Let’s say, hypothetically, that someone you know had an opportunity to interview Peter Falk in a couple of days… Are there questions that you’d like to have answered?
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bird flu halloween costume
I wanted to write about Rove, Scooter, Cheney and Judy tonight… but I’ve got a comic to do… so, instead, I’ll just mention this one quick thought…. I’m thinking now that it might be a good idea to dress Clementine as “The Bird Flu” for Halloween (in order to help raise awareness), if it can be done tastefully. And, I’m wondering what exactly that might look like. I guess the easiest thing to do would be to have her surrounded by dead birds, maybe dragging them behind her on pieces of string, or spinning around her on pieces of wire. And maybe she could occasionally throw handfuls of bird feces in people’s eyes (in order to help stimulate discussion about the flu’s transmission). If you have other ideas, leave a note.
(note 1: The image, of “Doktor Schnabel von Rom” (“Doctor Beak from Rome”) circa 1656, comes courtesy of our friend, and Ypsilanti expatriot, Hillary Cherry.)
(note 2: My next favorite idea is to have her dress up like a very unhappy Dick Cheney in an orange jumpsuit.)
Posted in Mark's Life 10 Comments
it’s always neat to see your name wedged in under “vaginal gas”
Occasionally, when I’m bored, or trying to avoid work, like I am right now, I like to go over to the old webstats program and see what search terms are bringing people here to MM.com. What you see here is the most recent batch. All of these took place in the span of about an hour. Some of these people, I assume, are still here among us… Consider yourself warned.
As you can see, for the most part, it’s a pretty scary group. (Meatonomy, for those of you who don’t know, is the practice of putting your penis inside another man’s penis for the purposes of making love to his stretched-out urethra.)
If you’re smart, you’ll do like me and try to avoid eye contact with anyone you meet while you’re here.
Actually, it isn’t all that bad. Sure, there are few guys looking for images of thongs and “super-sized” breasts, and there’s the person looking for information on ball shaving (always a given), but, for the most part it seems like a pretty good group. There’s even someone looking for information on Fred Flintstone’s green, flying friend, The Great Gazoo… Of course, they’ll never find anything because they think his name is Kazoo… And someone’s looking for Paul Krugman columns. I feel a bit vindicated by that, and the fact that someone else got here by searching for information on the Ypsilanti Sentinel. (Of course, that was probably just eminent local historian Brett Schutzman doing research on the local mid-nineteenth century newspaper by the same name.)
Anthropologically speaking, I’m not sure what this says about America, but I’m sure it speaks volumes about this little snapshot in time.
Posted in Observations 22 Comments
mark’s bird flu shirt idea
I know it’s in incredibly bad taste, but sitting here this morning, worrying about contracting bird flu, it occurred to me that there might be a silver lining in this whole pandemic thing… And here it is…. I have an idea that will make me rich beyond my wildest dreams. I’m going to make t-shirts that say, “If You’re Close Enough to Read This, I Just Gave You Bird Flu.” If I can get them in stores by Christmas I’ll be able to buy and sell all of you. (I’ll also have a less expensive version that just says, “I Gave You Bird Flu,” for people who can’t afford the one with all the letters.)
Posted in Mark's Life 7 Comments
mark’s admittedly contradictory post on freedom
I just received this note from the People for the American Way and thought that it was worth passing on.
Tell your senators and representative that the US must make clear to the world that we will treat detainees humanely and that we will not sign away our civil liberties!
Members of the House and Senate will meet next week to resolve their differences on two bills with important ramifications for civil liberties.
1. The first is the FY 2006 Defense Department Appropriations bill, to which the Senate has added an amendment offered by Senator McCain that provides clear, unambiguous interrogation standards to guide our military personnel in their treatment of detainees in an effort to end abuses like those that occurred at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. President Bush’s allies in the House are determined to remove it from the bill before it comes up to a final vote.
2. The second is the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act . Representatives from the House are expected to insist on the removal of even the modest steps taken by the Senate towards correcting the imbalance between protecting national security and preserving civil liberties in its version of the PATRIOT Act reauthorization. Though far from perfect, the Senate version of the PATRIOT Act sunsets two provisions expanding surveillance powers six years earlier than the House’s version, and requires increased judicial oversight of law enforcement search authority.
Urge your senators and representative to push for final versions of these bills that retain these important provisions! Tell them that the US must make clear to the world that we will treat detainees humanely and that we will not sign away our civil liberties!
And, I don’t know why I think it fits with this post, but I just heard that the head of CBS is considering putting the man behind shows like “Pimp My Ride”, “Jackass,” and “The Osbournes” in charge of the CBS News division. (I don’t imagine that there’s a way to say, “Goodbye, Dan Rather” more emphatically.)
Oh, and while we’re on the subject of civil rights and such, I thought it was worth mentioning that the Dutch are considering an all out ban on burqas worn in public, which, you might be curious to know, doesn’t bother me that much. I don’t like the idea of the government telling people what they can and can’t wear, but I find the idea of burqas offensive and contrary to the spirit of equality on which liberal democracies thrive. I understand that’s a bit of a Catch-22, saying “We’re so free here that you can’t wear that,” but that’s how I see it right now. I would also like to think that the police would step in to stop a man from beating a woman in public even if she waved them away, saying that she deserved it for having the audacity to teach herself to read, or some such thing. You might be able to convince me otherwise on burqas in public (as a big part of me knows that what I just said is wrong) but that’s what I’m thinking right now… I’m prepared for hate mail from both sides, so, as our Commander In Chief says, “Bring it on.”
Posted in Civil Liberties 6 Comments
