What's in a Name III

What to do with Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia?

I mean, as in, he needs a nickname for this blog.  We can't call him Tony, since that is already taken by the corporate-free-speech guy on the Court.  And, really, Ninny doesn't seem right for such a brilliant Originalist.

So I have come up with Scaley.  Get it, as in the scale of justice, there being only the one on the right these days.

But then there is Scaly, which appears to be a funny-looking synonym for Scaley.  I know.  I looked them both up on the Internet.  Which to use?  I could have a popular vote on the choice, but the Justice would probably block the count.  So, I'll go with Scaley.

I don't know what Scaley's friends call him, because he and I are not close. Who knows what his Court colleagues call him, especially behind closed chamber doors,  That's not the point, of course, because he needs a public nickname for my blog so that my ADHD readers won't have to read more than three syllables.  And I'll bet his nickname will be coming up a lot.

As recently as last week, Scaley was in the news guaranteeing that no state, like the Palin-Free-State of Alaska could sue to secede from the Union.  Most of you probably don't care about a union or know what secession is, but Scaley noted Generals Lee and Grant resolved that problem judiciously and for all time at Appomattox Court House in April of 1865. 

While a top judge like Scaley would not necessarily have to endorse a decision at a country courthouse, Appomattox Court House is not a courthouse and is not in the town of Appomattox.  Not that Scaley said it was either of those things.  His point was that the secessionists lost their argument and their almost-country fair and bloody square.

So, if Scaley is in the middle of an issue from 1865, he will be newsworthy, even blogworthy, today or next week and, thus, must be nicknamed.  I'm sure he won't object to the moniker.  It is well known that the Justice has a great sense of humor and can really take a joke.  He and his pals can even take one and make it... well, pretty important for eight years.

God Falls Into The Gap

No, not the place with the 1969 jeans and Wedges that Wow.  We are talking about The Gap between us Americans and The Religious Rest of the World.  Except the Chinese, who are atheists by fiat.

According to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs' (CCoGA) recent report, via the Washington Post, our narrow-minded secularism is mucking up out foreign policy big time.

The Big O, they say, should make religion our foreign policy.  The way Old Europe did for a six hundred some odd bloody years.

TBO, who spent a lot of time in Chicago and claims to be Born Again--this time as a Capital C Christian--continued the Faith-Based In Your Hood Office smack in the White House.  Under George III, this office was charged with drumming up votes, money and leather on the ground in churches everywhere for Republican electioneering.  I guess it is casting about madly to find some new purpose, since TBO is given the GOP all the help it needs without nary a minister's unkind word.

So, how can we have a God Gap, when He has a high-ranking neighbor of our very President?

The world is "abuzz with religious fervor", says the task force.  Like we're not squabbling about religious things like abortion, creches and Rapture-stranded pets?

Here, maybe, but not "over there".  Separation of Church and State ends at the border, sort of like the CIA only in the other direction.

It seems foreigners (no matter what they call themselves) are into God 24/6, sabbath being time off.  If you can't talk to a foreigner about God, well, they just zone out on you altogether. 

For example, Iran's President, Ejad, can't even broach the subject of uranium enrichment for civilian warheads without murmuring, "Allah is great, blessed be his name" or words to that effect.  Unfortunately, an American diplomat, who tries to schmooze Ejad at a UN cocktail party, is currently not going to say, "Hey, Allah's cool, but so's Israel."  Never going to get Ejad to the canapes that way.

From now on, TBO is supposed to call Ejad on his cell and "God, my Lexus is divinely fast."  Then, any topic will flow into a comprehensive ten-party treaty.

I can see how this works well with monotheists.  Even though they don't understand it, many foreigners worship the God who wrestled with Abraham long before it meant big money on TV.  Not so much, the billion who are Buddhists, Sikhs or Hindus.  Or a stray bunch of Shintoists, Animists or Scientologists.  Well, the CCoFA report really doesn't care about them since they are not all fervorish right now.

To be honest, are we really talking the billion foreigners who might be Christian?  Or a few who are Jewish?  Are they all in a religious lather?  Uh uh.

It's the Muslims.  But we don't dare say it.  As usual.  Come on Chicago Council of Global Bright Ideas.  Lay it out for real, just this once.

Okay, I will.  The muddle yields something like this:  If we had just chatted up Osama bin Laden about Allah, our mutual God-of-Abraham, Osama would have kept up his 1980's dance with the CIA and been stalking buildings in Tehran instead of New York and DC.

It's not too late.  If we just approach Osama the right religious way, he might cheerfully crash a White House dinner.  In a dinner jacket.  And no vest.

Europe Used To Be Something

Defense Secretary Robert "M for Macho" Gates says it like he thinks it is.  He may be in a Socialist Democratic administration, but he is still an All-American cowboy.

Macho pretty much said what we've all been thinking for months:  Europeans don't like war the way they are supposed to.

We don't know how this happened.  We've given them plenty of wars lately to show how much war can accomplish, how it promotes security.  Europeans used to enamored of war like no one else.  They had Hundred Years wars, Thirty Years wars, World wars, Napoleonic wars and lots of other named and unnamed wars.  For Centuries they didn't do much else, except, maybe, for the Black Death.  You have to wonder what happened to their appetite for armed conflict. 

Could it be that Europeans only like wars on their own soil?  No American can figure that one.

Really, though, Macho doesn't much care why the Europeans have turned namby-pamby. He is just concerned that NATO will lose the occasional Dutchman or Spaniard in the endless fight for peace against world-wide badness.

He didn't mince words, the way, say the French probably would, when he laid it out for some NATO types. According to the New York Times, Macho called the Continental sissies out. “The demilitarization of Europe--where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it-- has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st."

Tough language?  He used the word "swaths", for God's sake!  Large ones.  Europeans don't seem to like shooting and bombing people and are afraid there might be ramifications, like the ones they might miss shooting or bombing back.  But isn't that what peace is all about?

Macho wowed the NATO guys with this:  How can we ever have lasting peace without war? 

This is new thinking, right?  Has anyone ever said that we need war to have peace?  Not in my lifetime.  Very often. 

The proof is everywhere.  War brought lasting peace to the Iranian province of Iraq and has practically decorated Afghanistan with little flowers.

What brought Macho's anxiety out in public was The Netherlands flushing its pro-war government.  The land of cheese and tulips decided it didn't want to keep its collective finger in the Afghan dike any longer, Americans having far more fingers if fewer dikes. 

Furthermore, Europe barely spends the Euros on war they had promised to put out.  Five of twenty-eight countries spend two percent of GDP on war-making.  How weak is that?  The US, the only really dependable war-making beacon, spends more than four percent of its GDP (mostly Chinese Yuans) on tanks, missiles, submarines, soldiers and Defense Secretaries' secretaries. 

And for our leadership, we get less than two percent from yesterday's Huns, Vandals, Normans and Romans.  Those were heroes; they spent their ancient currencies, Francs, Lira, Marks dry, like so many dollars, and selflessly wiped out tens of millions in their quest for lasting peace.

And today's Europeans?  Pathetic and soft are words far too kind.  Especially when Macho uses "swaths".

TBO may be too busy band-aiding health care, but you know for sure that George III must be proud.

Credit Cards Get Too Much Credit in Dubai

We've all heard about the new Credit Card Act going into effect some day soon.  But that is not what this piece is about.  Nobody really cares about that particular "reform".  Congress really liked the Bank Lobby suggestion that the law go into effect only after every credit card company in North America raised their rates as high as South Dakota would allow.  The banks don't care if the new law banned outright any interest rate increases ever.  Because they've already hit the 49% ceiling allowed by Satan, recently back from Haiti, himself.

No, this post is not about credit cards snarling American budgets.  It is about credit cards tripping up the smartest spies on earth, the Israeli Mossad, while the vacationed on some fake island in Dubai.

This is not to say that those eleven guys who didn't kill Hamas big shot Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai aren't as smart as the Dubai cops, but the vacation seems to have softened the spies' brains just a little.

Even the Brits are pissed since some identity theft forced them to issue new passports to five men suspected of being in Dubai and England at the same time as the alleged hit.

So, you know Hamas is demanding a full investigation, right?  Not really, since Dubai wants to investigate Hamas for a mole who may have outed al-Mabhouh's location. So surely Hamas is fingering some Israeli or American.  Nope.  Hamas is blaming poor old Mahmoud, who can't defend himself or kidnap anyone anymore.  According to Lords of Gaza, Mahmoud called his family by phone--by phone!--before heading off for Dubai and told them the very hotel where Mossad could find him.  And he booked his travel plans via the internet.  No bulls-eye needed, thank you very much.

Does two nights in Dubai make everyone mushy above the eyebrows?

Anyway, Dubai's top cop claims to have clear evidence that Mossad was involved.  He says that the suspected assassination team used credit cards in the names of the stolen identities to buy their plane tickets.  Damn.  Slam dunk on Palm Frond Island!  The same stolen names were on the credit cards!  The very same names!

Don't look at me.  I don't get it either.

I'm not a spy (no, cyber-stalking Megan Fox is not spying), but if I were a guy traveling on a false passport, I think I'd opt for the Master Card issued me in my professionally faked name?  With 49% interest rates, I'm not using my own damned Citi or BoA Visa, trust me.  If I wouldn't do it, do you seriously think a Mossad agent would use his wife's Discover Card?

So much for Dubai's killer evidence.

So maybe, credit cards don't actually get any extra credit in Dubai's Ocean's-11-Meets-The-Bourne-Identity case after all.  And maybe, just maybe, Dubai Cheif of Police has been in Dubai a little too long.

It's Messy or Here We Stay

Remember Iraq?  We helped the Iraqis install an election-based government a few years ago.  Famously, the Iraqis voted with their fingers, turning Na'vi-blue in full 3D for their first sojourn to the polls, sidestepping IED and Ba'athist homeless.  Democracy was in Iraq to stay.

Until now.

Perhaps that is unduly harsh.  Iraq has elections coming up again and you'd think everyone would be celebrating their freedom and slandering their candidates.  Well, not quite.  The Shi'ite Elections Overlordship has found that a whole slew of candidates won't even get to the slandering stage; they just banned the candidates as not up to snuff.  Coincidentally, most of the banned were labeled Bat'thists and no further explanation seemed necessary.

So, now the Sunnis are upset.  Seems every Bat'thist is a Sunni and most are ex-Ba'athists anyway.  There is no Ba'ath party and hasn't since Saddam came out of  his spider hole back in 2003 as an early Christmas present for George III. Most outrageous, Saleh al-Mutlaq, the leader of the party known as the National Some Dialog Front, has been banned as a candidate by the Shi'ites.  Apparently, Saleh was a Ba'athist when Chevy Chase was playing Jerry Ford.  But he was such a lousy Ba'athist, that hateful party actually kicked him out in 1977, when an expulsion really meant something.

Often that something was a bullet to the temple.

Saleh may not have merited a bullet in 1977, but he is getting the shaft now, according to some ticked off Sunnis.  They want to boycott this election just as they did back in 2005.  That boycott worked out so well, the Sunnis kept themselves pretty much out of parliament; hence, not every Sunni is going all out for the boycott. 

Naturally, the US is staying above the fray.  Our Gen. Ray Odierno, and our ambassador, Chris Hill have kind of said that the top Shi'ite Election Overlords are buddies of Iran's President Ejad.  As if that were a bad thing.

As you regular readers will, no doubt, not recall, I favored the democratization of Iraq because I was assured it would result in lower gas prices for my '99 Lexus, which I could drive at a steady 15 mph in a school zone with or without floor mats.  We were assured by no less than George III that democracy, however hard and  messy, would be good for Iraq and even better for America.

Maybe the sub-dollar gasoline hasn't materialized yet, but that hard-won democracy, in all its messiness, is in full bloom in Iraq and the Iranians find they love the mess in Iraq a lot.

Driving Ban Needed for Cell Phone Use

Sure, you've heard the whimpering about the use of cell phones while driving.  Dangerous!  Texting?  Good God, air bags all around!  Ho hum.

Hey Mothers Against Cell Drivers!  Forget it!  The real culprit is just plain old driving.

Yep.  Driving.

Science News warns of this very real danger.  A psychologist named Gary Dell (no relation to the guy who used to make really good computers) reports that driving while using a cell phone significantly degrades cell phone performance.  Well, the cell phone does okay, but the driver really sucks at using the cell phone.

The study studied old and young drivers relaying information from the cell phone to a passenger.  The control was established by these same drivers when not driving.  They heard stories on their cell phones, like a Garrison Keillor podcast, except in Urbana, Illinois, and had to repeat those same stories to the passenger, who was still a passenger but in a car parked at, say, a Burger King.  The repeating went pretty well under the control conditions.  You know, Angelina Jolie goes to Haiti to visit traumatized children for the UN.  Sitting in one place, that's pretty much how the cell phone's story got to the passenger, except the UN was called "the frakkin' UN."

When the car was negotiating Urbana streets at a steady 30 miles an hour, the same driver heard the cell phone story and told the passenger that Angelina Jolie had divorced Brad Pitt and filmed a movie in Port au Prince, moved into a splendid Cirque tent with Sean Penn and adopted 10,000 orphaned Haitian children.  Bradgelina's lawyers stopped the car at the very next traffic light.

The driver also went completely insane keeping his BMW at 30 mph, but that was not part of the study.

By the way, it is not just cell phone ability that is compromised.  Storytelling, itself suffered.  Drivers repeated fewer story elements than passengers in the moving Toyota test.  Passengers pretty much got all the needed story elements out, while drivers could remember only the story elements of, maybe, an NBC 10 o'clock drama.

Summing up, Gary Dell said that driving is just plain dangerous for raconteurs (Garrison Keillor, again), bank executives and everyone at FOX Views.  He recommended that anyone planning a whopper (not from that Burger King) should sit the hell still.

Gary Dell further said that age didn't matter, but moving did.  Sorry, Gare, but I can guarantee that age affects moving big time.  Better recalibrate the knee part of your test.

Taliban Outduels US in Green

Once again, the US is surpassed by an Asian country in the Green Revolution.

You expect the Chinese to do it.  Their Revolution never stops, so they have all the infrastructure.  The last American Revolution was all about Dot.com's and we know how that worked out.

But now it is the Taliban.

How embarrassing is that?  Mullah Omar's Taliban.  These are the guys who plan to spend most of their time detonating the occasional Buddhas, enforcing a head-to-toe-but-not-hands burka law and stoning anyone they can see without a beard (thankfully, the burkas protect the women).  Not that kind of stoning, either, even though Afghanistan has more poppies than decent stones.

You probably think war is not that great, but it can foster Green innovation.  And it has in a place where the last know innovation was...  Okay, that's not the point, because innovation is happening now in  Afghanistan.

In ancient and even recent times, shields were made of wood and/or metals, like highly polished chrome-steel and the less glamorous cast iron.  They were pretty effective if you could lift them.  But wood requires cutting down carbon-dioxide-gulping trees and metals must be mined, melted, purified and cast or hammered into usable shapes.  All of that metal work takes energy, generally from carbon-based fuels, probably trees again, worsening Global Warming and threatening to flood the family poppy farms.

The Taliban solution may not be for everyone, but it is Green.  Afghan Human Shields.  In Afghanistan, humans, especially women and children, are plentiful and need no hot smokey fires to purify them, although that would help. Unlike oak or metal shields, human shields make your enemy think twice before trying to shred the shield to get to the combatant's vital organs.  In the Taliban case, that might not include the head, but big deal.

Best of all, these days, human shields can last for days and are recyclable as all get out.

Can you wait for this high-powered close up:  Mullah Omar getting his Nobel Prize?

Make Mine Miserable

An Austrian millionaire is tried of being miserable.

Sure, so am I.

Karl Rabeder, as reported on AOL News, has decided that wealth compromises the quest for happiness.  He grew up poor, made a pile and, now, at forty-seven (retirement age in Europe) wants to give it away.  Maybe it is because his wealth is in Euros (i.e., that used to be real money) and he understands this whole Greek budget mess may drown the Euro in Retsina

Republicans are, rightly, horrified.  Retsina tastes like gasoline futures.

Nonetheless, Karl seems to have felt his happiness threatened by his villa in the Alps and  forty-two acres of French estate.  I guarantee the six--count them, six--gliders screwed up his whole day.  Where do you keep six gliders?  Oh, I could find room on my 42 acres, if I had 42 acres and what is that in 1440 square foot increments? 

You wonder how a guy so used to soaring in one of six gliders could want to be so down to earth.

What it God's name awoke this feeling?  Three weeks in Hawaii.  Sure, I'll have to try that trip to guaranteed torment.  Still, that vacation coupled with gliding (in, I presume, only one glider) over the poverty rife in the Southern Hemisphere turned Karl's values upside down.  The glider is the key here.  In a 777 Dreamliner, all you would see are specks of poverty so tiny they look like, well, grains between your toes on that beach in Maui.  But gliders are pretty low to ground and you can't miss how bad it really can be.

Forget that Dreamliner reference.  In that, all you would see are dozens of life-sized Boeing engineers trying to glue on a wing.

Karl can't completely purge the kind of thinking that made him so nearly soullessly rich in the first place.   He is raffling off the villa.  You can buy in for 100 Euros, more or less.  Yes, it sounds like Karl is just making more filthy lucre, but you are the soulless one to be thinking that of him.

The guy is putting all his money into MyMicroCharity (distinct from this blog's preferred charity, MyNanoPleaseClickOnAnAd).  This outfit does loans even smaller than the fragment of your mortgage Lehman math majors packaged and sold to Iceland in 2006.  They lend, say, 118 Euros at a pop to enterprising folks in way-underdeveloped countries to start them on their own path to money-based misery. 

Karl, did you think this through?

Upon reflection at about 5 o'clock somewhere, this afternoon, I came to the conclusion that my own recently amassed pile of blog-generated nano-dollars is making me miserable, too.  I was definitely miserable when paying my Comcast bill this afternoon before the Scotch.

Hmm.  You know Karl?  It did feel like I was giving it away.  Maybe, my soul will feel lighter tomorrow, too.

Solve Old Crises, Have Fun Watching

This wasn't my idea, but I am duty-bound to spread it around like h1n1.

Making its way around the Internet is this new plan to resolve the a bunch of dire crises, including that of healthcare, nursing home shortages, Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security, all at one shot.

The "one shot" is a figure of speech, as you will see.

Now, you are surely thinking, "The damned Socialist Hawaiian Party is at it again."  I don't blame you, but you're all wrong this time.

The internet doesn't name the Party, but does refer to it as the "Right to Fight for Your Life" Party.  I googled for twenty minutes and could find nary a wiki on this group.  But it is such a Capitalistic pro-life idea that I have my suspicions.

It is a clever variation of "Survivor":  Give every person over 70 ten bucks in cash and an assault rifle the military lobby doesn't want, say anything under $25,000 per.  A couple clips of live ammo.  Put them on an island without a cell tower or a wilderness in a free state like Palinland (formerly Alaska). 

You can televise it, of course.  Forget Tribal Councils, the process won't take any longer than half a "Price is Right".  The winner gets to keep everybody else's sawbuck, ammo and assault rifles.  Each loser gets to have a free cremation televised on NBC in Leno's ex-time slot and any time on its cable channels.  And while you missed the day after Mardi Gras, you could still truck all the ashes to Vancouver and sell them to the Canadians as snow for Lindsey Vonn to blast over.

This new program is Capitalism at its best.  Players can bribe each other or sell faulty lead.  They can betray everyone's trust and then bargain for immunity.  Idol worship will be encouraged.  In the end, only one old person is left standing with pockets full of every other old person's money.  Which they get to carry to the next generation... round.

Subsequent rounds can be "Survivor" style or might go better as one-on-ones, in used Cirque tents pitched in key demographics around the United States.  This latter scheme might use brackets like March Madness, which itself includes every college in the country.  These matches might last about half as long as a beer commercial, keeping young viewers interest the whole time.

Think of the potential reward in that final round for the prevailing old, likely wounded Capitalist survivor.  Despite the visual appear, you would have to skip the idea of participants lugging along their cash each round.  Panamanian bank accounts are more efficient, but you'd still use a single ten spot as a symbolic spoil. 

Mind you, the amassed winnings would be taxable--keeping the Democrats happy-- at the end of the year, the games being long over.  Teams of attorneys and accountants would be on hand to structure tax shelters.  Vegas and Wall Street would establish betting lines to keep the younger generations invested in the outcome over the weeks.

But the key is the savings to all the crises mentioned at the outset of this piece.  Payouts under Social Security and Medicare would plummet.  Nursing homes could really care for their reduced patient load and that one ultimate Capitalist survivor, of course.  America's youth would work harder, secure in their financial futures and greatly accelerated inheritance.  America would once again be the beacon of Capitalism and the always-ironic Chinese would buy our bonds again, Dalia Lama or no.  And, no doubt, sell us any rope we would need.

I wish I could take credit for this not-lose-very-much-they're-old-people concept, but I can take credit for a second season.  Start with everyone over 65 and repeat.  How many seasons could this run?  Well, let's just say that CBS would have to shut down, but advertisers and their marketing plans could focus on that coveted 18 to 35 age brackets without the usual whining about ageism, which would only a cinder of an issue.

Toyota Out to Restore Confidence

I like to be fair.  On Wednesdays.

Toyota has been hammered by everyone with a keyboard, maybe serenaded by some, but not that I've heard.  All over this business of unintended acceleration.

CEO-San Toyoda (sic) is adamant that Toyota's electronic accelerators are not at fault, but to restore confidence in the brands, Toyota would install brake-override systems in all new cars.  Not old cars.  Those have been sold already and can't be affected by lack of confidence.  The override will shut off the accelerator if it senses that both the accelerator and brake are being pushed at the same time.

Two-footed drives can sit out rush hour.  And the rest of the day.

The Corolla problem is different.  Drivers seem to feel that they are losing control of the steering, but that is not a major issue since the Corolla does not have Prius brakes.  Note, too, that the drivers only feel that they are losing control, not actually losing it.  Until the car hits a fire hydrant just like Tiger Woods.  Then, they are actually losing it.  But maybe Mr. Toyoda does not get the idiom.

To restore your confidence, Mr. Toyoda promises to cooperate with anyone who asks in solving any real or perceived problems.  Except for the electronic throttle and its unattached pedal.  Don't worry, he knows those are just fine.  Maybe you should shoot Mr. Toyoda a big thumbs up as your Camry flies unintendedly into a second story office window.

Mr. Toyoda did indicate that he and his executive team back home cared more about his drive for market share than your drive through the market itself, but that's over with for now.  If only because he's got a dive for market share right now.

Still, apologies all around and, you out there in Toyotas, Lexus's, Prius's and Scions, please feel safe.

Raptureless Pets At Risk? Not Anymore

Why didn't I think of this?

Pets owned by the Born Again, at least the really good Born Agains, are going to be Left Behind.

That's right.  When the Rapture happens, we all know that cubicles, churches and Boeing 777's will be left partly empty.  Not that they can hurt anybody, since they will simply sit there and will just generate less revenue.  But subways, ocean liners and Segways, get out of the way.  Think Toyota Corolla without steering.  If you're still here to think.

I have been way too preoccupied thinking of those complications and missed the whole pet issue.

Pets can not be Born Again.  Jesus did not even have a dog and forget the whole fish explosion thing; those were tilapia not goldfish.  So, when a hapless pet's holier-than-thou owner is whisked away, the poor animals will, in many cases, be left to fend for themselves.

Some guy named Bart "Simpson" Centre has a lovely idea.  He will rescue, for a small contribution, your pet if you book heavenward.  You can look it up and make your own deal at eternal-earthbound-pets.com.  Humanitarians like this are hard to find, even for $110 for a decade-long commitment.

Any flaws?  For guaranteed care, Bart is, rightly, relying on atheists to do the adopting.  Only atheists are sure to be around.  Many non-atheists and even some unmarried gay couples are secretly eligible for the Nonstop to the Pearly Jetway, so who else can you count on?  I do worry that the pets will not adapt well to a Godless household after living in an elect environment.  Do atheists say five minutes of grace before kibbles?  How would a Savior-deprived little Nemo take the mere sight of porcelain deity worship?  Can a kitty used to purring to Bible versus get used to a litter box filled with shredded Gideon Gospels?  These are real questions that Bart, and, really, all of us, must deal with.

What about the separation anxiety of a Raptured's pit bull?  An atheist would have to be a psychiatrist or swilling a Afghan Poppy Juice-Red  Bull Cosmo to take that one on.  Or a Siamese?  Give me the psycho pit bull, thank you very much.

Perhaps, I am overreacting.  The Rapture was supposed to happen a few times in the past and was delayed for reasons above my nano-pay grade.  Maybe, it won't happen until Global Warming kills a couple million more species, including your parakeet and Ejad's space turtles.  God is merciful much of the time and does work in ways too mysterious to figure.

After some thought, I have an approach quite different from Bart's and far easier.  If you love your pet, I suggest sinning, either often or once really seriously.  Join a parade at Disney World or make a Haitian pact with Satan if you expect the Rapture late next week.  That is the only way to truly protect your pet from a life on half-deserted boulevards or in an atheists den of... well, with an atheist, it doesn't matter, every den is a pit of sin.

And the Rapture?  Once you've done that and your pet is safe, then, as George III so aptly said, Bring It On.

Fortune Reveals Powerful Women Push Envelopes

Fortune Magazine's Pattie Sellers has a blog on CNN.com and her blog revealed last week that powerful women push envelopes.

Now, this will surprise regular readers of this particular blog.  Not long ago, I posted an important piece on the new Republican-sponsored requirement that all women have their hands held (earlier post "Hand Jive and the Law").  Although the regulations have not been promulgated as yet, women in positions of power clearly must have both hands held, they being unable to advance to the top with unheld hands.

The Fortune blog post deals mostly with the secret need for female execs to meet together.  Fortune even has The Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit to accommodate this need.  I'll bet there are other more clandestine meetings.  Guess what goes on at these meetings.

Do you think "Kumbaya" is sung also?  In a soundproofed room.  (Can you guess what genus Kumbaya?)

Call me suspicious (silently, not in a comment), but I wonder if Pattie's blog is right.  I know that it is Fortune and is on CNN.com, after all, not FOXViews.com, and it does make some sense, since properly held hands can't really lift anything.  Still, isn't envelope pushing more of a sec... administrative assistant's job?  What, you see the CEO of Pepsi or Dupont peeling-and-sticking stamps, too?

Ultimately, though, I can't see how these top execs would push their envelopes anyway.  Aren't their noses too high up... in the air?

US Terrorist Policy: Just Shoot the Bastard!

It started under George III, but The Big O has continued the policy included in the title of this post.  Basically, if we spot a terrorist walking down a dusty road in Afghanistan, Somalia or Not-Pakistan, we shoot first and ask questions of... well, of scooped body fragments, but really of DNA.

Some sissies in the intelligence community insist that we are losing important opportunities to get some names, ranks and serial numbers.  All of which are either fake or nonexistent, but we do need them for our terrorist contact list.

Didn't we try the capture approach and fill up half of western Cuba with the results?  And now, we are stuck with trying the best of the captured some place Outside of New York.

Fortunately, we don't have any place to put the terrorists we would capture.  TBO is closing Guantanamo Bay's Terrorist Correctional Facility sometime soon.  Romania and Egypt have full slate to practice on and won't need any more for years.  Bring them to Outside of New York?  On US soil?  Can you find a nice spot where all the lawyers are at the bottom of a lake?  I didn't think so.

Haiti?  That is an excellent suggestion considering the Cirque tents on their way.  But those tents are to help Haiti's government get organized.  That means the Cirque tents will be tied up until Global Warming eliminates the need for a Haitian government all together.

Worse, after putting our CIA and Special forces guys and their helicopters at risk, all we get is "I don't have a present recollection" or "It depends on what 'is' is" before a panel of interrogators.  We have to simply write that response down (only once, followed by 238 ditto marks) and accept it all.  Under Congressional subcommittee precedent, we just have to take it and live with it.  Should a terrorist be held to a lower standard than that applied to a President, Cabinet member, tobacco executive or  Enron CEO?

Those neat Predator flying robots don't worry about capture and a chat.  They have Hellfire missiles with semi-precision laser aiming and Virginia-based triggers, for reasons not including an invite to gossip over low voltage electrodes. 

In Afghanistan itself, we have High Mobility Artillery Rocket systems that can whack a Talibaner from great distances without a harsh word or a single day of water-boarding.  And the accuracy is to within 1000 feet or 17 civilians, whichever is better.

To paraphrase, In war, the first of many victims is accuracy. 

Besides, those 17 civilians may not be all that civil and most of them probably grow a certain dangerous-to-Americans plant in their backyard garden or press said plant into Afghan Poppy Juice concentrate.  We'll ask their DNA later.

Surely, TBO may hate to admit it, even to Lady O, but George III was on target this one time.  No one loves this policy, really, but no one loves a terrorist, either.  For PR or blogging purposes, both President have, as I have, abbreviated the formal policy designation to punch it up for a better  executive order of blog post banner;  the real, classified title over the Presidential signature is too long and appropriately vague: 

Line 'Em Up, Pretty Well, and Just Shoot in the General Direction of the Bastards!

Army Brat Aids Taliban?

The US Army is tough.  They make you roll around in the mud, run with heavy packs, shoot terrorists and, I guess, not have kids.

One soldier, Alex Hutchinson learned that--what other--the Army way, having had a kid without permission and the Army got pissy. 

Okay, Alex didn't show up for a scheduled deployment to Afghanistan, but it's not like Alex was going to the beach with the unit for the afternoon.  For that mission, a teen-age sitter and her inevitable boyfriend would have been fine.

Afghanistan is far away and--don't let the pretty poppies fool you--no place to take a little kid.  Or a marine, for that matter. 

So Alex, skipped the deployment so that little Kamani didn't end up in Army Foster Care and you can imagine how those guys would treat him, being unauthorized and all.  The Army was all angry and threatened a Court Martial or maybe two, one for having an unauthorized kid in the first place and a seconc for missing the first group meet in Kabul.

Don't blame the Army too much.  They did give Alex 30 extra days to formulate another long term plan for Kamani, the original one having fallen through.  Well, Alex did come up with another care plan, but the Army didn't like the part that kept Alex several thousand miles from the Taliban our Army had planned to have Alex shoot at.

Without Alex, the Army's mission will probably falter, Alex being a Specialist... having been a key Specialist.

The good news is that the Army and Alex settled out of Court Martial and Gitmo still has that extra room.  The bad news is that Alex is pretty much out of military and the Afghanistan thing is not going that well.

Stop With the Scouting Trip Stuff!

Angelina Jolie was in Haiti last Wednesday.  Not everyone hid their children under rubble.

Gelina was there without her better-name-half, reportedly checking out the adoptee pool. She was in the Dominican Republic part of the island the day before, but those kids all have good jobs in T-shirt factories.

Besides, her visit was official.  Gelina is an ambassador of goodwill for the UN, Americans having a such surfeit of that for the UN.  She had to visit a quota of medical facilities, housed in smaller-than-Cirque tents, as part of her mission.  She went to villages that care for newly orphaned Haitians youngsters, many seriously hurt in God's Pat-Robertson-Approved Retribution (but we've covered that).

One boy, who had lost a leg, laughed out loud about some goofy book he was reading.  At least, Gelina thought it was, but she hadn't read Sarah Palin's work before.

Many of you may mock Gelina's jaunts around the world adopting locals.  But I don't care what her reasons are.  She goes where most of us won't even catch on the Discovery Third World Channel.  She is a big star, played Lara Croft twice and could simply do her nails in Hollywood if she and her party-of-the-first-part-name could stand the place full time.  Now that you mention it, she is perfect for my latest screenplay, too.

Unlike Americans, most folks in the underdeveloped world did not see "Changling" and don't worry she'll lose or even take their children.  She is also beautiful with a smile any kid would remember well beyond next week's dinner.

Does anybody accuse Bill Gates of using his Foundation's good work to get Africa addicted to Windows Mobile OS?  Well, all right, but that was before.

So lay off Gelina.  She, that smile and her heart at least end up in the right places.  So, last Wednesday?  I was here in Naples, pretty damned close to Haiti.  Where were you?

What snow?

The Soleil Also Rises

George III did actually learn something from Katrina.  No formaldehyde-based FEMA-brand trailers for Port au Prince as we expected.  No domed stadiums, either.

Circus Tents.

Only for the Haitian government.

All the way from Reno, Nevada.

Nope.  And I tried for an hour to come up with something half as good, too.

Tom Schrade, who used to own a piece of what used to be the Reno Hilton and still listens to his wife, is donating these things to Haiti.  Mind you, Tom wasn't using them much and these are top of the line circus tents.  Cirque du Soleil tents, no less, with heating and A/C, lighting, Port au Jeans and chairs.

And I'm sure the elephant... well, I'm sure the have been cleaned up to Haiti standards. 

As if the tents were not enough, the thirteen shipping containers it takes to the big tops from Reno to Haiti will themselves serve as apartments.  At least until some smart developer converts them into waterfront condos.

Conrad Hilton's Foundation, hip-deep in Haitian relief already, will finance the shipment and Bill Clinton's Foundation will handle the paperwork.  I guess foundations are not just tax shelters for the ex-Presidents, wealthy heirs and Bill Gates among us; they actually do stuff like this.

Cirque du Soleil, a Quebec bunch who could wow you in a pup tent, used these tents originally at Vegas' Mirage a while back.  These tents have traveled before, to Myrtle Beach, probably to house some golf course, and then back to Nevada, no doubt to keep the slots dry.

If you've ever seen Circle du Soleil perform, you know they do it in French, which makes the bathroom and exit signs ready to go for Haiti.  If you haven't seen Cirque at least on TV, queue up a disc from NetFlix, especially in BluRay if you can.  Try to get one with these soon-to-be-historic relief tents.  It'll make the idea of tents filled with French-filibustering politicians and hand-sewn voodoo dolls (not that the dolls have to needle each other nearly as much to work) seem very, very tame.

And unlike all that Bush emergency housing assistance for Katrina victims, this help is already on the way.

So, It's Not Just Iranian Space Worms

Iran fooled us all.  At least me.  Their storied missile launch was not just about a mouse, two turtles and a peck of worms.  Perhaps, the turtles should have tipped me off.  It ends up that the mission was about Gmail, too.

As in no more Gmail in Iran.

The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad didn't mention Gmail in his earlier comments about the space shot.  Even Google probably didn't know.  Ejad (as he is sometimes called from now on and pronounced "Egad") wants Iranians to use only home-grown technologies, like nuclear warheads, space worms and, now, SpaceTurtleMail.

Obviously.

Ejad sent the turtles up in the non-worm side of the space capsule to run a communication satellite as the hub of Iran's new email service.  Turtles Bill and Karolyn Slowsky are already well known in the US Web circles as spokesshells for DSL internet connections. 

While there is no Persian patent protection for turtle-based communications, there could be a trademark problem for Iran.  However, it is reported that Ejad intends to fold trademark negotiations into those for forcing most Israelis to swim to Malta, uranium highly-enrichment and Iran's new historic claim on seaside property in Thermopylae, Greece.  It has been a while, but this latest claim was recently renewed after the worldwide interest in "300 Spartans", who did lose the place two-and-a-half thousand years ago to a pre-Ejad Iranian with an easy, short name, Xerxes, and the Greeks are too broke to develop condos there anyway.

With the advent of SpaceTurtleMail, Iranians will not need Gmail anymore, so Ejad just turned it off a day or two ahead of time.  If it lives up to the Ejad's promises, SpaceTurtleMail will give the Iranians a better sense of community, a calmer pace to life, an abhorrence of protest marches and trust in their leadership, especially Ejad.  A guy who gives you free email service, no matter who slow going to and from a satellite, has to be your BFF.

And, you know what?  This best friend will forever listen.

Blog Commenting and Criticism: A Guide

It is easy to criticize a blog.  It is best to do so inside your own damned head.

Comment all you want, assuming you can figure out how to do it without selling your virtual soul to Google (I haven't, figured it out, that is).  Praise is always good and questions show you are thinking about the substance, if any, of a particular post.  Many blogs ask questions, some over and over, and you should feel free to answer.  Unless the question is something like "Huh?"

Don't bring up extraneous issues, like facts or pronouncements of FOX News.  Such items will confuse the blogger and make the next post seem completely opaque or like one from last month.

Many readers criticize a blogger because they envy the blogger's writing skill and, rarely, philosophical agility.  But mostly, they are really jealous of the blogger's courage to express the shallowest and meanest of thoughts for dozens to read.  Such critics are probably only able to occasionally express their own rude snappishness at the living room LCD when Serena makes yet another bad boyfriend choice on "Gossip Girl" (she drives me... viewers nuts with that stuff).

At heart, Bloggers don't like criticism all that much and know where you live and what car you keep in your parking space or garage, especially if it is always there, like a Toyota, maybe.  On the other hand, most bloggers no long have recognizable physical forms and only exist in that layer of the Cloud known as the Blogosphere.  Or an unnamed Caribbean Island.  So maybe, you are pretty safe after all.

Still, do not openly criticize bloggers in comments unless your corporate-free-speaking employer orders you to.  Criticism might have a chilling effect on the diversity of opinions that is (or are, in England) the key element of the Blogosphere.   No two bloggers have the same opinions or read the same British tabloid.  Moreover, each blogger has his, her or its own stylistic choices, focusing, naturally, on commas and parenthetical asides. 

And, if you try it for a couple weeks, you 'll find blogging is not as easy or rewarding as it looked.  After slaving for an hour on your occasionally daily post, you'd expect to get the best table at the nearby Red Lobster, but there really isn't one.  That pile of nano-dollars you earn when your sisters click on Google Adsense ads, in which they have no earthly interest, won't quite buy you a bread stick at Olive Garden.  Celebrities you selflessly promote remain aloof.  Does Oprah so much as call?  Do you get even a brief text "hi' from any tub-hawking. bare-kneed starlet you might have mentioned a couple times?

So, comment, sure.  Even be anonymous, if you want.  Go right ahead.  But, whatever you do, don't expect a civil answer.

Fiction Purveyor Unfairly Sued by Bradgelina

The News of the World, the major British tabloid, is being sued by Bradgelina.  It printed a story claiming that the photogenic superduperstar twosome were (this being in England) headed for two onesomes and were dividing up their very charming moniker, very handsome bank accounts and very international children.

Every important and respected media outlet in the United States and People Magazine immediately reported on the report, the fact of the report itself being worthy of reporting.

You would think that Brad and Angelina, who kicked each other's butts in "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", would be getting in some stretches in preparation of a rebuttal, but they have kids now.  Instead, their representatives stated emphatically that the story of the impending breakup was not, is not, all that accurate.  They asked for an apology and, maybe a few hundred million pounds (which are more than dollars any day). 

Did News of the World do the right thing?  Ha!

Now, Bradgelina's Brit lawyers are doing the pleading.  On parchment.  With wigs.

I'm sorry, but, in my view, Brad and Angelina are being daft nits.  The News of the World is owned by Rupert Murdock, for God's sake.  The same guy who owns FOX News and almost every tabloid that ever printed a photo of a martian baby with a tattoo that looked like Jesus Christ.

Surely, a couple so super that they only need one name can have only one opinion about this.

It's Murdock.  It's fiction.  Option the rights.

(Uh.  Did I mention I do screenplays, too?)

Super Bowl Ads: Shallower is Better

The best of the 2010 Super Bowl ads?

Cell phone, Megan Fox, really small tub.

Second?  Dave, Oprah, Leno, awkwardly small couch.

I have endeavored since I started this blog to hide my fixation on Megan Fox.  You may note that my profile lists me as male.  End of secret.  Neither am I usually obsessive about freckles (that Anna Freil thing notwithstanding).

More to the point, Megan has battled gamely space-worm-sized robot cars and toasters and has gotten quite dirty in the process; hence, the tub.  I have no doubt that "Transformers 3: The Droids Devour Olive Garden" will center around Megan, and that lame guy she's usually with, taking on a line of transforming cell phones with cameras.  Everything about the ad almost fits.

Taken all together, then, the Megan Fox ad was the best one. Because it worked.  It is still working, trust me.

I'm headed out to Home Depot right now to get that nifty European-style tub she was pitching.  And fifteen gallons of ice water.

CIC or Now Get that Biggish Bonus

Today must a day for short posts.  This will thrill some critics of this blog who suggest that the posts--and indeed, the very sentences--are too long and complicated for any reader who has, say, a longish walk on his or her schedule, longish being open to interpretation.  (And I do, too, take criticism well.  If it is any damned good.)

Anyway.  To the topic:

The Chinese are buying our stuff.  That's a switch, isn't it?  Only, they are not buying our stuff at our Walmarts or Dell.  The China Investment Corp., CIC for the ADHD'ers out there, is buying biggish (subject to interpretation) chunks of some biggish US, if multinational, companies.  Figure Coke, Johnson & Johnson, Apple, Motorola (especially after a certain ad during the Super Bowl) and even your plastic best friend,Visa.

China's CIC is what we call a Sovereign Wealth Fund and it is stocked with about $300 Billion.  And that would be in US dollars, because the Chinese are swimming in them.  And looking about for a shore to land on.

The CIC is like a Politburo-owned Warren Buffet. They have plunked lots of dollars in this fund and can dump more in any time they want.  Getting Dollars into the fund is not the problem.  It is how fast can they get the damned Bucks out without trashing the value and drubbing their own reserve in a Megan Fox-sized bathtub.  So, buying top-of-the-heap (I chose my words carefully) US companies seems like the next best thing after over-printing Dollars with Yuans or, maybe, feeding them into a bonfire.

Do you hear the Republican shouting of "Socialism" about this CIC Sovereign Wealth Fund?

No.  But relax, they're already Communists, which is like the Barry Bonds of Socialists.  They make TBO look like Sarah Palin.  Except smart.  And it's not like it's the Red Army buying up the Yankees or something.

Personally, I think the latest news puts this CIC business into a cheerful perspective.  Sure, the idea that the Chinese may end up owning all of Walmart is intimidating, but CIC has also been buying up shards of Citi, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, which, among other things,will let the Chinese speak freely about making their cherished hope of making The First Dude into The First Lad. 

Maybe that free speech angle isn't great, but you know what trumps it all?

Guess who has to ask the Chinese Communist Party for their Billion Dollar Bonus payouts?

Theory of Relativity II: The Storm of the ?

Damn it.  The storm of this Winter is not the one in December that forced weary travelers off the road and into my story "You Could Call It a Christmas Story".  That one was very nasty, but, let's face it, Friday's was a name-grabber.

It is cold here, today, in Naples, Florida.  Really, it is.  I turned the air-conditioning off.  Lila and Lucy Liu?  Both cats are snuggled up against my monitor for warmth.  I have on thick black woolly socks and Birkenstocks with my  pink and yellow Bermuda shorts and that is not a good look.  So you know how cold I am. 

Relatively.

Thanks, again, to Albert Einstein.

Who taught us that time and space are all relative and curvier than Megan Fox.  I proved in an earlier post that temperature is, too.  Along with that, of course, is comfort and its derivative down comforter. So I can be cold in 61 degree noon-Eastern Time and you can be cold in 18 degree snow drifts in Pittsburgh or 32 inches of the pretty crystalline white stuff in DC.

Back to the headlining snow storm. We can't call it the Storm of the Century, as that would be way premature.  I propose that we call it the Storm of the New Decade and the one on last December's 18th the Storm of the Old Decade.  Even if it is not a new decade, yet.

No, it is not. Not really.

We are supposed to count decades starting with a year One.  There were no zero back when time was first counted in periods longer than mealtime-to-mealtime.  There was still no even when the whole AD thing was started up in the wrong year and we started counting decades from that year One.  So, 2011 will be the first year of the new decade.

Only, this time, I'm siding with the folks who rigorously miscount.  I want that storied near-death-bad-night-in-a-Days-Inn experience to be caused by the Storm of Importance and Storm of the Old Decade tag is pretty good.  We can do this because time and decade-counting are relative and depend on where you stand in the Universe.

And I'd much rather be standing here in the near-white chilly sand than where a lot of other people are and in.  Sorry, too, but I'm turning up the heat again.  These woollies have got to go.

Credit Score: US 254 - Greece 0

Can a certain great economic power lose its A+ debt rating due to some over-spending?  "Absolutely not... That will never happen to this country"

It so happens that Tim Geithner, GSA (Goldman Sachs Alum) said that to ABC News.  He seemed almost incredulous that anyone would suggest that a $1.6 Trillion budget deficit would worry anyone, especially the smart money, worry about getting paid back.

Heard that before?  That's what the Romans said, except it was in Latin and the Greeks, back when Alexander the Great was learning Egyptian.  Probably the Russians and the Incas.  Definitely Spain.

Spain?  Yes, a while back Spain had accumulated more gold than the Incas, having stolen every movable object in Peru.  Spain even got a pope to divide half the western hemisphere between themselves and that rival great power, Portugal.

Portugal, honest.  Which is why Brazil speaks Portuguese instead of the Spanish we speak in California.  Yes, it was a long time ago, 1494 or something.

Now, more than 600 years later, once-big-shots Spain and Portugal are in big economic trouble because of deficits. But Greece is the headliner.  It pulled a surprise deficit-rabbit out of Zorba's cap and the mighty Euro is still trembling.  If countries had a credit score, Greece's would be zero.  Or less.

Everyone loves Greece.  It gave us Aristotle, the brilliant philosopher who taught Alexander Egyptian; Plato, the idiot who invented platonic relationships; Euclid, who made up middle-school geometry; the Boston Marathon; "300 Spartans" and that really hot Queen Gorgo; Helen of Troy and don't let the Troy fool you, that ship-launching face was from the same Sparta as the movie; and Retsina, a wine so awful the Greeks juice it with pine tar to make it taste better.

The Greeks also gave us the Philistines (and probably the all of the Palestinian crises) and the name "Jesus" (except for the "j" which even Jesus couldn't say because it didn't exist.  Not until after Spain and Portugal ate up Latin America, so named because the pope couldn't use either Spanish- or Portuguese-America without someone's hissy fit).

Greece always gets cut extra slack because it kept beating back the Persians and their power-hungry leaders (oh, how times have changed).  Greece created the foundation of Western Culture, which did not, in fact, begin with Ronald Reagan.  The European Union has tried to be patient with Greece, but the surprise deficit finished that.

Greece will have to cut spending, raise taxes and run 26.2 odd miles or it's credit score will hit Zero faster than the pop-up window warning you of just that. And all Greek credit cards will all carry the same 48% interest you and I are paying. The Euro is taking a hit, especially against the US Dollar

Tim Geithner is probably emailing overseas investors like crazy. "Won't say I told you so, but do you still want to buy bonds in Euros?  Greece has some nice ones.  Spain and Portugal, too.  Oh, and we are still selling bonds in Absolutely-Not Dollars.  Call me."

The smart money (that would be the Chinese) is looking for bonds in Nepal.

Not Valentine's Day for Iranian Space Worms

Terror indeed.  Iran just sent a mouse and a couple turtles (probably DSL-impaired) up into space along with the worms.  Sound like an amusing, benign little zoo.  Is "benign" a term you associate with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad taking a break from hand-cranking a centrifuge in his garage?

Iran sent up a  communications satellite into orbit about a year ago, which the NSA tapped as quickly as your iPhone or miy Skype line. Most of the talk was just about the number of black-eyed virgins dancing on the head of a pin, anyway. Big Deal.

This Iranian space mission is a different story.

It's not the turtles?  Israel and the US know how to slow down turtles from space, like they have to.  And a mouse, as a mammal, is sure to get motion sickness as its cute white fur ignites in the dive back into the atmosphere at Mach 5 over Tel Aviv.  Weaponized turtles and mice in space has long been anticipated and counter measures to scrape them off pavement are already in place.

These Iranian worms are another matter.  It is unknown what kind of worms they are or if they are worms at all.  Their purpose could be peaceful, like those gravity-free Chinese worms that made very nice black silk negligees for special Valentines... Never mind that.  Iranian's don't make negligees, but they still make the rugs used by Victoria Secret models... Oh, never mind that, either. Iranians make great rugs, so maybe the space worms will weave you a 9 x 12 just in time if you risk a monitored call to Tehran right now.  (It would make half of a great Valentine's Day gift, trust me.)

The space worms.. If I know Ahmadinejad, those worms are probably not going to make you or me that carpet.  More likely they are  gummy worms or maggots with plutonium-powered brains.

Do not even think that about a President of a sovereign nation with a fatwa in his pocket.

Worms are very dangerous as they can multiply a zillion times faster than a single lightheaded mouse.  On Ahmadinejad order, the worm capsule—safely housed in their own detachable capsule sealed away from that  little mouse cheese-deprived and those hungry, snappish turtles--could be sent Earthbound, each worm separately targeted.  Is New York safe?  Pairs?  London?  Your house?

International Space Station research has indicated that, In zero-gravity, worms could grow to be the size of subway cars, but without the beauty of urban aerosol-art. Perhaps, you think, “How much less can my house be worth?”  But it's not just that.  The stock market.... I know, I know, but a 401K could be worth even less if Ahmadinejad has his way.

One frightening hypothetical: proves the point.  What economic disaster would a single Burlington-Northern-box-car sized, plutonium brained worm cause in, say, Omaha, should it land on Warren Buffet's headquarters.  You've waited a generation for  Berkshire Hathaway shares even a blogger can afford and they would be unsaleable and radioactively slimed in one horrible instant.

And, yes, ugh.

Toyota Lexus Correction

According to a Toyota PR flack, the accelerator pedals of the Lexus ES or IS models from Toyota are not really a problem.  Toyota maintains that it only royally screwed up the design of their floor mats.

Huh?

You might well, if inarticulately, ask.

Toyota has not come out openly on this, but it is believed that Toyota designed and built floor mats out of living material.  That's right: Living Floor Mats.

These Living Floor Mats thrive on crumbs from HoHo's and Caesar Chicken Wraps, consuming most of the latte you spill on top of them.  The original Living Floor Mats hated coffee and would spit it back at Toyota engineers, so a too-hasty redesign took place before the cars hit the streets.  And bridge piers.

Living Floor Mats are sedentary creatures, but a few mutants are known--now--to creep at the rate of one nano-inch per hour toward perfectly fine Lexus accelerator pedals.  The attraction is not clear, but it is probably something about scratching the Living Floor Mats back really sweetly.

Mind you, Living Floor Mats are used in the passenger footwell, too.  They are suspected of creeping forward and toward the foot-cooling/warming air vents.  No suffocations have been reported, except in cases when a Lexus flew off a bridge into a bay and that was more because of the water.

Toyota suggests putting the Living Floor Mats in you trunk.  Basically, this is a good idea, but don't expect all of them to stay there.  It is not their natural habitat and even a non-mutant Living Floor Mat may become restless and creep (their only means of motion) through the ski/golf club portal into your back seat.  You might still want to leave your smaller children, if shaped like a Twinkie, at home when you drive your Lexus ES or IS even if the Living Floor Mats are seemingly secure in the trunk.

To avoid that annoying risk, put half of a stale, but real Twinkie and a splash of any drink from Starbucks in the trunk with them.  Safety first.

Hand Jive and the Law

The next step is down the slippery slope is finally underway.  Its not about guns, but something almost as commonplace in American Culture.  Jan Larimer, the RNC Co-Chair (and why not "chairman", this being the Republican Party National Committee) made the announcement:  Republicans have decided to regulate another part of the female anatomy, the reproductive organs pretty much sewn up.

But what part(s)?  Oh, give up.  You won't get it.

Their hands.

Co-Jan spelled out for the Party apparatus what males of all political persuasions already suspected, but dared not say:  Women need to have their hands held.  Not "want", you wishy-washy, hands-off Democrats, "need".

I don't know what prompted the landmark announcement, but it makes me feel both proud and smart.  Why now?  Maybe, the Scaliaist Court was about to legis... rule on the hands issue later this Spring.  Knowing, as all men do, that Co-Jan is right about this, I can only say, "About time!"

Since the '60's, women have been pretty brazen about their hands.  They stopped wearing white gloves for most functions and putting on hemp-wreath rings on their fingers (not that I knew any such women).  Many began raising their hands in High School and College classrooms.  Some would wave at friends across the street like they were Queen Elizabeth II.  Feminine hands would sneak their long French-nailed fingers into the cookie jar for hard earned dollars intended for an X-box or a case of Bud.

The breaking point for Republicans and me was surely, the use of Hillary Clinton's hand to throw her pink flowered hat into the Presidential Primary ring.  Now, she's using that same hand (or maybe not, since she is probably left-handed, you know, the way she is) to shake the hands of International leaders.  Recent Democratic women's Big-Brown-inspired finger-paint...(Oops again. Sorry, sorry NPR) -pointing may have finally sealed the deal.

So it is, finally, that the Republicans have acted.  Women's hands must be held, preferably both.  If you need more than one guy or Born Again Christian woman to do it, call 666...  That's enough really, and talk to Co-Jan directly.  She will dispatch local Volunteer Hand Police to enforce the new rules the way the Taliban kept all those charcoal gray Burkas in place, but without the soccer stadiums, which we don't really have.

I know the Constitution and Bill of Some Limited Rights will not stand in the way, as women were not even in the Constitution except to be counted as more fifths than slaves for census purposes.  Being counted is protected and women will be counted until it is time for something important.

An unintended but sweet consequence is that women will not be allowed to own cats, which are already in short supply since so many have been sold in France last month by Google.  It takes two free hands to hold a cat in order to kiss its head because cats hate that. 

Note, I said, "free" hands.  Not any more.  Not here.

The Scaliaist Court may still have to intervene, as it is not clear if both hands must be held or if one can be free (if you can call it that) to talk endlessly on a cellphone or clutch a purse.  Is it all the time or just when women are thinking serious thoughts as they are wont to do on occasion?  Maybe it is only when they want to turn thought into action or, worse, speech.

I always thought that my wife wanted to hold my hand as we walked down the boulevard, unless, of course, she was in a hurry to get to the shoe store before it closed, at which point she would drop my hand in disgust and take off like a 2008 Corolla.  The fact is that she needed to have her hand held.  (Trust me, you didn't want to suggest that without your best Ronald Reagan impression.)

Under the new Regs, women can still raise their hands in class, but only when it is held by a man or an approved woman.  The latter can be quite efficient--always a plus in a pretty free market society--because you get two women's held hands with one, I don't know, stone?  Which we won't have to use up throwing at defiant or lonely tabby-secreting women kneeling together in that soccer stadium we still don''t have in spite of David and Posh Beckham's best efforts.  Yet.

I realize that am getting way ahead of myself and polite society, but I am a blogger.  How about women's feet?  I know from personal experience that these feet can be disturbingly sexy when used properly under a starched, white linen clothed table or a 500-thread-count Egyptian cotton sateen-weave sheet and damn the color.  I'll email Co-Jan to see if she can schedule a hearing or something on women's feet.  I'd include the ankles, too, since they are attached and can be way too nice too look at in five inch heels.

Toyota Sticks with Lexus Excuse: Floor Mats!

 Toyota's builds great, increasingly smart cars.  Always has.  But willful cars?  Ones that accelerate of their own volition and pretty much refuse to stop.  Yep, Toyota builds them, too.

As a result of its pursuit of GM's top-seller crown, Toyota's great tradition of no-excuses, quality car building might have changed just a bit lately.  They knew it and some customers did, too.  Toyota-built cars would simply decide to go super fast and damned the breaks.  This would be fine if your Camry was sitting at a light next to some rich punk in Lamborghini, but that wasn't part of it.  All of which Toyota was finding out.

So, you'd think, Toyota would take the responsible step of recalling suspect cars to fix the accelerator pedal mechanism itself, which would include some up-market Lexus Models already  fingered in some uncontrolled acceleration accidents.  You'd be wrong.

Toyota already issued a recall in September 2009 for an acceleration problem ant that did include Lexus models.  The recall did not come easily and Toyota was in no hurry to be too publicly embarassed about the need for one.  Then it was.   

Thanks to a harrowing 911 call broadcasting the seconds preceding a deadly crash.  That driver surely saved more lives than a Toyota statistician can count, even if he couldn't stop one of their cars.  He pretty much recalled 1.8 million cars all by himself, including many, many a Lexus.  And eventually a lot more.

And I'm damned sure the playing of that heroic 911 tape ruined a bunch of perfectly good Sushi dinners all over Tokyo. 

If I'm Toyota's CEO--and after I've quickly thanked God(s) that another tradition involving employer humiliation and including samurai swords had changed, too, and I can just blush and stammer instead of spilling organs on the Sashimi---I'm telling everyone at the table, "The poor American just mistook the brake pedal for the accelerator."  The chucking all around probably stopped at this, "Uh, CEO-San, he was a California Highway Patrolman." 

The honorable consultants, probably hosting the gig and who did the fatality-versus-better-pedal-design statistical cost-risk analysis, stand up and leave the table, presumably to get their katana blades or no-excuses sharpened up.  They had forgotten to factor in the risk of a 911 tape becoming really bad publicity for quality car building.

But to whomever was left, "The floor mats!" is a tried-and-maybe-true response.  No chuckling this time.  Just a recall.  For the floor mats, probably a fancy option on that dandified Camry first being offered in 2006 Lexus ES...  Okay, forget that.  But it's still the floor mats.

Later, as complaints and accident reports flood in from everywhere including The Big O's Indonesian boyhood hood, Toyota's CEO finds out that accelerators suck--and stuck--on, maybe, eight million Toyota-built vehicle. Including Vibes from now-defunct Pontiac, of all bizarre things! On most of them, CEO-San comes to admit, it is the pedal itself that deserves the sword.  On the high quality, luxury Lexus cars?  Still just--up-market, but still just--floor mats.  Lexus accelerator pedals are just fine. On other Toyota's?  Not so much.

By the way, since the Lexus recall only involves removing the current luxury L-logo'ed mats and putting them in the luxury trunk, you can do it yourself.  On your way to trade up to a Buick.

Groundhog Day Fraud Exposed!

Punxsutawney Phil seems to be a fraud.  Not that it is his fault

Shadow or no shadow, Phil should not be able to predict anything except a good crowd on Gobbler's Knob, so named exactly why?  Did a turkey see its shadow initially?  Or does Phil's tree stump bear some physical resemblance I don't want to think about?

Groundhog Day has been going on since 1886 in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania and has been questionable from the beginning.

Apparently, the Germans came up with the shadow-seeing legend.  That does not account for the length of the town's name, it being an Indian thing.  The Germans used a hedgehog for shadow-casting, which is a lot like a porcupine to us Americans.  Phil is neither hedgehog nor porcupine?  He is not.  He is a groundhog, not a spiny piece on him, except maybe for the formidable backbone that lets him foist his fraud upon us all February 2nd every year.

The legend has to do with Candlemas and clear skies meaning "Oh, sh_t. And chop more wood."  Candlemas, itself, has to do with Jesus, Mary and Joseph, but not the mild oath Catholics grew up with.  Forty days after Jesus was not born on December 25th, the trio went to Jerusalem so Jesus could meet the locals.  Hence, the position of Candlemas is fake, too, since Jesus was not born anywhere near December 25th. 

Leaving the fundamental error aside, clear skies on the wrongly calendared Candlemas meant more damned winter.  The Germans figured that if it was clear, a hedgehog would see its shadow if it poked its spiny head out of the ground after hibernating most of  winter.  That part makes sense:  Who wouldn't see a shadow on a clear winter's day?  You might even be able to pick out tiny shadows of the hedgehog's spines.  Unless, of course, the hedgehog didn't have any and looked like a groundhog.

Legend-loving Germans migrated, passing themselves off as harmless Dutch, flocking to Pennsylvania like so many turkeys (of which Pennsylvania had so many already that Ben Franklin lobbied for the gobbler as our National Bird, knob and all).  To their dismay, they could not find a hedgehog.  Surprisingly, they couldn't find a porcupine, either, at least not one they could pick up and show off to an assembled awestruck crowd.  Groundhogs have a similar physique and are more pleasant to hold over one's head, so here we are at Phil.

Legends are legends, normally, because no one really knows the truth behind them.  But the truth--the brutal truth--is that the origins don't matter in this case.  Phil lacks the one key element needed to make the legendary prediction work, leaving the spines for Europe to pick up:  Phil does not hibernate!

Hibernating groundhogs, and maybe hedgehogs, snooze during the winter without eating to speak of.  To conserve energy (take notes America), they drop their body temperature lower than you last significant other before you had to move out.  It goes down to 46 degrees (F, not C, which is only used for hedgehogs).  Their heart rates go from 100 to 15 beats a minute.  This is real deep, sub-REM sleep.  What wakes them up is a mystery, but that doesn't matter here, either, because Phil doesn't do any of this.

Nuts, you say?  Uh uh.  I read it today in a report on the Web. (yes, I got up early if not as early as Phil The Fraud).  Phil doesn't even live underground during the winter.  The chunky little bastard lives in a human-crafted little zoo, munching away wide-eyed the whole time.  A temperature modulated fake habitat a spines-throw (if there were any) from a library.  He didn't dig it himself.  Maybe even Germans didn't do it.  But there he is, not hibernating all winter until he is pushed, probably more than gently, out a from under what is surely a plastic tree stump for all attending to applaud.

I would like to believe that Phil is embarrassed by the dishonest spectacle, but goes along because he doesn't really like hibernating in stone cold ground for five months any more than you would.  And God knows what yummy food he gets from the librarian when he should be as inert as an economy I could mention.  I would do the same thing.  We all compromise when no one can see (I even used a FOX Views article as if it were factual in writing this piece.)

So, keep at it, Phil.  Predict away, you furry little fraud.  But I'm going to use the Farmer's Almanac from now on.

Enough with the DNA Already

Don't get me wrong.  I like DNA.  It is very handy if you want to grow some skin cells after a sunburn or want to keep your hair (and good luck with that).  Of course, DNA also runs cancer but no one or thing is perfect.

Which brings me to Enough Already.

Bio 101 helped me understood why my wife looked more like a cute Genny Khan than Lara Flynn Boyle or a Megan Fox tattoo when she (not Megan) was photographed at age two.  Her young looks caused some consternation at home until the milkman proved to be Irish, too.  The whole family came to laugh that DNA weirdness off, but Nina did burn the picture.

I have twin sisters who liked their original DNA so much, they each kept a copy when they split up for the first time.  It may (emphasis supplied) explain why they liked the same dozens of shoes so much they wouldn't share them as readily as a single allele when the split up the second time, packing for college.

DNA, more recently, really soared when it managed to get half the blacks in Southern Illinois out of Joliet.  They got to got there largely because all blacks look alike to the whites in most parts of Illinois.  DNA fueled the Innocence Project which got some guys out in Texas before George Bush could get his hands, or syringes, on them.  Can't argue with that.

Even though I like civil liberty as much as anyone born before the Patriot Act, I don't care if the Feds want to have a Q-tip swab bank with every American, Illegal and Islamist radical in it.  DNA is sort of like Television and the Internet... and the Q-tip for that matter:  It was not invented until after the ink had faded to fuzzy on the Bill of Rights, so it is not protected from the Scaliaists by the Fourth Amendment. 

DNA and television are joined at David Caruso's hip.  We wouldn't have had the original "CSI" without DNA and where would David be now.  Outside of Prime Time, DNA helps catch rapists and killers whether they the raped or killed years ago or last week.  Depending on who you are, that is great or very troubling news.

But all that is over, now, for me.  I can't sleep and not because I am very troubled.  Yesterday, I found out The Big O is practically a twelth cousin of Big Brown (perhaps explaining the nickname connection).  The Hawaiian whose very father came from Kenya and who lived in Indonesia is related to a comman Massachusetts fellow who probably had never even seen Rhode Island until he drove that lame green pickup down I-95 to Washington DC.  And just in time to conjure the long-dead filibuster, at that.

Please, stop with the DNA already.  Everyone seems to want to trace their DNA back to... well, I'm not sure we all have the same agenda on that score.  Even before gene sequencing, I knew that I was related to half of St Paul, Minnesota (not, mind you, Minneapolis, my mother insisted) and most likely all of Transylvania.  I did not make the latter up, but might have if I had had the chance.

Some great, if obviously liberal and scientific, documentaries on PBS or the History Channel chased DNA all around the damned place.  It was hard and time-consuming because the chase required jamming an electron microscope along with cameras into the bed of a green pickup.  Mitochondrial DNA leads us back to an "Eve" in, by the way, Kenya ("The Big E"?).  Not Massachusetts.  The Y Chromosome project traced most of us guys back to Central Asia, but that may be because Genghis Khan was all over the place, too, and spilled more DNA than your neighborhood milkman.

And how the Big E thing work?  All of her kin descended from her, so where did the guys find the right girl?  In the same neighborhood bar?  The same hut, even?  Didn't we used to fear that beautiful cousin because inbreeding leads to genetic abnormalities like two-headed babies with different colored hair, unstoppable hemorrhaging, and hideous mental defects.  (Finally, Congress explained!)

Genghis Khan, I can live with.  I sort of did quite happily for a long time, at least photographically.  Being related to the Kenyan Big E is fine by me, too.  But I will, and hereby, do draw the line at being a cousin of either Newt Gingrich or Megan Fox.

For very different reasons.