Fish...Barrel...BANG!

Also by way of Interested Participant is the story of Diana Ponce, who is going on a hunger strike to protest discrimination against Hispanics by the Minute Man Project.



We at The Idiom figure that we are looking at a 3 to 4 year hunger strike.

OK, cheap laugh we know. But anyone stupid enough as Ms. Ponce not to realize how this is going to play in the media deserves to get laughed at. Ponce's choice of tactics is not going to gain her much sympathy. Picket, donate to an organization, write your congressman... anything else but a hunger strike. *sheesh*

May we also suggest a "chair strike" for Ms. Ponce? That she'll get off her ass and on a treadmill and not stop walking until all the illegal immigrants who want to walk across the border can do so?

And just what is the big deal with the Minute Man Project anyway? When we first heard of them we thought "Oh great. A bunch of rednecks with guns going out to stir up trouble." Even President Bush is calling them "vigilantes."

But, at least according to their web page, their organization merely monitors the border and reports people sneaking across to the border patrol:

When intruders are spotted, [U.S. Border Patrol] USBP agents will be summoned by cell phone. The MMProject communication center should also be notified at this time via cell phone or pre-established short wave radio systems that will be available on April 1. The intruders will be followed until USBP shows up to intercept and apprehend them.

No "hostile" confrontation with intruders will be allowed. The MMProject participants will only "spot and report", the USBP takes it from there.

That's not vigilantism, that's f*cking civic responsibility!

If you see someone breaking in to your neighbor's house, it's not your job to go over there and confront him. But it's your duty to call the police.

As long as the Minutemen aren't trying to usurp executive authority, Kid Various has no idea why anyone should object to the project.

Well actually, he knows why certain people object, because the Minutemen are a bunch of conservative, know-nothing rednecks who are displaying their cultural chauvinism and offending the sensibilities of the elite class.

Well screw them.

And Kid Various is a proponent of nearly open borders. It should be a lot easier to immigrate to the USA than it already is. Certainly for the nations of the "Industrialized World." (What, are we afraid that we're going to be swamped by a wave of migratory Australians?) But don't try to argue that it's the right of Mexicans to break the law by illegally entering the U.S. That won't fly for several reasons:

• It's unfair to legal immigrants who have navigated the Byzantine and ridiculous immigration system, sometimes devoting years of their lives and thousands of dollars for the chance to become an American citizen.
  
• It's unfair to American workers to look the other way while a huge source of underground labor, whom employers owe nothing to, supplants them.
  
• In the age of September 11^th it is simply unacceptable from a security standpoint to have a large, unmonitored border through which anyone can pass.
  

We should drastically revamp our immigration laws and make it easier for people to come here from all over the world. We should welcome the labor of people who want to come here to work and contribute to our society. But it has to be done through a process. There are people that we want to keep out, most notably criminals and terrorists. And if people like the Minutemen are willing to donate their time and effort on a large scale "neighborhood watch", Kid Various says, "Thank you for your support..."

PS: From the Minute Man Project page:

If you are susceptible to "road rage", or "hot temper" syndromes, then this volunteer work is not for you. Any such acts will seriously jeopardize the goal of the MMProject and bring unwanted ridicule to its efforts to assist the USBP.

Sorry Mr. Surly...No Mexicans for you! Come back...one year!

Hot for Teacher

We've heard of sex education but this is going too far. A spate of Mary Kay Letourneau events has rocked the New York City school system over the past few weeks.

It seems as if "NY's Smartest" have been teaching the wee ones something more than math and history...

These teacher-student couplings include:

• Rhianna Ellis, a 25 year old high school teacher who apparently bore a child fathered by an 18 year old student.
  
• Samantha Solomon, 29, who allegedly was having sex with a 17 year old student
  
• Joanna Hernandez, 27, who is accused of kissing a 15 year old boy in an empty classroom
  
• Jermaine Reed, 27, who allegedly had sex with two female students
  
• Joseph Morales, 28, who charged with lewd behavior after exposing himself to youngsters on Staten Island
  

Officials state that Reid has not returned to work since being arrested.

And the other teachers have? If Rhianna Ellis returned to class in Kid Various' high school, there'd be a raft of transfer activity of guys trying to get into her class. (Among other things.)

New York City officials are suitably outraged:

On Tuesday, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein wrote an e-mail to principals that he would "use all means at my disposal" to remove sex offenders from schools and prosecute them.

Which apparently, in most of these cases is not much.

The mayor wants to change union rules that make it difficult to fire teacher’s accused of inappropriate behavior. While the city can now remove them from the classroom, it can take years to get them off the payroll.

“At the moment, the city really has little recourse to terminate teachers who abuse their position,” said Bloomberg.

But it's not just difficult to fire teachers engaged in questionable behavior, it's difficult to prosecute them. Right now, there is nothing illegal about a teacher or administrator having a sexual relationship with a student who is 17 or older.

Ahhh. The Kid gets it now. Teachers have to be protected from the political persecution by administrators who may try to hold over them arbitrary and unreachable standards like not shtupping your students.

But just in case you thought the debauchery was confined to the teaching class or New York City, here's a fascinating piece via Interested Participant about some high schoolers in Ohio.

Four girls and one boy were arrested on Tuesday after deputies said the teens made a video of themselves having group sex.

The youths, ranging from sixth grade to 12th grade, reportedly were caught after one girl showed the sexually explicit video to two 12-year-old boys. Two of the girls charged are sisters.

"This is just beyond belief. And they're very cavalier about it and are acting like everybody's doing it," Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly said.

... Sheriff's Lt. Russell Garman said the minors admitted to having consensual sexual intercourse and oral sex.

... They shot the tape in a bedroom at her grandmother's house, but it wasn't clear whether the grandmother was home. The girl has been living there for the past five months to care for the ill grandmother, Garman said.

"It's just (like) the Howard Stern crap they see on TV," Garman said.

Oh yes we see, its Howard Stern's fault. Where was the grandmother? Where were the parents? Where were their teachers? Ok, don't answer that. Where was anybody in these kid's entire lives to teach them that it's not ok for teenagers to be making group sex videos???

Investigators called in the children and their parents for questioning. The children were laughing and joking, Garman said. The youths didn't seem bothered when the tape was played in front of their parents and investigators.

"They weren't even embarrassed," he said.

The parents were upset.

Yeah, no sh*t. Well, we're glad that someone besides the police thought that this was not acceptable. And then there's this...

The youths participated in a trend in which they wear colored jelly bracelets to indicate their sexual experience, deputies said.

Different colored bracelets represent certain sex acts, Garman said. Black bracelets indicate the wearer is willing to have intercourse. Blue stands for oral sex, green stands for touching private parts and pink stands for kissing.

Someone can walk up to a person wearing a bracelet and break the band. The person wearing the bracelet then is obligated to perform the act represented by the color of the bracelet, Garman said.

All of this, the teachers having sex with students, the group sex videos, the bracelet sex etiquette all leads up to the most burning question facing our society:

Why wasn't any of this happening when Kid Various was attending high school???

Do you have any idea how hard the Kid had to work to get a blowjob in high school? And now you're telling him that if he was born just a few years later he could have just gone up to some girl with blue bracelet and snapped it? That the Kid could just have gotten freaky with Mrs. K in the backseat of her car during free period?

Where is the justice???

These events make a mockery of all of the Kid's effort and exertion during his high school experience. Kid various spent 4 long years slaving like the proverbial dog to get some, with scant success. And he was happy for what he got!

Kids today!

We are really devaluing the work ethic in this country.

You feelin' the Kid, Mr. Scriblerus? This is your future man. Called into the precinct in the middle of the night to watch your kids getting down on VHS. Or, worse yet, stumbling across it on the Internet.

Aside from the humour involved in these events, there are a couple of interesting legal questions brought up that the Kid will leave to the two lawyers on this blog.

Firstly, Kid Various is curious to see whether or not the female teachers are prosecuted successfully and if they are, will their punishments be as severe as the male teachers?

The law states that their crimes are equal, but are they so in reality? The Kid simply means that no matter what the law maintains, in our hearts, we treat the situations as different. A 25 year old man having sex with a 15 year old female student is a monster. But when a 25 year old woman has sex with a 15 year old male student, secretly we're like:

Heh. Heh. Go for it dude.

That's what we all thought about Mary Kay LeTourneau and that kid Vili whatever. In fact, Kid Various would go so far as to state that LeTourneau's crime was less one of passion and more of taste. She f*cked him? You got to be kidding! Man, Joe Jackson said it best.

Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?
Is she really going out with him?
'Cause if my eyes don't deceive me
There's something going wrong around here

The other legal point the Kid would like to bring up is that, remember, the kids in the group sex video were actually arrested.

The Kid's question is "did they in fact do anything illegal?"

The article states plainly that they all were engaged in consensual sex. They were all in the same age range (although the 12 year old may have been under the age of consent - but then they couldn’t be arrested, only the older kids.) As far as the Kid knows, there's nothing illegal about taping you or your friends having sex. So where's the criminal behavior?

Symbol of the collapse of society, yes. But is it a crime?

Kid Various will leave you with this thought.

The video included a 12-year-old sixth-grade girl from Reid Middle School, two 15-year-old sophomore girls and one 17-year-old senior girl from Shawnee High School, and a 16-year-old sophomore boy from North High School.

Oh man, to be a sophomore again...

You Had To See This One Coming

Why are they wasting their time screening penguins at the airport? TSA employees really need to carefully check out the toads:

BERLIN (AFP) - Hundreds of toads have met a bizarre and sinister end in Germany in recent days, it was reported: they exploded.

According to reports from animal welfare workers and veterinarians as many as a thousand of the amphibians have perished after their bodies swelled to bursting point and their entrails were propelled
for up to a metre (three feet).

It is like "a science fiction film", according to Werner Smolnik of a nature protection society in the northern city of Hamburg, where the phenomenon of the exploding toad has been observed.

"You see the animals crawling on the ground, swelling and then exploding." He said the bodies of the toads expanded to three and a half times their normal size. "I have never seen such a thing," said veterinarian Otto Horst. So bad has the death toll been that the lake in the Altona district of Hamburg has been dubbed "the pond of death."

Access to it has been sealed off and every night a biologist visits it between 2:00 and 3:00 am, which appears to be peak time for batrachians to go bang.

Explanations include an unknown virus, a fungus that has infected the water, or crows, which in an echo of the Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds", attack the toads, literally scaring them to death.
Hat Tip Yahoo News

Although biologists are baffled at the explosive toad phenomenon, local officials have yet to rule out the influence of the radical Islam. Al Quaeda has reputedly been recruiting the disafftected toads as suicide bombers for some time. Young male toads are apparently quite susceptible to the appeal of martyrdom, especially in the face of pro-frog cultural discrimination. Before detonation a toad reportedly yelled "Long live the jihad! Death to the infidel frogs!"

Death to the Infidel frogs!

Penguin Profiling

Let's be clear on this. Kid Various does not support racial and ethnic profiling. Yes, 99% of all terrorists are young, Arab males. However, it is important to realize that 99% of young, Arab males are not terrorists and therefore, a policy which specifically targets young, Arab males for further scrutiny in the absence of other evidence is ultimately counterproductive and plain Un-American (a concept that has no parallel in the rest of the world. You can never be Un-French.)

Therefore, we all have to deal with the increased hassle of random searches and increased observation of everybody.

Of course, sometimes the TSA officials make a show of harassing those obviously not plying the terrorist trade. The grandmother from Wisconsin. The little kid from Texas. And we at The Idiom are pretty sure, they could have let the penguins go...



That's right. Two penguins from Sea World in San Diego, Pat and Penny, recently traveled through the Denver International Airport. Upon approaching security, they were made to get out of their carry case, remove their shoes and waddle through the magnetometer for the purpose of...

Oh, hell, Kid Various can't even fathom why the TSA officials would make them go through the metal detector.

Word was, they confiscated a nail file from Penny.

Europe Does Something Right

Kid Various is not one for giving the Euros kudos on anything, but there are some things they do right.

Number one on that list is that they are much more flexible on the pet issue. In Europe, you can take your dog on the subway. You can bring him to a restaurant. In the U.S., your dog has to be a "service dog" in order to qualify for restaurant privileges. Which has led, swear to God, to such things as "therapy dogs" which are licensed to go around and cheer people up. Hell, the Kid can slap a dayglo vest on his own dog and claim he's a "therapy dog." Then Fido could join him for a drink at T.G.I Friday's. And quite frankly, Fido would behave much better at a restaurant than most small children.

Now, the city of Turin, where Kid Various once spent several days recovering from a visit to France, has adopted new, even more stringent laws to pander to the pet electorate.

Dog owners in Turin will be fined up to 500 euros ($650) if they don't walk their pets at least three times a day, under a new law from the city's council.

People will also be banned from dyeing their pets' fur or "any form of animal mutilation" for merely aesthetic motives such as docking dogs' tails, under the law about to be passed in the northern Italian city.

"In Turin it will be illegal to turn one's dog into a ridiculous fluffy toy," the city's La Stampa daily reported.

Since you can take your dog to work or T.G.I. Friday's, the walking 3 times a day thing is not that big a deal. But even better, the law goes after goofballs from making their poor animals into clownish freaks.

Dog does not look happy.
If that doesn't define animal cruelty
The Kid does not know what does.

This is one of the rare instances where European tendency to legislate against allowing people to do stupid things pans out. Sort of like in France and Germany where you can only select a name for your child from a previously approved list. Thus preventing morons form naming their daughters "Toyota."

Compare and contrast this with the recent referendum in Wisconsin to allow for the hunting of cats. That's right, if fluffy don’t have no collar on, people in the great Midwest want to be able to pick up a .22 and pop off another of his nine lives.

A proposal to legalize the killing of feral cats is not going to succeed, Gov. Jim Doyle said Wednesday.

"I don't think Wisconsin should become known as a state where we shoot cats," said Doyle, a Democrat who neither hunts nor owns a cat. "What it does is sort of hold us up as a state that everybody is kind of laughing at right now."

Kid Various is more of a dog person, but he'd never look at a cat and think "where's my rifle?"

The rifle is reserved for dangerous turtles.


He's coming right at us!
*POP*

P.S. This is NOT a catblog!

Huh?!

[EXTERIOR] Kid Various is sitting outside at Le Figaro at the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal enjoying a latte...

[KID VARIOUS]

*SPEEEEEEEW!!!!*

*cough* *cough* *ack* *cough*

Huh??? ^{Hat tip Peaktalk}

Berlin - only each second German under 24 years can bring the term to "Holocaust" with the millionfold murder at of Europe Jews in connection. Twice as many women such as men do not know to begin anything with this designation.

Translated using Google’s Translator

It Boggles The Mind

So this is what Mr. Surly is doing instead of writing a goddamn post!

Boggle is so gay.

"Everyone said I'd get great presents, and then someone buys me Boggle!"

Kid Various Speaks...

Kid Various speaks 90% General American English or Yankee English. In other words, 90% correct English!

Your Linguistic Profile:

60% General American English

30% Yankee

10% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Hat Tip Twisty

We Quit

That’s it. We’re handing in our notice. When blogging makes The Family Circus, you know that the show’s over.

Kid Various can only paraphrase that character in the diner in “Go.”

Ahh man! I’m here, drinking my coffee, reading the comics and then, there it is. In the bottom right hand corner. The Family Circus. Just waiting to suck…

Charles M. Schulz? Dead.

Bill Keane? Still alive. How is that for lack of justice?

This Is Not From The Onion

It's finally happened. In response to his penchant for self importance for the better part of two decades, the last person on earth given to tolerate his incredible pretension has finally thrown in the towel. Yes, even Bono is sick of Bono.

The former Word Bank presidential candidate announced in an interview on March 3rd

People are saying, ’Bono, people are sick of you. You’ve been around; you’ve been winning all these awards. You have to go away for a while...’ I’m sick of Bono, and I am Bono.

The lead singer of the supergroup U2, whose concert film Rattle & Hum was shot in 70mm because that was the only format large enough to capture his ego, announced that he will forewith live in a cave with no outside contact to reduce overexposure and that he will return when the public once again wants to hear from him.

Publicity experts estimate this will be in approximately 117 years.


Alright. All That You Can't Leave Behind
was a kick ass album.

This Universe Brought to You By…

Scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered that in the microseconds after the Big Bang, all the matter of the universe was liquid.

New results from a particle collider suggest that he universe behaved like a liquid in its earliest moments, not the fiery gas that was thought to have pervaded the first microseconds of existence.

And that liquid, scientists said, was cool, refreshing Coca Cola.

Scientists have long pondered why our smooth and crisp universe is preferred 3 to 1 over alternate universes.

“Thirsty non-existence was banished in a microsecond by a bracing cocktail of amalgamated cola particles we call “revitalons,” scientists revealed.

Some one hundred microseconds seconds later, the liquid universe differentiated into the familiar “Coke Classic” particles we know today and its lighter “Diet Coke” cousin.

Scientists speculate that there may have been a third “New Coke” particle that existed briefly as universe differentiated, but it was not as energizing or thirst quenching as the other two particles and blinked out of existence almost as soon as it appeared.

The particle experiments demonstrate exactly how crisp and inviting Coca Cola became the universal standard for relief from thirst and provides a crucial insight into how life developed. Organic chemistry experiments last year done for the National Institutes of Health revealed how Coke ions are critical in the functioning of organic matter, bringing sorely needed refreshment to an organism's “Q zone.”

*The Brookhaven Laboratory is underwritten by a grant from the Coca Cola coporation.

Habemus Papem! Cont’d

Newly elected Pope Benedict XVI addressed the throngs of the faithful in St. Peter’s Square:

"Dear brothers and sisters, after our great pope, John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble worker in God's vineyard," according to a translation of remarks he made in Italian.

Officials from the Vineyard Workers Services of Sonoma, CA were thrilled at the election of one of their own. Said Miguel Sanchez, spokesman for the organization:

Although we can’t find a record of his applying for membership in the United Farm Workers Union, we are just tickled pink that the Holy Mother Church has decided to elevate a lowly laborer to the seat of St. Peter.

Pope Benedict XVI before his election

Fellow agricultural workers also expressed delight, and some surprise, at the recent elevation. Originally, leaders of the Catholic Church were mostly laborers or tradesmen such as carpenters or fisherman. However, for most of past 1800 years, leadership of the organization has steadily been in the hand of the “white collar” class.


Colleagues of the new Pope

Former colleague Manuel Gonzales said:

We sincerely hope that our comrade and new pope, Benedict XVI, will continue the Church’s efforts in promoting tolerance and understanding between the religions, encouraging peace between the nations and bring all of humanity closer to God’s love.

Oh yes, and we hope he will raise the minimum wage for migratory agricultural labor to $3.25 an hour.

Pope Benedict XVI’s office and residence
where he lived for the past 38 years.
The pope’s home was designed by
Michelangelo and decorated in a
renaissance style typical of the homes
of farm workers across America

The Idiom…On The Go!

This a truly useful item. Read the latest Idiom post…on my belt!

Good thing Kid Various is way used to the Ladies looking at his crotch.

Habemus Papem!

Ashton Kucher elected Pope!


Pope Dude I

You Don't Have To Walk A Mile, The Camel Cage Is Right Next Door!

The other year a much ballyhooed study came out that stated that the phylogenic description of chimpanzees should be changed:

New analyses show humans and chimpanzees to be 99.4 percent identical in the functionally-important DNA, which codes for proteins and is shaped by natural selection. This provides further evidence for revisions in our genus classification. Dr. Goodman proposes that all living apes should occupy the family Hominidae (which currently contains only humans), and that both humans and chimpanzees should occupy the genus Homo.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. But hey, as far as Kid Various is concerned, whatever our chimp friends do in the privacy of their own cage is completely their own business.

But today, additional evidence for reclassifying Pan Troglodyte is in. (I mean besides that field trip to Mr. Surly's house) Yes, in a stunning discovery, it seems that, like humans, chimpanzees love to smoke!

A South African zoo is trying to persuade its star chimpanzee to kick a bad smoking habit.

Charlie, a grown male chimp and the Bloemfontein Zoo, has been picking up cigarettes thrown to him by visitors and smoking them - a habit he probably picked up by observing humans, zoo officials told the SAPA news agency on Thursday.

Charlie is not the only smoking chimpanzee. A zoo in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou reported last year that one of its chimps had taken up smoking and was desperately bumming cigarette butts off visitors.

Jesus freakin' Christmas! Don't those chimps know smoking is bad for them??? It says so right on the pack!

They were probably lured into it by the evil tobacco companies and their slick "Marlboro Chimp" advertising. This could be a whole new line of revenue for the zoos; suing tobacco companies for Medic-ape costs.

Or maybe it's just peer pressure. Sure, they all hang around the alpha male for appearances but all the chimpettes secretly dig that lone ape in the corner, taking a drag on his Raleigh. He don't need nobody MAN! He's a REBEL!

All kidding aside, who's exhibiting more stupidity? The chimp in the cage? Or the chimps outside the cage who are actually throwing them freakin' cigarettes? How far has society degraded that we have to put up a sign at the freakin' zoo:

Please do not allow animals to bum cigarettes

Hey buddy...Gotta light?

Today's Factoid

According to our friends at Knight-Ridder, the most popular name chosen by newly elected popes is...."John."

Very original.

23 popes have been named after the "intelligent" Beatle.

Followed by John we have:

Gregory.........15
Clement.........14
Innocent........13
Leo.............13
Pius............12
Stephen.........10

Followed by:

Moe.......................6
Rinaldo...................3
Bruce (the Magnificent)...2
Ringo.....................1

Global Tsunami? NO! It's EPIC surf conditions, dude!

Scientists this week are modifying the language of the "Torino" scale which indicates the likelihood of an impact on the earth by a near earth object (asteroid), and the range of devastation it is expected to cause...

Akin to the Richter scale, the Torino scale goes from zero to 10, with zero representing no risk and 10 warning of an impact that could wipe everything off the planet. But scary phrases from the old warning system like "localized destruction," "regional devastation" and "certain global climatic catastrophe" have been modified.

Under the new system, a "4" on the Torino scale will be described as an "unrequested nickel-iron surplus."

While a "10" will be described as a "surprise civilization reboot."

What's that bright light in the sky?

RELAX guy! You need a rest! Look over there!

New Addition To The Seder Plate

Why should this night be different from all other nights?

Well according to a new rabbinical edict, it doesn't have to be! In news to warm the hearts (among other regions) of our Jewish friends, rabbinical experts have declared Viagra can be made kosher l'Pesach!

That's right! Now Jewish men the world over can be assured that come the beginning of Pesach on April 23, they will not have to suffer the dreaded 11th plague visited upon Pharaoh and the ancient Egyptians: Not being able to get it up.

(And you thought makos ha'bekoros was bad!)

Yes, now there will be no problem in doing what everyone wants to do after 5 hours drinking heavily and stuffing themselves with kharoses, moror and the pesach: going upstairs and getting freaky through the bedsheet.

Pfizer and Rokeach already are rushing to meet the demand, producing "egg Viagra" that will be unleavened and flat, and sprinkled with the blood of Christian babies.

The Trenton Whale

Yesterday, a beluga whale was sighted swimming in the Delaware River near the Trenton Marina. Apparently lost, the beluga whale, a native of Arctic waters, was approximately 80 miles upstream from the Delaware Bay.

From the New York Times:

TRENTON, April 12 - A beluga whale appeared here Tuesday in the Delaware River, drawing hundreds of camera-bearing onlookers to the shore and worrying wildlife officials. Eighty miles upstream from the ocean, the whale was also more than 500 miles from the waters off Canada, where it should be at this time of year. It had already braved river traffic on its way north from the Delaware Bay past Wilmington, Del., Camden and Philadelphia to the fairly tranquil waters here. "It's extraordinary for a beluga whale to be outside its range and in waters this fresh and this shallow," said Bradley M. Campbell, the state commissioner of environmental protection...

The white whale - estimated by scientists and onlookers at 8 to 15 feet in length, with its age and sex undetermined - was identified as a beluga by a state biologist called to the river's edge after workers at a marina spotted it, Mr. Campbell said. It spent the afternoon circling just south of the landmark "Trenton Makes, the World Takes" bridge between the Capitol district and Morrisville, Pa. By late afternoon, whale-watchers lined the river bank, watching for a white arc breaking the surface at long intervals. As evening rush traffic jammed the bridge, television news helicopters churned overhead, and conservation officers in a small boat kept watch.

Via NBC10

Cries from the crowd of "Yo whale! What exit ya looking for?" did not help reorient the whale.

In related news, hearing about the lost whale in State waters, the New Jersey Legislature immediately convened a special session to levy a tax on it.

This Is Art? Cont'd.

I fail to see why painting chubby people makes you an "artist." Columbian artist Fernando Botero painted scenes from the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal in his trademark chubby style to express his outrage.

Botero - via AP/Yahoo News

"No one would have ever remembered the horrors of Guernica if not for the painting," said Botero, referring to Pablo Picasso's masterpiece "Guernica," which depicts the aerial bombardment of civilians during the Spanish Civil War. Via Yahoo News

This is the 21st Century's answer to Guernica? This is an editorial cartoon.

A Public Service To Misdirected Googlers

The editors of the Idiom have noticed a recent uptick in our daily hit volume. We would like to think this is because of the high quality blogging experience available here. However, the majority of this new traffic is from misdirected European googlers searching for images from Maxim Online. Kudos to Mr. Surly for posting about this publication and driving up the hit counter... and we thought we were huge in Germany.

As a public service to you, the temporarily misdirected and inconvenienced Euro-googlers, here is a link to the Maxims Online where you will find all the images you desire:

Maxim Online: USA
Maxim Online United Kingdom
Maxim Online Germany

See you on the sitemeter.

Panda Pandering III

Unlike Panda couples in Washington DC and Atlanta, two Giant Pandas at the acclaimed San Diego Zoo successfully got it on...

The two giant pandas at the city's zoo retired to their favorite spot under a few bushes and mated over the past two days - the only successful natural insemination of a panda this year in the United States, officials said Saturday.

... Lindburg said Bai Yun had displayed signs of being receptive to mating in recent days, including yipping and raising her tail, walking through water and scraping pine tree bark onto her head and face.

"It's getting her perfume on for the date," Lindburg said."

"Somewhere between love and madness lies Calvin Klein's Pine Bark."

The pandas, both 13 years old, spent about 15 minutes mating in the same spot on Gao Gao's side of the exhibit where they mated in 2003.

At which point Gao Gao rolled over, switched on the TV and promptly fell asleep prompting Bai Yun to grab Buzz Bunny out of the nightstand drawer.

The recent amorous tendencies of the pair in San Diego are a relief for zoo officials who tried unsuccessfully from 1996 to 2002 to get Bai Yun to mate with Shi Shi, the zoo's first male.

Unfortunately, Shi Shi, then took up a career in the theater and moved to Greenwich Village.


Bai Yun and Gao Gao, uh, "frolicking."
Avert your eyes children!

Obituary

Who: His Serene Highness Prince Rainier III of Monaco (Rainier Louis Henri Maxence Bertrand Grimaldi)

Age: 81
Of: Heart, Lung and kidney failure.
Main Accomplishment in Life: Did Grace Kelly

Can you believe how freakin' lucky this guy was?!

Road Rage

Just in case Mr. Surly ever wants to stop shilling for The Man and strike out on his own, we've found the perfect job for him... taxi driver in Peru!

Some 40 percent of the 640 taxi and bus drivers surveyed by Lima's San Marcos University suffered from psychological problems and showed psychopathic tendencies, such as aggressive, anxious and antisocial behavior, the study said.

"Drivers showed they would not feel any guilt in injuring or running over a pedestrian," the study added.

Look out Lima! The Surlymeter is Red: Ragin' Surly!

The Kid's Got A Cause

Kid Various has requested that The Idiom add the following button to our template:

now located below right. Kid Various is seeking to promote democracy in Lebanon and support the demonstrators, clearly a worthy cause. In all likelihood he would not mind "liberating" one of the now infamous Lebanese freedom activists either.

Promoting the Spirit of America can't hurt, maybe the real charity we should be donating to is the Get Kid Various a Pickup Line That Works Fund. Overheard:

Kid Various: Hey baby, wanna see some Democracy in action?

Lebanese Freedom Activist 1: La. Sharmute! (Arabic Transliteration)

Kid Various: Hey honey, can you liberate me of these pants?

Lebanese Freedom Activist 2: Zib! (Arabic Transliteration)

Cold Holy Warrior

Remembrances of Pope John Paul II would not be complete without reflecting on and acknowledging his vast influence in ending the Cold War.

Debkafile reveals the secret dialogue opened between the Pope and the White House during the Carter administration. Interestingly, Zbigniew Brzezinski's initial harnessing of religious fervor as a tool to fight communism proved to work well in the Christian West, and not so well in the Muslim East.

Our Blogmeet Ambassador

Last Saturday the people of Grokistan, the spiritual homeland the The Idiom, sent our official ambassador-in-exile, Mr. Surly, to the now blogospherically famous Jersey Blogmeet. Violating traditional diplomatic etiquette, Mr. Surly left on a international factfinding mission (vacation) before filing his full report. Although The Idiom will forgive this oversight for all the inbound linkages he was able to negotiate. Nota bene Mr. Surly, a "vacation" is not a "blogcation".

As propaganda minister-in-exile for Grokistan I shall fill in the blanks. Posts covering Da Jersey Blogmeet include those by hosts Parkway Rest Stop and Katespot and of course our own Mrs. Surly, aka TJ. More coverage at: gigglechick, Sluggo Needs a Nap, Cripes Suzette, cootiehog, Sad Old Goth, Shamrocketship, Mom & Pop Culture, Dynanmobuzz, This Full House, Jerseyside, Jerseystyle, Tequila Shots for the Soul, Tigerhawk, and South Orange Journal.

The Idiom co-editors hope that for all those Blogmet by Mr. Surly that was on his best behavior, used his "inside voice", and kept the Surlymeter at a relatively low Green: Cranky Surly. For the next Blogmeet, perhaps the Kid and I will make satellite appearances from our undislosed locations.

Free Grokistan!

But Is It Art?

Hah! This is great! I love guerilla art...

Many a visitor to New York's Museum of Modern Art has probably thought, "I could do that."

A British graffiti artist who goes by the name "Banksy" went one step further, by smuggling in his own picture of a soup can and hanging it on a wall, where it stayed for more than three days earlier this month before anybody noticed.

Terri Schiavo...The Last Word

OK, this is funny!

Sick and twisted, but damned funny!^{hat tip Mr. Web}

This Is Not a Catblog

Or is it?

Just to prod Mr. Scriblerus.

Head over to the 53rd Carnival of the Cats!



Aren't they just precious?

We Didn't Know Mr. Surly Was Contibuting To Climate Change

Shares of Proctor & Gamble, makers of Head & Shoulders shampoo jumped on the news that:

A researcher has discovered unexpectedly large amounts of dandruff and other flaking skin, fur, pollen and similar materials in air pollutants known as aerosols.

Aerosols, tiny particles in the air, are widely studied because they are an important factor in regulating climate, variously absorbing heat to warm the air and reflecting sunlight to cool it. They are also important in forming rain and snow.

... The source of many aerosols has been unexplained and this could provide the answer, Jaenicke said.

Kid Various will tell you! The source is Mr. Surly's house, NJ!

The Funniest Comedian You Never Heard Of

What a F*cking waste. Comedian Mitch Hedberg died yesterday apparently
of a drug overdose.

His unique style evolved from his excessive stage fright. He would wear sunglasses, not look directly at the audience and just mumble out absurdist one-liners in a stoner monotone. It was damned brilliant and Kid Various is way jealous that he didn't think of it first. The Kid has stolen more Mitch jokes than he'd care to admit (never on stage.)

It's like Kurt all over again.

He was the funniest comedian you never heard of...

"Has anyone seen me on Lettermen? 2 billion people watch that show and I don't know where they are. You might have seen this next comedian on the Late Show, but I think more people have seen me at the store. In fact, that would be a good intro... 'You may have seen thise next comedian at the store'"

"My friend asked me if I wanted a frozen banana, I said "No, but I want a regular banana later, so, Yeah."

"Mr. Pibb is a poor imitation of Dr. Pepper. Dude didn't even get his degree"

"I got my hair highlighted, because I felt some strands were more important than others."

"I don't have a girlfriend. But I do know a woman who'd be mad at me for saying that."

"The next time I move I hope I get a real easy phone number, something like 2222222. People will ask, "Mitch, how do I get a hold of you?" I'll say, "Just press two for a while, when I answer, you'll know that you've pressed two enough."

"I had a bag of fritos, they were texas grilled fritos. These fritos had grill marks on them. They remind me of something, when we used to fire up the barbeque and throw down some fritos. I can still see my dad with the apron on, better flip that frito, dad, you know how I like mine. "

"My sister wanted to be an actress, but she never made it. She does live in a trailer. She got half way. She's an actress, she just never gets called to the set.

"Every time I go and shave, I assume there is somebody else on the planet shaving as well, so I say, "I'm gonna go shave too."

"An escalator can never break. It can only become stairs. You would never see an "Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order" sign, just "Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience."

"Alcoholism is a disease, but it's the only one you can get yelled at for having. Goddamn it Otto, you are an alcoholic. Goddamn it Otto, you have Lupis... one of those two doesn't sound right.

"I was at this casino minding my own business, and this guy came up to me and said, 'You're gonna have to move, you're blocking a fire exit.' As though if there was a fire, I wasn't gonna run. If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit. "

"A minibar is a machine that makes everything expensive."

"This shirt is dry clean only. Which means... It's dirty."

"I bought a doughnut and they gave me a receipt for the doughnut... I don't need a receipt for the doughnut. I give you money and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario that I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. To some skeptical friend, don't even act like I didn't buy a doughnut, I've got the
documentation right here... It's in my file at home. ...Under 'D'."

"My friend was walking down the street and he said, "I hear music." As if there is any other way of taking it in. I tried to taste it, but it did not work."

"I think Pringles initial intention was to make tennis balls. But on the day that the rubber was supposed to show up, a big truckload of potatoes arrived. But Pringles is a laid back company. They said "Fuck it. Cut em up."

"My lucky number is four billion. That doesn't come in real handy when you're gambling. "Come on, four billion! Fuck. Seven. I need more dice."

"I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it."

"I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault. Bigfoot is blurry. And that's extra scary to me, because there's a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside. Run. He's fuzzy. Get outta here."

"Last week I helped my friend stay put. It's a lot easier than helping someone move. I just went over to his house and made sure that he did not start to load shit into a truck."

"I got an ant farm. Them fellas didn't grow shit."

"I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long."

"I want to be a race car passenger: just a guy who bugs the driver. 'Say man, can I turn on the radio? You should slow down. Why do we gotta keep going in circles? Can I put my feet out the window? Boy, you really like Tide.'"

"I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too."