...and a Happy New Year to you all, from all of us, which in reality means just me, here at The Passing Parade...

BUTT ENOUGH about such trivial concerns. Seagulls, indeed, what rot! Let us discuss Olympic farting contests instead. Farting contests, you say? Yes, indeed, farting contests. There were several farting events in the 1912 Olympics. There were the pairs farting, the hop, skip and fart, and a new event, the long fart. To win the long fart athletes had to stand in front of a candle and fart while the judges measured the length of the plume of fire that resulted and granted artistic points for shape and color of the flame. Serge Nikodemonovich Flatulov of Russia won the first gold medal for the long fart, but was later disqualified when the IOC discovered that he had been filling his large intestine almost to the breaking point with propane. Flatulov always denied any wrongdoing and spent years touring Russia with the gold medal he refused to return, giving demonstrations and encouraging Russian youth to take up the long fart. Flatulov’s end came in 1929 during a demonstration at the Bolshoi ballet's theater in Moscow, when he accidentally set fire to Stalin’s mustache, a prima ballerina, two children, and half the Politburo. Comrade Flatulov was immediately taken outside and shot, whereupon the unused propane in his large intestine exploded, killing the firing squad and a stray dog. The long fart was subsequently banned in the Soviet Union as a capitalist diversion unworthy of a socialist people.

AND I RAN: German firefighters saved A Flock of Seagulls from freezing to death at Munich's Olympic Stadium today. A spokesman for the 1980's technoglam band said that they ran, they ran so far away, they ran all night and day, but they couldn't get away, until the firefighters came and set them free. Afterwards, the Munich Fire Department insisted that they could not be reached for comment, as they all had to wang chung tonight.

WILL THE CORRECT RICHARD SIMMONS, RIP: I wish to report that the World Almanac for 2004 has killed off Richard Simmons. He is firmly ensconced in the Entertainment Personalities of the Past, being wedged between Alistair Sim, the greatest Scrooge of all, who died in 1976, and the great Nina Simone, who passed away this year. I am sure that we are all sad to hear of Mr Simmon's premature passing, as is, no doubt, Mr Simmons, since he isn't dead yet. The World Almanac has confused the Sultan of Sweating with the Oldies with the actor of the same name who played Sgt Preston of the Mounties on TV back in the Fifties. One trusts that this error will be rectified in future editons.

MY APOLOGIES: This past week I've had the flu and blogging has been the furthest thing from my mind. I've spent most of the week, in fact, laying on my back thinking about breathing, which is something most people dont spend enough time thinking about. Breathing is a fun thing to do, especially when you dont have the flu and you just do it, as opposed to when you have the flu, when your chest cavity decides you've spent entirely too much time worrying about other parts of your body and now you're gonna pay for it, asshole.

A FAIR TRIAL?: Of course Saddam should get a fair trial. His rights should be protected and his sentence subject to appeal, and after that we hang him publicly. The hangman should be an Iraqi, and the position of hangman should be filled by national lottery, so that everyone will get a chance at the lousy bastard. If the Iraqi government is serious about paying its debts, it should sell the lottery tickets; they'd make a fortune, especially if they allowed block buying of tickets.

MCCAIN-FEINGOLD, or the Incumbency in Perpetuity Act

1791: Bill of Rights adopted, including this bit:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

1976: Buckley v. Valeo: The United States Supreme Court says that campaign contributions are free speech.

2003: McConnell v. Federal Election Commission: The United States Supreme Court upholds those parts of the McCain-Feingold Act that prevent organizations from making known their political views or what candidates they support in the weeks leading up to an election.

Freedom of speech, folks; well, it was just a fad, anyway.

JUST WONDERING: I realize that there are more important things for me to worry about, of course, but this has been nagging me for a while and I am going to take this opportunity to get it off my chest. There is just something, I don’t know what, about People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive feature that makes me wonder. My bone of contention is this: how can the sexiest man alive be different from one year to the next? If the honor bestowed was called the Sexiest Man of the Year I could understand the passing parade [notice how cleverly I worked that in] of celebrity hunks that grace People’s cover, but presumably the sexiest man alive remains that way until he is dead, whereupon he is replaced by some other person. The operative word in this honorific is alive, which keeps the competition to the quick and eliminates the chances of such historical studs as Casanova, Julius Caesar, and Jimmy Carter. But there can hardly be competition among the living for this title since whoever had it first, assuming he is still alive, is still the sexiest man alive, the title describing an absolute state in which the person involved is either experiencing the state in question or they are not experiencing the state in question, as one does when one goes to sleep while driving on the New Jersey Turnpike. Just as there are no not pregnant women ready to give birth, there can be only one sexiest man alive; the rest are fakes, poseurs, and charlatans, when they are not actually Charlie Sheen. People subscribers, the innocent victims of this outrageous fraud, should demand their money back forthwith.

IT'S A GUY THING: Paleontologists at the University of Leicester have found what may be the world’s oldest undeniably male organism. The fossil of a 425 million year old crustacean with a large penis was found this week preserved in a rock formation in Hertfordshire in England along with some beer bottles, half eaten buffalo wings, and a big sign saying ‘Red Sox Suck!’ Scientists are still exploring the scientific significance of the latter. A tube of toothpaste and a toilet were found nearby as well; the cap from the tube of toothpaste was missing and the toilet seat was up.

PANDATING GAME: Shuan Shaun, one of three female pandas at Mexico City's Chapultepec Zoo, is off to Japan looking for sex, thereby reversing the trend in sex tourism, which usually has Japanese men going to other countries looking to get some.

TRAMPLING: A Florida woman was trampled going into a Wal-Mart for a DVD player sale on the day after Thanksgiving. In my humble opinion, not enough women are trampled going into Wal-Mart; trampling should be encouraged, with door prizes and possibly cash bounties for the most energetic tramplers.

NO MORE WIRE HANGERS!: Maybe it's just me, but doesn't Michael Jackson's mugshot make him look an awful lot like Joan Crawford?