William Bennett has been appointed head of the newly created Middle East Deaths, Assassinations, and Wars Exchange, or MEDAWEX. The new exchange, headquartered in Las Vegas, will soon open branches in Atlantic City, Monaco, and every Indian reservation in the United States. The Federal government created the exchange in order to help it better predict events in the Middle East and to better regulate the market in, among other financial instruments, suicide bombing bonds, long-term settlement mortgages, and derivatives of the AK-47.

In a related story, a group of Palestinians in Detroit have petitioned the Federal government for recognition as a Native American tribe. “We have been thrown off our land too,” said one man who refused to give his name. There has been speculation that the request was made so Palestinians could open casinos in Detroit. A previous attempt to gain recognition as American Indians was denied by the Federal courts, who ruled that at best Palestinians could gain recognition as middle aged white men waiting in the parking lot at Wal Mart for their wives to finish shopping so they can go home and watch American Idol. Various local Palestinian groups denounced that ruling as an attempt by the government to deny Palestinians their rights to be Native Americans. There is no word yet if the Palestinians will again seek redress in the courts.

THE FRENCH INVASION OF BRAZIL has come to Naught, a small city along the coast near Belem, where the French stayed in a stylish hotel along the beach. The main thrust of the French attack was driven off in a samba school bus to see the sights and to dine on local delicacies in several of Naught's excellent sea food restaurants. Brazilian tour group operators hope that the stronger Euro will encourage more French tourists to come to Naught, which has traditionally not received the attention that other regions such as Rio de Janeiro and Bahia have had lavished on them.

NEW STUDY: A new study conducted at McGill University in Canada on white laboratory rats proves conclusively that nations that tolerate the practice of putting mayonnaise on freedom fries are at the forefront of the decay of Western civilization, and that men who engage in the practice will grow hair on their hands, become nearsighted, nervous, and neuralgic; prolonged indulgence will cause the penis to shrink. The study's findings were announced today across the street from a local McDonalds, which was promptly burned down by fanatical vegan rutabaga cultists. The hamburger and fries giant will eliminate the practice of fries and mayonnaise in all its restaurants throughout the world in an effort to avoid liability in those countries where the practice is prevalent. The news caused McDonalds stock price to take a tumble today on Wall Street with a Coke whore and he felt much butter for the tumbrel his wife led him off in. The police are still investigating the case, which may or may not be made out of leather.

NO ELSE WILL DO IT, SO WE WILL: Given that the tendency towards political and social chaos will grow annually unless someone does something about it, The Passing Parade is happy to announce that the entire planet is now under American military occupation. Just thought you might want to know.

I have just learned (via Andrew Sullivan) that the BBC returns some forty dollars or so of the annual television license fee it collects from all television owners in the UK to deaf viewers, presumably on the basis that the deaf cannot hear the BBC’s biases at work. As I think on it, this opens vast new realms of possibility. Shouldn’t the mindless seeker after entertainment be compensated for having to put up with nature shows, historical films, Shakespeare, etc? Is there some reason why the American viewer cannot sue the BBC on grounds of mental cruelty for one too many airings of Are You Being Served? Why can’t the BBC return the millions it gets every year to the millions it annoys every year? If not, why not?

The Vatican stated today that after years of serious theological debate by a commission of some of the deepest minds of the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope will announce next Sunday that compelling the bride to perform the Funky Chicken during a wedding reception is grounds for an annulment. The Village People's YMCA is also on the list of wedding standards that can end a marriage, although Electric Slide is not. Also not on the list is the 1990's hit the Macarena, which is thought to have been left off the list as a favor to Opus Dei, the powerful Spanish lay organization, most of whose members are rhythmically challenged.

BOB HOPE has passed away at age 100. Thanks for the memories

JULY 26 WAS THE BIRTHDAY OF Stanley Kubrick and Jason Robards, when they were still celebrating their birthdays instead of being dead all the time, and is the birthday of Kevin Spacey, Mick Jagger, Kate Beckinsale, Helen Mirren, Blake Edwards, Sandra Bullock, the Cuban Revolution, and me. Thank you for your applause, but please, just throw money. Green in any denomination is a color most pleasing to all of the above.

The wave of foreign earthworms undermining America’s forests have been declared a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States and pose an “absolute threat,” to thousands of American earthworms employed in the forest industry, according to a spokesman for the Department of Commerce. Speaking on the condition of Ann O’Minity, the spokesman said she is doing well but her back still hurts, and that the foreign earthworms have no business being in this country and should be sent back where they came from posthaste, if not by registered mail. Ms. O’Minity, a leading expert on the influx of foreign earthworms, was shot and wounded two months ago by an earthworm two days before she was going to testify before a Congressional subcommittee on the growing threat of earthworms to the forest cover in the United States. Ms. O’Minity contends that foreign earthworms have all but eliminated forest cover in several national parks, causing thousands of American earthworms to lose their jobs.

THE SURGEON GENERAL’S CALL FOR ALLIES in the war against obesity was shot down today by French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, who told a major French newspaper that France would not support any such war and that it would use its veto in the Security Council to prevent an Anglo-American resolution condemning obesity from passing. In an interview with Le Monde, the Foreign Minister said that American Surgeon General Richard Carmona had not made the case for the war against obesity and later denounced Defense Department plans to hide ICBM’s in some of America’s deeper belly buttons as “unnecessarily provocative” and an “obstacle in the ongoing search for world peace,” who was last seen panhandling for pesos in Patagonia.

Library Bill of Rights

The American Library Association affirms that all libraries are forums for information and ideas, and that the following basic policies should guide their services.

Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.

Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.

Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.

Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.

A person's right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.

Libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.

Adopted June 18, 1948. Amended February 2, 1961, June 27, 1967, and January 23, 1980, by the ALA Council.

This is not a test, but the curious reader may want to take a look at what the American Library Association says it believes, and then compare and contrast that to its behavior concerning the Cuban independent library movement in Toronto recently.
For further information about what the ALA says it believes go to their web site and type in intellectual freedom or library bill of rights in the search function. Then read what you find. When you're done you can spend the rest of the day wondering how an organization that claims to believe these things can play lap dog for a dictator.

THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION AND CUBA: I realize that I really should be investigating the comic possibilities of eBay auctioning off JFK’s boxer shorts, but since no one on the right side of the blogosphere is bringing this up I will. The American Library Association’s annual conference was held in Toronto this year in conjunction with the Canadian Library Association’s annual conference, and I trust that a good time was had by all; I certainly had a good time when the conference was in Chicago a few years ago, and I still have the bag they gave to everyone who registered for the conference.

This year was different. This year’s conference embarrassed me as an American and as a librarian. The ALA, which has traditionally stood for the rights of every library user to read what they want without fear, managed somehow to come squarely out for Fidel Castro’s right to suppress the Cuban independent library movement in particular and the Cuban people in general. This should not be surprising since the ALA’s Latin American committee includes several long time Castro apologists, such as Mark Rozenzweig and Ann Sparanese. The ALA’s explanation for not seating the independent libraries, that they are not “professionals,” is baloney piled high and deep; the ALA is splitting hairs in order not to deal with this issue. It is gutlessness, pure and simple. The American Library Association, which screams in high dudgeon anytime someone wants to remove Huckleberry Finn from a library for being a racist book or when a parent thinks maybe the kids computer ought to have a Internet filter on it, looked into the face of real oppression and not only blinked, but managed to convince themselves that they weren’t blinking. At this point, it is frankly embarrassing to be a member of this organization.

The other thing that surprises me is the absolute lack of interest in this issue by anyone on the political right. The only non-library blog discussing this issue has been Randy at Beautiful Horizons, and Randy is well to the left of me…although, of course, most people are to the left of me. One would think, however, that the right would have a field day with the ALA’s rampant hypocrisy, but if we’ve said anything at all then I’ve somehow managed to miss the fireworks.

In any case, I urge any and all librarians who think that the ALA’s shameful conduct does not reflect well on either our profession and our country to do what I am going to do: withhold your dues. The leadership of the ALA cannot ignore the members when the members refuse to pay for the ALA’s ivory tower in Chicago. And just to make one final thing clear: I am PROUD to be in the same profession with the “nonprofessionals” of the Cuban independent library movement; I just wish the ALA was, too.

THINGS TO DO FOR GRANDMA WHEN SHE’S DEAD: In the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, which you can enter for a modest fee; I don’t remember how modest the fee was, only that she was modesty personified, a jewel of modesty and Christian virtue, whereas I can remember every detail of her very immodest sister, including the shots afterwards; you can see the cream of Palermitano society hanging on the walls. I do not know why 18th and 19th century Sicilian swells thought that being stuffed and mounted in a church basement was such a good idea, but they did, and who are we, the enthusiasts of the Hula-Hoop, the Pet Rock, and Pamela Anderson to point the finger of absurdity at anyone?

The catacombs form a natural refrigerator of sorts and the galleries feature separate areas for priests, nuns, including the mortal remains of one mother superior hanging from the ceiling doing her impression of the Flying Nun, and one archbishop in full episcopal regalia, with scintillating hints of Congregationalism around the pockets, looking as though someone put him together from cigarette ashes and Elmer’s Glue. There were several galleries of the rich and locally famous, the upper crust in their Sunday best, all of them moldering away along with their social pretensions. Here you have the society swain of 1830 hanging across the way from the rich girl he got in trouble in back in the early summer of 1829. The girl’s parents hang next to her, as if to make sure there’ll be no more of this monkey business here, thank you very much, and the swain hangs between the girl’s two brothers, whose heads are turned slightly towards their sister’s seducer and whose skeletal grins seem to say, “What? Twenty- seven stab wounds weren’t enough? You want more?” And so there they are, the rich in their full if more than slightly moldy glory, awaiting the Resurrection so they can get a change of clothes. Nowhere in the lot is there a poor person, nowhere in the lot is there someone having any connection with the advertising business. Life and death were both unfair in those days. Hanging on the wall after you died just wasn’t good enough for the poor and outcast way back then, although just hanging by the neck until you were dead was.

Nowadays, of course, we live in a much more democratic world and the poor may choose to be interred where they will, and today the same freeze dry technology gives you a great cup of coffee every morning is now available to stiffs, living and dead, of every income level. Why go through the trauma of a wake and funeral when it is possible to have Grandma freeze dried and left in her favorite chair in the corner? Why try to explain the concept of death to your children when you can keep Grandma as part of the family forever? Freeze drying lets you keep those near and dear to you exactly where they were the last time you saw them. You can even buy special attachments for your vacuum cleaner that will let you clean Grandma off before the neighbors notice she’s getting a bit dusty for her age. There’s even a line of clothes for the hip but deceased Grandma so she will never feel out of it, and no, I don’t know how they’ll get those clothes on her, but where there’s a will and you’re in it, there’s always a way.

BIRDWATCHING FOR THE UNITIATED: Birdwatching has become a much more violent sport in recent years, much to the consternation of those of us who remember the gentler days of yesteryear before the sport succumbed to the lure of television and big money. In those days, this grizzled veteran sadly remembers, a birder did not need several pounds of body armor on his chest and legs to observe the feeding habits of the yellow-bellied sapsucker or to arm oneself with a heavy stick in order to watch a Hawaiian fairy tern. Gone are the days, I fear, brought low by the coarsening of our civil culture. But that is another matter.

Our purpose today, however, is not to discuss America’s cultural decline but birdwatching, in particular watching the extraordinary habits of that most elusive of native birds, the North American red-lagged pantaloon. The red-legged pantaloon is, as its name suggests, a member of the loon family of birds and will remain so despite the best efforts of some red-legged pantaloons that they are in the same family as hawks, eagles, and falcons. Social climbing is one of this species’ least attractive traits, along with cracking its knuckles and smoking cheap cigars and dropping the ashes on the carpet. The red-legged pantaloon’s most distinguishing feature is its unfashionably red legs, which the loon will often try to hide by wearing designer jeans. The loon is not always successful in these attempts to hide its legs, which leads to embarrassing incidents and low self-esteem among some of the younger members of the species. The legs vary in hue from season to season, being a soft, almost pinkish color in the winter to a deep brick red in the summer depending on the availability of sunscreen to a bright scarlet when the wife comes in and catches the male with a younger female.

The North American red-legged pantaloon is small as birds go and it will go almost anywhere provided that someone else pays the fare. The species has been known to migrate south for the winter if it can go first class; however, if the food remains plentiful and the relatives reasonably accommodating it will spend the winter in the north enjoying such winter sports as skiing, skating, and square dancing, but not necessarily in that order.

The astute birdwatcher will always take careful note of a bird’s plumage and nowhere is it more careful to take note than in dealing with the North American red-legged pantaloon. The plumage of the male is particularly spectacular, consisting of a heavy black comb on its head, a black and white ruffled chest, the red legs for which the species is named, and dark blue wings. The female, by contrast, is somewhat plain in appearance, though this may change every one to three weeks due to its constant shopping excursions to the mall. Birders will note these excursions are usually done in large female groups without the male being present, a fact that has been documented by such eminent ornithological authorities as John James Audubon, Robert Stroud, and Dr. Heinrich Von Vogelwelt. It was Dr. Von Vogelwelt who first scientifically explained the male’s absence in his definitive study entitled On Birding (Hamburg: Weisskopf Verlag, 1954). Dr. Von Vogelwelt found that the male found its mate’s excursions irritating in the extreme, especially when he would rather be home watching football.

In order to catch sight of this most rare and elusive bird in its natural habitat the modern birdwatcher must equip him or herself with the most modern surveillance technology available since this very subtle bird is very hard to find in the wild and can only be spotted through a combination of cunning, diligence, hard work, and fifty dollar per photograph, sixty-five for twenty seconds of film or video exposure; rates are higher during the mating season and just before spring break.

The first thing a modern birdwatcher must get is a good stout pair of birdwatching shoes. In the good old days any old pair of boots might have sufficed but today’s birdwatchers must move forward with the times. Today’s modern bird-boot (that’s what we pros call it amongst ourselves—it’s sort of an inside joke, I guess) has two air pumps on either side of the boot, a marshmallow sole that the kiddies can cook up if they’re really hungry, and small pockets to store rolls of film, shotgun shells (not that you would actually use a shotgun to hunt the North American red-legged pantaloon. The red-legged pantaloon is, as a species, heavily protected by the United States government due to its testimony against certain very powerful organized crime figures in New York during the 1980’s.), cookies, ice cream cones, tea bags, bottles of dishwashing liquid, and the complete works of Charles Dickens. Some of these features may seem superfluous to the untrained eye, but each one has been approved by a blue ribbon panel of experts selected by the National Birdwatching Association to enhance the pleasure of your birdwatching experience. I have been assured that the ugly rumors flying around about shoe contracts with champion NBA birdwatchers are just that, ugly rumors and nothing more.

To further enhance the birdwatching experience today’s birdwatcher must have a good pair of binoculars and a good camera in order to catch those memories on the wing, so to speak. I apologize for that but we must all be permitted to have our little jokes now and then. It makes the day go by quicker, as we all know. I heard a great one last year at the National Birdwatcher’s Association annual conference in Las Vegas. It seems there were these two strippers and they met up with a priest, a minister, and a rabbi….

Well (sorry), be that as it may (I apologize), let us move on to the social habits (blush) of the North American red-legged pantaloon. The North American red-legged pantaloon is an extremely sociable bird and gathers together in groups called cities. Why cities was chosen as the collective noun for pantaloons is still something of a mystery and one that causes much debate and good natured controversy among birdwatchers. On occasion the debate gets out of hand, but only in a friendly way, as it did this past year at our Western bird watchers conference in Butte, Montana, but it was all in good fun and we are all happy that Reverend Smathers will be out of the hospital soon. But still, red-legged pantaloons gather in cities in the same way as geese gather in flocks, larks gather in exaltations, and crows gather in murders, although pantaloons have managed in recent years to avoid the horrific violence that has plagued the crow community in recent years.

There are few sights in nature as awe-inspiring as a city of North American red-legged pantaloons, especially during the courting and mating seasons. The male pantaloon begins his courtship by building his nest. The nest is usually made of small sticks and stones, and is held together by mud and a twenty-year mortgage from the local savings and loan company. Unindustrious males usually rent a place by the beach for the season. Such places generally cost small fortunes to rent and it is not surprising to see three or four males sharing a nest in order to split the rent. Having secured a place to bring a mate the male of the species will then proceed to find a mate, a task much easier said then done.

The male pantaloon begins his search for a mate with an instinctive cleaning ritual. The male will shower and shave and preen in front of a mirror before leaving the nest, sucking in his gut and then releasing it when the effort becomes too much to bear. Such displays are usually followed by quickly forgotten resolutions to get to the gym more often and to lay off the pepperoni and sausage pizzas. Once the cleaning ritual is completed, the male then goes out to actively search for a mate.

During the mating season, male red-legged pantaloons travel together in groups called fraternities. A fraternity will typically consist of a few senior males and then a group of younger subordinate males organized in a rigid pecking order by age; the youngest males usually serve as the butt of jokes as their attempts to find a mate are invariably crude and are hampered by their still living with their parents.

In the early evening the fraternities organize themselves into long lines called bars and wait for the females to pass by. Female pantaloons travel in pairs during the mating season, although at times groups as large as five or six females have been noted. The female pair typically consists of a young pullet that has never been in this place before and an older, more experienced hen that has seen it all before and is frankly not impressed with this year’s pickings. The females pass in front of the bars of males in a long circular procession called a parade. At the end of the bar, where the youngest males tend to congregate because they are too young to drink in most states, the females will circle back to the beginning of the bar communicating amongst themselves about the relatives strengths and weaknesses of the current crop of males. Scientists have noted a good deal of excitement on these returns, especially among the young females over the flashiest, best-looking males, and there is too often a willingness to mate on that basis alone. The older females, however, quickly put a stop to that. Although it is not an entirely foolproof system; accidents have happened here as they do everywhere else; the older females will as a rule turn the young ones from a flashy male towards a stable male with a good job and solid financial prospects. This ensures that the genetic base of the species remains stable and that the older females get first crack at the flashy males, who for some reason unknown to science seem to winter in France or Italy and tend to be named Rocco.

The courtship ritual takes the form of a series of gifts by which the male attempts to lead the female back to his nest. The first of these gifts is invariably something shiny, such as a bit of tinfoil or the wrapper off a piece of chewing gum, although the female will usually prefer something from Tiffany’s. The male locates such a gift and deposits it in front of the female, who will usually refuse to acknowledge the gift at all. This will cause the male intense anxiety and he will generally follow us the first gift with several others like nuts, berries, worms, real estate, or a report from a credit rating bureau declaring him financially solvent. Once convinced of a male’s genetic superiority and good finances the female will allow the male to groom her and to bring her to new feeding grounds, where the male will attempt to impress the female the female by tipping the waiter forty percent and by ordering the wine with the remnants of his high school French.

Having gotten the female to this stage the male will invariably boast of his good luck to other males in his fraternity. If the female hears of this, it will cause a rejection of the male when the two meet again. The male will generally attempt to explain his behavior in what more than one observer has described as an orgy of self-humiliation, wheedling, and generalized sniveling. This period does not show the male pantaloon to best advantage and even other males seem to regard this behavior as somewhat degrading. The sense of degradation notwithstanding, all males seeking mates go through this phase. If the female is not assuaged by this display of self-abnegation, the courtship ends and the male begins searching for a new female. If the female finds the display acceptable the pair go through a reconciliation ritual which involves a good deal of nonsexual physical conduct, tears, and communicating in what sound like the chirping of pantaloon chicks. Other members of the species regard this “baby talk” as both annoying and humorous.

The pair is regarded as having permanently bonded when the female moves into the male’s nest, an arrangement accepted as legitimate by most members of the species, although the female’s father will usually refer to is as “shacking up.” Comments about the purchase of dairy products and the availability of dairy cattle at bargain prices are generally made at this time, an attitude the elder male will hang on to until the birth of the first hatchling. This event is celebrated with pats on the back and the ritual smoking of bad cigars and a longing for the good old days when it was still possible to get a good Cuban cigar. After this point, the conversation tends to get maudlin. This is particularly true in those older males that nest in the eastern United States. This behavior generally manifests itself in teary discussions of the good old days and the incomparable virtues of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

In any case, I hope that this encourages those of you who wish to take up bird watching and given useful information to those of you who already follow the hobby. It is a great hobby, filled with great American virtues and is, I believe, one of the truly great ways of inculcating those virtues in the young. To my certain knowledge no young person who has taken up bird watching as a hobby has ever become a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States, gotten mixed up in drugs, illicit sex, weird music, the advertising business, or become a Democrat. Given these facts I feel confident in recommending bird watching to every patriotic American boy and girl, man and woman. Those persons who do not take up bird watching after reaching this point will have their names and addresses forwarded to the F. B. I. for further investigation. Remember, you have been warned.

THE RETURN OF THE NOSE: I have a fondness for the works of Nikolai Gogol, as you may have already guessed, and so this report about the Russian police finding the statue of The Nose is especially welcome news.

Police officials in St. Petersburg also report that my overcoat is still missing and that someone resembling for US president Bill Clinton has been seen buying dead souls in the provinces and mortgaging them for campaign contributions.

ENCOURAGED BY REPORTS OF PERUVIAN DOCTORS performing brain surgery with a power drill and pliers bought from a local hardware store, members of Carpenters Local 45 today began offering surgery at half price to poor people in the New York—New Jersey area. The local’s first patient was Mrs. Sylvia Grosbeck of the Bronx, who came into the union hall needing an emergency organ transplant. The carpenters replaced Mrs. Grosbeck’s diseased heart and liver with a two story split level ranch house in Scarsdale. “The mortgage was very reasonable, I thought,” Mrs. Grosbeck said after the operation. “And now we have a front yard for the grandchildren to play in. It’s a dream come true.”

SO YASSER ARAFAT IS HOLDING UP THE PEACE PARADE: I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED, MIND YOU, at this revelation.
Actually, I don’t see the point of negotiating with a man who has no intention of keeping his word and whose power derives from keeping the Palestinian pot boiling. Whether this is political stratagem or personal preference, I don’t know, but I do remember reading an article some time ago about Che Guevara and men of his revolutionary ilk, describing them as men who find the fires of revolution infinitely entrancing, but find the job of cleaning up the mess the next day a bit of a chore. I strongly suspect that Arafat likes being a revolutionary; it is so much more interesting to deal with the great issues of the Palestinian cause than it is to make sure the people in Gaza have jobs, picking up the trash in Jenin, or installing drainage systems to keep the sewers in Ramallah from running over. How utterly pedestrian governance must seem to Arafat when compared to the glories of revolution, and why should he submit himself to such a fate when he doesn’t have to?

A QUESTION OF IMPORTANCE: Do puns in American Sign Language count as sight gags?

BILLBOARD MAGAZINE ANNOUNCED TODAY that Saddam Hussein's latest tape, I'm Still in the Bag, Dad, has gone to the top of the Iraqi charts with a bullet. No word yet if the old Iraq'n'roll star intends to support his new release with a fall tour.

THE WICKED WITCH OF THE EAST: EXPLOITER OF THE MUNCHKIN PROLETARIAT OR CAPITALIST MARTYR?: It still amazes me that people like The Wizard of Oz. The notion that parents would allow their children to watch the assassination of the Wicked Witch of the East and then cheer about it is perverse in the extreme and should cause the child welfare authorities to remove the children from the clutches of these people immediately. It is now known beyond any possibility of dispute that the Lollipop Guild, then as now one of the most powerful and corrupt labor unions in Oz, had the Witch eliminated in order to prevent her from installing new Japanese lollipop technology that would have increased production at the Munchkinland lollipop plants several times over and ended organized crime’s hold on the Guild.

The Mafia’s control over the Lollipop Guild is a fact so well documented that I won’t bother going into the slimy details at this time. From control of the hiring halls to sabotaging new labor saving equipment to siphoning off funds from the Guild’s pension fund, the Mafia in the Emerald City has for years done everything in its power to keep the honest lollipop worker downtrodden while at the same time proclaiming its great and altogether hypocritical concern for the welfare of the workingmunchkin.

The mob’s tentacles reach everywhere in Munchkinland; one need only look at the quick and shoddy coroner’s inquest and the authorities’ near hysterical demand that Dorothy go down the yellow brick road and out of Munchinkinland in order to muddy the evidence and prevent any sort of official inquiry into the Witch’s death. It now seems entirely possible that the Mob conspired with Aunt Em, an old labor organizer for the Communist Party USA, and Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, to have the house dropped on the Witch of the East in order to preserve the Mob’s labor racket in Oz. Dorothy was the patsy of the piece, a naif to be handed over to Ozean authorities for flying houses under the influence in the event that plot did not succeed and the witch lived. In any case, this glorification of gangsters is not a fit subject for children and it speaks volumes about the vicious mindset of today’s Hollywood that they glorify this sort of outrageous criminality.

THIS JUST IN: Spanish police announced ten minutes ago that the bulls that gored three tourists today have confessed that they were part of a larger plot against the American fast food chains McDonalds and Burger King. The bulls maintained that they gored the three tourists in order to revolutionize the bovine masses and end the sale of the Big Mac and the Whopper in Europe.
Anti-globalization activist Jose Bove has announced that he played no part in this attack, although no one asked him if he was involved. Mr. Bove also denounced the designated hitter rule, the high price of tea in China, and the iceberg that sank the Titanic. He also announced that despite rumors to the contrary he is not the Walrus koo koo ka chew. In light of this attack on Western tourists, however, security experts are still looking for a possible link to Hamas and other Middle Eastern terrorist groups because if they didn’t they’d have to look for other work and not be able to say cool things like "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."

THREE GORED BY BULLS: Three men, two Americans and an Australian, were gored by bulls today in the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona made famous by Ernest Hemingway in his novel The Sun Also Rises. Security experts say that it is unknown at this point if the bulls had a connection to al-Qaeda, but there have been several reports from Spain recently about the possibility of antiglobalization activists making some attempt to stop the San Fermin festival. Spanish police are now questioning the bulls involved.

In a related story from Spain, animal rights activists ran nude in an attempt to bring attention to the cruel treatment of the bulls in Pamplona, thereby proving Mark Twain’s dictum that clothes make the man—naked people tend to have little or no influence on society.

LIBERAL LUST: I am not a psychologist, nor do I play one on TV, but I cannot help thinking that one of the reasons why liberals loathe Ann Coulter so much is that they secretly lust for her and know they can’t have her. Another is their assumption that only they get to use ad hominem attacks, character assassination, lies, smears, and other general political nastiness, while the folks on the right are supposed to sit there like the metaphorical bump on the log and take it. This is an assumption that no one’s obviously bothered to tell Ms. Coulter about; hence the screams of protest from the left. They don’t think she’s fighting fair. In a political knife fight it helps to have people who enjoy political knife fighting on your side, and on the evidence of her books, columns, and television appearances I’d say Ms. Coulter enjoys political knife fighting.

GIRAFFES: Giraffes do not have vocal cords, which, given that they seldom have anything very interesting to say, is probably just as well. This factoid also comes to you courtesy of Snapple, whose mint iced tea is one of the wonders of the modern age, but I must report that I have been unable to substantiate the claim that mosquitoes have 47 teeth made in the previous post. I have been checking and I have found nothing which corroborates this information.

SNAPPLE: According to the bottle cap on my Snapple mint iced tea, pigs can get sunburned, mosquitoes have forty seven teeth, and it takes ten calories to lick a postage stamp. Bottle caps are much more educational than they used to be. I'm still debating whether this is a good or bad thing.

KILLING KRUGER WITH YOUR MOUTH: I like the President, I even voted for him, which is more than I did for his father, but he at times he does things I find intensely annoying. His recent “bring them on” challenge to the fedayeen in Iraq is one of these things. I imagine he and his advisors think it makes him sound tough, but when I hear him say these things what I hear is a Yale frat boy trying to prove his manhood using the lives of other men’s sons. Someone in the Pentagon or in Congress should tell the President that Central Command’s mission is difficult enough without the Commander in Chief trying to display his cojones and inviting our enemies to take potshots at our troops. The men in Iraq do not have squadrons of Secret Service agents protecting each and every one of them; the President should remember that he is probably the heavily guarded person on this planet, and that it is easy to issue challenges to Iraqi nut jobs when you do not have to bear the consequences of your challenges.

Giant Sea Creature Baffles Chilean Scientists
Tue Jul 1, 3:05 PM ET

SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) - Chilean scientists were baffled on Tuesday by a huge, gelatinous sea creature found washed up on the southern Pacific coast and were seeking international help identifying the mystery specimen.
Photographs showed a round leathery substance like a mammoth jelly fish, about as long as a school bus.The Chilean Navy first spotted the mystery specimen along with another large mass, but the other dead animal turned out to be a dead humpback whale.


Has anyone seen Bill Clinton or Monica Lewinsky recently? And why does Hillary look so happy these days?

Yeah, I know; it's a cheap shot, a very cheap shot...this is why we love it so.....

AT SOME POINT, God willing and the river dont rise, I will have my links and comments and the whole nine yards up on this blog...if, of course, I remember how to do links and comments and such; I've lost the instruction book I made up to get me through these times of blogging trial.

1954 was not a good year for France. The war in Vietnam ended with the humiliating defeat at Dien Bien Phu, the Algerian War of Independence began, and the government of Pierre Mendes-France fell, although it must be pointed out that the governments of the Fourth Republic fell with such astonishing rapidity that falling was their salient characteristic. French governments became so good at falling that three of them signed contracts with Ringling Bros. to take the falling act on the road with Neil Moriarity at the wheel. In addition to these catastrophes, or perhaps because of them; causation is difficult to ascribe in a field as complicated as politics; Victor Biaka’bodo, a representative of the Ivory Coast to the French National Assembly, went home to his native district to do some electioneering and was promptly hit over the head and eaten by his constituents. The details of this astounding success in the French mission civilatrice can be found in the first edition of that trustworthy tome, The People’s Almanac.

However, it is not our intention to bring up this moment of Franco-African gastropolitical history to elicit a cheap chuckle or even a Twizzler, although that would be almost too easy to do, but rather to ask why so few politicians are, in fact, eaten by their constituents. Politicians are a cheap and readily available source of protein and several B-complex vitamins, but are not, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, a significant source of iron or dietary fiber. Taking a multiculturalist every day along with a glass of buttermilk and a handful of casino chips will compensate for this nutritional shortcoming.

Politicians are best used in dishes where they can be stuffed with meat and vegetables; they make excellent ravioli or pirogi. The cook must soak the politician first in hot water and remove the ego, which takes up a good 90% of the average sized politician and also serves as a vestigal spine, and then stuff them quickly before their lawyers catch wind of what you’re up to. Once stuffed, a politician easily becomes a statesman and then leftovers that can last from Thanksgiving to Presidents Day. A word of warning: American politicians may be genetically modified and are, more often than not, filled with preservatives in the form of hair spray and campaign contributions. Bon appetit!