The CJSD theme song

My friend Bob Hillman has written a song called "Circle Jerk at the Square Dance," which you can here at his MySpace page (click the "Demo 7" link in the music player - Bob's trying to duck out of paying me royalties for the title). It's not really about me blogging in the way that, say, "Believe It or Not" is about The Greatest American Hero. But sharing the title alone is good enough for me.

While you're over there, I recommend checking out his other tunes, especially "Valentine's Day" and "My Satanic Friends." He's a terrific songwriter who combines great pop/folk melodies with very clever lyrics. If you like what you hear, hop over to Bob's home page where you can buy his CDs. I am particularly partial to Welcome to My Century, which is just a stellar collection of catchy, witty tunes.

A quick story tangentially related to Bob: When The Lovely Becky and I attended the lovely wedding of Bob and the lovely SER, they had karaoke at the party the night before the wedding. TLB, who is a huge Aimee Mann fan, wanted to do a duet of Til Tuesday's "Voices Carry." My wife can actually sing. I actually cannot. But we had a routine for this song where she would sing most of the song and I would play the part of the psychotic boyfriend. We thought this would be an entertaining change of pace from the other karaoke performances.

The song began, and Becky started singing very well. I stood very still until the chorus, when I grabbed the mic and screamed "HUSH HUSH! KEEP IT DOWN NOW! VOICES CARRY!"

This boomed out of the sound system. Prior to our act, many of the folks singing had not been singing very loudly, so the karaoke DJ had turned up the mic. As soon as I started screaming, I saw him lunge for the volume control.

We kept up the call-and-excessive-response rhythm for the whole song, until we got to the last part before it faded out:

TLB: He said...

Me: SHUT UP!

TLB: He said...

Me: SHUT UP!

Together: Oh God can't you, keep it down...VOICES CARRY!

I really don't know how much of the room was with us. I do know that the table full of our Writer's Workshop friends and associates were laughing pretty hard. Probably at me more than with, but since I am a chuckle whore, I take them any way I can get them.

Shortly after we finished, I found Bob. Bob gave me a look that I call the "there he goes again," a slight head shake and eye roll he uses whenever I make a particularly bad joke or blatant attempt to do my "act."

"What did you think?" I asked him.

He paused for a moment before replying, "That was surprisingly aggressive."

That was good enough for me.

Back tomorrow with the Top Ten Tuesday I should have written today.

Seen in the IC

I went to lunch in downtown IC with some coworkers today. As we turned to park into our space, one of them said, "There's Kerry." I thought of my friend Kerry, who moved away over the summer, and became confused. Then I looked up to see John Kerry standing right by our parking meter, shaking some hands and posing for photos with some passersby. We all smiled at him. He smiled back, and then ducked into one of our local sushi restaurants (here for those of you scoring at home).

This may not seem like a big deal to those of you with local populations in the six figures, but here in the IC, celebrity* sightings are rare. They tend to happen only if Ashton Kutcher is home to buy a new trucker hat or Tom Arnold is opening another loose meat restuarant.

I wanted to say something to JK but couldn't think of anything. I thought about saying, "Wish you had won," but thought that might make him think, "Thanks for reminding me I couldn't beat a talking chimp, buttmunch."

*There are famous writers in town all the time, but I'm referring to actual celebrities. You know, people in Us magazine.

McCain Blames President Truman for Current North Korean Nuclear Crisis

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. - Republican Senator John McCain, a 2008 presidential hopeful, went on the offensive against reporters who asked if the Bush administration could have done more to stop North Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Walking from the stage toward the press area, McCain asked, "Do you remember that little thing we had about 50 years ago called the Korean conflict? And how we failed to achieve victory?"

As McCain approached Charles Babington, the Washington Post reporter who had posed the question, Babington asked, "What does that have to do with the Bush administration's handling of North Korea for the past five years?"

"Imagine how things would have been different today if we had crossed the thirty-eighth parallel," McCain said, his voice shifting into a rising shout, "and pushed those rice eaters back to the Great Wall of China!"

He picked up one of the reporters' chairs and ripped it apart, his voice rising to a thunderous scream as he continued, "Then take the fucking wall apart brick by brick and nuke them back to the fucking Stone Age forever? Wouldn't that have prevented this week's tests? So why didn't we do it when we had the chance? Why? Say it! Say it!"

Babington, recoiling, yelled, "I don’t know!"

McCain answered, his face inches from Babington's, "Because Truman was too much of a pussy to let MacArthur go in there and blow those Commie bastards out! Oh! Oooohhhhh!"

In mid-scream, the senator stopped and stood up sharply, whispering, "Oh." He ran back up the stage and disappeared. After a few moments of confusion, a spokesperson for McCain said the press conference was over.

An anonymous source later revealed that the exertion had caused the 70-year-old senator to soil his Depends undergarments. McCain's office did not return calls on the matter.

Top Ten Tuesdays: How are we preventing nuclear proliferation?

10) Um...

9) Yeah...

8) See, it’s complicated.

7) We invaded a country that didn’t have nukes to send a message to countries that did.

6) ...

5) Because we don’t negotiate with negotiators.

4) So now, we’re, um...

3) Trying to negotiate.

2) Because we don’t have any more, uh, troops to send...

1) Um...it’s all Clinton’s fault?

Bill Frist: The Director's Cut

Amid all the hullaballoo about hot GOP man-on-boy virtual action, I noticed this tidbit in the news:

Frist: Taliban Should Be in Afghan Government

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily and urged support for efforts to bring "people who call themselves Taliban" and their allies into the government.

The Tennessee Republican said he learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated on the battlefield.

So a major Republican politician and potential 2008 presidential candidate calls for smoking a peace pipe with the people who harbored the terrorists that attacked the United States.

The irony drips thicker than in an Alanis Morissette song. The decision to attack the Taliban was, for nearly everyone in America, a very black-and-white issue, so clear cut, it was almost cinematic in its starkness. Which got me thinking about what some famous movies would be like if they starred Bill Frist...


Star Wars

Darth Vader confronts Princess Frist.

VADER
I want to know what happened to the plans they sent you!

PRINCESS FRIST
They’re in R2D2! (points to droid)

Minutes later, the ship is destroyed.

FADE OUT


Braveheart

LONGSHANKS
I will offer you lands in Scotland and Wales for your fealty. What say you?

Sir William Frist looks over the enormous English army.

SIR WILLIAM FRIST
Deal. Say, do you have something by a loch?


Halloween

Dr. William Frist puts his arm around the terrified Laurie.

DR. FRIST
Laurie, I’m not offering you as a sacrifice, I’m just saying that maybe he’ll stop killing everyone if you just go out on a date with him. Trust me, I've looked into his eyeholes, and he is no killer.


Saving Private Ryan

The front of the landing craft splashes down. Gunfire erupts as the men charge out. All the occupants of the boat fall, except for Private Frist.

PRIVATE FRIST (looking up at German gun placements, makes Curly Howard noise)
Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah!

He turns and runs into the sea.


Glory

Colonel William Frist, on horseback in front of the 54th Massachusetts regiment, looks through the telescope at the formidable fortifications of Fort Wagner.

COL. FRIST
Men, it is my professional observation that our only option is to return you to slavery. After all, you get three hots and cot, how bad could it be? Major Lott, prepare to surrender.


The Matrix

Morpheus sits in a chair talking with Frist.

MORPHEUS
This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—

Frist grabs the blue pill and swallows it.


Sleepless in Seattle

Bill Frist, holding a letter from Annie, talks with his son Jonah.

BILL FRIST
You know, Jonah, New York's such a long ways away, and it's full of criminals, and I don't even know this woman, she might be one of those transsexuals...I think I'm just going to stay here and masturbate.


Monty Python and the Holy Grail

FRENCH SOLDIER
Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!

KING FRIST
Right, come along, Patsy! (rides away)


High Noon

The train arrives in town. Frank Miller steps off and joins his gang of thugs. They stand ready, looking around the train station. Miller checks his watch. A close up of the hands shows noon. The watch hands spin to 5:00 p.m. Miller and his gang are still at the same spot.

MILLER
Guess Marshal Frist’s not coming. So, uh...rape and loot, then a bite to eat?

The men all nod and murmur agreements and they head into town.


The Exorcist

Regan’s head spins around in a 360 degree circle before she throws up on Father Frist.

FATHER FRIST (wiping face as he packs up Bible and starts to leave)
You know, she’ll probably grow out of it. If she’s still masturbating with crucifixes in six months, call me.


Aliens

PRIVATE FRIST
Game over, man, game over!

Top Ten Tuesdays: What are we doing while we're wasted?

Special 12-pack edition!

12) Crashing the party of family values, having sex in the closest, and then throwing up on the host.

11) Auditioning for a part on Lost.

10) Making new MySpace friends.

9) Making new TV show about MySpace friends.

8) Threatening to kill ourselves because, even though we make $25 million catching footballs, no one will throw us a hug.

7) Putting $1000 on the Cubs to win it all next year (again).

6) Drawing little hearts with “G.W.B. + C.R.” in the margins of CIA terror briefing.

5) Accepting chat-room invitation to meet an underage girl who calls herself D8Lyin’.

4) Saying we approve of the job Bush is doing.

3) Getting our bills mixed up by making waterboarding legal and royal flushes illegal.

2) Hosting The O'Reilly Factor.

1) Providing a convenient excuse for the kinds of behaviors we’d engage in even if we were sober.

Quick question for the technically proficient

Does anyone know if/how you can post an MP3 file in a Blogger post?

And if you have to link from another hosting site, is there any place you can do that for free/cheap?

Gracias.

An exclusive excerpt from Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial

From Chapter Three: On the Road to Bagdad

Inside the Oval Office, the President's cabinet sat around a large map of Iraq. A PowerPoint presentation projected a slide that simply read, "Iraq Post-Invasion Scenarios and Challenges."

Secretary of State Colin Powell had just finished going through the PowerPoint, explaining all of the difficulties that the United States expeceted to face. "Mr. President, those are the top 100 issues we expect to face after the invasion of Iraq," he said, "Given all of these scenarios, I think that the number of troops we will need will be approximately 350 to 450 thousand."

Bush tapped his fingers thoughtfully. He stood up and approached a white dry-erase board. Grabbing a marker, he began drawing a stick figure with an exaggerated head.

"Colin, here's how I see it," Bush said. "Iraq is like this figure. Saddam is like this head. If you cut the head off... "

Bush grabbed the eraser and rubbed the board. The head would not come off.

Vice President Cheney leaned toward him and whispered, "Sir, you used the permanent marker."

The president sniffed the marker. "'Course I did," he said hastily. "I meant to do that," he added in a Pee Wee Hermanish voice.

Instead of erasing, he drew a large "X" through the head, then an arrow showing it falling off the body. "Anyway, as I was saying, if you cut the head off, the body's no good. Can't really do much without a head, can you?" He let out a series of heh heh hehs. "Plus, when you cut the head off..."

The president drew lines spurting out from the neck, making a pshoo pshoo noise as he did so. "Democracy will just come gushing out. So why would we need 400,000 troops just to make democracy spurt out of Iraq's neck?"

Cheney stood up and let out a loud "Harrumph!" The other cabinet members, following his lead, also let out their harrumphs, except for Powell.

Bush pointed to Powell. "I didn't get a harrumph out of that guy!"

Cheney growled, "Give the president a harrumph."

Instead, Powell sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Mr. President, with all due respect, do you have any experience planning a major military invasion, occupation, and nationbuilding?"

Bush paused as the room fell quiet. "No. But I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night."

The cabinet exploded in laughter. Bush, looking at his cabinent for a moment, also started to laugh. After a few minutes, he asked, "What's so funny? I really did come up with this at the Holiday Inn Express."

Who are the people in your neighborhood?

The very entertaining scruffylooking stopped by yesterday to visit TLB and I. SL lives down the block from us, and while TLB had met her earlier, I had not. I greeted her at the door, and we had that double moment where you're not only meeting someone you've talked to online, but have to decide what to call each other. (Dr. Srcuffylooking, I presume?) We settled on our Christian names. As I said to Blue Girl earlier this weekend, after we exchanged our real names in e-mail, it's a bit like learning Kramer's first name. You'll get used to it, but it will take a while.

Anyway, SL generously dropped off some treats, which we much appreciated, and I was very glad to finally make her acquaintence.

Her visit also reminded me of a funny post, especially in light of our recent difficulties, about her daughter's birthday party. As all the cool, popular bloggers say, just go read it.

Thanks

As the Mrs. said, thanks to everyone for their comments, calls, and e-mails. It is a great comfort to us to be surrounded by so many caring people, IRL and online. A special thank you to Bob for the Calexico tickets -- that really helped take my mind off things last night. We're hanging in there and already transitioning from sad mode to battle mode and figuring out what to do next.

We will be returning to our regularly scheduled satire soon.

What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting

Over the years, I’ve had a number of jokes to explain why TLB and I, having been married since 1994, do not have kids. It was part of my release agreement with the state has been a favorite. I do have them, I just don’t know where they are is another. Because TLB already has a child to take care of, which is really just a factual statement.

I use jokes to deflect further Questions About Kids (QAK). Because in our case, the QAK is not a happy tale. It’s a long, sad, frustrating story. And today, after our last-second buzzer beater seemed improbably headed toward the hoop, we watched the last ball swirl in and out of the basket. It appears we will not be having kids of our own.

We started about nine years ago. We left our swinging (in the figurative sense) New York lifestyle to return to the Chicago area, primarily to start a family. New York was amazing and, despite our impoverished time there, it treated us well. But as a couple of suburban Chicago kids, we doubted our ability to raise kids in the Big Apple (worrying that ours would turn out like Harmony Korine’s very unharmonious Kids). Plus, with so much family around Chicago, we’d have instant babysitting. We packed, we moved, and we were ready to start begetting.

My Catholic education led me to believe that getting pregnant was very, very easy, so easy that if my thingy was even in the same zip code as her whatsit, I’d have a you-know-what on my hands. So I was surprised when our initial trips to the orchard didn’t bear any fruit.

We entered the first phase of infertility, the Planned Interlude, or Reverse Rhythm Method. There are measurements taken, charts consulted, briefs discarded, boxers purchased, and readings analyzed. You enter a realm where the need to have sex right fucking now is greater than any 15-year-old boy could ever imagine. Even if I was in the middle of scarfing some mac and cheese during the Bears game, the minute I saw three lanterns in the tower, I dropped what I was doing and rushed in to announce that the British were indeed coming (and going and going and coming and always too soon!).

That phase lasted for about a year and half with nary second blue line in sight. We reached the point where we had to Diagnose the Problem.

That meant diagnosing me first, because all the man has to do is an activity he’s been doing since he first noticed Mary Jane was cootie free. At the hospital, I was handed a cup by a small, goateed Russian Doctor, who seemed slightly too eager to examine my sample. He ushered me into a small white room which had a black faux leather chair, a TV/VCR unit, one adult video, and a few periodicals of varying degrees of smutitude. “Take as much time as you need,” the Russian Doctor told me, “and try not to spill any.”

My lab results delivered one of the first of many shocks and disappointments. I had azoospermia—a complete lack of troops to launch an invasion. The thought of being infertile hadn’t even crossed my mind. I figured my boys were just like me, lazy and not very good swimmers. This was much more serious.

All hope was not lost. Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, the doctors could go in and search for any isolated swimmers doing the male reproductive version of Castaway. If they found any takers, they could inject them right into an egg and get things going through In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF). In order to find this out, they would have to break into my vault and take a long, hard look at the family jewels. Thank God for anesthetic.

When I came to in the recovery room, TLB was standing beside me. I muttered a groggy hello. She looked sad, and I asked how it went. Surprised, she asked if I remembered talking to the doctor. Apparently he and I had an involved chat where we discussed the results of my testicular foray.

“No,” I said.

“They didn’t find anything,” TLB said. “You don’t have any sperm.”

The diagnosis was Sertoli-cell only syndrome, kind of the straight flush of male infertility. I had no ability to make sperm. This condition isn’t always hopeless, but according to the doctor, they searched for a long time and found nothing to work with.

The news took a long time to sink in. I remember being disappointed but also matter-of-fact about it. Okay, Monty, I’ll take what’s in the box—is it a sperm donor? While I thought, pre-biopsy, that I’d be fine, I still had considered the possibility of infertility and had made up my mind to green light a donor. The real disappointment was more of a slow burn, one of those things that hangs around like fog that won’t melt away. It was sad, but at the same time, I figured if this was the cross I had to carry, it wasn’t as bad as what many people had to bear. TLB and I would have our kids, we’d just have them a little differently.

We shopped around for a donor. This was definitely the most entertaining part of the whole infertility treatment. We logged on to sperm bank Web sites and read profiles of potential pops. We read medical histories, educational backgrounds, physical descriptions, and in some cases could even hear voice samples. We’d play Gay or Straight? as we reviewed our potential donors (loves travel, good food, and musical theater...helllooo!). I joked with TLB that I knew more about these guys than I knew about myself.

We settled on a man of Swedish background, whom I called “The Swede Seed.” By this time, we were in Iowa, so we headed to the UI Hospital for an Inter-Uterine Injection (IUI) — AKA the turkey baster. We went to a hospital room, and a nurse injected our future Big Daddy into my wife. Then, in a fit of jealous rage, I beat the shit out of the catheter.

The first try worked.

We couldn’t believe our luck. Yes, we’d had a bumpy road, and my condition sucked, but we were going to have a baby and at this point, I didn’t care how. Everything was great, and we waltzed into our first ultrasound ready to see the little chef. I imagined baby's first words would be bort-bort-bort.

The nurse fiddled around with the ultrasound and found him or her. We could see the embryo. It was beautiful. It didn’t last long. Almost immediately, the nurse told us the heartbeat and size were low. The pregnancy was likely to end. A couple weeks later, it did.

What the fuck? I asked the cosmos. Why? I could accept my lot in life, but why put TLB through this? What had we done?

After we went through the wailing and gnashing of teeth, we settled down. So the first didn’t take. That was common. At least it had worked. We tried again. And again. And again. We used up all the Swede Seed, and got not so much as a blue line. We made a call to the bullpen for a fresh, er, arm. That didn’t help. Years went by, and we eventually went through 15 IUIs. It was time for an IVF.

The IVF is the fertility cocktail. The mixing is done outside, stirred and not shaken, and then placed back. With IVF, you get actual pictures of the blastocysts, which would allow us to have the earliest baby pictures ever of our future children.

I was lucky that my insurance would pay for four procedures. IVFs run about $15,000, and while you can’t put a price on having kids, you can put a price on bankruptcy. The good news: IVF has a much higher success rate than IUI. Certainly after one or two, we’d be in business.

The game was different but the results the same. Our first attempt went bust. We tried a second attempt. It, too, went bust. Getting a little nervous, we tried a third attempt. That burned down, fell over, sank into the swamp, and then went bust. We were down to the last one insurance would pay for.

And it worked.

A couple weeks ago, TLB got a faint positive on her home test. Then she tested positive at the hospital. Her betas more than doubled. Even when she had some spotting and went in for a panicked test this past Monday, her beta levels were great. We were scheduled to go in for our first ultrasound in five years on Friday. We kept using the phrase cautiously optimistic, because we both remembered all too well what happened last time. But fuck it, I knew this was it. Of course it would be a dramatic Tin Cup kind of moment, where we hit a dozen balls before the last one in our bag goes in. After all, we’re writers, it’s what we would have come up with!

Alas, it was not to be. TLB started bleeding today, enough that we know what tomorrow’s news will be. We couldn't even make it to the fucking ultrasound without disappointment.

I feel terrible for my wife. I’ve had six years to get used to the idea that the children I have will not be mine biologically. As depressing as that is, I’ve made my peace with it. At least she could have a baby and we could share that experience.

Now, though, she has to deal with that, because it looks like another IVF will not be in the cards. We still have options: embryo adoption, which is more affordable and still lets us go through the process of having a baby. Regular adoption, which while expensive, is more or less guaranteed to produce a child. Either way, we’ll have our kids, and we’ll be happy. I know that.

I just wish, for once, that the nuns at school had been right, that it had been as easy as they said it would be.

Top Ten Tuesdays: What are we demanding the public release of?

Special extra day late edition!

11) Classified President’s Daily Brief entitled, “Shit Determined to Strike Fan”

10) Original Star Wars movies that haven’t been fucked with by the guy who thought Jar-Jar was a good idea.

9) Paris Hilton’s health records (please hurry, it really burns!)

8) Spine of Democrats.

7) Government geophysical survey revealing increase in global warming caused by Bush’s excessive flatulence.

6) Genitals (guys in raincoats only).

5) Bloopers and outtakes from Abu Ghraib (with narration by Dick Cheney)

4) K-Fed (into space).

3) George Allen’s novel manuscript, The Bigot’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing.

2) The Tribulation (Christians only).

1) Common sense.

Because you're not an A-list blogger until you post pictures of cute pets

TLB is a cat person. She is an animal person in general, but she especially loves cats (must...resist...easy...crude...joke). We have two cats, Bubba and Stinky (not their Christian names). Bubba came with the marriage. He's as big of a baby as he is big, an 18-pound mass of orange and white neuroses. A very sweet cat that lets himself be overwhelmed by his seeming insignificance in the universe, much in the way I do.

Stinky is the opposite. He's the feline version of Murdock from The A-Team -- crazy but charismatic, always getting himself into scrapes without ever getting scraped up. He doesn't worry about anything except getting yelled at when he's on the goddamned dining room table again. His baptismal name is Bugsy, and he was called that because he loved to chase bugs or any spec of material that resembled bugs. That says everything you need to know about him.

Stinky entered our marriage in 1996. We were living in Brooklyn (New York, not Iowa) and had just moved into a two-bedroom place that gave us the most precious commodity in NYC: space. I told TLB after we moved that she could get another kitty since we had a second bedroom.

At the same time, I had my mind on a pet of my own. It was gray and plastic and played all kinds of cool games. It didn't barf or poop in a box or scratch the furniture. TLB, however, was reluctant to bring it into our house for fear I would love it too much.

One day, while I was at work on a Saturday, TLB called me. I don't remember the exact conversation but it went something like this:

IwasattheFarmer'sMarketandIsawthecutestkittyandhe'sarescueand
he'ssosweetandwouldyoumindifIbroughthimhome?

I know I give off the cool, manly, stoic exterior of a Delta Force commando, but deep down inside, I am a softie. I was moved by my lovely wife's desire for another animal that would enjoy leaping on my crotch while I slept at night. I was about to say yes, when a little voice went off in my head: quid pro quo, Clarise.

"If I say yes, can I get a PlayStation?"

Check and mate. She got Stinky, and I got a tool that began my long, slow road toward not finishing a novel.

Flash forward to the present. TLB and her sister were at the mall and saw a cat at the pet store, a cat who was also a rescue. History repeated itself. Again, I was moved. Initially, there was quid pro quo. But I realized, this is the woman who puts up with my jokes, my neuroses, and who gave me my Holy Grail after she sold her novel. She deserved another kitty. So we brought home Jonesy. Currently he has only two settings:

On

Off

Now we just need to get Bubba and Stinky to stop doing their Heathers routine with him.

I'll start getting fitted for my muumuu

Oh sweet Moses:

Would you like a side of pancakes with that burger? Could be an option, some day. McDonald's has an eye on selling the likes of Egg McMuffins and McGriddle pancake-flavored sandwiches morning to night.

I have talked about this for years. I really hate Mickey D's food, but I am a Sausage McMuffin Gimp, powerless to disobey my eggy, porky master. The idea that I could stroll into a Golden Arches and get a McMuffin with a McGriddle chaser at 11 p.m. makes me warm and fuzzy inside.

Now it really may happen...and I'm scared to death that I'll be dead of heart disease by the time I'm 40. It reminds me of this classic example of getting what you wish for:

GEORGE: So what happened?

JERRY: She's into it.

GEORGE:
Into what?

JERRY: The ménage. And not only that. She just called me and
said she talked to the roommate and the roomate's into the ménage too.

GEORGE: That's unbelievable.

JERRY: Oh, it's a scene, man.

GEORGE: Do you ever just get down on your knees and thank God that you know me and have access to my dementia?

JERRY: What are you talking about? I'm not going to do it.

GEORGE: You're not goin to do it? What do you mean, You're not going to do it?

JERRY: I can't. I'm not an orgy guy.

GEORGE: Are you crazy? This is like discovering Plutonium ... by accident.

JERRY: Don't you know what it means to become an orgy guy? It changes everything. I'd have to dress different. I'd have to act different. I'd have to grow a mustache and get all kinds of robes and lotions and I'd need a new bedspread and new curtains I'd have to get thick carpeting and weirdo lighting. I'd have to get new friends. I'd have to get orgy friends...Naw, I'm not ready for it.

On a side note, TLB and I saw this report while watching the Today show. At the end of this electrifying news, they ended the segment by mentioning that it may be two years before this happens.

Me: Two years? (transforming into Lewis Black) What the...why the...why are they telling us this now?! Why?! Why on earth would they fucking tease me like that?!!

TLB: I know, what a joke.

Me: I'm going to go to one of their counters and start playing with myself for two years until they serve me breakfast.

Quote of the day

"Studies have shown that blacks are more likely to belong to the Steely Dan fan club than the Republican party."

--from "Lost Cause of the Year: The Black Republicans," Esquire (October 2006)

Top Ten Tuesdays: What mistakes did we make on the campaign trail?

10) Overused campaign tagline, “I’m Rick Santorum, bitch!”

9) Replaced Joementum with less electorally-efficient Blowmentum.

8) Got photographed reading The Origin of Species while on campaign stop in Kansas.

7) Remarked that inflation had hurt purchasing power of illegal campaign contributions.

6) Failed to convince voters that alleged infidelity was simply a case of slipping on a banana peel and falling penis-first into intern.

5) Tried to reach out to Hispanics with “Vote for me and receive a free trip to Mexico” platform.

4) Offered to compromise on detainee rights by allowing them to be tortured 3/5 of the time.

3) Attended ethnic voter rally in white sheet and hood.

2) Lost key soccer mom and gay votes after coming up short in Playgirl campaign pictorial.

1) Ran while wearing a very large lame duck around neck.

Does God Want You to Be Rich?

Supported by new scriptural discoveries, many Christian pastors are answering, “Hell, yes!”

A CJSD Special Report


The common belief of Christianity is that Jesus Christ rejected worldly possessions and eschewed wealth. After all, Christ warned that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.

But, as other media sources have recently reported, a growing number of American Christian leaders say that just isn’t true, and that while Christians do need to take up their crosses, there is no reason those crosses cannot be made of gold.

Reverend Austin Tayshus, chairman and CEO of In the Black Ministries and author of the runaway bestseller, The Devil Bears Nada: How to Get More R-O-I Out of G-O-D, claims that God is neither the angry, vengeful God of Evangelical preachers nor the benevolent watchmaker of the deist Founding Fathers. Instead, he is rather like an omnipotent hedge fund manager.

“Look at the world around us,” says Tayshus as he drives his golden Hosea Hummer, a custom-built SUV complete with holy water wiper fluid and rear seat kneelers. “What do you notice? Diversification. God didn’t put all his eggs in one basket. He spread life around, building on each investment over seven days, until man emerged to offer the best returns. That’s the exact advice I offer my clients...I mean flock.

“Plus, think about it: who are His chosen people?” Tayshus asks. “People who can be trusted with money.”

Reverend Tayshus is not alone. Other ministries—such as Wealth Is God’s Welfare International, The Church of the Heavenly Interest, and the Catholic 401 Kyrie Club—preach a gospel where the greatest command is to treat one’s brother as you would treat yourself.

The “Gospel of Wealth” movement, as it is called, received a tremendous infusion of intellectual capital with the remarkable discovery of the Spread Sheet Scrolls. Unearthed from an ancient board room, these works offer a rare look into the financial dealings of early Christians, and expand on many of Christ’s teachings about wealth. For instance, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells one young man, “Sell what you have and give it to the poor.” The traditional Gospel says that the man goes away disappointed because he has many possessions. But the Spread Sheet Scrolls continue the story:

“Some weeks later, the young man returned to Jesus. ‘Master, master, you were so right,’ the young man exclaimed. ‘By giving away my possessions, I was able to take so many tax write-offs, I made more money than earned last year! Now I have enough to buy that new chariot I have had my eye upon.’

The Spread Sheet Scrolls also offer the controversial Ninth Beatitude from Jesus, stricken from earlier editions of The New Testament: “Blessed are the rich, beyotch!”

Other texts show early Christians carrying out incredible acts of frugality. Archeologists recently uncovered two sequels to “The Acts of the Apostles”: “More Acts of the Apostles,” and “Even More Acts of the Apostles.”

“What we’re learning is that original Acts was just volume one of a three-volume system,” says Professor Mercedes Beamer, a Biblical and international finance scholar at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “In volume one, we see the apostles taking Jesus’s message to the unconverted. It talks about giving things to the needy. The last two volumes then show what the needy should be doing with those donations—sheltering them from Caesar’s renderings, purchasing real estate built on solid rock instead of sand, investing in commodities like fatted calves and mustard seeds. Really, it’s a system for putting God’s word to work for us.”

But the latest scriptural discovery that Gospel of Wealth advocates cite the most is a newly discovered epistle, “Paul’s First Letter to the Shareholders”:

My Dear Brothers and Their Profit-Sharing Administrative Assistants in Christ,

The day of accounting is near! Woe to those with unbillable expenses, for they shall be awash in the red ink of Satan. Beware those who submerge their debt and inflate their profits, for the Holy Spirit shall conduct an audit. But for those who follow the Lord, they shall be paid a hefty dividend. Now is not the time to merely hold your faith, my brothers and assistants, for Christianity is increasing in productivity and poised to outperform all expectations. So I say unto you, buy, buy, buy!

“The beauty of these discoveries, of God’s desire for us to have wealth,” says Reverend Tayshus, “is that God doesn’t care whether you’re white or black, male or female, Protestant or Catholic. He just wants you to be solvent.”

Such a radical reinterpretation of the Bible has some Christians up in arms. “This whole idea that God doesn’t care who you are as long as you’re wealthy can be summed up in one word: hogwash,” says Rick Warren, pastor and author of The Purpose-Driven Life. “Wealth is not nearly as important as being white, male, and Protestant. And I should know, because that message has resonated with the millions upon millions of people who have bought my book.”

But in the end, proponents of the Gospel of Wealth see no contradictions. “Look at the life of Jesus,” says Pastor Richard Pfund, host of the popular religioeconomic television program Hour of Powerful Finances. “He starts out getting gold, frankincense, and myrrh. He goes to work at an early age preaching in the temple. He insists on drinking wine instead of water at parties. He shows tax collectors the errors of their ways. And he has a group of twelve vice presidents, if you will.

“Let's face it: Jesus is our CEO, and if we don't imitate him, he's going to give us our pink slips.”

Top Ten Tuesdays: How did we get ready for some football?

Special extended opening weekend coverage edition!

15) Locked kids in basement with four-month supply of food, water, and homework.

14) Locked wife in bedroom with four-month supply of food, water, and batteries.

13) Reached under the table for big envelope from booster.

12) Had other thumb broken by bookie.

11) Put Hank Williams, Jr., in stress position and blared “Are You Ready for Some Football” song over and over until he confessed to being member of Al Qaeda.

10) Left divorce papers under the remote control before leaving with Jacques.

9) Called agent to arrange bond.

8) Removed draw string from sweats so we could finish off the nachos.

7) Bought Arizona Cardinals season tickets. Seriously. No, really, they're going to be good this year. Stop laughing.

6) Slaughtered our fattest calf and fed it to John Madden.

5) Placed spoon by coffee table in case 10 straight hours of football produced a seizure again.

4) Told the quarterback he better quit wiggling his goddamned fingers before the snap.

3) Found out when we had to take midterms for the starting defense.

2) Lamented how football has undermined the academic aspirations of youth and debased the intellect of the masses and...hey, where is everyone going?

1) Peed into a cup and prayed.

We're not here to start no trouble...

Pizza with two kinds of pork products...check
Comfy couch...check
NFL Sunday Ticket package...check
Wife who accepts primal urge to watch giant, sweaty men collide with each other...check
Whipped Cheeseheads...checkity check check check

Today, da Bears deprived the people of Green Bay of their only reason to live with a 26-0 mauling of the Packers. While Bill Swerski and the boys would have liked a score in the triple digits, that's about as good of a season opening as it gets for Chicago fans. And it calls for a little celebration:




On a side note, Brett Favre should have retired. He looks terrible:

Top Ten Tuesdays: How is the White House reminding us we're at war?

10) Reinstating vintage 72-point WAR font.

9) Staying in Washington no matter how much brush needs to be cleared.

8) Requiring gas prices to be displayed in red, white, and blue.

7) Reading the top-secret President’s Daily Brief aloud on every Today show.

6) Mandating a Project Runway challenge to design outfit made entirely out of yellow “Support Our Troops” ribbons.

5) Pointing to the one hair on Rumsfeld head that always sticks up when there’s a war going on.

4) Sending all registered Democrats to special camps...for their own protection.

3) Implementing such a strict zero-tolerance terror policy that Fear Factor had to be cancelled.

2) Donning flight suit and landing on aircraft carrier with large “Mission Ongoing” banner.

1) Mailing out the draft notices.

Snakes on a Birthday

With the dual honor of getting another year closer to death and having a day off work, I saw Emus Snakes on a Plane yesterday. It's what I expected, and definitely better with a group of people. There were some pretty funny moments, but they should have let Samuel Jackson go nuts more.

This doesn't really give anything away, but in one scene, a couple get into the bathroom to join the mile high club. They disable the smoke detector and fire up a joint before going at it. I leaned over to TLB and said, "Lawbreaking, drug taking, and fornicating. They're definitely in the high risk group for movies like these."

It's not Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park (so bad it's like a religious experience) or Desperado (completely ridiculous but still damn good). I was entertained and got my money's worth, and there is one really funny scene involving, shall we say, a wiener snake.

I did see the trailer for this and almost wet myself with excitement as I had no idea this film was in production. I know it's probably going to be terrible, but they showed a quick cut of the Devil playing the drums. I can't resist that.

Book Meme a la Circle Jerk

Pete over at parenthetical remarks tagged me with the following meme about books. I agree with him that "meme" is a very annoying word, but I'll answer anyway since I loves me some readin'.

A book that changed my life
How to Get in Touch With Your Inner Lesbian. No, no, of course I'm kidding. I would have to go with The Great Gatsby. I read it the summer before my junior year of high school and it has been my favorite ever since. Being a Navy brat attending a pretty well-to-do high school, the story really resonated with me.

A book I've read more than once
The Elric series by Michael Moorcock. I read this back in my D&D days in junior high and loved it -- the anti-hero protagonist and excessive violence were right up my alley. Then, in my 20s, I decided to re-read the series again. I was floored...by my own gullability. Was this even the same series I dug so much? The plot was still interesting, but the writing was the fantasy equivelent of Spinal Tap lyrics. Lots of "thees" and "thous" and ridiculous declarations, including the very last line of Stormbringer, which my friend Tom and I still mock. I blame my original raves solely on being brainwashed by Gary Gygax and his role playing cult.

A book I would take with me if I were stuck on a desert island
The Onion's Our Dumb Century. It's not great literature, but I need something I can read over and over and will make me forget that I'm stuck on a desert island. You can never have enough of "Holy Shit! Man Walks on the Fucking Moon!"

A book that made me laugh
Mark Leyner's Et Tu, Babe. Funniest book I've ever read and a huge influence on my sense of humor. It starts over the top and never lets up.

A book that made me cry
A toss up between Of Mice and Men and For Whom the Bell Tolls. The sharp writing and powerful characters make you feel like you are there in both books, which makes the tradic endings so personal.

A book I wish I had written
Pastoralia by George Saunders. The greatest literary satirist alive right now. This is the kind of dark, clever, utterly original satire I wish I could write.

A book I wish had never been written
The Ayn Rand canon. How writing so dull, so pretentious, and so unfeeling influenced generation after generation of readers is beyond me. I'll even sacrfice the existence of Rush's 2112 if it could make Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead disappear.

A book I've been meaning to read
I have a lot on this list, but Lolita was the first that came to mind. Let's just say that I hope there are libraries in heaven or a reading room in hell, because I'll never catch up.

I'm currently reading
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. She pulls off a neat trick -- making a high school character both interesting and annoying.

Time to tag...
Blue Girl
almostinfamous
teh Chuckles
scruffylooking
and of course, AG

Concession stand of dreams

TLB and I accompanied our friends SER and Bob and a couple of their friends from the Bay Area to the last home game of our local minor league ballclub. It was a perfect night for baseball, but little did I know what majesty awaited us inside.

At the concession stand, I ordered two hot dogs and two beers. "That will be four dollars," the counter clerk said.

"I'm sorry, did you get the beers?"

"Yes, sir. Two hot dogs and two beers. That's four dollars. Beers are one dollar tonight."

I almost kissed him.

The last time I ran into dollar beer was 1996, the night after I defended my master's thesis at the University of Missouri and proceeded to destroy nearly every brain cell that went into said thesis with dollar pints of Natty Light. I thought dollar beer was like two-dollar gas, a story I would pass onto my grandkids like our grandparents telling us how, back in the Depression, a nickel could buy you a drifter.

Even better, the dollar beer didn't apply to hoppy pisswater like Natty Light. You could pick from any of the standard brands -- Bud, Miller, Micheloeb. Lighter than the kind of suds I reach for normally, but for a buck, they were more than satisfactory. I even double-fisted some Budweiser Select, which was surprisingly decent.

Normally, teams don't like to mix cheap booze and sports, as things like riots tend to break out. I joked with Bob that this place would be ablaze and cars overturned by the sixth inning. Yet there was nary a fist thrown or an SUV flipped. I didn't even hear any swearing when our second baseman made an error that allowed the visitors to tie the game in the ninth. If that happened at a Cubs game these days, even the eight-year olds would be dropping a "c---sucker."

I really think if God had provided dollar beer and a polite sporting experience along with the free bread, the Hebrews would never have left the desert. And at least stuff grows in Iowa.

Game Notes
I managed to eat for the cycle. Here was my box score.

4 for 4
single (regular dog)
triple (jumbo dog)
double (giant pretzel with cheese)
home run (a dish of Blue Bunny ice cream that was the size of a toddler's head)

So much for putting my waistline on notice.

A Public Service Announcement for the Fucking Clowns

TLB and I have, as we have alluded to before, become enthusiastic poker players. I started playing Texas Hold 'Em a few years ago with my brothers, but only those couple times of year that we saw each other. TLB learned how to play when we started going to a weekly game at our friend MSF's house. A half dozen or so of us would get together, throw in $5, and play a little tournament once a week.

Our mentor was a great guy named Phil, a tall, goateed, long-haired man who is like Gandalf the Gray crossed with Chris "Jesus" Ferguson. His son Erik and Erik's wife Kate also played with us, and the three of them were light years ahead of us when TLB and I started playing. They took us under their wings in our weekly matches and helped transform our games from joker poker to somewhat more respectable amateur status.

One of the best parts of the weekly game was Phil and Erik's banter. Calling it trash talking would be like calling Raymond Chandler's novels detective stories. They would jab and spar with each other with enthusiasm and creativity that only a father-son team coule bring. One time, they were heads up against each other, and Erik won the hand in a manner Phil found, shall we say, dubious.

"You fucking clown!" Phil yelled with good natured annoyance.

That phrase has stuck with TLB and I, and we almost always use it when we see poker moves of a dubious nature. Like tonight.

I had, until recently, avoided the siren song of online poker. But having read Dan Harrington's Harrington on Hold 'Em over vacation, I've been eager to practice my lessons in cheapo $1 and $5 tournaments. I also am, most of the time, a gracious poker loser. Luck is part of the game. Sometimes you do the right thing and lose. I realize I have a lot to learn and try to take each loss as a learning experience.

What I can't stand is when someone does something abyssmally stupid and gets away with it -- the poker equivalent of Bush getting elected twice. Tonight, I was playing in a tourney and trying out some new betting strategies. Mostly I was playing tight, waiting for good hands, looking for key moments to beef up my stack and maybe win a little more than my $5 buy in.

At one point, we had a new person come to our table who had twice as many chips as I did. Right away, I got pocket queens -- a very good hand, and in late position, meaning I got to see what everyone was doing before I had to act. A lot of people just called, and I raised like I should. Everyone folded except Mr. Big Stack. This concerned me, because he had enough chips to seem competent and there were a couple hands (aces and kings) that could kill me.

The flop came a seven and two tens, all mixed, meaning the flush was not a real threat. Mr. BS checked, which I thought meant he either had the third 10 and was trapping me, or he didn't hit his cards. I bet about 1/3 of the pot. If he just called, chances are my queens and tens were better than his hand, and I might get more chips out of him.

He re-raised.

Poop.

The thrill of Hold 'Em tournaments comes from these moments. If I just called, I'd be hurting badly and likely get knocked out of the tournament anyway. If I re-reaised again, all in, he might fold a lot of chips to me, or lose a lot if I had a better hand. At this point, given his chips and the ballsy re-raise, I figured he had another ten. But queens and tens seemed pretty good to me, too. Like Leslie Nielson once said, "This is our hill, and these are our beans." I was going to defend my beans. Besides, I wanted to see if I was right.

I re-raised all in. Mr. BS called and turned over...ace nine.

Ace nine! He was, in a word, fucked. He needed an ace to beat me, three possible cards out of the forty-five unaccounted for. I was shocked. What the hell was he doing? How did he get all those chips making dumb moves like that? It was like invading a country that's not making nukes right next to the one that is. Finally, I thought, my studies would pay off.

The next card was an eight. A big smile crept across my face. The last card, the river card, surfaced. An ace.

The agony of Hold 'Em tournaments is watching someone play Russian roulette, get the chamber with the bullet, pull the trigger, and have the bullet bounce off the metal plate in their skull and ricochet into yours.

I sat there, speechless for a moment, as my virtual chips slid over to his table, and my virtual chair went dark. Then I felt it welling up inside me, pulsing, vibrating, ripping my insides apart.

"YOU FUCKING CLOWN!"

Taking a moment to gain my composure, I thought back on the lessons of poker -- what Phil, Erik, Kate, MSF, and Dan Harrington had taught me. That sometimes, the fucking clowns will have their days. They will dance their little clown dances and pull aces out of their butts like the tail end of a trick handkerchief. But most times, they will be trapped inside a VW bug with the other fucking clowns, heading toward a cliff where they will plunge to their deaths because no one can reach the brake.

Of course, losing a $5 poker tourney is not the end of the world. There are much worse things that could happen. And next time, when Mr. BS tries that again, odds are I'll be the one scooping up the virtual chips.

Not to get allegorical or anything, but I thought how this situation resembled the current state of political affairs. The jokers in charge keep going all in, daring anyone to challenge them, even when they're holding nothing. They've gotten away with it for a long time, but now people are starting to call and even raise against them, chipping away at their seemingly insurmountable leads. I bet that in two of the next three Novembers, the more solid hands will hold up, and the get tears painted on their smiling, smirking, ridiculous faces. When it happens, all I'll say is cry me an ace on the river, you fucking clowns.

The Stephen Colbert "On Notice Board" Generator

I think this has been around for a while, but I just found the On Notice Board Generator over at almostinfamous's place. Here's my current board:





And I'm not kidding about the last one. Time for me to reverse the last few months of pork snorkeling and XBox playing and get back to sweatin' to the oldies (which in my case, means Bon Scott era AC/DC).

Top Ten Tuesdays: Why are our SAT scores down?

Special lengthier edition!

SAT scores are the lowest they’ve been in 31 years. What’s the cause for the drop?

13) Preparation strategy to toke up while watching Old School over and over was not as effective as planned.

12) Kept having concentration broken by urgent text messages.

11) Had morning sickness during test.

10) Used writing portion to write essay for “Pimp My Ride.”

9) Were completely unfamiliar with SAT as there’s no reference to it in the Bible.

8) Harvard:legacy::fuck:this

7) Wanted to try for a higher score but couldn't find reset button.

6) Turned tests off and used computers to surf for porn.

5) Unable to call a lifeline or ask the audience.

4) teh kritical reeding sextion wuz 2 hard (heh heh)

3) Didn’t want to make the President look dumb.

2) Scores are actually up, we just did the math wrong.

1) Who cares, we just added 60 new MySpace friends!

Anyway you want it, that’s the way I need it

A couple of weeks ago, Blue Girl put up a post about her first concert: going to see Peter Frampton. It’s a wonderful post that really conveys the good things about seeing a really big rock show in the heyday of really big rock shows.

Around the same time, I started reading Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. There’s a scene (in the book and movie) where Rob sees the singer Marie LaSalle doing a cover of Peter Frampton’s, “Baby, I Love Your Way.” After a paragraph where Rob rants and raves about how terrible Frampton Comes Alive was (“bought, presumably, by every brain-dead, coke-addled airhead in L.A.!”), Marie has this aside:

“I know I’m not supposed to like that song, but I do.”

That's a feeling I have a lot. Because before I became a good little indie-rock-loving hipster doofus, I was a fist-pumping, air-drumming, hello-Cleveland arena rock fan. Big hair, long solos, and Marshall stacks that went to 11 were my mainstay. This was particularly unfashionable at the trendy San Diego high school I attended. My friends teased me about it all the time—especially my Rush fandom, which needs to be its own post—but I refused to trade Ozzy for Oingo Boingo or Dokken for Depeche Mode.

As I grew older, I broadened my range of rock tastes. I branched out, even started liking some of the bands I made fun of. But the arena rock fan in me never died. I still do things like buy Iron Maiden’s The Essential Iron Maiden, which caused TLB last week to give me the eye roll that says, “Are you ever going to grow up?” (My answer: I run a blog with Circle Jerk in the title.)

So reading about Frampton, about music you’re not supposed to like but do, reminded me of my own, a band that stood for everything the critics stood against when I was growing up: Journey.

I am not a huge Journey fan. Never bought an album, although I had a taped copy of their greatest hits. But there are Journey songs I absolutely love, songs I refuse to apologize to the Robs of the world for. Yeah, they were corporate and unoriginal and very schmaltzy, but they wrote some damn good tunes.

On one of our recent casino road trips, I discussed this with TLB and our friend MSF, trying to determine if it was just me. They both agreed with me that they have Journey songs they really like, even though neither has much interest in arena rock in general or Journey in particular.

We also decided that most people, deep down, like at least one Journey song. Here were the three I named:

1) “Anyway You Want It”
For starters, it reminds me of the hilarious scene in Caddyshack where Rodney Dangerfield starts blasting the song out of his golf bag. But it’s much more than that. I love the propulsive riff beat, Steve Perry’s singing, and the Neil Schon solo at the end, which I always wind up air-guitaring with.

Yes, I’m going to be 36 in a couple of weeks.

2) “Don’t Stop Believing”
The smell of wine and CHEEP PER-FUME! Okay, so it won’t win any lyric contests. It’s got a small-town-girl-leaves-for-the-big-city theme that’s been done to death. Again, though, I get pulled in with the guitar bit at the beginning and by the time Steve Perry hits that “in the N-I-I-I-I-GHT” note right before the solo, I’m singing right there with him.

3) “Faithfully”
No, I don’t carry a lighter. Yes, my testicles are still attached. This is definitely the hardest one to ‘fess up to. The background:

TLB and I went through a long period of a long-distance relationship when we went our separate ways (ha!) to college. This slice of vinyl cheese always got me a little verklempft, much in the same way Hornby's Rob starts balling when he hears “Baby, I Love Your Way.”

A couple days ago, I was talking about this with TLB. She started humming the do-do-do-dododo guitar parts. “Wait, I’ll do the drums,” I said.

Do-do-dooo-dodododo

Bu-da-bu-da-bum

Do-do-dooo-dodododo

Bum-bum-bumbum

Do-do-dooo-dodo-dooo

Bum-bum-bumbum-peeesh

So what’s your Journey song? Don’t be scared to admit it. I just said that I stopped my wife in the middle of “Faithfully” so I could add the drum parts, so clearly I have won the embarrassment limbo. Share yours in the comments, and have a good weekend.

Republicans demand assessment of when monkeys will fly out of Iran’s butt

GOP leaders believe current intelligence timetable of "when pigs fly" too unrealistic.

WASHINGTON - In the debate over Iran's nuclear ambitions and potential development of nuclear weapons, some Republican leaders have criticized the intelligence community for not taking another threat more seriously: the potential for monkeys to fly out of Iran's butt.

Republican Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, head of the House Intelligence Committee, stated, "This issue isn't even on the CIA's radar, and I find that very disturbing."

The concern stems from a classified CIA report—based on raw, uncorroborated intelligence sources—that concludes: "Iran may be trying to as the pull something out of its ass. We are not sure what it is, but it could be something significant and unprecedented."

Hoekstra and several other Republicans, after reading the report, immediately reached the conclusion of flying monkeys. "Think about it,” said Hoekstra. "'Significant' and 'unprecedented.' Well, flying monkeys are significant. Anyone who's watched the Wizard of Oz knows exactly what a well-trained army of flying monkeys can do. And such a feat would be unprecedented." Hoekstra added that North Korea was rumored to have developed monkeys that could be lodged in the rectum, but had not been able to get them to fly.

Hoekstra was not alone in his concern. Vice President Cheney has long suspected Iran of harboring anally-delivered flying monkeys and has made this his pet project. "Imagine the chaos that could cause," the Vice President said the cable-television show Hardball.

"Let's say Iran develops this monkey technology and decides to give it to a terrorist organization," said Vice President Cheney. "The terrorists implant these monkeys into their butts, sneak into New York, and boom, next thing you know, you've got a cloud of flying monkeys over Manhattan. Now, in the best-case scenario, those monkeys only fling feces. But that alone could cause catastrophic economic disruptions on Wall Street. In the worst-case scenario...they’re flinging thermonuclear weapons."

The stock market has since dropped 350 points on rumors of the flying monkey threat.

Under this intense pressure from the White House, the CIA upgraded its assessment of this Iranian airborne monkey threat from “never in a million years,” to "when pigs fly," completely skipping one classification level, "when hell freezes over."

Intelligence analysts criticized Republicans for jumping to conclusions “For starters, we're not even sure that these monkeys are harmful," said a senior intelligence official who wished to remain invisible. "They could be peaceful helper monkeys. Honestly, we need more analysis from sources inserted in Iran before we dump a report on the president's desk. But people in the administration are stove-piping this raw data directly into the back door of the White House.”

Still, others called the CIA assessment too cautious. "The intelligence community says that Iran will have flying butt-monkeys when pigs fly," said Newt Gingrich, former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, "I ask: 'What if North Korea were to put those monkeys in Iran's butt tomorrow? How close would they be then?' We can't just close our eyes and hope for the fairy tale ending."

But one intelligence veteran who has ample experience with flying butt-monkey proliferation remained skeptical. "Iran will have monkeys flying out of their butts? Chyah, right! It'll happen right after Heather Locklear gets in a sandwich with me and Garth."

Top Ten Tuesdays: What else is straining our psyches?

President Bush said in a recent news conference that the Iraq war was "straining the psyche of our country." What else is troubling our minds?

10) Having a Vice President who acts just like his first name sounds.

9) Wishing we were still talking about Oval Office blow jobs instead of Middle Eastern mushroom clouds.

8) Being prohibited from carrying our snake repellant on the plane.

7) Betting kids' college fund on the Cubs to win it all.

6) Losing autographed photo of us, Jack Abramoff, and Tom DeLay rolling around naked on a bed of money.

5) Reciting an abstainence pledge while maintaining a raging erection.

4) Figuring out how intelligent design supporters could support the idea that a Supreme Being made them so surpremely ignorant of scientific evidence.

3) Watching new dorm roommate bring in his Dungeons and Dragons stuff.

2) (Tie) Wondering who we're going to take first in our fantasy football draft/where our wives are going this time of night.

1) Seeing the emperor not only wearing no clothes, but also riding the giant elephant in the room.

What wingnuts see when they read the New York Times

almostinfamous has a great link to a flashy right-wing-thinking emulator. Here I was thinking there were a bunch of hypocritical, mean-spirited, illiterate cobags. Instead, they are hypocritical, mean-spirited, dyslexic cobags.

Wasps in an Office

The following is based on a true story. With the exception of one cobag, the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

(And no, I haven't seen the movie yet.)

Inside a row of cubicles in a typical office. BRANDO stands at the wall, talking to his coworker, MARY.

BRANDO
I know, I was like, what’s up with that skirt she’s wearing? Are they remaking Desperately Seeking Susan? I swear they’ll let anybody onto Project Runway.

MARY
Hey, there’s a wasp by your head.

Brando ducks and swats at it. The wasp buzzes around his head.

BRANDO
Agh! If he lands on my head, I’ll never get him out with all the product in my hair. You have to kill him.

Mary grabs a three-ring binder.

MARY
I swear to God, how does your wife put up with you?

BRANDO
I could tell you but it would violate the company HR policy. Just kill this fucking thing.

Mary swats at the wasp. She misses and hits Brando in the head.

BRANDO
Ow!

MARY (looking at the binder)
Here's a tip: try not using all the gel at once.

She looks down at the desk and sees the wasp. She slams the binder down on it.

MARY
Gotcha!

BRANDO
Look, up at the lights!

In the florescent lights above the cubicle, several wasps buzz around. More appear from the ceiling. They immediately head for Brando and Mary. Brando runs around frantically swatting at them while Mary dispatches two more with her binder.

BRANDO
Don’t just stand there, get help!

MARY
Alright, keep your panties on. (Dials phone)

CUT TO
The company parking lot.

MUSIC
“Mary Mary” by Run DMC

A white van pulls up, coming close until we see the license plate: BUGGIN.

A man gets out wearing a white jumpsuit uniform. He pulls on white gloves, straps on a white exterminator’s tank, sprays some applicator in his jheri curl, and dons a pair of dark sunglasses. It’s SAMUEL JACKSON.

CUT TO
Inside the office. Brando sits with a sandwich while shooing wasps with a flyswatter. Jackson strolls up the cubicle

MARY
Are you the bug man?

JACKSON
Bug man? Lady, do I look like fucking Tom DeLay? I’m an exterminator, and I've been sent back in time to kill some motherfucking insects. Now, let me guess. You must be Brando, right?

BRANDO
Right.

JACKSON
What you eating for lunch there, Brando?

BRANDO
Pan-Panera.

JACKSON
Panera! That’s the bread place, right? See, my girlfriend’s a Subway manager, so she don’t like it when I cheat on her and go to Panera. I’ve eaten so much Subway my name should be fucking Jared. What kind of sandwich is that?

BRANDO
Asiago roast beef.

JACKSON (raising eyebrows)
Asiago roast beef! Would you mind if I had a bite of your Asiago roast beef?

BRANDO
Sure.

Jackson takes a bite.

JACKSON
Mmm, mmm! That is a tasty sandwich. (Points to a plastic cup) What’s in this?

BRANDO
Iced chai tea.

Jackson casts a knowing glance to Mary

MARY
I know, I know, but he swears he’s married. To a woman.

JACKSON (to Brando)
Do you mind if I wash this Asiago roast beef down with your tasty beverage?

BRANDO
No.

Jackson sips the straw until the iced tea is gone.

BRANDO
Listen, I’m sorry, are you going to, what did you say, kill these motherfucking insects?

JACKSON (leaning in menacingly)
Let me ask the questions, Brando. Now, what does a wasp look like?

BRANDO
What?

JACKSON
What ain’t no bug! What does a wasp look like?

BRANDO
What?!

JACKSON (Aiming the spray nozzle at Brando)
Say what one more time, motherfucker? What does a wasp look like?

BRANDO
It’s black!

JACKSON
Go on!

BRANDO
It’s winged.

JACKSON (yelling)
Does it look like a fly?

BRANDO
What?

He sprays pesticide in Brando’s face. Brando screams.

BRANDO
No!!!

JACKSON
Then why’d you try and treat it like a fly? (knocks flyswatter out of Brando’s hand)

MARY (yelps and grabs arm)
Ow! I just got stung.

Jackson turns around to see a wasp buzzing. He raises his nozzle and fires. He sees another on the desk and shoots pesticide. He sees three on the window and fires three quick bursts.

JACKSON
Ever see A Bug’s Life? Well I’m directing the sequel, A Bug’s Death!

He lets loose a flurry of shots, dropping two dozen wasps. He pauses after a moment. The room is silent except for Brando’s sniffling. Faintly, a buzzing begins. It grows louder. Brando wipes his eyes and stands.

BRANDO
What’s that buzzing?

JACKSON
It’s your mama’s vibrator, what do you think it is?

BRANDO
But...but how? You killed all those wasps.

JACKSON
Correction, I killed some of those wasps.

The buzzing gets louder.

MARY
They sound like they’re right in the cubicle.

BRANDO
That’s impossible, I don’t see them.

MARY
Well maybe they’re invisible wasps, genius!

Jackson looks up at the ceiling tiles.

JACKSON
Do those come off?

He balances himself on a chair, flips on a flashlight attached to his glasses, and slowly raises one of the ceiling tiles. He looks left to right, until he sees a huge swarm of wasps coming down the airshaft toward him. He cries out and falls backward, shooting pesticide at the ceiling.

JACKSON
Run, motherfuckers!

The three sprint for the supply closet as the wasps come at them. Jackson pulls something from his pocket and pulls at it with his teeth.

MARY
What’s that?

JACKSON
A bug bomb!

BRANDO
You can’t use that in here!

JACKSON
Tell that to them! Now run, white boy!

The three sprint as Jackson drops the bug bomb. They dive into the supply closet as the bug bomb explodes. A cloud of white poofs in, causing all of them to cough. When they stop, it’s dead quiet outside. They step back out.

The office is covered in white powder. Glass and debris cover the floor as well. There are dead wasps everywhere.

BRANDO
Oh my God!

MARY
My weekly reports, my spreadsheets...

BRANDO
My Asiago roast beef!

JACKSON
Well, it’s like I said...

CUT TO
Jackson, in a different pose and slightly different office, with no sunglasses and a beard.

JACKSON
We’ve got to do something about these motherfucking wasps in this motherfucking office!

CUT TO
The original Jackson in the original office.

JACKSON
Now if you’ll excuse me, my work here is AAAGGGH!

Jackson screams as a giant wasp, easily 30 feet long, grabs him. His canister falls off his back, and Brando grabs it as the giant wasp flies away. Mary and he climb to the top of a cubicle wall.

JACKSON (writing in agony)
It's the mother of all motherfucking wasps! AAGGHHH! First Deep Blue Sea, now this!

The wasp flies up and chomps Jackson in two.

MARY
Look out, he’s coming around again.

The wasp drops Jackson’s body and opens its maw to grab Brando. Mary grabs the canister and throws it in the wasp's mouth. The wasp takes it and flies away.

MARY
Grab those staplers.

Mary and Brando grab a stapler and swing them open. As the wasp circles back, they fire staples.

MARY
Come on and smile you sign of a...

One staple hits the canister and it erupts, spraying the wasp with pesticide. It flies up in the air, smashing through the roof, before plunging again to the ground.

BRANDO (jumping up and down)
We did it! We did it!

THE BOSS, an older white gentleman in a three piece suit who looks like Judge Smails, comes in and sees the damage. He points the Brando and Mary.

BOSS
My word, what on earth happened here? I said to call an exterminator, not destroy the office! (sees Brando and Mary) You! You are going to be fired, and what’s more, you’re going to pay for this mess! Do you hear me, hmm, hmm?

Mary looks at Brando, then at The Boss, and raises her stapler.

MARY
Looks like we’ve got one more WASP to take care of.

CUE MUSIC
“LOVE Machine” by WASP

FADE TO BLACK

There are only two things I hate in this world: friends moving away and the Dutch

Five years ago, as we sat in our Rome hotel room and TLB found out she got into the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, I thought that I’d go to Iowa City, spend two years doing my Green Acres imitation, and return back to Chicago.

That changed when I actually arrived in this peaceful, friendly, fun town. Until I moved here in 2001, I had never gone more than four years without moving across state borders. Years as a Navy brat and my itinerant twenties kept me on the move. Goodbyes have always come with that territory, and one of the ways I’ve dealt with many great people coming in and out of my daily life was appreciating that I had known them all. I tell myself, If I hadn’t moved here, I wouldn’t have known them at all.

Still, I always hoped to find that place to settle down—especially since I was lucky enough to find someone to settle down with. If my future self arrived Back-to-the-Future style to tell my New York or Chicago self that Eastern Iowa would be that place, I would given Future Brando a drug test. But lo and behold, this little corner of the Big Ten is a place TLB and I have come to adore.

The people we’ve met have played the biggest role in that feeling. The Writer’s Workshop is (in)famous for being a place where egos are shredded and no quarter is given. We expected vicious critics and potential backstabbers. Instead, we found a community of cool folks, people like us who had left behind professions and more diverse metropolitan areas for the chance to improve their writing (or help their significant others improve their writing).

It’s hard to describe how much the experience invigorated us. I was happy in New York and Chicago. I left people who I still miss. Here, though, we turned back the clock. We went to parties, stayed up late talking with friends, drove out to corn mazes, went to readings, went to casinos, and—maybe best of all—just bumped into people we were always happy to see. It was like being an undergraduate again, only while having a clue.

The size of Iowa City works against people staying. Most people in the Workshop do depart after those two years. Most need to, frankly, because Iowa City is not for everyone. It’s small, it’s quiet, and it’s not always easy to get a job here. I was very sad when our dear friends Paula and Tom left, but we expected it. It gave us time to prepare for it, even if that didn’t make it any easier.

We were also lucky that, for a while, the rule of leaving took a back seat to the exception of staying. Many of our closest friends decided to stay put, at least for while. Some bought houses, and eventually we bought ours, forming a nucleus of dazzling urbanites who had settled in their new rustic environment. Even though my mind told me it couldn’t last, I hoped it would.

Sadly, my mind was right.

We’ve suffered a couple of losses these last weeks, people who have been with us since we first turned off I-80 and wondered if we were nuts for chucking everything to come to a town with four interstate exits.

First, El Gordo and Kerry took off for Massachusetts, where El Gordo landed a sweet job in academia. El Gordo, as I have written before, is Old School in the Will Ferrell sense, but with a brain: a man who can discuss subtext and point of view just before he drains a beer bong. Our defining moment was pogoing at the final Guided by Voices show in Iowa City, singing ourselves hoarse and damn near going deaf from being next to the stage monitors.

Kerry was the Mentos to El Gordo’s Diet Coke. Sweet, funny, one of those people who always seemed to take a genuine interest in what you were saying. They were the first of us to buy a house, and the last ones we expected to leave.

Our friends, Eathgoat founder Grendel and his lovely wife, Traca de Broon, followed El Gordo and Kerry out east, and after a few month stint in Mass., they will keep heading east to the Netherlands. Grendel and Traca were our first couple friends here. We were all about the same age, had come to the IC with many of the same reservations, and breathed the same sigh of relief when we discovered that this literary toga party wasn’t going to be an orgy.

They were our comrades at our first Workshop Prom, an occasion where everyone dresses up, drinks like fish, and reminisces about the previous year. Traca and TLB drank enough Cosmos to put the cast of Sex and the City to shame, while Grendel and I pounded Newcastle like it had abducted two of our soldiers. The next day, we were supposed to get together, but amusingly found our 30-year old bodies couldn’t handle 21-year old excesses so well. A hangover had never been such a bonding moment.

Grendel and Traca always had more of the wanderlust than we did, but when they bought a house, we thought they would be here for a while, just a couple of blocks away from us. They were the first people we went to after the tornado struck. Today, however, they’re blowing town, and I hate the Dutch a little for luring them away.

And then Kate, Becky’s first friend at the Workshop, has finally decided to leave. Her departure is not as surprising, but just as sad. Another person who is so nice, you can’t help but smile when you see her. She once threw a wig party that may have been the highlight of my time here, with all of us donning strange hairpieces (I wore a mullet) and drinking and joking until the wee hours. She leaves with Vinnie, another Workshop grad who already sadly left us but came back for the summer writing program (and helped me scare the bejesus out of some teenagers).

We are truly fortunate that we still have so many good friends here. As sad as we are, we’ve got people we love still just a few blocks away.

Losing these folks, though, people who were with us right from the beginning of our Iowa City experience, is hard to take. I still love it here. I still am happy we are staying. It’s just not going to be quite the same.

I just have to tell myself that if I hadn’t moved here, I wouldn’t have known them at all. That thought is much sadder than them leaving.

Top Ten Tuesdays: How are we getting the kids ready for school?

Special expanded they-grow-up-so-soon edition!

12) Having them walk through metal detectors before entering the sandbox.

11) Ripping out the chapters on evolution.

10) Replacing their crystal meth with Folger’s Crystals.

9) Transferring them from Catholic to public school so they’ll be safe from sexual predators.

8) Reminding them gently that if they don’t get into Harvard, mommy will start drinking again.

7) Practicing their gang signs flash cards.

6) Cutting practice short to introduce them to the kids who will take their tests.

5) Making sure they have a fresh box of Kraft Munchables, the tasty lunch-and-dental dam snack.

4) Pinning their chastity pledges to the crotches of their pants.

3) Helping them revise their rumors about the head cheerleader having crabs.

2) Searching their rooms for the drugs they’ve been taking from us all summer.

1) Hiring Karl Rove, Jr., to run their campaign for class president.

Boob Watch, or How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Featuring the first-ever blog picture of yours truly!

Every year, The Lovely Becky, the TLB family, and I head to the sunny, deep-fried beaches of Sunset Beach, North Carolina. Located just above its secession-loving sister state and 40 minutes north of Myrtle Beach (aka Branson with sand), Sunset is the anti-Myrtle—relaxing, non-commercial, and free of strip clubs (okay, so it’s not all win-win).

We’ve been going to SB for a few years. TLB’s parents rent a beach house and we freeload (now that’s a win-win). We spend the week lounging on the beach, reading, drinking, grilling, and boogie boarding. This year, we had the added pleasure of The Gs, TLB’s funny, friendly, and very Canadian relatives.

One fine afternoon, as we sat under our tent, a family of four set up camp in front of us: Dad, a big former-football-player-cum-Shoney’s-buffet-jock; two kids; and Mommy Boobiest, who filled the top of her teeni-weeni white bikini. She looked to be in her thirties, but if you only looked at her mid-chest, you’d probably card her for alcohol.

Nancy G, the Canadian mom, and Bill, her husband, engaged in a heated but friendly debate. I leaned over and said, “What are you guys talking about?”

Nancy nodded her head toward Mommy Boobiest. “Do you think those are real or fake?”

I gave MB my best peripheral-vision gaze. “Fake.”

“No way,” Bill said. “Those are real.”

Chad and Tim G, their 20-something sons, sided with Bill. Kelly, TLB’s sister, jumped into the fake camp. We were split 3-3.

“Why do you think those are fake, Nancy?” Bill asked.

“They don’t move when she moves.”

Bill nodded to Nancy and smiled. “But yours don’t move either. Are they fake, eh?”

Nancy shot him a wicked grin. “What do you think, Billy, that I paid for these? Yeah, I went to the ninety-nine cent special at Wal-Mart.”

“We need TLB,” I said. “She’s never wrong about fake boobs.” This is no exaggeration. My wife knows how to write a great novel, bake the best cookies in the universe, and spot a pair of fakes faster than an art insurance appraiser.

No sooner had I mentioned her name, TLB appeared at the tent. I explained the situation and the current voting. Like the Vice President in a deadlocked Senate, she weighed in.

“Those are real,” TLB said. “She's got a halter top bikini holding them in place. That’s why they’re not moving.”

Nancy and Kelly continued to grumble about silicone this and flotation devices that. “Look,” TLB said, “Just because you want them to be fake doesn’t mean they are fake.” Spotting another woman walking down the beach with what appeared to be plunger tops stuck to her chest, TLB found her control group. “Those are fake.”

With the Real or Fake? game decided, I needed a new way to amuse myself. Now, even if you removed the Confederate Flag beach towels and Krispy-Kreme fueled waistlines, Sunset Beach will never be confused with the North Shore. The waves rarely top more than a few feet, and this year especially, the sea was flatter than a pre-op breast augmentation patient. Bodyboarding appeared pointless.

Instead, I grabbed Chad's skimboard, a small, thin, wooden board that you use to skim the tide near the beach. I saw teenage boys using them all week: taking a running start, throwing the board in front of them, and jumping on. They slid along the water’s edge, doing turns, twists, and maybe hopping an incoming wave or two.

The first couple of experiments did not go well for me. I was tentative and my timing was off, leading to some one-footed, groin-stretching failures. “These damn things are defective,” I said.

Tim G, who is younger and much lighter than I am, took the board. After two failed tries, he got both feet on and glided a bit. A few more tries and he was sliding along the beach. I had my Brave Sir Robin moment: “That’s easy!”

I grabbed the board, took off running, threw the board down, and jumped on with both feet. For 1.5 seconds, I was alive! At second 1.6, I almost became paralyzed. I flew, I fell, I flailed. I went knee-first into the wet sand, which is surprisingly hard, especially when all of your weight comes crashing down on your left kneecap. Luckily, like a Reuters photographer, Nancy was where the action was. I dub this:

Portrait of the Blogger as a Dumb Ass

I lay in the surf for a few moments, my knee bloodied, my pride wounded, and my sense of mortality more alive than ever. I had attempted a Youth Augmentation, to turn back the clock and seem younger and more vibrant to onlookers. Instead, the result looked ridiculous, cartoonish, and downright ugly.

I noticed a ringing in my ears—the Clue Phone. I picked it up and heard the message: if you’re 20 years older and 20 stone heavier than the kids gliding along on these Paralysis Planks, just walk away while you still can. Because most of the time, you're not going to fool anybody into thinking you're 18 again.

Top Ten Tuesdays: What are we saying while under the influence?

10) I, Pamela, take you, Kid...

9) Officer, I can totally get you a discount at any Hilton hotel.

8) Wait, wait, check it out...after we invade Iraq, let’s convert it to a Western-style democracy!

7) Maybe I should make a sequel to Clerks.

6) The Cubs could still make the wildcard.

5) Let’s get the Coreys back together again.

4) I will run in Connecticut as an independent.

3) You know what this movie needs? More Jar Jar.

2) What do you mean the margarita mix already had tequila in it?*

1) Becky, pull the car over.*

*Actual Brando quotes.

Mel Gibson Cancels Film Production of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”

Gibson nailed to the cross for anti-Jewish comments; claims he is not a Hollywood denier

HOLLYWOOD - Mel Gibson announced he was cancelling production of a movie version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, after the actor/director received harsh criticism for allegedly anti-Semitic remarks.

During an Access Hollywood interview, Gibson was asked about the controversial project and whether it was anti-Semitic. An incoherent and apparently intoxicated Gibson appeared let loose an expletive-ridden tirade.

“See, it’s okay for (expletive) Jewey McJew of Jewimax Pictures to greenlight a movie that says Catholics are conspiring with Albinos to make Jesus a whoremonger. But if I say Jews are bent on world domination, somehow I’m the bad guy. Well, listen here, sugar tits: I'm going to slap some Gibson pork in the smug face of Hymiewood and out-Da Vinci Code those (expletive) Christ-killers.”

The outburst created a firestorm of criticism. “What a schmuck,” said Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League.

Actor Billy Crystal said, “I haven't been this angry since I paid full price to see Lethal Weapon 4.”

Gibson received criticism when he announced the project last year. Created in the late nineteenth century, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is a document that portrays a worldwide Zionist conspiracy. Passed off as legitimate, it has been used to justify anti-Semitism worldwide, but has been proven to be a fabrication and hoax.

In Gibson’s movie version, a researcher discovers that the Protocols are real and that the hoax is actually part of the Zionist conspiracy, aided and abetted by Jewish figures in the United Nations, the White House, the media, financial industries, universities, carnival workers, Jiffy Lube, Krispy Kreme, the Boston Red Sox, and the Vatican. Gibson wrote the screenplay based on a story treatment by his father, Hutton Gibson.

The film was to star Richard Dreyfuss, Albert Brooks, Natalie Portman, Fran Drescher, Adam Goldberg, and Abe Vigoda.

After the public outcry, Gibson immediately checked into the Betty Ford clinic. The actor released a statement of apology. “I wish to apologize for my actions. Taken out of context, my words appear to condemn Jews for killing our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ—which, I might add, they did.

“But the truth is, I have long been suffering from whip-it addiction that has severely altered my judgment. The day of the interview, I had sucked the nitrous out of two dozen Redi-Whip cans. I was completely high and my mind was spinning like one of those Jew tops.”

To prove his sincerity “to the ticket-buying public and the Hebrew studio heads,” Gibson announced that he was canceling the Protocols production and starting a new production: Turner and Hymen, a buddy action film about two FBI agents, a Vatican-denying Catholic and a pro-Israel Jew. The two men struggle with the differences of their faiths until they learn to unite toward a common cause: killing Muslims.