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From 'TBH Politoons'
Great Site!
Thanks, again, Tim!
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Reader Contribution
'Ridge Won't Say'
From Alvin
Ridge Won't Say (We're In TheDark)
(Sung to "Saturday In The Park" by Chicago)
By Alvin & Bill
MIDILink
(instrumental intro)
Ridge won't say (we're in the dark)
What threat there is on Fourth of July
Ridge won't say (we're in the dark)
What threat there is on Fourth of July
People tired of terror warnings from Mr. Police Czar
Too often he's been wrong
What the hell is Ridge now ranting?
"You are safe, Americans"
But we've been warned by him for so long...
He still can't say...
Ridge won't say (still in the dark)
What threat there is on Fourth of July
Ridge won't say (still in the dark)
What threat there is on Fourth of July
Terror warnings keep on piling from Mr. Police Czar
Not worth much at all
Will Bush help to change the world?
Can he dig it? No, he can't!
The world's eluded Bush for so long...
That's Bush's way
Bush the Divider, spouting his spin of the day
This dumb man... still plans... to have things his own way
Liberties gone, 'cause of our boss!
'Cause of our boss, no?
(instrumental break)
Bush won't say (he's in the dark)
What his plans are, and won't say why
Bush won't say (he's in the dark)
What his plans are, and won't say why
Cronies leaching, without blushing
They're ruining the nation
Hastening our fall (hastening our fall)
Dubya wants it, really wants it...
He may rig it (yes, he can):
Suspend elections during "war time"
Bush's way?
Don't say yeah (no-o-o-o)
Tell him no...
Tell him no...
~~ Alvin
Thanks, again, Alvin
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Soaked some northern whites all night, then set them in the oven with brown sugar, onions & some bacon, and went back to bed.
Ate real good. Also made some potato salad, and some macaroni salad, and incinerated some ribs on the grill, too. Oh, and also
had fresh corn on the cob, and even roasted 3 kinds of peppers, then sauteed with olive oil & garlic, and a little onion, too.
Lots of so-called 'illegal' fireworks in my neighborhood. Lots & lots. And I loved it. Reminded me of when I was a kid, and grown-ups were allowed to
be grown-ups, and kids were kids.
Tonight, Friday, CBS starts the night with '48 Hours', and follows with a 5-year old TV movie, 'Murder, She Wrote: South By Southwest'.
On a rerun Dave (Original Air Date: 6/13/02), the guests are Jodie Foster & Jack Hanna and Animals.
On a rerun Craiggers, the guests are Jon Favreau, Kelly Hu, Five For Fighting.
NBC has a 2-hour 'Dateline' followed by a rerun 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'.
On a rerun Jay, the guests are Jon Stewart, Olympic gold medalist Apolo Anton Ohno, Ryan Adams.
On a rerun Conan, the guests are Bob Costas, Eugene Levy, Billy Bragg.
ABC has a rerun 'America's So-Called Funniest Home Videos', then 2 reruns of 'Whose Line', and then '20/20' with Barbara Walters.
Tonight is the VERY LAST Bill Maher/'Politically Incorrect' scheduled. The listing says 'TBA; TBA; TBA; TBA'.
The WB has reruns of 'Sabrina', 'Maybe It's Me', 'Reba', and 'Raising Dad'.
Faux has the movie 'Blast From The Past'.
UPN has the movie 'Operation Sandman: Warriors In Hell'.
Check local PBS listings for 'NOW With Bill Moyers'.
The 'Twilight Zone' marathon continues on Sci-Fi Channel.
There's a new feature (scroll down) to 'Full Metal Jackass', for the true-life stories from a treatment center. Thanks, Rob.
Anyone have any opinions?
Or reviews?
(See below for addresses)
Would Rather Rock Than Rule
Bono
Irish rock star Bono said on Thursday music was his first love and that he had no interest in becoming a politician despite his work as a rights campaigner.
"Nothing comes close to the feeling of waking up with a melody in your head and having a band like U2 to help you capture it," the singer told Ireland's Hot Press magazine.
"Politicians don't turn me on, politics doesn't turn me on, the way music does. I have a lot more respect for them than I used to. They work a lot harder than I thought...but I don't want to be one."
Touted as a possible Irish presidential candidate, Bono said he had no interest in the job, a largely ceremonial position which usually attracts a wide-range of candidates from outside the political mainstream.
"I don't think I could live with the pay cut or moving to a smaller house," he said.
A participant in fellow Irishman Bob Geldof's 1985 Live Aid famine-relief concert, Bono has set up his own group called DATA (Debt, Aid, Trade for Africa), advocating economic aid, lower
export tariffs and money to fight AIDS.
Renowned for his forthright personality, the 42-year old father of four said he was not getting mellower with age.
"I'm getting angrier and that's what makes me believe that with some smart thinking and simple changes to our lives, we can drastically improve the lives of so many other people."
Bono, whose real name is Paul Hewson, said U2 had been working on a follow-up album to the Grammy-winning "All That You Can't Leave Behind" since the end of their "Elevation" tour in December 2001 .
Great Link
PEARLY GATES
PEARLY GATES - Conservatives and other Fun stuff
Marries Cameraman in New Mexico
Julia Roberts
Oscar-winning actress Julia Roberts began her Fourth of July celebration with fireworks, marrying movie cameraman Daniel Moder on Thursday in a star-studded midnight
ceremony at her sprawling ranch in New Mexico.
"I'm confirming that Julia Roberts has married Daniel Molder, but that's all we're saying for now," Roberts' publicist, Marcy Engleman, told Reuters.
The 34-year-old Roberts, who has been married once before to offbeat country singer Lyle Lovett, fell for the married Moder after meeting him two years ago on the set
of "The Mexican, released last year and co-starring Brad Pitt.
Last month Moder, 33, left his wife of five years -- make-up artist Vera Steinberg -- to be with Roberts.
Engleman said the wedding was attended by "close friends and family."
"Runaway Bride" star Roberts has bolted from several high-profile romances and her love life has been the subject of celebrity gossip reports for over a decade.
Roberts left fellow actor Kiefer Sutherland three days before their planned wedding in 1991 and ran off with Jason Patric. She has also been linked to Dylan
McDermott and Liam Neeson, and last year ended a four-year relationship with actor Benjamin Bratt, who married actress Talisa Soto in April.
Julia Roberts
Indigo Girls, the B-52s and Midnight Oil
Yucca Mountain Protest
The stars came out to protest a plan to store the nation's nuclear waste in Nevada. Not many others did, though.
Six protesters wearing identical T-shirts and carrying signs denouncing the proposed Yucca Mountain storage facility were joined Wednesday by members of the
Indigo Girls, the B-52s and Midnight Oil.
The bands, which were in town for concerts Wednesday and Thursday, came out to urge the U.S. Senate to strike down a plan to store all the nation's nuclear waste
in south-central Nevada. The U.S. House of Representatives approved a similar measure in May.
Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls said she speaks out on these issues in the hope that her star power will reach people who otherwise would not think about the
dangers of nuclear waste transportation and storage.
"It's been astonishing to me that such horrible public policy could be passed without many people knowing about it," Saliers said.
Yucca Mountain Protest
'What Passes For Justice' Continued
Pakistan
A Pakistani teenager (R), allegedly the victim of a gang-rape ordered by tribal village elders, is pictured with Pakistan's Minister for Women's Development Attiya Inayatullah on July 4.
Photo by Asim Tanveer
To read the whole story, see BartCop Entertainment, Wednesday, 3 July (What Passes For Justice - Pakistan)
China Stops Broadcast
BBC World Television
Chinese authorities have stopped transmission of the British Broadcasting Corporation's World Service Television channel following a news item on Sunday night mentioning the
Falun Gong movement, the BBC said on Thursday.
"Our encrypted signal through the Sinosat 1 satellite was stopped by the Chinese authorities on Monday. No official reason has been given, but we understand there was
dissatisfaction with the content of a news bulletin," a BBC spokeswoman said.
"We are in touch with the Chinese authorities trying to clarify the position," she added.
The Sinosat 1 satellite signal is taken by the majority of ex-patriots and piped to the 60,000 rooms in up-market hotels in China.
But the BBC spokeswoman said the signal was still available to viewers in China who could tune in to Panamsat's two, eight and 10.
However, possession of equipment necessary to receive those unencrypted signals is illegal in China.
BBC World Television
Fun Link
Manualism
'Manualism'
Bad Business News Is Good Business
CNBC
Nearly buried in the bad financial news of the past week was the glimmer of hope it offered to struggling CNBC.
On June 26, the day after CNBC's David Faber first reported about WorldCom Inc. inflating earnings by hiding nearly $4 billion in expenses, the cable network had 29 percent
more viewers than on a typical day this year.
After a nearly unrelenting two-year run of bad news following the bursting of the Internet bubble, CNBC will seize on even that small reason for optimism.
The cable network has fallen far from its peak, when it averaged 418,000 viewers during the day in March 2000. For a few months, more people watched CNBC during the day than watched CNN.
The network's ratings fell with the stock market. During the first half of this year, CNBC's average viewership of 232,000 was 23 percent lower than it was the year
earlier, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Brian Williams' one-hour newscast will be moving from MSNBC to CNBC exclusively starting July 15. The first third of Williams' show will be about general news,
with the rest largely concentrating on business, she said.
CNBC
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
Ordered Released
Harrison Attacker
A paranoid schizophrenic who stabbed the former Beatle George Harrison on what he thought was a "mission from God" was conditionally released from a secure hospital Thursday.
A panel of experts said Michael Abram, 35, was fit to be released from the Scott Clinic, a psychiatric facility in Liverpool, northwestern England.
Abram, who has a history of mental illness, told psychiatrists he stabbed Harrison on Dec. 30 1999, because he believed he was possessed by the former Beatle and was on a "mission from God."
Abram was accused of breaking into Harrison's home in Henley-on-Thames, west of London, and stabbing him repeatedly, puncturing a lung. He also was charged with attacking Olivia Harrison,
when she came to her husband's defense.
He was tried for attempted murder but acquitted in November 2000, on the grounds of insanity. A judge ordered him to be detained at a secure hospital "without time restriction."
There was no immediate reaction from Harrison's family.
After Abram's trial, Harrison's son, Dhani, read a statement from the family protesting the "ancient lunatic law" that allows acquittal on mental grounds.
"The prospect of him being released back into society is abhorrent to us," he said.
Harrison Attacker
Snarky Gossip
David Hasselhoff
Hours after going AWOL from the Betty Ford Center, booze-addled "Baywatch" star David Hasselhoff was rushed to the hospital after drinking himself unconscious in his hotel room. The National Enquirer
reports Hasselhoff was taken to the emergency room of Eisenhower Medical Center in Palm Desert, Calif., on June 26, after workers at the Desert Springs Marriott Resort and Spa found him passed out in
his room. Hasselhoff's wife, Pamela, who was back at their home in Encino, flew to Palm Desert to be with him. He was treated for alcohol poisoning, released and returned to the Betty Ford Center. The
Enquirer reports that the hotel's housecleaning staff found that Hasselhoff had guzzled all the booze out of his mini-bar, and his room was littered with bottles. His hospitalization came just days
after PAGE SIX spotted him falling down in front of Tao on East 58th Street after he'd gulped too many vodka tonics and Jaegermeister shots. At the time, his publicist insisted the story was "absolutely
not true."
David Hasselhoff
Favorite Link
Dress 'M Up Dubya
Dress 'M Up Dubya
Accused Statue Attacker Granted Bail
Margaret Thatcher
A man accused of knocking the head off a statue of former British Prime Minister "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher did it because she "endangered the world" a court heard on Thursday. Theater director Paul Kelleher
walked up to the two-ton marble statue in London's Guildhall on Wednesday and decapitated it with a cricket bat and an iron pole, prosecutor John Gilbert said.
"He knew he was going to be arrested," Gilbert added. "This was to ensure he had his day in court to highlight his concern at the state of the world and the future of his two-year-old son."
The statue by sculptor Neil Simmons, insured for 150,000 pounds and set eventually to stand in the House of Commons, was unveiled in May to admiring comments from Thatcher who dominated British politics for
11 years from 1979 with her right-wing policies.
An evidently shaken Kelleher said his sole intention had been to behead Thatcher's statue, and he had no intention of taking any other action.
Margaret Thatcher
May Have Met Gory End
Frozen Sculpture
A sculpture made with the artist's frozen blood and owned by one of Britain's most famous art collectors may have thawed in a gory domestic meltdown.
National press reports gave conflicting accounts Thursday about the fate of "Self" — artist Marc Quinn's cast of his own head in nine pints of his own frozen blood — and London's Saatchi Gallery
firmly withheld any comment.
None of the newspapers seemed quite sure what had happened to the work of art, but The Guardian went so far as to report a rumor that it had been stored in the home freezer of gallery owner Charles
Saatchi, among the frozen peas, and that builders working on the kitchen had unplugged the appliance.
The Independent quoted an unattributed report that the builders were improving the kitchen at Saatchi's home in elegant Eaton Square for close friend Nigella Lawson, the celebrity television cook and
author of the best-selling "How to Be a Domestic Goddess."
It all went wrong when the builders started to remove the old kitchen fittings and turned the freezer off, the report said, adding that a pool of what appeared to be blood was found when they moved
the freezer away from the wall.
In a slightly different take on the story, The Daily Telegraph said the builders had accidentally switched off the "refrigerated unit" where the cast is kept at Saatchi's home. It described the unit
as a "see-through case" mounted on a refrigeration unit.
Frozen Sculpture
BartCop TV!
More 'Sex & The City' Baby News
Cynthia Nixon
The "Sex and the City" cast can start planning another baby shower, as Cynthia Nixon reportedly has joined Sarah Jessica Parker in the family way.
Nixon and longtime boyfriend Daniel Mozes are expecting their second child, according to E! Online.
As high-powered lawyer and impending single mother Miranda Hobbes, Nixon spent last season wearing maternity clothes and a fake belly. This season she will be performing an
opposite illusion, as producers have no plans to retool the plot to fit Nixon's real-life story line.
Cynthia Nixon
Again This Year
The Hot Dog King
Takeru Kobayashi celebrates his 2001 hot dog eating contest win in New York in this file photo.
Town Trying to Save High School
James Dean
Time may be running out to save the historic Indiana high school attended by 1950s icon James Dean.
Residents have discussed converting Fairmount High School into a community center, a new library or apartments for senior citizens.
The town of Fairmount, about 45 miles northeast of Indianapolis, is applying for a $30,000 to $50,000 state grant to fund a feasibility study.
The "Rebel Without A Cause" star, who died in 1955, began his acting career on the auditorium stage in the 1940s. The 100-year-old building is
also on the Historic Landmark Foundation's list of the top 10 most endangered buildings in Indiana.
The school has been vacant since 1986, when it was closed after districts were consolidated.
James Dean
Fun Link
PocketBush
PocketBush
Released From Jail
Jim Brown
Former NFL star Jim Brown was released from jail Wednesday after completing a term for vandalizing his wife's car.
Brown, who received a six-month sentence after he refused to undergo court-ordered counseling and community service, was released more than two months early.
"I served my time — maximum. I did it as a gentleman," Brown said outside Ventura County jail. The 66-year-old former running back, who starred with the Cleveland Browns, was
surrounded by friends, his wife, Monique, and their young son.
In September 1999, a Hollywood Superior Court jury convicted Brown of misdemeanor vandalism, but acquitted him of a more serious misdemeanor charge of making a terrorist threat.
The latter charge stemmed from an allegation that Brown had threatened to kill his wife during an argument at their Hollywood home.
Brown was initially sentenced to a year of domestic violence counseling. He was also ordered to spend 40 days on a work crew cleaning up streets or put in 400 hours of community
service, pay $1,800 in fines and serve three years' probation.
When Brown refused the counseling and community service orders, the judge imposed the jail term. He began his sentence on March 13.
Jim Brown
Sotheby's to Auction
Rediscovered Rubens
Auction house Sotheby's said on Thursday it would sell a long-lost masterpiece by Flemish master Rubens as well as a valuable Rembrandt, in what it called one of its most important sales of Old Master works yet.
Sotheby's had announced earlier this year the rediscovery of The Massacre of the Innocents by Peter Paul Rubens, which it said had long languished in a private collection, misidentified as a work by a minor painter.
The elaborate and gory painting, painted between 1609 and 1611, shows naked children being torn from their mothers, put to the sword and trampled underfoot by soldiers of King Herod seeking to kill the infant Jesus.
It would be sold alongside Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn's 1663 Portrait of a Young Woman, which Sotheby's said had not been seen in public in half a century, and which it hoped to sell for $15-23 million.
Rediscovered Rubens
Spanish Firm Purchases, Will Display
El Greco
A Spanish steel company said on Thursday it had bought a series of paintings by El Greco from an aristocratic family and would display them in the northern city of Oviedo.
The series known as "The Calling" comprises 12 paintings of the Apostles and is the best preserved of three such works by the Spanish Mannerist master.
The company, Aceralia, bought them from the family of Marquis de San Feliz, which owned them since 1905 when they matched a bid from a French collector to stop the paintings leaving Spain.
Aceralia said the paintings would be hung in Oviedo's fine-art museum, in the northern province of Asturias.
Professor Alfonso Perez Sanchez, an El Greco specialist, said the canvases were painted between 1585 and 1590.
Domenikos Theotokopoulos, whose nickname "El Greco" means The Greek in Spanish, was born in Crete and spent much of his career in Toledo, the headquarters of Spain's Catholic Church.
Despite his foreign origins he is counted among Spain's top artists with Francisco de Goya, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali.
El Greco
Jamestown, NY
'Buffalo Bill' Billboard
The crumbling brick facade of a downtown building revealed a long-forgotten secret: a 124-year-old billboard promoting a dramatic appearance by "Buffalo Bill" Cody.
Experts say the 26-by-10-foot billboard, uncovered when workers began removing the wall last month to prevent its collapse, is among the earliest graphic representation of the Wild West legend.
Pasted to wood sheathing behind the bricks was the paper poster of Cody waving his hat to a crowd, announcing "Buffalo Bill in his new theatrical drama ... May Cody" on March 14, 1878.
"We knew we had to act quickly," said Keith Schmitt, acting director of the Chautauqua County Arts Council, which quickly began preservation work on the fragile paper. "Some of the
pieces were already coming away from the wall and blowing away."
Schmitt and volunteers photographed the pieces and collected those that were removable as historians began researching the performance at the Allen Opera House in this city 60 miles south of Buffalo.
William F. Cody, who died in 1917, was a prospector-turned-Pony Express rider and Civil War veteran who later hunted buffalo to feed railroad construction crews. Legend has it he
earned the name "Buffalo Bill" in a daylong shooting match with a hunter named William Comstock, presumably to determine who deserved the title.
Cody became a national folk hero in the pages of the "Buffalo Bill" dime novels of Ned Buntline, who in 1872 persuaded Cody to take to the stage to tell stories of the Wild West.
The Buffalo Bill Combination toured the country for 10 years until 1883, when Cody began the Wild West Show.
'Buffalo Bill' Billboard
Reader Contribution
'Tales From The Treatment Center'
''Full Metal Jackass''
Chapter 1:
Mistakes were made
It was a typical 3-11 shift at the place...all 4 of our security rooms were
full, we had kids on the bench and sitting in chairs in the hall waiting
for rooms or the chance to process with staff and return to thier home
units.
We had a kid from ICU in room three, a very sick puppy who didn't
appreciate all the noise from the others in our care. He began to feed into
the chaos and then turned it on himself, punching the walls and screaming
at the other kids to rise up and rebel against us. He had to be contained.
We gathered up a team from the available staff and set about planning our
intervention. Since I was the senior staff on duty, I would be on the door
(the first one in) my shift mate would make the call from the observation
window, and there were 4 behind me to complete the team. Everyone had a
limb assigned and when the time was right the observer would signal go, the
idea being we would charge into the room and subdue the kid in the "company
approved fashion" and end of situation.
The success of this depended on the staff making the call at the
window...well, as luck would have it, the staff making the call was having
an off night.
He gave me the go sign and I burst through the door,the kid popped out from
behind the door and commenced to punching me in the face....1-2-3-4-5-6
times....this stopped me dead in my tracks and the 4 staff behind me piled
up in the doorway crashing into each other and stomping on my feet.
I grabbed the kid under his armpits and buried my face into his chest and
ran him across the room into the opposite wall as hard as I could, we
bounced off the wall and I pinwheeled, the 2 of us crashed to the floor
with me on top. He had my hair and beard in a deathlock and even though I
bent his pinky back to his wrist he would not let go.
In the blur that followed, I was freed,he ended up face down on the floor
and I was bouncing up and down on his legs making sounds that can only be
described as feral while the senior staff from ICU was yelling at me to
leave the situation.
I left and stumbled to the courtyard, past a group of latency age boys on
their way to the gym...this caused quite a ruckus as they all liked me and
could see I was hurt.
After calming the younger kids I went and saw the nurse, who sent me home
with the recommendation I go to my doctor in the morning.
I left the center and started out for home....I ended up at my parents
house, and when my mother opened the door, I fell into her arms crying like
a baby. (I had not lived at home for 10 years).
The following day I went to the doctor and an xray of my left foot showed
multiple fractures and I had a major concussion....cool...time off I
thought to myself.
I would deal with this kid again in a crisis situation, but that's for
another time.
Next week: Sparky gets a letter.
*These are true accounts of 14 years of work in residential treatment
center....sometimes harrowing, sometimes heartwarming...presented to
enlighten you to the human condition, as much as to tell my story.....and
maybe understand how I ended up the way I am.
~~ Rob
Turtopia - Turtle rescue, rehab and rehoming
Still Seeking Volunteers
'The Osbournes'
Freshly updated - 'The Osbournes' ~ Page 2 !
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 1
C'mon....send your thoughts, your impressions, your views, your favorite quotes...
Scroll down for lots of addys to pick from (or 'from which to pick', for the truly anal retentive).
