“Howl, howl, howl, howl!”

18 July 2010: In and Out of Bed with Zsa Zsa Gabor

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Before Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, celebrities who are celebrated for doing nothing well or worthwhile except to promote themselves as celebrities, there was Hungarian-born Zsa Zsa Gabor, former beauty queen, socialite and occasional actress who starred in such howlers as Queen of Outer Space and Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood. There’s news this morning that the 93-year-old lady was watching Jeopardy in bed last night with her 9th husband, Frederic Prinz von Anhalt, when the phone rang.  She reached for the phone, fell out of bed, and broke her hips and several other bones.  At her age, this is no joking matter.  But, unlike Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, Zsa Zsa Gabor is capable of laughing at herself.  According to the tabloids, she once claimed that she was a good housekeeper because every time she divorced, she kept the house.  I hope the lady recovers and mends quickly.

10 July 2010: Shapeshifting With Sarah Palin!

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Sarah Palin has done it again!  Although she was born in The Year of the Dragon (1964), she is not content being a mere Dragon Lady.  Through the years, she has, by her own account, been a barracuda on the basketball court, an attack dog on the campaign trail for the GOP, a pitbull with lipstick.  And now, in her latest television commercial, she wants to be identified as a feminist Ursus arctos horribilis, the grizzliest of the Mama Grizzlies.

Keith Olbermann has already pointed out  on MSNBC that grizzlies eat their own young.  To that, I’d like to add the following information which I found on the internet:  “Grizzlies are subject to fragmentation, a form of population segregation. Fragmentation causes inbreeding depression, which leads to a decrease in genetic variability in the grizzly bear species.  This decreases the fitness of the population for several reasons.  First, inbreeding forces competition with relatives, which decreases the evolutionary fitness of the species.  Secondly, the decrease in genetic variability causes an increased possibility that a lethal homozygous recessive trait may be expressed; this decreases the average litter size reproduced, indirectly decreasing the population.”

How Sarah Palin identifies with all this, I’m not sure.  But, wait.  At the end of her new television commercial, Sarah shapeshifts yet again.  “Look out Washington,” she warns, “cause there’s a whole stampede of pink elephants crossing the line, and the E.T.A. for them stampeding through is November 2, 2010.”

So what happens after November 2, 2010?  What specious subspecies is Sarah turning into next?

8 July 2019: Rachel Maddow Plays With Trucks And Guns!

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I watch The Rachel Maddow Show assiduously, not only because it’s the best-researched cable news program on the air, not only because Rachel is erudite and isn’t afraid to use big words or to indulge in her love of puns, but also because Rachel herself is one of the most joyous and gleeful political commentators on television today.  She was at her most joyous and gleeful this past Tuesday and Wednesday when her show was aired live from Afghanistan.  There she was in Kabul, striding shoulder-to-shoulder with our brave young soldiers, riding in armored trucks and playing with deadly weapons.  It’s a little boy’s dream come true!  And when she was shopping for a gift to bring back to her mother, Rachel showed no interest in the emeralds or other precious stones from the region which NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel was trying to show her. Instead, Rachel chose to buy her mother an ugly little carpet decorated with guns!  Engel looked astonished.  He said he has never seen anyone actually buying one of those carpets. Rachel is now on her way home back to the States. I’d love to see the look on her mother’s face when she sees that carpet.

2 July 2010: Loose Lips Sink Ships!

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According to The Washington Post, U.S. Marines are being warned to be wary of foreign beauties they might meet and mate while they are on shore leave in the Seychelles islands.  Pictures of Anna Chapman, the ravishing redhead who has been arrested recently as a Russian spy, are being circulated among the 3,000 sex-starved marines who have now been at sea almost seven months, as someone who might show undue interest in them, waiting for them to reveal vital information “when the moment is right.”   That’ll really get us screwed.  Okay, enough said about Pussy Galore.  What about the U.S. Marines who happen to be women? Or gay?  Pictures of which foreign male beauties should they be shown?  Soccer players from Brazil and the Netherlands?  Or maybe Ghana and Uruguay?  Wait, how about Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner?  They’re not human, are they?  Who knows what they’re hiding behind those smoldering eyes?  Or when they’ll sink their fangs into all our sweet and innocent shipmates?  Hmmmm.  For my money, “Give me Bela Lugosi or give me death!”  And my lips will be forever sealed.

27 June 2010: “Not tonight, Josephine!”

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If men with erectile dysfunction can reach for Viagra and/or Cialis to make sure they’re “ready when the moment is right,”  it’s only fair that women with libido difficulties should have a remedy of their own.  According to an article in The New York Times, relief is just around the corner.  Right now, the F.D.A. is vetting a drug called flibanserin.  It’s supposed to increase female sexual desire, but it could also cause dizziness and nausea.  Thus, coitus could be messy.  Girl Sees Boy, Girl Gets Boy, Girl Vomits on Boy.  Boy Runs To Loo To Take A Shower.  Girl Loses Boy.   Maybe that’s what happened to Napoleon long before he met his Waterloo.  “Not tonight, Josephine!”

25 June 2010: Wake Up, Little Sushi!

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Scientists at Ocean Alliance, a research and conservation group, recently released a report which shows that “sperm whales feeding even in the most remote reaches of Earth’s oceans have built up stunningly high levels of toxic and heavy metals  like cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium.”  Industry dumps these things into the oceans, the fish are contaminated, the whales eat the fish, and we’re eating the same things the whales are eating, perhaps eating the whales as well while we’re at it.  Ahhh, what waiters in fancy restaurants don’t tell us when we’re ordering “the catch of the day,” or when we’re being poisoned slowly at our favorite sushi bar.  Tell your kids there’s no point trying to find Nemo or the little mermaid. They’re dead.  And we will be, too, if we don’t wake up to what goes on in “the water planet.”  BP isn’t the only culprit here.

23 June 2010: The Place For Criminals

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I’m hooked on MSNBC, which bills itself as “The Place For Politics.”  But why is it that, whenever HARDBALL with Chris Matthews, COUNTDOWN with Keith Olbermann or THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW aren’t on the air after 10 PM at night, or on weekends, the programming inadvertently turns to something called LOCKUP, a prison documentary about hardened criminals?  Is this a portent of things to come in politics?  Is it just a matter of time before LOCKUP starts featuring senators and congressmen who ought to be in jail for defending oil companies because they get Big Payments from them?  Or for sexually  practising in private what they condemn sanctimoniously in public?  Or maybe just for sheer insufferable incivility towards the rightfully elected President and Commander-in-Chief of these United States?

19 June 2010: Women Beware Women!

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It boggles my mind how, in recent years at the University of Kansas, so many of the young women in my classes do not want to be identified as feminists.  They seem to want all the benefits, and actually take all the benefits for granted, but would rather not be identified with the cause, or the history of the struggle.  Back in the 60s and 70s, life seemed so much simpler when opposing forces like Germaine Greer and Phyllis Schlafly were at least civil with one another.  These days, temperate and well-mannered people in politics like Hillary Clinton, Claire McCaskill and Maxine Waters seem to be horribly outnumbered by the likes of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Sharron Angle, Sue Lowden, Liz Cheney, ad nauseam.  So can we blame young women today if they would rather not be identified with these shrieking shrews?  What hath feminism wrought?  Perhaps Jacobean playwright John Middleton said it best, back in 1657, in the title of his play, Women Beware Women.

17 June 2010: Big Porno?

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Now that BP has made Big Promises to make Big Payments (industry experts say the $20 billion in escrow will grow to $65 billion by the time this is all over), and now that BP has also provided some unintended comic relief by allowing Big People to laugh at the expense of “small people,” we all need to start filling up our gas-guzzling SUVs and RVs this summer at BP stations all over America, to make sure that BP stays solvent as a company, that it does not go into bankruptcy, that British Pensioners can continue to enjoy their cuppa as their American cousins cry all the way to the bank.  Drill, baby, drill.  Keep the oil coming.  Plug that hole.  Why does it all sound like Big Porno?

26 May 2010: “Plug the damn hole!”

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Says President Obama to BP.

Says the rabbit to the tree after Alice fell into Wonderland.

Says American cheese to Swiss cheese.

Says the flat tire to the garage mechanic.

Says the IRS to all the loopy tax laws.

Says the dike to the little Dutch boy.

Says the wounded gunman to the Mafia medic.

Says the unhappy stigmatist to God in heaven.

Says the dietician to the obese teenager.

Says the porn star to the dentist.

Says the Octogenarian Mom to her obstetrician.

Says the pharmacist to the leaky bottomless dancer.

Says a reformed Tiger Woods to another acquiescent cocktail waitress.

Says the priest to the altar boy.

Says the bishop to the priest.

Says the Pope to the bishop.

Says Who to the Pope?