaign statements here.)

Evidently the execution warrant signed for Mumia yesterday has nothing to do with execution, but is intended to harass him by putting him on death watch, and to force him to submit his habeas appeal to federal court earlier than he had intended, to try to force him into a legal error. Cute.

6 billion people. Could everyone scootch over a bit? Thank you. Fortunately, this is not a problem with the United States, which evidently has no population problem, even though every kid here will consume as many resources as your average African village. A modest proposal: cancel next year’s census. Let’s not do reapportionment anymore. India stopped doing that in order to let state governments that are successful in population control not be penalized.

Well the good news about the Pakistani coup is that control of the nuclear button was never in doubt because control is already in the hands of the military. The bad news is that control of the nuclear button is in the hands of the military. Wonder who has it in India?

Supreme Court lets stand a ruling that a defendent is not entitled to a lawyer for a habeas corpus hearing, even if he is semi-retarded and due to be executed for a crime committed when he was 17. He went into court and kept asking, what am I supposed to be saying, what am I supposed to be doing.

Also, a warrant of execution has been signed for Mumia Al-whatsit for December.

Monica Lewinsky’s father is threatening to sue a tv show (I forget which one, and I watched it, too) for referring to oral sex as “getting a Lewinsky.”

Does anyone know anything about Ulysses S Grant expelling Jews from Tennessee during the Civil War?

Kansas (I already did the “If I only had a brain” joke, right?) now deletes the Big Bang from its science curriculum, along with evolution.

Tony Blair reshuffles his Cabinet, putting disgraced friend Peter Mandelson in charge of Northern Island, which is less a rehabilitation (M borrowed some money from a Cabinet colleague to buy a house, big deal) than a purgatory. I checked four British papers to see if any of them would have the nerve to comment on the fact that the man being sent to oversee a sectarian conflict is Jewish. They did not, which makes it the most interesting ommission since the NY Times story last week about France choosing a new model for statues of Marianne, a 21-year old underwear model, and running with it a picture of her from the neck up only. Mandelson is also gay, which should piss off both sides about equally. Since the “peace” deal, both sides have been stepping up their policing activities, beating up and kneecapping and executing and exiling in larger numbers than ever before, while the government pretends nothing is happening.

New Mexico removes creationism from the state curriculum.

There was a bio of Gore’s early years in yesterday’s Wash Post. Who’da guessed it, he was a tattle tale.

The Scottish Catholic Church has been paying 12 and 14 year olds not to have abortions.

Bulgaria abolishes the death penalty.

I know I’m not the only one who can’t see tv news reports of nuclear accidents in Japan without looking in the background for Godzilla.

In H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, Martian invaders were brought down by the common cold; in 1999 a NASA probe to Mars was brought down by the metric system. Coincidence? I think not.

And a big happy b-day to the People’s Republic of China. I especially liked the sight of 100,000 party members chanting the approved slogans, like “Hey hey, ho ho, Long live great Marxist-Leninism, Mao Tsetung Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory!” and, “Hey hey, LBJ, Rely on the working class wholeheartedly!”

Dubya thinks Buchanan should stay in the Republican party. This whole thing is cynical as hell. The Reform Party wants him, mostly, because he might get them the 5% they need to get big federal matching funds next time around; the federal money is the only reason Buchanan would consider the party to begin with. Dubya is willing to overlook the whole Hitler thing for fear of losing votes (asked his own opinions on Hitler, he responded that he would not play the politics of personal destruction [joke from the Daily Show]).

Read the AP report, which can be found in the NY Times but not the Post, on the US massacre of Koreans during the Korean War.

Speaking of war crimes, General Pinochet’s lawyer, who yesterday were pleading for him to be released because of his poor health, stirring up all the sympathy they could, today say that the dead people named in the Spanish indictment don’t count as torture victims because the electric shocks killed them so quickly.

Gary Bauer held a news conference to announce that he was not having an affair with a young campaign worker. His Christian loon aides resigned because, well they don’t say they think he had the affair, just that he spent time alone with a woman, and Christians evidently don’t do that.

Invention of the week: a see-through toaster.

It seems that the new Israeli government is approving settlements even faster than Netanyahu did. Also, Israel is training torturers in an infamous (there’s a word I don’t often use!) prison run by the South Lebanese Army with Israeli funding. They torture people to death there.

Dan Quayle drops out of the race, blames lack of money but oddly does not call for campaign finance reform. Don’t laugh, this is Al Gore 4 or 8 years from now.

Misspelling in a fortune cookie: “The best profit of future is the past.”

At the Labour Party conference today, Tony Blair declared the class war over. Evidently the middle class have won. Outside, a demonstration raged. In favor of fox-hunting. Tally ho!

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.]