Algorithmic Warmongering

Look, obviously, algorithmic-driven content and decision-making has done nothing but improve our lives since it’s been implemented. 

But goddammit, Google News, I need a better way to tell you I DO NOT GIVE TWO SHITS ABOUT A CHINESE SPY BALLOON STOP SUMMER OF THE SHARKING ME IN WINTER.

This... Is C-R-A-P.

Memo to the Washington Press Corps: GROW A PAIR.

What the fuck is "negotiating with myself", and how can you sit there and let it pass as an answer to a question, or even an excuse for getting out of answering a question?

I was sitting there, watching the year-end presidential news conference, and on top of the usual array of evasions, talking-point restatements, complete diversions into entirely unrelated topics, and half-assed jokes the press corps let Dubya use to get out of answering their questions, now Bush is proclaiming repeatedly that he refuses to "negotiate with himself" over Social Security.

How does anyone with even a remote understanding of journalism and its nature not just snap and revolt and start yelling at that point? What does it take to provoke these people into standing up for themselves? How many times do you have to get pissed on from the podium before you realize that maybe you should spend a little less time trying to one-up each other and spend a little more time not getting your balls handed to you time and time again by a trained monkey and his handlers?

"You're trying to get me to negotiate with myself." You know what "negotiating with myself" means? THINKING. It means the President is not going to think about the point you raised, consider the question you've asked, because the question you've asked might contradict the path he's chosen.

They call journalists "the fourth estate", which is appropriate, since "estate" is increasingly associated with CORPSES. I know why they do what they do, why they let this shit go, why they roll over and play the game. Because now that their parent companies are making money off of the news, the ability to provide the product is more important than the quality of the product. CNN can't be shut out. CBS can't be shut out. They're asking pussy questions and accepting non-answers to preserve their ability to ask pussy questions and accept non-answers in the future. Which is compeltely useless as news, but is great when you need to fill 24 hours a day with random, meaningless footage and government propaganda.

Oh, and to CNN's anchors and analysts: TAKING TOUGH QUESTIONS is not a virtue when you don't have to answer them. You can be asked all the tough questions that you want, and when there's no penalty for dodging them, no penalty for answering a completely different question nobody asked, no penalty for providing an answer that's inadequate, inaccurate, ridiculous, or an outright lie, "tough questions" becomes an oxymoron.

Beyond that, an hour-long news conference, in which the first fifteen minutes are spent reading a prepared speech, is not "exhaustive". Stop lowering the fucking bar. If spending 45 minutes answering questions, something Dubya does only a couple of times a year anyway, is "exhaustive", then maybe there's something wrong with the person in charge. If it takes that much effort to fire up the old neurons and send the result to his lie-hole, he cannot do the fucking job. Which we knew anyway, didn't we.

And another thing. Why has nobody reported Bush learning a new word? He whipped out "complex" three or four times in a short space yesterday, and only screwed it up once, using "complicated" instead before correcting himself. This is big, big news! Now, when people say Bush is incapable of understanding "complex situations", at least the right can now counter that he knows what both those words mean.

In any proper world, a performance like yesterday's should have damn near sparked a bum-rush of the stage. Riots in the newsrooms. Loud demands for follow-up questions, instead of allowing Bush to smack you around with his down-homey "wit" every time you dare consider asking more than one question of the guy who thinks he runs the country. No matter how much you pretend otherwise, that is supposed to be your fucking job.

Thirty years ago, the press took down a president who was grossly abusing his power. Five years ago, you got used as a tool to try to take down another president for getting his dick sucked. And now, you're just getting used. Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does seem to make a fabulous substitute for self-respect.

It's been a while since I've mentioned Lisa Wright, hasn't it? But she's STILL DUMB.

Precis for new readers - Lisa Wright is a morning DJ on a Minneapolis 80's radio station. The one I wake up to in the morning. Because Minneapolis Radio sucks, because news and classical don't wake me up, and because hideous beeping noises wake me up with so much excess hate and rage that I'd have to start a second website. LIsa Wright is also an idiot.

This morning, Lisa Wright was discussing Barbara Walters' most fascinating people of 2004. Of which there were ten, but only four were discussed on the radio - Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump, Paris Hilton, and the super-secret #1 pick. Wright then proceeded to embarass herself more than usual. First, by making fun of Barbara Walters accent slash speech impediment, calling her "Baba Wawa". Which, as a comedy touchstone, is five years too old for an 80's RETRO STATION. Whatever hole she pulled that out of was covered with a thick stone block with warnings of a curse carved into it. I know you can't qualify as a morning DJ without the uncanny ability to fail at every single joke they attempt, but, BABA FUCKING WAWA?

Then she proceeded to make fun of Trump's new fiancee as a golddigger while simultaneously saying she'd do the same thing, proving once again that Lisa Wright is to feminism what strychnine is to cuisine. But then it was time to "reveal" Walters' already-revealed #1 pick, Karl Rove, and Wright was SHOCKED.

"I thought it would be Britney Spears, or Barry Bonds."* Yes, Lisa. How could the guy who masterminded the last two presidential elections be more fascinating than the woman who had "Toxic" written for her? Britney and Barry are both famous this year for one reason - sticking things in 'em that they shouldn't have. And despite Paris Hilton's inclusion on Walters' list, that does NOT in fact make someone "fascinating".

---

It's gotta suck to be Donald Rumsfeld right now. Publicly shamed and embarassed by a grunt at a photo op, and having to put a brave face on it for at least four days until everyone, including the media, forgets who Sgt. Thomas Wilson Is and the government can safely toss him into Gitmo and stick electrodes to his scrotum.

But until that sweet, sweet day comes, again, next Tuesday or Wednesday, Rumsfeld's gotta suck it up and say nice things about how "healthy" it is for the troops to question him about why they're digging through junkyards for scrap-metal armor. He's gotta smile and be nice and talk about improving the problems. He's gotta live with his weak-ass answer about "the Army we have" being replayed ad infinitum, and hope that a whole bunch of people don't make the connection that he's the one responsible for the condition of the Army we have. And whatever he does, he has to make sure he doesn't say anything that sounds like a vaguely ominous threat of reprisals. It's ALPHA QUEBEC TANGO!

"I don't know what the facts are, but somebody is certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know." - Donald Rumsfeld, today. Oops. Reports that Rumsfeld found Wilson's lack of faith... disturbing were unconfirmed as of press time.

---

At the risk of sounding very 1998, America Online can continue to go fuck itself. Admittedly, they're not the blight on the Internet they were six, seven years ago, back when AOL was the major conduit for stupid fucks making it on to the Internet. Now you can barely exchange a packet over a network without it brushing up against some idiot's e-mailed Flash cartoon about a transvestite Republican penguin.

But running ads claiming to "make the Internet better"? Please. Animated emoticons do not make the Internet better. Taking all the porn out of it does not make the Internet better. Giving people anti-virus software doesn't make the Internet better. You'd think it might, but if it weren't for rampant viruses culling the herd by making their computers spontaneously combust, the net would have 30% more dipshits by weight than we do already. You don't take away a species' only natural predator without horrible environmental results.

On its home page, AOL has a link that people can click on. Clicking on this link runs software that checks the clicker's PC to tell this person if they have AOL installed ON THEIR OWN PC. Anyone who needs to be told this is not going to make the Internet better, no matter how many housewives stand on boardroom tables.

* All Lisa Wright quotes in You Are Dumb are, by necessity, rough approximations, as they are heard in the blurry, pre-morning haze and then written down 60-90 minutes later. The essential spirit is there, though. Those were the names.

Getting The Most Out Of Old Household Tools

Memo to George W. Bush, the entire Justice Department, Ed Gillespie, and Kimberly Parmer: FUCK YOU IN THE EAR-HOLE WITH A RUSTY AWL.

I know that sounds harsh now, but trust me, I have my reasons. And here these reasons are, in the very words of the potential earholefuckees themselves:

"My opponent has no plan, no vision, just a long list of complaints. But a Monday morning quarterback has never led any team to victory." - George W. Bush. Fuck you in the ear-hole with a rusty awl*. Happening to mention that you've fucked up is not Monday morning quarterbacking. War is not a sport. Three hundred and seventy tons of explosives is not the ball between Bill Buckner's legs. People like John Kerry HAVE to keep pointing out that you've fucked up, because you keep fucking up, and you won't admit it.

Plus, you imbecile, you only "Monday Morning Quarterback" the LOSERS from Sunday. There'd be no second guessing if the people in charge had gotten their first guess right. Perhaps, someday, you will know what a job done properly looks like, so that you will be able to recognize it and distinguish it from everything else you've ever done ever, but until then, just trust me. And try not to hand over any more huge quantities of explosives to our enemies between now and January 20, OK?

"Many Democrats in this country do not recognise their party anymore. Today, I want to speak to every one of them: if you believe that America should lead with strength and purpose and confidence in our ideals, I would be honoured to have your support." - Mr. President, you have two ears. I would explain to you that the reason Democrats don't recognize their own party anymore is because all the Democrats are TRYING TO BE LIKE YOU, but the metaphorical awls keep getting in the way. Plus, you're an idiot.

"This administration has made it clear from the outset that members of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups do not necessarily enjoy the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Al Qaeda members and other foreign terrorists in Iraq illegally would not be entitled to the Geneva Convention protections. That's consistent with our opinion on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan." - An unnamed senior Justice Department official. Fuck you in the earholes with a rusty awl, the lot of you, and a second bonus awl for your Imperious Leader Ashcroft.

Go back to covering up stone titties and arresting Tommy Chong, why don't you? You want to take prisoners, ship them off to other countries, hide them from the world, and we're supposed to take your word that it's OK 'cause you say they're terrorists? You lost an election to a rotting corpse. You have less credibility than the kind of lying bastard governments the Geneva Convention was designed to thwart. I hope you get the first pink slip handed out on January 21. Maybe you can sell it on eBay as a collectible.

"Look, the Republican candidate will never win the contest for editorial board endorsements. The major dailies across the country tend to skew liberal." - RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie. Fuck you. Guess where. Guess with what. And guess how many rusty awls we're going to have to scrounge up for all the fucks in the media who let you come on their shows and say things like this, which are demonstrably and patently FALSE.

You know how many times the Republican candidate won the contest for editorial board endorsements? Thirteen. You know how many times they've lost? Two, plus, it seems, the current one. You know who won the contest in 2000? BUSH. The statistics only go back to 1940, so while we can set a lower boundary on how big a lying, fuckwit monkeybrain Ed Gillespie is, we cannot set an upper limit. Plus, there's six days to go. That's plenty of time for ol' Ed to rack up his retardo quotient.

"If you actually look at him, and he stands up next to Kerry, you just kind of feel sorry for him. I feel he's more of an underdog, he's had a hard go of it in the last four years." - Kimberly Parmer, of Michigan, quoted in the New York Times about why, despite being an "undecided voter", she may end up voting for Bush. EARHOLES! AWLS! RUSTY! NOW! In fact, I'd like to get a team of surgeons to add approximately FIVE MORE EARS to you at various locations on your body. I'll tell you it's an extreme makeover or something. Because two rusty awls simply doesn't seem like enough earfucking for a sentence this stupid.

You do not support someone for Leader Of The Fucking Free World because you feel sorry for how badly he's doing the job. And frankly, the rest of us would appreciate it if you would not ruin things for the rest of us because of your inexplicable desire to give George W. Bush an electoral pity-fuck. If things go badly on Tuesday, it will be largely on the heads of the Kimberly Parmers of this country. Hooray for the rusty awl of democracy, which fucks us all in the ear-holes sooner or later.

*Metaphorically, of course.

Allegedly

Fuck politics.

At least for one more day. Sure, there's stuff I'd like to touch on, like all the things you didn't hear from Kerry-Edwards in the debates, or how ludicrous it is that The Bulge is getting more traction than, say, war crimes... but for this week, at least, fuck politics. And speaking of fuck-politics...

Memo to Bill O'Reilly: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ALLEGEDLY HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ALLEGEDLY HA.

Oh please, oh please, oh please, let it all be true. Let this be the Bill O'Reilly legacy. Let him be the new Marv Albert, the new punchline, for the next decade. It would be a thing of such beauty in a cold, cruel world. So please, let it be true.

Because for a guy who purports to spend so much of his time in a "no-spin zone", Bill O'Reilly sure is allegedly one twisted little fuckmonkey.

In case you haven't heard the story, O'Reilly is being sued by Andrea Mackris, a producer on his show. Her lawsuit alleges that O'Reilly is allegedly a vibrator-obsessed, phone-sex-obsessed, philandering ape who allegedly forces all kinds of nasty, creepy, unwanted advances on his female subordinates, and allegedly called this particular producer on the phone three separate times while "tapping his microphone", as it were. Allegedly.

The details of the alleged allegations, as seen on The Smoking Gun, paint an allegedly horrifying picture of a middle-aged, rich asshole who allegedly acted like a non-stop horn-monster around the producer and her friends while, at the same time, exhibiting alleged behavior that really makes you question Bill's alleged sanity. Not to mention his alleged intelligence. The classic, choice bit that will go down in alleged history is excerpted here from the complaint in a new segment I like to call ALLEGED QUOTE TIME!

"You would basically be in the shower and then I would come in and I'd join you...and I would take that little loofa thing... it's one of those mitts those loofa mitts you know, so I got my hands in it ... and I would put it around front, kinda' rub your tummy a little bit with it... and then I would take the other hand with the falafel (sic) thing and I'd put it on your pussy..."- Alleged Bill O' Reilly *

First of all, "falafel"? FALAFEL? Second of all, I have it on very good authority that the only thing that happens when you use EITHER a loofa OR falafel on a human clitoris is that you get your fucking arm snapped off at the wrist. What next? Does O'Reilly have a dildo made out of pumice? Or, perhaps, hummus? Never trust a man who confuses exfoliants, chickpeas, and sexual aids. It'll only hurt you in the end.

You know who's gotta be having the time of his life right now? Al Franken. How must it feel to have pissed someone off SO much that he allegedly drops your name right in the middle of a series of allegedly creepy, sexual-harassing dinner conversations? That when Bill O'Reilly allegedly needs an alleged analogy for any woman who crosses him, he allegedly goes immediately to "Look at Al Franken, one day he's going to get a knock on his door and life as he's known it will change forever. That day will happen, trust me." That's gotta feel fucking incredible, to know that you've gotten so far under Bill O'Reilly's skin that even while he's trying to allegedly get into a subordinate's pants, he still has time for an elaborate power-trip revenge fantasy** about you. Al, you are the MAN.

There's even a bit that, if the allegations are true, may actually qualify Bill O'Reilly as the most allegedly selfish human being on the planet. Because, you know, it takes a certain kind of selfishness to allegedly call up your subordinate and allegedly whack off while you're on the phone with her. It takes an extra special kind of selfishness to allegedly do it AGAIN. It takes a rare kind of selfishness indeed to allegedly do it a THIRD time, allegedly using a vibrator on yourself. But only the most selfish man in the universe would, after allegedly masturbating for the third time, with a vibrator, allegedly on the phone with your subordinate (who's not allegedly cooperating in any way), to allegedly then brag about your recent performance on the "Tonight Show". Because first, when it comes to "pillow talk", that's just allegedly deeply fucking tacky and egotistical. And second, who gives an alleged shit if Jay Leno allegedly thinks your so damn funny?

This whole thing, of course, will get ugly before it's over. O'Reilly's already countersued, calling Mackris an extortionist and a politically-motivated career saboteur. He has plenty of media outlets with which to make his case. And these things never go smoothly. But I'm inclined to believe Mackris for two main reasons. First, some of the details, like the loofa, and the falafel, and the Franken, are just too completely off-the-wall and insane to be the products of a fabricated scheme. And second, I want it to be true so bad it almost hurts. Let's all keep our alleged fingers crossed.

*There's a lot more to this bit, but I've snipped it down to the comedically relevant parts. You really should check out the full complaint online, though. Even if it turns out not to be true, it's a great read.

**Allegedly.

Repulse, Reuse, Recycle

Fuck politics.

Just so you know, Sinclair Broadcasting ordered me to pre-empt the column next Thursday with a column written by George W. Bush called "JOHN KENNEDY ER KERRY SHORE IS STOOPID", but after the first paragraph, it trails off for about seven minutes worth of blank space, and thus screws up the formatting of the site, so I can't. Sorry, Sinclair!

Instead, I will use this space for its intended public-service purpose, issuing memos like this to people like frigging Heloise The Hint Lady: YOU ARE DUMB.

If there's a fraternity, a bond amongst columnists*, then nobody's tried to get me drunk and brand my ass yet. So either there isn't one, or they haven't invited me. And either way, that means there's nothing stopping me from taking shots at "Heloise", or whatever corporate cube-drone actually fills up her six column inches five days a week. Next to the horoscope people, Heloise has the cushiest job on the planet.

You all know Heloise. She's the one that gives helpful household hints, for sufficiently loose values of "helpful", "household", and "hints". She is, like many who've appeared in this space before her, the product of a simpler time. A time when there were only a few dozen different tools and gadgets, a handful of different foods to eat, and three kinds of soap. Yes, three. One for the skin, one for the dishes, and one for the clothes. Those three soaps, plus bleach, cleaned everything on the planet at one point.

Plus, if you needed something, you couldn't just pop over to Target and get it. There was a whole rigmarole involved, with parasols, and waving, and traveling into the big city, and whatnot. In times like those, Heloise was like a matronly Macgyver, repurposing mop handles and providing the chemical equations to turn leftover casserole and a nine-volt battery into a silver de-tarnisher. She was the Anarchist's Cookbook in a sun-dress, if you will.

But today, the Heloise empire is a mere shadow of its former self, the victim of the home products industry, where every single chemical that can remove every single stain known to man has been impregnated into its own little disposable cloth on a re-usable stick and stuck on the shelves of the nearest Wal-Mart. You think Macgyver would manufacture a three-ring binder out of stray planks and bits of ductwork if he were standing in the middle of OfficeMax? He would not.

So five days a week, Heloise's column is filled with three classes of "question". Class One is "Can you reprint Hint X?". This, assuming they have a decent record keeping system, is about five minutes worth of work. Class Two is: "I have this stupid and obvious hint that I would like you to convey to your readership!" Which takes no more than ten minutes to retype if it came in hardcopy, plus ten seconds to type some variant of "That sounds great!" after it.

Here are some examples of Class Two questions from this week alone, edited down to their essentials because these people write like they're filling out a patent form for "means of organizing small metal objects using a leftover egg carton".

• "By having a paper shredder handy when I open my mail, I can easily shred my junk mail!"
• "I keep spare makeup bottle caps because sometimes I break the caps on my makeup bottles!"
• "A ladle is useful for scooping things!"
• "Microwave ovens cook potatoes faster!"
• "Make croutons by cutting bread into cubes!"

If you are stunned by these incredible household revelations, then go right out, buy a couple of Heloise's books, and hit yourself in the head with them until the hurting stops. Thanks.

And then there's Class Three. The Horrible Food Hints. Venture into these hints at your own peril, for here you will find tales of unspeakable horror.

Like the woman who, needing bread crumbs for her meatloaf, made the startling conclusion that croutons, being somewhat breadlike, could be transformed into bread crumbs by the application of force. Retarded, yes, but not too terrifying, until you read on and learned that she was anxious to try a different bread crumb substitute her friend suggested: PULVERIZED CHEETOS. The reanimated corpse of James Beard is tracking her down even as we speak, revenge in his unbeating heart.

And watch out, Rachael Ray! Another helpful Heloise writer has a spaghetti meal so fast, it'll be cooked, eaten, digested, and shat out in well under 30 minutes. And all you need is a jar of spaghetti sauce and a packet of RAMEN NOODLES. Just throw away the seasoning packet, boil up the noodles, pour on the sauce, and PRESTO, you've got a vitamin-free, all-fat meal that'll make you vomit in no time!

It's one thing to get paid for printing the obvious. But to take money for printing culinary atrocities? That's shameful, evil, and DUMB. Of course, Heloise -is- reportedly from Texas...

*See how this noun is not spelled "B-L-O-G-G-E-R"? There's a reason for that, you know.

Rather Annoyed

Memo to CBS: YOU ARE DUMB. AND NOT HELPING.

How ridiculous is this going to get? CBS is duped by a fake memo, people are discrediting the entire story the memo supports despite claims that the memos were factually accurate and a mound of other supporting evidence, and everyone's pointing at Dan Rather like he's some kind of Satan-spawned minion of evil. This is the most trouble a journalist's been in since Robert Novak did the administration's evil bidding and exposed a CIA operative.

Oh, wait, that's right. Robert Novak NEVER GOT IN TROUBLE for doing the administration's evil bidding and exposing a CIA operative. Forget I said anything.

It's bad enough that CBS got duped by the forged memo. Despite what the right-wing bloggers would have you believe, it wasn't actually as simple as "hey, I can do this in Word!", as evidenced by the nearly two weeks people argued about it. The memos were fishy as hell, of course, because even the Freepers picked up on it quickly, but they were within the realm of possibility, and assuming CBS did its job, they'd know whether to trust them or not.

That's the problem, though. The hallowed halls where Walter Cronkite walked, where 60 Minutes brought down the mighty, are currently populated by modern-day journalists. And like any modern-day journalists, they have modern tools that replace asking questions, finding facts, and THINKING. They asked the guy who gave 'em the memos if they were real. He said he didn't know, but the person who gave them to HIM said they were real. And thus, CBS's job is complete.

Of course, it's not particularly fair to single out CBS for believing what they're told and repeating it. 95% of current journalists are doing that. The only difference is, CBS got caught. Well, actually, the only difference is, CBS got caught by the right-wing machine that can make something like this snowball with the help of a cowed press all too willing to turn on one of its own if it makes them look better to the administration. The administration that controls their access to repeat verbatim what the President says when he says it, a much-too-vital commodity in the current news market.

And now, of course, they're "probing" the "ties" between CBS and the Kerry campaign, which consisted of the guy with the memos asking the guys at CBS to have the guys at Kerry's campaign call him. I suppose we won't know for sure if there was a connection until, say, a campaign staffer and Kerry's lawyer have to resign over their connections to the people who lied. Then they'll REALLY be in trouble.

Oh, wait, that's right. It was the BUSH campaign that lost a campaign staffer and lawyer because of their connections to the people who lied, and beyond that, nobody really got in trouble. I don't know how I keep making these mistakes. It's almost as if my brain were struggling to resolve the cognitive dissonance caused by double standards so huge they trap small planetoids in their gravitational field.

Not to excuse CBS being retarded, of course. It would be better if CBS were not, in fact, frickin' idiots. What I love, though, are the suggestions that CBS was deliberately trying to help the Kerry campaign by lying about Bush. Man, do I hope that's not true. Because if it is, I'm never asking CBS to help me move. They'll break into my neighbor's apartment, take four of his things, break them, and deposit the pieces in the front yard of my new place. Then setting fire to three random buildings in my new neighborhood. That's the kind of "help" CBS offered the Kerry campaign.

Especially since, if a corporate news organization that's been kissing Bush's ass for the past three and a half FUCKING YEARS were to suddenly decide to actively help the Kerry campaign, all they'd have to do to accomplish it would be their JOBS. You wanna help the Kerry campaign? Then don't push forged memos onto 60 Minutes. Just report what's actually HAPPENING. That's damning enough.

But that doesn't happen, because we have apparently reached a point where reporting something negative about a Republican is, innately, a biased, political act, whether or not the negative thing is true. So if you report a negative thing, you have to have friends of whoever fucked up on the air right afterward to explain how this fuckup was actually a pretty flower. And don't think it'll get any better if Ol' Zombiehead gets in in November. The Democrats have seen how effective the Bush press manipulation tactics have been, and they're all set to use them when it's their turn.

So, what have we learned? Let's see. Bush was a pussy who couldn't even manage a few stinking years of cushy, stateside Guard service, and had to get out of about a third of his committment. But that doesn't matter, because someone typed up a fake document that said true things, and since CBS said it was real when it wasn't, Dan Rather is a pinko Commie who should be stabbed in the eyes with knitting needles. Also, we need to stop arguing about the Vietnam War, and who lied about it as recently as last week, and concentrate on more important issues, like how many different news outlets can use the "Oops, I Did It Again" joke for Britney Spears' second wedding.

Luckily, once CBS is investigated, gutted, and its staff sent to Guantanamo and replaced with vat-grown clones of Tucker Carlson, we'll all be safe from journalistic incompetence... forever.

Fun With Poll-Sucking

Memo, once again, to the general political audience and the means by which they receive information: 48% of you are DUMB, another 46% of you are DUMB, and six percent of you are undecided, but PROBABLY FUCKING DUMB.

Do we need eight polls a day? No, we do not. Do we need even ONE poll a day? Probably not. Do we need polls at all? Maybe. They were definitely useful at one point, but the hideous, misshapen monster they've become should probably be put out of its misery. Either by the army, or, barring that, angry villagers with pitchforks and torches.

It's not really the fault of the concept of polling, which is grounded in scientific research, has grown along with the development of statistics, and meticulously carried out by professionals with education and a deep understanding of what it is they're doing. A finely crafted poll is like an intricate detailed, hand-painted vase. The artistry is undeniably impeccable. The only problem is, the vase is made out of hardened shit and it's handed over to a caveman who proceeds to beat people over the head with his new shit-vase.

Polls are a service. Like any service in our capitalist society, polling is paid for. Therefore, polling must have a perceived value. So, to keep the money rolling in, that perceived value must be maintained. So the polling companies don't really like to let on the fact that, oh, their surveys don't include the opinions of people unwilling to waste half an hour of their lives answering questions over the phone. Which is an increasingly large percentage of the number of people they call.

Which means that if there's a significant difference between the opinions of people willing to provide their opinions, and the people unwilling to provide them, the polls are fucked. And since we'll never know what the opinions of non-opinion-givers ARE...

Then there's the hoops they have to go to to try to prove that the 500 people they called are representative of the population as a whole, which in the first place is fucking iffy at best, and in the second place, not the kind of thing you want the people selling you the poll to be determining. "Why yes, our poll is totally representative! Trust us!" Uh huh.

But let's assume, just for one moment, that everyone involved in a national political poll, from the person who first decides to have a poll, to the person that sells you the newspaper in which the results are printed, is a fucking saint on toast, with nothing but the purest of intentions and the kindest of hearts.

The pollsters take pains not only to make the best poll they can, but explain, in excruciating detail, all the various ways in which their poll's results could deviate from reality. The reporter writing the story does an excellent job of boiling down the salient points and explaining them simply to an audience unfamiliar with statistics. The editor of the paper positions the story appropriately given those caveats, and includes a tasteful, non-sensationalistic headline describing the latest poll. And the clerk at the SuperAmerica doesn't see the headline, point, and start chanting "FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS!" He just takes your money and lets you leave.

At that point, the newspaper will STILL be opened by John Q. Fuckwit, he'll skim the article, see "Latest poll has incumbent ahead by 3%, well-inside the five percent margin of error", walk to work, stand near the water-cooler or water-cooler equivalent, and say to his co-worker, "Man, did you see the paper today? The challenger is FUCKED.

At which point the co-worker, hearing that the challenger is fucked, decides that he probably has better things to do on November 2nd than to stand in line in some stinky apartment building lobby waiting for his chance to touch-screen vote (sans paper trail), and it doesn't matter anyway because there's no way Challenger can beat Incumbent, and then, that night, when he's called by another polling company trying to work up TOMORROW'S poll and sell it to the media, he hangs up on them, or tells them he's not gonna vote, or tells them he's "undecided".

Used to be that polls measured opinions, and those opinions were formed by things that WEREN'T OTHER POLLS. There were only a couple of polls, and a couple of pollsters, and a couple of networks, and there weren't three different top-of-the-hour stories on three different polls on three different 24-hour news channels. Now, the whole thing is the classic snake-biting-itself-on-the-ass scenario. Half-ass polls are trumpeted by an incompetent media which feeds them to an ignorant public who accepts them as holy, incontrovertible writ and uses them to make sure that come November 2nd, they can say they didn't vote for a LOSER. Hoo-fucking-ray.

Another Pleasant Valley Spastic Topic Monkey Friday

Some of you may wonder about the nature of Spastic Topic Monkey Fridays. Why on many occasions, your humble author feels the need to dump a big load of half-formed concepts unworthy of full column stature on an audience that just wanted a little diversion, a little comedy. All I can tell you is, to paraphrase the late, lionized-despite-beating-and-torturing-women Rick James, "Caffeine's a hell of a drug." I have a sort of Ike-Tina relationship with caffeine, one in which caffeine and I alternately play both roles, and that frequently results in physiological payback by Friday morning. Welcome to my braindump.

Memo to the dudes in the back of the bus: DUMB. AND LUCKY. Lucky I wasn't feeling particularly Socially Darwinian yesterday afternoon. Because if I had, I might have decided to pass along the epic quantities of information you provided on your drug-buying and dealing activities to the authorities. Just to punish you for being so indiscreet about it. I don't care what you do. I'm borderline libertarian when it comes to drugs. But at least act like it's a LITTLE illegal. Loudly discussing where you live, how to contact you, what you can hook people up with, is just DUMB. And bumming an Oxycontin off the white-trash mother of two who very obviously had already taken a couple was just fuckin' tacky.

I love public transit, really I do. But I just want to ride home, play some Game Boy, and sit in peace. I do not need to spend half an hour listening to the Blue Collar Comics re-enactment of "Traffic". Thank you.

Memo to John O'Neill: DUMBASS. First, you say that John Kerry was never in Cambodia because you were never in Cambodia, which is specious reasoning to begin with. Then, confronted with a tape of you telling Nixon "I was in Cambodia", you supposedly address the contradiction. By explaining that when you said "in Cambodia", you actually meant NOT IN CAMBODIA. Brilliant! I suppose it would be a bit crass to suggest that this whole mess depends on what your definition of "in" is? It's a good thing you're not President. And a Democrat. Not to defend Clinton, but his definition of "sexual relations" is almost exactly the same degree of prevarication that "served with John Kerry" is.

Memo to Dubya: FUCKHEAD. "I understand how Sen. Kerry feels - I've been attacked by 527s too." Take your rattlesnake sympathy and shove it up your ass. Has anyone actually bothered to ask Bush which 527 ads attacking him contain demonstrably false statements? Here's a hint. Being called a shitty President doesn't count. They're not naming specific advertisements they object to for reasons that should be blatantly obvious even to people stoned off their ass on Oxycontin, be they bus riders or talk radio hosts. If Bush were any more transparent, he could strap on a set of clear plastic boobs and play Sue Storm in the Fantastic Four movie.

And on a related note, let me just bitch, briefly, one more time, about the fucking media. Given everything we know now, historically, about the behavior of poiticians, especially Presidents, how in the hell could it POSSIBLY seem like a good idea to start taking them at their word? With the possible exception of Carter, every single President from Kennedy on up has been shown to have been lying out of their asses for nearly their entire terms. Both parties. Just a constant stream of truth-shading, manipulation of selective facts, out-and-out falsehoods, hiding information... it hasn't changed. It's still going on. It'll still go on after November no matter who we pick. That is the reason you are there.

You do not exist so that I can find out what George W. Bush said at 2:42 p.m. instead of waiting until 6:30. You do not exist to sit between two lying assholes and point from one to the other. You are here because if there are hundreds and thousands of people poking at stuff trying to find out as best as they can what is actually going on, the people in charge have to WORK HARDER AT LYING TO US. You're like copy protection on software. You'll never stop the lying. You're just there to make us hunt for cracks and serials on porn-laden pop-up sites if we want to steal the software. And right now, you can't even be bothered to do THAT much, because you suck so incredibly hard. Adobe knows better than to just put a question at the beginning of the install asking "Did you buy this software? Yes/No?", and computers haven't been around nearly as long as lying politicians. What's YOUR fucking excuse?

"Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2" opens today. Authorities have set up elaborate haz-mat "safe zones" around area theaters to prevent vulnerable individuals from coming within 200 feet of the movies. Vulnerable individuals are defined as anyone who has read a book 50 pages or longer in the past two years, anybody who remembers that PBS is on Channel 2, and anybody who can count to eight without taking off their shoes. Anyone wishing to enter the movie's area effect can bypass security checks with proof of purchase of any "Larry The Cable Guy" DVD.

The Spice Of Life Tastes Like Ass

Memo to the Star Tribune Variety Section: HOO-BOY, DUMBER THAN USUAL.

I don't have high expectations for any paper's "variety" section. It's like the Special Olympics of the newspaper. If they fill the news hole at all by the time they go to print, they get a hug and a cookie. But man, today's edition probably shouldn't have gotten the cookie.

But first, let me take a moment to awkwardly segue from the paper's Variety coverage to their Non-Special Regular Olympics coverage. So the U.S. basketball team loses a meaningless match to Puerto Rico that doesn't keep it out of any medal contention, plus this one runner who had a chance at 8 medals now has a chance at 7. Does this really justify, in 96-point bold headline, "DAY OF DEFEAT"? Isn't every day at the Olympics a day of defeat? I was watching one of them swimming races, and I could have sworn that of the eight guys swimming, SEVEN of them got defeated. That's a whole lot of defeat.

But anyway, the Variety section. Right off the bat, you're in trouble. The front page article - how to talk to your children about... politics. It gives handy advice like "Don't rant..." and "Help them get the facts," and "Don't demonize the other side." Which is great, if the article were "Talk To Your Kids About Government". But this is Politics. And politics is all about ranting, ignoring facts, and demonizing the other side. Teaching your kids about respectful discourse, respecting other points of view, and such is commendable, but at some point, you're going to have to stop putting quarters under their pillow.

It doesn't help that the article's author implies she had to use the Web to find the answer to "Mommy, what's a republic?". Way to inspire confidence in the readership right there.

On page two, right below some old fart bitching about new-fangled begadgetry, there's Heloise. I don't know if this is the same Heloise or a new Heloise, but today's useful hint is that wire baskets can be used to hold loose change. Tune in tomorrow, when Heloise recommends that a couple taking a trip to the desert that they don't need to buy an expensive "canteen" if they happen to have a spare colander in their kitchen. Nobody will read it, of course, because they can't buy a paper, because all their dimes are trapped in, amongst, and between the metal bits of a wire basket.

Just below that, we have an Ominous Portent of Doom. The Strib wants to hear your compelling stories about how your life changed after September 11, 2001. You know, I know we were all touched by that tragic day blah blah cue mournful music and soft-focus flag bullshit blah, but come on. It's Minnesota, and it's three years later. If anyone in Minnesota is still blathering on about their momentous life change caused by two buildings falling down, they do not deserve press coverage. From the timing, I bet this is going to appear on the third anniversary maudlin-fest, too. Hooray.

"Dear Abby" is harmless today, but I'd just like to state for the record that the new Dear Abby looks like the love child of Elvis and The Joker. Thank you. I'll be here all week. I'm here every week. There is no veal to try, I'm afraid, nor wait-staff to tip.

But it's the last page that really takes the cake. Entitled "Budget Living", it's full of the worst ways to "save money" in the history of the planet. Like a pair of $18 earrings shaped like cherries.To help you retain that summer feeling. No, I don't fucking get it either. Do cherry-shaped earrings usually retail for -more- than $18? If you're on a tight budget, maybe you should spend the $18 on REAL cherries. Plus, they're from a website, so I bet that $18 doesn't include shipping. Maybe it just seems like "budget living" compared to their other suggested purchase, the $300 plastic chair shaped like a pair of lips.

The main feature in Budget Living is... BACKYARD CAMPING. OK, that's fine. I get that. But first, they suggest starting a campfire in your own backyard. Yes, nothing makes the neighbors more calm and relaxed than a rising plume of smoke from the other side of the chain-link fence. And once you've got the roaring fire going, what better way to enjoy the evening than to... drag your TV and DVD player into the backyard with extension cords to simulate a drive-in movie!

It's just like being in your living room, only you're... outside, and bugs crawling in your DVD player, and smoke from your runaway backyard campfire is turning your TV into a surprisingly flavorful mesquite treat, and hey, was that thunder?

But let's assume, for the moment, that nothing will go horribly wrong when you drag your television into your backyard. What does the Strib recommend you watch? Teen classics! Meatballs! Little Darlings! Wet Hot American Summer!* WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER?! "Mommy, what are the two naked men doing in the tool shed?" "Um.., they're doing... exercises, honey." It's like some kind of elaborate practical joke played on the community by the staff writers. You can introduce your children to the wonders of anal sex**, right before lightning strikes your television and your house burns down. All while wearing your cherry earrings. Now THAT'S a Wet, Hot, Budget American Summer.

* This is the only disadvantage to YAD not being some kind of Flash-based multimedia cartoon. The column desperately needs that "needle being dragged suddenly across the record" sound right here, but all I can do is add this footnote.

*In retrospect, I probably should have considered rewriting this sentence to make it clear I mean via the scene in the movie where the two guys are screwing.

BAD CALL

Today, we inaugurate the latest in a seemingly endless string of Friday gimmicks designed to ease the tired brain of your weary columnist: BAD CALL FRIDAY. Where I go through and single out individuals in the world who have, perhaps, shown poor judgment, or made a... BAD CALL.

Like whoever lets Dubya out of his fucking cage and allows him to open his mouth. While signing into law the spending of four. Hundred. Billion. Dollars, ol' cottonmouth told Pentagon officials: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." This is the guy that gets to sign the four hundred billion dollar checks, folks.

It's not even a traditional Dubya fuckup! Look at the sentence... it's deliberately employing that politician-speak rhetorical device where rhythms are repeated. The ending with "and so are we" twice is a classic speech thing. It's just horrendously misapplied. A professional speechwriter would have caught that, which means a professional writer didn't script Bush's speech, which means they're letting him make up his own words. During an election year, no less. What were they thinking? Putting Bush in charge of his own mouth is always a... BAD CALL.

Moving to the other end of the political spectrum, we look at sex columnist Dan Savage. I like Dan Savage, I really do, but he's been doing this long enough to know not to submit a paragraph like the following, from this past Wednesday's column, to his editor:

"But there's always a catch: I've never actually seen an extremely beautiful goth girl myself--most of them seem to have weight problems, which has always struck me as strangely contradictory. From the neck up, the look cultivated by goth girls seems to say, 'Oh, we despair of this world and long for the sweet embrace of death!' From the neck down, their look seems to say, 'I'll take the bacon cheeseburger, two orders of fries, and a Diet Coke, please.'"

Dan, Dan, Dan. Why would you do this? Are you feeling tired? About to go on vacation? Trying to fill your next two columns with angry e-mails denouncing you for being an insensitive prick? You gotta know you're gonna get letters when you say something like that. You always get letters when you say something like that. I know this, and I -never- get letters.

Plus, fat jokes? Making fun of goth chicks for being fat is like making fun of Dubya for his receding hairline. It may be technically true in certain cases, but come on. That's not where you go. You make fun of goths for treating unhappiness like a lifestyle choice. You make fun of goths for being in front of you in line at Hot Topic when all you want is a goddamn Brak T-shirt. You make fun of goths for still thinking Trent Reznor had something to say. You make fun of goth nerds who do live-action vampire roleplaying and then tell you about everything that happened to their characters the next day. Making fun of goths for being overweight is just a... BAD CALL.

Of course, as bad calls go, you can't get much worse than Joe Brown, city council chairman, Memphis, Tennessee. Hey, look! It's Tennessee again! Didn't you just try to lynch an atheist a few days ago, Tennessee? You've got to pace yourself. At this rate, you'll be too stupided out to do anything retarded in November and December. You don't sprint during a marathon, son.

Joe Brown was in City Hall a few days ago when seven Iraqis came to visit. They had an appointment with a city councilman. They'd been brought in by the United States government, and were touring the country to learn how our form of government works. And, to be fair, they got an accurate picture from Joe Brown, who, in a triumph of local control over federal mandates, refused to let those damn dirty Iraqis in the building.

In fact, in a move that I think really exemplifies the concept of "Southern Hospitality", he threatened to evacuate the building and call the bomb squad if they set foot in City Hall, and said, "We don't know exactly what's going on. Who knows about the delegation, and has the FBI been informed? We must secure and protect all the employees in that building." It's ironic, really, that someone named Joe Brown would have an irrational fear and hatred of people who share the trait embodied by his OWN FUCKING LAST NAME.

And that, my friends, is why Memphis is famous for GRACEland. What better way to show graciousness and willingness to help the people we've allegedly liberated than to have a screaming, Anne Jacobsen-style panic fit when they come for a visit. Brown has since been forced to apologize, but even by the lower standards I set for Tennessee in general, I'm afraid Joe Brown made a.... BAD CALL.

Comedy Death Blossom

This doesn't even qualify as a Spastic Topic Monkey Friday. It's been a solid week, comedy flowing like sweet sweet wine, but I'm tired and spent. So here's a bunch of crap that's crossed my mind in the last 24 hours.

- I saw Joan Rivers on Graham Norton last night. I've decided, now that Bob Hope has finally passed on that Joan Rivers is the celebrity who should just fucking die already, please. Useless protoplasmic cyborg bitchsack. All she's done for the past two decades is provide surgeons with boats. She's had so much work done that she now looks like the Spitting Image puppet of herself. Wayland Flowers keeps putting his hand up her ass by MISTAKE. Skynet learned to make Terminators from her fucking X-Rays.

- A commercial claims that Joel Siegel claims that nobody watching the Manchurian Candidate will be able to exhale during the last 30 minutes of the film. I assume that's some sort of compliment. The movie is so good it turns your lungs into Bags Of Holding. You can inhale all you want, but you can't exhale. It's like Hotel California with oxygen molecules replacing Don Henley. Normally, I would be 100% behind any circumstance in which Don Henley is replaced by free-floating molecules of oxygen, but come on. Better pray for immortality, Siegel, because Pauline Kael is waiting in the afterlife with a spiked club and a long memory.

- Your Compassionate Conservatism Moment: "Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy, or go on Prozac?" Bush campaign assistant Susan Sheybani. Sheybani made the comment while transferring a phone call from a reporter asking about poor-quality jobs. The bad news is, she didn't think the reporter could hear her, and he could. The GOOD news is, he works for USA Today, and they needed someone to replace Ann Coulter with anyway. Thank you. I've been here all week. Try the veal. Next week on Leno, Ben Affleck.

I mean, come ON. How many times does the veil need to slip off before we realize under the flimsy fabric of "compassionate conservativism" are a whole bunch of greedy assholes who've gotten theirs and only pretend to give a shit about other people because it's good P.R.? The Democrats care about people's suffering*. All they pretend is that they can do something about it. It's part of their broader plan of pretending, in general, that they can do something.

- "Revenge Of The Sith". Yay. Here's my prediction. Over the next however many months before Episode III comes out, I will occasionally mention to my geek friends, nerd aquaintances, and probably within earshot of creepy stinky guys in comic shops, that I will not be bothering to see Episode III. I base this decision on Episode I being shit and Episode II being shittier. Dungfests. Craporama. Even discounting Jar-Jar. Even discounting Jimmy Smits infamous-only-to-me-and-people-around-me-a-couple-of-years-ago crocheted neck doily. I ain't going. And every single one of those people are going to tell me "But you GOTTA."

Why? Am I somehow not going to hear what happens in it? Will I be bereft entirely of Star Wars, at least in non-toy, non-videogame, non-three-minute-not-sucking-animated-shorts, non-napkin, non-shitty-Kevin-J-Anderson-novel form? Why do I gotta? No, screw that. I know why I don't gotta. Why do YOU gotta? Look within, young retardawan. Find that within yourself which blinds you to history and reason. Find it, and stab it in the gut with your mechanical pencil and leave it bleeding in the gutter. And then we'll go see Serenity again. You'll be happier. I'll be happier. We can hear about how that whiny pudpuller gets his black suit on the Internet in three minutes if you're that desperate to know.

- Fuck "bounce". For the rest of the campaign, if you hear anyone using the word "bounce" in regards to the election or polling, they are to be considered a fuckhead and not worthy of your attention or trust. Especially if they're predicting a bounce. Especially especially if they're comparing actual bounce to their prediction. Especially especially ESPECIALLY if they're comparing actual bounce to someone ELSE's predictions. It's bad enough that we have reports of meaningless, barely accurate polls every single day. Now, suddenly, it's a story when the numbers in these meaningless, barely accurate polls do not match up with politically-motivated predictions pulled out of the major-party asses?

Does nobody in the media evaluate ANYTHING? It's not as if the motivations behind "bounce prediction" are even remotely opaque. Political parties low-balling their own or high-balling their opponent's expectations is just noise. Everybody knows this. Five-year-olds can figure this out. Yet, seemingly, nobody is actually willing to make the decision that yes, this whole thing is bullshit, and we have an obligation, as journalists, to NOT SPREAD BULLSHIT.

Oh, wait, I'm hearing from Fox News that, counter to Karl Rove's predictions, John Kerry was not immediately carried off into Heaven to replace God Almighty Himself on his throne following his acceptance speech last night. That has to be a major blow for the Kerry campaign. Coming up next, Bush and a puppy!

* OK, Lieberman doesn't. But he's an ass.

Your Stinking PIehole And How To Use It

Before we begin, I'd like to officially call for a ten-year moratorium on the phrase "perp walk". Has there been, in recent history, a term that's arced from nonexistent to relevant to annoying to hateful to useless AND hateful in less time? There has not.

I mean, "perp" is bad enough when cops use it, but at least they're sort of... allowed to. They can have their own slang. But anybody else using "perp" just comes off as a wanker, and any wanker who knowingly appends "walk" is compounding their crime exponentially. Oooh, Ken Lay's in handcuffs, and he's WALKING. It's so gritty. Finally, real punishment for corporate crime, as if, at the finish line to this little display, there weren't four defense attorneys, a giant novelty bail check, and two personal assistants with a decaf latte and a warm towel waiting for Lay.

"Perp Walk" is the kind of phrase that makes today's weak-livered, low-fiber Journalist Substitutes cream themselves and make them think that the stuff they're watching and regurgitating is "news". Plus, at eight letters and two syllables, it's perfect for USA Today, and fits into a tight headline space than "pointless show of authority by the figurehead law enforcement departments who the Ken Lays of the world buy and sell eight times before breakfast". But hey. three minutes and 20 seconds of holding his hands behind his back oughta show him who's boss.

Having gotten What Not To Say out of the way, let us turn to What To Say. I think we need to kick this off early to get a head of steam going, so I think everyone needs to take, say fifteen seconds ouf of their day every day this week to say something bad about "I, Robot" in public.

Many of you should find this easy. While "I, Robot" is unlikely to be Garfield-bad or Catwoman-bad, it is still either really fucking dumb, or being advertised as such. And while I hold little hope that we can actually talk people out of going to see a Big Loud Movie where Will Smith makes quips and uses his Serious Face, we can at least maybe place some subliminal suggestions that might cause people to accidentally go see Spider-Man 2 a third time or something.

Let me provide some guidelines.

DO mention that the guy who wrote this movie wrote 'that shitty Batman movie. You know, the last one.'
DON'T mention that the guy who wrote this movie also wrote "A Beautiful Mind", because most of the people within earshot either kind of liked it or will just remember that it inexplicably won Oscars and forget about the INEXPLICABLY part.

DO mention that it's based on a whole bunch of long, boring books that only nerds read.*
DON'T add "You know. Like Lord of the Rings."
ALSO DON'T mention that they're totally fucking up the books because the books apparently don't have enough shattering glass in them. The only books people care about moviemakers not fucking up have that wizard kid in them. Applying that argument to any other book will cause them to dismiss you as a sexless pasty lump, and will likely make them want to see the movie more.

DON'T bring up Alex Proyas. The Proyas Gambit is far too risky, because there'sa significant group of people out there who normally could be trusted to not see I, Robot. However, every time you mention Proyas, their eyes glaze over, they lick their Dark City Special Edition DVD's, and they wont' come to their senses until the caterer credit rolls past. This is not a time for your steenking auteur theory.

You have five days. That's five different bad things, and I've already given you at least two. Go forth and deride, but try to be casual about it. More ninja, less mormon.

*This is one of those things where you don't send me angry e-mails filled with your deep and abiding love for the Three Laws.

The Fourth Estate: ON THE JOB

Memo to American journalism: YOU ARE DUMB.

We'll kick off with the New York Post, who went to press with the SCOOP OF THE YEAR. Front-page stuff. Exclusive. John Kerry has picked as his running mate... Richard Gephardt!

This scoop comes just hours ahead of the actual announcement of John Edwards as Kerry's running mate, a choice that, unlike Gephardt, saves John Kerry from being the subject of today's column. Gephardt would have been a shit choice for VP. We, as a country, have said "no" to Gephardt on at least three separate occasions. He's like a new stadium in Minnesota. He's only incrementally better than Tom Vilsack, who has an awful lawn-sign name. Edwards, while strictly a "best of a bad crop" choice, was it.

Except, of course, at the New York Post, bastion of accuracy and somber non-sensationalism. The Post is a very successful paper. So successful, in fact, that it can afford to send its best reporters through a dimensional rift to Earth-2, where they can produce such exceptional copy as "Edwards also could have been competitive in the south, and the choice of Gephardt could be a sign that Kerry is 'writing off' that region.", and "Edwards also lacked experience. He is a one-term senator whose lack of seasoning in foreign affairs could have made voters nervous about his ability to assume the presidency during a war or an international crisis. "

Obviously, the Post's reporters were misled by their many, numerous, named sources. The ones they must have had to cut from the article for um... space. Yeah. I just feel bad for the reporter who got this wrong. His career is ruined. He'll never live down that byline.... except, of course, there's NO BYLINE.

So a major piece of news gets printed in a major metropolitan newspaper with a huge circulation, with no byline, no sources, and no attribution, and oh, by the way, it just so happens that everything in it except for Dick Gephardt's biographical information is entirely wrong. The only silver lining to this cloud is that, since it was the New York Post, they won't actually lose any respect over this. That well came up dry years ago.

Luckily, our nation's press, in a bold attempt to atone for its past sins, has finally gotten around to reporting what many of us suspected over a year ago. The defining image of the early days of Gulf War II, the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein by jubilant Iraqis? Completely fucking staged by Army psych-ops staff.

Basically, the way it -actually- went down is some Marines got it in their heads to slap an American flag on the statue and pull it over. Psych-Ops (Psych, from the Greek "psychus", meaning "photo", decided that since they couldn't actually find the masses of jubilant Iraqis our leaders promised us were in the country, they'd better round up a couple dozen locals from nearby streets, and pack 'em into the square. Swap out the flag, get them to cheer for the cameras and look like it was THEIR idea to pull down the statue, and those nice Marines were just helping them out.

Shortly after the statue was toppled, there were pictures on the Internet of wide shots of Firdos Square, showing a few dozen people in the square with the Marines, and nobody else for a couple hundred feet. Funny those shots, or any possible questioning of this admittedly very photogenic footage, never got picked up on by our fine embedded press corpse... er, corps.

Even now, with the truth out, the story got buried over the holiday weekend. And the sum total of mea culpa expressed by the LA Times in its tiny story? I'd say it's ACTUAL QUOTE TIME, but by the time I'd finished typing the "Q", I could have said the whole quote, so here it is. "It was a Marine colonel - not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images - who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said."

See? It's YOUR FAULT, AMERICA. You just ASSUMED, because all these people showed you pictures of happy Iraqi civilians, and told you they were the ones toppling the statue, that it was them who toppled the statue. You suckers, going around assuming things just because they're in THE NEWS. The press did their job. They told you the Army was behind it, fourteen months later, after the Army publically admitted that they were behind it. Not their fault you fell for it. Now shut up and vote for Vice President Gephardt.

I Hate Morning In America

Memo to the media: HURRY UP.

Let's just get it over with quickly, since we can't escape it. After all, when Nixon died, all of a sudden he was some kind of great statesman, instead of the drunken racist filthy crook that all those pesky facts pointed to. So now Ronnie has finally kicked it, and I know you're all lining up to jerk off his corpse and display your Photoshopped soft-focus portraits with the waving flag behind them, but move through it as quickly as you can, because I just ate.

In one sense, it was like God thought this weekend was my birthday, because first Creed broke up, and then Reagan died. But if there's one thing Ronald Reagan and an Islamic militant have in common, it's that they were both of more use to me drooling in a house somewhere than actually dead, because death makes them martyrs.

I can't even imagine what kind of cathartic apotheosis must have been happening on Fox News this weekend. Unclean worship of Reagan is one of those freakish arch-conservative points of view that they've managed to mainstream to the point where if you don't love "The Gipper", you're a commie. Just ask CBS.

And that's another thing. Ronald Reagan wasn't the fucking Gipper. George Gipp was the fucking Gipper. How rude is that, anyway, to just up and assume the fucking persona of someone in the real world who you happened to play in a movie? I bet all those Young Republicans out there weeping in their Coors this morning would have a fucking embolism if James Brolin started calling himself the "Great Communicator".

Reagan was the reason my generation shit itself when they ran "The Day After". "The Day After" does not hold up well. It's not actually a particularly good movie. But with Ronnie and his fucking plastic hair running things, there was a palpable sense in the air that at any moment, he could have some kind of communist hallucination, or press the wrong button, and rain nuclear fire down upon us all.

I mean, we were terrified of STEVE FUCKING GUTTENBERG walking around on a soundstage full of the simulated styrofoam rubble of 80's civilization. How the hell can you deify the man most responsible for an entire nation being freaked out by STEVE GUTTENBERG? I mean, as bad as Iran-Contra was, as bad as the October Surprise was, as bad as Reaganomics was, that's the most chilling indictment of the Reagan years right there. We were so fucked up as a country under Reagan that Steve Guttenberg TV-movies were giving children legitimate nightmares.

Bet they don't mention THAT in any of the four thousand retrospectives you're gonna see in the next two months.

Luckily, unlike Reagan, the death of Creed has NO DOWNSIDE WHATSOEVER. So even while Dan Rather waxes poetic over slow-mo footage of that evil retard president (the dead one) smiling, we too can maybe smile, just a little. Because as horrible as the wor

Desperation Dinners

Memo to Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross: YOU ARE DUMB.

Or you think we are. Or you know we are. Or your editor at United Features Syndicate is. Or some combination of all four. Maybe we could just have everyone involved in any way with the article I'm about to describe congregate in a meeting room of some kind. Or, even better, a small, secluded cabin in the woods. A nice, peaceful retreat. That explodes or collapses or something once everyone's inside.

Apparently, Mills and Ross are the masterminds behind "Desperation Dinners", some kind of regular column. And website. It provides "helpful" "tips" for "time-strapped" "families" who want to "eat" "together" in "healthy" and "flavorful" "ways" on a "budget". And their tips get syndicated, and get sent to newspapers, and get put up on newspapers' web pages, where I read them. And that's when my walls get peppered with brain meats and skull shrapnel.

Because I just read an entire thirteen-paragraph article explaining how families can have the convenience of convenience foods without the price. By making their own convenience foods at home. Which in and of itself is problematic, because if you're spending time and energy and dirtying dishes in order to make convenience foods, that pretty much eliminates the convenience and turns them into FOODS.

But then the article gets weird. I mean, I've been writing stuff, for pay and for free, for a long time. I learned how to pad and bullshit early in my academic career, and it's served me well ever since. Hell, the first three paragraphs of yesterday's YAD were, in some ways, the culmination of over two decades of practice in the fine art of Padding With Bullshit.

But not even in my most jaded moments would I have had the gall to produce something as vapid and space-filling as this convenience food article. In the padding world, I am a concrete floor, and this article is the forty stacked mattresses a princess sleeps on. SANS PEA.

The article provides DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS on how to create home versions of: pre-shredded cheese, baby carrots, pre-cut celery sticks, pre-separated broccoli florets, pre-sliced bell pepper strips, pre-chopped onions, pre-chopped ginger, and pre-sliced mushrooms. You may begin to see where this is going.

For every single one of these items, the instructions are to perform the action that turns them from an inconvenience food into a convenience food, then put the result into a plastic bag, then put that plastic bag into your refrigerator or freezer. ALL EIGHT. The only thing that isn't 100% obvious in the entire article is that baby carrots can be simulated by taking large carrots and cutting them until they are small. That's only 98% obvious.

This is worse than the ranch powder thing. Who is the target audience for these? How many people are out there thinking that elves use shrink-rays and magical slicing powers to take vegetables, separate them into their component parts, and place those parts in plastic bags picked from the magical petroleum tree? If you need to be told by the newspaper that to create bagged celery sticks, you first cut celery into sticks, then place the sticks in the bag, then you CANNOT BE HELPED, because you are probably using the newspaper to shit on.

These people have put out TWO COOKBOOKS. Probably with big fonts and wide margins to up the page count. I know that's what I did in high school when I didn't have jack shit to say. But then, my history class was somewhat different than the Desperation Dinners website. I could not get away, as they have, with an entire article that boils down to "SPICE BLENDS ARE DIFFERENT SPICES BLENDED TOGETHER. WOW!", or "SALAD COMES IN A BAG NOW, WOW, WE LIVE IN THE FUTURE!".

They have to be evil. They have to know. Because in my mind, the kind of person who could write "Grilling out? Check out the myriad of new rubs and other seasonings for steaks and chops. They usually contain black pepper with various other spices thrown in for good measure." with a straight face, yet NOT be a conscience-free, money-grubbing loafer out to scam the entire world, would try to eat the keyboard halfway through the third word.

Paul Douglas

Memo to Minneapolis meteorologist Paul Douglas: YOU ARE DUMB.

Mr. Douglas cut a radio promo for local 80's station WXPT, "The Mix". A station, I might add, that will probably be making its appearance on this page before 2004 is out.

This promo featured Mr. Douglas saying "I have a prediction that's guaranteed to be 100% correct. Lisa Wright rocks!"

Editor's note: Lisa Wright is one of the morning DJ's on Mix 104, which the dismal state of Minneapolis radio and the vagaries of reliable clock radio reception force me to wake up to.

Let's assume, for the moment, that Lisa Wright does rock. It's a big stretch, but we are brave souls. We can manage. So even if "Lisa Wright rocks" is 100%, pure, scientifically verified fact, determined to three decimal places with a precisely defined meaning for the verb "to rock" stored on a platinum-iridium tablet at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, Paul Douglas would STILL BE DUMB.

Because, and a meteorologist would be wise to remember this, THAT'S NOT A PREDICTION. It's either a bald-faced lie, an unfortunate opinion, or a verified fact, but since it's discussing the here and now state of Ms. Wright's rockingness, it ain't a prediction.

Ergo, we have no choice but to issue the following judgment upon Mr. Douglas:

YOU ARE DUMB.