=Friday, December 30, 2005=

The Whole Planet Houston?

I have not posted anything in a couple weeks because I've been really busy. Superman II has been running heavily on HBO, and I have been studying General Zod like most yuppies study the GMAT. Now there's a guy, I mean a general, who knows how to lead. I was always a fan of Lex Luthor as a kid but now that I have matured, I realize that it is Zod who's most fit to rule this planet.

His media savvy alone qualifies him for the job. When he, Ursa and Non are trashing Houston when they first get to earth, he walks up to the TV reporter and asks who's seeing the broadcast (so he can command any and all to KNEEL BEFORE ZOD). The reporter replies, "just about the whole planet." Zod says, "the whole planet Houston?" The reporter says, "Earth. The whole planet earth." Right then, you see the lights go on in Zod's eyes. And I don't mean those lethal heat rays he usues to blow up cars in Metropolis. I mean the sinister, deadly focus Karl Rove must have felt when he first though of leaking Valerie Plame's CIA status to the press.

Only Zod isn't trying to get even with someone for criticizing his war-mongering. He's trying to get even with the man who put him in a glass jail for war-mongering. Bitter fate it is then when Superman, son of Zod's jailor, frees Zod accidentally while saving Paris from a nuke-u-lar attack. How does this stuff get so complicated? It's almost as confusing as a GMAT question. But I intend to pass with flying colors, so it's back to the TV for me.

=Thursday, December 15, 2005=

Most Political 'Twas The Night Before Christmas'

Yesterday we posted the funniest translation of 'Twas The Night Before Christmas'. Today we post the most political translation. As you surely know, the 'liberal assault on Christmas' has been the conservative media machine's top coverage priority for December. Not that they cover issues so much as invent issues to polarize weak minds. But still, the sheer volume of their 'coverage' has fueled House Resolution 579, a bill urging that the symbols and traditions of Christmas be protected. Of course, the whole point here is that Christmas traditions are strong as ever, and there's no issue at all. To underscore this point today, Congressman John Dingell (D-MI) presented the following poem during a discussion about Resolution 579. The job of news is to inform the public, not to polarize them. So we applaud Dingell for taking the government back from media control, if only for a fleeting holiday moment.

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Rep. John Dingell (D-MI): "Madam Speaker, I have a little poem.

'Twas the week before Christmas and all through the House,
no bills were passed `bout which Fox News could grouse.
Tax cuts for the wealthy were passed with great cheer,
so vacations in St. Barts soon should be near.

Katrina kids were all nestled snug in motel beds,
while visions of school and home danced in their heads.
In Iraq, our soldiers need supplies and a plan,
and nuclear weapons are being built in Iran.

Gas prices shot up, consumer confidence fell.
Americans feared we were in a fast track to ..... well.
Wait, we need a distraction, something divisive and wily,
a fabrication straight from the mouth of O'Reilly.

We will pretend Christmas is under attack,
hold a vote to save it, then pat ourselves on the back.
Silent Night, First Noel, Away in the Manger,
Wake up Congress, they're in no danger.

This time of year, we see Christmas everywhere we go,
From churches to homes to schools and, yes, even Costco.
What we have is an attempt to divide and destroy
when this is the season to unite us with joy.

At Christmastime, we're taught to unite.
We don't need a made-up reason to fight.
So on O'Reilly, on Hannity, on Coulter and those right-wing blogs.
You should sit back and relax, have a few egg nogs.

'Tis the holiday season; enjoy it a pinch.
With all our real problems, do we really need another Grinch?
So to my friends and my colleagues, I say with delight,
a Merry Christmas to all, and to Bill O'Reilly, happy holidays.
Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas."

=Wednesday, December 14, 2005=

Funniest 'Twas The Night Before Christmas'


There are countless translations of 'Twas The Night Before Christmas' out there, but each year, this one stands the test of time. It was 'translated' by a government technical writer. Big props to whoever actually wrote it. We're merely passing it along. Hope you enjoy. Merry Holidays, or Happy Christmas, or whatever ...

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'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, and throughout the place of residence, kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus (mouse). Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of St. Nicholas.

The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual hallucinations of variegated fruit confections moving rhythmically through their cerebrums. My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal head coverings, were about to take slumberous advantage of the hibernal darkness when upon the avenaceous exterior portion of the grounds there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the precise source thereof.

Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing this fenestration, noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without, reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline precipitation, might be said to rival that of the solar meridian itself - thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to behold a miniature airborne runnered conveyance drawn by eight diminutive
specimens of the genus Rangifer, piloted by a minuscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble that it became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated caller. With his ungulate motive power traveling at what may possibly have been more vertiginous velocity than patriotic alar predators, he vociferated loudly, expelled breath musically through contracted labia, and addressed each of the octet by his or her respective cognomen - "Now Dasher, now Dancer..." et al. - guiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our abode, through which structure I could readily distinguish the concatenations of each of the 32 cloven pedal extremities.

As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile location, and was performing a 180-degree pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved - with utmost celerity and via a downward leap - entry by way of the smoke passage. He was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the ebony residue from oxidations of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls thereof. His resemblance to a street vendor I attributed largely to the plethora of assorted playthings which he bore dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle.

His orbs were scintillant with reflected luminosity, while his submaxillary dermal indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability. The capillaries of his malar regions and nasal appurtenance were engorged with blood which suffused the subcutaneous layers, the former approximating the coloration of Albion's floral emblem, the latter that of the Prunus avium, or sweet cherry. His amusing sub- and supralabials resembled nothing so much as a common loop knot, and their ambient hirsute facial adornment appeared like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water.

Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose grey fumes, forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput, were suggestive of a decorative seasonal circlet of holly. His visage was wider than it was high, and when he waxed audibly mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner of impectinated fruit syrup in a hemispherical container. He was, in short, neither more nor less than an obese, jocund, multigenarian gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered me visibly frolicsome despite every effort to refrain from so being. By rapidly lowering and then elevating one eyelid and rotating his head slightly to one side, he indicated that trepidation on my part was groundless.

Without utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the aforementioned appended hosiery with various of the aforementioned articles of merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously dorsally transported cloth receptacle. Upon completion of this task, he executed an abrupt about-face, placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leave-taking, and forthwith effected his egress by renegotiating (in reverse) the smoke passage. He then propelled himself in a short vector onto his conveyance, directed a musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter to the antlered quadrupeds of burden, and proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hitherto observable chiefly among the seed-bearing portions of a common weed. But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of visibility: "Ecstatic Yuletide to the planetary constituency, and to that self same assemblage, my sincerest wishes for a salubriously beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and dawn."

=Monday, December 05, 2005=

My Mom Is A Mullet Hunter


I got a post card from my mom last week. She was visiting Manhattan and doing all the requisite sightseeing. I definitely didn't inherit the sightseeing gene, because when I travel, the only sights I tend to check out are bars. By some standards, this would make me uncultured. But I'm at peace with that. I'd rather have a couple beers and chat with local strangers than stare at museum walls while being bumped into by visiting strangers.

But my mom is definitely someone who likes to get cultured when she travels. So you can imagine my pride when I got her postcard from the Guggenheim Museum: "Dear Julian: Lots of 'mullet sightings,' New Yorkers are a trip. The Gugg was great."

The front of the postcard is a picture of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed museum, and on the back is a concise mullet scouting report from the streets of NYC. A picture perfect balance of sublime and riduculous; of sightseeing and people-watching; and of high and low culture.

It was nice (and hilarious) to see that these things can coexist on the same plane. Way keep the mullet dream alive, mom. The hunt never goes out of style.