Thoughtless for the Day

I'm wiped out (and nobody said anything nice about my cartoon yesterday) so I'm heading off to bed early. Before I do, though, I'd just like to say a few words about the deaths of Don Knotts, Darin McGavin, and Dennis Weaver.

When I was a young man, hanging out on the mean and unevenly paved streets of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, a few my friends and I were flagged down by one of our local drunks (there were at least forty of them and they all lived at the Coach and Four Inn) whom we called "Spaceman" because he seemed to have issues with the Earth's gravity. "Boy's," Spaceman said covering each of us with about a half gallon of spittle, "television stars get no goddamn respect."

When "Porky" Gilbert asked Spaceman why that was, he just shouted back "'Cuz they're on television!" as if we should've immediately seen the wisdom of his statement.

Like many of the crazy things shouted at my by crazy people during my crazy youth, I spent a long time thinking that Spaceman's position was just crazy. It's only in the last few years that I've begun to realize that he had a point (Sadly, since Spaceman broke his neck in a fall from one of the Coach and Four Inn's sixth floor windows while attempting to skip out on rent, I'll never be able to tell him just what a true visionary he was).

In the entertainment hierarchy, starring in a television series ranks just below the guy at the circus who follows the elephant with a broom and just about ventriloquism. Don Knotts not only played Barney Fife in the Andy Griffith Show (check out the episode with the exploding goat) but he was also responsible for creating many of the show's brilliant gags: many of which were ad libbed. Darin McGavin actually manged to make the role of a guy who kills monsters believable: setting the stage for The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And Dennis Weaver starred in the greatest made-for-television move of all time: Duel.

But, because they were primarily TV stars (Don Knotts did appearing in several "films" including The Ghost and Mr. Chicken: from where I took "Shit Luther", and Darrin McGavin, of course, starred in A Christmas Story) Knotts, McGavin, and Weaver's deaths will end up getting about one tenth of the airtime that Martin Lawrence's death will get when he finally does Western Civilization a favor and kicks the bucket.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 7:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Look, I know that we're all a little down about the deaths over the weekend of both Barney Fife and Carl Kolchak, but it's important to remember that life goes on. Well, maybe not for Don Knotts and Darren McGavin, but for the rest of us it goes on.

Whenever I'm feeling a little sad, I just ask myself "What's black and white and brown all over?" The answer is, of course:

Boycott liberalism's Cartoon of the Weak after I get done wiping my ass with it.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 7:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I really hate to do this two nights in a row, but I really don't have time to put up a proper post tonight. On the other hand, the latest Aid or Invade has been written and email to my editor. I don't want to build up unrealistic expectations for the next installment, but you will shit your pants while reading it.

I'll be back in full strength tomorrow night for the next episode of The Cartoon on the Weak.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 7:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As I mentioned yesterday, I've got a ton of writing obligations to fulfill, so toady's Thoughtless will be rather short and mostly comprised of information that other people have sent me.

From Doc (to whom, as well as the guys in the Tweakers, I owe an apology: your links have been added) comes the first story out of the Sudan in over a year to have nothing to do with genocide and everything to do with goat nuptials.

"When I asked him: 'What are you doing there?', he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured and tied him up".

Somewhere, Rick Santorum is saying, "See? I told you this was gonna happen."

Mike supplies us with a story about Richard Dawkins' new series The Root of All Evil? in which Dawkins takes on religion. It seems pretty unlikely that the series will ever air in the United States of Jeebuz, so we'll all just have to do you our best to imagine the confrontation between Dawkins and a Colorado Springs minister.

"In a conversation with Dawkins after the sermon, the pastor likens the event to a rock concert. Dawkins suggests that it was more akin to a Nuremberg rally-a comparison that the pastor appears to be too uneducated and ignorant to be offended by."

And, finally, religion and goat fucking have come together in the form of Governor Mike Rounds of South Dakota. Governor Reach-A- Rounds is currently leaning towards signing into law a bill, approved on Friday by South Dakota lawmakers, which would ban nearly all abortions in the state: including in cases of rape or incest. This bill should pose no problems for the Governor who only rapes barnyard animals and does so anally as not to induce unwanted pregnancies.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 8:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By all rights, I should be taking tonight off from blogging. I've got an Aid or Invade to write, several magazine articles to get cracking on, as well as a chapter I'm contributing to a book to edit, and a ton of email to answer. But the picture of Kreskin that I incorporated into last night's post reminded me of a funny Dave Blood story; the telling of which is arguably more important than anything else on my To Do list.

Back in the eighties, there used to be a free weekly paper in Philly called The South Street Star which counted among its writers one Stanley Greene. Stanley was The Star's resident food critic. All you really need to know about Stanley is that at the end of each of his restaurant reviews he would include a contest: a photo of an unnamed celebrity as a child was printed at the bottom of each review and readers would then mail in the name of the celebrity whom they thought appeared in the picture. Winners got some shitty prize or another. You should also know that, like most columnist (your humble friend and narrator being the exception), Stanley's picture was featured at the top of his column. It was one day while staring at that picture that Dave Blood decided he would make Stanley Greene's life more "interesting".

Dave was always making total strangers' lives more interesting. Once, for example, at one of those huge chain hardware stores, Dave found one of the salesman's business card. When he got home that evening, Dave wrote the guy's boss a letter saying that Dave (well, actually Fred Lettuce, Dave's pseudonym) had come to the store hoping to purchase insulation for his attic (this was followed by several astoundingly overly earnest paragraphs about the importance of insulation). The letter then shifted gears as it went on to explain how when Dave/Fred stopped the salesman whose name appeared on the card and asked him which type of insulation he recommended the rolled up his sleeve, displayed a swastika tattoo, and asked Dave/Fred if he wanted to swing by his house and "pop some 'cold ones' and watch some all 'boy films'".

Then there was the time that Pat Robertson made the mistake of mailing Dave an envelope with the words "Return postage guaranteed" on it. Dave taped the envelope to car battery and sent to back to Pat: costing the 700 Club roughly fifty bucks. But I digress.

Back to Dave versus Stanley Greene:

Along with Stanley's column, The Star, in conjunction with a local animal shelter, used to also run an adopt-a-pet feature. The first step that Dave took towards making Stanley's life more interesting was to clip out Stanley's headshot and paste it over the head of the dog in that week's adopt-a-pet feature. Dave then scrawled "This bitch answers to the name of 'Stanley'" over the picture. A quick trip to Kinko's later and Dave had thirty copies of "a bitch called Stanley." Dave then put the pictures in envelopes and sent them to Stanley's "Guess the celebrity" contest.

A few weeks later, walking through West Philly, I was delighted to see that nearly every telephone pole sported "a bitch called Stanley": now brilliantly re-worked as a lost dog poster.

And then Dave turned his attention towards Stanley's radio show.

As well as appearing in print, twice a month, on Saturday, Stanley would host a food show on the local NPR affiliate WHYY (back when it kinda sucked). When Stanley's next turn on the microphone came around, Dave Blood would ready for him. You see, Stanley's radio show was also a call-in show. Dave then enlisted the help of both his girlfriend and me to pull off what would be the climax of his assault on Stanley. Dave carefully explained to us what we needed to do and I'd like to think that we performed admirably.

That Saturday, just before "a bitch called Stanley" went on the air, Dave put this bizarre Kreskin record, which pretty much consisted of Kreskin "teaching" the art of hypnosis by counting backwards from 500, on his turntable and cranked up the volume so that, when it was "needed", it would be heard in background by the listeners of WHYY.

Kreskin: 500...499...Your eyelids are getting heavy...498...

Stanley: Let's go to the phones. First off we have Ann in University City with a question about Vegetarian food.

Kreskin: 497...496...You are beginning to feel sleepy...495...

Dave's girlfriend: I was just wondering if a lot of celebrities are vegetarians...

Kreskin: 494...493...So very sleepy...492...

Stanley: Well I...

Kreskin: 491...490...So very, very sleepy...489...

Dave's girlfriend: 'Cuz you know who I think is a vegetarian? That's psychic guy. What's his name? Oh yeah, KRESKIN!!!

*click*

Stanley: OK. I'm not really sure what that was about. Let's take some more calls.

Stanley then took one or two serious calls and then:

Kreskin: 354...353...You feel yourself getting lighter...352...

Me: Hello Stanley? Fist I just wanna say how much I love your column.

Kreskin: 351...350...Lighter and lighter...349...

Stanley: Why thank you.

Me: Where do you get those pictures of celebrities as children that you use for your contest?

Kreskin: 348...347...Lighter, and lighter, and lighter...346...

Stanley: Oh, from all over the place. Sometimes people send them in and...

Kreskin: 345...344...Like a feather...343...

Me: People send 'em in? Great! Because I've got a picture of BABY KRESKIN!!!

Stanley (clearly caught off balance): I'm not sure what's going on with these Kreskin calls.

Reluctantly, Stanley went back to the phones. After three or four Kreskin-free callers, his voice became more relaxed. He had dropped his guard. The trap was about to be sprung.

Kreskin: 221...220...Feel your cares melting away...219...

Dave Blood: Hello Stanley. I'm calling about Magnolia [a now defunct local restaurant], which I think is one of the best eateries in all of Philly. It should really get more attention.

Kreskin: 218...217...Melting, melting away...216...

Stanley (unaware that he is, at that very moment, speaking to the man responsible for the "a bitch called Stanley" campaign): I agree with you 100%.

Kreskin: 215...214...You're entering a new world, now...213...

Dave Blood: One thing that bothers me, though. I heard a rumor that Magnolia is going to start naming dishes after local celebrities and I think that's just a little tacky for such a classy place.

Kreskin: 212...211...A dark and silent new world...210...

Stanley: Once again, I agree with you 100%. I just can't stand it when restaurants do that sort of thing.

Kreskin: 209...208...Leave your old life behind...207...

Dave Blood: I hear that they're even going to have a dish called...

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 7:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Those of you who missed last night's KYW "news" segment on Heaven probably won't be surprised to learn that it followed the usually script for presenting a story about "unexplained phenomena" (AKA "Bullshit"): Start off with an average Joe who's a true believer (AKA "Sucker"), cut to an "expert" (AKA "Charlatan") who has written a book preying on the hopes of true believers, cut to a real expert who gets a few seconds to state a rational argument against the "mysterious" (AKA "peyote induced") nature of said phenomena, and finally cut back to the average Joe who gets to wrap it all up with "These brainy types can say whatever they want; but I know what I saw was real."

It's the same framework rather the story is about alien abduction, demonic possession, or a USEWE (Unexplained sexual encounter with Elvis). What might surprise you, however, is just how completely asinine the piece was once you flesh it out a little.

Meet the Sucker:

At the tender age of nine, Bob (his last name sounded like "Shutter", but since Channel 3 failed to show the names of anyone appearing in the piece you'll have to settle for just plain "Bob") suffered a traumatic experience that didn't involve a priest, a can of lard, and a series of Polaroid's. While Bob was swimming in a local pond he struck his head and, as Bob tells it "went to Heaven", only to return to terra firma after his older brother pulled him out of the water. Damn him.

OK class, it's time for a pop quiz. What do you think Bob, who suffered a head injury as a child and believes he traveled to the Great Beyond © , does for a living? And I don't want to catch any of you looking at your neighbor's monitor for the answer.

Pencils down.

Bob is a guidance counselor. I bet Bob doesn't advise many young people to pursue careers in Science. While in school, I staunchly refused to seek advice from my guidance counselor on the basis that anyone who had chosen the worst possible vocation was ill prepared to offer me direction on life's highway.

Meet the Charlatan:

His name is Anthony DeStefano. I know his name because Ukee Washington (yes, his name is "Ukee") who narrated the piece did a wonderful job a clearly enunciating the name of the book that DeStefano had written. Then a picture of the book's cover was shown. And then Ukee said the book was a best seller in nineteen countries. Then I shit my pants. Channel 3 will be getting my dry cleaning bill.
Anthony DeStefano's magnum opus that is burning up the best seller charts from Albania to Zimbabwe is titled A Travel Guide To Heaven. You can read a hilariously savage ripping of this waste of perfectly good paper here. Enjoy this snippet:

"... try to deny the unimpeachable sources on the back cover -- Quincy Jones, Regis Philbin, and God help me, Susan Lucci. It's practically an endorsement from the New York Review of Books."

And what makes Anthony DeStefano qualified to give guided tours of Valhalla? Well, according to Ukee, he has a degree in Theology.

Meet the real Expert:

Since Dr. Andrew Newburg doesn't have a fancy degree in Theology, he'll just have to settle for being a neurobiologist. Oddly, Ukee failed to plug Dr. Newburg's book Why God Won't Go Away.

Dr. Newburg then proceeded to explain Bob's "out-of-body" experience by saying that "Brains deprived of oxygen do strange things."

Hmmmmm... Brains deprived of oxygen do strange things...

The Sucker Gets the Last Word...

Back to Bob, who's having none of Dr. Andrew Newburg's (a man so smart that, unlike Anthony DeStefano, nobody snickers or makes fart noises when he uses the words "Doctor" and "Neurobiologist") fancy explanations. Bob knows that he's been to Heaven and isn't just some delusional 'tard who floated facedown in the town swimmin' hole.

...Almost:

Here's where you can contact KYW Channel 3 News and let them know exactly how you feel about this sort of moronic reporting.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 7:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Salvete veri comites,

Many of you were so impressed with yesterday's display of my psychic abilities that I now dare not enter some of America's more "rural" states (That's the polite way of saying "Jeebuzland") for fear of being burnt as a witch. And yet I'm going to throw caution to the wind and astound all of you once again by predicting that tonight, sometime between 11 and 11:30 PM EST, mankind will sink to a new low.

For it is then that the "news" division of my local CBS affiliate, KYW AKA "Channel 3", will present a segment about people who died and "went to Heaven."

Never mind that this sort of bullshit has been debunked a thousand times over or that this sort of nonsense hardly qualifies as news (there is still a war on, right?), Channel 3 boldly marches on; happy to do its part in the effort to turn America into a nation of fuckwits.

I'm going to toss in a few bonus predictions, just for good measure. First I predict that the Channel 3 News team will either offer no rational explanation for this phenomenon or, if they do, that explanation will be downplayed. Secondly, either no skeptic will be interviewed for the piece or, if a skeptic is interviewed, that skeptic will get less than twenty seconds of air time. Finally, I'd like to predict that if my first two bonus predictions come true (and since KYW was running a promo promising "proof that Heaven exists", they more than likely will) I'll be coming down on Channel 3 News like a ton of pissed off bricks. In fact, I think I'm getting a vision of what tomorrow's post will look like...

For more Channel 3 News team fun, I heavily suggest you check out this reporter's bio and then read this piece from Slate.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 7:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A few odds and ends:

Putting the 'dic' back in predict…

First, since everyone seemed mildly impressed with my humble efforts towards duplicating the artistic genius of Thomas N. George (the father of a new Avant-Garde movement: painfully unfunny comics) that I've decided to try may hand at another one of Mr. George's fortes: predicting the future. Stop yer grinnin' an' grab yer linen, folks: the contest of champions begins now!

Thomas N. George predicts:

"Many sex abuse claims against the Catholic Church were false"

RATYHTL predicts:

"Tonight during the first twenty minutes of The Shield, Vic will call somebody an 'Asshole'."

And after all we've done for her...

I finally got around to skimming through the Pungent Pacific Islander's book (and I'm using that word in its broadest possible sense) today. Sadly, PFMYV doesn't appear in its pages. Oh well, maybe when she pens her memoirs.

Jungian Synchronicity on Ice...

Right on the heels of this post comes news that the first people to wander into North America may've been European. If this is true, I demand the right to sell untaxed cigarettes and open a casino.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 7:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Salve calcee patis,

Congratulations. You are about to witness the birth of a new RATYHTL Monday night tradition. For it is on Monday that Thomas N. George, the "editor" of boycottliberalism.com (see previous post for details) publishes his "Cartoon of the Week". Subsequently, each Monday night from now until I get bored with the concept, I'll be attempting to improve on Thomas "Perry White" George's featured cartoon. Got it? Good, here we go and my the best man (me) win:

Boycott liberalism's Cartoon of the Weak

RATYHTL's Cartoon of the Week

Apologies for the ultra-short post tonight, but I've just gotten back from doing my patriotic duty by attending a GPOP meeting and I'm looking forward to grabbing a shower and going to bed. Before I take off, I'd like to remind PA residents that, if you'd like to see Marakay Rogers' name on the ballot for Governor this November, then you need to sign our petitions. We need 65,000 (100,000 if we want a "buffer zone") signatures in order to gain ballot access: Dem's and Rep's only need 2,000. Does that see fair? No? Then get off your asses and do something about it.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 9:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Salvete gemmae occulis meis,

A brief mention in an earlier post of the fact that I now own a car triggered a landslide of questions about the make and model of said vehicle for some unfathomable reason. Well, it's time (tempus) to let the speculation come to an end: I own a red 1989 Chevrolet Geo Spectrum, which is indistinguishable from the one pictured above (Please note that the car in the photo is not my car. As I keep my car in a very dimly lit garage and since cameras are not allowed at my workplace, it's difficult for me to get a decent picture of my car. I found the picture of the car above at this site, and PhotoShopped out the car's owner, replacing her with myself at last year's Dracula Parade. Needless to say, I was delighted to see that another picture of the car on the site clearly shows a trailer home in the background).

Two measures of American Manhood are rarely, if ever, discussed here at RATYHTL: Sports and cars. This is not because I have no interest in either (although I don't), but because I have little or no expertise in these areas. If you have no idea what you're writing about, maybe you shouldn't be writing about it. Since I'd like this to be my first and last post about cars, I'll go into as much detail as I can stomach.

The first question I'm sure that you have is "Why did you choose a red 1989 Chevrolet Geo Spectrum?" I didn't choose my car; my car chose me. The car used to belong to my Aunt. When my Aunt no longer wanted the car, she sold it to my parents. When my parents found out that I needed the car, they gave it me.

Have I made any modifications to the car? Only one. I removed the front "license" plate which read "Ireland forever. God made the Irish #1. Irish American." I'm not an Irish American. For that matter, neither is my Aunt who put the plate on the car. In fact, I'm pretty sure that, despite the maternal branch of my family (from which my Aunt hails) originating in the Orkney Islands (OK, technically, they started off in Africa), I have no Irish ancestry whatsoever. Even if I were an Irish American, I'm an Atheist, so I still wouldn't have a plate on my car that proclaims the existence of some supernatural being. And, even if I were an Irish American who believed in God, I'd like to think that the overwhelming abundance of evidence (Potato Famine, alcoholism, and three shots in seven seconds: The Prosecution rests) that God did not make the Irish #1 that I'd be more likely to adorn my vehicle with a bumper sticker proclaiming "Spring Break Tehran. No Rules!" than with anything declaring that the Irish are God's chosen people.

I would like to get one of those "Darwin fish" for the back of my car. If anyone knows where, in the Philadelphia or Wilmington area I can buy one, please let me know.

Does my car have a name? No, not yet. Although I've given the matter much thought and have already rejected Incitatus (Caligula's horse) and am leaning towards Ekka (a small one-horse carriage). Your suggestions are more than welcome.

Hasn't it been a while since I've driven a car? No, why just yesterday I was out driving for two hours. In fact (quidem), yesterday (heri) was a bit of a milestone for me. It was the first day that, after living in Philadelphia for over twenty years, I finally got to drive on the Schuylkill Expressway. However, if by "hasn't it been a while since I've driven a car?" you mean "wasn't there about a twenty year period in my life when I didn't get behind the wheel of a vehicle?" then the answer is yes. That's why, upon realizing that I would need a car to get to my new job, I immediately began taking driving lessons. Believe it or not, there are some people who, after spending years not driving, think nothing of suddenly getting back into the driver's seat and speeding, unaccompanied, along the interstate.

Having not driven for over two decades, there were many things that I had to relearn. For instance, I reached another milestone on Friday: I pumped my own gas. While I felt more than a little stupid for asking my wife to show me how, I couldn't help but think about all of the people of seemingly normal intelligence who've approached me in train stations to ask for help in understanding the train schedules.

Speaking of public transportation, do I miss it? Well, what I don't miss is the smell of someone's McDonald's breakfast: A smell that (pardon the pun) ranks just above "explosion at a sewage treatment plant" on my list of most offensive odors. No sooner would I catch a whiff of a Shit Burger with Cheese than another passage would inevitably shout "Mmmmm. I smell somethin' good." Then there would be a lengthy conversation about the merits of the McSausage and Egg combo. This chain of events was as certain as someone saying "I'm comfortable with my weight" following it up a few months later with "I'm comfortable with my Type Two Diabetes" and, finally, "I'm comfortable with my amputation."

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here comes one of those sentences that you're likely to see only on RATYHTL:

I'm pretty pissed off at the indigenous peoples of the world right now.

A few (paucus-a-um) weeks ago, my nephew returned home after spending a month in New Zealand. Now, whenever someone under twenty-one disappears for a month, you're going to naturally demand to see some photos which provide concrete proof that they really were where they said they were. Shit Luther, once when I was seventeen I convinced my parents that I'd spent a two weeks in Honduras helping to rebuild a village when I was actually at my girlfriend's house. Anyway, among my nephew's pictures of sheep and Helms Deep (If anyone from the New Zealand Board of Tourism is reading this, may I suggest the follow slogan: "For Sheep and Helms Deep, come to New Zealand.") were a few (paucus-a-um) photos of strange dome-shaped boulders scattered along a beach.

"Whoa. What are these?"

"Those? Oh those are strange dome-shaped boulders scattered along a beach."

"I can see that. I mean what are they?"

"Nobody knows for sure. They're sacred to the Maori, and they won't let scientist study them. It's a shame because you can see down into some of them and the inside looks like a giant geode."

Zeus be praised for the internets. In the past, if you had a question you were forced to walk miles through the dark woods to get to the library. I don't know about you, but I like to yell "Holy shit!" whenever I learn something new. Subsequently, I've been asked to leave more than a few (paucus-a-um) libraries. Today, thanks to the Zionist plot that masquerades as the World Wide Web, not only did I learn that the boulders are known as Moeraki boulders and that they began forming (despite what Young Earth Creationists and the Maori might tell you) around 65 million years ago, but I also discovered a great new crazy pseudo-science site: Geomantica: the free E-magazine of dowsing & geomancy.

While my search didn't turn up any mention of the Maori forbidding scientiststo study the boulders, I can easily believe that what my nephew told me has a ring of truth to it (in fact, we sent my nephew to New Zealand to toss that ring in a volcano). There are precedents for this sort of thing. For example, Kennewick Man, while not exactly a household name, is probably the best known example of a collision between scientific curiosity and the beliefs (superstitions) of native people.

Ten years ago, a skull was discovered adjacent to the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington (I wish someone would find an old skull near a town called "Pusher"). A little later, the rest of the skeleton was uncovered. Upon examination, scientists determined that the skull was approximately 9,200 years old and belonged to an individual who, at about the age of forty-five, was dispatched by a stone projectile (AKA "Killed with a rock"). So far, so good (except for Kennewick Man who took a rock to the Gulliver), until the scientists announced that the skull bore more of a resemblance to that of a Jomon (a prehistoric people who inhabited Japan), or a Polynesian, or even a Caucasian than it did to any Native American.

This didn't sit(ting Bull) well with the local American Indian tribes (the Umatilla, Yakama, Nez Perce and the Colville) who wanted to rebury Kennewick Man's skeleton on Indian land in accordance with 1990's Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). This act returns the remains "... of or relating to, a tribe, people, or culture that is indigenous to ... the United States" to Indian control. In other words: If your last name is Running Bear and I have your ancestor's bones in a box in my attic, I've gotta fork 'em over. I think we're all OK with that.

Of course the big problem was that Kennewick Man had obviously not been an ancestor of the local tribe. Not that the local tribe cared because, according to their religious beliefs, they had been in that spot since the beginning of time, ergo Kennewick Man was one of them, igitur, they still wanted his bones and are, therefore, retarded. So, under pressure from several Native American groups, the Senate attempted to pass Bill 536, Section 108 which would add two words to NAGPRA, so that it would now read "... of or relating to, a tribe, people, or culture that is or was indigenous to ... the United States." In other words: If your last name is Running Bear and I have some ancient bones that are in no way related to you but were found near where your tribe is currently living, I've still gotta fork 'em over.

Had SB536 passed, it would have been a triumph of religion over science. So, naturally, it was supported by both the Bush administration and Senator John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

Thanks to a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals, Kennewick Man is now in the hands of scientists. I promise I'll keep you updated on his story.

And don't forget that some Indigenous groups opposed the Genographic project because, in the words of some tribal assface, "Indigenous people already have a history of their origin which was communicated over generations by their ancestors. Further scientific proofs are thus decrepit."

Look, I understand that for centuries Colonial cultures did inhuman things to the indigenous peoples of the world. But that world does not exist on the back of giant turtle and scuttling the space program because it contradicts that view of cosmology or refusing to partake in scientific investigations because your ethnic group believes that the Earth is a few (paucus-a-um) thousand years old isn't going to bring back the millions of native people who were massacred by Europeans any more than some ignorant Hillbilly's refusal to allow Evolution to be taught in his local school is going to result in the Second Coming of Christ.

If you have a problem with that, you're free to gather in a sweat lodge, smoke a peace pipe, put on a ghost shirt, and go fuck yourselves.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 3:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

James Randi Update

Good news! According to his website, James "the Amazing" Randi, who suffered a heat attack and underwent bypass surgery earlier this month is feeling and doing much better. If you don't want to be branded an asshole by future generations then you need to start working on your Get Well Card for Randi right now. Here's mine.

Once you've finished, send your card to:
James Randi
C/O
JREF
201 SE 12 Street
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316.

Since The Amazing Randi isn't completely out of the woods yet, you might want to wait a week or two before you tell him that, apparently, everything that Bush knows about global warming he leaned from the guy who wrote Jurassic Park.

Huh?

As stated in this piece...

Bush is a dissenter on the theory of global warming. To the extent it's a problem, Bush believes it can be solved by technology. He avidly read Michael Crichton's 2004 novel State of Fear, whose villain falsifies scientific studies to justify draconian steps to curb global warming. Crichton himself has studied the issue extensively and concluded that global warming is an unproven theory and that the threat is vastly overstated. Early in 2005, political adviser Karl Rove arranged for Crichton to meet with Bush at the White House. They talked for an hour and were in near-total agreement.

While the blogger asks "what's the bigger outrage here: 1) That Bush didn't tell the public his real "dissenter" view on global warming; or 2) that Karl Rove set up a secret science advisory session for the president with a novelist.", all I can think is What? Bush read a book?

I'll be back either later tonight or in the wee hours of the morning with a rant.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 7:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Salve ursus patris,

Move over Pee Wee Herman; today I am the happiest boy in Puppetland (talk about a dated reference: what's next, "look out Belinda Carlisle, for now I am the chunkiest Go Go"?). No, our favorite fascist Filipino wasn't found floating facedown in a pool of her own filth. I'm happy because the Philadelphia City Paper has started running my new monthly column: Aid or Invade (while you can read the piece on the worldwide-global-web-of-internets, I strongly suggest that interested parties residing in the greater Philadelphia area pick up a copy of the CP: that way I feel more like a columnist). OK, I can sense that some backstory is called for.

A few months back, Pat from the CP emailed me asking if I'd be interested in writing a music column. While most would-be writers would sell their children Karl Rove for a chance to ink a column, I was extremely hesitant. No. Not "hesitant". What's the word I'm looking for? Oh yeah: "hostile". I've never liked the predictable nature of music writing. Every bass line is "throbbing". Every drummer "attacks his kit" as every guitarist "stalks the stage." And nobody is ever honest enough to point out that the reason why major label success has eluded that singer/songwriter with the folkish-yet-urban vibe is because he sucks marinated badger balls.

Well, there was my dilemma. I really wanted to write a column but I didn't want music. I would've much rather have been asked to write about politics, popular culture, history, or new developments in feminine hygiene (I hear that those pads which used to have wings can now take off vertically like a Harrier Jump Jet). If I was going to about music than I had to come up with a concept so insane that it would risk being rejected even by the guy who grrenlighted Tatu:

Dear Pat,
How about this: "Aid or Invade"? Basically I'll review music from obscure countries and instead of thumbs up or down, we'll say if and how much aid the US should provide to said nation or if we she just blow the shit out of 'em. If the Bush administration hasn't already copyrighted this concept, we should be OK.

- Rodney

I highly doubt that H.L. Mencken started this way; and right now I don't care. All I know is that, at this moment, I'm on top of the world.

Nowhere to go but down.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 7:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Salvete lignei mariti,

Well, Dick is finally talking about last weekend's shooting. Can you guess just whom he's talking to? Aw c'mon, guess. If you guessed Hee Haw Jazzera, give yourself a gold star. By the time Brit Hume finishes that interview, he'll have his viewers convinced that Cheney gunned down one of al Qaeda's endless stream of number two men. Who would've thought that a man capable of gunning down a fellow human being could also be such a complete pussy. In other Cheney-related news, Bay Buchanan, loitering on the set of Lou "Goddamn" Dobbs Tonight actually took the media to task for never once asking how the Vice President was holding up after the shooting. Bay (if that is your real name), not asking if Cheney is crying himself to sleep at night over shooting a man in the face isn't being callous: it's not being crazy. Especially after the guy whom Cheney shot had a heart attack.

Speaking of hearts, if you're looking for something interesting (and relatively short) to read, I heavily recommend this piece from Slate which answers the often asked (I know that I'm sick a answering it) question of why the symbol for the heart looks nothing like an actual heart.

Finally, many of you have been asking questions about my car: questions that I've been hesitant to answer. Well, the fog of mystery will be blown away this weekend and all will be mad clear.

Oh, and expect more updates once I get settled in at my new job.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 7:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Salvete clari nemines,

A new psychologist is touring a mental institution when he catches sight of a patient who is just standing around with his dick in a bowl of cashews. The shrink flags down an orderly and asks what's wrong with the man. The orderly shrugs and says, "Nothing specific, he's fucking nuts."

This was waiting in my inbox when I got home:

Last nite the City Committee of the [Organization's name] voted to endorse the Day without an Immigrant Paro taking place today. Immigrants around Philly and the nation are striking today in a stand against the Sensenbrenner Bill making being or aiding in any way an undocumented immigrant a felony.

We urge all [Members of the organization] who can to attend the rallies today. You can find information about where events are happening at http://daywithoutanimmigrant.com/

My reply:

You're joking right? If you're not, let's hope that the City Committee never makes a mistake of this magnitude again. Maybe we should all think about just why this is a bad idea:

1) These ILLEGAL (not "undocumented": would you go to an Undocumented Surgeon?) workers are a laissez-faire Capitalist's dream come true as they drive down wages across the board. Did we back this fiasco so that we could get a Christmas card from Halliburton?

2) By allowing countries like Mexico to export their poor, rather than to deal with the issue of poverty, we're doing the indigent in those countries no favors.

3) Since nobody seems to have the guts to say it, I might as well: these are not agnostic professors of Sociology streaming across our southern border: these are Virgin's-Face-in-the-grilled-cheese-sandwich true believers. What good is working to get "Under God" removed from the Pledge of Allegiance when these folks wanna stick Jesus' mug on the dollar. Think I'm paining with too broad a brush? OK, ask your newfound buddies if they're Pro-Choice or how they feel about Gay rights.

4) Congratulations on losing the White working-class vote. "Hello Ma'm. I'm from the [organization's name]; we helped your husband lose his construction job. Would you like to sign our petition?"

I'm sorry if somebody is feeling a little guilty because Mommy and Daddy had a Hispanic maid and gardener, but this isn't the way to address your problems.

_._._._._._

And no, I didn't include the Latin word of the day in my reply.

PS. Happy Valentine's Day

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 7:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Salvete sacerdotes et angeli,

Hodie was my first day and my new job so, naturally, I'd like nothing better right now than to take a hot shower, crawl into a warm bed and scream senselessly for about three hours. I should probably also make a sacrifice to Janus.

Have I ever told you about Janus? Janus is the Roman god of beginnings and endings. Whenever a Roman began a new business venture, or got married, or had a child, or even planted a field, they would make an offering to Janus. Janus also symbolizes the transitional states: moving from a rural location to the city, for example. Fittingly, Janus is also the god of gates and doors. The month of January is named after him.

Until I get back up to speed (a good night's sleep should do the trick), why not take this time to discuss how Dick Cheney finally lived up to his full potential by shooting a man (I bet you that Scalia turns down that next hunting trip offer), or, if you've already exhausted that first topic in the Forum, you could exchange thoughts about Bush's approval rating, which has now been marked down to an affordable 39%

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 7:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Happy Darwin Day!

Thanks to the blizzard, I'll be celebrating Darwin Day indoors this year. I've got a roaring fire going and, later, I'll pour a glass of wine and toast the great man's legacy. Strangely, my box turtle, Special Agent Dale Cooper chose this morning to come out of hibernation: two months earlier than expected. Coop seems to think that today is April 12th. Even in the animal kingdom, the essence of comedy is timing. If Coop lived in the wilderness instead of on the third floor of our house, he'd be attempting to dig his frozen ass out from under a foot of snow.

Darwin tells us, of course, that left to his own devices Coop would freeze to death thus failing to pass on his bad-timing genes. In an evolutionary sense, it would be a very good thing if Special Agent Dale Cooper never bred. For starters, Coop is missing a foot and several toes. Since these appendages were already lost when Coop and I first met, over twenty years ago, I have no idea exactly how he came to lose them. Since Coop and I are roughly the same age and since I'm not missing any body party parts, I've always chalked it up to Coop not being smart enough to avoid hungry dogs. If I see a dog hungrily eyeing my digits I get on the nearest bus and leave the area.

Coop's string of questionable judgments resulted in his capture and his landing his shell in the Black Hole of Calcutta of pet stores. It was located in the Gallery, populated with half-dead animals and rumor has it, eventually closed down by the Board of Animal Welfare. I had gone there in order to pick up some meal worms for a friend's lizard when I noticed Coop franticly attempting to climb the sides of an aquarium that was barely bigger than him. "You should move that turtle in to a bigger aquarium," I helpfully offered to the guy behind the counter who was a dead ringer for Dustin Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo character from Midnight Cowboy.

"If you're so fuckin' concerned about it," Ratso Rizzo shot back, "the why don't you fuckin' buy it and get it out of here?" In Philadelphia, this approach is know a "the soft sell". "The hard sell" involves a baseball bat and your grandmother's kneecaps.

"How much do you want for him?"

"What have you got?"

Using all of my bargaining skills, combined with my intense knowledge of psychology, I managed to talk Ratso Rizzo down to everything I had in my wallet along with all the change in my pocket: a little over fifty bucks. The average box turtle usually sells for anywhere from "free" to "we'll pay you to get it off our property".
And that, pueri et puellae is how Special Agent Dale Cooper went from being the world's most unlucky box turtle to eventually living in a colonial townhouse and having is own private garden. Although, I admit, at times it's been a bumpy road. Because of his mistreatment at the unwashed hands of the workers at the pet store, Coop had health problems for a few years. For a while, I even had to give him vitamin injections (nothing in your past, and I've opened for Johnny Thunders, can adequately prepare you for shooting up a turtle) on a daily basis. Of course, there's still one more thing I need to do for Coop: I need to get him laid.

Once a year, Coop's eyes develop a reddish tint and he starts humping anything he can climb onto (if you visit my home during the early summer, don't take off your shoes or leave your pocketbook unattended on the floor; trust me) and I make a promise to look into arranging some female companionship (Coming this fall to Animal Planet: Rodney Anonymous, Reptile Pimp) for him. I've even gone so far as to contact the Philadelphia Zoo, who (understandably) hung up on me.

I'm not worried. Cooper is, like me, only his early forties. Unlike me, he could easily live to be well over one hundred and twenty years old. I've got plenty of time to get him some action. Someday, thanks to my tampering with process of natural selections, you might just find yourself strolling by a frozen pond on a snowy day and catching a glimpse of several confused turtles that had awoken early expecting spring.

Darwin, as you might know, brought several tortoises and turtles back to England with him following his adventures on the Beagle. One of them, Harriet, a giant tortoise now living at the Queensland Zoo, turned 175 last year. As for Darwin's pet turtle, the last I heard was that he was alive and well and living on a country estate in the UK.

Special Agent Dale Cooper (seen here in his private garden)

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Salvete opimi oratores,

I'm going to break RATYHTL's longest standing policy, gentle reader, and be honest with you. In a perfect world, the only politics that I would ever write about would be the politics of the people who lived around the Mediterranean Sea from shortly before the voyage of the Argo until shortly after the crowdedly murder of Hypatia of Alexandria.

Of course, the world isn't perfect and nothing proves this more than a little website, which my friend Paul B. recently brought to my attention, called Boycott Liberalism. No matter what your political leanings are, you are going to enjoy the living shit out of Boycott Liberalism...but definitely not for the reasons that "editor" (normally the title "editor" implies that you have a staff of writers whose work you edit. As far as I can tell, Boycott Liberalism appears to be the work of a single, lonely, individual) Thomas N. George wishes you would. Remember the first time you saw that website about how John Lennon was really killed by hack writer Stephen "Boo! Did I scare you?" King? Well, prepare to fall in love all over again.

Before you read any further, I want you to open another browser window and check out Mr. George's "Predictions" page. Sylvia Browne would be proud.

Do you see it? No, not "The truth is that the resignations from the Bush Administration Cabinet after his first term were result of the long hours and hard work" or "Michael Jackson will be found guilty. (not incorrect- Michael Jackson's troubles with the law is not over )" I'm talking about "The story of an alien spaceship crashing in Roswell is true." Tether you trireme and curb you Cerberus, those goddamn Liberals have used their control of the Jewish media to cover up the fact that aliens (not the Mexican kind) walk among us!

This site is like a big, beautiful Valentine from the Twilight Zone. And it only gets better. Check out Tommy's cartoon archive. Thank you, thank you, thank you Thomas N. George! Not only for the fact that, at long last, I've finally found something that makes Life with the Poor look professional, but also for the countless hours I plan on spending replacing your captions with my own.

Nothing drives the comedy home better than a trip back to the homepage. It would seem that, among many, many other things, Tommy would like his readers to be sure to boycott the movie Manderlay, as if anyone who would take Boycott Liberalism seriously and might happen to wander off the grounds of the asylum might be itching to see Lars von Trier's sequel to Dogville. Christ, I fucking love this site!

Tommy, if you're reading this, I beg you to go "Ol' School" and call for a boycott of restaurants which let Blacks sit at the counter, men who refuse to beat their wives, and scientists who claim that the Earth travels around the sun.

The only drawback to Boycott Liberalism is that the site is so jam packed with crunchy craziness that it's easy to get lost. For example, somewhere on the site (damned if I can find it again) I found the following:

"Liberals protest the deaths of 2,000 soldiers during the Iraq War as they attempt to spread freedom in the world. During that same time - 80,000 Americans died exercising their privilege to drive a car. How come liberals aren't protesting driving?"

If it wouldn't be about as productive as arguing with box of Kleenex, someone could point out to "Editor" George that those 80,000 Americans didn't die while driving around looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction or links to al Qaeda.

If there's one crime that Thomas N. George is guilty of (other than the crime of filling our hearts with a childlike whimsy), it's confusing "Liberalism" with "Being a stupid, smelly Hippie" (I wish the "editor" would change the name of the site to Boycott Stupid, Smelly Hippies). Nowhere is this more evident than on Tommy's the top ten liberal lies page. For some reason Mr. George seems to think that true Liberals love Bill Clinton: the man who gave the world NAFTA, CAFTA, the Defense of Marriage Act, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Tommy is deaf, dumb, and blind to the fact that the people who call themselves Liberals (people who traditionally believe in studying a point of view before developing an opinion about it) are actually as far from being "Freethinkers" as one can possible get.

But can Thomas N. George really be faulted for not understanding the difference between an educated Liberal and dogmatic Hippy? No, and not just because Tommy is about as lucid as the waiting room at the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic. Shit Luther, there a countless Americans who identify themselves as "Conservative" (people who traditionally believe in small government and limited US intervention abroad) when they are, in fact, dumbshit illiterate pig fucking hillbilly Fundies.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Italian researchers have recovered part of a lost ancient Greek treatise, the earliest cartography of the Greek-Roman era, and a sketchbook for ancient painters - all by piecing together 50 fragments of a first- century B.C. parchment used in a mummy's wrapping."

Read all about it here.

This just goes to prove that "It's always in the last place you look". In this case, the last place they looked was the gift wrapping on a corpse. Keep checking fellas, maybe one of those bodies was papered over with the long missing text of Suetonius' The Lives of Famous Whores.

Speaking of famous whores...

Now that he's unlikely to ever again find employment in an office, George Deutsch-bag needs to learn the first rule of manual labor: when the hole's deep enough, stop digging.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 8:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday was a day that the Bush administration would, undoubtedly, want to forget, but one which I'm sure many of us will think about for years to come. Let's take a fond look back at the events of February 9, 2006.

1) It was divulged that Scooter "Irving" Libby testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists.

Ah, the ol' "I was only following orders" defense. Fills you with a sense of nostalgia, doesn't it? Before you start planning that "Dick goes to OZ" party, I'm going to have to play the part of wet blanket (triumphantly reprising a role a fulfilled on Broadway for six years) and remind you, gentle reader, that this revelation might just be a) a straw man built up by Irving's defense team, in collusion with the administration, for the sole purpose of knocking it down or b) an attempt by Irving's lawyers to get their hands on some documents that had previously been restricted.

2) Michael "Forget about the levees and look at the ass on that horse" Brown is back! And he's pointing his bony, little finger right in the direction of his former boss. Brown is claiming that he has emails which prove that he notified the White House that the levee had given way, the city was flooding and his crews were overwhelmed. "There is no question in my mind, that at the highest levels of the White House they understood how grave the situation was," Brownie has stated.

3) Bush informed us, in the sketchiest way possible, that a terrorist plot to blow up LA's "Liberty" Towers. OK, it's really called the "Library" Towers, but for Bush that's getting fairly close and RATYHTL salutes our dyslexic President. See the special FOX News / Will Smith version of the attack here!

Sure, the only reason that Bush told us (and not LA's mayor) about it is because some Republicans have joined the Democrats in asking for hearings into the warrantless wiretapping program, and sure there's no evidence that the warrantless wiretapping program actually stopped the attack on the to Whatever Towers, but the good news is that a major terrorist attack was thwarted.

Or maybe not.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There's a donkey cart's load of steaming news to get to, so let's grab our pitchforks, don our colorful peasant kerchiefs, and dive right in

Krawchuk Alert! Krawchuk Alert! This is NOT a drill!

My Libertarian buddy (which means that I pay him $10 a month to be my friend) Ken Krawchuk (whom you might remember from this ancient piece) will be appearing on Radio Times with smokin' hot radio babe Marty Moss-Cohane tomorrow from 10:20 until 10:40. Radio Times airs on 90.9 FM here in Philly. Before you cry a river that even FEMA would notice about how you won't be able to listen in because you don't live in Philly, please allow me to remind you that, through the magic of the "internets", you can listen live by clicking here. George Deutsch calls it witchcraft, but we call it technology.

Ken will be talking about Voters' Choice Act, the ballot access lawsuit (follow that link and feel the rage!), and the importance of not singing at the table (it's not just good manners, folks, it's a good a idea). Ken will be joined by Terry Madonna who will gyrate shamelessly across the studio while singing "Like a Virgin".

Also tomorrow, my good friend Jay "You're what every citizen should be, a good Christian" Schwartz will be helping to conduct and interesting experiment at the Franklin Institute. The Institute is celebrating the fifty-first anniversary of the opening of its Giant Heart exhibit by staying open for fifty-one straight hours. Jay will, of course, be showing movies. Like the day when JFK was assassinated, 9/11, and that time when that fat kid shit his pants during the National Geography Bee, people will be talking about where they were when this went down for decades to come.

In RATYHTL news, while my column didn't appear in this week's City Paper, I have it on good authority that it will definitely be in next week's. This new high visibility might just result in an influx of new readers for this site. In other words, we've got less than one week to straighten this place up. razlerja, pick up that dirty laundry! billzebub, get those dirty dishes outta the sink. I don't care what you do with 'em. Hide 'em, if you have to. C'mon people, look alive. I'm not mad at you, crapmonkey. I'm mad at the dirt. briannirvana, one word: "pants". As in "put some goddamn pants on now."

By the way, I drove (in a car) for two hours yesterday and for another two hours today. While that might not seem like a huge accomplishment, I should point out that the last time I drove a car, you could only make a right turn on a red light if you had the written permission of Ladybird Johnson.

Now, in the past, I've had what might be described as, at best, a "spotty" driving record. At the tender age of eighteen, I managed to flip a car end-over-end. Since then I've relied on public transportation, taxis, and tour buses.

In order that I not pose a danger to anyone else or (most importantly) myself, I'm taking driving lessons. That's all. No punch line. Just something I wanted you all to know.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Salvete populus malae volatatis,

Sorry about the several hour gap between posts, but I've had a big day (more on this later). The first items on the agenda, and something I should've mentioned on Tuesday, are a trio of eulogies from Coretta Scott King's funeral.

The first standout was Jimmy Carter who, standing only a few feet away from George Bush, managed to bring the crowded church to its feet when he said the following:

"It was difficult for them personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the targets of secret government wiretapping, other surveillance."

Translation: "Someone in this room has been taking a shit all over the fourth amendment. I'm looking in your direction, Captain Dickface." Sweet economy box o' Jesus, what is Carter's problem? All President Bush asks of us is that we give him unlimited powers with which to fight the War on Terror: A war that he, himself, admits may never end.

Now, at this point, some Republican always jumps in with "Wait a cotton-pickin' minute! On May 23, 1979, Jimmy 'Shame on you, George the eavesdropper' Carter signed an Executive Order stating: 'Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order.'" Only they say it with a southern accent, use fewer "big" words, and fuck a pig while saying it.

Then I am forced to remind everybody that I am not a Democrat before pointing out that what Carter's Executive Order actually said was "1-101. Pursuant to Section 102(a)(1) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1802(a)), the Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order, but only if the Attorney General makes the certifications required by that Section." In other words, the Attorney General would have to provide certification as required under Section 102(a)(1), that the surveillance would not be applied to "the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party." The key words being "United States person": you know, like Dr. and Mrs. King.

Moving right along...

The next memorable eulogies came from Maya Angelou. If you can find Maya's whole speech on line I heavily recommend that you read it. Maya was surprisingly funny while remaining respectful of the occasion. I mention this only because Maya Angelou has often pestered me about speaking at my funeral. To be honest, I never thought that Maya's rather dry delivery would go over big with the Bitchin' Camero crowd so I gently put her off by saying "For fuck's sake woman, you'll be long dead and your crappy poems forgotten years before I even show the slightest hint of giving up the ghost." Then we would laugh. Or, rather, I would laugh outwardly while Maya would laugh quietly on the inside. However, after hearing Maya's farewell to Mrs. King, I would be honored to have her speak at my memorial service: as long as she doesn't throw herself onto the pyre with the seventy-five "virgin brides of Anonymous".

The only low point in Maya Angelou oration was a brief mention of her friend Winnie Mandela. Yes, the former wife of Nelson Mandela: a woman known for commanding a squadron of hooligans who specialized in placing burning car tires around the necks of their victims.

I honestly hated to bring that up, beause Maya's speech was otherwise perfect. However, brining up a dangerous lunatic does help set the stage for our final speaker, King's youngest daughter, Bernice. Who is, unfortunately, bat-shit crazy.

She delivered a rambling monologue in which she compared her mother's cancer to the "materialism, greed, racism, perversion, misogyny, idolatry and militarism" that is "eating away at the very nature of what God created us for". If you can find the whole speech on line I heavily recommend that you avoid it with all the zeal normally reserved for avoiding the three hour one-man-show, An Evening With Carrot Top.

By the way, did you notice that right there smack in the center of that role call of vices is "perversion"? You see, just like her father, Bernice King has been a tireless crusader in the area of civil rights; however, unlike Dr. King, Bernice has been crusading against the rights of an oppressed minority: in this case, Gays. Two years ago, Bernice led several thousand people, mostly African Americans, in a march supporting a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. By the way, the late, great, class act Coretta Scott King was an ardent supporter of Gay rights.

I'm now going to apply to Bernice King the same theory that I've hitherto reserved for Hank Williams Jr. I call it the "Left on the Doorstep by Their Real Fucktard Birth-Parents Hypothesis." 'Nuff said?

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 1:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Flounder from Animal House said it best: Oh boy, this is great!

George Deutsch, the fawning young toady who turned an internship on the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign into a cushy paying gig in the NASA Headquarters' Press Room where he got tell brainy science guys that God made the Universe, has resigned!

Deutsch-bag decided to clean out his desk not because of the public outcry over his memo telling a NASA contactor that it was mandatory to follow the words "Big Bang" with the word "theory", but because it was discovered that Deutsch (the man who believes that Laci Peterson may have been murdered by a satanic cult), contrary to what appears on his resume, never graduated from college.

What? George Deutsch isn't a college graduate? I'm shocked. Shocked; I tell you!

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In response to a Danish newspaper publishing a comic strip depicting the Prophet Mohammed (I've seen the strip and, frankly, it pales in comparison to the RATYHTL version) an Iran newspaper has put out the call for comics about the Holocaust.

Longtime listener/First time caller razlerja (if that is his real name) has triple-dog-dared me to pick up the sweaty, stinky Iranian gauntlet and toss it back at their beared faces. Well, never let it be said that Roney Anonymous is the kind of man who would back away from a challenge!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

Live with the Poor (Vita Plebe): Special Iranian Comedy Edition:

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 7:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Terrible news, folks...

The Amazing Randi suffered a heat attack earlier this week He underwent bypass surgery on Thursday, and is currently in stable condition. Progress reports will be posted on the James Randi Educational Foundation website (While you're there, please make a donation: don't be a cheap bastard). As I've mentioned before, Mr. Randi has been one of my heroes (unus virorum meorum) ever since, as a kid staying up late on a Friday night, I saw footage of him busting animated lower intestine Peter Popoff. Thanks to the mighty Paul Kircher I had the opportunity to interview him twice. You can listen here and here.

We all wish him an amazingly speedy recover (I'm looking forward to see a headline reading "Fucking Amazing: Randi Escapes From Hospital")

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Salvete divini pesces exitii perpetui,

Just in case you missed popular recurring character and Turd Flambeau Alberto Gonzales' testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, please allow me to sum it up.

"The president's domestic spying program is perfectly legal because the president says it is. Oh, and Little Debbie Snack Cakes give me 'the trots'."

Of course, since Gonzales wasn't sworn in, he could've sat there and said that Bush's domestic spying program was necessary to prevent robots from the future traveling back in time and raping our cattle, and we'd all just have to live with that explanation too.

Had Gonzo just stuck to script, he would've been home in time to "seek the opinion of a respected colleague": or, in layman's terms, he could've caught the end of Judge Judy. Sadly, Alberto chose to adlib:

"In the wake of 9/11, he [Bush] told the American people that to carry out this solemn responsibility, he would use every lawful means at his disposal to prevent another attack."

The keyword, of course, being "lawful", which by all appearance the domestic spying program is not. To put it another way, let's say that Lawn Doctor© promised to use any means at their disposal to keep your yard green and healthy. Now let's say that one of those means at their disposal was forcing Sudanese orphans to spend sixteen hours a day weeding your lawn and fertilizing it with the blood of virgins. Would that be legal? No. Would it be cool as shit to watch? Maybe. Gentlemen, the prosecution rests.

Amazingly, all this talk of legality seemed to stir Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont to the point where he was forced to state the obvious saying, "Nobody is above the law, not even the president of the United States. But instead of doing what the president has the authority to do legally, he decided to do it illegally without safeguards." However, by this point in the hearings, Gonzales had been distracted by a shiny object and his overwhelming desire to put it in his mouth.

Fortunately for Gonzales, his ADD medication kicked in and he suddenly blurted out that the Surveillance Act is "not always sufficient for providing the sort of nimble early warning system we need against al-Qaeda". True. The last time that the administration was warned about a possible attack by al-Qaeda, the wording was so vague as to only be understandable by the most dedicated of linguists armed with decoder rings.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 7:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm sure that you all remember George Deutsch-bag (the 24-year-old wunderkind who rose from an obscure position (see page 23 of the Karma Sutra) on the Bush-Cheney re-election team to a job wherein he gets to tell smarty-pants PhD. types what to say) from Sunday's piece about the current administration's attempt to invite Science to a frat party, slip it some roopies and pull a train on it. Well, "that guy" over at World O' Crap did what I should've done and googled Deutsch. Hilarity ensues. Here are Deusch's thoughts (in the broadest sense of the word) about the murder of Laci Peterson:

"Still, the defense's main theory -- that a Satanic cult killed Laci -- is actually quite credible. Several impartial witnesses have reported seeing a van adorned with satanic symbols and a man with "666" tattooed on his arm in front of the Peterson home in late December."

Never mind that the FBI has never found any evidence to substantiate claims of murderous Satanic Cults roaming America.

Remember; although George works for NASA he's no Rocket Scientist.

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The every vigilant eyes of Mike from ookworld spotted the following tale of woe:

"Tresa Waggoner, the Colorado music teacher whose attempts to introduce local children to opera drew a storm of criticism, has decided to take legal action after being forced to take administrative leave from the Bennett School."

"The uproar began about a week later, when Waggoner was contacted by a mother asking why her daughter had watched a video on the devil. Waggoner believes that the incident was a catalyst for parents to express their frustration about the school's December 9 annual concert. According to Waggoner, the parent said, "I don't understand why you wouldn't let the kids sing Christmas songs, but you'll show them a video on the devil." Ironically, Waggoner says, she had chosen a diverse repertoire for the concert in order to avoid offending the community's non-Christians."

The whole goddamn weird story can be read here. This piece has it all, including accusations of Lesbianism. This would be pretty funny had it taken place anywhere else but Twenty-first Century America.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Salvete remedii morti,

Just a gentle reminder that next Sunday is Darwin Day. Those of you who, like me, will be celebrating Darwin Day in Philly can find a list of activities here. Normally there are plenty o' wholesome and nutritious reasons for observing Darwin Day, but this year we have one more: America has declared War on Science.

Before you click on the Comments button to tell me that I'm being overly dramatic, hear me out on this:
Today, I learned that back in October George Deutsch, who works at the NASA headquarters press office, fired off an e-mail to a NASA contractor who was working on a web site about Einstein for middle-school students informing the contactor that the word "theory" must be added after every mention of the Big Bang because, I shit thee not, it is, despite an overwhelming mountain of evidence, "not proven fact; it is opinion," Have a heapin' helpin' of some hillbilly stupidity:

"It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator…This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."

OK, so who, other than a dumbfuck who doesn't understand the definition of "theory" is George Deutsch? George graduated from Texas A&M in 2003 with a degree in journalism. After working as an intern for the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, he was rewarded with a presidential appointment to his current (missionary) position. In December of 2005, Deutsch began taking an interest in the career of NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen. Dr. Hansen's specialty is Global Warming.

After releasing data showing that 2005 was most likely the warmest year in at least a century, Dr. Hansen received a warning from NASA's headquarters that there would be "dire consequences" if he continued talking about Global Warming. Enter Deutsch-bag who then reportedly rejected a request from National Public Radio to interview Dr. Hansen, calling NPR "the most liberal" media source and stating that it was his job to his job "to make the president look good". Deutsch has denied saying any of this and I, for one, think we ought to give a fellow who works at NASA and is suspicious of scientific data the benefit of a doubt.

Admittedly, one guy who spent his childhood cleaning out septic tanks with a straw and now wastes his adult years and our tax dollars sending out moronic emails doesn't necessarily constitute a War. But a President who repeatedly ignores the research and recommendations of scientists, has made statements in favor of Junk Science, and who continually appoints persons with questionable qualifications to scientific committees sure as shit does.

And what are the results of the War on Science? Your neighbors are idiots.

51% of Americans believe at God created humans in our present form. While 30% of Americans believe that humans evolved, they think that a Higher Intelligence (Read: God) guided the process. Only 15% of Americans believe (understand) that humans evolved through a process that was not divinely guided.

And it gets worse…

Statistically, every other American you meet doesn't know that the Earth travels all the way around the sun once a year.

One in seven American adults (that's pretty much 25 million people, folks) cannot locate the United States on an unlabeled world map.

Only 21 % of Americans can explain what DNA is.

Only 9% of Americans know what a molecule is.

This is why, if you think about it, celebrating Darwin Day is more than just a good idea: it's your patriotic duty.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Salvete margariti sententiae,

Apparently the Super Bowl will be taking place this Sunday. The only reason I know this is because I received an invitation to a Super Bowl party. Since I have no idea who's playing whom, I'm just going to make up two teams: The Atlanta Squirrels and Madison Black Smiths. Now I'm going to make up a score: Squirrels 11, Black Smiths 4. Go Squirrels! Beat the fuckin' shit out of those faggoty Black Smiths.

This lack of acquaintance with the grid iron goings on has made me suspect in the eyes of many of my coworkers: in particular, those who participate in Fantasy Football Leagues.

Now, the one thing I do know about football is that many football players are convicted felons. I know this because, a few years back, I caught an interview on NPR (I've admitted to knowing nothing about football and listening to NPR: Gitmo, here I come!) with a gentleman who'd just authored a book detailing that, at that time, nearly one quarter of all NFL players had criminal records which included felony arrests. In order for this fact to fully sink in, I propose an experiment. If you're reading this in the office (and, after all, that's where I'm writing it), take a quick look around you. What percentage of your coworkers do you think have felony convictions?

Other than Department of Defense contractors (click that link: under-reported story alert!), don't most new hires have to undergo background checks? Shit Luther, I had to pee in cup before the company I work for even allowed me into the lobby. And then they made me take a drug test. Badda Bing.

If you're like me (and I pray regularly to Zeus that you are not), you've been searching for some means through which you can transform your limited knowledge of football into a way of, if not actually enjoying, at least feigning interest in the sport. Here's my modest proposal:

Fantasy Felony Football

The rules are fairly simple: Everyone picks one (1) NFL player. I've chosen Chris Henry of the Cincinnati Bengals * who was recently arrested for and charged with possession of a concealed firearm, improper exhibition of a firearm and aggravated assault with a firearm. For getting arrested for three and charged with three (3) felonies, Chris Henry has earned me three (3) points. Thanks Chris. If Chris manages to get convicted, I'll pick up one (1) point for each felony charge for a total of six (6) points. C'mon Chris; you can do it! I believe in you!

At first I thought about making more serious crimes (rape, murder, picketing outside of a Honeybaked Ham store) worth more points than let's say, oh, "Assault with intent to teach the bitch a lesson", but after some reflection this seemed in questionable taste. I also considered writing Chris Henry of the Cincinnati Bengals a letter telling him that I was a very sick little boy (let it go) and that I might not make it unless he committed a few more felonies, but again the question of taste (as well as getting my ass kicked) came up.

OK people, I've already got my three (3) points and you know the rules so, in the words of Antonio Banderas in Desperado, "Let's play!"

* Are tigers native to the greater Ohio region?

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 7:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Women seeking abortions in Indiana would have to be told in writing that life begins at conception under legislation approved by the Indiana House.

Read 'em and weep

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Few major news outlets have covered the fact -- first reported by the New York Daily News -- that in a letter to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's defense attorneys, special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald said that numerous emails from 2003 are missing from the White House computer archives.

Read all about it.

PS. Can we puh-leeze start calling "scooter" by his real name: Irving?

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Those who would exchange freedom for security get and deserve neither"

- Benjamin Franklin

Herb, you fuckin' idiot! OK, stop right there. Look, I'm never going to get anyway by just attacking someone who happens to be mistaken about the facts. How can we expect to ever engage in meaningful dialog with those who disagree with us if we immediately insult them? Let's start all over; this time trying a gentler approach:

Dear Herbert, while I certainly appreciate the passion with which you've expressed your concerns about the security of your fellow citizens, I believe that you're mistaken on several points. Please allow me the opportunity enlighten you… you fuckin' idiot!

One: Herb, it does not take two weeks to get a warrant from a FISA judge. In fact, if the government wants to wiretap your shitty little princess phone, they can go right ahead and do it. The Feds can then wait three whole mutha fuckin' days before asking a FISA judge for a piece of paper asking if it was OK to listen on your calls to 1-800-STUDLOVE.

Two: "The judge could say no." Yes, and you could wake up tomorrow to find that you've grown a penis, but both of those things are highly unlikely to happen. The FISA court approves over 1,000 warrants a year. Since the FISA court has been in existence for twenty-five years that's (I'll help you with the tough math, Herb) roughly 25,000 warrants. And in those twenty-five years, how many applications for warrants have the FISA court rejected? Pencils down. The correct answer is FOUR. You can see the stats here. See, unlike you, Herb, I prefer to back my statements up with evidence instead of just inventing crazy shit. Statement: You are a fuckin' idiot! Evidence: Your shitty little letter to the Editor.

Three: So, with a three day grace period and a 1-in-6,250 chance of having an application for a warrant rejected, why would the Bush administration want to avoid the FISA court? Well, Herb, maybe it was because Bush and pals didn't won't to leave a paper trail showing that they'd been spying on the likes of Caitlin Childs.

Who?

Caitlin Childs. Caitlin Childs was spied upon by both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Was she making daily calls to Osama bin Laden? No. Was she building a dirty bomb out of your soiled panties, Herb? No. She was…wait for it, it's that goddamn good…she was part of a small group of vegans who, in December 2003, were picketing against a HoneyBaked Ham© store. I guess the Feds figure "Wait, Muslims don't eat pork: maybe, just maybe, there's a connection!"

Four: Bush's secret wiretapping program, just like the War in Iraq, is not making either you, or me, or the seamstress who sews the frills unto your shitty little pink panties any safer. As a matter of fact, it's having the opposite effect. The FBI (when there not busy spying on Caitlin Childs) have complained that the program caused them to be inundated with useless leads on thousands of innocentAmericans. You see, Herb; you don't find a needle in a haystack by throwing more hay on it. Do ya', dickface?

Five: Herb, if you wanna live in a Police State as much as you wanna teach Gym, you should move to a country like Pakistan, you shitty little obsequious prick. Sweet Jesus on a riding mower, Herb, as much as I hate your shitty little guts, I hope to Hell that you never come home from a hard day at the drive-thru window to find your kids missing and a note from the government reading: "Don't worry, it's a matter of national security and the continued safety of our Honeybaked Ham© supply". That sort of shit happens every day in shitty little princess phone buggin', pink panty confiscating Police States, Herb.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 7:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mrs. Anonymous turns 21 today. In other Vienna related news, I keep trying to get her to pose for the skepchick calendar, but she keeps refusing.

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Ode to the 125 bus: A hastily written, rambling sort of manifesto, State of the Union thingy.

"That's why I swim against the stream: 'cuz the shit only flows downhill." - The Unloved.

Salvete auctores amoris,

I'll be changing jobs in less than two weeks, and his shift in position will require some readjustments in my life. For example, I now have to get my hands on a car (I guess that I should probably learn how to drive as well). This, of course, means that I'll be saying a sad farewell to the 125 bus.

The word "bus" does the 125 a great injustice as it has been so much more than a mere means of transportation to me. It's been my library, as I like to read on my way to work and it's been my bedroom, as I like to sleep on my way home. But, most of all, the 125 has been my classroom. My fellow passengers have opened up my mind to a world of knowledge that I would've once considered unimaginable. Did you know that the plural of "shrimp" is "shrimps"? Neither did I until last Friday when I heard another passenger loudly exclaim "I'm gonna get me some shrimps this weekend!" Unfettered by the draconian rules that have hamstrung many a grammarian, the vast majority of the proletarian scholars who frequent the Algonquin-Round-Table-on-Wheels that is the 125 have embarked on a bold, new conjugation of the verb to be: "I be", "S/he, it be", "We be" and, of course, "Which Doobie you be?

And it's not just the linguistic arts in which my fellow public transportation inmates have excelled. They also seem privy to a universe of films that not even the most ardent of "art house" fans has ever even heard of. Until last Wednesday, I was looking forward to seeing A Cock and Bull Story, but not anymore. Why waste my money taking a chance on what might be a very funny movie, when I can plop down my seven bucks on a sure thing: Big Momma's House II. According to a group of women seated behind me, Big Momma's House II is the apex of mankind's attempt at capturing humor on celluloid (or, as they critiqued it, "That be the funniest shit ever made!"). Admittedly, I failed to catch Big Mamma's House I when it opened six years ago (no doubt on a double-bill with Quills), but I loved The Madness of King George III and I never saw parts I or II of that trilogy.

Sweet Jesus who can't get his stigmata treated because his HMO says it's a "pre-existing condition", if ignorance is bliss, then America is the happiest whorehouse/candy store/free fireworks stand combo on Earth. People sure are naturally pretty fuckin' stupid, aren't they?

No! No one is naturally stupid! People are only stupid when they're encouraged to be stupid, and incentive to be stupid flows downhill from the restricted country club at the top of the mountain.

I don't mean to come off sounding like a professor of Menstrual Persecution at the Berkley School of Indigenous Oppression, and I am by no means implying that a group of wealthy white males are currently sitting in a Halliburton boardroom floating strategies about the most effective way to make you dumber. But you have to admit that the people at the top benefit greatly if the people at the bottom are too ignorant to question the status quo. People who believe that they're poor because God made them poor or because "that's just the way things have always been" are not just the ruling class' greatest asset, but also bear a great deal of responsibility for their current situation.

Speaking of the way things have always been, I've spend way too much of my free time trying to pinpoint the exact moment in history when the working class began to consider knowledge to be a bad thing. On the one hand, Jude Fawley, the working class protagonist of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure which takes place during the 1880's (the movie version features a nekkid Kate Winslet and that creepy soldier guy from 28 days Later. You know, the guy who keeps saying "The cure for infection is here"), is roundly ridiculed by his peers for his attempts to learn Greek and Latin. On the other hand, Jude was attempting to improve his mind and there were a few people (OK, drunken barroom patrons) who were impressed by his knowledge. If Jude Fawley were alive today and riding the 125 bus, he'd be content to know who was playing in the Super Bowl, what time his favorite s!
itcom was on, and very little else. And that would be OK, because there are plenty of decent people out there don't beat their wives, don't set stray cat's on fire, and who also just happen not to give a bucket of Crispy Kentucky Fried Shit© about the year in which Emperor Julian ascended to the throne (361 CE). Unfortunately, there are plenty more people out there who are not only proud of the fact that they don't know in what year Emperor Julian ascended to the throne, but are suspicious to the point of hostility of anyone who does.

As best as I can calculate (using an abacus, sun spots, and the intestines of a Madagascar ground pig, and a really smart Asian kid), the backlash against intellectuals in the United States began in November 2, 1920 with the election of Warren G. Harding (that day also marked Harding's 55th birthday): a man who will doubt be remembered as the second worst President in US history. The Robber Barons were tired of educated radicals stirring up the works and many in the lower class were angry with the smarty-pants scientists and engineers who, in their minds, had brought the airplane, the machine gun, and mustard gas to the battlefields of the First World War; so an unspoken agreement was struck wherein a likeable moron would be place in the nations highest elected office. This was the first shot in the war against "those know-it-all eggheads": today known as "The Liberal Elite."

Meanwhile, back on the 125 bus, someone is spouting off at the top of their lungs about the proper treatment of detainees held in US custody.

"What we oughta do with those Iraqis who attacked us on 9/11 is sick some pit bulls on 'em. Then they'd tell us where that Ben Laden guy is hiding."

There I was, happily sleeping the return trip away when this idiot, two seats away, wakes me up with his thoroughly retarded interpretation of the Geneva Conventions. Someone is gonna pay for this.

"Second that emotion!" I chime in, "If we're 100% sure that one of them towel-head Iraqis scumbags knows something, then we should torture the living shit outta 'em."

A chorus of agreement greets my comment.

"Of course," I begin hesitantly, "If we're only, oh, let's say 30% certain that one of them Iraqis knows something, I guess we should still probably torture the living shit outta 'em."

"Well…maybe not thirty…"

"And we may get a guy or two who won't crack under torture, so we may have to torture his wife or maybe his kids in front of him to get him to speak up."

"Look, I dunno if…"

"But there's no denying that torture works. Sure, there are some intellectual types who'll tell you that, if you torture someone, the person being tortured is only gonna tell you what they think you wanna hear: you know, in order to stop the torture. But what about those folks back in Salem? They sure as Hell didn't waste anytime turning in other witches once the ol' thumbscrews were put to 'em. Shit - is your name Luther? Can I call you Luther? Thanks. Shit Luther, some of them folks back in Salem even turned in their own demonic relatives. You don't see any witches walkin' the streets today, do you? Maybe at Halloween, but with the help of God and the determination of Pat Robertson, that 'holiday' won't be around much longer. All hail the burning in my loins!!!"

"I guess…"

"True, Roger Brokaw, an Army Criminal Investigator who was assigned to Abu Ghraib as an interrogator, testified that the best technique he found for extracting information wasn't beating prisoners, or sicking dogs on 'em, or stripping them naked and making them pile on top of each other, or even forcing them to 'spank the Mullah' while Nation Guard members from West Virginia snap photos. The best approach he found was to 'engage them in conversation about their family….Many times they start crying, and then they start talking.' But how fuck are we average Americans supposed to know about that? What the furry fisting fuck are we supposed to do? READ?"

The rest of the ride is joyfully silent.

Technically, I'm a very bad person. It's not the fault of people on the 125 that they think it's OK to shove a hose up a detainee's ass and turn on the water until the poor bastard sings like the cast of Cats on meth; it's just another example of the stupidity ball rolling downhill across the cultural landscape. Can you guess the names of the brainless pig fuckers whose fault it is? C'mon, guess!

Here's a clue:

On February 7th, 2002, professional asshole George Bush issued a Presidential Directive suspending US observance of the Geneva Conventions. This was followed on August 1st by the not-famous-enough "torture memo" cooked up between Bush and Attorney General-to-be and trained two-legged talking turd, and popular recurring character Roberto Gonzalez. On October 5th of 2005, Bush announced that he would veto any military-spending bill that included a ban on "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment": AKA "Kicking little brown prisoners in the balls."

Last week, in a trail that received little to no coverage in by the US media, a soldier was convicted of negligent homicide and dereliction of duty for causing the death of an Iraqi major general by stuffing said Iraqi major general head-first into a sleeping bag, binding him with electrical cord, sitting his chest and regularly covering his mouth. The soldier's defense was, basically, a September 10th, 2003, memo issued by the Army's top commander in Iraq which authorized the use of painful stress positions, exploiting prisoners' fears and terrorizing them with attack dogs.

In other words, no one a rung or two up the ladder of command had ever told him that what he was doing was wrong.

_._

Further reading:

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
Reading don't fix no Chevys
Idiot America

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 7:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The staff of U.S. Rep Marty Meehan wiped out references to his broken term-limits pledge as well as information about his huge campaign war chest in an independent biography of the Lowell Democrat on a Web site that bills itself as the "world's largest encyclopedia," The Sun has learned.

Story here

Bonus Comedy:

One edit had White House press secretary Scott McClellan under the entry for "douche" and another said that Senator Tom Coburn had been voted the most annoying Senator by his peers in Congress "this was due to Senator Coburn being a huge douche-bag".

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Holy Lioness Headed Shit, Batman!
Two 3,400-year-old Sekhmet statues have been found! By a strange coincidence, tomorrow is Vienna's birthday.

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptologists have discovered two 3,400-year-old statues of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet and a rare statue depicting a king with Nubian features, an archaeological conservation director said on Monday.

Extra, extra! Read all about it (the statues, that is: not Vienna's birthday).

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)