NYUCK NYUCK NYUCK

Al Franken kicked off the liberal Air America Radio today. Reuters thought so highly of the story, they put their best man on it:



(As a side note, they mentioned in the story that Al Gore called in. As fellow fans of Harry Shearer's "Le Show" could understand, I'm dying to get a hold of an mp3 or a Real audio link of that exchange. If you're one of the 7 people who read this and who happen to have such a thing, please e-mail it to me.)

IF A BLOG HAS NO ENTRIES AND NO ONE READS IT, IS IT STILL A BLOG?

I've either been busy or apathetic for most of the last five days, hence the empty space where posts should be. I am neither apologizing for nor rationalizing my lack of attention to this web log. There's plenty of other stuff to read, you know, and this shit sucks anyway.

But, now that I have a few moments, I thought I'd pass on to the people who are looking for information about how to make a crossbow, Karen Grassle nude, Bitty Schram nude, or a recent favorite, "republican dominic weather", what exactly I've been doing the last five days, and the fabulous things I have coming up.

- Friday, I figured out how to get my computer-based training to work, which was a mixed blessing. I'm learning how to be a Six Sigma Green Belt. Yes, I know, it sounds exciting, like something Uma Thurman might find handy in "Kill Bill 2". Actually, with Six Sigma, all Uma could do is maybe improve her ability to kill enormous numbers of people by a few percent, since she's already achieved what we Green Belts like to call "high process capability".

- Saturday, I can't remember. Some boring stuff my wife dragged me to.

- Sunday, ditto.

- Monday, more CBT. I'm also working on putting together some highly dubious numbers for a conference I'm attending in late April. It's giving me great respect for Bush's budget team. Highly dubious numbers are harder to arrive at than one would think.

- Tuesday, CBT again, and I'm trying to back up a PC that runs Windows NT but is not networked. I've also got a laptop, which runs XP, and a CD burner, which has a USB interface, but the CD burner won't plug into the PC I'm trying to back up because NT doesn't do USB, and the laptop needs to have administrator privileges, which I don't have, in order to set a connection with the NT PC. This is so typical of my life.

- Upcoming: well, I'm going to that conference in Louisiana in a few weeks, and I'm heading up to Northern NJ for a week in June for more Green Belt training. After that, we're vacationing in Salem, MA because my wife has a witch fixation. I wrangled some Red Sox tickets for the trip, because I have a perpetual loser fixation. Then we're going to see Prince at the Wachovia Center in August, because...well, he's playing there (were he hosting a Jehovah's Witness convention, we probably would not attend). Somewhere in there a few times we plan to go "down the shore", as they say around here because of inadequate grammar instruction. A full summer of really lame activities awaits! Now you know why I mostly write dumb political and pop culture jokes in here. And why nobody reads this.

GOOD WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT

Amhed Chalabi, leader of the anti-Saddam lobbying group known as the Iraqi National Congress and member of the Iraqi Governing Council, was profiled today in the NY Times.

It's a two-pager, but somewhere on the second page, the Times conveys this rather startling fact:

"Nevertheless, the Department of Defense continues to pay his organization $340,000 a month to gather intelligence in Iraq. "

Let's see...Chalabi feeds the Pentagon a bunch of lies, and gets, um, doing the math here...carry the one...two and half shitloads of money. Hey, I can do that! Finally, my ticket to the good life. Hey, Rummy, try this on for size:

- Osama Bin Laden was staying in my basement. He took off and said he was heading to San Antonio for the Final Four, though, so you just missed him.

- Um, there's like a bunch of guys with heavy guns and rockets and bombs and stuff, like, in Najaf, or Umm Qasr, or Ramalamadingdong, or some place. And they look pissed.

- That guy you caught in the spider hole was a double. Saddam is hanging out with Martha Stewart in the Hamptons, planning an extremely tasteful yet vicious revolt.

So, Pentagon brass, what do you say? I'm thinking a quarter of a mil for all three pieces of intelligence, or $100,000 sold separately. And I'll take one those Comanche helicopters off your hands, while we're at it. I need to cut my commute time.

POETIC (DRIVERS) LICENSE

I think that I shall never see
A service area as lovely as thee.

(I took a run up the NJ Turnpike for work yesterday, and ate a Double Whopper there.)

RELEASE THE HOUNDS

Former terrorist czar Richard Clarke went on "60 Minutes" last night to claim that President Bush has done "a terrible job" fighting terrorism. In response, the White House trotted out National Security Adviser Condi Rice this morning on "Good Morning America", "Today", and "The Early Show" and possibly "Romper Room" for all we know to refute the charges. Among other things, she noted that Clarke, who at the time was the leading anti-terrorist expert at the White House, "wasn't involved in most of the meetings of the administration." Touché, Dick!

Anyway, Condi's whirlwind tour of the Diane & Charlie/Katie & Matt/Some Guy & A Random Blonde Chick triumvirate is only the beginning of the balls-out assault by the Bush Administration and its well-funded character evisceration apparatus. Here's a preview of some of the charges the Bushies will be leveling at Mr. Clarke:

- Performed a gay marriage ceremony between Richard Gere and a guinea pig.

- Was seen laughing hysterically at "The Passion Of The Christ".

- Trades abortion videos on Kazaa.

- Named illegimate son with Jane Fonda after Osama Bin Laden.

- Once burned a flag by striking a match on a broken chunk of the Alabama Ten Commandments monument.

- Had anal sex with a welfare mother while simultaneoulsy smoking crack and shooting up heroin at a Kim Jong Il Fan Club meeting on national broadcast television.

- Is actually the former host of American Bandstand without hair dye:



Oooh. That last one might stick.

TOP TEN THINGS THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA WILL MISS NOW THAT "THE REAL WORLD" HAS LEFT

10. More appearances by the giant inflatable rat. He's so cute!

9. Some black guy getting tossed out of the house on his ass.

8. Seven young, highly motivated uh, advertising...or possibly fashion...or something...interns.

7. Lucrative revenue stream from hot tub cleaning and supplies.

6. Lucrative revenue stream from bail bondsmen and process servers.

5. Roommates' constant complaints about the smell.

4. Gripping video of Caleb from Arkansas eating his first cheese steak.

3. Some serious sex with roommates' visiting girlfriends/boyfriends.

2. Guest star Jack Osborne pissing on the Liberty Bell.

And the number one thing the City of Philadelphia will miss now that "The Real World" has left is:

1. "Total Request Live" from Independence Hall!

THE WEARIN' O' THE PUKE

It's St. Patrick's Day. I wonder, do full-time alcoholics get defensive on St. Patrick's Day? I mean, do they sit around saying, "Where the hell are you people the rest of the year? Welcome to my world! Have fun with that hangover tomorrow, you lousy solid citizens!" Or are they pretty much the only ones who are getting drunk today just like every other day?

OH GOD

According to the NY Times, Hollywood executives are rethinking faith films in light of the success of Mel Gibson's "The Passion Of The Christ".

Some movies in the pipeline include:

"David" by Jerry Bruckheimer Productions. Goliath gives him all he can handle, until David kicks some Philistine ass! Starring Colin Farrell.

"Sodom and Gomorrah", by Paul Verhoeven. They don't call it "sodomy" for nothing! Starring Sharon Stone, Elizabeth Berkley, and Mr. T.

"Genesis: The Trilogy", from the Wachowski Brothers. Keanu Reeves is Adam, leader of a new race in a new world. But is it real? After watching all three films, you may still not know. Also starring Carrie-Ann Moss as Eve.

"Jonah", by The Farrelly Brothers. Living inside a whale is even more disgusting (and hilarious) than it sounds! With Jim Carrey and David Spade as the voice of the whale.

"Teen Jesus", from the makers of the "American Pie" series. Jesus tries to get into a good carpentry school with the help of the irrepressible Judas and a cast of wacky teen apostles! Topher Grace is the Messiah, and Jack Black is his wisecracking betrayor-to-be.

NEVER MIND

I'm not doing the stupid lame Sopranos bit this week or ever again. I've got absolutely nothing, and there's no point in trying to force it. I rarely watch TV aside from HBO any more, and it's very hard to make fun of something you don't watch. That was the whole point of this bit, in case you didn't get it. The Sopranos is actually a good show, and nearly everything else on TV is crap. So, I created this scenario of what the Sopranos would be if it was on any other channel, which basically amounts to that it would also be crap. It's kind of an obvious point, and I no longer feel compelled to make it.

Other than that, I have nothing to say. Here's a joke from last year at about this time that still holds up pretty well.

HOW TOUCHING...



Create your own Bush/Cheney poster here! (Use the "city" field to create your own message.)

SCENES FROM LAST NIGHT'S "THE SOPRANOS" HAD HBO MERGED WITH ANOTHER NETWORK

I can't believe I'm doing this pathetic bit again. Oh well, here we go for season 5. I gotta write something in this thing.

This week's network is NBC.

SCENE: Carmella sends A.J. on an errand, and a bear appears in the back yard.

EXTRA SCENE: "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy" drops in to give A.J. a makeover, but after watching him repeatedly scream, "Mommy", they decide their work is done.

SCENE: Carmine has a stroke and nearly chokes on his egg salad.

EXTRA SCENE: The "Fear Factor" final challenge is to give Carmine mouth-to-mouth, and then eat the egg salad.

SCENE: Feech La Manna asks Tony if he can "get back in the game".

EXTRA SCENE: To everyone's surprise, the game is "The Apprentice". Donald Trump immediately appoints Feech to Project Manager of Versacorp over the protests of Nick, whose lifeless body is later found in a dumpster on 7th Avenue.

SCENE: Paulie Walnuts shoots a waiter who is having an epilectic seizure after the waiter complained about not getting a tip and Christopher beaned him with a rock.

EXTRA SCENE: The "ER" gang medi-vacs in and stabilizes the waiter, but only after smolderingly sexy Dr. Luka Kovac finally decides which hot County General chick to bang steady.

SCENE: Dr. Melfi rejects Tony's advances after Tony confronts her in her office.

EXTRA SCENE: Phoebe sets up Tony with Rachel, Ross gets jealous, and hilarity (and high-caliber weaponry) ensues. So much for a Ross spin-off!

MAKING THE GRADE

The NCAA released documents today listing some of the test questions from Georgia assistant men's basketball coach Jim Harrick, Jr.'s class, Coaching Principles and Strategies of Basketball. Among the questions were, "How many points is a 3-pointer worth?"

Now some may say these questions were a bit on the easy side, but TCP would beg to differ. I mean, at least these questions involved some math. The crack research staff here at the Project sifted through some of the hundreds of documents that the NCAA discarded during this investigation, and we were able to locate some questions that Harrick decided not to use because even he thought they were too easy for the average college basketball player. Here are a few:

#34. You're on a recruiting trip, and the upperclassman assigned to you has passed out, leaving you alone with two hotties who are trying to get you to play strip poker. Do you:

a. Notify the nearest Resident Advisor of your predicament, and call the NCAA ethics hotline when you get home.
b. Attempt to wake up your Upperclassman, and politely tell the hotties to leave.
c. Never try to draw to an inside straight, especially if one or both of the hotties is only wearing her underwear.

#42. One of your teammates has apparently shot and killed another one of your teammates, and your coach is trying to get you to tell the investigating committee that the teammate who was killed was a drug dealer in order to cover up the fact that he, you, and several other of your teammates have been receiving illegal payments. You should:

a. Notify the NCAA ethics hotline immediately.
b. Refuse to spread the falsehoods and promptly alert the authorities.
c. Transfer to another school, claiming hardship so you don't have to skip a year, and blab everything to ESPN.

#67. Your school has been cited for numerous recruiting violations, some involving you. Your coach has given you the option to play out the season, or forfeit the remaining games. You should:

a. Suck it up and play. You caused some of these problems, and you should bear some of the responsibility. The fans expect and deserve for you to play.
b. Play the games, but as soon as possible come clean to the NCAA over all possible recruiting violations you've been involved in.
c. Spring Break, Cancun style! Kick it, baby!

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL...ESPECIALLY AMONG CELEBRITY PORN ADDICTS

Jeez, if Bitty Schram or Karen Grassle ever do a nude pictorial, no one will ever stumble on this site.

But, until then, I just got about 10 or twenty more hits!

BE REALLY PREPARED

The White House announced yesterday that they would be bringing the Boy and Girl Scouts back to Iraq.

Of course, the merit badge system will be slightly different than the U.S. Here is a brief list of U.S. Merit badges (courtesy of USScouts.org) and their Iraqi equivalent:

U.S.	IRAQ
Archaeology	Looting
Atomic Energy	Procuring Yellowcake
Aviation	Box Cutter Concealment
Communications	Al-Jazeera Downlink
Energy	Oil Company Kickbacks
Genealogy	Avenging Ancient Wrongs
Landscape Architecture	Landmine Deployment
Law	Creative Punishment
Plumbing	N/A
Public Speaking	Incitement
Rifle Shooting	Shoulder Fired Missile Launching
Truck Transportation	Truck Detonation

DATABASE POTATO



Well, I'm pretty sure I exist, so it must be that going to the gym only a few times a week isn't cutting it...

ON GOLDEN MAN

Yeah, you know it, I stayed up and watched the whole freakin' Oscar telecast last night. And oh yeah, you really know it, I am compelled to write about it, because no one ever writes about the Oscars in their web log. A few thoughts:

- All the Hollywoodlians are now officially and completely under the collective thumb of their Conservative corporate masters again, if they ever weren't. You could almost tell from Tim Robbins' facial expression he was thinking, "Oh fuck George Bush and his illegal war, somebody go and get me a triple foam Starbucks latte, and make it snappy!"

- Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, and Dominick Monaghan...REALLY ARE HOBBITS!

- Billy Crystal is slowly morphing into Buddy Young before our very eyes.

- Even a parody of Robin Williams' act isn't funny any more.

- Nice job of calling Academy President Frank Pierson "a weapon of mass sleep-induction" before Frank came out and paid tribute to Gregory Peck in front of Peck's family. Was that Bruce Vilanch's idea? Off with his comically hirsute excuse for a head!

- Clint Eastwood brought his mom. I'll just let that one sink in.

- Nobody ever thanked the sheep of New Zealand. And since LOTR was a long, torturous shoot populated mainly by very ugly men, I'm sure they played a vital role in the well-being of the cast and crew. Especially Elijah Wood, but I'm only speculating.

- To Catherine Zeta-Jones/Charlize Theron/Julia Roberts/Angelina Jolie/Nicole Kidman/Renee Zellweger/Naomi Watts/Samantha Morton/Susan Sarandon/Julianne Moore/Scarlett Johannson/Holly Hunter/Jennifer Garner/Diane Lane/Sandra Bullock/Marcia Gay Harden (special hormone-enhanced edition)/hell, even Oprah:

Nice rack!

As for Uma Thurman, the Latvian Folk Festival is over that a way. Reowr!

- Sorry, Steven Cojocaru just inhabited my brain for a few seconds there. And we all know how painful that can be.

- I think Lord Of The Rings was robbed in the Foreign Language Film category. That Elvish sounded pretty damned foreign to me. Well, the whole script did, frankly, but that's only because I've been laid.

- Is it over yet? Ha ha, gotta insert that lame hack joke about the Oscars going on forever. Actually they got it in well under four hours this year, mainly because of more efficient Oscar-handing-out techniques developed by the crack Academy R&D team which consisted of handing out Oscars to the same people over and over. Look for the same technique next year for "The Passion Of The Christ" (See Item #1).

- "There may come a day when the strength of men fails; when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...but that is not this day...On this day...we meet at the Hollywood American Legion Hall in costume and get fucking blitzed!!! Well, you know, maybe drink some mulled cider or some non-alcoholic mead. Really, I can't stay too late. I gotta get back and help my Mom with the laundry."

NOW THAT'S MARKET RESEARCH

Well, at least they hired a guy with experience.

A LITTLE TOO HIGH

Yes, folks, today Comcast came out and officially ferried me across the digital TV divide! I am now the proud watcher of High Definition Television. It went pretty well, aside from the fact they unnecessarily unhooked my DVD player, couldn't figure out what channel the High-Def signal was coming in on the receiver, which caused them to tell my wife it was broken and they would be back "later", forcing her to sit at home waiting for them when it was actually working fine, and left me the new multi-function cable box remote without any codes to program my other devices, but hey, you can do that when you're a monopoly that is threatening to buy pretty much every entertainment company in the known universe, and is hosting this web site, so I must now shut up. That sentence was too long anyway.

Anyway, the picture is great. I must say, you haven't lived until you've seen Oprah's acne scars!

HOT FOR TEACHER

In a coordinated effort between several agencies of the US Government, thousands of schoolteachers are being arrested and sent to Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay after Secretary of Education Rod Paige referred to them as terrorists.

"We're taking this very seriously," said Attorney General John Ashcroft at a joint news conference today with Secretary of Homeland Defense Tom Ridge. "One of our fellow cabinet members has made a determination, and the Justice Department is moving swiftly and with all available resources to apprehend the enemy combatants and remove them from the theater of battle, er, classroom."

Reports are streaming in from all over the nation that US Marshals, DEA agents, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms personnel, and even county Sherrifs and local law enforcement are being pressed into service to arrest and detain the educators. "Yeah, man, it was really cool," said 9th grader Sean Garrity of Lincoln High School in Wilmette, IL. "We were, like, sitting there doing our, like, practice standardized tests, and then these dudes with, like, yellow 'DEA' jackets come busting in and grab Mr. Harris. He's like, 'What the f***!', and the dudes go, 'Hit the floor and put your hands behind your head, you terrorist!' We were all, like, tripping out at first, and then after they took him away, we were like, yeah, party dude!"

Homeland Secretary Ridge has raised the national threat level from Yellow, or Elevated to Orange, or High, until the last of the teachers can be taken into custody, which could take weeks according to a spokeman. In the meantime, volunteers from the President's Council On Faith Based Initiatives will be filling in for the detainees, according to the Bush Administration. President Bush told a group of reporters, "It's time our children was taught to learn some values the right way, and these people is just the group to do it."

HE'S OUR MAN



Every village has to have its idiot, and Preston Lit is Philadelphia's. It's a pretty impressive honor to be the village idiot of the nation's fifth largest city, so let's see what Mr. Lit has done to deserve it.

- In 1996, he harrassed a male news reporter for the local NBC affiliate who he was in love with and thought was Jesus, and led police on a 120-mile high speed chase.
- Placed a fake bomb in a mailbox in 2002.
- Barked like a dog and turned over a table during court proceedings after that arrest.
- Missed his parole hearing last month, then dumped trash all over his yard.
- Placed a fake bomb in a mailbox in Northeast Philadelphia last week.
- Left several suspicious packages at the Philadelphia International Airport last week.
- Checked into a hotel room last night and sprayed grafitti all over the walls and left a package for Al-Qaeda.

The FBI and the Philadelphia Police Department, seemingly more amused than alarmed, have not yet apprehended Mr. Lit, and he remains on the loose, both literally and figuratively. So if you see any stark raving lunatics carrying paper bags and muttering religious-themed love sonnets to Steve Levy, please return him to Philadelphia. We need our idiot back. Oh, we have several other candidates ready to step in, but it just wouldn't be the same without Preston. Thanks.