"Oh, Talk Slow When You Talk Purty"

Using my well-worn copy of Dover's Say It in Serbo-Croatian, the only truly helpful phrase my friend Elaine could manufacture was "Please put your sausage where my tampon goes."

I ask you, "Who could refuse such a silver-tongued devil?"

I'm Gasping and Swooning (The Vapors Can't Be Far Behind)

"I was down here the other day working out with the kid from Vanderbilt we got (second-round pick Matt Freije), and I told him, 'I'm gonna come across the block, and if I get doubled, I'm gonna pass the ball to you and you're gonna have a wide-open jumper, or (forward) Udonis Haslem is gonna come down the lane and he's gonna get a dunk, and you're all gonna get big contracts.' He said, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'Just look at the history. Travis Knight. Horace Grant. A.C. Green.' He said, 'Shaq, you're one of the coolest guys I've met.' "

Oh, my. I think I may be developing a man-crush on The Diesel. Let's see: "...Your're all gonna get big contracts," "I couldn't see myself playing for Mike Krzyzewski." Yep, there's no doubt about it. It's a man-crush.

What Kind of Elitist Are You? - Quizilla

You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every
book ever published. You are a fountain of
endless (sometimes useless) knowledge, and
never fail to impress at a party.
What people love: You can answer almost any
question people ask, and have thus been
nicknamed Jeeves.
What people hate: You constantly correct their
grammar and insult their paperbacks.


What Kind of Elitist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Um, I don't think so, but I guess it had to classify me somehow (or explode in frustration). I do find the categorization flattering, though, however unlikely.

Ringleader, Maggie Simpson, Was Unavailable for Comment

It doesn't say, but I think we all know, it was the Ayn Rand School for Tots.

My Dog Ate It.

"Um, uh, hmm. I guess blaming this on elderly voters in Dade County is out of the question? It is? Yeah, I thought so.

"Well, if that's the case, I've got nothing.

"How about a computer bug? What? Eleven counties used that one last month to explain why a manual recount wasn't possible? Really? No shit?

"I'm at a loss. I guess somebody ought to put on a pot of coffee; it looks like we're going to be here a while.

"Oh, and pump the interns for for ideas. Tell them there's no college credit for anyone till we get at least one good excuse from them.

"Gee, this just couldn't be happening at a worst time."

"Madam Chairwoman, The Cynical Blogger from the Great State of Nicotine Addiction and Cancerous Lung Cells Casts His Vote for...

Now it is our turn to take up the cause. Our struggle is not with some monarch named George who inherited the crown--although it often seems that way. Our struggle is with the politics of fear and favoritism in our own time, in our own country.

Our struggle, like so many others before, is with those who put their own narrow interest ahead of the public interest. We hear echoes of past battles in the quiet whisper of the sweetheart deal, in the hushed promise of a better break for the better connected. We hear them in the cries of the false patriots who bully dissenters into silence and submission. These are familiar fights. We've fought and won them before, and...we will win them again....

--Ted Kennedy at last night's DNC

A decent wit, a progressive background, and a record and history of public service and public works in the people's interest: There but for a drinking problem and a shoddy bridge rail go the president of these United States.

"a movie that drips so much sleaze on your shoes that you're liable to track it all over the linoleum."

I love camp: Love it! Love It! LOVE IT! There's just something wonderful about art so unintentionally bad, it's good.

And when it comes along, I wallow in it, like a pig in a camp sty. I mean, how can you not?

How can you listen to, say, Neil Diamond, watch one of his concerts on PBS during pledge week and not say, "OH. MY. GOD."? Shimmering shirt, tight polyester-blend pants, over-the-top crooning of treacly rock ballards: It's just so awful. But it doesn't stop at bad; it breaks on through to the other side. Listen to this guy sing, "You don't Send Me Flowers," or watch him work a crowd, and you know that this guy really thinks he rocks. And he does--like he's Tom Jones or something. He's just that good.

And don't get me started on bad television.

So there should be no surprise that I am all over this. I mean, I'm on it like a pixelated thong on Elizabeth Berkley. I've got it covered. You should probably check it out, too.

It's that good. Honestly, it like Christmas in July.

God bless us, everyone!

It's Probably No. 82

There are presently 81 reasons listed. My favorite, "Despicable Sum'bitch," isn't among them--yet.

The New York Times's Week in Review: "Democrats, Lend Me Your Ears"

For out this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdom were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporation, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital--all undreamed of by the fathers--the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.



--Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Don't expect any speeches like this this week in Boston. Over the past 20 years, political speakers, particularly on the Democratic side of the aisle, have forsaken the art. Listening to a political speech now is like listening to a public administrator read a jay walking statute in a dry, accented monotone: Forget lyrical prose; forget eloquence. There is no Romanticism or passion left in our politics, and, sadly, no poetry left in our political voices.

I can't tell you how sorry I am about that.

Smells Like Someone's Pants Are on Fire (I'm Looking at You, Bill)

In case you didn't know, Bill O'Reilly is a lying sack of shit, a rotting waste of protoplasm, a walking, talking, living, breathing, galling, and annoying rebuttal to any argument anyone can offer in support of the existence of a just god, and a really bad person. Use that information any way you wish.

But remember, you heard it here first.

I Believe in the Sanctity of Human Life; But, I Pray that Something Will Come Along and Thin Out the Herd

"After about four stores, the coffee loses all taste," says Winter, who's unconcerned about any long-term effects fo so much coffee. "It doesn't taste good at all--I'm not enjoying drinking it. After an extreme number of stores, I have to wash out the taste with water after every sip because it's starting to make me sick.

"...I can't forsee myself stopping. It's too rewarding an experience."

When it's quiet, really quiet, and I concentrate, I can hear his parents weeping.

An Open Letter to Overworked Parents Everywhere

Dear Overworked Mom and Pop,

While we can all agree that everything your child does is, indeed, as cute as homemade shoes, that he can create works of precious and adorable wonder with the skill of a Renaissance master, even you have to admit that his walking over to strangers' tables in restaurants and singing the chorus to Joan Osborne's "What if God Was One of Us" is one of his lesser works. It is so hard to appreciate, in fact, that I'm going to have to ask you to make him stop, before some Philistine misinterprets the work and kills him.

Thanking you in advance,

"Well, Let 'Em Drop First; Then, Try Again"

Two bestselling books by Yoko Haraka...describe the exasperating fate of the modern Japanese woman: ... She can spend an eight-hour day at work and arrive home exhausted, but is she leaves the laundry until the weekend, or serves up a frozen dinner, her husband is likely to say: "What kind of woman are you?"--and mean it. On top of that he will expect her to peel his apples, go out for cigarettes, make his coffee and still have enough energy for sex.

Haruka tells of her sister-in-law who takes endless verbal abuse from her eldest brother, and her mother, who lives with them. The sister-in-law maintains a self-effacing smile even as she scurries to provide their every material need--right down to putting a cold beer in her husband's hand as he steps out of his nightly bath.

--from "Boom to Bust," an article in The Financial Times

According to the article, married couples account for 99% of all childbirths, and the birthrate has declined to a point where Japanese society will drop from 124 million persons to just 64 million by century's end. Japanese demographers and sociologists are baffled as to why. Here, I may be of some assistance. If I may be so bold, let me suggest that your men refrain from responding to their wives' kindnesses with "What kind of woman are you?" All those kicks to the testes can't be helping.

She's Got Brass Ovaries, My Friend. Believe That

Gaea forgive me, but despite the best efforts of your Womb Warriors -- who have told their delivery sagas so loudly and so often in the nation's public spaces that nearly everyone with functioning ears can now deliver a child and cut an episiotomy with the skill of a first-year medical resident -- I remain unimpressed with the whole childbirth extravaganza. Yes, yes, yes, the head is bigger than the opening. Yes, that's got to hurt. If men had to do it, .... Yadda, yadda, yadda. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever.

Or that was my attitude before this. Now, I am impressed.

Her husband, the guy who was out drinking with his buddies when all this happened, I'm guessing, not so much.

That's because a woman who performs her own Caesarian with a kitchen knife couldn't possibly be married to a wussy, little guy like me. In fact, when you think about it, that's the least likely of all possibilities.

A woman who performs her own Caesarian marries a man who pisses testosterone and shits machismo, the kind of guy who works the third shift, hammering sheet metal with heavy machinery and at times, when the guys need a giggle, the anvil-like ridge of his Neanderthalian brow. He's a former high school jock-stud who entertains himself now flicking lighted matches at his toddlers on those nights when no amount of aluminum foil on the antennae will bring in Cops on his black-and-white. He's King Hard.

He's not impressed with her feats of derring-do. This guy comes home to find his wife has performed a self-Caesarian, and all he has to say in response is, "Does this mean you did or didn't get around to making dinner?"

But that's not me. Me? As I said, I'm impressed.

Well, Yeah, a Time-Out Would Have Been Better

An Albany father has been arrested for using a stun gun on his 5-year-old daughter.

Well, sure, it's going to sound bad put like that, but what you have to remember is, the media puts a negative spin on everything.

I'm sure it was nothing. If I were you, I'd keep on disciplining my kid with high voltage-low ampere electrical jolts from my Taser and/or stun gun.

But that's me, all about the tough love.

Barney's Really Changed Since His Show Got Cancelled

I've resisted the notion, thinking it wasn't possible, but, now, after seeing this, I am convinced it's true. I was born to thong.

And if after watching this, the essence of me in a 40-second short film, you can honestly say, those moves, that thong (okay, technically, a mawashi), those man boobs don't scream me, I'll put the boxers back on. Until that day, though, I'm a thong man, man in a thong.

And What She Does for Flag Day Isn't To Be Missed

XP Games my ass! This sounds like a slow Friday in my hometown of Fayetteville, except, there, not only can the girls blow out candles with their vaginas, they can light them as well, using just a strike-on-anything match and a Syphilitic chancre.

Trust me. Until you've seen my mom light a birthday cake, you haven't celebrated being born.

Oh, mom, (sigh) I think I'll call her.

All This Time, I Thought Brevity Was the Soul of Wit

Best of all, the first audience question was: "Why do you think there are so many funny gay people?" To which Sedaris answered, "Just so everyone heard that question, she asked me, 'is there a relationship between me putting a penis in my mouth and being witty at a dinner party?' You know, I hadn't really thought about it."

Well, when you get a chance, mull it over. We're dying to know.

Lonesome Teacher Seeks Horny Students for "Play Date"

She obviously needs help, but I can't feel sorry for her right now. I'm saving my tears for those poor traumatized boys who had to sleep with her, who didn't have the strength to fight off her attacks of fellatio and intercourse. Later, after the healing, I'll cry for her, too, but not now. Now, I'm crying for the children.

And her husband. Somebody's got to cry for him. (Scroll down &mdash "Teacher Faces Sex Charges &mdash and cry, too.)

The Western Canon Is Safe

Some British researchers tested the “a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters” theory, sort of. Unwilling or unable to round up the requisite numbers of primates and Underwoods, these charlatans of the U.K. gave six monkeys one computer, and drew the following conclusion from their observations:

The monkeys aren't reducible to a random process. They get bored and they shit on the keyboard rather than type.

Wow. It's like looking into a genetic mirror, isn't it?

There's Typewriter Erotica, and It's Giving Me the Vapors

Believe it or not, the Typewriter Museum--which I imagine consists of a guy, a computer, and a lot of spare time--has dedicated a page on its Web site to typewriter erotica. Yeah, that's right: typewriter erotica.

Go ahead: wipe your glasses, rub your eyes, shake the cob webs free from your Monday-morning stupor, pinch yourself. Do whatever you have to do to re-focus your vision and attention, and read that first paragraph again. It hasn't changed, has it? You know why? There's a Typewriter Museum, and it has a page dedicated to typewriter erotica. The sooner you accept it, the sooner we can move on to the good stuff.

By good stuff, I mean photo after photo of coy glances, bare and stockinged ankles and calves, women in various states of undress, and fingers on Underwoods and Royals, poised to tap out the primal beat of that famous love sonnet to the heart and loins "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog." Oh baby!

And if that weren't enough to make anyone tumescent, to bitch-slap the average voyeur into estrus--just mad for a typewriter--there is actual porn available. Clothed Victorians not doing itfor you? Still unable to work up a key-driven lust? Well, that's because you haven't seen Mildred standing beside her Royal 10. (Ooh, I think she's made a typo.) You're feeling tingly in your naughty places now, aren't you?

I know I am. In fact, I'm one or two sexy postcards away from typing my "O" key repeatedly in fits and starts, making a funny face, holding the key down, and, then, rolling over and falling asleep.

If that's wrong, I don't want to be right.