NY Times headline: Increasingly Schools Move to Restrict Dodgeball. Well that should make it easier to hit the little kid with glasses and asthma, shouldn't it?

TV movie with the most tv-movieish title I've ever seen: Baby Monitor: Sound of Fear

Energize, Mr Scott

www.chick.com for those hilariously over-the-top Christian comics

The Louisiana Legislature denounces Charles Darwin as a racist.

Bush: But I also made it clear to [Vladimir Putin] that it's important to think beyond the old days of when we had the concept that if we blew each other up, the world would be safe."--Washington, D.C., May 1, 2001

The magic of networking

Funny web-page, features computers should have:
http://www.rita.thegourmet.com/computers.html

A Minneapolis fire chief has been demoted for posing for a photograph with his arm around the charred body of a woman. Captain John Caston has been demoted to firefighter for conduct unbecoming an officer, but will not be stopped from working his way back up the ranks.

The House votes to make harming a fetus a crime, as part of the long-term strategy to re-criminalize abortion. A bunch of Dems voted for it, showing how deft they aren't over this issue,
and how well the R's are playing it, with "partial-birth" abortion and now this. When the R's refused to support upping the penalties on harming a pregnant woman, which would have the same legal effect, the D's should have walked and trumpeted that the R's rejection of the Lofgren measure showed that they were only interested in establishing a separate legal status for feti.

Meanwhile, the Scottish Parliament is planning to decriminalize gay group sex. Plan your vacations accordingly.

And the British military pays for a dozen servicewomen a year to get breast implants. It makes them happier, more contented soldiers.

The Supreme Court ruled that because federal law only protects people from pervasive sexual discrimination in the workplace and not isolated sexual harassment, it doesn't protect people
who complain about the latter from being fired for it. Way to go,
Supes.

It also said that people who don't wear a seat belt or spit on the sidewalk or whatever can be handcuffed, arrested, and made to post a bond substantially bigger than the fine for their infraction. And oh yes, arresting people also means you can make warrantless searches. The Supes didn't think that this might lead to abuses of any sort.

A pleasant thought from the NY Times: If you can't get a song out of your head, it could be the sign that you have a brain aneuryism. Fun thing to do for the next day or so: try to get the theme song to MASH out of your head now that I have told you not to think about it, or to think about the possibility of your imminent demise. Remember: brain aneuryism is painless, it brings on many changes...

(Note to Googlers: the reason you arrived here is that you misspelled your search term, as I did in this post. The American spelling is aneurism, the British spelling is aneurysm.)

Today Israeli troops shot people at the funeral of someone shot by Israeli troops a couple of days ago, if I'm not mistaken at another funeral... Guns don't kill people, funerals kill people.

Bushism of the Day: "It's very important for folks to understand that when there's more trade, there's more commerce."--Quebec City, Canada, April 21, 2001

It'll be fun watching the CIA, Peru and the missionaries trading charges over the next few days. I've been saying for years that the drug wars were becoming Vietnam, or at least El Salvador in the '80s, all over again, and if it takes a couple of dead missionaries to put the brakes on, well, I don't much like missionaries to "primitive people" (in the words of the father of the guy in the plane, himself a missionary) to begin with.

The British have discovered bugs in the walls of the Ministry of Defense. They think it's... the French. French arms companies, to be precise.

Follow-up:

THE Austrian province of Vorarlberg will [31]ban the practice
of blowing up dead cows with explosives on its Alpine meadows,
state television ORF said yesterday.

What is the world coming to:

THE outwardly placid world of Belgian pigeon racing has been shaken by the seizure of substantial quantities of suspected performance-enhancing drugs.


Horrifying medical story of the week: A woman died in Britain a couple of years ago of a heart attack a couple of hours after a surgeon operated on the wrong lung. What just came out is that it was the patient herself, under local anesthesia, who pointed it out to him.

The guy who invented the Zip code just died.

So did the guy who invented the smiley face in the '60s. :)

When I suggested that Bush apologize and then take it back, I didn't think he'd actually do it.

The press's weak grasp of matters espionagic has been ongoing, with none bothering to educate themselves throughout the last week and a half as to what the spy planes were monitoring. Since spy satellites are so much more efficient at most forms of surveillance and sigint, it is clear, as I said before, that the idea is to trigger China's defences (radar, communications, etc) in order to evaluate them. This is why the Chinese are really so pissed off: this form of spying is part of active preparations for warfare.

I haven't given a detailed analysis of the recent recount of the Florida vote, partly because it isn't done yet, and partly because I assume you found decent reports if you wanted to. What's interesting is how often journalists who knew better insisted that it proved that Bush really won the state, when it did no such thing.

The British decennial census is starting, and Star Wars fans are marking down their religion as "Jedi." New Zealanders have already done this, but the count hasn't been finished yet.

Cambridge professors have calculated the kinetic energy, centrifugal force and co-efficient of friction for different kinds of pasta in order to determine scientifically how not to
make a mess.

The team found that the safest method of eating spaghetti is to hold the fork vertically, rather than horizontally, select a few strands and rotate them against the concave part of a spoon which is held parallel to the plate. The fork can then be lifted out and the spaghetti eaten off the spoon.

The laboratory experiments proved that the risk of sauce
splatter is highest as the last 4.3ins of spaghetti are rolled on to the fork: a final flick of the wrist can accelerate the speed of the spaghetti tip to more than nine feet per second, producing enough centrifugal force to make the sauce fly four feet.

The Dutch implementation of mercy killing has received negative comments from Germans. Being Germans, I assume it's not the killing part that they're objecting to...

Most of Russia's big parties have now merged. One party was always good enough in the past...

Harry Secombe has died. Goodbye, Neddy.

Detroit homicide cops have evidently been making a practice of arresting witnesses in order to pressure them into giving information. Consequently, Detroit is responsible for 8% of the nation's arrests in homicide cases, with a below-average clearance rate. William Saletan has an interesting piece in Slate on how both the US and China waved their hardliners at the other (i.e., good cop/bad cop, or perhaps Nixon's Mad Bomber strategy) in attempts to extract concessions. At least Dubya didn't go on tv, put his fingers next to his eyes to stretch out the skin and say "So solly, so solly," so once again he has exceeded expectations.

Do not tell me which symbol should represent me

The Netherlands legalizes euthanasia. Now it's worried about "death tourism."

A cop in Northumbria, UK, received compensation for being exposed to skunk marijuana, whatever that might be, giving him snoring and a whistling in his noise and other such problems, affecting his marital relations.

You have your choice of disgusting news stories today. There are those Siamese twins joined at the brain. There's the singer who is back at her job (or his) after his/her tongue is surgically reconstructed. And there's the Washington Post's story about meat. Evidently beef is sliced off cows that aren't actually
dead yet.

Boy George has become the 1st Republican president to appoint an openly gay man to a post, albeit to head an AIDS office that was declared abolished in February. According to the NY Times, "refused to discuss Mr. Evertz's sexuality or its significance
in either politics or policy, saying that Mr. Bush did not take such concerns into account when making appointments." So now we're supposed to believe that it was a coincidence that a gay man was appointed to the AIDS office. There's a statement that would insult the intelligence of a George Bush.

In the big British news, a greengrocer was convicted of selling bananas by the pound. Expect the "Metric Martyr" to be a major symbol in the next election.

Gov. Gray Davis accuses PG&E of being selfish. Yes, it is. That's what it's supposed to be. That's why profit-making companies should not be monopolies in basic industries.

Words

Bush Lite seems to be caught between two words (not for the first time)-- apology and hostages. He can't bring himself to use either one. The obvious solution is to use both. First give the Chinese whatever apology they want, and when the spies are returned say that of course we said what they wanted, because they were holding hostages, and no statement or promised under such circumstances counts. It'll never happen, of course.

In a piece of stunning naivete, a NY Times editorial Wednesday "trusts" that the US plane didn't violate Chinese air space because it is so sophisticated that it doesn't need to get that close. Of course one of the things such planes are spying on is the defences, radar, response time etc at the border, so spy planes violate sovereign air space all the time.

Today Colin Powell's non-apology apology, which you may have heard on the radio or seen on tv, was immediately (the sentence before) preceded by an attempt to blame the Chinese pilot. I mention this because that part was not played in several broadcasts I heard or saw today. Evidently Chinese pilots aren't as good as Americans. Something about slanty eyes. All right, he didn't say that part, but he was thinking it. He also said that we should all just move on now. He might have waited until the body was recovered.

All of which leaves the question, who thought Powell would be a good secretary of state anyway?

Israel Radio says that Viagra, because of its coating, is not kosher for Passover. Plan your holiday accordingly.

Bill Clinton buys a Cuban cigar in Britain, where it is not illegal. Does this sound at all familiar?

The Supreme Court allows Medicare and Medicaid money to go to Christian Science "clinics." Evidently it's not ok if the law says that the money can go to Christian Scientists, but it is if they write standards so that their clinics, and no others,
qualify.

A judge in Spain rules that Jesus was wrongly convicted, and that there were irregularities in his trial. That's Spanish efficiency for you.

Faith-based presidency

George W. Bush Jr. III today sent a warship to China. So now we're threatening war (that's not a "show of force" as the London Times put it; it is either an actual threat of force, or it is a completely silly totally pointless symbol, except it's not a symbol because it stands for nothing and a symbol is supposed to stand in for something, that's pretty much the definition. We need a word for a signifier without a referant--possibly we could call it a georgewbush) over a spy plane, which I understand actually had the capability of intercepting Chinese phone calls and e-mail.

Milosevic will be tried, if he is tried, by the Yugoslavs and not the International War Crimes Tribunal, for something like corruption rather than, oh, say genocide. Showing impressive chutzpah for a man who had a gun in his mouth just yesterday, he is actually planning to use genocide as his defence. He admitted today having funded the Croatian Serbs and Bosnian Serbs in their little wars. So he didn't steal money for himself, he used it to fund massacres in neighboring countries. So that's all right then.

An Iraqi newspaper owned by Uday Hussein reported today that food rations would be increased. It was an April Fool's joke. Ha ha.

A US spy plane bumps a Chinese jet, forcing it to crash and the spy plane into a forced landing. The US asks China to consider the plane to be sovereign US territory and please not board it.

Favorite London Times opening paragraph this week:

THE Tory MP who provoked fury by warning that immigrants had undermined Britains Anglo-Saxon society admitted yesterday that he owned a house in France, drove a Mercedes and had a business
importing European wine.

You'd think that if anyone was going to be sympathetic this week, it would be the Israeli parents of the 10-month old baby who got shot by a sniper this week. But they were settlers, so you'd be wrong. They decided to hold their own dead baby hostage, saying they would not bury it until the Israeli army retook a hill.

Speaking of occupying the moral high ground, Mayor Benito Guiliani appointed his "decency panel" this week, to vet art in publicly financed museums. He named his divorce lawyer to it.

The Supreme Court will reconsider whether it is ok to execute the profoundly retarded (an oxymoron, surely).

Like us, Jamaica doesn't put insane people on trial, but it does put them in jail until they're sane enough to be tried. And then, sometimes, forget about them completely, like this guy who broke a window in 1972.....

For the first time in history, the Japanese are now on average taller than the Chinese. This is actually a source of concern to the Chinese government, which is encouraging its youth to grow, dammit, grow. Milk-drinking is now compulsory, despite the fact that most Chinese are lactose-intolerant. The youth themselves are going in for that horrifying leg-lengthening surgery, and taking quack growth pills (I'm sure there's also some endangered species that they're eating for the same end, but it's not mentioned in the Telegraph.

Ashcroft broke the ethics rules of the Justice Department by threatening spy Robert Hanssen with the death penalty if he didn't give information.

Blue

So my electricity rates are going to go up by half, give or take, in order to save PG&E & SCE from bankruptcy. Well, it was the least I could do.

Mitch McConnell voted for an amendment to campaign finance reform that he claims is unconstitutional, in order to kill the bill. Given that he has taken an oath to protect the Constitution, I'd say that vote is equivalent to a resignation. We accept, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

I actually watched the Academy Awards, although I hadn't seen most of the movies. Julia Roberts thanked everyone in the world except the person she played. She also forgot to thank her breasts for their out-standing performance. Oh, what, like you all weren't thinking the same thing. Steve Martin said at the beginning that there were almost a billion people watching them, all thinking the same thing: You are all gay. Well, no, I wasn't thinking that, not until Gladiator won Best Picture.

The Bush-era EPA (motto: We're Trying to Think of Something Else for that P to Stand For) has decided that nobody really has to know what the emergency plans are for nearby chemical plants, or what they might be exposed to in event of an accident.

I hadn't realized just how long a wish-list American business
had. Bankruptcy reform, arsenic in the water, no repetitive stress standards, and the list goes on. Who knew that Clinton had actually stopped all this stuff, sort of? Indeed, who knew that American business couldn't do any damn thing it wanted?

Zimbabwe is eliminating dual citizenship. This is the next step in Mugabe's ethnic cleansing campaign.

Prince Charles once gave blood. Write your own joke.

Stalked by a game

Oddly enough, it also comes out this week that Mussolini had a first wife and child no one knew about--including the woman he married bigamously. He had both locked up in asylums, where they died in 1937 and 1942 respectively.

Mississippi's Legislature orders that "In God we Trust" be put up in every classroom, school cafeteria, etc. The ACLU sees no reason to contest this, since no one in a Mississippi school is likely to be able to read it.

While in exile in Siberia, Stalin impregnated a 14-year old. Not a lot to do in those Arctic winters, I guess. But still. And never paid child support, either. Who knew that Stalin might not be a good person?

The Supreme Court allows employers to force employers to give up their right to sue them.

Berlin is having a problem with wild boars. There's a joke there, and I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot Pole.

According to the National Enquirer (so it must be true) (actually on this sort of thing they usually are), Jenna Bush, one of the president's daughters, smokes pot.

Favorite headline in today's Times: Hunt for escaped Filipino cannibal

Website of the week: http://www.smalltime.com/dictator.html.

You pretend to be a dictator or a sit-com character. It asks you a series of questions and then accurately guesses who you are. The amount of work necessary to create something like this is frightening.

Bush ends the Bar Association's role in evaluating prospective judges, observing that there are dozens of professional organizations interested in judicial nominees. So from now on, the Plumbers' Association of America will evaluate judicial nominees.

Bush reverses Clinton's standards for arsenic in the water supply. I'm sorry, but the only place there should be arsenic is in an Agatha Christie novel.

I don't think I mentioned the South Carolina attorney general, running soon for governor, who said that it's ok to kill people breaking into your home. In one case including the a guy who lived there. License to kill. He will *never* prosecute such cases.

The 14th Circuit upholds Texas's anti-sodomy law.

Speaking of which, the Biker from the Village People died this week, and was buried in his biker outfit. Also, Ann Southern, who would like not to be remembered as the title character of My Mother the Car. Also, the, amazingly enough, serial killer who killed Janet Leigh's body double from Psycho, is finally convicted.

And a special hello to those on the list who are up to their asses in snow. It's shorts and sandals weather out here, you'll be pleased to hear.

I got a leaflet in my mailbox today for a "professional Oriental gardener." I'm still not sure if he's a professional gardener or a professional Oriental.

Evidently when Bush promised to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, he was unaware of some important new information he has since learned: it might cost money.

That's not my joke, that's what the White House said.

Clarifying his foreign policy, Bush says that Russia is not an enemy but may be a threat.

Bush, evidently not going after the Nobel Peace Prize that eluded Clinton, has invited Ian Paisley to the White House for St Patrick's Day.

Three Turks were convicted for a ritual murder of a young woman to prevent any more earthquakes like that of August 1999. They received 25-year terms. And 6 months more because they took her handbag. Which I'm guessing they also planned to sacrifice.

Headline from today's NY Times: Fearing Virus, Alabama Quarantines Tractors.

Ariel Sharon's first act as prime minister will be to advocate the re-legalization of torture.

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME: A Florida boy aged 14 is sentenced in Florida to life without parole for killing a 6-year old girl when he was 12, copying wrestling moves learned from tv. When you heard that a kid was sentenced to life, you did automatically assume that he was black, didn't you? Well, you'd be right. And I know this because another kid whose trial shouldn't have been televised was. Nobody seems to have asked Governor The Body for his opinion.

Next to that story on the front page of today's NY Times is the face of another kid, who was at one of those shot-up high schools, appeared on every talk show he could get on (his mother wouldn't allow him to talk to Geraldo or Larry King), and is
suffering from withdrawal of media attention three days later. If
you want to write a think-piece about the relationship between tv & violence, those 2 stories would seem to be related.

There is a Christian group here in California I believe called Snowflakes, whose job is to convince Christians to adopt embryos created for IVF but not used. Nice sense of proportion, guys.

Bush speaks / websites

First, the websites. Well, there's
and there's http://www.cookingbynumbers.com

which I didn't look at myself but which I understand involves your telling the site what stuff is in your refrigerator, and it tells you what you can make. For more of this sort of thing, you might check out http://www.seethru.co.uk,
which is a sort of fake webzine in connection with a BBC drama set in the offices of the webzine, if you follow, but its links are certainly interesting and I've passed some on before. You might also check out their random URL generator, which selects a word at random from a large dictionary, adds dot com to the end and goes there. Well I enjoyed it anyhow. Somewhere on their list of links is one for crappy corporate anthems. Enjoy.

That's how the president speaks

The US military has been clearing Kosovo Albanian guerillas out of their bases, along with our new best friends, the Serbs. Today, they protected the Kosovo-Montenegran border in a military action whose only flaw was that it took place in entirely the
wrong country, thanks to faulty NATO maps.

Isn't it great how the same Republicans who complained about Clinton turning the Lincoln bedroom into a Holiday Inn are equally outspoken about the Navy using its subs as a roller coaster for the rich? Oh, right, they haven't done that. Just as well; if Trent Lott decided to do something principled his fiber-glass toupee could do major damage in the emergency surfacing exercise as he pulled his head out of his ass.

That joke worked better in my head than when I tried to condense it into a single sentence.

Ariel Sharon finally has his government, ranging from alleged peacenik Shimon Peres (who should be ashamed of himself) to people who want to expel all the "Arabs." Finally, a Cabinet that looks like Israel (except for those self-same Arabs, who have been ethnically cleansed from the Cabinet, again).

On yesterday's news, I saw footage from the courtroom of the kid who shot up his school. Why are we seeing the face of an unconvicted minor on tv?

So was Bush downplaying Cheney's latest heart "incident" or just desperate when he kept saying how sure he was that the best thing was for Cheney to return to work immediately, if not sooner? Obviously the sub hasn't been giving him enough homework, as demonstrated in this quote from today's NY Times:

In a brief exchange with reporters after meeting Mr. Kim in the Oval Office, Mr. Bush said: "We're not certain as to whether or not they're keeping all terms of all agreements." But the United States has only one agreement with North Korea -- the 1994 accord that froze North Korea's plutonium processing at a suspected nuclear weapons plant. And at a briefing this afternoon two senior administration officials, asked about the president's statement, said there was no evidence that North Korea is violating its terms.

Later, a White House spokesman said that Mr. Bush was referring to his concern about whether the North would comply with future accords, even though he did not use the future tense. "That's how the president speaks," the official said.

So the Taliban (which is Pushtu for "everyone's a critic") have been firing artillery at ancient statuary. Don't tell Mayor Guiliani.

Speaking of picking on someone your own size, 35 Muslims on haj in Mecca were stampled during the Stoning Satan ceremony. That would be Muslims 0, Satan 35. Go team.

Now if only the giant Buddha would get off his fat ass and kick some tiny Afghani butt of his own.

Speaking of religious loons, the NY Times reported Monday that US AID money to aid victims of El Salvador's earthquake is being funnelled through a little organization called Samaritan's Purse, run by the son of Billy Graham, which forces people to sit through prayer sessions and talks about how Jesus (a Protestant Jesus, yet) loves them before they get any food and shelter. All of which leads to the question, what sort of a name is Samaritan's Purse, anyway? One thing about those God-botherers, they do know how to accessorize.

Speaking of sending a message, the Supreme Court says that the Klan should be allowed to pick up trash (but not white trash) on the highway between St. Louis and the suburbs. Please note that this is not just about free speech within a government program (and picking up garbage next to a highway in a government-sponsored program goes beyond even my expansive views of what should be covered by the 1st Amendment). They had actually been allowed into the program. No, what they wanted was a stretch of highway used by black children in school busing programs.

A few days ago, the Times noted that jury verdicts now decide the results of only 4.3% of federal criminal trials (down from 10.4% in 1988) and 1.5% in federal civil trials. It's not just in the US that lawyers no longer trust juries. In Britain too, government plans to eliminate the option of jury trials for certain crimes has been presented as a cost-saving measure but actually reflects the fact that juries will no longer reliably convict. Government-appointed judges, of course, will.

A few selections from the British press:

Celebrations for Spam’s 60th birthday have been put on hold as a mark of respect for British farmers hit by the foot-and-mouth outbreak.

IT IS not offensive to call the Queen a bitch if the remark is made by a black man, the television standards watchdog has ruled.

Puppets under fire for TV smoking
BY PAUL MCCANN, MEDIA CORRESPONDENT

THE worlds best-known female undercover agent, Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward, has been attacked by health campaigners for setting a poor example to children.

By smoking through her trademark cigarette holder, the string puppet Lady Penelope, a Supermarionation secret agent for International Rescue in the BBC series Thunderbirds, has fallen foul of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation.
[The show began in 1965]

From the Daily Telegraph, which is so much more fun than a real newspaper:

THE first cockney Bible, with Jesus speaking in rhyming slang, will be published in May with the endorsement of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Written by a religious education teacher from the East
End of London, the Bible's account of the feeding of the 5,000 in Chapter VI of the Gospel of John becomes Jesus making a "Jim Skinner" (dinner). It describes him feeding 5,000 "geezers" from five loaves of "Uncle Ned" (bread) and two "Lilian Gish" (fish).

I haven't read the opinion yet, but evidently the Supreme Court exempted states from the Americans with Disabilities Act on grounds of the 11th Amendment, which they clearly haven't read.

On the old cold warriors in the Bush White House, Bruce Cumings of the University of Chicago said of them in `The Nation': "There hasn't been so much pseudogravitas in one room since the last time Henry Kissinger dined alone."

I don't know what it is about cats in this building. This morning a cat was outside my door demanding to be let in. He turns out to belong to the people downstairs, but he spent the whole day either inside my apartment or trying to get in.

I forgot to mention that when Bush justified bombing Iraq, he said that Saddam should live up to his agreement to the no-fly zone. There is no such agreement. The bombing has been solely for the purpose of damaging anti-aircraft facilities which threaten no one other than Americans (and I guess Brits). So I guess our pilots are there to protect themselves. Which they could do just as easily from their couches in the States. Just to make a point that this has nothing to do with anything that happens in Iraq, Saddam's first response to last week's bombing was to assassinate a Kurdish leader.

Hillary Clinton says of her brother's role in brokering pardons, or whatever he was doing, "If he were, you know, Joe Smith from somewhere, who had no connection with me, we wouldn't be standing here, would we?" No, but then Joe Smith wouldn't have been paid $400,000 either, isn't that rather the point? Poor Hillary, it's always just about her, isn't it?

Nigeria Elects Black President

Monday was Presidents' Day. George W. rushed downstairs in his footy pajamas and demanded to know where his presents were.

The American intelligence community is enacting once more its game of Good Traitor/Bad Traitor over Robert Philip Hanssen. I think that double s should have been reason enough to suspect him. Anyway, Hanssen could be executed because he was a traitor to his country by telling Russia the names of two of its citizens who were traitors to their country by working for the US. This is why a robot judge would be a bad idea: the infinite regression loop would make its head explode. Anyway, he was caught with the aid of a couple of the good traitors, that is Russian citizens the US pays to give information about our traitors. I'm going to move on to something else before my own head explodes.

Some more good spies, or at any rate lawyers representing them on behalf of the US government before the Supreme Court, argued that people do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy "in the heat that's on the exterior surface of their walls." "Heat loss is an inevitable feature of heat in a structure," said deputy solicitor general Michael Dreeben, who was 98.5 at the time. "That's why there is an insulation industry."

A New Statesman competition asks for world religions summed up in under 100 words. Only one entry worth reproducing:

Protestantism: You are one on one with God.
Catholicism: You are one on one with the priest.
Buddhism: You are One with The Oneness of All.
Hinduism: You are one with a lot of gods.
Jainism: You are 1 on a scale of 1 to 5.
Judaism: You are the one in the yarmulke.
Scientology: You are the one born every minute.
Islam: You are the one with the AK47.
New Age: You are wonderful.
Satanism: Oooh, you are a one.


"http://theonion.com/onion3706/nigeria_elects_black_pres.html"

I've figured out what's going on with that cat from downstairs. When I was out Thursday, I left food and water outside the door for my cat. When I came home more of it was gone than I though my cat would have eaten, but some of it was still there, so I knew it wasn't racoons. The point is, this cat I hadn't even met yet ate my food, and then the next morning meoued outside my door to
be let in. And today.

Beginning of a Daily Telegraph story:

THE Swiss ringmaster and elephant trainer who has emerged as the latest lover of Princess Stephanie of Monaco yesterday declared that while he was prepared to leave his wife, he would never abandon the circus.

I suppose every country gets the tax system it deserves. The new figures say that audits halved again in 2000 and 44% of them consist of audits of poor people. This protects the rich people's taxes from fraud by the poor people, but why do the rich people even bother to pay taxes? IRS auditors are not scared that they'll lose their jobs if they go after anyone who can fight back.

The latest Clinton scandal is that his half-brother Roger, just arrested for drunk driving, has been investigated for selling pardons (although I presume his own was free). Of course his pardon covers this. Jeez, evidently the man lives in Torrance. Isn't that punishment enough?

Clinton explains his pardon of Marc Rich. It wasn't because of campaign donations to him, it was because of donations to Israel. So that's all right then.

The Dutch royal family deny that Prince Johan Friso is gay.
He is 2nd in line to the throne, but the 1st in line is dating the daughter of a member of the Argentine junta of the 1970s and would probably have to step aside if he married her.

11 countries just took a major step towards implementing
the death penalty. Can you name them?

SF mayor Willie Brown gets a restraining order against an Elvis impersonator.

In more SF news, the city health plan will now cover sex changes. I guess it's when they're mandatory that you've got a problem.

A piece on McNeil-Lehrer a couple of days ago on military spending featured people complaining that the military was still preparing to fight the Cold War against a non-existent enemy. Of course the Navy still hasn't found out that Japan surrendered in 1945.

NY Times headline: “Civilian Says Submarine Took Precautions.”
That, of course, is why they couldn't spot that big ol' trawler: their periscope had a condom over it.

You groan now, but you'll be forwarding it to all your
friends.

Bush finishes off "national security week," which some people would say hadn't gone very well, given that the same military that doesn't notice a fishing boat is supposed to hit a missile with another missile in space, by bombing Baghdad. Donald Rumsfeld on McNeil-Lehrer said that the ABM treaty was ancient history, so what's bombing Baghdad--golden oldies?

So now Bush has killed his first foreign civilians. How long before he catches up with the number of Americans he's caused
to be put to death?

The British papers suggest that the British may also have participated in the bombing of Baghdad, although you'd never know it from the American papers. London Times headline: Bombs Renew the Special Relationship. As long as it was in a good cause.

In a heart-warming story, an 11-year old boy sneaks on to a train to London, travels 150 miles, then tries to see the Queen to ask her to stop the bullying in his school. He is then beaten to death by Beefeaters. OK, maybe not that last part.

Serialized in the the Sunday Times is an excerpt from a book which says that the Holocaust was run off of IBM punch cards.

A solicitor has launched a legal effort to allow solicitors to wear horse-hair wigs and long robes in mourning for Charles II just like the barristers.

Liechtenstein Prince Hans-Adam II is proposing referenda to increase his powers greatly at the expense of parliamentary government. The world's a pretty funny place when the crown prince of Liechtenstein starts getting delusions of grandeur. If they don't all pass, he threatens to move to Vienna and sell his castle to Bill Gates.

So thanks to the arbitrary census rules, Utah just barely
lost a Congressional seat to North Carolina. It seems that overseas federal workers including military are counted, but Mormon missionaries are not. Sound familiar at all? Utah is suing to overturn the count made under rules already in place for a decade. Now?

Bulgaria bars the former king from running for president.

What is it with tape recordings lately? Ukraine
president Kuchma is heard on tape ordering the death of a journalist; Pakistani authorities giving orders to the judge in the trial of the former prime minister; and those Peruvian bribery tapes involving every politician, leaking out one by one by one by one.

So thanks to the arbitrary census rules, Utah just barely
lost a Congressional seat to North Carolina. It seems that overseas federal workers including military are counted, but Mormon missionaries are not. Sound familiar at all? Utah is suing to overturn the count made under rules already in place for a decade. Now?

Bulgaria bars the former king from running for president.

What is it with tape recordings lately? Ukraine
president Kuchma is heard on tape ordering the death of a journalist; Pakistani authorities giving orders to the judge in the trial of the former prime minister; and those Peruvian bribery tapes involving every politician, leaking out one by one by one by one.

As expected, Israel elected the war criminal as prime minister. Oh good. And Barak announces that he is leaving politics. From his performance in this election, I think we all thought he left politics weeks ago. You know your "democracy" is in trouble when the only choice is between two former generals.

Putin will re-merge the bits of the old KGB that Yeltsin
split into separate organizations. Oh good. And he fired that regional governor who faked the heart attack. Evidently he couldn't keep the electricity on in Vladivostok. Hear that Gray Davis! I assume that was your fault that KQED was off the air during the first half hour of Masterpiece Theatre--now this is personal!

The authorities in Turkey are looking askance at a boxing match held last week between two four-year old girls.

The Moscow Times says that Bush's mouth is where words
go to die.

A hunt saboteur in Britain rescues a fox. Which bites him. The hunters are pretty impressed that he was able to pick up the fox. They still think he's an idiot.

I noticed in the New York Times website that one can click on an icon to "personalize your weather." Now does that mean that it will make up a nickname for it--there's a cold front coming in from the north, which you can call Joe--or does it mean you get your own personal weather, like that character in Lil Abner with the rain cloud over his head? Or is it a revenge thing: the rain is back, and this time---it's personal!

The governor of Vladivostok, facing corruption questions,
fakes a heart attack.

2 more Korean War soldiers, South Koreans, escape from
slavery in North Korea. There are some people in the South who think that before further concessions are made to the North, it might at least be persuaded to let go POWs it has held for 50 years.

New Zealand soldiers were used as extras in the filming
of Lord of the Rings, playing hobbits before going on to peacekeeping duties in East Timor. There's a good joke in there somewhere, no doubt.

Headline of the day: "Adoption Couple Risk Jail to Go on Oprah."

Runner-Up: “Boy banned for chicken 'gun'”

AN eight-year-old boy was suspended for three days from a Kentucky school for pointing a chicken drumstick at a teacher and saying "pow, pow, pow".

Teachers at the school said they had "zero tolerance" of guns after two boys in a nearby town shot dead four pupils and a teacher in March 1998. The suspended boy's mother said the punishment was severe. Simon Davis, Los Angeles

South Dakota has had to scrap a law against fondling children's bottoms.

There's something creepy about the way George the Younger talks about "faith-based" as opposed to religious organizations. Is that supposed to fool someone? Anyway, the theory behind his policy (about which very little was said during the election, you'll notice) is that if you give someone a fish, he'll eat for a day, but if you give it to a "faith-based organization," he'll have to sit through a talk about how Jesus loves him if he wants to eat fish. And then it'll taste suspiciously like cat food.

In 1985 Helena Greenwood, a British biochemist who moved
to LA to work on DNA identification, was murdered. Last week, her murderer was finally convicted, by DNA evidence.

For an account of the Florida over-votes, click here.
http://orlandosentinel.com/news/orl-asecvotes012801.story

Just a few more ways to waste your time:

Movie reviews by blind people.

Groin holsters.

www.web.aec.at/nextsex/spermrace Yes, a sperm race.
In Austria (you can click on English language)

Air fresheners in the shape of Jesus on the cross. Now in crucifix-citrus scent.
I didn't make that up, either.

The Museum of Menstruation. Watch where you step.

A website features links to losers on the Net. Categories include hobbyists, trekkies, and rednecks. Of course if you're looking at this particular site on a Friday night with a cat in your lap, you might just find that the site consists solely of a mirror. Oh the irony.

A piece in the Saturday Washington Post analyzes the Florida ballots in some detail. And yes, Gore won.

We know that all US presidents have to have an embarrassing brother. Clinton just pardoned his; Neil Bush as far as I know has been locked in a cellar for some years. It seems that Raisa Gorbachev had one as well, a drunk. First they used the KGB to keep him out of the public eye and scare off all his friends, then they committed him, and never bothered visiting him. And there he stays.

The economic conference at Davos, Switzerland was met
by the usual protests, which were met by the usual water cannon.
But not by the method the Swiss police had intended--spraying protesters with manure. Swiss farmers don't like globalization either, and wouldn't sell them any.

A slap on the ass may be quite continental, but diamonds are a girl's best friend

"President" Bush's first acts in office this week are 1) to reimpose the gag rule on international family planning providers, which he inaccurately describes as ensuring that taxpayers who are opposed to them don't have to pay for abortions, and 2) proposing vouchers so that other taxpayers have to pay for the private schools of the taxpayers that don't want to pay for abortions.

I don't believe it made the American papers, but an Israeli settler who beat an 11-year old Palestinian boy to death was sentenced to 6 mos' community service. And a fine. That'll teach him.

London Times story headlined "Signoras told to turn the other cheek": "ITALIAN feminists were in uproar yesterday after Italy’s highest appeal court ruled that it was not an offence for a man to pat or slap a female colleague on the bottom, provided it amounts to a one-off, fleeting action and carries no sexual connotation."

Remember in the 1980s when PG & E doubled electricity rates so we could pay for the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant? Now they want to triple them because they didn't get to build more nuke plants. There's a fault in that logic somewhere, I just know there is. But then again, "W" wanted a tax cut because the economy was good and now wants a tax cut because the economy is bad. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

PG & E are evil fucks, so I say turn on every appliance you own, so long as they're paying more for electricity than they're allowed to charge. Then laugh maniacally. And pay your bills late; they can't charge late fees. I pay every two months and have for years.

Remember the protests over Diablo Canyon? A group from Santa Cruz went, but having a faulty sense of geography, first drove up here to Mount Diablo.

The rolling blackouts are expected to cripple the California economy, as millions spend hours trying to get their VCRs to stop flashing 12:00 at them.

Several months ago I mentioned a Texas death row prisoner who had been coerced into a confession. The real killer sent Governor Bush a letter several years ago. Which was filed and never sent on to anyone to be checked out. Well, the prisoner was just released, thanks to DNA evidence. The AP story, which ran in the NY Times, failed to mention W's role in the matter.

Oklahoma executes a gay, black, borderline-retarded woman. I believe that's a four-fer.

Palestine executes 2 of its citizens for collaborating with Israel. When did Palestine achieve actual independence, much less independence recognized as such by Israel? Did I miss something?

Indian eunuchs are launching a political party. No I don't know what its name will be.

Republicans say that John Ashcroft is very qualified to be attorney general by virtue of his long record as Missouri attorney general and governor, and US senator. In the next breath, they denounce Democrats who have already declared against him, saying they should ignore his long record as Missouri attorney general and governor, and US senator, and wait to hear what he says in the confirmation hearings. They also say denounce people who charge Ashcroft with bigotry in fighting the confirmation of Ronnie White, and charge them with religious bigotry in fighting his confirmation.

Laurent Kabila, the 450 pound dictator of Congo-Kinshasa (well, that's my guess) was executed this week. Anyone not picturing Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now should immediately rent the movie. He was succeeded by his son, although I doubt that will last terribly long. Interestingly, I can't think of any other case of a hereditary leadership being established in Sub-Saharan Africa since decolonization.

From the London Times: "KEN LIVINGSTONE met New York's feisty right-wing Mayor and the largest newt in North America yesterday. He seemed to be equally delighted by both."

Since then, Red Ken has had water thrown over him by the
head of PETA, in Washington, for having banned the sale of pigeon feed at Trafalgar Square.

A newly elected state legislator in New Hampshire is evidently in favor of shooting cops. This didn't come out in the election campaign. Better still, it sounds like it's because of his support for drugs. New Hampshire, live free or off a pig. He's a Republican, of course.

Last month a NY judge ruled that it is legal to curse at cops. I'd have thought it was mandatory. Giuliani isn't pleased.

Taiwan has banned the eating of dogs.

Putin hired the same guy who wrote the original pro-Stalin lyrics for the national anthem to replace them with religious language. There's a guy who's more ideologically flexible than Clinton. And a perfect personification of the "new" Russia.

OK, *now* it's the freaking millennium. That's one thousand years, not 999. I blame last year's premature celebrations on a miscount by Katherine Harris.

I went to a millennium dinner party last night and told the host there'd be a lot less clean-up if the meals came in the form of a single pill, like they were supposed to do by now.

This is not the future we were promised.

Open the pod bay doors, Hal.