Pancake City

CONTESTANT 2: “Marsupials for $600.”
ALEX TREBEK: “This is the largest type of marsupial.”
CONTESTANT 2: “What is…I know this one. What is…um, what is–”
TREBEK: “YOU’RE OUT OF TIME, MAURCIE! YOU’RE OUT OF TIME!”

CUSTOMER TELEMARKETER: “Hello, is Mr. Henry Pittington in?”
MR. PITTINGTON: “Speaking.”
CUSTOMER TELEMARKETER: “I have some bad news about your subscription.”
MR. PITTINGTON: “My subscription to what?”
CUSTOMER TELEMARKETER: “Don’t play coy with me.”
MR. PITTINGTON: “What are you talking about?”
CUSTOMER TELEMARKETER: “YOU’RE OUT OF TIME, PITTINGTON! YOU’RE OUT OF TIME! That is, unless you renew in the next two weeks.”

[In the Spy Museum in Washington D.C. A trans-universe rip in the space-time continuum opens and two aliens in the shape of translucent pink starfish emerge from the rift. The aliens communicate by emitting and absorbing colored light-pulses through their skin. This information, although interesting, is completely unnecessary to the joke ahead. One could even argue that, by building up a level of tension that this simple joke has no hope of justifying, this preamble is, word by word, lessening whatever humor the reader may find in the following sentences.

Then again, the person making this argument is likely in the group of people who voted for Fantasia more times this week than they had voted in the last five Presidential elections, assuming they were old enough to vote in any of them, which they weren't.]
PAA-PIT-WIISH-WISH: “Where are we? This isn’t our universe. The temporal funnel–something must have happened. But where–”
ZOONA-REESH-AUK: “YOU’RE OUT OF TIME, PAA-PIT! YOU’RE OUT OF TIME!”
PAA-PIT-WIISH-WISH: “Well, if I’m out of Time, so are you.”
ZOONA-REESH-AUK: “Oh, yeah.”
PAA-PIT-WIISH-WISH: “Maybe if we materialize one of these beings can help us.”
ZOONA-REESH-AUK: “Don’t be ridiculous. What are we going to do, ask them for directions? There’s no way these inferior beings know how to get to Hoboken.”

I’m going camping. Have a nice weekend, but preferably not nicer than mine, because I judge the quality of my weekends solely on their relative joy to the time of others.

This guy totally kicks the shit out of Carpal Tunnel XTreme 3000. (link from LYD).

I haven’t posted in a while because my last post was number 666, and I wanted to enjoy the magic. I also started a part-time job dog walking, which has given me many good stories, but has cut into my free time.

Washington Post Headlines

Snoop Dogg Files for Divorce

Says Dog, “I’m breaking off with you, g.”



President Vows to Raze Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq

Four to one odds he didn’t use the word “raze”.

Call to Rally Lacks Answers

“Hello?” “Hey, this is George. Come to my rally. No time to explain.” [click]

Dionne: Election Mistakes to Avoid

Leading list: losing, taunting press to discover your floozy

The Cola Wars Go Low-Carb

“Can O’ Blubber”, “Carb Destroyer Xtreme (Now With More Acid!)” flies off shelves

Loudoun Leaders Hear Stadium Plan

Developers throw rocks at leaders’ windows at night, plead for love, large tax breaks

GOP Creating Own ‘527′ Groups

Groups like “Fox News”, “The Rush Limbaugh Show,” “Hannity and…” oh.

Do your own. It’s easy! Try:

Soldiers’ Doubts Build as Duties Shift

Instead of the Arab world intensifying its hatred for America and creating legions of terrorists for the next twenty years because of the Abu Ghraib recruitment video we gave them (”Torturers Gone Wild! [With Snoop Dogg]” Vol II now out), can we just trade them President Bush and call it even?

We can trick Bush into flying over there by laying out a trail of old USA Today sport sections and Buddy Jesus dolls that leads to an airplane. On the plane, Colin Powell will knock him out and replace his suit with a shirt of Gizmo from Gremlins on it and matching sweats. We’ll also send over a few X-Boxes with “Tom Clancy: Splinter Cell” and “Halo” to sneakily advertise the pleasures of American life. They’ll know what to do.

Dear Ms. Tina Brown,

Are you drunk when you write your columns? No, really. I’m not being sarcastic. I truly wish to know if, one, are inebriated when you write your column for The Washington Post, and two, if so, the degree of said inebriation.

Sincerely,
Me

I switched back to Haloscan for comments. The faceless messages from “Anonymous” disturbed me. None of the messages on HaloScan are faceless, because if I don’t know what you look like, I will compensate by using the image of a like-named celebrity in your place (”Dan” = Dan Cortez, “Kate” = Kate Winslet, “Chad” = The country Chad). Unless your name is anonymous, in which case I use the image of a black hole.

Here’s why I don’t like Kerry too much: he panders to voters and makes misleading arguments as much as most politicians. I don’t know how much to begrudge him for being this way. A significant part of the voting doesn’t have the ability or doesn’t want to make the effort to think critically. Misleading campaign commercials work. Rhetoric can be completely disconnected from reality and still influence people if the politician is “trustworthy” enough. And people love “tell it how it is” politicians except in the voting booth (e.g. John McCain, Howard Dean).

So I’m not sure if I want Kerry to have more integrity. Can running a campaign based on reason and logic beat a campaign based on emotion and rhetoric? That’s a question I want answered in a less important campaign than one for the position of President. But at the same time, I get annoyed when I read passages like this one, in today’s Washington Post:

The Kerry campaign contended in a statement that Bush “stubbornly refuses to offer help” even as higher gasoline prices, which have risen to more than $2 per gallon, will cost the average Oregon family an extra $1,006 a year and squeeze family budgets already hurt by a weak job market and higher costs for college.

What should the President do to offer help, cut taxes? Make a secret deal with Saudi Arabia to lower gas prices for the election? The President has almost no power to control gas prices. The one thing he tried, trying to arrange a deal with the ruling party in Saudi Arabia, was rightfully criticized, and if he suggested the other thing he could do, lowering the federal gas tax, wouldn’t he be attacked for putting the country in further fiscal jeopardy to buy a few votes for the election?

Yet when the Bush campaign tries to make an issue of Kerry mentioning the idea of a 50-cent per gallon gas tax in an interview 10 years ago, and adds a “Kerry gas tax calculator,” I wonder if returning the cheap shot is necessary to win?

The questions here are, “What is the penalty for honesty in politics?” And, “What price do we pay if the penalty is severe?”

Match.com could save itself a lot of money and work. The company spends tens of thousands of dollars advertising their site, hiring models for photos, analyzing web traffic, tracking customer activity, and creating promotions to defend its claim of the online dating world. And they could. get rid of it all and double their popularity just by advertising one of their little-known features. The feature?

Search. By. Mullet.

In addition to wind-tossed, teased, and curled, you can elect to receive page after page of potential dates with swept-back manes that will intoxicate your soul and provide wind resistance during blustery storms.

Match.com could spend 30 seconds a year creating advertising materials. “Are we rolling? No, screw it. One take. I’m Larry Abrahms, CEO of Match.com. I’ll make this short and sweet. You can search by mullet. You wanna spend 2 years developing mulletseekingmullet.com, be my guest. But for now, you got two choices. Food Lion or Match.com. I’m out.”

Search by mullet. Search by mullet. Search by mullet!

Update: As Anonymous pointed out, the links don’t work. Which sucks, because one of them was a contender for best mullet ever, and I can’t remember which area I searched to find him. So if you want to cull the mulls, you’ll have to search on Match.com yourself.

DOCTOR: I have some bad news.
PATIENT: What? What is it?
DOCTOR: There…there can only be one Highlander.
PATIENT: No. No! You’re joking. You have to be.
DOCTOR: I’m sorry. It is difficult news for any man.
PATIENT: Two enters, one leaves. Is that how it is?
DOCTOR: It is the law.
PATIENT: How much time do I have before…
DOCTOR: We should operate as soon as possible.
PATIENT: Dr. Dealgood, is there anything I could have done?
DOCTOR: I don’t know. Maybe a regular prostate exam. Maybe healthier eating. But sometimes these things just happen.
PATIENT: Will I feel any pain?
DOCTOR:
Pain is a gauze stretched and twisted around our bodies /
like ribbon and wrap over a last birthday present.
Steel skin and ice, a moon in the shape of a scythe.
Is your heart open? Will you feel pain?
PATIENT: Easy questions for a reaper.
DOCTOR: I prefer surgeon.
PATIENT: A poet would.

Theme: a few seconds before disaster. The first 15 or so are quite funny.

…that the Bush administration didn’t do everything they could to fight terrorism. Like kill Abu Musab Zarqawi*. Because it would have undermined their reason for going into Iraq.

*You may have seen Abu Musab Zarqawi (”The Moose” to his friends) in such terrorist videos such as “Executing Michael Berg” and “Al Qaeda and Friends: Happy Fun Hour.”

The smartest thing a spammer has ever done was titling their email in my inbox today “Re: baboon”.

This

inspired by this.

No, your money will not be refunded for listening to the first “this.”

I just realized the comments feature was set to “Registered Users” only. That must be why no one is commenting. Yup. That’s it. Why didn’t anyone let me know the comments feature was set this way? (It’s now changed.) Would it have killed anyone to leave a comment and give me a heads up?

Sometimes I just can’t believe it. From Dan Froomkin’s “White House Briefing” column in the Wash. Post (bold added):

President Bush doesn’t spend much time poring over news coverage because it would just muddle his thinking and bring him down, he told the author of a new, admiring book about his presidency.

“Mr. Bush thinks that immersing himself in voluminous, mostly liberal-leaning news coverage might cloud his thinking and even hinder his efforts to remain an optimistic leader,” Sammon writes.