THIS JUST IN: The world's oldest man has died in Japan at the age of 114. As he was, in fact, the world's oldest man, this news is not entirely unexpected.

SPAM ALERT: Hawaiians eat more Spam than anyone else in the United States, averaging 12 cans per person per year. The number of Hawaiian males lengthening their penises while sending money to Nigeria has increased as well.

MORE ZOOLOGICAL NEWS: HAVANA - A living example of an insectivore native to Cuba — but believed for years to extinct — has been found in the island's eastern mountains, a Cuban news agency reported.

The discovery of the male insect-eating mammal known as an almiqui (pronounced ahl-mee-KEE) raises hopes "that it will not wind up in the catalog of the irretrievable animals disappearing from the face of the Earth," Prensa Latina said in reporting the discovery.

Prensa Latina also reports that a species of carnivore thought to have gone extinct in 1989 still exists in eastern Cuba. The species, fidelicus tyrannicus communistum, has been located in the area around Havana. The carnivore is best known for its spectacular dominance displays. During these displays the dominant male kills other members of the species, usually in large numbers and for no real reason. The species can be identified by its long plume, which resembles a human male’s beard. [not terribly subtle today, are we?]

AMPHIBIAN NEWS: Frogs do not drink, nor do they smoke, earning them this year’s Passing Parade Award for most sanctimonious amphibian. Frogs used to be a much more outrageous species, but that was before they married and settled down and had the kids, Billy, 12, and Ann-Marie, who's just turned six. Amazing, isn’t it, how a mortgage and braces for the kids will turn a party animal into just another drudge hoping wearily to someday get out of the swamp he’s landed in.

MARSUPIAL ALERT: Adult male kangaroos are called boomers; adult female kangaroos are called flyers; young kangaroos of either sex are joeys. A group of kangaroos is called a mob. Just thought you might want to know.

ORDERS, GENTLEMEN, ORDERS: Canadian soldiers stationed in Afghanistan have been forbidden to have sex with local women. In order to facilitate the soldiers’ compliance with this order, all Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan have been issued condoms and told to stay away from the sheep as well. The Canadian Ministry of Defense also announced today that the number of suspected blonde Moldovan swineherds detained by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan has risen to 348 and that these suspects will be moved to Kabul as soon as there is space for them.

NOTHING REALLY: I really must stop using the passive voice so much. it's a bad habit and one I should break, like cracking my knuckles.

ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS: Today’s discovery of an underwater Stone Age city in the United Kingdom brings up the question of why so many civilizations built towns and cities underwater and whether or not placing said towns and cities underwater had a deleterious effect on these areas and their long-term use by human beings. Clearly, building cities underwater prevents their being attacked by invaders who cannot swim, but it also makes going to the bathroom a bit more problematic. The large numbers of flints make it clear that the Stone Age inhabitants understood the use of fire; they also understood that putting the dog sled up on concrete blocks made it harder for the repo man to get a hold of once they fell behind in their payments. In any case, most archaeologists believe that Paleolithic hunters threw these particular flints away as defective when they wouldn’t work underwater and the hunters could not get the company they’d bought them from to honor their lifetime guarantee on the flints. The hunters have sued and the case is expected to arrive in small claims court sometime in the next 25 years.

Greenpeace and the Sierra Club immediately blamed the underwater city on the United States and the Bush Administration, claiming that the administration’s refusal to ratify the Kyoto Accords were directly responsible for the city’s current overly humid conditions. When a reporter for the National Review pointed out that the city’s perpetual dampness predated the existence of the United States, the Greenpeace spokesman demanded to know who let the reporter into the press briefing and then denounced the reporter’s question as the worst kind of timeism and that the government could not escape its responsibility for this ecological disaster by conjuring up lame excuses. A spokesman for the Sierra Club said that he could not be reached. When it was pointed out that he had, in fact, been reached, the spokesman claimed to be Curly Howard from the Three Stooges and began to dance the funky chicken before taking out a slingshot and shooting several reporters with heated Kennedy half dollars. When police finally shot him down after a five-hour standoff, the spokesman claimed he was only stimulating the economy and demanded that he be mulched after he died.

A HEALTH TIP FOR UP AND COMING MESSIAHS: When walking on water, do not forget to wear your socks. They add traction and keep your feet warm.

JOHNNY CASH, RIP: But the one thing I've always wanted to know is this: Folsom Prison Blues is about a man who shoots a man in Reno "just to watch him die" and he is tortured by the freedom of the people on a train going down to San Antonio. Folsom Prison is in California, Reno is in northern Nevada, and San Antonio is in southern Texas. How is this song jurisdictionally, let alone geographically, possible?

CETACEANS, ETC. : While it is a cetacean, the killer whale is not really a whale at all; it is the largest of the dolphins: Flipper with an attitude problem.

DOMINO'S DELIVERS: Giovanni da Verrazano, the first European to breeze into New York Bay, was later killed and eaten raw by Indians in the Caribbean, instituting the first Italian take-out in North America.

9/11 THOUGHT: I wrote this two blogs ago, in January of 2002. I thought it was true then and I think it’s true now.

In the aftermath of the attacks on the United States, this quote comes to mind...

"War is upon us, none can deny it. It is not the choice of the Government of the United States, but of a faction; the Government was forced to accept the issue, or to submit to a degradation fatal and disgraceful to all the inhabitants. In accepting war, it should be 'pure and simple' as applied to belligerents. I would keep it so, till all traces of the war are effaced; til those who appealed to it are sick and tired of it, and come to the emblem of our nation, and sue for peace. I would not coax them, or even meet them half-way, but make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it."

William T. Sherman, letter to General H.W. Halleck, September 17, 1863, in William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of William T. Sherman, p.364

I found this while looking for Civil War information; it seems to me that Uncle Billy had the right idea. When fanatical nutjobs of any religious/social/political ilk realize that the price of harming Americans is their complete extermination, and that we will hunt them down anywhere in the world in order to destroy them, then we and the rest of the world will have little to fear from terrorism. As for the regimes that use these fanatical dupes as their catspaws, the example of Afghanistan and Panama should be held up and used as an example of what happens to states that cross us. The Saddam Husseins and Robert Mugabes of this world are not legitimate rulers; they are thugs whose power literally flows from the barrel of a gun. Our diplomats should quietly remind them that we have the biggest guns in town, and that on occasion we will topple some of the more egregious members of the thugocracy. These guys are big believers in job security, especially their own; letting them know that we can pink slip them whenever we want to will keep them quiet.

FOOD NEWS: The always trusty food pyramid, I am told, will soon go the way of all flesh, forced into an early retirement by bureaucrats who think the pyramid is too old for her job, and that she will be replaced by some other, younger shape. Attractive shapes from all over the country are converging on Hollywood, California in order to audition for the career-making roll in the hay. There is no word as yet who might be the nation’s new spokeshape for dietary planning, but from Wall Street rumors have been circulating that the food industry, with billions at steak and onions and maybe freedom fries on the side, is pinning its hoped on a lovely young dodecahedron from Chicago named Aurora Lopez, while industry giant Pepsi Cola is already planning to replace pop tart Brittany Spears with a Boolean five dimensional hypercube from St. Paul, Minnesota named Priscilla Jackson in order to appeal to younger consumers. The battle from the prize role has been intense and bitter, the Hollywood Reporter wrote in yesterday’s edition, with several shapes dropping out of the running after allegations of drug abuse and charges that they had appeared in pornographic films during the late 1990’s were made in the National Enquirer. Spokesmen for the shapes in question could not be reached for comment.

STATUS: Strange, isnt it, how once upon a time having your own car was a major status symbol, but nowadays having your own car is nothing and having your own parking space has status oozing from every socially conscious pore? The times, they are
a-changin.'

THE NOSES KNOWS: Reuters reports that customs officials in the Netherlands have intercepted several thousand baboon noses at Amsterdam’s Schiphol International Airport. The noses were granted asylum status prior to an actual determination of their immigration status. Several right wing Dutch groups have criticized the current government for allowing primate parts into the country, saying that that the current liberal policy will result in an immigrant population of unemployable primate parts living off the Dutch taxpayer and taking jobs that Dutch primates could do. In response to this allegation, Adrianus Cardinal Simonis, the Archbishop of Utrecht and Primate of the Netherlands, said that he had more than enough work to do as it is and didnt need or want more.

In what may be a related development here in the United States, thousands of American journalists’ noses have been removed from the buttocks of Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean and were last seen filling out voter registration forms in Barstow, California. There has been no word yet if the noses are taking up residence in that state or are simply running for governor. A spokesman for the noses said that most of the noses were out of joint and were hoping to get a hold of some of that new strain of Maui Wowie real soon.


UPDATE: After several rounds of intense negotiation with their former owners, representatives for the journalists and their noses announced today that the noses will return to work at the end of the week. It is not known as yet what concessions were made by both sides, but it is believed that the journalists have agreed to not write any further stories about Gov. Howard Dean simply because it's summer and they have nothing else to write about. It is also rumored that the journalists made significant concessions to their noses in matters of benefits, especially dental and vacation benefits. The full package will be released to the public next week so the noses' rank and file can vote on the particulars.

Asteroid May Hit Earth March 21, 2014
AFP
Sept. 2, 2003 — British astronomers monitoring near-Earth objects said Tuesday there was a slim chance that a newly-discovered asteroid could hit Earth in March 2014.
The large rock — known as 2003 QQ47 — has a mass of around 2.6 billion tons, and is around two-thirds of a mile wide.
The possible collision on March 21, 2014, has been classified as "an event meriting careful monitoring" on the Torino scale, which rates the chances of newly discovered asteroids and comets hitting the Earth.
On impact it would be travelling at 75,000 miles per hour.
But astronomers say the probability of such a collision was just one in 909,000, and while they could make an educated guess as to the day of impact, they could not reckon exactly where it would be.

The Internal Revenue Service wishes to remind bettors that monies earned from gambling are considered taxable income. Members of pools wagering on the asteroid’s time, speed, and place of impact must keep receipts of all bets made and that failure to pay income tax on winnings will be punished with the utmost rigor of the law.