WaMu: SNAFU

WaMu crashed today under the weight of enormous debt, fiscally risky investments and the combined salaries of twenty venerable Brooks Brothers-clad East Coast bankers who stood in the bank's lobby doing absolutely nothing.


Khaki-pantsed spokesman, Jerry Johnson, shrugged when asked about the economic decision to keep the bankers on staff for over twenty years each, with extravagant bonuses and above-market stock options. "Customers seemed to like them," he said, "and enjoyed their antics. Especially that day they came to work naked."

Plain Blaine Aims for Mundane

After spending a not-quite harrowing 60 hours safely suspended upside down from a secure scaffold, illusionist David Blaine ended his "magic trick" by being removed from his harness by his seasoned union riggers to the yawns of the crowds who were hoping for more from his touted "dive of death."

Once he was certain his check from ABC had been cashed, Blaine made an obligatory appearance on Live With Regis and Kelly, where he announced that his next death-defying stunt would be to sit on a chair for seven days.

"It will be a rickety chair," he cautioned.

Vote Republican! (If you want)

Feeling uncomfortable because your liberal home is surrounded by McCain/Palin signs? Want to stand out in a sea of Obama/Biden signs?

Here's your chance to be different by making people look twice and maybe think twice, too. Turn your neighbors' sensibilities on their ear with this message:

Vote RepublicanIf you want:

• Home values to fall even more.
• Dozens more banks to fail.
• The price of gas to stay sky high.
• Another 4,000+ soldiers and thousands of innocent civilians to die in artificial wars.

Get this clever-but-socially-responsible yard sign here.

Trafficking in Politics

What's the difference between Democrats and Republicans? The answer can be seen in the way we drive and manage our roads.

Merging into traffic

Democrats are aware of the needs of others and make room for traffic that is trying to merge from the on ramp.
Republicans ignore merging traffic or speed up, forcing mergers to slam on their brakes to get in behind the Republicans.

Posted limits

Democrats believe in reasonable-but-regulated speed limits to ensure safe travels and fuel conservation.
Republicans don't like the government reigning them in and keeping them from going as fast as they want, regardless of risk or wastefulness.

Speed bumps near playgrounds

Democrats accept the inevitability that careless children run into the streets--chasing balls, playing tag, riding bikes--so traffic should be mandatorily slowed to protect them.
Republicans believe that once a few children have been run over, concerned parents will monitor the way their own kids play and self-regulate. As for the kids whose parents both work and can't be home to protect them: fuck 'em.

Alternatives

Democrats encourage alternative modes of transportation and support the installation of bike lanes and hike & bike trails along thoroughfares.
Republicans counter alternative transportation with bumper stickers that say, "Want a bike lane? Move to Europe!" and "Not in my back yard."

Buses and trains

Democrats believe that those who can't afford a car of their own should have access to a publicly funded rapid transit system.
Republicans believe that if you can't afford a car you should walk.

Tyler Perry's Blog on Tyler Perry

Tyler Perry, the woefully unoriginal writer director and uninspired cross-dressing actor has released another melodramatic southern soap opera. He went into the kitchen with Alfre Woodard and Kathy Bates and came out with a flavorless pecan pie, called "Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys."

How insecure in your own creative talent do you have to be to preface every title with your moniker? Is it some form of protective legal charm against Hollywood producers who might steal your impotent plots or does he just like putting his name on things? His house must be full of monogrammed stuff and Post-it notes declaring Tyler Perry's hand towels, Tyler Perry's cheese grater and Tyler Perry's Compound W wart remover. I heard he has a vanity tattoo just below his belly button that indicates the location of his irritable bowel.

Maybe Mr. Perry is in some twisted competition with John Carpenter to see how many movies he can release with his name out front.

Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married? Tyler Perry's Daddy's Little Girls Tyler Perry's Madea's Family Reunion Tyler Perry's House of Payne Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad Black Woman

John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars John Carpenter's Vampires John Carpenter's Escape from L.A John Carpenter's Village of the Damned John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China John Carpenter's Starman John Carpenter's Christine John Carpenter's The Thing John Carpenter's Escape from New York John Carpenter's The Fog

Did Kubrick put his name in front of Spartacus? Did Altman ad his name to M*A*S*H? Did Murphy add his to Meet The Klumps? No. They stood on their own merit. Maybe they get to do that when they write and direct a film, in which case, look forward to seeing "Turner & Phelps's Bigfoot Saves Hannukah" coming soon to theater near you.

Also coming soon in 2009: Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail (for real). Now he's chasing the Ernest P. Worrell dream. Over the next few years we'll see Madea going to camp, getting scared stupid, saving Christmas and becoming a reluctant astronaut.

Milk that cash cow, Tyler. Milk it!

Smell like Paris in the summertime

Paris Hilton is hawking her new, unique aroma. She sent me a sample this weekend in the mail and it's a huge success!

That is, of course, if her goal had been to find the essence of 2 million undeodorized Frenchmen in an overcrowded city with an antiquated water supply system, each burdened by an unquenchable penchant for eating over-ripe cheeses and onions, and reeking of rendered horse flesh and unfiltered cigarettes.

I predict that we won't be the better for this new venture by the queen of classless self-promotion.

Having our teenage girls smelling like they spent a week in the sewers beneath the Champs-Élysées, competing with each other for scraps among dead, bloated rats and suspicious fungi is the last thing we want.

No thanks, Paris. I'd rather my daughter smell of Ernest Borgnine's nutsack than your Can Can.

Adolf Hussein Must Go

I was just in a discussion about the Iraq War where someone said it was America's duty to stand up and remove Saddam Hussein from power because he was a terrible dictator who killed innocent people.

Then he used that tried and true catch-all rhetorical question: What if we hadn't stood up to Hitler or Pol Pot?

Comparing Saddam Hussein to Hitler is like comparing Manuel Noriega to Stalin. I'm tired of these historical revisionists either ignoring the fact that the American public was tricked into invading Iraq because of their (imaginary) ties to Al Qaeda, or changing the reasons we deployed into some grand exercise in liberating a people from an evil despot.

He was an evil dictator, no question. And he used chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iranians. But that wasn't a good enough reason to invade, overthrow, and occupy.

And to answer the rhetorical question: We didn't. How long did Hitler's reign of terror and expansion last before we got involved? And it was Vietnam that drove Pol Pot out of power when they invaded during the Vietnamese-Cambodia War in the late 70's.

Not a very funny blog post, but I hope some people consider it over the next two months, when we hear this same rhetoric from the "Support Our Troops" thugs and "Nobama" hooligans.

To make it up to you, here's a rhetorical question that is funny:

If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?

McCain's Steaming Pile of Cabinet Choices

John McCain hasn't announced who he plans to pick for his cabinet, if he wins the election, but he has promised to include a Democrat.

Hmmm... a Democrat in the McCain cabinet. Who could it be? Who might he pluck from the across the aisle to represent the voice of the liberals and provide transparent balance to his conservative agenda?

Why, of course, it will be the sack of shit disguised as a Connecticut Democrat, now turned independent, but actually a closet war-mongering, lobbyist-loving, old-school politico Republican in Democrat's clothing. The stench from his betrayal to his party, which still surrounds him, will fit right in with the rest of McCain's cabinet choices, I'm sure, especially if McCain just fills those seats with the faithful from the past two Bush administrations.


If that day comes, John McCain will be able to look around the table at any given cabinet meeting and say those words he has longed to say in honor of his enemy-turned-biggest-supportor, "Heckuva job, Brownie. Heckuva job."

Petraeus Underwhelms All by Stating the Obvious

"Qaeda still undefeated in Iraq." The words echoed through the deserted hall where General David Patraeus, U.S. commander in Iraq, was scheduled to give a press conference. Due to almost all news agencies sending their reporters to St. Paul, Minnesota to cover John McCain's Republican acceptance speech, Patraeus's press conference became a one on one interview with lone veteran Financial Times reporter, Sammy "Scoop" Hamilton.

"Well, I was supposed to be in St. Paul too with the rest of the world's press corps" Hamilton confided via phone to Turner/Phelps, "but I missed the bus Sunday to the airport and had to stay here."

Further investigation revealed that "Scoop," his gluttonous love of Middleastern food famous among the other reporters, was en route to the airport when he spied an all-you-can-eat falafel special at Habib's House of Humus and jumped off the bus just as it was leaving the Green Zone.

GOP Risks Doublespeak with Palin

It's the tried and true, "cheer for this talking point, even though it's contrary to the one we had you cheering for five minutes ago" tactic at last night's RNC. And that talking point is the word risk.

Ru Gui comes on strong saying we can't risk having someone with Obama's lack of experience in the Whitehouse. It's too dangerous.

Minutes later, Governor Palin is telling us we have to take risks. She says, "It's safe to keep the ship tied up in the harbor, but that's not what it was built for." (An old Inuit saying?)

I think Risk is a good, healthy exercise. I usually try to establish a presence in Asia and Australia first, and then expand westward through Kamchatka to North America.