The Monk Bought Lunch

cue Homer voice: mmmm, cunning ham arglarglargh....

Nothing starts my day better than hearing a Republican blubbering like a little girl on my radio.

From a statement by the Republican Party of San Diego:
I expect what few liberals there are left in North County to try to exploit this episode for political gain.

Republicans and Democrats alike said Cunningham, a Republican who represented the 50th district for eight terms, had acted wrongly; however, Republicans also stressed the importance of moving on....
...the republicans then pretended to sneeze, while some of them shouted "Lewinski!" and some "Chappaquidick!".

*update: Video here of Cunningham's blubbering "I sowwy" speech, accompanied by a "crawl" describing death by peanut butter kiss.

we bring good things to life

Daddy Monk gave me his old digital camera, so now when I have nothing about which to blog, I can just show you a picture. Here

BBBARRROOOMM brawl

Ka-Boom!
A Dictionary of Comicbook Words on Historical Principles

A shameful omission: Bamff!, the sound Nightcrawler made when he teleported. Always my favorite comic book word. Not to be confused with Banff.

Oh, and Nightcrawler is Kurt Wagner, but not to be confused with Lambchop's Kurt Wagner. Who is not be confused with Kurt Waldheim...

I love this game!

yes, I'm talking about the weather. sue me.

So it's around 7:00 this morning and the man on the radio says it's 70 degrees outside. I figure either I misheard him or he misspoke, so I open the door and sure enough a warm breeze wafts through my outstretched fingers which, even in freaky-wit-da-weather Rochester NY, is unsettling. Not to sound like a stressed-out choreographer but, um, it's November 16th people- winter will be here and are we ready? I don't think so!
Nothing to worry about, though. It was just a blip as by midnight tonight it will be 31 degrees with a mix of rain and snow.
How's a monk supposed to dress?

is it just one per customer?

I would be lost without craigslist:
For once Let me give you Free Oral Ladies - m4w - 41

o tannenbomb

I wasn't planning on getting a christmas tree this year, but I may go ahead and get one just so I can cut this out:

and put it on top. Turn your head sideways, dummy.

late-nite talk show monologue joke, jack-in-the-pulpit edition

This Sunday, a local film festival will be featuring "Childrens' Shorts from Around the World". Already, Catholic priests are lining up to get inside.
*phony golf swing. stop there*
When we come back, Olivia Newton John will deliver an impassioned plea for information on her husband's disappearance and tell us about the new extension she's putting on the house!

I smell something, but i don't think it's esther williams

I think differently in the shower. After my 1/2 hour cancer check, my mind tends to wander in unpredictable directions. So I would be hard pressed (see cancer check) to retrace the steps that got me there this morning, but I got to wondering what ever happened to Mark Leyner. At one point he seemed to be chugging along pretty good, producing vacuous but entertaining material that was good bathroom reading. I was thinking that he might have, in some ways, been out out of business by episodic bloggers like Latigo Flint and the Peabs (who appears to be out of business himself). People can get their outrageous quasi-fictional biofantasies with a click of the mouse- why buy a book?
So I did a fast bit of Googling to see if I could find out what Leyner's been up to. I found out here that Leyner recently co-authored a book called Why Do Men Have Nipples? : Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini, which tells me that he's fully accepted his toilet-author mantle. I didn't think about that too long, though, because I was distracted by these sentences by the website's author:

Leyner is a very hyperactive mix of a biology thesis, a pop culture dictionary, and a homicidal terrorist weaving through rush hour traffic in an ambulance with an AK-47. There is no other way to describe his writing.

Really? You've found the one way to describe Mark Leyner's writing and it's "Leyner is a very hyperactive mix of a biology thesis, a pop culture dictionary, and a homicidal terrorist weaving through rush hour traffic in an ambulance with an AK-47"?
I've been trying to parse this description, and the only result is that I'm nostalgic for this morning's shower, particularly the cancer check. Leyner is a mix. This mix is "very hyperactive". Not simply "hyperactive", mind you, but "very" so. This mix consists of a college research paper, a book (fortunately we don't have the problem of having to imagine a "very hyperactive" biology thesis or dictionary since it is the "mix" which is hyperactive, not its components), and a "homicidal terrorist". This last not to be confused with a philanthropic terrorist. I think it's just the terrorist who's in the ambulance with the AK-47, but I like to think of them all in there- the book, the paper and the terrorist, maybe calling each other Mother, Jugs, and Speed. Finally there is the confusion over whether the author is describing Leyner or his writing (Leyner is a very hyperactive mix... There is no other way to describe his writing). Maybe this is something to do with auteur theory- I don't have my old college notebooks handy right now (maybe they're in an ambulance).
I'm reminded of those old Spin Magazine record reviews, which always included some kind of collision or impossible combination: "The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion sounds like Lon Chaney's werewolf in a three-legged race with Traci Lords, but instead of burlap the bag is satin, and on fire". The Spin hacks, however, never had the gall to follow that with "there is no other way to describe the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's music".
And guess what? The man responsible for this website has a book out. Here's his own description of the contents:
A combination of pop-fiction references, heavy metal speed, and hilarious parody mix the half-dozen different stories together into a nightmarish tale of post-apocalyptic America.
I'm guessing there is another way to describe it.

Possuma Bin Laden?

From a question in yesterday's Scotty Mac Show:

I've heard Osama bin Laden is-- he is saying that he is dead. His experts is telling him that Osama bin Laden is dead.

To quote Moe Szyzlak-
Whaaaa?

the cluck stops here

Is it just my imagination, or have scientist types for some time now been trying to tell us that the avian flu is some serious shit and that “pandemic” is not someone who’s diet is lacking in Chinese bears? Interesting, then, that in the midst of all the indictments, SCOTUS SNAFUs, and lowest-ever popularity ratings, the Prez all of the sudden gets all “Watch out fer the bird flu! Bird flu gonna getcha!”.
My guess is that soon you will start to see exchanges like this in the White House Press Briefing room:

Q: Scott, you stood at that podium and told us that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby had nothing to do with the outing of Valerie Plame. As a matter of fact, you called such charges “ridiculous”. Now that we know, and not in a “relating to an ongoing investigation” way but in a “right there in black and white, underneath where it says it will be 62 degrees and windy today” kind of way, that both were in fact involved, don’t you feel like a chump and don’t you feel stank?

Mr. McClellan: Are you feeling alright, Helen? You look a little peaked. You been messin’ with the chickens?

Which will eventually evolve into something like this:
Q: Scott, you lyin’ ass hair-club-for-men joinin’, phony paper passin’ and nix-check cashin’ lowlife, every time we ask you about any problem the administration is having, you try to hand us a steaming bowl of “focus on the work of the president”. What the holy hell IS that work, if not making sure he’s running a tight ship? Clearing the brush from his ranch?

Mr. McClellan: Terry, let me say this: Buh-GAWK! Cough cough. Buh-GAWK!

Q: You didn’t answer my question.

Mr. McClellan: I did answer your question, Terry. I said: buh-GAWK! You go, Goyal.

There’s this little gag I like to do to annoy my friends when we’re out in some noisy environment. I get their attention and wave them in close as if I want to tell them something, then once they’ve leaned in towards me I wave them away as if to say “nevermind- not important”. Then I wait a few minutes and do it again. The great part is that people will keep falling for it, so great is the instinct to respond as they do. It really pisses folks off, because it makes us feel just as stupid as we are. The Bushies seem to be trying a similar tactic with the whole “scare the shit out of the country whenever we get in trouble” scenario. But I’m here to tell them, it loses you friends.
My understanding from what news I’ve force fed myself on the “bird flu gonna getcha” front is that, while the prez is out there saying “hey, you can worry about indictments all you want, but we’re all gonna die”, he’s got reps on the news shows saying “we want municipalities to be aware that, if a pandemic hits, it’s going to be up to state and locals to deal with it”. Because apparently viruses recognize state and county boundaries.
It makes me wonder if the whole Katrina fuck-up wasn’t really the White House’s version of the sitcom husband burning dinner so that he won’t be asked to do it again.
“Hey, you don’t want the federal government managing catastrophes- we suck at that!”.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.