Catching Up: Best of 2005: August

Here is this month's installment of the best items posted in my personal newsletter three years ago this month. * * * * * Late-Night Political News from About.com "President Bush is vacationing in Crawford, Texas. He will be vacationing for five weeks. That's a long time. I don't think he has an exit strategy for his vacation either." --David Letterman "President Bush says schools should teach kids the theory of intelligent design, which says that the creation of life is way too complex to be understood by science and we should leave those questions for God. Of course, President Bush also felt the same way about Algebra." --Jay Leno "President Bush is going on his annual vacation. The White House says he goes to his Texas Ranch to unwind. I'm thinking, when does he wind?" --David Letterman "It was so hot down in Florida, Jeb Bush was rigging ice machines." -- David Letterman "President Bush signed an energy bill in New Mexico last week. He had a simple clear message for all Americans -- he said the economy is moving. It's moving to China and Korea and Taiwan, but it's moving." --Jay Leno "President Bush is at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and here's the good news -- he says he will only stay until Crawford is capable of self rule." --David Letterman "And while President Bush was out of town Hillary Clinton stopped by the White House on Friday for an important meeting with her decorator." --Jay Leno "According to President Bush's most recent health results, he's the most fit president in history. He's in the 99 percentile for men 55 to 59 years old. Bush said he could make it into the 100% league if his damn job didn't take up most of his morning." --Jay Leno "Bush woke up this morning, saw his shadow and now -- six more weeks of vacation." --Jay Leno "Israel began evacuating thousands of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and as a result, the Jewish settlers will be forced to return to their traditional home: Miami Beach." --Conan O'Brien "Big news in the Middle East. Yesterday the Israeli government began moving thousands of Jewish settlers from the Gaza strip. This is huge. And officials say once the area is cleared of all Jews the area will be renamed Utah." --Conan O'Brien "President Bush is on week three of his marathon five-week vacation. In fact, he has been gone on vacation for so long that today in Washington, a judge ruled that a young couple with two children can now legally move into the White House because it appears to have been abandoned by its previous tenants." --Jay Leno "Now is a great time for President Bush to go on vacation because Iraq is pretty much under control. But a White House spokesman said Bush is using his vacation to reconnect with regular people. So you know what that means -- he's drinking again." --David Letterman "California education officials said today that the state of California needs 52,000 more teachers. They say we are facing a huge teacher shortage. In fact, by the year 2007, they said many students will be forced to have sex with each other." --Jay Leno "Pat Robertson, in case you don't know, is a televangelist. He's one of the big ones and also one of the dumbest ones. He's getting a lot of heat today after suggesting on his show yesterday that we go ahead and assassinate the president of Venezuela. Well, that is what Jesus would do." --Jimmy Kimmel "It was announced today that oil companies are reporting record profits. Who saw that coming?! I was as surprised as you!" --Jay Leno * * * * * The Wisdom of Comics "I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three." --Elayne Boosler "A study in the Washington Post says that women have better verbal skills than men. I just want to say to the authors of that study: Duh." --Conan O'Brien "Did you ever walk in a room and forget why you walked in? I think that's how dogs spend their lives." --Sue Murphy "I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." --Lily Tomlin "I planted some bird seed. A bird came up. Now I don't know what to feed it." --Steven Wright "I don't kill flies but I like to mess with their minds. I hold them above globes. They freak out and yell, 'Whoa, I'm way too high!' " --Bruce Baum "I think that's how Chicago got started. A bunch of people in New York said, 'Gee, I'm enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn't cold enough. Let's go west.'" --Richard Jeni "Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant? I'm halfway through my fishburger and I realize, Oh my God....I could be eating a slow learner." --Lynda Montgomery * * * * * Personal Update: Moving Indoors I have been living in an apartment for nearly three days now, and it is scaring me. The first two days, I went without eating, drinking (almost), or bathing. I was buried in household possessions that had to be entirely remapped. The whole scale was wrong. In the outdoors, you just sort of spread your crap around and deal with it later. Not so in an apartment. You can't get around it. If you try, Bam! Dammit. You've walked into a wall. Try to get around it the other way, same thing! Crap everywhere. Four cubic hectares of random merchandise to be sorted, shelved, packaged, and then remembered where it was, so you don't have to buy another of the same thing and have even more redundant crap to trip over. And then you have to buy insurance to protect it -- and they charge a pretty penny for that, those bastards. Honestly, the moment you step indoors, you are pretty much screwed. Better to leave the crap in the storage unit, I'm thinking, and pitch your tent in a field, with a clear view of the Moon. But now they've got me. I had to sign a lease. I'm just not sure how much more of this I can take. I will be sleeping in the yard within a week, I guarantee. I almost forgot to mention today. I showered! Fricking weird feeling, after all these days of letting the gunk build up. No shower curtain yet, so water spattered around the bathroom pretty evenly, and then collected in a little pond by the tub. I used to have one of those in Jersey -- pond by the tub, I mean. I put a towel down to soak it up and left it there, wedged between the shower and the vanity. Looked at it a couple of weeks later, and lo -- it was growing a mushroom! Now, how many people can claim to have grown a mushroom on their towel? No kidding. I have the photo. But no mushrooms here yet. Just a minor pond. Then I went grocery shopping. ***(HINT: DO NOT GO GROCERY SHOPPING WHEN HUNGRY)*** Three hundred dollars later, I have food. Do I ever have food. Cheesecake? You want cheesecake? I've got a mix for it. A mix, for chrissake. Apple pie (frozen; Mrs. Smith's, bless her corporate heart). Butter pecan ice cream. Frozen strawberries. Oh, it all looked so GOOD!!! Whew. Three days down, and 362 left to go before my lease expires. I can do it. I know I can.

* * * * * In Case I Forgot to Say So, It's Time to Sell Your House (excerpts from a New York Times article posted August 13, 2005) For the first time since the residential real estate marathon began 13 years ago, parts of the country are showing signs of exhaustion. But if you rely on the experts to declare that a particular area's bubble has popped, you may have waited too long. ... "It's taking a lot longer to sell a home," says Karl A. Martone, a Re/Max Properties agent in Providence .... To judge from the media, the housing bubble may have peaked in June. According to a Nexis search of magazines and newspapers, that month was the peak, with 312 references to "housing bubble," almost six times that of a year earlier. It fell 24 percent in July.

* * * * *

Blast from the Past (it reminded me of elections in Iraq) U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 [1967]-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong. ... A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam. * * * * * Can I drink my urine if it's a survival situation? Can you? Yes. Should you? No way – there's nothing to be gained and much to be lost. First, the salt in urine will make you even thirstier. Second, when you're dehydrated, your urine contains higher concentrations of waste products your body doesn't want. Third, drinking potent urine could make you vomit, which would leave you even more dehydrated. * * * * * Pat Robertson Quotes "Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history."

[In response to "Gay Days" at Disney World] "I would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you, This is not a message of hate -- this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs; it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor."

"(T)he feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with." -calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez

Bonus Quote:

"I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should 'take him out.'"

* * * * * Lines from Employee Evaluations "Since my last report, this employee has reached rock-bottom and has started to dig."

"I would not allow this employee to breed."

"This employee is really not so much of a has-been, but more of a definite won't be."

"This employee should go far, and the sooner he starts, the better."

"He doesn't have ulcers, but he's a carrier."

"He's been working with glue too much."

"Gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train isn't coming."

"He's got two brains cells, one is lost and the other is out looking for it."

"Takes him 2 hours to watch '60-minutes'."

"The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead."

* * * * * Avoiding Assaults from Fake Cops http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/fakecop.asp