The Department of Homeland Security seems to be more in the entertainment business than anything likely to secure us in a time of emergency. For example, DHS has a new website, http://www.ready.gov/, complete with a whole new set of universal warning signs.
BoxSet.com discovered that, “The fun thing is that these pictures are so ambiguous they could mean anything!” and they offer a few interpretations.
Some are pretty funny.
Can’t make a decision? South Dakota Senator Bill Napoli can help.
Napoli, if you don’t know, was the advocate for South Dakota’s draconian new abortion law who stated the following when asked who might be an exception to the prohibition:
A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.
Link via Mind of Gutter, Mouth of Potty, who says she called to get help with the choices at lunch.
How the marshmallow chicks found Jesus.
Candy historians speculate that the Peeps’ link to Easter has more to do with the pagan origins of the holiday than its Christian roots. Eggs, and consequently chicks, are a long-standing symbol of fertility and rebirth, an appropriate image for a holiday that celebrates the coming of spring. Originally part of a pagan fertility ritual symbolizing new life, the egg became incorporated into Easter as pagan rites were absorbed into Christianity with the Christianization of Central Europe.
NewMexiKen believes that bunny Peeps are heresy. True Peeps are chicks and yellow. Period.
“A leak in the Alaskan Pipeline last week spilled 265,000 gallons of crude oil into the Arctic tundra. British Petroleum, the company that runs the oil operation, said that the spill was too small to be detected by their maintenance equipment. But just large enough to rise the price of gas fifteen cents a gallon this week.”
Jay Leno
“In his first interview since the Olympics Bode Miller says that he has received many letters calling him a disgrace to the country. To give you an idea of how bad it is — most of the letters came from Tonya Harding.”
Conan O’Brien
“In a remarkable speech over the weekend, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt recommended that Americans store canned tuna and powdered milk under their beds for when bird flu hits. What? This ranks right up there with ‘duck and cover’ during a nuclear attack. In case of radiation wear a hat.
“Powdered milk and tuna? How many would rather have the bird flu?”
Jay Leno
Teen girl #1: Okay. Maybe I’m, like, retarded for not knowing this, but…did you guys know that other countries have national anthems, too?
Teen girl #2: Duh! It’s the same song, in different languages!
–Bay Ridge
The muse has left NewMexiKen almost entirely so I had to search around to find something — anything — to liven this place up. How’s this?
One day an Irishman, who has been stranded on a desert island for over ten long years, sees an unusual speck on the horizon.
“It’s certainly not a ship,” he thinks to himself. As the speck gets closer and closer, he begins to rule out the possibilities of a small boat, then even a raft. Suddenly, emerging from the surf is a drop dead gorgeous blonde woman wearing a wet suit and scuba gear.
She approaches the stunned man and says to him, “Tell me how long has it been since you’ve had a cigarette?” “Ten years,” replies the Irishman.
With that, she reaches over and unzips a waterproof pocket on her left sleeve and pulls out a pack of fresh cigarettes. He takes one, lights it, takes a long drag and says, “Faith and begorah! Is that good!”
“And how long has it been since you’ve had a sip of good Irish Whiskey?” she asks him. Trembling, the castaway replies, “Ten years.”
She reaches over, unzips her right sleeve, pulls out a flask and hands it to him. He opens the flask, takes a long swig and says, “‘Tis absolutely fantastic!”
At this point she starts slowly unzipping the long zipper that runs down the front of her wet suit, looks at the man and asks, “And how long has it been since you’ve played around?”
With tears in his eyes, the man falls to his knees and sobs, “Oh, Sweet Jesus! Don’t tell me you’ve got golf clubs in there too.”
Q: How many members of the Bush administration does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Ten
Via Ample Sanity, who got it from Sky Pape.
“President Bush then went to India. He was met with protests there. As a result most Americans spent the day on hold with computer problems.”
Conan O’Brien
“President Bush’s approval rating has fallen to an all time low of 34%. In fact, his ratings are so low his new Secret Service code name is ‘NBC.'”
Jay Leno
During Judiciary Committee Mark-up this morning, [Senator] Dianne Feinstein’s cellphone went off while she was giving her statement on comprehensive immigration reform.
Her ringtone? “California,” the theme from “The OC.”
We’ve been on the run
Driving in the sun
Looking out for #1
California here we come
Right back where we started from
Hustlers grab your guns
Your shadow weighs a ton
Driving down the 101
California here we come
Right back where we started from
California!
Here we come!
In this wicked little book, Julie Jackson reinvents the age-old craft of cross-stitch, finally putting an end to all that saccharine sentimentalism and giving modern stitchers the chance to say what’s really on their minds. Stitch up Bitch in Kitchen for a heartfelt housewarming gift. Spread cheer with the ever-festive “Bite Me”. Or whip up “This Place Sucks” for a cherished co-worker.
Link via kottke.org
Not for the faint-hearted. (Small video with sound.)
But I do want to mention something I think I heard Calvin Trillin say once, when he came to talk to a writing class circa 1982. He said people were always asking him how he managed, again and again, to write humor that was just a little bit funny — gently humorous, civilized, New Yorkerish — but not super laugh-out-loud, bust-a-gut, knee-slapping, spittle-spewing hilarious. Trillin’s answer: “Actually, I’m going pedal to the metal.”
WASHINGTON, DC—Government documents declassified today reveal that President Bush was briefed last summer of “a substantial risk” that Vice President Dick Cheney would shoot an elderly male in the face sometime in the next several months.
The Onion, which has more.
Dilbert’s Scott Adams:
Blog reader Diana W. wrote to opine that the sentence for attempted murder should be the same as the sentence for successful murder. Otherwise we’re just rewarding incompetence.
There are a lot of laws that don’t make sense to me. For example, if I were king, I’d make attempted suicide punishable by death. That’s a win-win scenario.
I’m also not clear as to why gambling is legal in a few specific places within a country and not others. It seems to me that if the main complaint about gaming is that some people will gamble away their mortgage money, isn’t it even worse if they have to pay for gas to drive to a distant casino?
I’m also confused as to why potentially dangerous drugs are illegal. I assume the reasoning is that it will keep people from hurting themselves. The penalty for attempting to hurt yourself is that you are sent to prison where a guy named Chainsaw punches out your front teeth and rents you to the Aryan Brotherhood for parties. After about 15 years of that, you’ll think twice about trying to hurt yourself.
I also think that prostitution should be legal, but only provided via vending machines. That way you don’t have to see the person providing the service. He or she or it would be inside the vending machine. Don’t make me draw you a picture.
The White House became embroiled in controversy once again as it announced today that it had made a deal with Osama bin Laden to run the U.S. Postal Service.
Only days after it agreed to a review of its deal with a Dubai-based company to run several U.S. ports, the White House surprised Washington with its decision to put the U.S. mail in the hands of the world’s most wanted man.
But at a press briefing in Washington, Vice President Dick Cheney vigorously defended the deal, calling Mr. bin Laden “the right man for the job.”
“Osama bin Laden is eminently qualified to run the U.S. Postal Service,” Mr. Cheney told reporters. “For one thing, he’s already disgruntled.”
From McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.
Excuse me if I’m being presumptuous, but I assume that you, as a parent, are aware of the declining literacy rate in this country. This can be blamed on what I call O-verexposure: too many tots feeding on a single letter, instead of on the entire alphabet banquet. I offer the glorious triple-pronged E, the delightfully asymmetrical Q, even the commercially co-opted X. These are the building blocks of words, communication—dare I say, of civilization itself.
That, of course, would be part of the argument made by Alpha-Bits.
Thanks to V. for the link.
At Confessions of a Community College Dean, the dean sees Curious George and Brokeback Mountain on the same weekend and writes a “compare and contrast” review. He writes it like a freshman composition student might. It begins:
Although Curious George and Brokeback Mountain share many similarities, they also share many differences. Both involve men in hats, but the meaning of the hat changes.
Here is just an unbelievable story. The White House has given permission for a company owned by the government of Dubai to run six U.S. ports including New York. Dubai is accused of helping to fund the September 11th attacks. And was one of only three countries to support the Taliban. Now they are going to run the port of New York. What’s next? … Are they going to put Dick Cheney in charge of gun safety?
People are always saying we can’t find bin Laden. You know where I think he is? I think he’s working in the basement of the White House.
Jay Leno
President Bush has a plan that would put an Arab country in charge of several ports. You know if he keeps this up this is the sort of thing that could get people to start questioning his judgment.
An Arab country in charge of ports. That’s like FEMA in charge of disaster relief. That’s like Wayne Gretzky’s wife in charge of your bank account. It’s like Michael Jackson as your nanny.
David Letterman
Guess which recent hunting accident this Lego construction represents!
Click image to enlarge.
Life is entirely too short to actually spend time scrolling down websites like Go Fug Yourself, but NewMexiKen never fails to find at least one laugh-out-loud caption.
Joel Achenbach got his winter heating bill and turned his thermostat down. Part of his amusing take:
The average American burns roughly 47 jillion “British thermal units” of energy daily, plus an uncounted number of French and German thermal units. The general standard, in the past, was that you would turn down the thermostat only if there was evidence that your house was melting the under-lying planetary crust. People took pride in having a house so hot that, in the depths of winter, everyone sat around in undergarments, fanning themselves and holding iced beverages to their foreheads.
But that’s changing. Now we recognize that household warmth, far from a necessity, is a fetish, an indulgence. It’s a recent invention of a society grown so soft that its members have forgotten how to kill, gut and don the hide of a wild furry animal. Other than the socialites.
The good news is, there are many very practical steps that ordinary people can take to keep their heating bills reasonable. In my house we keep the thermostat at 48 degrees and then turn it down at night. It’s hard to enter my house because of the towels and spare curtains and stuffed animals crammed by the front door to keep the heat inside. When you do manage to fight your way in, the first thing you see are strange mounds of blankets and clothes in the living room. Laundry? No, my children.
The thermostat stays at 72° during the winter here at Casa NewMexiKen; automatically lowered to 60° overnight. Still, even with our mild winter, nearly $200 for natural gas last month.
HALLIBURTON WINS CONTRACT TO RECONSTRUCT CHENEY’S REPUTATION
The Halliburton Company announced today that it had won a $42 billion no-bid contract from the U.S. government to reconstruct the reputation of Vice President Dick Cheney.
While Halliburton has been known for massive reconstruction projects in such war-torn nations as Iraq, the $42 billion contract represents the first time that the company has been employed to put its reconstruction expertise to work on one embattled human being.
The Borowitz Report, which has more.