Stupid Question of the Week You Don't Have to Answer
Mac and Dick McDonald owned a burger joint called McDonalds. One day Ray Crock visited, liked the place, bought a franchise, and the entire fast food industry was born. Years later, McDonalds started selling a double burger named after one of the original brothers, the Big Mac. Why wasn't it named after the other brother?
Personal Problems
This week I had personal problems that make your personal problems look like getting your toes tickled by a squadron of buxom French maids with feather dusters while the Luxembourg String Quartet plays Debussey.
If my personal problems were in a triathlon with your personal problems, my personal problems would butterfly past your Australian crawl in the swimming competition, pump faster than your cottage cheese thighs in the bicycle competition, and huff past your sweaty ass in the running competition.
If my personal problems met your personal problems in a dark alley, I'd end up with your wallet and your kid wouldn't become Batman.
My personal problems had numerous run-ins with authority while your personal problems were hiding behind 100 seersucker suits in the bedroom closet. My personal problems had to keep explaining themselves, stretching the limits of diplomacy to the breaking point, while yours turned into a windmill and provided electricity for thousands.
If our personal problems were sudoku puzzles, yours would be solvable in 10 minutes in pen while mine would remain unfinished with pages of penciled scratch notes.
If your personal problems were my personal problems I'd rejoice. If my personal problems were your personal problems, you'd write me an angry letter.
When our personal problems walk towards each other down the center of a dusty western street at high noon, my personal problems mow down your personal problems without the help of the schoolmarm. There's nothing wrong with my personal problems that a little bit of your personal problems wouldn't cure. My personal problems shove your personal problems off the lifeboat of the Titanic to make room for more personal problems.
Your personal problems are the ape. My personal problems are the monolith.
If personal problems were pies, yours would be freshly baked and mine would be already eaten. My personal problems are itching for a fight and don't like the way your personal problems are looking at them.
My personal problems have staged a coup in my brain, keeping my hippocampus prisoner and my medulla oblongata in chains, while your personal problems step aside for material obligations in your cranium. You've got your personal problems rounded up nicely while mine are roaming the streets in a hopped up Buick.
When Buddhists light incense called "Your Personal Problems," they're reminded of heaven. When Buddhists light incense called "My Personal Problems," they're reminded of Los Angeles.
When personal problems get together for drinks in local bars, your personal problems buy a round on the house while my personal problems are barfing in the men's room.
In spite of all this, my personal problems get 25,500 hits at Google while your personal problems get 45,100.
I guess you win.
Stupid Question of the Week
How many personal problems does it take to screw in a light bulb?
If you didn't tell your editor, Len Downie, about the CIA leak because you were so afraid of being subpoenaed, why did you supposedly tell Walter Pincus? Did you trust Pincus but not Downie?
Why were you afraid of being subpoenaed in 2003? Subpoenas of reporters didn't begin until 2004. And how would telling Downie lead to your being subpoenaed?
What are your ground rules for your books? Since Plan of Attack was published, weren't you free to use the material from your source?
Why did you come forward to Len Downie in late October to reveal your source? This was supposedly before your source approached Fitzgerald, so what motivated you? Did the source call you or did you have sudden pangs of conscience? Why didn't this occur to you in 2003 or 2004?
On October 27, you were on Larry King saying you had no big scoop. Was that true or a lie?
Why did you criticize Fitzgerald and his investigation without revealing that you had something to hide from him?
You said you got permission in writing from all three of your sources to testify about your conversations with them. Two of these sources, Andrew Card and Scooter Libby, have been identified. Can you release their letters? And did Libby write any poetry to you?
Why did you say categorically that there was no harm done by the outing of Valerie Plame? How do you know this when the CIA has yet to issue an after-action report?
Can you at least tell us some of the atmospherics of your dealings with Fitzgerald?
Did the prosecutor indicate that you might be called back?
Are you now writing about the Plame affair, and if you are is it for one of your books or for the Post?
You've praised Judith Miller's decision to go to jail and offered to do time for her. Still feel that way?
Did you remind your source of the June 2003 conversation and did that prompt him or her to go to Fitzgerald?
Had your source testified previously to Fitzgerald or before the grand jury?
Is there any chance your source was Bill Casey being channeled from the dead?
Religious fundamentalists are making the wrong argument against evolution. The real argument is that our air is filthier, our water is more polluted, we're still using outdated forms of energy, and we still slaughter and maim and torture each other in the name of progress. This is the opposite of evolution. If mankind were evolving, our air would be purer, our water clean, free flowing, and readily available to everybody, all our energy needs would be endlessly supplied by sun, wind, tides, and thermal plants, and we would all be nurturing each other to ever greater plateaus of health and happiness and personal fulfillment.
Answers to Last Week's Stupid Celebrity Question
Question: If Katey Holmes gets post-partum depression after having their baby, what will Tom Cruise do?
His chauffeur. Actually, he'll probably do the chauffeur regardless.
- ed lynn
Send her over to Brooke Shield's house until she gets over it.
- Rita M.
Oh, I am hoping this pregnancy is as genuine as their love for each other. In any case I am hoping for the best which would be a Holmes dominant household with Cruise being treated like the little bitch that he is, post partum depression or not.
And what is up with the Serb jokes? Man. You really are an asshole. No one picks on us Serbs. Haven't we shown through thousands of years of history that we are not good sports? Christ!
- Marta Martin
Tom will give Katey a Total Assist, a crash course of all the levels of Scientology culminating in a breakthrough at OT-21, the highest plateau, where they end up in outer space. There they meet L. Ron Hubbard wearing a yachting cap and working as a lowly second lieutenant on the great creator Xenu's space yacht. Aboard the yacht, Katey will be assigned to a state of suspended animation and a steady diet of Cal-Mag until her suicidal urges subside and Tom will be ordered to either ante up 50% of his fortune or distribute Scientology leaflets throughout the galaxy to recruit novices. The baby, a boy, will never be allowed to return to earth due to gravitational conflicts. Tom and Katey who eventually return to earth secure a hefty advance on a book and movie deal about their intergalactic experiences. The movie, directed by Steven Spielberg, will star Tom and Katey and feature a cameo of their young son Elron. Tom and Katey are resigned to rely upon a unique telepathic child-rearing practice known as Cryogenics, invented by L. Ron shortly before his mysterious demise, to raise their son. Baby Elron ultimately becomes the new Messiah causing the surprising merger of Christianity and Scientology. The new religion known as Sci-Chrientology will mark an historical first by offering shares of stock to the public.
- J. Holderbaum
Cruise will do an exclusive interview with MSNBC's Rita Cosby:
RITA COSBY (in her most throaty transsexual voice):
"Tom Cruise, tell us: how did you FEEL when Katey went into her post-partum depression after the birth of little L. Ron?"
TOM CRUISE:
"But, Rita, you know nothing about it! Depression doesn't exist -- that's just a psychological term and I know all about those; they don't exist! You can't suffer from an illness that doesn't exist!"
RC (panting slightly):
"So, you don't FEEL as if she needs some help?"
TC:
"Don't worry, she'll feel much better when I tell her I'm donating $5 million dollars to build a new Katey Holmes Memorial Actualizer wing at Scientology World Headquarters! Yee-hah! And the money's coming out of her part of the pre-nup. She'd want it that way."
- RSJ
Cruise and his new wife are on Oprah showing off their new child when it begins.
Oprah asks about how Katey isfeeling.
Katey
Well Oprah, I haven't felt happy much and I don't think..
Tom interrupts-
Tom
She's just not used to not being happy all the time. I mean we're in love can't you see that (looks at the audience) How much more can one woman have in life but to have a child, get processed everyday by L.Ron Hubbard's brother and be married to me? I mean Jesus, for Christ's sake!
OPRAH STAYS SILENT LOOKS STUNNED
Katey
Well that easy for you to say Mr. Mission Impossible. Let's see you haul a twenty pound basketball on your stomach for 9 months and then have your asshole stretched as it passes through. What do you think it's a special effect from War of the Worlds?
Oprah
Now Tom, women are different than men. They need time to recover from traumatic things.
Tom
Well, I mean its not like Ned Beatty in Deliverance, for God's sake.
Oprah
That was a movie and by the way, thirty years later and he's still paying the price for taking it up the butt in that scene. You wife just had a baby! She needs rest and maybe a little help from some antidepressants
Katey
Really Tom, are you that self absorbed that you can't empathize with my problems. Is everything just another Dianetics Day with you?
Tom
There is no way you're taking drugs to relieve anything! Can't you see you in love with me, I'm in love with me...what else matters? If you can't be happy being in love maybe you need to be poked with the joy stick more often while we watch the latest L. Ron Hubbard tape.
(jumps up on the couch) That's it! I'll invite all our friends over and they'll wear masks and robes and watch us do it. That'll bring you out of it, just think of all those eyes wide open watching me poke your poodle. Oh the humanity!
Oprah
Tom, I think you did that with Nicole already...we need to cut to commercial.............
Tom
Then what if I bring this beautiful blond prostitute home and then entertain you both in my underwear. Wouldn't that get you hot Katey, just think a threesome...gimme that Old Time Rock and Roll that'll get you out of it!
Oprah
I don't think she was born yet when Risky Business came out Tom.
Tom grabs mike from Oprah, takes off pants and starts jumping up and down screaming
"I LOVE YOU KATEY, I LOVE YOU KATEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oprah talks into Katey's lavaliere microphone while Katey holds her hands to her ears screaming for Tom to shut the fuck up while the baby is crying loudly in her lap.
Oprah
We really gotta to commercial........
(Camera cuts quickly to commercial for the anti depressant Wellbutrin)
- Watermn
Tom WHO?
- Lou Taylor
If Katie suffers from postpartum depression, Tom will grok her wrongness and take her to the Archangel Foster Temple and join with the other saved in a prolonged Happiness... no wait, wrong science fiction writer. Nevermind.
- Jeff Crook
Simple. Tom knows the tribe rules. The child must be the next full moon human sacrifice on the altar, then they all dance naked around the roasting fires for their feast on TomKatlet. Isn't that what everyone does? Appease the Gods, dance & be merry, reality is fabricated for future expiration date. Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of "Celebrity Lives Bear No Resemblance of Reality to Ordinary Folks" (*subject to local laws & prohibitions*).
- VLA
he will punt of course
- johnny iguanna
Express his disappointment. Do the Boogie Oggie Woggie all night long! Staple one of his fingers to a wall. Tell her that her career is over. Paint his shoes red. Eat a bowl of lawn clippings. Jump off the roof flapping his arms like a bird then insist she start taking vitamins.
- Bill Moses
Tom Cruise will just call for a rewrite.
- chris from boca
Don't Take My Word for It
"The light, the light, the light, every mystic in the world has 'seen the light.' That brilliant, blazing energy, brighter than a thousand suns, it is locked up in everything. Now imagine this. Imagine you're seeing it. Like you see aureoles around Buddhas. Like you see the beatific vision at the end of Dante's Paradiso. Vivid, vivid light, so bright that it is like the clear light of the void in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It's beyond light, it's so bright. And you watch it receding from you. And on the edges, like a great star, there becomes a rim of red. And beyond that, a rim of orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. You see this great Mandela appearing this great sun, and beyond the violet, there's black. Black, like obsidian, not flat black, but transparent black, like lacquer. And again, blazing out of the black, as the yang comes from the yin, more light. Going, going, going. And along with this light, there comes sound. There is a sound so tremendous with the white light that you can't hear it, so piercing that it seems to annihilate the ears. But then along with the colors, the sound goes down the scale in harmonic intervals, down, down, down, down, until it gets to a deep thundering base which is so vibrant that it turns into something solid, and you begin to get the similar spectrum of textures. Now all this time, you've been watching a kind of thing radiating out. 'But,' it says, 'you know, this isn't all I can do,' and the rays start dancing like this, and the sound starts waving, too, as it comes out, and the textures start varying themselves, and they say, well, you've been looking at this as I've been describing it so far in a flat dimension. Let's add a third dimension; it's going to come right at you now. And meanwhile, it says, we're not going to just do like this, we're going to do little curlicues. And it says, 'well, that's just the beginning!' Making squares and turns, and then suddenly you see in all the little details that become so intense, that all kinds of little subfigures are contained in what you originally thought were the main figures, and the sound starts going all different, amazing complexities of sound all over the place, and this thing's going, going, going, and you think you're going to go out of your mind, when suddenly it turns into... Why, us, sitting around here."
"This investigation has cast a constant searchlight that the White House can't turn off the way it has succeeded in turning off the press. So their methodology and their dishonesty and their disingenuousness - particularly about how we went to war - as well as their willingness to attack and rough up people who don't agree with them are now there for all to see. They can't turn off this searchlight, which is shining on a White House that runs a media apparatus so sophisticated in discrediting its critics it makes the Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Ziegler press shop look like a small-time operation."
"By this time in 1996, the Iraqis had put together a fairly sophisticated matrix of who the inspectors were and who they ultimately worked for. So whenever we submitted a roster of inspectors to the Iraqis, they were pretty locked in on what kind of inspection it would be, and what kind of emphasis there would be, and who on the inspection team they should be concerned about. So they have a good feel for that. But the Mukhabarat also had to deal with aspects of protecting Saddam Hussein that had nothing to do with UNSCOM, such as the CIA's own efforts to recruit people inside Iraq to target Saddam. And what the Mukhabarat did is they were tracking these two separate issues and found that there was crossover - that the CIA was using the inspection process to facilitate a coup d'etat by another group of Iraqis that was being handled by the CIA outside the framework of the weapons inspections.
"And the Iraqis tracked this. They infiltrated the coup and they pulled the plug on it, executed the plotters and terminated the CIA's effort. But in the process, they got definitive proof that the CIA was using the inspection process as a vehicle not only to gather intelligence, but to trigger a coup d'etat. And it destroyed the integrity of the inspection process."
"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."
- James Thurber -
"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it."
- Mark Twain -
"How is the world led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print."
- Karl Kraus -
"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong."
- Eugene V. Debs -
"Unanswered questions are far less dangerous than unquestioned answers."
- Harvey Spooner -
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -
"There is being created a growing revolutionary force in American life. The capitalists hold in their hands a mighty power. But within the capitalist order there are generated those forces which weaken and disintegrate that power in the form of the continuous class conflict which capitalism engenders. What is needed is the organization which can combine for the struggle against the capitalists all the forces of opposition which it creates."
- C.E. Ruthenberg, 1924 -
"In these awful days, George W. Bush has become the American Yasir Arafat, an empty, repetitive, shifty public personality who talks out of both sides of his mouth, with little or nothing to say from either of em. Oh, he's still Israels man: maybe not quite as much as he was on Tuesday, but more than he was on Thursday, though by Sunday, who knows, he might be back in staunch-ally mode again, or conversely he might have a few encouraging words for the Arab side. He's as purposeful as a wind-up toy boat with a bent rudder doing circular putt-putts in the bathtub."
"In my state of the ... my State of the Union or state - my speech to the nation - whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation."
- President George W. Bush, Tuesday morning in Connecticut. (Thanks to CBS News Correspondent Mark Knoller traveling with the president.) -
"Bush, himself the most intellectually backward American president of my political lifetime, is surrounded by advisers whose bellicosity is exceeded only by their political, military and diplomatic illiteracy."
"Now, white phosphorus, an incendiary story about an incendiary substance. Conservative bloggers have seized on a key detail in the original report, that skin of victims was burned while their clothing remained intact, to cast grave doubt on the white phosphorus report.
"Liberal bloggers have pointed to stories such as this, at the time of the siege, which reported use of white phosphorus in a bland, business-as-usual tone. And a fiercely anti-war website that gathers stories on the war from a multiplicity of sources points to a quote from the US Army Field Manual, which appears to endorse the use of white phosphorus as an anti-personnel weapon, not just as a source of battlefield illumination.
"What to think? Whom to believe? In an ideal universe, of course, this would be a big enough story - accusations of the US Army using chemical weapons against Iraqis - that major American news media would do some, pardon the expression, actual reporting on it. But, like white phosphorus itself, the news media aren't being used so much for illumination these days."
"For an administration which used, among hundreds of others, the fact that Saddam had gassed his own people as the REASON TO INVADE AND TAKE HIM OUT, to use anything resembling chemical weapons there is a VERY SAD AND VERY SICK THING. "Splitting hairs about whether it is legal is just another indication of how morally bankrupt this administration and many of its' supporters really are. "We have plenty of conventional weapons, including those bunker busters and others which could be used to conventionally wipe things out without resorting to chemical weapons."
"With nary a peep from the mainstream media, the US Supreme Court has stabbed yet another partisan knife into the American electoral system.
"This time the court has let stand Florida's infamous 137-year-old ban on voting rights for ex-felons. It was this same Jim Crow ban that the GOP used to disenfranchise thousands of Floridians in 2000, providing the margin by which George W. Bush took the presidency. The ruling continues to take the vote from millions of African-Americans and non-violent offenders----and, in practice, others who have broken no laws at all. It is highly likely to strengthen the lock of the Republican party and its future candidates on the US presidency...
"In 1870 the US adopted the 15th Amendment, guaranteeing all Americans the right to vote, regardless of race (but not gender). But white racist regimes in the former Confederacy quickly found ways to circumvent the Amendment.
"One such tool was the ex-felon ban. Along with poll taxes, the grandfather clause (disenfranchising anyone whose grandfather had been a slave), lynching and other violent intimidation, the attack on ex-felon voting rights was aimed directly at a black community that had started to gain political power in the south. Under the white supremacist Democratic Party and its terrorist adjunct, the Ku Klux Klan, blacks were subjected to unjust and often absurd prosecutions that stuck them with felony convictions. As the 20th century dawned, very significant percentages of the black male population thus lost their vote...
"Today only Florida, Kentucky and Virginia permanently deprive felons of their franchise once they have cleared parole. Ten other states restrict those rights in various ways. But especially in Florida, that ban remains a major key to Republican supremacy.
"According to the Sentencing Project, some 4.7 million Americans - one in 43 adults - have currently or permanently lost their right to vote due to a felony conviction."
"'Reasonable people can disagree about the conduct of the war, but it is irresponsible for Democrats to now claim that we misled them and the American people,' the president said at an Air Force base in Alaska. 'Leaders in my administration and members of the United States Congress from both political parties looked at the same intelligence on Iraq, and reached the same conclusion: Saddam Hussein was a threat.'
"This is a manipulative distortion; saying Hussein was a threat - to somebody, somewhere, in some context - is not the same as endorsing a pre-emptive occupation of his country in a fantastically expensive and blatantly risky nation-building exercise. And the idea that individual senators and members of Congress had the same access to even a fraction of the raw intelligence as the president of the United States is just a lie on its face - it is a simple matter of security clearances, which are not distributed equally.
"It was enormously telling, in fact, that the only part of the Senate which did see the un-sanitized National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq - the Republican-led Senate Select Intelligence Committee - shockingly voted in the fall of 2002 against the simple authorization of force demanded by a Republican president. Panicked, the warmongers in the White House and Pentagon pressured CIA Director George Tenet to rush release to the entire Hill a very short 'summary' of the careful NIE, which made Hussein seem incalculably more dangerous than the whole report indicated.
"The Defense Intelligence Agency finally declassified its investigative report, DITSUM No. 044-02, within recent days. This smoking-gun document proves the Bush administration's key evidence for the apocryphal Osama bin Laden-Saddam Hussein alliance -- said by Bush to involve training in the use of weapons of mass destruction -- was built upon the testimony of a prisoner who, according to the DIA, was probably 'intentionally misleading the debriefers.'"
"In a major shake-up of its editorial pages, the Los Angeles Times announced Thursday that it was discontinuing one of its most liberal columnists as well as its conservative editorial cartoonist.
"Editorial Page Editor André Martinez said that Robert Scheer, a Times reporter for 17 years before he began writing a column on the Op-Ed pages in 1993, will be dropped."
"It seems a remarkable piece of irony that Scheer is being dropped now that every liberal word he has written about the Bush administration has turned out to be true... [T]he once-mighty Los Angeles Times is rapidly becoming just another newspaper."
"I am disgusted. I am appalled. In fact, I am enraged! Slowly but surely, an interesting and balanced opinion section has been eviscerated. It is not even a shadow of its former, engaging self. Interesting commentary has been replaced by mediocre columnists and a plethora of cartoons. The coup de grace comes with the replacing of columnist Robert Scheer and editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez. What a sad day for Los Angeles!"
- Frances Solo: Move toward center is a move to mediocrity -
"Scheer is about the most irresponsible columnist I've ever seen in my life anywhere."
"Assessing the merits of a column, like assessing the merits of a movie, is a subjective exercise, so readers can agree to disagree over the wisdom of our decision. It's inaccurate, however, to ascribe ideological motives to our decision to stop running Scheer's column."
"The paper is in decline. They have 300,000 fewer readers now than when I went to work there nearly thirty years ago....The Times needed me more than I need it...I always have two or three balls in the air at same time...That's why I teach full-time at USC's Journalism school, do my radio show, write books. It's the only way to live. I've been preparing for this moment for 30 years. I wrote this column for 13 years and never missed a deadline.
"Probably the main reason they got rid of me was O'Reilly and Limbaugh made a living out of attacking me, pounding, pounding away and doing mass mailing campaigns against me and using me as a punching bag. But I'm still standing; the paper may collapse....Would never go back to LA Times, and I start at the San Francisco Chronicle next week. They called Wednesday to offer me a column. And my syndicate stood behind me, and the syndicate's editor, a conservative, was quoted in Editor & Publisher saying he was 100 percent behind me. And it's the same syndicate which runs O'Reilly's column.
"These bean counters from Chicago are so cowardly that the day after the paper won five Pulitzers they flew into LA and met with chief editors at Burbank airport hotel to let them know of cuts. This corporation doesn't understand that the paper belongs to readers and they forget that it's not just shareholders and wider profit margins that count... And this week, they're going to lay off over 70 editorial people.
"They may own the paper but they don't own the readers. And LA is the greatest city in the world, and it deserves a great newspaper. Send emails and make them aware that if they want to keep readers, they got to be smarter. Let them know readers don't like being treated with contempt. I know there's shock in the Times building; every switchboard jammed, emails streaming in. [One estimate is that close to 10,000 e-mails have come in; on Saturday, the paper ran a series of articulate, intelligent, reasoned and serious letters protesting Scheer's ouster.] I hear the publisher is walking around in a daze. Didn't anticipate these protests, the level of outrage. Every complaint you send will give space to others who want to do bold, brave reporting."
"And don't worry about Scheer. Two weeks from now, he launches his new website, TruthDig.com. 'I think of A.J. Liebling, who said 'freedom of the press belongs to those who own one' and fortunately, now I own one. I think of the site as Ramparts on speed.'
"'I don't like to get bummed out,' Scheer said. 'Hey, reports of my end are premature. I am not into suffering. Want to enjoy life, act on my passions, write about the truth. And I will.'"
"Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will."
- Frederick Douglass -
"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
- Scott Adams -
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
- James Joyce -
"I've been asking for 2 1/2 years why, if you can impeach a President for lying about an extramarital affair, why can't you impeach a President for lying about weapons of mass destruction that led to a war that led to thousands of deaths. In one case, you have thousands of deaths, and in another, you have a dry-cleaning bill for a dress."
"You have to learn to look at what they do and ignore what they say. Whatever it is that they're doing is not a war on terror, because they haven't caught the terrorists and they haven't cut down on the terrorists. But what they have done is they've managed to break the back of one of the absolute foundations of international law, which is the sovereignty of nations, and broken the back of one of the highest ideals of the 20th Century, established at Nuremberg - that aggressive war is the mother of all war crimes."
dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY is free and may be reproduced in any form, preferably parchment. It consists of information from dozens of sources, cut up, thrown in the air, and recycled randomly. It is sent all over the place, so I apologize if you're seeing the same thing twice. If you see a joke, graphic, or news item that came from or through you, thanks, send more, and please accept the fact that much of dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY is unacknowledgeable, and if I sought permission from everyone whose bastardized material showed up here, I'd never get anything else done. Please note that I don't even put my own name on it. If you're still pissed off, hey, it's either satire or fair use.
Terrence McNally: Come Home Again, America (AlterNet)
George McGovern, subject of a new documentary, discusses the bright and shining moments of his 1972 presidential campaign and how it changed politics forever.
JAMES BAMFORD: The Man Who Sold the War (rollingstone.com)
The fabrication might have ended there, the tale of another political refugee trying to scheme his way to a better life. But just because the story wasn't true didn't mean it couldn't be put to good use. Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war.
Frank Rich: One War Lost, Another to Go (The New York Times; posted at truthout.org)
IF anyone needs further proof that we are racing for the exits in Iraq, just follow the bouncing ball that is Rick Santorum. A Republican leader in the Senate and a true-blue (or red) Iraq hawk, he has long slobbered over President Bush, much as Ed McMahon did over Johnny Carson. But when Mr. Bush went to Mr. Santorum's home state of Pennsylvania to give his Veterans Day speech smearing the war's critics as unpatriotic, the senator was M.I.A.
Paul Krugman: A Private Obsession (The New York Times; posted at truthout.org)
"Lots of things in life are complicated." So declared Michael Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, in response to the mass confusion as registration for the new Medicare drug benefit began. But the complexity of the program - which has reduced some retirees to tears as they try to make what may be life-or-death decisions - is far greater than necessary.
Bryan Collinsworth: Jesus, Meet Evolution (campusprogress.org)
Despite recent rants from fundamentalist leaders, it's okay for Christians to believe in Darwin. This is where the Bible begins to take on its real power and authority: not as a precise account of physical truth, but as a deeply resonant revelation of moral and spiritual truth.
Local TV station (KCAL) was hyping Dr. Phil with 'Dr. Phil & Robin's 1st Wives Club', but, oddly there was no mention of Dr. Phil's 1st wife or when she'd be participating.
Been experiencing some computer trouble - I hate when that happens.
No new flags since Tunisia.
Tonight, Tuesday:
CBS begins the night with a FRESH'NCIS', followed by a FRESH'Amazing Race: Family Edition', then a FRESH'Threshold'.
Scheduled on a FRESHDave are Dennis Quaid and Donovan McNabb.
Scheduled on a FRESHCraig are Jerry O'Connell, Joely Richardson, and the Fray.
NBC starts the night with a FRESH'Biggest Loser', followed by a FRESH'My Name Is Earl', then a FRESH'The Office', followed by a FRESH'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'.
Scheduled on a FRESHLeno are Tom Arnold, Phil Jackson, and Audioslave.
Scheduled on a FRESHConan are Usher, Colin Quinn, and Pink Martini.
Scheduled on a FRESHCarson Daly are Maisa Coughlan, Big Boi, and Max & the Attack
ABC fills the night with the LIVE'2005 American Music Awards' (tape-delayed & edited on the left coast).
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Fred Willard, Tyler James Williams, and Lyfe Jennings.
The WB offers a FRESH'Gilmore Girls', followed by a FRESH'Supernatural'.
Faux has a FRESH'Bones', followed by a FRESH'House'.
UPN has a RERUN'America's Next Top Model', followed by another RERUN'America's Next Top Model'.
Check local PBS listings for a FRESH'Nova', and a FRESH'Frontline'.
A&E has 'American Justice', 'Cold Case Files', 'Dog The Bounty Hunter', another 'Dog The Bounty Hunter', and a FRESH'Random 1'.
AMC offers the movie 'In The Heat Of The Night', followed by the movie 'The Natural', then the movie 'Memphis Belle'.
BBC -
[2pm] 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' - Light Entertainment War;
[2:40pm] 'Coupling' - The Girl with Two Breasts;
[3:20pm] 'Coupling' - The Cupboard of Patrick's Love;
[4pm] 'At Home With the Braithwaites' - Episode 2;
[5pm] 'Monarch of the Glen' - Episode 8;
[6pm] 'BBC World News';
[6:30pm] 'House Invaders' - Erdington;
[7pm] 'The Benny Hill Show' - Episode 7;
[8pm] 'Cash in the Attic' - Corry-Thomas;
[9pm] 'Bad Girls' - Episode 3;
[10pm] 'Mile High' - Episode 5;
[11pm] 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' - Light Entertainment War;
[11:40pm] 'The League of Gentlemen' - Ep. 3 Turn Again Geoff Tipps;
[12:20am] 'The League of Gentlemen' - Ep. 4 The Medusa's Touch;
[1am] 'Bad Girls' - Episode 3;
[2am] 'Mile High' - Episode 5;
[3am] 'Cambridge Spies' - Episode 2;
[4am] 'Murphy's Law' - Electric Bill;
[6am] 'BBC World News'. (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has 'West Wing', 'Carol Burnett Show: A Reunion', and 'Carol Burnett Show: A Reunion', again.
Comedy Central has 'Beavis & Butt-head', 'Drew Carey's Green Screen Show', an old 'Jon Stewart', an old 'Colbert Report', 'Chappelle's Show', 'South Park', 'Chappelle's Show', and 'Showbiz Show With David Spade'.
On a RERUNJon Stewart (from 11/7/05) is Sen. Barack Obama.
On a RERUNColbert Report (from 11/7/05) is Eliot Spitzer.
History has 'Secrets Of The Acropolis', 'Mail Call'< 'Shootout!', and 'Man Moment Machine'.
IFC -
[6AM] Amerikan Passport (1999);
[7:30AM] Hoop Dreams (1994);
[10:30AM] At The IFC Center (2005);
[11AM] The Festival #2 (2005);
[11:30AM] IFC in Theaters(2005);
[11:45AM] Home Movie (2002);
[1PM] Radio Bikini (1987);
[2PM] Dancing to New Orleans (2003);
[3:45PM] IFC in Theaters(2005);
[4PM] The Last Waltz (1978);
[6PM] Running With The Bulls (2003);
[7PM] At The IFC Center (2005);
[7:30PM] Love & Sex (2000);
[9PM] The Double Life Of Veronique (1991);
[11PM] Hopeless Pictures #5 (2005);
[11:15PM] Greg the Bunny: "The Godpappy" (2005);
[11:30PM] The Festival #2 (2005);
[12AM] Hopeless Pictures #4 (2005);
[12:15AM] Greg the Bunny: "Daddyhood" (2005);
[12:30AM] The Festival #1 (2005);
[1AM] The Double Life Of Veronique (1991);
[3AM] Hopeless Pictures #5 (2005);
[3:15AM] Greg the Bunny: "The Godpappy" (2005);
[3:30AM] The Festival #2 (2005);
[4AM] Hopeless Pictures #4 (2005);
[4:15AM] Greg the Bunny: "Daddyhood" (2005);
[4:30AM] The Festival #1 (2005);
[5AM] At The IFC Center (2005);
[5:30AM] Short: In The Sun (2003). (ALL TIMES EST)
Former President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel in Budapest, Hungary, Monday, Nov. 21, 2005. Havel is planning to write a new play, a newspaper reported Monday 'I have it already well thought out,' the daily Pravo quoted Havel as saying. 'In my head, it's almost finished. There's just one little thing _ to write it down.' Havel did not give any details about the play, and also refused to reveal when he would start writing it. He has said earlier, however, he planned to write a play based on William Shakespeare's 'King Lear,' as well as an autobiography.
Photo by Szilard Koszticsak
Oprah, Dave. Dave, Oprah. The cold war between television titans Oprah Winfrey and David Letterman has thawed to the point where Winfrey has accepted Letterman's invitation to appear on the "Late Show" on Dec. 1.
Letterman made the announcement during a taping of his show on Monday. Winfrey's appearance will coincide with opening night of the Broadway musical "The Color Purple," which she is producing.
It's Winfrey's first visit to "Late Show," although she was twice Letterman's guest on his NBC show before the late-night comic moved to CBS in 1993.
Irish rock singer Bob Geldof was awarded at a ceremony held in the Portuguese capital Lisbon a European human rights prize in recognition of his work to alleviate poverty in the developing world.
The annual award is awarded each year by the Council of Europe through its Lisbon-based North-South Centre to two people from the northern and southern hemispheres for their achievements in promoting human rights.
Ethiopian activist Bogaletch Gebre, who campaigns for women's rights, shared this year's prize with Geldof.
A spoof of science-fiction classic "Star Trek" has become Finland's most viewed movie, relying on free distribution over the Internet to reach more than three million viewers in less than two months.
"Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning" is a full-length feature in Finnish with English subtitles. It was made by a group of students and other amateur film makers with a bare-bones budget and a few home computers to create elaborate special effects.
According to the Finnish Internet hosting firm Magentasites Oy, which is helping to distribute Star Wreck, 2.92 million copies have been downloaded from the film's Web site since October 1, and an estimated 600,000 copies have gone out through various mirror sites.
Dozens of tiny grains of the Ethiopian crop known as teff are seen on Gary Alexander's fingertip as Alexander harvested a test plot on his farm near Nicodemus, Kan. Thursday, Nov. 17, 2005. Alexander and a handful of other farmers around the historical black settlement have been experimenting with the crop hoping to market it as an alternative to wheat for persons with gluten sensitivity.
Photo by Charlie Riedel
Cars principals Elliot Easton and Greg Hawkes are teaming with veteran singer/songwriter Todd Rundgren in a new incarnation of pioneering new wave rock act the Cars, which will tour and possibly record an album next year. Rundgren will step in for Cars frontman Ric Ocasek, who has no plans to participate in the project. Cars bassist/vocalist Ben Orr died of cancer in 2000.
Billboard.com has learned that the New Cars are eyeing a 2006 tour with another legendary new wave rock outfit, but no details have yet been announced. Reaction to the news that Easton and Hawkes were pressing on without Ocasek and Orr has been mixed, but Rundgren defended the decision in a recent post on the Web site TRConnection.com.
White opera singers will no longer wear black face paint when playing black characters at the British Royal Opera House.
The practice of putting black makeup on white performers was used in dress rehearsals for Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera" ("A Masked Ball"), but the singer portraying the sorceress Ulrica did not use the makeup in Thursday's opening night performance, Royal Opera House spokesman Christopher Millard said.
Novelist Philip Hensher noticed it while attending a dress rehearsal and criticized the practice in The Independent newspaper. The Royal Opera House would not discuss the reason for the timing of its new policy, which was announced within a day of Hensher's article.
In Britain, "The Black and White Minstrel Show," a popular musical variety show featuring blackface actors, was on TV until 1978.
A person on a parasail is framed by palm trees against the backdrop of the island of Lanai as they parasail along Kaanapali beach in Lahaina, Hawaii, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2005.
Photo by Michael Conroy
Clear Channel Communications Inc. on Monday said 200 radio stations would, by the end of the month, be upgraded to air high definition digital broadcasts featuring CD-quality music, as rival satellite radio services encroach on its market share.
The roll-out represents more than triple the number of stations it had previously expected to upgrade this year. By 2007, the San Antonio company said it expects that 95 percent of its 1,200-controlled stations would be upgraded to digital.
The top U.S. radio conglomerate is facing stiff competition from satellite radio pay services XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. and Sirius Satellite Radio., which are luring away top-drawer talk radio talent and striking deals to be installed as standard equipment into new cars.
A collection of poems written by Minnesota college student Robert Zimmerman - later to become the "voice of a generation" as Bob Dylan - sold for $78,000 at an auction of rock and pop memorabilia.
Titled "Poems Without Titles," and written in 1960, the 16-page hand-scrawled collection features the aspiring poet trying out his soon-to-be pseudonym. Most of the poems are signed "Dylan" or "Dylanism," the earliest known use of his nom-de-tune, according to Christie's auction house.
The rare cache of Dylan poems were bought by an anonymous European collector, a spokeswoman said.
A whale shark swims by Leonard Borg of Atlanta as he takes an early tour of the new Georgia Aquarium, billed as the world's largest aquarium, November 21, 2005. The aquarium holds 8 million gallons of water with 100,000 fish.
Photo by Tami Chappell
NBC Universal is shutting down Trio, but will keep the cheeky pop culture television network alive as a broadband offering.
Trio, perhaps best known for show business documentaries and its "Brilliant, But Cancelled" series resurrecting short-lived TV shows, is currently available in only 9 million of the nation's 110 million television homes. It will sign off at the end of the year, NBC said Monday.
Its fate was effectively sealed last year when bought by NBC Universal, which also owns the similar and more widely distributed Bravo. Trio was subsequently dropped by DirecTV, taking away more than half of its distribution, and prospects for going wider were dim.
But it will relaunch on Jan. 1 as a broadband network under the BravoTV.com banner, a prospect that would have been laughable only months ago but now is a serious business prospect. MTV, VH1, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon have all recently started their own online networks.
A 1,000-year-old multi-tailed leather whip that was initially associated with the sex trade but more recently identified as a slave scourge is one of the stars of a new exhibition.
The whip, whose knotted thongs are reminiscent of the later cat o'nine tails used to discipline navy defaulters, was found during excavations of the rubbish pit of a London house dating back to the late Saxon period between 900 and 1050 AD.
The Museum of London, which is staging the exhibition exploring the city's mediaeval history, said the location of the find indicated it was not connected with any brothels, which were all elsewhere.
Guitar master Link Wray, the father of the power chord in rock 'n' roll who inspired such legends as Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie and Pete Townshend, has died. He was 76.
Wray died Nov. 5 at his home in Copenhagen, his wife and son said on his Web site. No cause of death was given, but his family said his heart was "getting tired." He was buried Friday after a service at Copenhagen's Christian Church.
Wray, who played in his trademark leather jacket, developed a style considered the blueprint for heavy metal and punk music. He is best known for his 1958 instrumental "Rumble," 1959 "Rawhide" and 1963 "Jack the Ripper." His music has been featured in movies including "Pulp Fiction," "Independence Day" and "Desperado."
Wray, who was born in North Carolina and is three-quarters Shawnee Indian, is said to have inspired many other rock musicians, including Townshend of the Who, Springsteen, Bowie, Bob Dylan and Steve Van Zandt. All have been quoted as saying that Wray and "Rumble" inspired them to become musicians.
The power chord - a thundering sound created by playing fifths (two notes five notes apart, often with the lower note doubled an octave above) - became a favorite among rock players. Wray claimed because he was too slow to be a whiz on the guitar, he had to invent sounds.
Tai Shan, the National Zoo's four-month-old giant panda cub, nuzzles his mother Mei Xiang, following his twelfth health exam in Washington November 21, 2005. Zoo veterinarians say the cub now weighs 8.7 kg (19.2 pounds) and is 79.2 cm (31.2 inches) long.
Photo by Jessie Cohen
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"Splitting hairs about whether it is legal is just another indication of how morally bankrupt this administration and many of its' supporters really are.
"We have plenty of conventional weapons, including those bunker busters and others which could be used to conventionally wipe things out without resorting to chemical weapons."