Category: News

Looks like Billy-Bob teeth sales were actually hurt by a copycat novelty teeth maker, so the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals decreed. Thank heavens that got straightened out. Perhaps it will stop there and not have to go to the United States Supreme Court.

In our Fun Facts corner, Billy-Bob Teeth, Inc., had sales of novelty teeth of five million dollars last year. Call the investment bankers! We need an sophomorically exuberant Novelty Item stock market bubble to re-energize the markets, and we need it stat.

The Washingtion Post mentions in passing in a story about a spammer that Senator Charles Schumer of New York wants an international treaty for the non-proliferation of spam.

Protected by International Treaty? What’s next, an Axis of Spammers? Trade wars or military intervention to depose those who would forge headers?

For the love of pete, it’s just junk mail you can delete from your inbox and filter, fairly effectively, from your server. It’s annoying, but the pushes to make it illegal and criminal are a little much for my taste, but I rankle against legislation and regulation more than I rankle at being annoyed.

A home schooled child has won the National Geographic Bee this year. And it’s not as though he’s been in training for the geographic bee: he’s also on his state science bowl team.

Regardless of these accomplishments, he probably doesn’t feel good about himself since his home schoolers, who love him and don’t just look at him as a little monster to suffer for a year, lack diversity and sensitivity training to provide programs to love himself and his fellow little monsters. Of course, his educators aren’t paying the administrative vigorish that cripples school district budgets, either.

So this homeschooling win must be a fluke.

Nestled among the column in Forbes that examines how small cars have fared in the United States throughout history lies the trivium that Sears once produced a compact car, way back in the 1950s.

Of course, I am not going to tell you its name here; I’ll save that for a random conversation about Sears or small cars, wherein I can interject, “You know, Sears once sold its own car. The Sears …..”

A couple of outraged students at UCSB are frothing about the use of the Gaucho as a symbol for the school’s mascot or some such nonsense. They’ve written to the school paper to foam on at length about how the school mox Mexican-Americans and their descendents. Oh, yeah, here’s the response to those who might think the collegiate children are being foolish:

Now some of you reading this might be immediately tempted to dismiss our commentary as some “PC” reaction to what you might perceive as a rather harmless appropriation of Mexican culture. [Emphasis mine]

Oh, spare me the pillaging of your heritage. As some tonto gringos know, gauchos roamed las pampas de Argentina, not Mexico. And gaucho is a romanticised profession, not a race or ethnic group.

See also Green Bay Packers, the Ottawa Senators, Seattle Mariners, the Washington Wizards (sorry, I had to stretch for the NBA) or, more appropriately, the Dallas Cowboys.

Still, the incited students have a great idea! Change the mascot!

We propose the changing of the mascot name from UCSB Gauchos to UCSB Gavachos, a slang term used by Mexicans and Chicanos to refer to white people.

That learned them Fighting Whities guys, wot?

(Original source: Fox News Tongue Tied.)

Hey, if you’re coming in from Google and want to see the complete Ted Nugent transcript from KRFX, sorry I don’t have it (but if you do find it, I would love to see it. I did talk about the “controversy” on Wedneday, May 7, and you can read the two posts here.

Google’s searches only bring you to the main page here, and not the actual post for which you were looking. But rest assured, the Doc-U-Matic 3000 is here to serve you! Don’t forget to drop me a line and say thanks.

The Shepherd Express discusses the possibility of eliminating last call at taverns and pubs, or at least allowing them to stay open a while after they’ve stopped serving liquor. Although this article examines regulations far off lands where even sober people talk funny, like England and Minnesota, I thought I would add my two shots.

It would be a good idea to eliminate last call and deregulate alcohol serving totally.

After all, two o’clock closing times merely throw a bunch of inebriated and partially-inebriated people into the streets at once. A number of people to bicker, to continue partying, and sometimes to drive home at the same time. The mandated closing time concentrates the goofiness into a single period of time arbitrarily assigned by the municipal or state government. Heaven knows the problems the neighborhoods in Milwaukee alone have suffered because of the throngs. Denny’s restaurants in Milwaukee close before the bars do to avoid the rush of post-tavern patrons, for crying out loud.

By eliminating the bars’ closing time, municipalities would spread out the impact of partying people and whatever infractions they might perform, hereby diminishing the overall disquiet created in neighborhoods, allowing bar patrons to trickle out until the next day. With the end-all, drink-all crowd evacuating at a single time, we’re assuming the cops can be everywhere at once to catch all of the drunk drivers who would kill short-order cooks getting off at one o’clock in the morning and all the gun-, knife-, and fist-bearing disagreeable people.

Of course, opponents might say that eliminating the bar closing time would make people likely to drink more, but that’s not necessarily the case of Miller High Life. People can drink as much as they want outside of taverns and clubs. It just means people would drink in places where restaurant keepers could profit from it.

I hate junk mail that looks like invoices for something I have ordered. Cripes, this very day I got three from the wonderful Domain Registry of America, warning me that unless I paid right now my domain names would expire!. In August. Send your check now! Of course, they’re not my domain registrar and they’ve never gotten dime one out of me. As a matter of fact, considering they have sent me this triplicate postal spam four times, I have cost them 12n, where n is the cost of your general presort postage.

It’s not just these desperate, fly-by-day two-bit-and-you-get-change operations doing it. Time Warner’s been onto the ploy before they wed “A Disk A Minute” AOL. Time and Sports Illustrated offers started looking like past due bills a long time ago. I no longer subscribe to any Time Warner magazines. I have a long memory.

I have no respect for a company that would hope to trick me out of my money. These guys send their “invoices” out the same way as GAINPRO PENIS ENLARGERS (excuse the keyword spamming) pinheads send e-mail. The number of people who are too busy, too unintelligent, or too inattentive and simply cut a check to Time Warner, Domain Registrars of America, or whatever, obviously rewards them enough to keep them doing it. But they won’t get my money, and in the case of legitimate and large corporations, I mean any of it.

So is legislation the answer? Hardly. But individuals should be careful with such “invoices,” and we in the blog-o-mockracy and in the consumer world should stand up and let the companies know we see what they’re doing, and we disapprove.

Before Six Flags over Mid America, in Eureka, Missouri (a suburb, now, of St. Louis) opens, the firefighters and emergency workers have their day. It’s not like they get short lines to the roller coasters, though; Six Flags lets them use the Thunder River ride to practice rescuing people from flash floods and rapids. How cool is that?

Story, courtesy of the Suburban Journals (a wholly owned subsidiary of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch designed to make you think there’s real “competition” or that they contain “news”), here.

How convenient. French scientists have determined that the mosquitoes that carry West Nile are mutants. Just at the same time that X-Men 2: X-Men United is atop the box office again. Sure, these scientists claim this is based on scientific evidence and the announcement is designed to further the understanding of the West Nile epidemic.

Furthermore, the scientists explain their trademarking of the “MassKillto” super villain suitable for t-shirts was inadvertent, and that they meant to send the comic-book style graphic to the magazine Nature.

Listen, Garner, I love Heather.

The Opinion Journal yesterday included a column that explained that Republicans are from Mars, Democrats are from Venus. Or, as the article says, Democrats want to build (presumably Utopia) while Republicans want to defend civilization, whatever its flaws, from the alternatives.

This conforms to an idea I had while I was growing up, in the Reagan/Bush years, that the Republicans made good presidents, but Democrats made a good legislature. Republicans believe in law enforcement and strong militaries, which conform to what the executive branch does, whereas Democrats embrace the social freedoms in the bill of rights, or seemed to, and would provide a good body of legislators for a shambling and mostly gridlocked Congress. A balance of thought, a balance of focus, and the balance of power. What could be better?

But I am older and wiser now. I realize politics is sports for old fat men and women who cannot compete on the field and are afraid to try it in the honest business world (and I do mean honest, not the inbred business-lobbyist-executivocomplex). It’s not about making good laws, it’s about making a leaping reverse stuff law that says a lot but does whatever someone eventually interprets it to do. It’s about scoring votes and trash talking and excessive celebration after every small victory and one side winning and the other being humiliated. Since I have grown up, I have seen how they haven’t.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports (second item) that a man in a suburb of St. Louis became suicidal and armed himself with a sword. However, lacking a good instruction manual for killing oneself with a sword, this gentleman drew the attention of neighbors, friends, family members, or the local busybody. Said other, non-suicidal person called police, who arrived and shot the suicidal man when he brandished said sword at them.

No, they didn’t kill him. Now he’s going to prison for attempting to kill a police officer. That should fix him right up.

The San Fransisco Chronicle reports about an ambulance proceeding lawyer who’s suing Nabisco for selling Oreos which are not good for children. His goal, other than getting his name in the paper so he can be the Erin Brokovich of food lawsuits (man breasts probably included), is to keep tran fat out of the hands of children.

Listen, bub, here’s a lesson for you. When Milwaukee started getting decorated by the young graffitos in the local youth crime organizations who used brightly-colored, aerosol-propelled paint in their unauthorized, yet profoundly authentic, murals, Milwaukee banned the sale of spray paint to people under eighteen. You had to go to the counter and show some ID for your Krylon. No kidding. This meant, of course, that those young, impassioned artistes driven to speak out in the only subversive, non-violent fashion they could needed to hang out outside the local True Value waiting for someone they could bribe to come along, or they could improvise. And many did, which meant that most of the gangland glyphs were done in permanent marker. Now, Milwaukee had to make marker possession by minors into a felony….

What’s my point? Aside from using the blogomockracy to make fun of this frivolous lawsuit? I guess none. Of course, without sugary things that are bad for you to put into their mouths, we’ll return to the dark ages of eating Elmer’s Paste and papier-mache. Is that the bright future we want for our children? I think not. Let Them Eat Tran Fatty Cake!

Thank you, that is all.

Dick Gephardt has announced his daughter is a lesbian and will now serve as an important tool in his campaign to woo the homosexual vote, which apparently does not vote on issues but on symbolic gestures.

Next week, it is expected that Gephardt will announce that some of his best friends are black.

Also, is it just me, or do homosexual-friendly candidates often cough up gay daughters, but not gay sons? Is this because they’re playing on the current lesbianism-as-non-threatening-and-titilating-homosexuality cultural vibe, er, more?

Discuss.

Well, not exactly, but one young man in the Northwest R-1 school district, from which I matriculated, was busted for videotaping the girls locker room. Now, he’s going to get it.

Looks like possible punishment might fit what used to be called “hijinks.” A suspension and a slap on the juvenile wrist. Entire movie franchises were built on kids doing this sort of thing, albeit before x10 made it easy. (See also Meatballs (I-IV), Porky’s (I-III), and American Pie (I-III).) So spank the boy, send him to bed before dinner, and maybe raise him, but let’s not deny him the right to vote, lock him up, and brand him a sicko-for-life yet. Youthful “exuberance” is not a felony yet.

Maybe I am just a softy because Northwest Valley used to be Northwest High School, and I have fond memory of it. Just one, graduating.

Not quite. Apparently, the Supreme Court of the fine state of Utah has officially determined that dogs and cats are not equal in the eyes of the law.

How should animal rights activists reactivist to this news? A whole new separate-and-unequal controversy!