The Monk Bought Lunch

psst! hey kid!

It only costs one dime, one tenth of a dollar and a moment of your time to experience the thrills, the chills, and the educational experience of a lifetime. Don't be shy, folks. Give the man your money and see the GREATEST GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH IN THE WOILD!
(Antigeist, do I have to tell you not to look?)

we think the American people deserve to know the facts. and by "know the facts", i mean "kiss my ass"

A gem from Wednesday's White House Pressed Ham Teething Ring with Skeets McClaypigeon (yeah I know, I'm really starting to stretch with these):

Q I want to follow up on what Terry just asked you. Even before DeLay was indicted, there were a lot of Democrats who were making an argument that the Republican Party, by virtue of having controlled Congress for more than a decade now, the White House for almost five years now, had grown arrogant in its use of power, and was flouting rules and sometimes laws. What's the President's view?

MR. McCLELLAN: Welcome to Washington, D.C., Dick. That's the kind of politics that go on in this town.

Huh? Man, I gotta remember to use this tactic:
"Monk, the mailman said he saw you tying your cats to the ceiling fan and setting them on fire!"
"Hey, welcome to my house, your honor. People do weird shit here, what can I say?"

Also, I would like to request that Scottie change "Go ahead, Goyal" to "You go, Goyal!". I think it's a little more in keeping with the spirit of what callin on Goyal is all about. Keep it real, Scottie!

other bust-related news

Anita Ekberg, the woman we're all meant to envision when someone includes the abbreviation BBW in their personals ad, turns 74 today. Let's all go dance in a fountain to celebrate!

Well, my telephone rang it would not stop,
It's President Kennedy callin' me up.
He said, "My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?"
I said, "My friend, John, Brigitte Bardot,
Anita Ekberg,
Sophia Loren. The country'll grow!"
-Bob Dylan, I Shall Be Free

could be someone's about to do some Hammer time

Tom Delay: "I have done nothing unlawful, unethical or, I might add, unprecedented".
Translation: "I didn't do anything wrong, and even if I did, everybody else does it!".

hate to say I told you so

Do something great for your country- become an atheist:

In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

It also tends to make people really annoying to ride the bus with, but what the hell.

mike, browned

Broadway B at Titivil pointed me at the AP story on Mike Brown's "testimony", in which Brown amusingly invoked the Family Circus "Not Me" phantom when asked to assign blame for the Katrinastrophe. But for me this was the funniest part:

"I'm happy you left," said Rep. Christopher Shays (news, bio, voting record), R-Conn. "That kind of look in the lights like a deer tells me you weren't capable of doing that job."

"That kind of look in the lights like a deer". I think I saw that printed on some Japanese teenager's t-shirt once.

new lady in GW's life?

Maybe some of you know more about this than I do. I was just sort of glazedly scanning through the White House Pram Beatings when this exchange kinda caught my eye:

Q Who makes up the list of reporters that he is allowed to call on?

Q Who is Bianca, anyway?

Indeed, who is this Bianca? So, as anyone would who's trying to avoid doing his job, I did a little Googling. This was the first I came across.
Then I found the "president's remarks" (just so's you don't think it's a press conference) that set off this whole Bianca thing, and, yup, it was one of those bizarre moments we've come to expect from our conundrum-in-chief.
I would have assumed that Bianca was a plant, but if that's the case she's apparently not a very good one.
So what the hell?

who wants one?

I keep waiting for The Onion to "jump the shark", to use the current vernacular. It hasn't.

the pit and the pendulous

The aforementioned spider seems to have taken up semipermanent residence in the garden, and I am happy to have Butch as my neighbor- I named him/her Butch. I like the sound of it- Butch the Spider- and if it is a girl it's pretty butch, so, Butch. Anyhow, I like visiting it and checking out what it's doing to the web ("I like what you've done over here, where the spokes change direction a little bit"). It's also fun to watch Butch in the midst of devouring a bee. Hey, Butch! You got one!
The problem is, my girlfriend who will also soon be my roommate is deathly afeard of spiders. Even if a cartoon spider comes on the TV, she looks away and says "Tell me when it's gone". So I can't share this new diversion with her. I'm tempted to try to convince her that this is an opportunity to overcome this phobia of hers- y'know, limited exposure to begin with, a little more each time, 'til one day I find them in bed together- her and Butch. "Butch! How could you!". Okay, not that part but you get the idea. I want to convince her that this fear is totally irrational, the spider means you no harm and is most likely incapable of doing any, wouldn't you like to free yourself of this silly aversion?
But with my luck, while I am lecturing her about the benign nature of the gentle spider, she'd bite into a peach right in front of me. Right in front of me! AHHHH! Peach fuzz! Graah! How do you just bite into it like that? Are your teeth completely insensate? Are they made of Adamantium, like Wolverine's skeleton? That fruit's got hair on it for christ's sake! Let me know when you're done eating that thing- I'm gonna go see what Butch is up to.

along came a spider

I have nothing interesting to say, so instead I'll open my virtual wallet and share with you a picture- not of my grandkids, but of:
a big-ass spider that was in my yard this morning.

I was going to include a couple pictures of my cat, but the machine tells me that they are too large. Which may in fact be true of the cat in question. I will attempt to resize the pictures, if not the cat, and get back to you.

Bad sportsmanship. A ruthless minority of people seem to have forgotten good old-fashioned virtues.

It pains me to say this, but there are a few points David Brooks makes here that are worth thinking about. Thing is, it's hard to consider him seriously after he says something like this:

Most of the ambitious and organized people abandoned the inner-city areas of New Orleans long ago, leaving neighborhoods where roughly three-quarters of the people were poor.

Yeah, people are poor because they lack ambition. Thanks, Reagan. Glad to have you back.

hey, that's no way to be canonized!

Headline from the college newspaper where I work:
Men Gut St. John Fisher for Title

for nerds only

I've got way too many things to do to bother with this thing, but I just thought I'd drop in for a second because I was up past my bedtime last night and caught Letterman interviewing Shepard Smith, who was clearly pissed off about the rescue efforts in Louisiana and was surprisingly blunt about it. So that was interesting. But I also kept thinking, "Was this guy born or did Steve Ditko draw him?"

ditzcarraldo

I don't get it- Klaus Kinski got tons of tail!

And curse you, Dana, for introducing me to Don'ts and Dont's!

too bad jim

RIP R.L. Burnside