Since Scott has a splitting headache, let’s make him feel better by checking out John Stossel’s latest column. Or, rather, let’s check out John Stossel’s column and then split Stossel’s head to make Scott feel better.

I’m Politically Incorrect

Oooh, I’m so naughty and trendy, and just the kind of bad boy that the ladies all go for!

This week, I held a bake sale — a racist bake sale. I stood in midtown Manhattan shouting, “Cupcakes for sale.” My price list read:Asians — $1.50

Whites — $1.00

Blacks/Latinos — 50 cents

People stared.

I imagine they did. And I imagine they were thinking to themselves, “Man, Stossel is so 2003 with that ‘Diversity Bake Sale’ stuff. And he is SOOO 1985 with that mustache! And besides, this is midtown Manhattan, and we don’t hawk cupcakes here – for anything less than $5 a pop. ”

Anyway, if you are older than ten, you can predict where the rest of the column is going: Diversity programs are racist because everyone is equal now. College conservatives are being repressed by evil administrators who won’t let them practice cupcake discrimination. My university colleagues are stupid hippie feminist liberals, and I hate them all so much!

Wait, that last one was Dr. Mike — but you can’t blame me for being confused, since Stossel’s column sounds like it was stolen directly from Dr. Mike, including the fact that the whole thing is based on a Foundation of Irritating Republicans in Education Who Whine A Lot (FIRE) press release. And since Stossel is a big TV star (really! it’s in his bio), and Dr. Mike is just a non-promoted criminology professor at a state college, it’s kind of sad that Stossel is now poaching on Dr. Mike’s beat. (Of course, Dr. Mike has long since finished with racist cupcakes, and has moved on to the more evil gay cupcakes, thus proving that Stossel has indeed fallen on hard intellectual times.)

So, it has come to this. Dr. Mike and Mustache Face Stossel enter an arena, and only one emerges alive. And then that one has to sell cupcakes on the streets of Manhattan for the rest of his life.

Oh Lord | 13 Comments »

I’m on day two of a (so far) two-day headache, and want to apologize for not posting this week, but I just haven’t felt up to skimming through the usual wingnuts.  However, since the inside of my skull feels the way a bad bearing sounds — grinding, scraping, shrieking — I figure I might as well read Pam Geller’s column, since it produces roughly the same effect.

We Won – Now What?

The Republican win on Tuesday was far larger than the historic takeback of 1994, the stunning rebuke of Bill Clinton that subsequently forced a chastised president to enact welfare reform (a flying-pig moment).

Just as some people release doves as symbols of peace and love at the conclusion of weddings or memorials, Pam commemorates the passage of important legislation by releasing flying pigs in order to ward off Muslims.  (Genetically engineered raptor-swine made possible by a grant from the Archer Daniels Midland Company.)

Even the sparse wins the subversive left managed to pull out on Tuesday were riddled with chicanery, cheating, union payoffs, and the buying of votes with “free lunches.”

I’d been planning to vote for Meg Whitman, but as I approached the polling place (and well within the 100 foot “no electioneering” limit) I was accosted by a Jerry Brown supporter and bought off with an olive loaf on white bread and a Fun Size bag of Cheez Its.

Harry Reid’s systemic corruption garnered a win funded by millions of dollars from public-sector unions. It was all in the game. Same for California — a state from which decent, hardworking Americans (aka Republicans) have been fleeing

This is true, and as a liberal it’s partly my fault, but I’ve tried to make amends by holding the door for them.

…a state destroyed by a union choke hold.

Linda McMahon dispatched some of her employees to battle the SEIU thugs, but unfortunately, WWE wrestlers are barred from using the union choke hold, so it wasn’t really a fair fight.

The stakes could not have been higher or more serious in the triumph of the rational on Tuesday.

The Triumph of the Rational (Artist’s Conception).

Obama still doesn’t get it. Obama’s tone at his press conference on Wednesday was still contemptuous of the American people and shocking in terms of simple math. He had the audacity to say this: “We should be able to agree now that it makes no sense for China to have better rail systems than us, and Singapore having better airports than us. And we just learned that China now has the fastest supercomputer on Earth. That used to be us. They’re making investments, because they know those investments will pay off over the long term.”

His math is shockingly bad — it doesn’t even use numbers, which I’m pretty sure is a prerequisite.

Singapore and China are free-market economies — laissez-faire capitalism

Yep, China’s National Center for Supercomputing, and Ministry of Railways — Triumphs of Private Enterprise!

Higher taxes imposed on the rich (and the semi-rich) come out of their investment capital (i.e., their savings). These taxes mean less investment, i.e., less production, fewer jobs, higher prices, etc.

That’s why China’ free-market railroad magnates invented Reardon Metal, and we didn’t.

By the time the “rich” lower their standard of living, those who work in their companies or subcontract with them will be gone, along with their savings and their spouses’ jobs — and no power in the world (no economic power) will be able to revive the dead industries. There will be no such power left. (In this I am paraphrasing Ayn Rand’s words from decades ago.)

And as Rand correctly predicted, America’s great piece-goods moguls were forced to offshore their sweatshops to South-East Asia because Obama taxed Dagny Taggart.

The Concorde was going to be the future of air travel, in which we’d bop from place to place in half the time. Now the Concorde is defunct. Kaput. Much like the environment for producers and businessmen, who are the “villains” of Democrats, statists, collectivists, moochers, and looters.

This is the price of force. This is the price of coercion. This is the price of statism. This is the price of big government. The very idea of America has been subsumed by an enslavement mentality.

Democrats have killed America’s national symbol, the Concorde, which replaced the bald eagle, a statist bird that just wanted to sit on the Endangered Species List and mooch and loot, rather than going extinct as the free market decreed.

Government is not the answer — it destroys everything it touches.

On the bright side, this is how we manage to win all of our wars.  WWII, as you’ll recall, came to a swift and sure end in early 1942 when Roosevelt sent some Department of Agriculture bureaucrats over to Berlin to touch Hitler.

We must take back the culture, because politics is merely a reflection of the culture. The left has the culture in a choke hold.

We must break up this match and save the culture, before the left gets The Real Housewives of New Jersey in a three-quarter facelock, or immobilizes American Idol with a Boston crab and forces Ryan Seacrest to tap out.

We are done with lies. We are done with “It’s Bush’s fault.” We are done with “Obama inherited the second Great Depression.” No. Obama’s policies led to a great coming depression. Obama talks about Bush spending? The utter gall. Bush was Jack Benny to Obama’s profligate Mack Daddy Warbucks.

“Racism” is the new “Irony.”

The left can spin it any way they like, but the economic emergency of 2008 was a direct result of Democrat entitlement/financial policy: Carter’s Community Investment Act (CIA), Clinton’s sub-prime push, and the ensuing Barney Frank Freddie Mac/Fanny Mae plunder.

I’m disappointed that Pam has failed to connect the dots by pointing out how Johnson’s “Great Society” planted the seeds of the sub-prime mortgage crisis by making minorities think they’d be ready to buy a house in 43 years.  Oh well, at least she’s not blaming this on the Muslims…

I do not fault Bush war expenditures. We are at war with a ruthless, bloodthirsty, savage ideology that has no humanity. No expense can be spared in defeating jihad. Obama’s sniveling like a little girl falls on deaf ears when you consider the trillions he stole from us for no reason but to pad the pockets of his shadow government.

I have to agree with Pam — we should have just bombed and invaded the banks instead of bailing them out.

Our victory is the beginning of the forty years’ war — who is with me?

Sounds great!  But before we get started, I’m just curious — why a Forty Years War?  I assume because a Hundred Years sounds too long, and Thirty Years sounds too French?  Anyway, the important thing is, Pam has a manifesto, which, in honor of her twin inspirations, Hitler and Fergie, she has entitled Mein Humpfs.

We will repeal national socialist ObamaCare.

We will destroy all old propaganda media. New media is steamrolling over the dead media walking.

We will take back the college campuses.

We will get on our children’s school boards and, just like in Texas, change the whitewashed history books and review the syllabi.

Deregulate business. Piece by piece. Sector by sector. Unshackle the motor of the country. Free the producer.

Producers will now be free to sell up to 100% of Broadway musicals to multiple investors.

We will call our mortal enemy by its rightful name: Islamic jihad.

Or “Voldemort,” depending on how touchy Rowling is about her IP.

We will turn the Muslim Brotherhood into the Muslim Little-Girlhood.

We’ll teach them to vlog in their bikinis!

We will ridicule, polarize, and render irrelevant the dogmatic, evil leftists.

We will crush them with our logic and reason and concrete facts.

While ridiculing and polarizing them.  Our facts may be concrete, but they’re funny.

We will demand reasoned discourse and laugh at their ad hominem attacks.

We’re, uh, we’re gonna start with that the second one first.

We will raise the voting age to 21.  Military excluded.

Our facts are concrete, but some of our logic and reason was, admittedly, filched from Starship Troopers…

If “children” are still on their parents health insurance at 26, maybe 21 is too low.

In order to register to vote, you must show proof of having been refused treatment at a private hospital.  Preferably for something life-threatening, like a gunshot wound or acute appendicitis, so we know you’re serious.  Remember, No Suffering, No Suffrage.

Get Your Ass Back in the Culture War | 23 Comments »

RILEY:  Ha!  I’d like to see him sneak up on us with that camera now!

RILEY: Crap!

Wild Things | 7 Comments »

It’s been awhile since we’ve posted about low-rent pundit Kyle-Anne Shiver, mostly because her once flavorful wingnuttery seemed to lose a few of its seven secret herbs and spices after she unsuccessfully played chicken with her employers.  For those who may have missed or forgotten about it — it’s been a year — here is Kyle-Anne’s own America’s Most Wanted-style recreation of the crime:

I noticed that Creators Syndicate, with whom I was under contract for a weekly column, was allowing its liberal columnists to use the homosexual slang, “tea baggers” and “tea bagging,” in clear reference to American citizens protesting unconstitutional overreach and out-of-control spending of taxpayers’ hard-earned money.  I lodged a formal complaint with the top editors and demanded that the practice stop.  I said that I would disengage with the Syndicate if the practice continued.

The eagerness with which her editors snatched the proffered resignation out of her hand suggests they may have regarded it less as an act of brinksmanship, and more as an early Christmas present.

When the editors refused to even entertain a discussion on the merits of my complaint, and instead showed me the door, I apologized for my hastiness and tried to save the prestigious contract.

When they wouldn’t let her take back her ultimatum, she wrote another letter declaring that she’d been right the first time, and they should suck it.  Since then, though, she has seemed to lose that keen and keening edge of crazy certitude which once distinguished her opinionizing, until now, her afflatus just seems deflated.

Nevertheless, Kyle-Anne is still capable of cranking out a decent column in her area of expertise:  practical and applied stupidity.

California Wins Dumbest State Award in Landslide

It’s the proverbial morning after and with votes counted, California has won the Dumbest State Award in a historic landslide of monstrous proportions.

We’ve elected Arnold Schwarzenegger Governor twice, and you’re only now realizing that we’re stupid?  I take it you’ve also just noticed our fondness for Wallabees, mood rings, and Dixieland Jazz?

All Californians can now see Greece from their bedroom windows.  No need to even go to the backyards and crane their little necks.

To “crane their little necks,” refers, of course, to our practice of using penny arcade claw machines to harvest clams.

In the coming years, the unions, who have been bilking Californians in a protection-racket type scheme, will be taking to the streets in massive, destructive temper tantrums just like those out-in-the-cold workers in other failed socialist states across the big pond. It won’t be pretty.

Yes, it’ll be exactly like the way those blue collar thugs took to the streets in 1934 to avenge Upton Sinclair’s loss in the gubernatorial race — thousands of working class goons shutting down the docks and the factories, chanting “No Whitman, No Peace!”

All the while Californians have been lining the greedy pockets of union masters, they’ve also saddled their economy with the greenest of the green anti-pollution laws, which they’ve just voted overwhelmingly to keep in place.  At the very same time, they’ve neglected their infrastructure to the degree that whole cities will probably be condemned shortly as uninhabitable by anything higher on the evolutionary scale than rats.

So remember California, by trying to protect the environment, you’re actually turning it into a barren, mutant-infested hellscape.

California’s sanctuary cities openly flout federal immigration laws with impunity now, but if they keep it up they’re going to face a loud demand from the other 49 for their statehood and immediate, irreversible secession by force.

Oh oh, you mean Mississippi and Oklahoma won’t let us subsidize their diabetes and oil spill damage anymore?  Shucks!  This is worse than a lesbian separatist being thrown out of the He-Man Women Hater’s Club.

Let’s start with the election of Governor Moonbeam. As I’m thinking of Jerry Brown’s reincarnated governorship, I’m already visualizing his mouth covered in duct tape for four years.

You’re in luck, Kyle-Anne, as there are several sites on the Internet which cater to this, and similar fantasies.

Honestly, I’ll be the first to admit that Meg Whitman, although a brilliant businesswoman, was not the most spectacular political candidate. But really, have Californians been so brainwashed that they mistake a forked silver tongue for actual abilities in the budget-balancing realm?

Granted a lot of people don’t have terribly clear memories of the 70s, but come on, Kyle, you couldn’t even open up Wikipedia?  ”Upon taking office, Brown gained a reputation as a fiscalconservative. The American Conservative later noted he was ‘much more of a fiscal conservative than Governor Reagan.’ His fiscal restraint resulted in one of the biggest budget surpluses in state history, roughly $5 billion.”

Or $1 billion more than Meg Whitman lost when she bought Skype.

It’s enough to make bright citizens in the other 49 run for the barf bags. Never has a generation so disgraced their ingenuous, hard-working, self-reliant ancestors.

Most of my ancestors were douchebags, so who cares, but I have to admit that “ingenuous, hard-working, self-reliant,” perfectly describes my grandfather — or, as he’s better known to some, “that guy who voted for Jerry Brown in 1974.”  And I still haven’t lived down the disgrace.  Won’t someone please think of the descendants?

Nancy Pelosi’s disgraceful tenure as House speaker got the national drubbing she had been begging for since she first pranced around with the big gavel and unethically (illegally, probably) started her own foreign policy in the Middle East.

I disagreed with Speaker Pelosi’s decision to invade Iran, and in retrospect I probably should have spoken up, but I was afraid she would hit me with her giant gavel.

This woman has so disgraced America, her state, her gender, her Catholic faith, and the Democrat Party that she couldn’t have won election as dog catcher in any of the other 49 states.

It’s like the opening to Branded, with the other 49 states ripping off her brass buttons, epaulettes, and crucifix, and breaking her vagina over their knee.

And now to the cake-taker in California’s miserable showing yesterday.  In a statewide race that had the entire country holding its collective breath, Californians decided to reelect “Call me Senator” Boxer, whose intelligence is so questionable

…that she actually thinks it’s pronounced “Democratic Party.”

To put icing on this purely poisonous cake, Madame Boxer was running against a candidate – Carly Fiorina – who had the rest of us in the other 49 drooling in envy.

It might not be envy.  Drooling and foaming at the mouth is a sign that the cake may be poisoned with phencyclidine, cadmium, mercury, or rhododendron.

But what did Californians do with this golden-beyond-golden opportunity that the rest of us would have killed for?  They blew it.

Even when news broke last week that Ms. Boxer had illegally implored California’s public school teachers to send their students to work for her campaign, the dumb-beyond-dumb citizens of California…

…who should just give it up and retire to On Golden-Beyond-Golden Pond.

…just rolled their eyes, donned their valley-girl ninny suits, and marched right in to vote for the Hollywood candidate.  As those of us in the other 49 well remember, Senator Boxer is the brainy equivalent of a slug.

So, with no further ado, let me bestow upon California the 2010 award for the dumbest state in the entire union.

The awards banquet will be held Friday, December 3rd, at the Shrine Auditorium at 8 PM.  Cocktail attire for the ladies, Ninny Suit and Tie for the gentlemen.

You Californians made your bed yesterday.  Now sleep in it and don’t come crying to the rest of us when your lights go out, your water turns off, and your illegal-alien servants head back south.

We’re calling it “The Nanny Apocalypse,” or “The Day of the Day Laborer.”  Cormac McCarthy is hard at work on the novelization.

I Cover the Wingnut World | 17 Comments »

With all the exulting this country is doing about how Tea Partiers are going to take this country back to the more virtuous times of the Middle Ages, let us not forget to spare some concern for Robin of Berkeley, whom her fellow citizens are trying to mow down. Here’s what happened. Or at least, here’s what Robin says she perceives as having happened.

Someone tried to mow me down the other day. This is what happened: I was driving home from work when suddenly, for no reason, the driver of an oncoming car decided to play with my mind.

Having found the ball-in-a-cup he’d been playing with previously too complicated.

He entered my lane, threatening me with a head-on collusion. Then, at the last possible moment, he pulled away, narrowly averting disaster.

I have no idea why the driver did this. Maybe he didn’t like my driving. Perhaps he was mad at the world. Perhaps he was obeying the little voices in his head.

Perhaps he was one of Robin’s clients, and had never gotten the help he needed.

Out here, anything is possible.

Yeah, in Berkeley random strangers try to kill you on a regular basis, when they aren’t smashing bugs, terrorizing you with their lower-class vibes, and/or menacing your house plants.

Oh, did I mention that he was driving a Prius?

Wow, that explains everything! If he was driving an energy-efficient car, he must have been a LIBERAL, and as we know, they are all prone to random acts of homicide. Case closed!

I’d like to say that this was the first time anyone has messed with me, car-wise, using his vehicle as a weapon. But, believe it or not, another car did the very same thing to me about a year ago on the same block.

Robin, did you notice if it was the same driver? Could it have been, say, your husband behind the wheel?

I’ve started taking another route home, though this is no guarantee that it won’t happen again.

No, it isn’t. I think it’s time for you to learn from Jen Shroder and the prophecy of the scorpion, which is interpreted to mean, “Stay the heck off the roads until you are sane enough to drive.”

A few months ago, in fact, as I was walking along I was almost mangled by a bicycle. The guy was racing his bike faster than the speed of light. He flew around the corner, making no attempt to stop, or even to slow down. Had I not seen him, I would have been flattened like a pancake.

So, to recap, three times in the past year Robin has had scary near-accidents involving moving vehicles. The lesson is clear: the Transformers are here, and out to kill Robin the evil liberals have taken over the country and are out to kill everyone.

And the danger out here is not restricted to moving vehicles. A while back, my husband and I were walking around downtown Berkeley with another couple. Suddenly, a deranged person picked up a bottle and threw it at me.

Fortunately, it hit the sidewalk a few inches away, and shattered into a million pieces. By the look of blind fury in the maniac’s eyes, he clearly wished it were me who had shattered instead.

Again, I have to ask if this was one of Robin’s clients, and if not, if he and the bug-smashing deranged person are colleagues.

Okay, that was the set up. Now, for the point of the story.

Now I don’t have to tell you that a lot of progressives are crazy–with the Left in charge, you probably figured this out a while back. You may be wondering what rock they crawled out from under. Are they on drugs — or off their medications? Well, folks–can you imagine walking, working, and driving among them every single day?

Pity poor Robin, somehow forced against her will to live in Berkeley, where everyone except Robin is CRAZY!

Berkeley is, in my view, a city under siege. It has been since the 1960s, when the Black Panthers established a reign of terror over law-abiding citizens. Somehow, that behavior became normalized, as though unbalanced people were simply part of the colorful passing show.

   

So, it’s all the Black Panthers’ fault that none of Robin’s disturbed clients ever get better.

With the progressives in charge, we see the same phenomenon nationwide: unacceptable behavior regarded as acceptable. Liberals don’t blink an eye when conservative women are called vile words meant to terrorize and degrade.

Personally, I refuse to live in a world where Sarah Palins can be terrorized and degraded with words like “unqualified” and “quitter.”

And other psychopathic behavior from the Left, such as biting off an opponent’s finger, doesn’t warrant even a blip on the evening news.

Did Harry Reid bite off Sharron Angle’s finger again, and the MSM refused to cover it? (Seriously, what is she talking about?)

Anyway, that is how the piece ends: with a bitten off finger. The whole story reminds me of a Berkeley production of “Suddenly, Last Summer.”

Oh, but if you go to the top of the page, you learn a bit more:

Robin is a recovering liberal, and a licensed psychotherapist in Berkeley, California. She has written about 70 articles for American Thinker, and has also penned material for Front Page Magazine, NewsReal, and Bookworm Room. Robin has been interviewed in a number of talk-radio venues, including those of Michael Savage and Rusty Humphries.

The above information is intended for entertainment and educational purposes, rather than to offer any kind of definitive diagnoses.

While I am entertained by Robin, I also feel that her work offers a definitive diagnosis: looney tunes.

Get the Butterfly Net! | 38 Comments »

Musing on the election results here in California, I noticed a rather disturbing pattern:

1. The economy is in the toilet, and the state is broke.
2. If you get caught with less than an ounce of pot, the cops will just give you a ticket.
3. People are ragging on Jimmy Carter.
4. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf is playing down the street.
5. Jerry Brown is Governor.

Conclusion…?

I can’t believe I have to live through the Seventies again.

MORE good news! | 20 Comments »

Mr. Zombie Rotten Mcdonald has indicated that it’s his birthday. Have a great one, Zombie!

In your honor, we decided to forgo a photo of zombie Ann Coulter, since she is starting to rot. Instead, may we present you with this photo of the ghoul Nancy Grace, a foul creature that obviously doesn’t crave brains. No, she eats microphones.

Birthdays | 14 Comments »

Sometimes when an old man hears the owl call his name, he will sit alone on the front porch, in a silence broken only by crickets and the creak of his rocking chair, and cast his faltering mind back to one bright, untarnished memory of love.  Of first love.  Of the Girl Who Got Away.  Wes Vernon is one such man, although in his case the porch is a right wing website, and the love of his life is the Blacklist.

To the new Congress: ferret out internal subversion

The incoming (more conservative) Congress should add one more item at or near the top of its agenda: Bring back the House Committee on Internal Security (HCIS).

We don’t need ObamaCare, we need ObamaCarthy!

We need to know who our enemies are on our own soil — abusing our freedoms to plot the death of Americans and of America itself.

If I learned anything from those soap operas that my mother obsessively watched — or, more precisely, from the commercials which punctuated them — it’s that the biggest enemy on our own soil is our own soil.  Ground-in dirt is the worst threat an American woman can face, and if we must spill the blood of patriots to defend ourselves, so be it, although blood stains are hard to get out too.

Only when we have the facts — fully documented with supporting testimony — can we chart a clear path as to how to deal with it — legislatively and in oversight of the relevant government agencies.

Perhaps we could concentrate our enemies in some sort of camp.  Then, once we’ve taught them useful skills like potholder-weaving and wallet-stitching, they could pay for their own upkeep.  (We also might want to consider boosting productivity with posters, or contests, or maybe an inspirational slogan.  Something like “work makes you free,” but rendered into a European language, like Latin, or German, to class it up a bit.)

Urgency #1 — Islamofascism

There are Hezbollah terrorist cells throughout the United States. The FBI is aware of them.

Unfortunately, due to Hezbollah’s clever practice of concealing their weapons in grape leaves and pita pockets, the FBI thinks they’re a chain of Falafel King franchises.

Lurking out there is the non-affiliated “lone wolf” terrorist, and those who have actually become American citizens for the express purpose of joining our military so they can undermine its efforts, including plots to kill our men and women in uniform.

Granted, most of them are “anchor babies” or “terrorist toddlers,” so that makes it a challenge for the lone wolfs to enlist, but what with the way the military has been steadily lowering its recruiting standards since 2003, an all-infant infantry seems inevitable.

The Homeland Security Committee (probably chaired by the ever-vigilant Rep. Peter King — R-N.Y.)

There’s a happy thought.

…deals with many issues in addition to internal threats, including policy initiatives at the highest levels. The revived HCIS would have a much heavier focus on subversion right here on American soil — from whatever source.

Probably from water, the source of all life.  And Obama’s government is piping the stuff directly into your home!

Urgency #2 — the borders

Our southern borders have all but collapsed. It is almost childishly simple for Middle East terrorists to slip through hidden amongst the poor wretches who flee their native lands of corruption and Marxist-style economies.

Arabs in sombreros are probably behind all those beheadings in Scottsdale.

Related to that is the Reconquista movement whereby Mexican authorities — with the aid of powerful allies in the U.S. — hope to retake the Southwest United States “block by block.”

Hey!  ”Block by block” is the same strategy the Islamofascist terrorist toddlers are using!  I hope they never join forces with the Reconquista Rugrats, or it’s not going to be safe to walk around the living room barefoot.

Urgency #3 — I have to pee

It’s really urgent.  Be right back.

Okay, I’m back.  What Urgency are we up to now…?

(more…)

No Country For Old Men | 21 Comments »

Chris, let me add my happy wishes to the stack there on the mantle. Like others have noted, Chris is a long-time favorite around here (and as such, is entitled to our “super secret snark” reserved for founding members). I remember the days when my fingers would automatically type “Christ V” whenever I mentioned him, and eventually the name stuck, and then he died for our sins.

Anyway, I wish you the happiest of birthdays, Chris, and because Scott has already inflicted the traditional Coulter torture on you, I will just share with you this appalling photo.

Besides being Chris’s birthday, today is also All Saints’ Day. Per Wikipedia, All Saints’ Day honors “all the saints, known and unknown.” And hey, that just might include some of you!

Also, there are many Saints who are known, but not all that notable, and probably wouldn’t get honored any other day. For example, one St. Alkeld: “Nothing is documented about her life, but she is depicted in a painting as being strangled by Dane invaders.” Which probably wasn’t a lot of fun, but doesn’t really inspire many people to live better lives these days.

But one good thing about Saints, there seems to be one for every purpose you can think of. Here are a few from the list, chosen more or less at random:

~ Saint Anthony the Patron of Lost articles, the Poor, Amputees and Cemetery workers

~ Saint Benedict the Patron of Monks and Poisoning
~ Saint Bernadine the Patron of Advertising
~ Saint Bernadino the Patron of Impulsive and uncontrolled gambling

~ Saint Christina – Millers, Insanity and Psychiatrists

~ Saint Maurice the Patron of Infantrymen, Cramp and Swordsmiths
~ Saint Maximilian Kolbe the Patron of Drug Addiction
~ Saint Michael the Patron of Battles, Germany, Grocers, Police officers, Radiologists, Seafarers
~ Saint Monica the Patron of Alcoholism, Bakers, Brewers, Children, Coopers, Greece and Peace
~ Saint Nicholas/Saint Dorothy the Patron of Brides
~ Saint Norbert the Patron of Peasants

~ Saint Scholastica the Patron of Convulsions in Children and rain
~ Saint Sebastian the Patron of Athletes, Enemies of religion, Gardeners, Iron mongers, Undertakers
~ Saint Stephen the Patron of Austria, Casket makers, Hungary and Stone masons
~ Saint Swithin – Weather
~ Saint Theresa of Avila the Patron of Headache sufferers

Anyway, your assignment to commemorate the holiday is to either pick your patron saint (from the link above, or any other official Catholic saint list, or your imagination, or whatever), and say why he or she is getting that honor.

Or, make up a patron saint for a group, situation, or attribute that seems to be patronless. For example, I suggest that the Catholic Church beatify somebody who can be the “Patron of finding a parking place when you’re running late and really need one.” Or perhaps St. Sebastian could add that to his list. I also note that as St. Alkeld (the one who was strangled by Danes) has apparently not been chosen to be over anything, I recommend that she be made the patron of Altoids, stranglers, and being jumped on by big, overly-friendly dogs.

Now, get to work!

Birthdays, Happy Holidays | 25 Comments »

Today is the natal anniversary of WO’C commenter extraordinaire (and our old drinking buddy) Chris Vosburg.  Celebrated from here to Alicublog for his dry wit and command of the off-beat, but oddly relevant fact, Chris V. is also one of the nicest people you’ll ever met, assuming you ever meet him, which personally, we’d recommend.

Now, Chris, in honor of your special day (and before s.z. beats me to it) here’s a photo of Ann Coulter loading up on some of that nicotine gum she’s constantly working her jaws around like Bull Connor with a plug of Red Man.

Phew!  Okay, moving on…As is only appropriate for a fellow who works and lives in Hollywood, the Stars have much to say about you.  So let’s listen in:

The waxing Sun trine Moon in your Solar Return chart is a fortunate aspect.

But you should probably spend the extra $3.50 for the Carnuba Sun Wax, for that genuine trine shine.

You are likely to feel especially comfortable in your skin this year.

I envy you, Chris, because I can never seem to get comfortable in my skin.  To begin with, it’s got poor lower back support and is always asking me really personal questions.

This could be a good year for financial undertakings involving electronics, technology, the internet

Uranus is apparently suggesting that you explore the burgeoning field of porn spam.

Childbirth is sometimes associated with this aspect, if appropriate.

So don’t go into labor unless the moment feels right.

On This Day in History:

996 – Holy Roman Emperor Otto III issues a deed to Gottschalk, Bishop of Freising, who responds by opening a chain of dry goods stores in Fresno and Visalia.

1896 – A picture showing the unclad (bare) breasts of a woman appears in National Geographic magazine for the first time, in the annual Girls of Abyssinia issue.

1911 – The first dropping of a bomb from an airplane in combat, during the Italo-Turkish War, by Flying Lieutenant Vittorio “Butterfingers” Lombardi. The war between the Kingdom of Italy and the Ottoman Empire is officially ended by the Treaty of Ouchy, which mandates the transfer of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica to Italy, provides for the demilitarization of the Dodecanese Islands, and requires that henceforth all combat wounds be treated by “kissing them.”

Born this day in 1982:  Yuko Ogura, Japanese model, seen here presenting you with a birthday blancmange, and trying desperately to make up for that Coulter pic:

Many more, Chris.  (Birthdays, that is, not Japanese models.  Not that we’re judging you, or trying to get all up in your business, or anything.)

Birthdays | 22 Comments »