i smell like smoke: this is what i’m thinking about at eight o’clock tonight

The mother of Jill Carroll, the freelance writer recently kidnapped in Iraq, was Linette’s high school Humanities teacher. She was also the faculty advisor for Linette’s Amnesty International group. Jill, now 28, was probably about 10 years old at the time. It’s horribly sad… The good news is that Adnan Dulaimi, the powerful Sunni political leader that Jill had been trying to meet with just minutes before her translator was murdered and she was kidnapped, is now supposedly reaching out to the Sunni group that has her, asking for her release… Maybe it’s just because I hope that my daughter is as brave and idealistic one day, but this is story is hitting me like nothing since 911 has been able to.

In other depressing news, the whale that had made his way up the Thames to London has just been pronounced dead. Experts aren’t sure what brought him to London, but some suspect it had to do with the military use of sonar. His death, however, it seems everyone agrees, was caused by stress. And that also hits really close to home.

Shares of Google dropped precipitously yesterday after a webpage from the future announced the company’s plans to flood the real world with massively intrusive, robotic information vampires. (In the interest of fairness, I should also point out that while other online search companies have turned over data to the Justice Department concerning the search queries of millions of their users, Google has not. Let’s just hope they can hold out.)

Linette’s old Saturn announced its impending death yesterday, so we hastened our plans to find more reliable transportation. The Subaru dealer offered $200 for it in trade, and, not wanting to prolong the process of car shopping (or face the snow without windshield wipers), we took it. I’ve been cautioned by more than one friend that people will just assume that I’m a woman when I’m in the car, and that Linette and I are lesbians…. In completely unrelated news, I just found out that one of Clementine’s little friends calls his mama’s nipples, her “nibbles.”

Paul Krugman on the media’s coverage of the Abramoff scandal: “So I have a question for my colleagues in the news media: Why isn’t the decision by the White House to stonewall on the largest corruption scandal since Warren Harding considered major news?” (If we’re lucky, the photos of Abramoff and W will surface soon and the media won’t be able to not cover it.)

The brilliant Gore speech I told you about a few days ago concerning the administration’s illegal abuse of power can now be found on-line in audio and video. (If you watch it and feel inspired to do something, you can start by signing the MoveOn petition requesting a Congressional investigation… If you don’t feel like doing anything, you can just light up a big, fat joint and stare at this giant jellyfish for a while. Or, better yet, you can check out this hilarious retelling of the Bush presidency as an interactive, text-based computer game.)

The new Monkey Power Trio record, Spiders in the Blood Supply is now out and available, and the groupies are talking.

There are very few things that I’d like to accomplish here on earth before I die. One of those things is to star in a remake of William “I piss diamonds” Shatner’s video for Elton John’s “Rocketman”. (Speaking of which, does anyone know where I can find video online of Chris Elliott doing it on Letterman? Actually, I’d be interested in getting a tape compilation of all of Chris Elliott’s Letterman work if anyone knows where I could get something like that.)

OK, I have to go home now. If I have too much decaf I’ll have a panic attack and my organs will start shutting down like I’m a bottlenose whale in the Thames.

Good night, my invisible friends.

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5 Comments

  1. kez
    Posted January 21, 2006 at 10:06 pm | Permalink

    … i’m a rock-et-man…

    [url]http://media.putfile.com/Family-Guy—Stewie—Rocket-Man[/url]

  2. danandkitty
    Posted January 21, 2006 at 10:43 pm | Permalink

    The best thing about that Shatner clip is that they have him acting with the only person/ people cpapable of matchin his acting chops. Why hasn’t there been a feature length film starring ONLY Bill Shatner?

  3. mark
    Posted January 21, 2006 at 10:48 pm | Permalink

    Shatner did play his own evil twin on Star Trek. (I didn’t watch TJ Hooker, but I suppose it’s possible that he did it there as well.)

  4. danandkitty
    Posted January 22, 2006 at 1:00 am | Permalink

    Yeah, the evil twin is a good start, but I’m thinking Oedipus with an all Shatner cast. Or maybe Cheaper by the Dozen?

  5. mark
    Posted January 22, 2006 at 8:07 am | Permalink

    I have seen an all Jim Neighbors version of Pulp Fiction that was quite good.

    (“Activate the Anonymatt 5000!”)

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