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Guilt Is All Over This Not Guilty Face

Her beautiful baby girl is dead, but Casey Anthony is a very happy girl.
That's not the smile of an innocent person who lost her beloved daughter in a tragic accident.

Do You Believe Him Now?

A man imprisoned for the last three years - with 5 years left on his sentence - for vehicular homicide in Minnesota is asking the court to take another look at his defense. The man, Koua Fong Lee, was driving his family home from church one Sunday morning in their 1996 Toyota Camry when he shot up an interstate ramp and plowed into the back of a stopped car. The jury didn't buy his ridiculous excuse that the accelerator just took off, and that he was braking as hard as he could. I'll bet they would buy it now.

And I would imagine that, unless he has statute of limitations problems, Lee v. Toyota is going to be a pretty good case.

 

The World Trade Center

Today, try also to remember this: the World Trade Center the way it used to be.

What If He Was Black?

I don't consider myself a racist (although a law professor from Illinois thinks I am racist bigoted scum because I don't have a big problem with the occassional non-lethal prisoner abuse of would-be and have-been terrorists at Guantanamo), but I have to admit that, as a white guy, I sometimes miss the racial issues in the news and in everyday life.

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Mike Seate, who is not a white guy, doesn't. And he raises an interesting issue in his article "White skin: the no-hassle passport."

Remember Gregory Despres, the crazy bug-eyed white guy with all the weapons, including a blood-stained chainsaw, who entered the U.S. from Canada and was questioned and released just a few hours before they found his murder victims?

Do you think they would have released him if he was a black dude carrying a bloody chainsaw? I want to say no, because I want to believe that nobody with a bloody chainsaw bragging about his "confirmed kills" would get through, regardless of skin color.

But since they let the white guy in, it's a fair question. And I'd have to still say no, because who wants a black dude with a bloody chainsaw entering the U.S.? I think the answer to that rhetorical question is something like "Nobody. Not even the guys who would let in a white guy with a bloody chainsaw."

Mike Seate might have a point here.

Hindsight

Hindsight sure is 20-20, no? Who was Deep Throat? Sure, now we all know. But CNN had it pegged back in 2002. So did Slate. ESPN was clueless, but the Atlantic seemed to have a good handle on Felt's role as early as 1992.

The compelling evidence:

1.  H.R. Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff, was recorded telling the president in a 1972 Oval Office tape that most of the leaks were coming from Felt.
2.  In 1999, the Hartford Courant reported that Jacob Bernstein (the son of Post reporter Carl Bernstein) told people at a summer camp that Felt was the man.
3. As a high ranking, but snubbed, FBI official, Felt had both motive and opportunity.
4. Bob Woodward met with Felt in 1999.

It sure looks obvious now, doesn't it?

Now that we've solved this mystery, what should we solve next? Some favorites, just off the top of my head:

1. Who killed Jimmy Hoffa, and where is he?
2. What happened to Amelia Earhart?
3. What the hell crashed to the ground at Roswell?
4. Did anyone else shoot Kennedy?
5. Who was Jack the Ripper?

And if we have time left over, where did the settlers of Roanoke go?

Mark Felt, Great American Scuzzbucket

Former FBI official W. Mark Felt has come forward and identified himself in the new issue of Vanity Fair as the famous "Deep Throat" from the Watergate scandal. The Washington Post has now confirmed it. His family members are telling the world that he should be viewed as a hero. Is he a hero?

Not that my opinion is particularly in demand, but I'll offer it. I don't think Mark Felt is an American hero. I think he's a rat and a criminal, which makes him the worst of his lot.

Felt was convicted in 1980 for authorizing illegal break-ins during the 1970s at homes of people associated with a radical anti-war group called Weather Underground. He and Edward Miller were granted rather partisan pardons by President Reagan in 1981.

So why did Felt rat out the Nixon administration? It can't be because of the watergate break-ins. Felt was apparently comfortable with the concept of breaking into your political enemy's abode. It can't be because of his hatred of the coverup. Felt was quite at ease with the idea of covering up an illegal break-in. It was a vendetta. Nothing more, nothing less.

Though a glorified one, Felt is nothing more than a disgruntled employee, ratting out the company for software piracy even though he runs $10,000 worth of pirated software on his home computer. He's a drug selling, loan sharking hit man who turns mob informant because he's pissed off about being passed over for the underboss position. He's a Big Pussy (as in Salvatore Bonpensiero). I don't respect that. Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano ratted out John Gotti even though he was himself a monstrous criminal. Does that make him a hero? I don't think so. Who does? But that's all Deep Throat was.

Is the world a better place because of scuzzbuckets like Felt? Probably. The Nixon regime deserved to go down, just like John Gotti deserved to go down. But don't confused Sammy the Bull with Eliot Ness; and don't confuse Mark Felt with a real hero. He's not. Just because his ignoble actions rained justice upon a corrupt administration doesn't make him noble.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that almost every president has skeletons in his closet that would get him impeached if all true facts were known. Luckily for them, however, they never pissed off the wrong scuzzbucket. Nixon pissed off Mark Felt. And that's what Felt was -- the wrong scuzzbucket to piss off. It doesn't make him a hero. It just makes him a useful scuzzbucket.

According to Slate, six years ago, Timothy Noah asked Felt whether, if he were Deep Throat, that "would be so terrible." Felt replied:

It would be terrible. This would completely undermine the reputation that you might have as a loyal, logical employee of the FBI. It just wouldn't fit at all.

When asked if Deep Throat was a hero, Felt told the truth:

That's not my view at all. It would be contrary to my responsibility as a loyal employee of the FBI to leak information.

That admission is as close to heroic as Felt ever got.

Must Be Stupid, Stupid, Stupid

I recently posted about some of my favorite movie lines, and I keep thinking of others than should have been included. These three didn't make my list, but I've used them quite a few times myself, usually in a voice that tries to mimic the actor who first delivered it.

Get Shorty: I can't believe my f*cking ears.
The Full Monty: Nobody said anything about the full monty.
The Rainmaker: You must be stupid, stupid, stupid.

For example, how oblivious do you have to be to have a four inch nail shot up through your teeth and into your brain and not notice? I don't know the answer to that question, but one Patrick Lawler does. Lawler heard his nail gun go off, and thereafter developed a toothache, some swelling, and blurry vision, but suspected nothing. Six days later, he went to the dentist, and an X-ray of the tooth quickly identified the problem: a nail that jutted more than an inch and a half into his brain.

I actually have a tooth that's bothering me. In fact, I'm worried that I might be in for my second ever root canal. But I'm pretty darn certain that I don't have a nail embedded in my brain right above the sore tooth, notwithstanding the standard "it could happen to anybody" line.

Have you ever listened to Senator Ted Kennedy speak? He's no Jack Kennedy, that's for sure. Rush Limbaugh once spent an entire week with no programming other than a running commentary on Kennedy's drunken-sounding incomprehensible rambings. Most recently, he spoke of the Junior Senator from Illinois as Osama bin Laden, Osama, uh, Obama. Every once in a while, I ponder why God let Ted ripen to his current age, but allowed Jack and Bobby Kennedy to be taken in their prime, and I can't fathom any justification for it.

Another thing I cannot understand the justification for is the reaction of the general business populace to Martin Luther King's birthday. Racism has made the white man work harder than ever. Remember the 1980s? Remember how Washington's birthday was a holiday and everyone was off work? And it came right on the heels of Lincoln's birthday, when everyone was off work? Yes, we got two holidays between New Year's Day and Memorial Day. And it was good.

Then, along came the movement to make Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday. But The Man didn't want us to get three paid holidays, where once there were only two, so The Man took Lincoln's birthday and Washington's birthday, and combined the two, to give us "President's Day." That freed up a day in January to celebrate MLK's birthday.

And for some reason, the white folks didn't take to the holiday. Some thought that a black man could never be worthy of such a celebration. Some thought King was a good man, but not so great that he should be the only American to have a national holiday named for him. Some thought he was an immoral philanderer who would be no more famous or historical than Jesse Jackson but for some crackpot murdering him. Others saw him as just one link in the chain of people and events, from Rosa Parks, to Malcolm X, that led to the success of the civil rights movement.

So, to express their disapproval, they continued to work through this holiday. Eventually, all of the government workers were given the day off; and politically sensitive companies gave their workers the day off; but a huge percentage of companies had their people show up for work. And they all showed up and worked. So now, instead of two paid holidays, most of the private sector gets just one. That is stupid.

Of course, that's not quite as stupid as the middle-aged black lady I saw on the news in 1994, when the MLK parades and celebrations in Los Angeles were affected by the Northridge Earthquake, who said she found it more than a little suspicious that the earthquake came on the day of MLK's holiday.

I can accept black people believing that The Man is racist. But I draw the line at calling regional tectonic plates and underground fault lines racist. And if you disagree with that, you must be stupid, stupid, stupid.

My Irrational Fear Comes To Life

I've always wanted to go to Thailand to vacation. In the heart of winter here in California -- in other words, when temperatures fall into the 60s and rain sometimes falls -- the weather in Indonesia is hot and sunny. The beaches are clean and white. The fish are plentiful. In particular, I've always wanted to visit Phi Phi and Phuket. Not only are these great places for a tropical vacation, but it sounds so great to tell people that, for your vacation, you are just "going off to Phi Phi and Phuket."

Living in Southern California, I have grown accustomed to earthquakes. I've lived through the Pacoima earthquake, the Whitter Narrows earhquake and the Northridge earthquake, and they just don't bother me much. However, the byproduct of an earthquake is, occasionally, a tsunami. Tsunamis scare the hell out of me. I've never seen one, and yet I fear them more than I fear other things much more likely to kill me -- things like rickety ladders, drunk drivers and Vioxx. When I relax on the beach, or snorkel in shallow waters, I always have, in the back of my mind, a dread that the earth will shake and I won't have time to reach higher ground before the sea rises up and sweeps me away after pounding me unconscious against the flotsam.

For all of those reasons, the story this morning out of Thailand and Indonesia freaked me out. An 8.9 quake -- the world's strongest earthquake in 40 years -- struck the Indonesian island of Sumatra, triggering tidal waves as high as 33 feet in some places.

The stories coming out of the worst-hit places include tales of people who were snorkeling getting dragged along the coral and their carcasses washing up on the beach, and people sunbathing and then, without warning, getting washed into the sea. Suddenly, the fear seems more rational, and the danger seems more real.

Sick, Sick, Sicks

Sick: Lisa M. Montgomery, who [allegedly] murdered Bobbie Jo Stinnett (or at least, ripped her uterus open with reckless disregard for her life) to steal her unborn baby, reportedly showed off the new baby to her pastor just hours before police arrested her for the gruesome crime. Just when I thought that the story couldn't become any more bizarre, we learn that this woman was seeking approval from her pastor.

She has a pastor? And she cares what her pastor thinks? It seems to me that a person who would rip open a pregnant woman's belly to steal her baby would have little interest in what a man of the cloth thought. And if the esteem of one's pastor matters, one would think that one might be able to resist the temptation to gut an innocent mother-to-be.

Sick: Scott Peterson is receiving bags of fan mail from severely disturbed women, and he is reportedly in "good spirits" as a result. Read 'em and weep, Amber Frey. I just look forward to the day that his spirits are all that he has left. And those won't be good spirits. They will be evil spirits. Are you paying attention ladies? He is evil. He murdered his wife and baby. And you want to date him? Or even marry him? Why? Did Ted Bundy reject you? If you are that desperate for a man's attention, just become a whore.

Sicks: Michael Jackson is throwing a huge holiday bash for a bunch of little kids at his Neverland Ranch. What kind of parents would let their kids go to this thing? Are they all orphans? Red-headed stepchildren? Or are the parents hoping Jackson will get their kids wasted, share some porn and bugger his way to a great big cash settlement for the youngsters? If the latter, I have some sobering news for them: for months, Jackson has been on the verge of bankruptcy, and not just moral bankruptcy. The first molestees are going to end up with all the good stuff. The new victims are going to end up with nothing much better than a few postcards from Tito.

Jackson was quoted recently as saying that he no longer considers Neverland his home, after two massive police raids "tainted" the sanctity of the place. That could explain how police found porno magazines there with fingerprints of both Jackson and his latest accuser. God knows, if I had porn with my fingerprints on it, along with the prints of a kid I had molested [allegedly], the last thing I would do is leave that stuff laying around my home. But if it was no longer my home, I guess that would be okay. Especially if it was my faaaavorite magazine. Of course, a more clever [alleged] child molester would have rid himself of the magazine a long time ago, whether at his home or some former home, or hotel room, or whatever. But then again, being able to sing and dance doesn't necessarily make you smart. Thank God.

PSA: Cell Phone Do-Not-Call List

A new hoax is going around saying that, beginning January 1, 2005, cell phone numbers will begin falling into the hands of telemarketing firms.

Unlike such calls at home, you probably are paying a per-minute charges -- or using an allotment of free calls -- when you field a sales call on your cell phone. Granted, that's a great excuse for ending the call quickly, but who wants telemarketing calls on their cell phones? It isn't a widespread practice, but there is no law against it. I've had them. If I see a number I don't recognize, I don't answer, so it's not a big problem.

Anyhow, the email is making the rounds, telling people that they only have until today, December 15, 2004 to be put onto the National Do Not Call List in time to avoid the 2005 cell phone calls. But don't panic just yet.

I didn't see that deadline on the government's official "Do Not Call List" website, so I'm pretty sure it's a hoax. Even if it was true, telemarketers are now required to update their lists every month, so you'd only suffer through one month of sales calls. Nonetheless, it can't hurt to register your cell number today. It takes almost no time, and it's a good idea even if there isn't a deadline.

Go here to register: http://www.donotcall.gov.

An Example Of How Racial Politics Kills People

The Los Angeles Times, a noted liberal publication, has just finished publishing a five part story about King/Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles, the least competent, most dangerous, most expensive (per patient) hospital of its kind in California. This is a must read if you live in Southern California. If you ever see an ambulance coming to take you to King Drew, limp off as fast as you can.

Part 1: Deadly errors and politics betray a hospital's promise.

Part 2: Underfunding Is a Myth, but the Squandering Is Real.

Part 3: One doctor's long trail of dangerous mistakes.

Part 4: How Whole Departments Fail A Hospital's Patients.

Part 5: Why Supervisors Let Deadly Problems Slide.

Advocates say they don't want King/Drew (which is run primarily by black doctors, nurses and employees) closed or reformed because it is a source of racial pride in the community. They insist that its detractors are racists. But who do they think King/Drew's incompetence is hurting? It isn't The Man who is getting killed by medical errors and incompetence. They are hurting, maiming, infecting and burying inner city minorities, that's who. Instead of insisting that black-run facilities get The Man off their back, they should insist that black-run facilities provide the same quality of care that would be expected of any other comparable facility.

The Best News Photos of the Month

Some of my favorite photos in the news this month:

1. If you shave your cat and leave it in the tub too long, it'll end up looking like this.

2. Here is an X-ray of the world's least observant man, who didn't realize he had a 5 cm nail driven into his forehead in an industrial accident until he went to the doctor, years later, to seek treatment for headaches.

3. When you are down to your last tooth, you might as well pluck the damn thing already.

4. If my mouth was as ghastly as this, I would never shout in the presence of a cameraman.

5. No set of favorite photos would be complete without some dude getting booted in the jimmies.

6. Clione, aka "Sea Angels." I want one for my fishbowl.

7. This cat looks alarmed at being photographed in such an ugly shirt.

8. Sean Connery is starting to look like Dr. Phil. And strangely, I feel better about myself.

9. One kid, with one broom, against about a billion locusts. No contest.

10. I felt bad for this dude, but when you book out-of-conference foes like the Citadel, this is as close as you get to the Oranges.

Happy Birthday, Laci

The former fertilizer salesman bullshit peddler was convicted. Scott Peterson is guilty. Maybe now he'll wipe that smug little smirk off his face.

I was actually nervous listening to the verdict. (You can hear it yourself at usatoday.com.) I don't know anyone involved in the case, yet, I felt like it would be a great personal loss if Scott Peterson had been acquitted. There was no doubt in my mind that he did it. As a husband and a father, I know enough to be certain that the the conduct by Scott Peterson in the days and weeks after his wife disappeared was a strong indicator of guilt.

If your wife disappears with your unborn first child, you do not sell her truck; you do not call your girlfriend; you do not order a new porn channel; you do not use the baby's room for storage; you do not dye your hair, borrow your brother's identification, stockpile cash and head toward the border. Unless, of course, you killed her.

Why do people think Mark Geragos is a good lawyer? He did Winona Ryder no good. He did Scott Peterson no good. Why would anyone hire this guy? He wasn't even there to hold his soon-to-be-given-the-death-penalty client's hand as the verdict was read. If you're going to pay a guy a fortune to blow your defense and seal your fate, you should at least get a hand to hold when the jury nails you. Scott didn't even have his dad with him in the courtroom. He was practically alone, as he deserves to be.

Make no mistake, Geragos blew it. Granted, he didn't have great facts to work with (as Geragos said himself, before being hired: "You'd be hard-pressed to find a prosecutor who couldn't put together an indictment, let alone a conviction"), but he compounded that problem by making a bunch of promises in his opening statement that he knew he could never keep. That's rule number one of trial work. You don't let the jury down by offering more in the opening statement than you can show them during the trial. Geragos promised a lot in his opening statement, and all he had to offer the jury was (to paraphrase) "My client is an asshat, but you shouldn't convict him of murder unless you can determine how the asshat killed her."

I hope he gets the gurney. Sadly, Peterson probably won't be put to death for 20 years or more. In fact, they'll probably put him on a suicide watch and prevent him from trying to kill himself in the interim.

But he will be put to death, methinks. The only way Scott can avoid death, if the jurors think at all like me, is to testify in the penalty phase, show remorse and beg forgiveness and mercy. He won't do that. It's a near certainty.

I believe in the death penalty, but it does have one tiny little flaw: it potentially deters other prisoners from killing inmates like Peterson. If you are in for life, without parole, and if there is no death penalty, you are completely free to kill Peterson without consequence, a la Christopher Scarver (the Wisconsin inmate who killed Jeff Dahmer). I wouldn't give the death penalty to a vigilante who ended Scott Peterson. But, if you are in for life, but not on death row, or if your death penalty case is on appeal, you can't whack Peterson without worrying about the death penalty, unless you really know the "special circumstances" law well. Most inmates don't.

Can you believe how quickly the newspapers came out with their special editions? I saw video of people holding newspapers just a few minutes after one o'clock.

I'm glad that this verdict came down today. I was sick of seeing Yassar Arafat junk on the news. Plus, it was almost poetic that the day of reckoning came on what would have been Laci's 28th birthday.

It doesn't bring their daughter back, but the Rochas must be so happy, knowing that they will not have to suffer the pain of the Goldman and Brown families, who have to watch their children's killer enjoying his freedom. Scott Peterson's freedom is gone.

Sometimes, the system works.

New Network Slogan: If You Want to See B.S., Watch CBS

It's been like pulling teeth, but finally, at last, CBS has admitted that they slammed the president with documentation that turned out to be complete forgeries. Dan Rather should resign and go help OJ search for the real killers.

Did Someone Start Breaking Seals?

Do you remember that Tigger dude who was acquitted of groping a teenage girl in Orlando, then got sent back to work as "something other than Tigger"? I was keeping my eye out for that dude, but I couldn't really tell who was inside the costume. It turns out, we probably encountered him. He was pulling duty as Goofy in Camp Minnie Mickey at the Animal Kingdom. And he's in trouble again. Here he is shown on the left, keeping a safe distance from my daughter so he wouldn't get his ass kicked from Orlando to the Netherworld.

You know the end of the world must be approaching if judges in New York are perfectly okay with jurors using drugs and getting drunk during trial.

But the most certain sign of the pending apocalypse is this: Mary Kate and Ashley are the new celebrity spokespersons for McDonald's. Yes, there is an anorexic pimping Happy Meals for the world's biggest fat vendor. What's next, Stephen Hawking getting a Nike endorsement?

Supporters of John Kerry have reached a new low -- ripping up a three-year-old girl's Bush-Cheney poster and making her cry. Nice going, asshats.

In more pleasant news, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has announced that it has a great white shark in captivity which has accepted food. This is a breakthrough, because most great whites die in captivity or must be released quickly because they will not eat unless they are in open water. I hope the shark keeps eating, because I'll be in Monterey in a few weeks and I'd like to see it.

Two Americans and one British man were kidnapped in Baghdad's upscale al-Mansour neighborhood. This was a real eye-opening story for me. I had no idea there were upscale neighborhoods in Iraq.

Some dude likes to scale buildings dressed as Batman. Can you believe this guy's girlfriend would break up with him?

Did you know that naked hurricane survivors don't really need clothing? Just ask Teresa Heinz Kerry. "Clothing is wonderful, but let them go naked for a while, at least the kids," said Heinz Kerry, who rates generators well ahead of clothing on her list of priorities. I'd love to be at her house when the power goes out. "Alright! Everyone get nekked until we get some electricity in here!" Actually, she's not that attractive. Maybe I don't want to be there. And since she seems to only really like the idea of the little kids going nekked, maybe it would be more suitable for Michael Jackson to attend.

And, as long as we're on the subject of disgusting pervs, is it too much to ask of the media that you distinguish between my USC and those cocks in South Carolina when one of them tries to reenact the Porky's girl's shower scene and gets arrested? When you read the headline: "USC swimmer admits to spying in women's showers", you probably assumed it was a Trojan getting busted. Wrong. It was a Gamecock.

South Carolina sucks.

Good and Bad at the Window

These two recently reported events contrast a bit, don't they?

A Tampa man, Martin Rivero, watched an out-of-control 2000 Nissan XTerra cross into southbound lanes and hit a Mazda Protege. Seeing the Nissan burst into flames, Rivero kicked and punched until he broke the windshield, then he and another man pulled the driver out. About half a minute later, the SUV exploded in a ball of flames.

But in Georgia, a less honorable fellow drove home drunk, with his buddy hanging out the passenger window like a dog, and when he struck a guide wire on a telephone pole. The buddy was decapitated. The driver figured, what the hell, might as well just drive home and park the car at the curb. Nobody will notice, right? Wrong. Passersby noticed and told police, who found John Hutcherson inside his house, covered in blood, and still drunk, the next morning. He's in jail now.

But he's not alone. Drivers sometimes react to horrific accidents in strange ways. Many take off. And many, including Arizona Bishop Thomas O'Brien and Chante Mallard (of dead homeless guy in the windshield fame) are now in jail. May they find love there.

The smarter drunk drivers, however, get their love before they are arrested, like Travis D. McConchie, an inmate supervisor at Largo Road Prison. McConchie was clocked going 73 in a 45 mph zone, and, after leading police on a short chase, was pulled over just in time to fail a sobriety test. When officers learned of his profession, they inquired as to why he didn't pull over right away. "He stated he did not pull over because his girlfriend was naked and was sitting on top of him," said the arresting officer. At least it was an honest answer.

Weekend at Roy's

Take a look at this picture, recently taken of Roy Horn and Siegfried Fischbacher in Las Vegas. In my opinion, Roy looks about as alive as Bernie in that cinematic classic, Weekend at Bernie's. Until I see that guy move on his own, I'm going to assume that the Tiger killed him.

More Protesting Fools

I have little respect for your average protester.

Take these idiots protesting unemployment. Real unemployed people do not have the money to go to New York and march in protests while carrying $5 cups of coffee.

And they aren't even on the right side of the issue. Unemployment figures aren't really that bad right now. If everyone with a job votes for Bush, and all the shitcanned people vote for Kerry, it will be the single most lopsided victory in the history of American politics. In general, if you don't have a job, it's because you have no skills or ambition, or you just lost your job and you haven't finished interviewing yet.

But at least they had a message that was political. Vulgar crap like this next photo should be left to the dregs, the blogs and the flamer newsgroups.

Paying Attention to the World Again

I'm back from Orlando. What a great set of days that turned out to be. Other than a little snafu at the rental car counter, it was almost perfect.

I'm blowing out the mini-blog with 20 fresh links tonight. When you are on vacation, it seems to you like the rest of the world has come to a stop. But it hasn't. Here's some of the stuff I missed:

People in New York are paying $30 a pop to attend cuddling sessions with strangers in pajamas. I would never admit to being that lonely.

If you see the pictures, you wouldn't think she's a MILF. But her 18-year-old son did. He suffered a panic attack and "when she gave him a cuddle and comforted him, one thing led to another." Screeeeeech! One thing does not just lead to that. Not ever.

Almost as unfortunate is the story of a man who got his bolt stuck in a nut during a kinky sex game. I'll stick to poker, thank you.

The mayor of Glendale, California ripped the city of Glendale, Arizona. "That little, podunk Glendale, Arizona, everybody knows. It's a little small town, it's mostly agriculture, and everybody knows it." Everybody, that is, except the selection committees who awarded it the 2008 Super Bowl and the 2006 NHL All-Star Game.

If getting busted for smoking crack is inevitable, I guess you might as well smoke it down.

His defense lawyer, while cross-examining the cops who saw him smoke that crack pipe while his car sank into a pond, might break out with this new-fangled tactic: "Admit it, sir, that you were in a good mood when you observed my client's car sinking into that pond." Um, okay, I admit it it. Now comes the expert, to testify that memory is more reliable when the observer is pissed off.

You know those skaters who look like they are about to crack their skulls and die? They sometimes do precisely that.

The Farmer's Almanac may be predicting a mild winter, but hurricane season isn't very mild so far. Just two weeks removed from Charley, Central Florida might be about to get slammed by Frances. It looks like we got in and out at precisely the right time.

Moron The News

I'm about to hit the skies on my way to the happiest molten, hurricane ravaged, place on Earth. The one thing I will miss the most is my online news. It never fails to amuse me.

At least while I'm in Florida I'll be able to watch my favorite online TV news station, Local 6. My favorite story of the day there? Ted Kennedy is pissed off because they somehow mixed things up and put him on that homeland security "do not fly" list. A DHS spokesman admitted that the listing was a horrible error. "Senator Kennedy was supposed to be on the 'Do Not Drive' list. We apologize for the error."

The single worst line ever ever uttered on the big screen belongs to Keanu Reeves. In Point Break, Reeves unconvincingly portrays an FBI agent who learns to surf in, like, a day, so that he can infiltrate a group of bank-robbing surfers. It's bad enough that the film completely ignores the intense "locals only" attitude of real surfers and lets Reeves's character, Johnny Utah, join the gang. But it gets much worse when Utah is compelled by the gang to go along with them for a robbery. "I ... am an F ... B ... I ... Agent!" he screams at bad guy Bohdi. It just doesn't get any less realistic than that. Fast forward to 2004. A local Orange County guy, who also happens to be an FBI Agent, is among the cast of the next Survivor series. I can't wait to hear him tell people what he does for a living. I hope he delivers the line with the same enthusiasm as Johnny Utah.

People on 'roids should not stand in the sun. In a related story, Barry Bonds passed out outside a burger joint today.

New Jersey Governor James E. McGreevey's approval rating has not suffered since he announced that he had an affair with a man. His approval numbers are up two points since the story broke. If the November election looks like a dead heat at the end of October, do you suppose George Bush would consider banging Colin Powell to pick up a couple of electoral votes?

USC condom references are older than than dirt, but headline writers still love to slip one in when they can. You have to register to see this one, but the Orange County Register featured this headline today: Trojans Feel Effect of Probe. Nothing you can say will convince me that the writer did not intend that to be a double entendre.

Illegal alien stories sort of infuriate me. Out of Salinas Victoria, Mexico, comes this story, about a man thought to have drowned crossing the Rio Grande last week. His family received word of his demise and buried what they thought to be his body. Two days later, he called to tell them he had successfully made it over the border to the U.S. His family's reaction? "The stunned family said [he] should be granted temporary US residency and a work visa because of the mishap." What?!? Since when is that a ground for legalizing illegal immigration?

Two sisters who attend Cal State Northridge and came to the U.S. illegally with their parents many years ago are about to be deported to Mexico after taking an unauthorized trip to Tijuana and illegally crossing the border back into the U.S., where they were busted. Edith Luna and Martha Luna appeared on TV this week, crying about how the termination of their applications for permanent residency is an unfair punishment for something as minor as illegally re-entering the country. Sadly for them, the federal law that permanently bars the sisters from re-entering the United States does not allow them to appeal. Edith cried, "we are being treated like criminals ... they took me to jail...." Here's a hot tip: if you don't want to be treated like a criminal, don't violate federal laws.

As a matter of fact, don't violate any laws. If you trespass at a sporting event, it might seem funny at first, but it could result in you becoming some inmate's new quasi-girlfriend. Examples given: that guy who ran on the field during a Mets game carrying a "Howard Stern for President" sign is going into the can for 8 weekends. Doh! And the dude in the tutu who invaded the Olympic diving competition on Monday has already been given a prison sentence of five months. Double doh!

But the dumbest smart ass in the country right now is a bricklaying fan of the Oklahoma Sooners who plugged the letters O and U into the renovation of a brick wall at Oklahoma State's Boone Pickens stadium. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's funny, dude. But, you're still a bricklayer. Then again, at least you have a job. That's better than most Sooner fans.

The Never Ending Parade of Idiots

Most of us had at least one friend in high school who was way, way down on the IQ charts. You tend to lose track of them over the years, until you run into someone at a baseball game or something and they say, "so, did you hear what so-and-so did?" And then they tell you, and you wonder how you ever were able to tolerate spending time with so-and-so.

This week, there have been more than a few idiots making the news. Coming soon to a baseball game conversation near you, are the following morans:

Bryan S. Condo drives drunk. In fact, he drives at four times the legal BAC limit. His license has been criminally suspended and he has prior arrests for DWI. But Mr. Condo has a conscience. And it got the better of him. So he pulled over a Vermont trooper and instructed the trooper to arrest him for drunk driving. He's an idiot, but at least he's less harmless than those craftier drunk drivers who try to evade the police.

Slipping beneath the surface of a body of water is an effective way to evade the police. However, if you overdo it, and never come up for air, the consequences can be worse than being arrested, arguably.

If you are going to jump to your death, is it too much for us to ask that you avoid landing on innocent people below?

Bobby Fischer is on the verge of becoming like that dude in the Paris airport who inspired the story in Tom Hanks's new movie, The Terminal. Fischer reportedly wants to renounce his American citizenship because the filthy American government wants to prosecute him for violating an American law that pretty much all of the rest of America obeyed. Hey, Bobo, you may be a fantastic chess player, but I have a country, and you don't!

What's grosser than gross? I've an exemplar. Gross is finding out that your waitress has been pooping in your customers' soup. Grosser still is her confession that she's been doing this for months.

If you sniff drugs for a living, you should probably keep an eye out for signs of overdosing. And if you're a dog, maybe your trainer should do that for you. Otherwise, you're not likely to make it to 50 in dog years.

New religions keep popping up every day. Most don't catch on, like this group from Hertzogville, who believed self-proclaimed prophet David Francis, who predicted that Paul Meintjies would rise from the dead on July 29. Oops. He meant August 5. Oops. He'll get back to you.

I'm not saying that it is wrong to believe that abortion is evil. All I'm saying is that the cops in Connecticut don't want you crossing the state line if you're driving a truck with a giant billboard of an aborted fetus on the side.

I'm not saying that it is wrong to hold beliefs that oppose the gay lifestyle. All I'm saying is that taking an anti-gay sign to a "Gay Day" sporting event is like begging to have same-sex couples make out in front of you.

Along the same lines, the hassle of people freaking out over you using the word "lez" in a professional scrabble game just isn't worth the couple of points that little word is worth.

And if you are a teenage lesbian, and you have a 15-year-old girlfriend that your grandparents hate, I'm not saying that it's wrong to be angry about it. All I'm saying is that you shouldn't kill them. And if you do, writing out a "to do list" that includes "Kill" is not a good idea. Writing it on your arm is, arguably, an even worse idea.

American Pie was very funny. I almost threw up from laughing so hard. American Pie 2 was about as fresh as week old undergarments. American Wedding was awful. And they are going to make an American Pie 4. Stiffler's little brother goes to band camp. Frankly, I don't want to know what he does with his flute.

In Vancouver, everyone seems to be upset over a finding that farm-grown salmon have elevated levels of certain fire-retardant chemicals in them. I don't really mind. After all, I like the idea that my salmon is unlikely to burst into flames on my plate.

Toys R Us is thinking about getting out of the toy business. Maybe they should start selling hamburgers, to fill the gap left by McDonald's, which is now heavily into the toy business.

Some dude has lost 321 pounds is the last eight weeks. How heavy does one have to be to lose that much weight? Hint: enough to kill your half-ton pickup.

Rick Fox proves the adage, "No matter how hot that woman is, there's some guy out there, somewhere, who is sick and tired of sleeping with her."

In the Scott Peterson trial, Amber Frey has taken the stand to prove the correlating theorum that "No matter how mediocre that skank looks, there is some guy out there, somewhere, who would be willing to sleep with her at least once." Can anyone tell me why Gloria Allred needs to be at that trial "representing" Frey as she testifies? I mean, other than, because she wants to be on TV.

The death of an obese Massachusetts woman and her 8-month-old fetus has people concerned over the risks associated with stomach stapling procedures. The woman had the procedure performed about 10 months before she got pregnant. When she died, the woman was still 440 pounds. 440 pounds? Forget what I said before about Amber Frey. This pregnant Massachusetts woman was the proof that no matter what you look like, there is a man out there willing to do it with you. I, however, am not that man.

If you are Paris Hilton's boyfriend, and you want to slap her around, as any corrupt Tijuana policeman can tell you, there is a right way to do it, and there is a wrong way. The wrong way is to use fists, which leave behind visible bruises. Far better is to hit her upside the head with a telephone book. It gets your point across, but leaves no visible bruises.

The same could be said, I suppose, if you want to persuade a hotel employee to have consensual sex with you.

You know the old saying, fools rush in where angels fear to tread? The Kobe Bryant prosecutors seem to have lost their nerve. Nerve was all they had.

I wonder if they got their diplomas from California Alternative High School. This school taught its student body that Congress had two houses -- the Senate for Democrats and the House for Republicans; that the U.S. flag had not been updated to reflect the addition of Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico to the "original" 50 states; that the federal "administrative" branch oversees the Treasury Department; and that World War II occurred from 1938 to 1942. They considered that the "non-fiction" curriculum. In the fiction department, their students were sent on wild library searches to locate a copy of the classic "Death of a Traveling Salesman." Deaths of plain old ordinary salesmen weren't interesting enough to read about. Yet, ironically, California Alternative High School is interesting enough to read about.

Back on Track

Filing two contested class certification motions and answering ready for trial, all in just eight days, has pretty much wiped out my ability to run a daily log. People that hate my junk won't care, but the people who exchange ideas with me must be annoyed. I've had nothing to offer in trade lately.

We almost missed our deadline for the first class certification motion because our class representative blew us off on the filing day. By this, I mean that she was supposed to come to the office and sign a declaration, but decided not to because she thought it would make her late for work. We understood her concern about getting fired for being late, but we were pretty livid when she called and said "I'm running late, I'll be there in 20 minutes" and then simply never showed. The alternative arrangements were a pain in the ass, but we got the signature and got the thing filed at the last possible minute.

We took no chances with the second motion. We got the signatures in plenty of time so that even an unexpected no-show wouldn't have taken us off track. So, I'm back on track. At work. On line. At home. Everywhere. I'm back on track. Now, if only I had something to write about....

More Bad Drama, This Time From Martha Stewart

Some of the outrageous comments made by Martha Stewart at and immediately after her sentencing:

"What was a small personal matter became over the last two years an almost fatal circus event of unprecedented proportions."

Almost fatal? Unprecedented? Small and personal? She traded a large volume of publicly traded stock on inside information. That is not small and personal. It is public, substantial and financial. But hardly fatal, unless she's threatening suicide. And it is nothing close to being unprecedented, is it Michael? Or Ivan?

"I have been choked and almost suffocated to death during that time, all the while more concerned about the well-being of others than for myself, or hurt for them and for their losses than for my own, more worried for their futures than the future of Martha Stewart, the person."

Again with the death references? This was not life and death; it was money, money, money. Even now, it's not life or death. It's five months at a prison camp. And this business about caring more for others than herself? Bullshit. When one is hoping for leniency, the last thing one should do is insult the judge's intelligence, which is what she did with that comment.

"Perhaps all of you out there can continue to show your support by subscribing to our magazines, by buying our products, by encouraging our advertisers to come back in full force to our magazines."

That was crass and tacky. In the home and garden arena, I'm more in the market for classy and tactful. Had I known that Martha Stewart was inherently crass and tacky, I might have looked more critically at her home and garden ideas from the beginning. I certainly will now.

"And I don't want to use this as a sales pitch for my company but we love that company, we worked so hard on that company and we really think it merits great attention from the American public."

That sounds like a sales pitch, biotch.

"There are many, many good people who have gone to prison. Look at Nelson Mandela."

The parallel must be so obvious that I just can't see it. But from now on, when I think of civil rights leaders jailed for political beliefs, I will think of Martha Stewart, too.

"I didn't go and cheat the little people. I just didn't do that. We're all little people. I didn't cheat anybody out of anything."

Actually, that's exactly what she did. It is a statistical likelihood that those buyers who got matched up with her sell order(s) included little people, or at least people acting for the benefit of little people. And they didn't know about the unannounced news that would devalue their purchase of ImClone Systems Inc. stock in an instant. But Martha knew. And she knew she wasn't allowed to trade on that sort of information. That is cheating. It is cheating the little people. It's exactly what she did.

Five months in the hole is fair. But I would feel better if the sentence could be notched up just a week, or even a day, because of her arrogance. That way, on the day she would otherwise get out, the warden could stroll over to her cell and say "Today was going to have been your last day here, but you had to go and shoot your mouth off. Think about that tonight as you spend another night behind bars. And next time, don't be such a bitch."

As it was, the judge's terse parting shot will have to do:

"I believe that you have suffered, and will continue to suffer, enough," the judge said.

Head and Neck Preservation

I know it is easy to sit here in California and second guess the conduct of people in Iraq who are kneeling in front of heavily armed men, but I can't help thinking that once you get to the point where the gunmen are filming their triumphant video, but before they asked you to put on the orange jumpsuit, you really need to make a concerted effort to get one of the gunmen. It probably won't work, but it's as good a chance as you are going to get.

Am I right?

Is This The News, Or Am I On Candid Camera?

There are a few WTF stories in the news this week.

Six Los Angeles rabbis wrote to Arnold Schwarzenegger this week, suggesting that his proposal to let illegal aliens get driver's permits with a special emblem denoting their immigration status would subject them to "scorn and ethnic discrimination" that harks back to the Nazi holocaust. That pretty much blows my last remaining stereotype of Jewish people. I used to think Jews were all smart. Oops. My bad.

Explain this one to me: If Terry Nichols, convicted of 161 murders, including lots of little children, isn't going to be put to death, how can we possibly justify executing anyone else ever again. Nichols should be fed into a woodchipper, feet first.

What do you think of this? A group calling itself Faithful America has filmed an ad to be shown on Arabic television, that says:

A Salaam A'alaykum ["Peace be with you" in Arabic]. As Americans of faith, we express our deep sorrow at abuses committed in Iraqi prisons. We stand in solidarity with all those in Iraq and everywhere who demand justice and human dignity. We condemn the sinful and systemic abuses committed in our name, and pledge to work to right these wrongs. This message was endorsed and paid for by thousands of Americans."

Somehow, I don't think it is going to appease anyone. If anything, I fear it will embolden them to believe that the average American, even [gasp!] the Jewish rabbis, does not stand behind the American soldiers and civilians serving in the Middle East.

I don't hate it, though, as much as I hate those TV ads that say I'm giving money to terrorists because I buy drugs. I don't buy drugs. But, even if I did, if I bought some weed from some dude who grew it in Mendocino County, the terrorists would make jack freaking squat. Now, moonshine, on the other hand, might actually fund the terrorists. But that's okay, because moonshine kills terrorists.

Unbelievable, dude. The internet has finally gone too far. I understand someone sitting in a cubicle, wishing they were surfing a chest or head high tube rather than the World Wide Web. That's cool. I can dig that. But I do not understand someone ripping up the waves, coming ashore, and needing to check their email right there on the sand. That's not cool. I can't dig that.

But if you can, your wish is some geek's command. Intel has come out with an Internet-enabled surfboard, with a touch-screen tablet computer and solar panels on its top surface, protected from the saltwater by a thin sheet of plastic. It has a wi-fi antenna for access to the Web "and even a built-in webcam to capture those special moments at sea," the British weekly New Scientist reports.

This was in my newspaper the other day: "Dear Abby: I am a 16-year old girl and haven't had my period for almost five months. What does that mean?" It means you don't have a clue where to turn for timely advice, little girl.

Somewhere in Germany lives a four-year-old mutant kid with a body that blocks production of a protein called myostatin. The result is that this kid is stronger, and better built, than most adults. I hate my myostatin. I wonder if they can take it out with liposuction.

There has been yet another celebrity (well, sort of) sex tape hitting the Internet. Jenna Lewis, Survivor All-Star, is seen in another "honeymoon" porno tape. Zap2it.com reports that "Fans on 'Survivor' message boards are already saying that they know for sure that the woman in the tape is Jenna because she never stops talking throughout." There is nothing I could possibly add to that to make it any funnier.

Finally, there is still no word on the content of those text messages sent to and from Kobe's accuser on the night of the incident. If it says anything close to "411 KoB jst FkD Me LoL IM Rch," Kobe is going to walk.

A Bad Weekend

Reasons Why This Weekend Sucked (in chronological order):

1. Ronald Reagan died. (This, in and of itself, was enough to sadden the whole weekend, and then some.)

2. Smarty Jones lost to Birdstone.

3. The rat got away. (If you've seen or read it, you know what I mean.)

4. The Lakers were owned by the Pistons.

5. The cable went out with nine minutes left in the Sopranos Season Finale. I'll have to wait until tomorrow night to see the closing minutes.

Thank You, American GIs

Sixty years ago today, American forces lead the Allied invasion to reclaim France from the occupying Nazis. They stormed the beaches at Normandy: Omaha Beach, Pointe du Hoc, Sword Beach, the Cotentin Peninsula, Utah Beach, Juno Beach and Gold Beach. They fought and died as patriots, and with their bodies and their blood, paved the path toward victory. Without that sacrifice, the world, as we know it today, would not exist.

"The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge — and pray God we have not lost it — that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest."

Ronald Reagan, June 6, 1984.

I never fully understood the bravery and the sacrifice made by the American soldiers until I saw Saving Private Ryan. Another good source of history about D-Day is Britannica online presents Normandy.

I Believe in Coincidences

I believe in coincidences. For example, about three hours before the Northridge earthquake, I told my girlfriend that I needed to move my precariously balanced TV, because if we had a big earthquake, it would fall and break into a million pieces. The thought was still fresh in my mind when I was jolted awake by the temblor at 4:30 a.m. (I saved the TV.)

One time, in Honolulu, I wandered into what turned out to be a hostess bar. I had no idea what a hostess bar was, but I quickly learned that it was a place where men pay $25 a drink to collect chips that they can cash in to go in back with a bunch of Mrs. Roper-looking old hookers in muu muus and "really party." Once I realized this, I headed for the door, muttering something about having run out of cash. One of the hostesses followed me out, trying to talk me into going to the ATM and coming back inside. Just at this moment, a girl I knew from back home walked past, recognized me, and asked me what the hell I was doing arguing with a hooker in front of a hostess bar. If there is a good answer to this question, I still haven't thought of it.

Jackson Pollock's 1949 painting "Number 12", sold for $11.6 million at Christie's auction house in New York earlier this month. $11.6 million dollars? I could have done this. In fact, it looks a bit like something I did on the garage floor in 1998. Coincidence?

Yes, coincidences are everywhere.

But I don't believe all of them. In particular, I don't buy James Lee Crummel's claim that it was a mere coincidence that he, a serial child molester who had been previously convicted of murdering a little boy in Arizona, happened upon the bones of an abducted 13-year-old boy many years after the boy's disappearance.

Crummel, whose murder conviction was overturned only because he was smart enough to hire incompetent counsel, lived on the same Costa Mesa street where murder victim Jamie Trotter's family lived when Trotter disappeared in 1979. But that was just a coincidence. When he disappeared, Trotter was right around the age that Crummel generally found most attractive, if you judge by the age of most of his rape victims in Missouri and Wisconsin and California and Arizona. But that was just a coincidence. Crummel had, for years, been fond of hiking in the woods near where Trotter’s body was found, and photos of the area were found in his apartment. But that was just a coincidence.

Or not. Crummel was convicted today of Trotter's murder.

The strangest coincidence of the year comes from the Nick Berg story. Berg's e-mail password was found in the hands of 9/11 suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, who was enrolled at a nearby flight school in 1999 when Berg was at the University of Oklahoma. Berg's father, Michael, said, "I am sure that he only saw the good in his captors until the last second of his life. They did not know what they were doing. They killed their best friend." Just what did he mean by that? Was it just an odd coincidence that Berg crossed paths with Al Qaeda years before its thugs beheaded him? If Berg was not Jewish, I would have trouble believing that the stories were unrelated.

In an almost related, but slightly less creepy, coincidence, the Saudi Binladin Group, founded by Osama bin Laden's father, is in the running for the bid to build the world's tallest skyscraper. If you ask me, that's like begging to have someone fly an airplane into it.

The oddest story of the week: a finger was found outside the jaguar exhibit at the Rio Grande Zoo. Just sitting there. No one had declared it lost or anything. A groundskeeper, however, had spotted a man, who frequently visited the jaguars, running out of the zoo with blood on his pants earlier this week. The bloody fellow was known to have a New Mexico Zoological Society pass, and so was contacted by the zoo. He denied missing any fingers. "Finger? No, that's not mine."

Albuquerque Police matched the fingerprint to the man, went to his house and confirmed he only had nine fingers left. Coincidence? He's banned from the zoo for life, just in case.

Finally, this, I know, was not a coincidence. Everyone and his brother checked out the story about Jose Lima singing the national anthem at Dodger Stadium last week. It wasn't for the music. It was because Lima's wife, and her ample breasts in a tight brown top, were so prominent in the photo. I showed it to a friend today. He was unimpressed. It seems that the picture has been cropped. Mrs. Lima is gone, gone gone. (You can still see her in the linked video.) Coincidence? Not a chance.

Triumphs and Not Triumphs

It's been a week of triumphs and not triumphs.

I'm pulling into the gas station, and some worker is changing the price on the sign to increase it by two cents per gallon. I get to the pump and the old price is still there. I quickly fill the tank and save forty cents. Triumph.

We're playing a home poker tournament. I go all in and hit a flush, jack high. Ed has a flush, too. Ace high. Not a triumph.

The Lakers lose the lead, then win the game, all in the span of less than a second. Triumph.

The "million mom march" draws about 2,000 supporters. Not a triumph.

With Bush and Kerry at a near dead heat, politics is starting to heat up.

Why vote against Bush? Well, for one thing, joblessness is pretty bad, says John Kerry. How bad is it? About one percent worse than it was in 1996, say the statisticians. Is that bad? Sure. How bad? Not very, if you follow John Kerry's actions rather than his words. On Tuesday, Maria Cantwell's amendment to provide extended federal unemployment benefits lost by a single vote in the U.S. Senate, receiving 59 of the 60 votes needed to pass. There was one senator -- only one -- who missed the vote. The absent voter was, of course, John Kerry. Not a triumph.

Someone has created a website called http://johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com/. Triumph. For whom is for you to decide.

Andy Dick gets busted at the Coachella Festival for smoking pot. Not a triumph. Andy Dick smokes pot? The next thing you know, someone is going to start spreading rumors that Rosie O'Donnell eats donuts.

New York Minute looked bad. Apparently, it's as bad as it looks. Last weekend's box office figures show that it didn't even crack $6 million in receipts, despite playing in more than 3,000 theaters - the lowest opening ever for a movie showing on 3,000 screens or more. Do the math: 3,000 screens, $8 bucks a head, at least, a full weekend ... that's about 80 tickets per screen, per day. Not a triumph.

It looks like I am not alone in my opinion that Mary-Kate and Ashley are creepy, crappy actresses who touch each other way too much and act like they are ten times hotter than they really are. As I've said before, I still look at them and see the little bug-eyed Full House babies who looked like their mom drank too much.

A calf born on a ranch near Dallas is thriving with an extra mouth and three eyes. Triumph.

A married couple on the Atkins diet got 86'd from Chuck-A-Rama, a buffet-style restaurant in the Salt Lake City suburb of Taylorsville, for eschewing vegetables and breads and seeking more than the standard one or two thin, see-through, slices of roast beef. Okay, so it was twelve. That's still less than a single slice of normally carved beef. Cops were called. Not a triumph. Except for the cows.

Investigators in the Michael Jackson sex case seized part of a New Jersey man's memorabilia collection last month, including a note in which Jackson calls little boys "rubbers", and two pairs of Jackson's underwear thought to hold "bodily fluids that prosecutors hope will provide a sample of Jackson's DNA." Now the world knows that this fellow collects Michael Jackson's stained underwear. Not a triumph.

Courtney Love pleads not guilty to assault charges in a New York court, and talks to reporters afterwards without slipping into a drug-induced coma. Triumph.

Remember fat sloppy Anna Nicole? Well, she's looking good again. If you are over the age of 80 and have a few dozen million dollars, or million dollar assets, you might be able to hit that, yo. Triumph.

Some dude has a theory that goes something like this: Britney Spears keeps changing her boob implants in for more appropriately sized models. I have a different theory. It involves a new application for some old technology. Triumph.

Everything I Know About The War On Terror, I Learned From a Food Fight At a Concert

Sometimes, it all comes together. Today, we got a nice fee award, a check in the mail, approval of a settlement, a hearing date we've been waiting for, and, to top it all off, the Lakers won again.

Sometimes, it all comes apart. Some poor American civilian is all over middle eastern TV and the internet, getting his head cut off by a bunch of religious freaks who never suffered any wrong at his hands. A bunch of hooded, masked and bound-headed cowards.

One of the cowards read a statement urging Muslims to seek revenge for the pictures of Iraqi prisoners being abused by U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib prison. Then, the men were seen pulling the man to his side and putting a large knife to his neck. A scream sounded as the men cut his head off, shouting "Allahu akbar!" — "God is great!" They then held the head up to the camera.

The Muslim extremist nuts are all over this. For weeks, they have been saying "We bring the good news to Muslims of the world that the expected "Winds of Black Death" strike against America is now in its final stage...90 percent and God willing near."

I'm proverbially sorry, but if your god favors catching innocent civilians and slicing off their heads as revenge for offensive, but non-lethal conduct of the enemy's soldiers, your god is wicked. If you think your god wants you to kill innocent people to glorify him, your god either (i) does not actually exist; (ii) has serious problems communicating with you; or (iii) is completely fucked in the head. Whichever way, you and your faithful masses don't belong here with the rest of us. Why don't you just slit your own wrists and join your god tonight?

The murderers of Nick Berg claim that their act was a response to the Abu Ghraib situation. Of course, the truth is that they hated Americans -- all Americans -- with all their might, well before the naked prisoner games were disclosed. Now, they hate Americans -- all Americans -- with all their might just like they did before. Still, it can be said that Lynndie England and the other smiling soldiers who didn't get training on how not to abuse, torture and humiliate prisoners, now have real blood on their hands.

On the other hand, I've also noticed this story shifting a few people's views to the right when it comes to the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners. "Let them suffer," say some. "Let them all suffer." It's a good thing these folks are not Jedi, or they would be headed into the desert like Anakin Skywalker to slaughter a bunch of sand people. Or maybe it's not a good thing. I don't know.

The one powerful Jedi in our government, Senator Palpatine/Lieberman (the comparison is stolen from Doug Wiken) seemed to feel this way even before Berg's murder came to light. At last week's hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Palpatine/Lieberman had this to say:

"Mr. Secretary, the behavior by Americans at the prison in Iraq is, as we all acknowledge, immoral, intolerable and un-American. It deserves the apology that you have given today and that have been given by others in high positions in our government and our military. ... I cannot help but say, however, that those who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, never apologized. Those who have killed hundreds of Americans in uniform in Iraq working to liberate Iraq and protect our security have never apologized. ... And those who murdered and burned and humiliated four Americans in Fallujah a while ago never received an apology from anybody."

It's true. The problem with that statement, however, is that the guys we were letting our soldiers abuse are not the same guys who flew the airplanes, cut off heads, or dragged bodies through Fallujah. Some coalition military intelligence officials estimate that 70 to 90 percent of prisoners detained in Iraq since the war began last year "had been arrested by mistake," according to a confidential Red Cross report given to the Bush administration earlier this year. The guilty parties condemned by Palpatine/Lieberman, on the other hand, either got away or died. And they are not going to apologize.

The war on terror reminds me a bit of the first really big concert I attended. On June 18th, 1988, I went to The Concert For The Masses at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, headlined by Depeche Mode.

Between acts, someone in a corner section became enraged, for some unknown reason, at a person seated below. He retaliated by chucking food at the offending party. He missed. Or, should I say, he struck the wrong person. The struck person, feeling wronged, turned and retaliated by tossing a beverage toward the source of the original throw. The original target might also have thrown something. They, of course, missed. Or, should I say, they hit the wrong people. The settling of scores began to spread.

Within about 30 seconds, a food fight engulfed the entire section of seats, from the top row to the field. It then spread outward, like fans doing the wave, until people were throwing all of their unessential possessions all over the stadium. Nachos with cheese, cardboard trays, full beers and sodas, hot dogs, balled-up bags, sunglasses, trash, even full gallons of bottled water were flying about like mosquitoes.

Finally, the MC stepped onto the stage and told everyone that Depeche Mode was not going to come out until the food fight stopped. The threat was taken seriously, and, slowly, the storm of food and beverage projectiles calmed.

The Middle East, sadly, has no eagerly anticipated act that someone can threaten to withhold if everyone doesn't just stop.

Ike Lay Uday

Reports are that there are over 1,000 pictures taken of the abuses that took place at the Abu Ghraib prison since American forces took over the place. Hazing, harassing or even humiliating prisoners of war is nothing, compared to, say, slaughtering them, as the Hussein regime used to do. But that doesn't make it defensible.

I understand, somewhat, the rage and, in some instances, the moral numbness of a soldier who has been shot at by hostile forces that are now under his control. But I cannot fathom what would possess someone to take or pose for pictures during the beat down. Our claim of moral superiority has been seriously undermined. "Good versus evil" is starting to look more like "Strong versus weak." Suddenly, their rhetoric looks much better than our rhetoric.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, God only knows what we can expect from the millions of uneducated Middle Eastern men whose only knowledge of the world is what they read in the Koran and what they see on Aljazeera. They look at these pictures, especially the electrocuted Heaven's Gate guy on the box, and they think Americans are worse than Uday and Qusay Hussein. Uday, you may have noticed, is pig latin for doo. Dog doo, pig doo, camel doo, flinging monkey doo, I'm not sure which. But it's what our own military is being compared to.

The next time a busfull or more of innocent Americans are killed by angry Muslims who claim to be retaliating against the US for its war atrocities in Iraq, Army Pfc. Lynndie England and her stupid buddies should take responsibility. Maybe they could stand on a box and plug themselves into an outlet or something.

The Joys of BMW Ownership

By now, if you are reading this or any other bjournal, you've probably seen the stories on the German car magazine that published a report on car brands and sexual prowess. The conclusions are that BMW drivers have more sex than owners of any other cars. Porsche drivers, on the other hand, suffer from DSB. The German magazine "Men's Car" found in a survey of 2,253 motorists aged 20 to 50 published in its inaugural May issue that male BMW drivers have sex on average 2.2 times each week, while Porsche drivers have sex 1.4 times per week. No comparisons were made between drivers of 540s and drivers of the Mini Coopers.

Following BMW drivers were Audi (2.1), Volkswagen (1.9), Ford (1.7) and Mercedes (1.6). Also behind were drivers of other foreign car makes, such as Italian cars (2.0), French (1.9), Japanese (1.8), Swedish (1.6) and Korean cars (1.5).

Depending upon how you define sex, those who drive these beasts (no, the link does not show people getting unreasonably familiar with animals) might get it several times per trip.

I wouldn't suggest trying a back seat encounter in this BMW, though.

Skimming Stink Off the Pool Surface

Does stink float? Or does it just melt right in?

Either way, a Dutch bath house has banned some old codger from their swimming pool because his body odor was too annoying. The unnamed 66-year-old was a three-times-a-week visitor at the De Zeehond baths who always wore the same shirt and trousers. Manager Peter van Vierssem said: "The smell was unbearable. We argued with him about it for a whole year. We asked him to wash his clothes and even sent him letters, but nothing helped." So they 86'd the guy. Can you imagine how bad the dirty old man is going to smell a year from now? People are going to be asking their pet skunks to fart just so they can get a whiff of fresh air.

At my gym, we never face this problem. Clean or foul, we are all expected to shower before entering the pool. We're smarter than Dutch people, evidently. Cleaner, too.

But there was one guy at my high school with the same problem. In 30 years, I'm going to start scouring the newspapers in towns with Dutch baths to see if he gets banned, too.

They Doth Protest Too Much Methinks

“I may not agree with a word you say,” Voltaire once declared, “but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.” I agree with Voltaire’s sentiments, but I wouldn’t fight to the death. In general, I wouldn’t even pound the pavement.

The Man Show once did a bit where they stopped women on the street and persuaded them to protest in favor of ending women's suffrage now. It was a perfect IQ test. If you protested, we knew you were an idiot. And, in that respect, it was like most real protests.

I assume that there are smart and effective protesters -- I’ve seen the Martin Luther King videos -- I just haven't met any. Most of them, I believe, don't really understand what they are protesting. I base this belief on some of the stupid things these people say when interviewed, and the stupid manners in which they express themselves. If you are not a serious ideologue who knows the issue well, save us the trouble and just shut the hell up. Take up a hobby. Get a job. But get out of the street and don't make me late for work.

A recent assault on Big Ben confirmed my belief that the majority of protestors are idiots. If you are going to climb umpteen feet with signs designed to change the way people view current issues, you should: (i) carry a sign visible from the ground; and (ii) carry a sign with a message that people will understand. "Time for Truth"? What does that mean? I don't have the time or the interest to go to your website and find out. Sorry. Message not received. Not loud. Not clear.

I don't understand how wearing nothing but a sticker over your nipples helps to convey a political message, but I'm willing to investigate further. Is there a prettier protester available?

Actually, lots of people like to protest nekked. This, of course, is stupid, because nobody looks at or listens to the message. They are paying attention only to the nekked people. Ladies, you think men look only at your boobs when you are clothed. What on God's green Earth makes you think that we are paying attention to your message when you are topless?

Clever signs and puns are often used and abused. This weekend, one woman carried a poster that read "Hey -- George, get out of MY BUSH!" Though she might be talking about her armpits, the context suggests that she refers to her right to have an abortion. She forgets, however, that to have an abortion, you generally must first persuade a man that you are attractive enough to have sex with, so as to have him get you pregnant. That is not happening, unless she moves to that place where the one-eyed man is king.

I assume she is talking to George Bush, rather than, say, George ("Have you ever noticed that most women who are against abortion are women you wouldn't want to f*ck in the first place, man") Carlin. But even on his worst cocaine binge, Dubya wouldn't touch her. I think her Bush is safe.

Not all feminists look like her, though. Some look like famous people. But until this day, I had no idea that feminists necessarily dressed funny and had bizarre bumps and lines in their necks.

It’s not just the liberal protesters I dislike. I also don't have any respect for the "God Hates Fags” crowd. The same goes, generally, for the pro-life group. The peaceful ones accomplish nothing. The ones that actually have an impact use deplorable methods, ranging from using disgusting rolling billboards to murdering doctors.

The creepiest protest recently in the news, however (even worse than the femme pedophile in the trees of Central Park) is the one with the woman who made a little gun out of her own skin. If you ask me, making a little gun out of a surgically removed stretch of your own skin is not an acceptable form of protest. Nor is it art. Rather, it is a cry for help -- begging to have some weirdo who watches Silence of the Lambs seven nights a week come along and take some more of your skin to make a second gun. Or a knife. Or a bongo drum. Or a dress.

She doth protest too much, methinks.

Questioning the Headlines

Is it really newsworthy that gay Republicans don't like Bush?

Since when does gold grow on trees, and when will my Home Depot start selling them?

How frustrated do you have to be to become a fig pucker?

How well must you wrestle to get your eye gouged out and still win your match?

And now that the church has apologized for sacking Constantinople 800 years ago, can we get a little mea culpa for the kids that have been buggered by priests recently?

Don't Join Them Thoughts (3-26-2004)

Marcus Wesson, that strange Fresno polygamist who killed a bunch of his kids and their moms --including one or two of his other kids -- is being denied visitors because officials think he might try to talk his surviving sons into committing suicide.

Ordinarily, I think suicide is a terrible thing which should never be encouraged. But in Michael Shechtman's case, I can make an exception. Shechtman shot himself Wednesday at the conclusion of a high-speed chase through Rhode Island. Why? He apparently didn't want to be caught alive with his murdered girlfriend's severed head sitting in a bag in the passenger seat. He shouldn't be thanked, exactly, but I do appreciate him sparing the taxpayers the cost of a murder trial.

Perhaps the subtitles in The Passion should include a warning that says "Do not try this at home." Or, at least, don't try it alone. If you are going to attempt crucifixion, you should do it with a friend. Though this should be self-evident, a rather foolish and despondent man was treated last week at a Pittsfield hospital after he nailed himself to a cross. He took two pieces of wood, nailed them together to form a cross, and placed them on the floor. He attached a suicide note before nailing one of his hands to the cross with a 14-penny nail and a hammer. Then, and only then, did he realize that would be unable to nail his other hand to the board. He gave up and called 911.

He's not alone. Some other idiot tried and failed to crucify himself recently, too. If these two had worked together, at least one of them might have succeeded.

That reminds me of some lyrics recently misheard by me. I thought HIM's song "Join Me" went as so:

Baby, join me in bed.
Baby, join me in bed.
Baby, join me in bed.
We are so young.
Our lives have just begun,
But already we're considering
Escape from this world.
And we've waited for so long
For this moment to come
Was so anxious to be together,
Together in bed.

I was wrong. No, it's not "in bed." It's never "in bed." It's "in death." As in "join me in death." Screw that. It's off my "interesting music list" effective immediately.

Some people might not have trouble reconciling both versions of the lyrics. It was seven years ago today that authorities found the Nike-clad bodies of Marshall Applewhite, aka Do, and his Heaven's Gate followers. They joined each other, in bed, in death. The group of 39 believers had practiced celibacy, abstained from drugs and alcohol, and had limited contact with the outside world. No wonder they didn't want to live.

The U.S. Army is upping its suicide prevention efforts after an investigation into 23 U.S. soldier suicides in Iraq and Kuwait last year. All soldiers are being sent to suicide prevention classes. That's one of the differences between us and them.

We try to prevent our boys from taking their own lives. They encourage their boys to take their own lives, especially if they can take a few civilians with them.

What we ought to be doing is educating suicidal Iraqis and Palestinians on how to protest in appropriately self-destructive ways.

For example, blowing up a bus with innocent people on board is inappropriate.

While running around like an idiot on fire is much more appropriate.

Now they know. Let's see what they do with this knowledge.

A Kick in the Jimmies Thoughts (3-24-2004)

Yahoo's Most Popular Pictures page is currently featuring this shot of former California Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson kicking a Buddhist monk in the jimmies. Oh, how I would love to see a picture of the monk booting Wesson in the nuts. Kick back, Mr. Monk!

The picture parade doesn't end there. This one cracks me up, too. "Is that a horn, or are you just excited to be sitting on my head?"

And check out this picture of David Lee Roth. Does he look like Joe Pesci with long hair, or what?

I don't just look at the pictures, though. I read, too. And today was quite a day for reading. My morning began with a bit of good news from yesterday. My local appellate court had issued an opinion that began as follows:

"This case illustrates how adroit lawyering at the trial level can save a win on a motion to compel arbitration when that victory is challenged on appeal."

Whose adroit lawyering were they talking about? Mine (and my legal team's). I'm fairly jazzed by this. The only bummer is that the opinion is not going to be officially published. Still, it isn't every day that a Presiding Justice praises me on my lawyering skills. I guess the planets must be aligned or something.

I was not the big legal news story today, though. The big legal news story today (aside from Kobe confronting his accuser) was atheist Michael Newdow's argument before the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to toss the phrase "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. The single most absurd comment made was Newdow's claim that he distressed over how his daughter would be singled out by not saying the Pledge in school (which, of course, assumes that she would refuse if given a free choice) and would be coerced to participate against her will. "Imagine you're a third-grader in a class of thirty kids. That's enormous pressure to put on a child," Newdow argued.

True, Mike, but imagine how she's going to feel if she becomes famous for being the little girl who made the Pledge of Allegiance illegal. What little girl wants to be known as the Jane Roe or Madalyn Murray O’Hair of her generation?

And, Mike, what if it backfires? As most people know, Jane Roe (Norma McCorvey) is now a pro-life Christian activist, and O'Hair's son, William Murray, is a born-again Christian. What if your kid becomes an avid theist?

I'm fascinated by this latest scientific finding -- possible evidence of the mutation that might have caused the earliest humans to branch off from their apelike ancestors. But it causes me concern, because, as some of you may know, everyone who believes in evolution is going straight to hell with Mr. Newdow. And I don't want to go to hell. Unless I'm in the Cayman Islands. Even then, it's not that great.

Wait. I just found out that all Catholics are already going to hell. So, I guess there's no harm in me believing in a pre-human genetic mutation theory after all. In that case, check out the article. It's controversial, but intriguing.

Also in the news today, we found out what motivates suicide bombers to kill innocent people in Israel. It is the lure of about $20 cash and the possibility of having sex with 72 virgins in heaven. Frankly, I would hold out for more money, and I would demand the virgins up front.

Even if the Jayhawks beat Alabama Birmingham on Friday, as is expected, Blazer fans will still be able to chant "Kansas Sucks!" And they will be right. How bad does Kansas suck? Kansas sucks so bad, that to get people to move there, they have to give away free land. Ouch.

You know what sucks as bad as Kansas? The remake of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" by Johnny Cash and the Clash's Joe Strummer. I don't want to disrespect the dead (and I used to idolize Strummer) but this version is just plain ugly.

Speaking of ugly, the Von Bondies are playing tonight at the House of Blues. Also on the ticket: the Bar Room Heroes. Jason Stollsteimer, front man for the Von Bondies, could have used a bar room hero last December when White Stripes lead singer Jack White beat the crap out of him at the Magic Stick in Detroit. But he didn't have one then.

At least he'll be safe tonight.

Martha and Other Dumb Criminal Thoughts (3-13-2004)

In this racist nation, how is it that Martha Stewart and Winona Ryder have probation officers, while O.J. Simpson is a free man?

Arrogance doesn't help. Inviting celebrities like Bill Cosby to your trial is obnoxious and insults the jury. One juror sarcastically commented,"Was that supposed to sway our decision?"

Uh, yeah, that was the plan, dude. Did it backfire?

Stewart's attorney, Robert Morvillo, is complete denial over his utterly incompetent defense. "We look at this as an opportunity for us to go to the next rounds," he said. This guy should quit being a lawyer right now and apply for a job in the Iraqi Information Ministry. Morvillo called just one witness, another lawyer, who testified for just 20 minutes. Suffice it to say that the jury was underwhelmed.

How costly was Stewart's conviction? Stewart averted a tad more than $50K in losses by selling her IMClone stock. She faces up to $1 million in fines. But that's nothing. On the day of her conviction, her holdings in Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. fell from about $14 a share to under $11. That cost her $95 million. But, the shares had soared as high as $17 early in the day, on speculation that she would be acquitted. They might be worth $20 or more today if Stewart had taken the stand and been acquitted. That makes for a loss -- including lost opportunity costs -- of as much as $200 million.

Ouch. And she will probably spend 6-18 months in the can.

Stewart has little hope for a successful appeal. Her best shot was with the jury. There were few, if any, controversies over legal points that went against her that could form the basis for an appeal. Last December, Stewart said that this Christmas would be the saddest holiday ever. "It's an unwelcome time for me; very unwelcome." Wait until this Christmas, Martha.

Martha's K-Mart affiliation might be in trouble. Then again, those K-Mart people are not as clever as the Wal-Mart folks. You can't sneak anything past those Wal-Mart people. This brilliant and stunning woman (well, she was one of the less ugly ones at her particular Georgia trailer park) tried. Sadly, she got busted trying to spend a fake $1 million bill to buy $1,675 worth of merchandise at a Wal-Mart. It didn't work. "A clerk at the store immediately noticed the bill was fake when 35-year-old Alice Regina Pike handed it to her," said police.

You think?

If your boyfriend steals your stash, and you want it back, you can't necessarily count on the cops to do the right thing by you. But some people just can't figure that out for themselves.

This argument takes some serious huevos: a Montreal cop on trial for shoplifting says he was "testing" the supermarket's security. On April 10, 2002, Guy Marleau left a store without paying for $191 in groceries. When the manager approached Mr. Marleau -- an off-duty Canadian police officer -- said he was "testing" the supermarket's security system, and flashed a badge. Yeah, I was just "testing" your security. That's the ticket!

We sometimes tell our kids to look for a police officer if they are lost in a public place. We're glad they never ran into this police officer.

Meanwhile, a New Mexico lawmaker was caught driving drunk just hours after attending a bill-signing ceremony to highlight the state's new DWI law. Joe Thompson has this lame excuse: "I am thankful that no one else was involved. I will follow the advice of my family and physician to obtain whatever treatment is necessary." Thompson told the arresting cop that he did not think his alcohol counted "due to it being consumed several hours prior to the stop."

If you must drink and drive, do so before you pass out. If you pass out, be sure you can trust your friends, or else stay and sleep it off. Disregard these suggestions and you might end up getting pulled over, like this guy. What a loser. Worse than Michael "Miserable Failure" Moore.

Consider yourself warned.

Killing Joe Smith Thoughts (2-7-2004)

I've been slightly nauseous all week. I don't think it was anything I ate. I don't think it was a virus. I think it was the news out of Sarasota.

Few things frighten me more than the thought of one of my daughters being abducted by a sexual predator. I know that it is not much worse than losing them to a drunk driver, a lightning bolt or an undertow, but still, watching the surveillance video of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia being lead off by what we now know to be the wicked, vile, Joseph P. Smith, has literally made me sick all week.

As the week wore on, the news got no better. When I learned of a suspect in custody, I saw nothing to celebrate. If you find the suspect, and he doesn't have the girl with him, it is rarely good news. The day after Smith was declared a suspect, the news got worse.

"The suspect is not cooperating."

There is no more telling clue that the abducted child is dead.

It broke my heart to watch the girl's parents grasping at the infinitesimal hope that their child was alive. And even though I knew it was inevitable, the news that they found her body on Friday hit me like a sucker punch below the belt.

Police say Smith told a cellmate that he had kidnapped and killed Carlie. Such tips are not always reliable. Cellmates conjure up false confessions all the time. However, in this case, according to early reports, the witness also said Smith boasted of dumping her body behind a local church, and that information allowed police to find Carlie's body behind the Central Church of Christ, near the carwash where she was abducted.

That is about as damning as a jail cell confession gets. Add that to the videotape, and the reported evidence that Carlie spent time in the suspect's piece of shit car, and you have a man who is guilty, guilty, guilty. Innocent until proven guilty? A figment of the law's imagination. Let me know when the lynch mob is forming. Give me six hours notice and I will be there. I have the miles in the bank. I know how to tie a rope. I'm here to help.

What kind of monster can do such a thing? Remarkably, in Smith, a man who has three daughters himself. That just blows me away. How does a man who has daughters of his own do this to someone else's daughter?

It is unfortunate that Smith wasn't put away years ago. He was arrested at least 13 times since 1993. Convicted of many lesser crimes, he was acquitted of kidnapping and false imprisonment charges in 1998, when a jury rejected a woman's claims that he told her he "would cut her" if she screamed, and believed Smith, who claimed he had grabbed the woman because he thought she was about to harm herself by jumping in front of traffic.

Smith's story reminds me a bit of Alejandro Avila, who killed 5-year-old Samantha Runnion in 2002. Avila had been acquitted on charges of molesting two young girls the previous year. This left him free to molest again, leaving no witness alive the second time.

Is it really better to have a justice system that lets ten guilty men go free rather than imprisoning one innocent man? I don't know. Is is better to jail a guy who looked guilty, but wasn't? Or is it better to bury little girls like Samantha and Carlie? Unless you are OJ Simpson, it's hard to argue that Samantha and Carlie's lives are worth less than their accusers'.

Some people deserve to die. I'm not sure I entirely buy into the eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth line of discipline in every case, but evil men deserve powerful justice. If you ruin or end lives without justification, you might deserve to die. In the case of Joseph Smith, it is fairly clear that the accused deserves to die.

Should we kill murderers to teach people that it is wrong to kill? Damn straight -- just like we imprison kidnappers to teach people that you should never hold people against their will.

So let's make sure Smith gets a fair trial, and then let's kill him. Let's make it painful and frightening. It might be cruel, but it won't be unusual, because Carlie Brucia has already been through it.

Thoughts on Tackles and Other Criminals (2-3-2004)

Willie Sutton said the reason he robbed banks was because that was where the money was. He is no longer right. Today, the money is in politics and professional athletics. But that's not the only flaw in Willie's reasoning. The main reason people rob banks because they are lousy thieves. Bank robbers generally get caught, and when they do, they get tossed in the can for decades. That's stupid. If one is such a great thief, one has little need for money in the first place. One just steals what one needs, when one needs it, from less secure places.

But you have to be quite a bold thief to rob an NFL man like Keyshawn Johnson. Keyshawn was robbed at gunpoint last month in Berkeley. I guess this really isn't a great year for the Trojans in Berkeley. I wonder if he asked his attackers to just take his money and leave. Hmmm. I'll bet he's heard that line somewhere before.

Cincinnati Bengals tackle Levi Jones was arrested right after the Super Bowl for attempting to take a night stick from a police officer following a bar fight. This makes him a bigger Super Bowl loser than either of the Carolina Johns.

Panther kicker John Kasay's really bad final kickoff may have cost Carolina the game. It gave Tom Brady a better chance to redeem himself. But Brady should have lost any shot at the MVP award after tossing that awful interception when New England had a shot at putting the game away.

The sorriest John of the day was Carolina coach John Fox. If coaches were eligible, Fox would have won the MVP easily, because his disastrous decision to go for the two point conversion was the deciding factor in the game. If they kick the extra point, they wouldn't have had to go for two after the next score. Those two failures cost Carolina two points. Then New England wouldn't have gone for two after its last touchdown, because a five point lead is not much better than a four point lead. With proper play calling on extra points, the score would have been 31-28 near the end of the game, and Adam Vinatieri would have been kicking the game-tying field goal, rather than the game-winner.

New England Patriots linebacker Matt Chatham made a good case for the MVP by tackling the Super Bowl streaker. That took guts. I wouldn't have touched the guy. When Chatham retires, Reebok should use him to replace Terry Tate, the “office linebacker.”

Carolina covered the spread, which I thought would happen. However, the best bet turned out to be the over, which clinched victory long before Adam Vinatieri did.

I sure was sorry Matt Willig didn't block that last field goal attempt. But at least his penalty in the first half messed up Vinatieri's angle and cost the Pats 3 points.

One unintended consequence of the Janet Jackson flap is the increased interest in TiVo. Cool. Whatever it takes.

TiVo hosed me with a botched recording of Survivor All-Stars. I'm glad CBS replayed the first episode tonight. I'm also glad Tina went first. She was the least deserving of all prior winners. Colby should have won Survivor II, and Tina should have been voted out early, right after she barfed up her tripe and cost her tribe immunity.

Last year, it was "metrosexual." This year, "wardrobe malfunction" is looking like an early favorite for expression of the year. Richard Hatch seems to suffer from it regularly.

However, the phrase "biological changes over time," as a replacement for "evolution" should be a strong contender. Georgia schools are considering the move already. Excellent.

But not as excellent as this story from Kansas, where authorities are investigating a 33-year-old mother who posed as a 13-year-old boy to get handouts from local churches and schools. This story wouldn't have caught my eye but for the fact that the alleged perp's name is Birdie Jo Hoaks. Mrs. Hoaks is apparently an experienced hoax artist, having pulled off similar scams in Montana, Vermont, Alaska and California.

I guess we should be thankful her name isn't Birdie Jo Stabbing.

Strange News Portal Thoughts (1-30-2004)

If you get all of your news from a local affiliate, you are missing out on some great entertainment, inter alia,

A Utah polygamist has been sentenced to prison for taking his 15-year-old cousin as his bride. Oh, she was also his aunt. So, if I understand this correctly, her first child would have been his own cousin, once removed. Or something like that. Gross.

But not as gross as the 60-ton sperm whale exploding on a Taiwan street. How would you like to have been sitting on a moped when that happened?

Free speech advocate Al Franken body-slammed a demonstrator after the guy heckled Howard Dean. Franken explained it like this: "I'm neutral in this race but I'm for freedom of speech, which means people should be able to assemble and speak without being shouted down." As long as you are not presenting the opposing viewpoint. Those people can't speak without getting knocked down. Okay. I've got it.

The "He Hate Me" dude is in the Super Bowl. With all the media covering the game, maybe someone can finally find out who hate he.

My Trojans own this town, baby! UCLA can't even beat us in basketball at Pauley Pavilion. And the national football recruiting class rankings are shaping up like this: No. 1 USC, No. 2 LSU, No. 3 Michigan. Oh, yes.

Hey! I feel good! But James Brown must feel like hell.

I thought kangaroo nut sacks were about as weird as eBay got. Then some dude tried sell Paul McCartney's germs, which he caught and would pass on to you, for a price, either in the form of a "bag that [he] will cough into, or if preferred, [in] a plastic container full of mucus." Don't bother looking for it, eBay shut it down.

eBay is also cracking down on those quasi-hookers and semi-gigolos pimping themselves as "imaginary girlfriends" and (less expensive) "imaginary boyfriends." Designed for the loser who wants to hide his homosexuality, or the lamer who wants his ex-girlfriend (hopefully not this one) to think he scored some new, much hotter, replacement, these auctions offer the chance to falsely claim someone to be your lover. The only good things to come of this are the T-shirts that say "I did your imaginary girlfriend."

Wesley Crusher is hawking his own autographed pictures. He will make any "reasonable" dedication, such as "Hooray for you!", but not "I loved being your bitch in prison," or "Help me, my ass is on fire!"

There goes my interest.

I'm so mad that AOL let this slip out: clueless misspellers giving away their wares on eBay by selling labtops, knifes, camras, earings and waches. Most, never found, just don't sell. Especially $25,000 waches. But those that sell, sell cheap. I have some favorites to search for, but for the most part, I'm not teling.

A Jamaican man was jailed in Atlanta for three days because he wore a mask on a cold day, violating a Georgia statute prohibiting "any person to wear a mask, hood or device by which any portion of the face is so hidden." The law was designed to keep KKK members from wearing sheets in public. It isn't working perfectly, officials admitted.

This is the meanest thing I have seen on line this year.

This is the meanest thing I have read about this year -- a joke that sounded funny at first, but upon further reflection, was just, plain, jacked up. A New Zealand train operator is out on stress leave after running over a garden gnome that he assumed was a child on the tracks. Had I perpetrated this hoax, I would have laughed myself silly when the train hit the brakes and smashed the gnome to bits. But if I had later seen the look on the conductor's face, I would have felt so bad, I might have puked up intestinal matter.

Ronald Duffy, the idiot who dumped water on a crying baby in an airplane, is a close second. "Alcohol may have been involved."

And, finally, the Colorado football program is defending itself against charges that players were recruited with sex parties where women were allegedly raped. Campus cop Timothy Delaria testified that one football recruit reported that "They told us, you know, 'This is what you get when you come to Colorado.'"

As Kobe Bryant can tell them, that's not all you get when you come to Colorado.

15 Minutes of Stupidity Thoughts (1/18/2004)

No matter how stupid you are, there's always someone dumber, e.g.,

Daytona Beach authorities searching for three people were about to leave the home of one suspect's girlfriend empty-handed when the trio realized they were sharing their smelly attic with a rotting corpse. Instead of quietly regurgitating, one of them screamed "Get me out of here, there's a body!" They are in jail now.

Psychic Uri Geller has proof of Michael Jackson's innocence. Three years ago, he put Jackson under hypnosis, whereupon the king of pop denied having sexually abused children. That settles it. It's time to start dancing on the top of SUVs.

Rapper Mystikal lacked such powerful exculpatory evidence and was sentenced to six years in prison for sexual assault. Why did he go down, when so many other accused celebrities walk free? Because his posse was clever enough to record the attack on videotape. He now leads R. Kelly in the race for the most costly porno tape in rap music history.

In Iowa, one Clyde Lamar Pace II (one would hate to confuse him with his proud father) passed through a courthouse metal detector after tossing the contents of his pockets onto a tray. Among his cargo that morning was a small bag of weed. When he realized what he had done, he tried to run away, but was caught. This made him miss a hearing in his pending drug case, but I'm sure the judge will believe his excuse. I mean, who would lie about something like that?

Argentinean thrill seeker Lucas Tomas says he was ordered by voices from God to go into the lions' pit at the Buenos Aires Zoo. Why, why, why, do people who hear voices claiming to be God fail to secure proper verification of said voices' identities before taking advice such as "go in there and start teasing the lions?" Next time, Lucas, ask for a sign before you decide to take on the zoo lions with your bare hands.

Elecia Battle took advantage of a lottery winner's patience by falsely claiming to have "lost" the winning ticket. When confronted with the truth, rather than backing out with a graceful, "Damn, I could have sworn I had played those numbers on my ticket," she sued to recover the jackpot. Her nerve lasted one day, after which she dismissed her suit and admitted to making it all up. When first confronted with the truth, Battle, who has a history of fraud claims, said her prior history was just the past. I guess so. If you consider earlier today to be "the past," you are technically correct. And being technically correct is a big step forward for Ms. Battle.

Otis Nixon (the ugliest baseball player ever) was busted after chasing his bodyguard around an Atlanta hotel while naked and brandishing a kitchen knife. I hold it to be self-evident that Nixon does not know how to select a bodyguard. If one needs to chase one's help around with a knife, one obviously has some problems in the employer-employee relationship. More importantly, though, if one is naked and needs only a little kitchen knife to make one's bodyguard run like a little girl, one hasn't chosen the right man for the job. If I ever pulled a knife on my bodyguard, I would expect him to disarm me and beat the living crap out of me and every last one of my friends.

And my favorite story of the year: that of the Spokane streakers, who decided to run naked, except for hats and shoes, through their local Denny's. They wanted to make a quick getaway, so they recruited a getaway driver. Problem was, the driver wanted to run naked, too. So he went in. Because it was so cold outside -- you wouldn't want to stall -- and because they wanted a quick escape, he left the engine running. When they entered the restaurant, the opportunist of the year, a diner near the front door, decided to jump in their car and take off, leaving our heroes shivering naked in the snow as they watched their clothes and their car disappear into the distance. By the time police arrived, they were hiding in the parking lot, their bravado shrunken by the bitter cold. Next time, guys, streak in warm weather.

And take the keys with you.