Pancake City

Rule #1 for corporations: choose a name that doesn’t sound evil.

I call this the Hollywood Movie Test. Here is how it works:

YOU: “Hey, we’re thinking of naming our business ‘MegaCorp.’ “
FRIEND: “MegaCorp? Wasn’t that the name of the evil corporation in RoboCop?”

TEST FAILED.

It doesn’t matter whether the name actually made a guest appearance as an evil corporation in a movie. The fact that the idea easily comes to imagination is enough.

That’s how I know Blackwater, the private military company providing additional security and logistic services in Iraq, is evil. Blackwater sounds like one of the corrupted areas in Lord of the Rings. Make a right at Isengard and head 1/2 a league south of Fangorn. You can’t miss it. The water is black. Huh? Yeah. Completely black. Symbol of the absolute corruption and exploitation of nature.

Why are you heading there anyway? Oh. Okaaaay. No, no, I’m not saying it’s a bad name of a company. It’s just…well…depends what you do. Do you work for Sauron? No? Saruman? No. Okay. What’s your core business? Uh-huh. Yeah. So it’s not polluting the environment and instilling dread in the hearts of men, dwarfs, and hobbits? Maybe you should rethink the name then. Something with more pop. What’s that? “Hobbit Punchers, Inc.”–no, not that type of pop.

If you want any real information about Blackwater and the shooting incident they were involved in with Iraqi police, The Washington Post has a nice repository of information on the company. The House voted overwhelmingly last Thursday to place all private contractors working in Iraq and other combat zones under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Which begs the question, why wasn’t this done at the start?

“There’s no way in the world, having read this information, that I would have one of those chips implanted in my skin, or in one of my family members,” said Dr. Robert Benezra, head of the Cancer Biology Genetics Program at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Oh, how the cyborg future is fraught with peril.

The Associated Press unearthed several studies done in the mid 1990s that show a possible link between cancer in mice and RFIDs, Radio Frequency Identification Devices. I’ll risk cancer for a laser chip or a neural implant, but not for something that is essentially a high-tech name tag. The chips are popular with pet owners. If their robo-puppy runs away, many local animal shelters have scanners that can read these chips and retrieve the owner’s information, making it easier than ever for shelters to return the runaway pooch to a place that he obviously does not want to be.

The FDA approved a product made for human implantation in October 2004, although the product’s manufacturer probably called it a more congenial name than…HUMAN IMPLANTATION (“Who wants a permy-pill? We got three flavors.”).

An object that is cancerous to mice or rats doesn’t mean it will be cancerous to pets and humans. As I mentioned, the devices are popular with pet owners, and one would assume if RFIDs posed a significant health problem to animals, anecdotal evidence from pet owners and veterinarians would have bubbled up by now.

The AP’s story brings up some questions. Was the FDA aware of these studies before approving the product, VeriChip? Did VeriChip’s manufacturer know of these studies and withhold them from the FDA? Guess who’s stonewalling? That’s right, everyone! Read the article for a special guest appearance by a former top-level Bush administration appointee.

I was reluctant until now to comment on Sen. Craig’s arrest in a Minnesota airport bathroom for allegedly trying to initiate sex with another man. It’s a whirlwind of homophobia and denial that isn’t pretty to look at.

It’s hard to believe that the Republican Congressional leadership would have reacted so quickly if Sen. Craig was caught cheating on his wife with another woman. I think the message they got from the Mark Foley scandal wasn’t “Don’t cover up your own who use their power to prey on others” but “gay + sex = bad.” Some of them don’t even need the “+sex” part.

Yet there is news that Sen. Craig is reconsidering his decision to resign and fight his guilty plea. By guilty plea, I mean his homo- or bi-sexuality.

While part of me welcomes the forthcoming amusement from the reinvigoration of a story that was already fading from the nation’s conscience, I don’t think this is what Dylan Thomas meant when we wrote, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” Or in Sen. Craig’s poetry book, “Do not go gentle into that good nightclub on bear night.”

I had my own issues with coming out as a gay man and still have work to do accepting my sexuality. I understand the great fear of shedding your old life and having to reconstruct your whole identity, who you thought you were for most of your life. But damn it man, you got in a public bathroom doing a homosexual Kabuki dance trying to entice the guy in the stall next to you to give you a reach around. It’s time to give it up and put on a pair of hot pants.

I know, gay men don’t wear hot pants anymore. But when your psyche is fractured to the point that when the national spotlight sends your gay side scurrying back into the closet, unscrewing the light bulb, and hanging a sign on the door that says “Out for lunch! Will be back in: NEVER”, you have to start somewhere.

I felt some sympathy for what has to be one of the worst coming out experiences ever. Now that it looks like he’s looking to fight the “charges” instead of starting the difficult process of accepting them, a lot of that sympathy is gone. It just reinforces an idea some people still have that being gay is an albatross that should be avoided and fought at all costs.

On a final note, what spurred this post was a throwaway line at the end of the aforementioned article:

“All three of Craig’s adopted children said Tuesday they believe their father’s assertions he is not gay and did nothing to warrant his arrest.”

Hey, here’s a sign that you may be gay: not being able to ejaculate in a woman. Other signs: actually, there are no other signs. That’ll pretty much do it.

A reenactment of the past week:

SHERIFF: “Do you want to finish your sentence at home?”
PARIS: “Really?”
SHERIFF: “Sure. Three days in jail is enough. You can do the other 42 days as home arrest.”
PARIS: “Thank you so much!”

Paris goes home. A few hours later, the Sheriff’s phone rings:

SHERIFF: “Hey.”
JUDGE: “Did she buy it?”
SHERIFF: “Oh, yeah. It was hilarious. Her face lit right up.”
JUDGE: [laughing]: “Oh my God. This is going to be great. Get one of your guys to bring her to the courthouse. Tell her the judge needs to speak with her for a few minutes. Tell her it won’t take long, and to leave her things.”
SHERIFF: “This is so wrong.”
JUDGE: “I know. Isn’t it awesome?”

At the courthouse:
JUDGE: “Paris, I have some bad news. We’re putting you back in jail. Right now.”
PARIS: “What? But he said I could do my sentence at home!”
JUDGE: “Lee, did you tell Paris she could serve her sentence in her house?”
SHERIFF: “Don’t believe I did, Mike.”
PARIS: “You liar! Yes you did!”
SHERIFF: “Hold on a second. Let me think.” [Sheriff strokes his chin slowly.] “Hmmm. Hmmmmmmm. Wait, yes! Yes!”
PARIS: “You remember?”
SHERIFF: “I remember that ‘The Simple Life’ sucked. Now get your scrawny ass back in your cell, bitch.”
JUDGE: “Oh! Smoked!”

[SHERRIF + JUDGE give each other a high-five. An officer shakes his head and escorts PARIS out the courthouse.]

…but I can’t help it.

Armless man eludes police in high-speed car chase

The story is even better than the headline. Not only is this guy, Michael Wiley, driving around with no arms and escaping the cops, he is a mean son-of-a-bitch. He has been arrested before drug and abuse charges, and has had his driver’s license revoked. Armless doesn’t cover it. He doesn’t even have two legs. One of them was damaged in the electrical accident that made him armless. You know why he spent time in jail in 1996?

He kicked a state trooper.

An able-bodied person attacking a police officer is wrong. But when an armless, one-legged man kicks a cop, maybe he has a legitimate beef with the police. If you lose three out of four appendages, whatever you do with the fourth appendage becomes real important. Priority 1. This guy isn’t patting his head and rubbing his belly at the same time. He’s making choices.

That must have been embarrassing for the kicked trooper. How did the officer not see it coming? Wiley has one leg. His hand-to-hand combat options are limited. He’s either hopping away or taking a stand. You don’t even need to figure out which leg he is going to use. Cover your crotch and watch for arm bites. Not too complicated.

What I like about this story is that is about a disabled person who is absolutely, completely anti-inspirational. It’s not about challenges that the mundane activities of life pose for the disabled. Wiley isn’t fulfilling a dream of hopping up Mt. Kilimanjaro or grooming rescue dogs with a comb attachment for his big toe.

It’s about a mean, probably horrible man with no obvious redeeming qualities who, when faced with a long, uphill battle to overcome his disability and use the challenge as motivation for life, said: “Screw it. I’m racing cops.” It’s a type of disabled person never promoted in the media, and I’m glad to have heard of him. Even positive stereotypes gets in the way of viewing people as individuals, and not just as a member of a group.

Funny and well-done video.

Here is an odd story of Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, calling President Bush “the devil” on the floor of the U.N. General Assembly. Afterwards, Chavez pulled down his pants, waved his rear at Bush, and said, “You can kiss my brown ass.”

Okay, Chavez kept his pants on, but if you are going to call the leader of a nation “the devil” in front of the leaders of almost every other country in the planet, your pantaloons might as well have wings because they’re flying off soon.

The article points out that Chavez has called Bush names before, but it was “Mr. Devil”. Now, Chavez is dispensing with the formalities.

Mr. Devil does have a nice ring to it. Sounds like something an orphan would say. “Mr. Devil, can I have some more porridge?” And the devil would smile and say, “Well, the devil wouldn’t give you more porridge, but maybe Mr. Devil can help a young, polite man like yourself out.”

Can you understand how crazy this is? It’s like a far-left version of Ann Coulter got elected president of a country. Calling a president a devil in a public forum is something a crackhead would say. How is the President supposed to respond? “You called me what, bitch?”

Whoever gave Chavez the key to the liquor cabinet in his room is going to be fired. Chavez is going to wake up the next day, hungover and groggy, and get a call from his frantic aide: “I said what? Wow. Really? They knew I was drunk, right?”

Does anyone else think that Ken Lay was desperately stuffing his mouth with doughnuts, fried chicken, and molasses for the past three months?

While descending from the peak of Mount Everest, a mountain climber collapsed and his friends, thinking he was dead, left him behind.

Later, another climber check on him, found that he was still alive, and helped him make it to camp.

CLIMBER1: “Cheers, everyone! We did it!”
CLIMBER2: “To us!” [they clink champagne glasses and drink]
CLIMBER1: “Hey, you know who that looks like?”
CLIMBER2: “Where?”
CLIMBER1: “I swear that looks like…oh my God.”
LINCOLN HALL: “Hello, guys.”

[CLIMBER1 and CLIMBER2 smile uncomfortably]

CLIMBER1: “Lincoln! You’re alive!”
CLIMBER2: “We’re so happy to see you. We thought you were dead.”
HALL: “I know. I saw your boots kick snow in my face as you left me behind.”
CLIMBER1: “Yeah, about that. Look, we really thought you were dead.”
CLIMBER2: “Super dead. We would have carried you back if you were just dead.”
CLIMBER1: “You weren’t moving at all. Or breathing.”
CLIMBER2: “You looked lifeless.”
HALL: “I was clinging to your leg for dear life, Charles. Before you shook me off.”
CLIMBER2: “Oh, that was you?”
HALL: “Who did you think it was?”
CLIMBER2: “…Polar bear.”
HALL: “YOU THOUGHT THERE WAS A POLAR BEAR CLINGING TO YOUR LEG ON THE TOP OF MOUNT EVEREST!”
CLIMBER2: [sheepish] “Or a penguin.”
HALL: “I’m going to kill you guys.”

(from the Washington Post, in regards to an accident at the Kentucky Derby)

“The news came as a huge relief to those who had stood vigil outside the hospital and to Barbaro’s fan base, which had grown exponentially in number since the jockey’s dominant victory at the Kentucky Derby on May 6.”

Oops. I made a typo. The vigil wasn’t held for a jockey. Barbaro is the horse.

I can understand the horse’s owner and those who take care of him being deeply concerned. But that’s not the image I get from “vigil.” I picture a few dozen people holding candles and swaying back and forth to “Kum-ba-ya”. Which, unless they are degenreate gamblers who took the over for the horse surviving, seems like an overreaction.

I don’t understand the commotion behind Vice President Cheney shooting his companion on a quail hunting trip.

One, have you seen a photo of the victim (shootee?), lawyer Harry Whittington? Kind of looks like a bird. Maybe not a quail, but he definitely has some duck in his cheeks.

Two, I know the vice presidency isn’t the most glamorous or powerful position in the U.S. government, but come on. You can’t even shoot a man without creating a ruckus? What the heck is the point of being vice president then? He’s not even a first-term vice president. He went over five entire years without shooting someone. Be honest: how many of you thought that would happen in 2000? I predicted Cheney would eat a man by 2006. We should be grateful he hasn’t decided to eat a protestor yet. He could do it. Picket sign and all. Cheney is a beast.

Mr. Whittington isn’t even dead. As most of the news accounts describe the incident, Cheney didn’t shoot him. He “peppered” him with shot gun “spray.” Much like you would pepper a salad, and spray it with a delicious glaze of flavored olive oil.

And the hospital where Mr. Whittington is staying at describes his condition as “very stable.” Mr. Whittington is doing so well that the hospital had to invent a new way to describe a patient’s condition. Stable doesn’t cut it. There’s a new king of the hill in town, and his name is “very stable”. For all the losers in stable town who think they’re doing well: you might as well pull the plug now, because stable = disabled. It rhymes, so memorize it, mother fuckers.

Should the White House have informed the press about the incident instead of leaving it up to the ranch owner? Should Cheney apologize and admit he was careless instead of claiming it was an unavoidable accident? I suppose so, but demanding that the White House show honesty and take responsibility for this incident is like having a spouse that had an intimate affair with another person every few months for the past five years, and then getting into an apoplectic rage when you find out he kissed a co-worker on the cheek yesterday.

All Cheney did was shoot a man. Why would anyone believe this incident would spur personal change?

The election results for Canada’s next Prime Minister will be announced tomorrow. Which brings up an obvious question: Canada has elections? Good for them. Just like a real country.

(Look, I need a warm-up people. You don’t serve aces without some practice, and Canada’s my automatic ball machine.)


“Lay, Skilling Ask to Postpone Trial”
How’s 2017 work for everyone? No? Shit.

My roommate was watching a History Channel show on “USOs: Unidentifed Submerged Objects.” Essentially, they’re UFOs that swim under water. Here’s a typical line from the show:

NARRATOR: “Some researchers believe that the lost city of Atlantis is the home base for USOs.”

How many takes the narrator went through to say that without snorting milk through his nose, I don’t know.

The show references an event many years ago on a dark night (of course) where “hundreds of objects burst from the ocean and flew into the air.” One of the producers found a 911 recording of someone calling in about the event. Here is the beginning of the dramatic conversation, which I swear I am not embellishing a bit:

OPERATOR: “911.”
CALLER: “Has anyone reported anything unusual tonight?”
OPERATOR: “Uh…..can you be a little more specific?”
CALLER: “Anything involving lights?”

And was the caller arrested afterwards for crimes against humanity? No. And some say there is justice in the world.

Face Transplant Patient Smokes Again

A few days ago, Iran announced that it will never again suspend its uranium conversion projects at its nuclear power plants. Uranium conversion is the step before enrichment, the process that produces material that can be used for both reactor fuel or an atomic bomb.

President Bush responded that, if diplomacy fails, “all options are on the table.” He then said: “The use of force is the last option for any president. You know, we’ve used force in the recent past to secure our country.“

Screw realism, neo-conservatism, isolationism, idealism, or any other of the various foreign policy philosophies that have fallen in and out of favor over the course of America’s history. Apparently, our entire foreign policy is based on the notion that we are a bunch of crazy mother-fuckers. Or as the textbooks call it, crazy mother-fuckerism.

Iraq’s constitution is due in two days. The country’s political factions are rushing to finish it in by the deadline. I don’t know what’s going to be in the constitution, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to have two-inch margins and be double spaced.