I had the opportunity to listen to a bit over a minute of National Peoples Public Radio yesterday morning. The story I caught was a blurb about gas prices. Now if you're like me and you use gasoline you might have noticed that the price of gas has plummeted over the past month and a half or so. Locally we're down a good 40 cents a gallon over that period and they're continuing to fall. NPR's take on this?

Gas prices are an average of 45 cents a gallon more expensive than this time last year.

I can't believe I used to think of them as an impartial news source. Bloody posers. more...

Posted by: Jim at 09:03 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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The insane Arab fundamentalists have murdered South Korean citizen Kim Sun-il. Kim was one more foreign national working to make Iraq a better place.

Words have no wings but they can fly a thousand miles.

That's a very old Korean saying and it's very true but in this case I need these words to travel quite a few thousand miles as I wish peace of heart and deep sympathy for Kim Sun-il's family and loved ones.

The three thousand South Korean troops that were scheduled to ship to Iraq are still coming. Now they have one more reason to do so. Good hunting, gentlemen.

Posted by: Jim at 09:17 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Terrorists in Saudi Arabia have carried through on their threats to kill their American hostage. I'm not going to hot link to anything because I honestly don't want that traffic. It's going to be everywhere you look in a few hours anyway so you don't need my links.

Paul M. Johnson Jr. was a contractor in Saudi Arabia, our "ally" in the fight on terrorism. His captors beheaded him as they previously murdered American Nick Berg.

Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of the majority of the 9/11 suicide mass murderers. Saudi Arabia is where Osama bin Laden was born and where he made the millions of dollars that started his criminal empire. It is the stronghold of Wahabiism, the ultra strict fundamentalist Islamic sect that makes all of this possible.

In the past several months, foreign (pronounced "American") facilities have been attacked by terrorist strike teams and bombings. In each instance the Saudi police have allowed terrorists to escape, either through negligence or by disengaging contact.

I won't be saying anything at the moment that I might have some slight chance of regretting later. Instead I will just take this space to express my deepest sympathies for Paul Johnson's friends and family.

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The Supreme Court overturned a 9th Circuit Court ruling against saying the Pledge of Allegiance in schools because of the controversial word "God". Unfortunately they didn’t actually rule on the Constitutionality of “under God”. The lower court ruling was overturned because part-time dad Newdow didn’t have proper custody to sue in his daughter’s name.

Which means weÂ’ll be seeing this again sometime soon.

Incidentally, today is Flag Day and the 50th anniversary of the addition of "under God" to the Pledge.

(Hat tip to Lovely Wife)

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Phylicia Rashad made history yesterday as the first black woman to win a Tony award for Best Actress. This begs two questions. The second is why hasn't a black actress won a Tony award before now? The first is what is Claire Huxtable doing in a play? We'll completely ignore the second question and concentrate on the first as there's more comedy potential there (trust me, this does pick up in a bit).

Broadway is Phylicia's first love and her notable successes in the silver screen were basically just placeholders in her career as a stage actress. A way to pay the bills you might say. That decade long stretch as the affluent lawyer mom of a gaggle of dark skinned and white souled children was but a diversion. How does one get 'diverted' from the love of their life for such a long time? A year here or there could be understood easily but a decade?

There's only one answer and that is cashola. Moola. Dough. Money. Greenbacks. Hey, you don't get to snort coke off a whore's ass by showing her your playbill, even if you are first billed. Well, not any classy whore anyway. I'm talking high class hookers where your people call somebody who knows somebody who sets things up. And she brings the coke too. That's right, I'm talking F-I-N-E fine.

Hell, you don't even get "people" without serious cash and clout. Yule Brenner WAS the freakin' King and he never had people. Guy danced around bald and half nude for twenty years and all it got him was an aneurysm. Couldn't even beat out Captain Picard for sexiest bald dude. You know why? Because Patrick Stewart was the star of a popular series and he has people. Successful show equals money equals people equals hookers with ass cocaine. It's simple math, folks.

How much was Kramer getting for working on Seinfeld? Something like a million per episode there at the end, right? You think he ever seriously contemplated leaving the show to pursue his dream of being a NASCAR driver? Of course not. You get way more tang as "that loser goof on Seinfeld" than you do as "another redneck wanna-be" in Daytona.

The only person who has ever successfully left a hit series to pursue other interests was Shelley Long. She abandoned Cheers after it became the number one show on television and managed to become a wildly successful screen actress. Oh, wait a second - no she didn't. She played a couple roles as an extra flighty Goldie Hawn impersonator opposite such worthies as Steve Gutenberg in second rate comedies that nobody remembers except the occasional desperate blogger reaching through the depths of the IMDB database. Shortly after noting her dismal failure as a B movie queen, Shelley Long's career shifted focus and she now makes a living by showing up at strange houses with several grams of coke and tear-off panties.

So to sum up, congratulations to Phylicia Rashad for her historical achievement. We're sure that she would have got it much earlier if she hadn't taken such a long sabbatical from the stage and if the assholes who give out the Tony's weren't such racist sons of bitches. Hey, there's a bonus - I answered the second question too.

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A study from Journal of the American Medical Association says that 1 out of every 4 Americans have mental illnesses. Think of your three best friends. If they all seem normal then it's you.

(Hat tip to Electric Venom)

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1 No, in my group it's me. Totally. But that's ok, I like being the one that stands out in my crowd.

Posted by: Helen at June 03, 2004 09:10 AM (D56g3)

2 Since everyone in my family is looney, that makes a couple other whole families safe....

Posted by: Susie at June 03, 2004 12:46 PM (c7TZ/)

3 [doing quick mental inventory] Yup. Me.

Posted by: Harvey at June 03, 2004 01:24 PM (tJfh1)

4 The voices in my head tell me to let you know we're fine. Guess who. . .

Posted by: Emma at June 04, 2004 03:46 AM (NOZuy)

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It's the last day of school in Rogers, Arkansas. The 1st-grade teacher wraps up the lesson on rainforest animals and rewards the students with fish that squirt water. A summery fun toy that's also apropriate to the material. Karen Young, mother of one of the students, was not happy with this choice of gifts. Not happy at all.

A Rogers mother says she's upset after her first grader came home with a toy gun. Karen Young says her 7 year old came home with what she called a water gun on the last day of school. Young asked her child where it came from. He told her that his teacher gave it to him. Young says she considers the teacher an excellent educator but says this was a really bad decision on the teacher' part.



Assistant school superintendent Dr. Louise Standridge says the package that the toy came in says the toy is called a water squirter. It's in the shape of a fish.

We know it's not a toy gun because if it was the police would have arrested all of the children to enforce the zero tolerance policy against toy weapons. It's a squirting fish. Hello? Ms.Young? What's the dealy-o? Perhaps it has something to do with her history with firearms.

Young says two of her brothers were shot in domestic disputes, her uncle committed suicide with a gun and she accidentally shot her ex boyfriend when the gun she hit him with went off.

She accidentally shot her boyfriend while beating him with a gun. Why was she hitting her boyfriend with a gun? Is it a tradition in Rogers to beat husbands/boyfriends with guns? There seems to be a log of firearms discharging during arguments in that family.

I think a fish that spits water might be exactly what's needed in that household. When mommy starts beating on her boyfriend with a gun, squirt her with water. Hey, it worked to train the cat from eating the ferns, right?

(Hat tip to The Thief)

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