'TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
Reader Comment
Re: Smoke in the Water
Hello,
I have a little place on the Mar de Cortez side of Baja, Ca. a few miles north of Cabo San Lucas. This great sea provides the locals with a substantial supply of Mexican "mota", by the kilo--nay, by the bale--with some frequency. Small planes drop their contraband into the sea for their smuggling buddies to pick up. Invariably, some bales burst open or get lost in the churn. That's when every panga south of La Paz goes fishing for pot. The catch? K i l os of pressed herb all wrapped up in neat little packages. The fishermen all get a bit of free smoke, and most supplement their rather limited income by selling the surplus. Sometimes water seeps in, but the heart of the kilo is always fresh and dry.
The Federales don't like this sytem of distribution--they don't get a cut. So they run around like a coked-up version of the Keystone Cops, tipping off anyone who didn't already know about the bountiful harvest from this lovliest of providers. Now everyone is waiting for the day they find the great white--powder in kilos--floating and dancing on the waves.
An aside: You get busted for small amounts of pot or coke in most places in Baja, you pay a "mordida" right there on the spot, and that's the end of that. Whereas in the Home of the freedom-loving brave,. you pay now, and you pay later, and society pays to keep you in detention, and you got a felony attached to your name in many freedom-loving and drug-hating states.
Bye
mf
Thanks, mf! Muy bien.
He's Been Busy!
The Worried Shrimp
Reader Reminder
from Sharon
Lots of great Bushflash animations w/music, including "Idiot Son of an Asshole".
And "Top Gun" featuring the Eric Clapton version of "Cocaine" while reviewing Shrub's (lack of military)service record.
Selected Sunday Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Less June Gloom, but still a nice day.
Earlier, the power dipped & then surged - took down my computer (losing what was in the editor), the 'Dish'™ and all the digital clocks. Happened again about 4 minutes later (not that I was resetting clocks at that point).
Baked some cookies - basic chocolate chip, but with semi-sweet & milk chocolate chips and pecans.
Today is Jim Hilton's birthday. Saw my very first gold & platinum records hanging on a wall in his house, long, long ago. While that may make me feel old, he'll always be older. : )
Tonight, Sunday, CBS opens the night as usual with '60 Minutes', followed by a RERUN 'Becker', then the
Series Premiere of 'Charlie Lawrence' (with Nathan Lane), and then a RERUN made-for-tv movie, 'Follow The Stars Home'.
NBC has the U.S. Open overlapping into primetime, so expect an hour of local filler on the west coast, followed by 'Dateline', then a RERUN 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent',
followed by a FRESH 'Crime & Punishment'.
ABC starts the evening with the movie 'Mail To The Chief', followed by a RERUN 'Alias', then a RERUN 'The Practice'.
The WB offers the weekly RERUN 'Gilmore Girls', followed by a RERUN 'Charmed', and then another RERUN 'Charmed'.
Faux has a FRESH 'Futurama', followed by a RERUN 'King Of The Hill', then a RERUN 'Simpsons', followed by
another RERUN 'King Of The Hill', then a RERUN 'Malcolm'< and finally, a RERUN 'Oliver Beene'.
UPN offers a RERUN 'Buffy', followed by the weeky RERUN 'Enterprise', and then 'Stargate SG-1'.
A&E has 'Columbo', then 'Biography' (Michael Douglas), followed by the movie 'Fatal Attraction'.
AMC has the movie 'Young Guns', followed by the movie 'High Plains Drifter', and then the movie 'Joe Kidd'.
BBC has 'Ground Force' - Nantwich (7:00 pm), 'Ground Force' - Yorkshire (7:30 pm),
'Faking It' - Alex the Animal (8:00 pm), 'Manchild' - Episode 1 (9:00 pm),
'The Office' - Episode 2 (9:40 pm), 'Coupling' - My Dinner in Hell (10:20 pm),
'Faking It' - Alex the Animal (11:00 pm), 'Manchild' - Episode 1 (12:00 am), and
'The Office' - Episode 2 (12:40 am). (ALL TIMES ET)
Bravo has Michael Palin's 'Around The World In 80 Days', followed by 'Inside The Actor's Studio' (Meryl Streep), and then the movie 'The House Of The Spirits'.
History offers 'Dead Reckoning', followed by 'Godfathers'.
SciFi has 'Firestarted: Rekindled', back-to-back.
TCM offers the movie 'The Courtship Of Eddie's Father', followed by the silent film 'The Crowd'.
Anyone have any opinions?
Or reviews?
(See below for addresses)
Co-Star to Deliver Eulogy
Brock Peters
Hollywood will pay its last respects next week to film great Gregory Peck at a public memorial service led by a tribute from the actor who played the wrongly accused black man defended by white lawyer Atticus Finch in Peck's most famous film role.
Brock Peters, who co-starred in "To Kill a Mockingbird" and remained close friends with Peck for four decades, will deliver Peck's eulogy at a mass set for 2 p.m. (5 p.m. EDT) Monday at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels in downtown Los Angeles, Peck's spokesman said on Friday.
In "To Kill a Mockingbird," Peters, now 75, played the hapless Tom Robinson, wrongly accused of raping a white woman in a small Depression-era Southern town.
The 1962 film, based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel of the same name, earned Peck his only Oscar as best actor for his role as the principled lawyer who stands by Robinson despite the foregone conclusion of a guilty verdict by an all-white jury. The American Film Institute recently named the character of Atticus Finch as the greatest hero in movie history.
Peters, who made his film debut in 1954's "Carmen Jones," has appeared in dozens of theater, film and TV productions over the years, including the 1996 film "Ghosts of Mississippi." He earned a Tony nomination for a lead role in Broadway's "Lost in the Stars."
Brock Peters
The Information One-Stop
Moose & Squirrel
Allegation Says Probation Violated
Nick Nolte
A judge told actor Nick Nolte there was an allegation he violated his probation in a driving-under-the-influence case but that more investigation was needed.
The judge, who noted that progress reports "were all positive," revealed no details of the allegation.
The 62-year-old actor, who said nothing during the appearance Friday, told reporters on the way into the courtroom: "I haven't been drinking. Nothing, nothing."
The TV program "Celebrity Justice" reported that an anonymous tipster told the court Nolte was seen intoxicated and buying alcohol from a San Francisco-area liquor store and then driving away.
Nick Nolte
The USS Constitution 'Old Ironsides' fires a 21-gun salute to the nation, Saturday, June 14, 2003, off Castle Island in South Boston. The USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world, conducted a turnaround cruise in honor of Flag Day, Bunker Hill Day and Nahant's 150th anniversary.
Photo by Lisa Poole
Naked Man Scares Shark To Eeath
Guy Venables
A British comedian could face criminal charges over the death of a "sensitive" shark after he jumped into a tank at an aquarium in the nude, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Friday.
The 12-year old smooth hound shark -- which measured three feet (0.91 meters) -- died suddenly two days after Guy Venables jumped into its tank as a publicity stunt at the Brighton Sea Life Centre, southern England.
"This variety of shark is susceptible to stress. We are very concerned he died as a result of seeing Mr Venables jumping into the tank," Sea Life Centre's Lisa Handscomb told the newspaper.
"The shark is being examined by our biological services team and if it is found that he died from stress, we will prosecute Mr Venables for criminal damage."
Guy Venables
Thanks, Marian!
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
Extends Tour
Fleetwood Mac
The success of Fleetwood Mac's recent album Say You Will and the demand for tickets to the band's performances has led to the extension of the group's current North American tour.
Promoters have already begun lining up a second leg of the tour and will announce the exact dates and locations of the performances within the next few days. Also, Fleetwood Mac will release "Say You Will" as the follow-up to their highly successful "Peacekeeper." The song, written by Stevie Nicks, tells the story of a failed romance.
Fleetwood Mac
A Cuban boy holds a picture of the late guerrilla leader Ernesto 'Che' Guevara during a political rally in Santa Clara, Cuba, June 14, 2003, where Guevara led the main battle for the Cuban revolution in 1959. The Argentine-born Guevara would have turned 75 today and thousands of people gathered in his honor.
Photo by Claudia Daut
New Home at Smithsonian
Concorde
After 30 years of flying passengers at twice the speed of sound, the Concorde is joining the Wright flyer, Charles Lindbergh's "Spirit of St. Louis," and other aviation treasures at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
An Air France Concorde roared into Dulles airport in suburban Virginia on Thursday and headed for its new home at the museum's companion facility adjacent to the airport. The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center opens in December.
The French airline officially retired its Concorde fleet in May, while British Airways -- the only other airline that offers supersonic flights -- will end its service in October.
Concorde
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
Simon & Schuster Sign Senator for Book
John Edwards
Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is a multimillionaire with a blind trust worth $5 million to $25 million and a book deal with the same publisher who put out Hillary Rodham Clinton's memoir.
But the North Carolina senator won't be making the kind of profits on his book that the former first lady and New York senator got in her book deal.
All earnings from Edwards' book, which will focus on his two decades as a trial lawyer, will go to an education foundation he set up after his son, Wade, died in a car accident in 1996, said Edwards' spokesman Mike Briggs.
The foundation provides learning labs and after-school computers for students in Raleigh, N.C., and Goldsboro, N.C.
John Edwards
Visitors pose for pictures in the wheel wells on Bigfoot 5, billed as the worlds biggest pickup truck, on Friday, June 13, 2003 at Ford World Headquarters in Dearborn, Mich., during Ford's 100 birthday celebration. The four-day celebration ends on Sunday, June 15.
Photo by Paul Warner
Misheard Lyrics
Mondegreens
Mark Raboo speaks of the moment when he wished the floor had opened and swallowed him, and all because of some misheard lyrics.
The 24-year-old was jamming with a rock band when a guitarist launched into the opening chords of The Who classic "I Can't Explain," and he joined in on vocals.
"The real lyrics were 'A certain kind, can't explain'," says Raboo.
"But I misheard them as 'Been circumsized, can't explain.' The laughter ended that cover pretty quickly..."
For Lisa -- her last name understandably remains under wraps -- public death by ridicule occurred when she took the microphone at a karaoke party to celebrate her 20th birthday.
Her nemesis, in front of 250 guests, was Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing."
The real lyrics ("Darling, you're so great/I can't wait for you to operate") had always been understood by Lisa to be "Darling, you're so great/I can't wait for you to ovulate".
"Hilarity ensued," Lisa recalls bleakly.
Mark and Lisa are casualties of something called a mondegreen: when you mishear a lyric in a song and even if the words seem a bit daft or total nonsense, they simply stay in your head and you always sing them that way.
Until now, mondegreens were obscure. They were a closet of private shame and humiliation that few wished to open up to the world.
But the arena of Internet, with its mixture of openness and selective privacy, has changed all that.
Mondegreens are now a tribal phenomenon, breeding numerous collectors' sites on the Internet where victims, including Mark and Lisa, register their self-mangled versions of pop lyrics and compare them, sometimes with dismay, to what the true lyrics were.
There is even a popular book, "'Scuse Me, While I Kiss This Guy" (named after a widely-misheard line in the Jimi Hendrix song "Purple Haze" -- "'Scuse me, while I kiss the sky").
Remember the opening line to David Bowie's "Space Oddity"? Could it really have been "Clown control to Mao Tse-tung"?
What about that raw song by punk group The Clash, "Rock the Casbah," misheard by some sad individual as "Rock the Catbox"? And The Eurythmics' "Sweet dreams are made of cheese"? Or that memorable line in the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," when "The girl with colitis goes by"?
Then there is that Bob Dylan protest song with the refrain, "The ants are our friends/They're blowin' in the wind," and the Cuban song "Guantanamera," which some mondegreen victim, presumably not a Spanish speaker, construed as "One-ton tomato."
Spare a thought for the unfortunate who misheard a line from Irene Cara's "Flashdance" ("Take your passion and make it happen") and spent much of his life singing it as "Take your pants down and make it happen."
Why are they called "mondegreens"?
The term was invented in 1954 by a writer, Sylvia Wright, who described how she had misheard part of a Scottish ballad, "The Bonny Earl of Murray."
"They hae slay the Earl of Murray/And Lady Mondegreen," was how Wright interpreted a stanza.
For years, Wright mused about the enigmatic Lady Mondegreen who had died so tragically with her liege.
Only later, much later, did she discover that the villains had slain the Earl of Murray -- and laid him on the green.
Mondegreens
In Memory
Hinda Kibort
EDINA, Minn. - Hinda Kibort, a Holocaust survivor who testified against a Republican lawmaker who questioned whether homosexuals were persecuted by the Nazis, died Thursday at a hospital after suffering a heart attack a day earlier. She was 83.
Born in Lithuania, Kibort was in German-run labor and concentration camps from 1941 to 1945.
She moved to the Twin Cities in 1951 and along with her late husband, Leo, spoke about the Holocaust for more than 30 years. One of her last appearances was in April, before the state House Ethics Committee, which was deciding whether to censure Rep. Arlon Lindner, R-Corcoran, for comments suggesting that Nazi persecution of gays and lesbians has been exaggerated.
Kibort testified about seeing gay men wearing pink triangles in a concentration camp where her mother was killed. When asked about Lindner's comments, she said, "If he denies a part of what happened, he denies the Holocaust." The committee deadlocked.
Hinda Kibort
In Memory
Lucile Bluford
Lucile Bluford, editor and publisher of The Kansas City Call and a champion of the civil rights movement, died Friday after a brief illness. She was 91.
Bluford joined The Call as a reporter in 1932 after graduating from the University of Kansas. She took over as publisher after Chester A. Franklin died in 1955. She had also served as editor and a part-owner of the paper.
Bluford worked at The Call until suffering a stroke five years ago, after which she relinquished her duties but retained her titles.
In 1939, Bluford sued for the right to attend graduate journalism courses at the University of Missouri. Although she ultimately lost, a journalism program was soon opened at Lincoln University in Jefferson City.
In 1984, the Missouri School of Journalism awarded Bluford its Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism. Five years later, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the university.
In 1990, she received the Distinguished Service Citation, the highest honor awarded by the University of Kansas. Bluford was the second African-American student to major in journalism at the school.
Bluford was named the 2002 Kansas Citian of the Year by the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce; a branch of the Kansas City Public Library is named for her.
Lucile Bluford
A mountain goat looks out over North Cascades National Park in northwest Washington state in this undated photo. The photograph, taken by field biologist and amateur photographer, Tana Beus, won the grand prize in the National Parks Foundation's 'Experience Your America' photo competition this week. The image will be featured on the 2004 National Parks Pass, and beat out 8,000 photographs submitted for the contest, which is sponsored by the National Parks Foundation and Eastman Kodak. Beus's grand prize packageincludes a trip for her and up to three of her friends and family to the national park of their choosing.
Photo by Tana Beus
'Ark of Darkness'
"The Ark of Darkness", a Political/Science-Fiction work, in tidy, weekly installments (and updated every Friday).
'The Osbournes'
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 4
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 3
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 2
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 1
