Reopenings

Good news from Jon's neighborhood.

I'm back, chere.

Commander's Palace is reopening for the first time since Katrina.

Woo hoo! Haute Creole for all!

However, and more importantly, mid-City institution Brocato's is back.

We're back, too. Yeah, those lines are Ponchartrain stains. So what?

Spumoni is one of the very strong arguments that there is a benevolent god who rules the universe. And it's beyond wonderful that Brocato's is back.

In Praise of Mallo Cups

Mmm-mm.

Have you had a Boyer Mallo Cup lately? If not, you should pick one up. It's everything that a candy bar should be. Chocolatey, smooth, and sprinkled with toasted coconut.

Treat yourself to one today. You won't be sorry.

Congratulations!

It's a celebration, bitches!

Everyone give Jon a little love. He passed the bar, and he's probably drunk already.

Good going, my man.

Words Fail

Can we please get rid of Florida?

Please?

A secret sexual relationship with his daughter was not enough.

There had to be a wedding.

And it had to be a grand celebration befitting a Fisher Island multimillionaire who controls billions from Wall Street to Bermuda, from London to Dubai.

So on a sunny June day two years ago, father and daughter exchanged rings at Westminster Abbey.

They couldn't follow convention by inviting friends or family, and they couldn't make an announcement that they'd eloped.

There was no white dress and no officiant.

D. Bruce McMahan, then 65, and his daughter Linda Marie Hodge McMahan Schutt, then 35, pronounced themselves husband and wife on June 23, 2004.

It was their secret.

Except for a few traditional photographs, it was a wholly unconventional and unholy union.

Several shots show off their new Cartier Trinity rings — hers diamond, his three shades of gold. In other frames, they look the happy couple — cheek to cheek, faces glowing, and the Abbey's Little Cloister garden a royal backdrop.

Afterward, she flew home to her legal spouse in Mississippi and he went home to his compound on Fisher Island, a ferry ride from Miami.

From different states, they traded their wedding photos back and forth over e-mail.

He talked about touching up her redeye. She declared her favorite the photo of their hands wearing their new rings, his hand on hers, which they had titled: "Says it ALL." Using codes, they addressed each other in the e-mails as husband and wife.

"They are great pictures," McMahan wrote in one of their daily exchanges. "But they tell a story, so pay attention to what happens to them."

With their secret still safe, McMahan filed to divorce his fifth wife, and Linda moved out of the home she shared with her husband.

McMahan began spending more time at the plush Fisher Island retreat he'd built for his hedge-fund clients. Linda moved into a nearby condo, leaving behind her career as a psychologist.

Linda enjoyed the trappings of life with one of America's richest money managers, racking up a $74,000 bill at Barney's New York.

He enjoyed lavishing her with jewels, a Bentley Continental GT, and a Versace Club membership.

He put her on his corporate payroll. They celebrated regularly with bottles of expensive Opus One wine.

But when Christmas 2004 came along, they resumed roles as father and daughter. They needed to keep up appearances, for the sake of their families and to protect their secret.

Family snapshots show their return to normal. She put her legal husband's rings back on her left hand and moved the Trinity ring to her right hand.

They didn't know it then, but their secret was safe for only a few more days. McMahan was right: The photos do tell quite a story.

What followed was a breakup on an even grander scale than their wedding and a legal battle every bit as obsessive as each has been about the other.

For more than a year, attorneys have been kept busy in Miami, New York, Mississippi, and San Diego with the fallout over the breakup of McMahan and Linda in five lawsuits involving not only father and daughter but also their legal spouses, as well as Linda's current boyfriend and soon-to-be father of her child. Details of McMahan and Linda's extraordinary wedding at Westminster Abbey and their years as lovers come from court documents as well as Linda's videotaped deposition, which New Times has made available on its website, browardpalmbeach.com.

In court papers, McMahan denies that he ever had a sexual affair with his daughter. But he doesn't explain how his and Linda's DNA turned up on a vibrator that Linda's husband uncovered in her luggage. McMahan also hints that Linda may not be his biological daughter, despite a DNA test he paid for showing with 99.7 percent probability that he is her father.

When New Times began gathering court records and calling individuals involved in the lawsuits several weeks ago, McMahan declined to comment for this article. He hired a Los Angeles public relations firm to field New Times queries. He also made three requests to seal court documents in Miami and San Diego that three judges denied.

Then, on September 13, as this article was being prepared for print, all five lawsuits were settled on undisclosed terms. As part of the settlement, a federal judge in San Diego sealed the files of the California lawsuit and took the rare step of wiping out any record that the lawsuit had ever existed.

Through McMahan's L.A. public relations firm, the parties sent a statement to New Times, describing the matter as a mere "family dispute," and alluded to taking legal action if this newspaper published this article, which is drawn from the information in the court cases that McMahan has gone to such lengths to hide from public view.

Are you done vomiting yet?

'Cause I'm not.

And she was a shrink? Jesus.

How much you wanna bet this rich prick gets all exercised about other people's "family values," too?

Thanks, Brenda, for sending me this. I haven't figured out a way to pay you back yet, but I will. Believe me.

More Bullshit Due to the Worst Idea of My Lifetime

Or, the Magic of the Marketplace:

Cleric Said to Lose Reins of Parts of Iraqi Militia

BAGHDAD, Sept. 27 — The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has lost control of portions of his Mahdi Army militia that are splintering off into freelance death squads and criminal gangs, a senior coalition intelligence official said Wednesday.

The question of how tightly Mr. Sadr holds the militia, one of the largest armed groups in Iraq, is of critical importance to American and Iraqi officials. Seeking to ease the sectarian violence raging across the country, they have pressed him to join the political process and curb his fighters, who see themselves as defenders of Shiism — and often as agents of vengeance against Sunnis.

But as Mr. Sadr has taken a more active role in the government, as many as a third of his militiamen have grown frustrated with the constraints of compromise and have broken off, often selling their services to the highest bidders, said the official, who spoke to reporters in Baghdad on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to speak publicly on intelligence issues.

“When Sadr says you can’t do this, for whatever political reason, that’s when they start to go rogue,” the official said. “Frankly, at that point, they start to become very open to alternative sources of sponsorship.” The official said that opened the door to control by Iran.

Mr. Sadr’s militia — dominated by impoverished Shiites who are loosely organized into groups that resemble neighborhood protection forces — has always operated in a grass-roots style but generally tended to heed his commands. It answered his call to battle American forces in two uprisings in 2004, and stopped fighting when he ordered it. But as the violence in Iraq has spread, evidence of freelancing Shiites has accumulated.

After the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, bands of militants dressed in black, the favorite color of Sadr loyalists, drove into neighborhoods, kidnapping and killing Sunnis. Mr. Sadr, who was abroad at the time, returned home and gave a rare public speech calling on his followers to stop, even proposing joint prayer sessions with Sunni clerics. Still, the rampage continued.

In Basra, a province in southeastern Iraq, Mr. Sadr has less direct control over militiamen, and they have tended to operate to suit their own agenda. Local leaders there have said that he has disciplined some members and fired others, but with little overall effect. He has run through four different leaders in Basra, according to the intelligence official, and has even had to shut offices temporarily, when local leaders ignored him and acted on their own.

Mr. Sadr is still immensely powerful, with as many as 7,000 militiamen in Baghdad, the official said. And the cleric has turned that firepower into political might. His candidate list won about 30 seats in Parliament this year, one of the largest shares. The participation was a central goal for American officials, who tried for months to persuade him to stop fighting and enter politics.

Still, six major leaders here no longer answer to Mr. Sadr’s organization, according to the intelligence official. Most describe themselves as Mahdi Army members, the official said, and even get money from Mr. Sadr’s organization, but “are effectively beyond his control.” Some of those who moved away from Mr. Sadr saw him as too accommodating to the United States. Others saw him as too bound by politics, particularly as killings of Shiite civilians in mixed neighborhoods began to soar.

“They’re not content to sit there and just defend their family on the street corner,” the official said. “They want to go out and take on what they view as Al Qaeda or Baathists or both in aggressive measure.”

One example is Abu Dera, a fighter in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in the capital who used to be loyal to Mr. Sadr. Residents said that as he began to gain a reputation for killing Sunni figures, Mr. Sadr told him to stop. But he ignored the order, and now he is referred to as the “Shiite Zarqawi,” after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader who exhorted Sunnis to kill Shiites.

“He started against the Americans, but he moved on to killing Sunnis,” said Sattar Awad, a 29-year-old resident of the district. “People here look at him as a brave man.”

American forces are hunting for Mr. Dera, the intelligence officer said, but he has eluded capture.

Although the splintering has solved some problems for the American military, it has raised new ones. “In some ways it makes it easier for me because I now have digestible doses I can deal with,” said a senior American military official at a briefing on Wednesday, also in Baghdad. “At the same time it creates problems because they are harder to find when they are splintered.”

The splintering has changed the tone of the American military’s interaction with the Mahdi Army in Sadr City. In past years, American forays into the area would often draw a storm of grenade attacks. But recent American moves into the area have been carried out relatively peacefully: Mr. Sadr has not ordered attacks because the men being sought were freelancers like Abu Dera, the intelligence officer said.

The fighters’ defections have raised the troubling prospect of more avenues of influence for Iran, the senior intelligence official said. The official cited shipments of weapons with labels that trace back to Iranian weapons manufacturers as evidence that Iran was actively aiding groups in Iraq. And that assistance has not just been limited to Mahdi Army offshoots. “They’re not sure who will come out on top, so they fund everybody,” the official said of Iran.

Even Mr. Sadr, who fashions himself as the quintessential Iraqi nationalist, has reached out to Iran’s government, making a very public trip to Iran for talks early this year. He is also trying to reassert control over his power base at home, and to expand his influence, the intelligence official said. “What Sadr is looking for is discipline,” the official said.

He said Mr. Sadr had begun to increase his exposure in the northern city of Kirkuk and in Diyala Province, both mixed-population areas north of Baghdad where sectarian disputes have been on the rise. There, he is trying to appeal by casting himself as a defender of Shiites against Kurdish and Sunni Arab factions.

Yay! Iraq is the bestest foreign policy adventure ever!

Busy Busy Busy

And I'm too pissed off to write about all the torture bullshit that's currently demeaning all of us (Jon, maybe you can chime in on that).

Instead, I'll just put up this picture for you all to enjoy.

If you don't like that, check out this little deer:

I may be dumb, but I sure am cute.

Back with more substance tomorrow.

Too Funny

But in that really, really sad way.

Today's Time Waster

Thanks to Errol, we have the Line Rider program.

If you're really ambitious, have lots of time, have no sex life, and no regards for copyrights, you can aspire to this:



Enjoy!

Double Reverses and Idiocy

Eastercapp

Jon is absolutely right about the ESPN MNF crew's stupidity regarding the Saints' lone offensive TD last night (And yes, I just used three different abbreviations in one sentence. Woo hoo.). I thought it was Tony K. and Mike Tirico, but Stuart Scott is an idiot by anyone's standards, so throw him in just for good measure. For the record, there is a double reverse, but it involves yet another handoff.

Someone who, inexplicably, gets this right is Gregg Easterbrook of TMQ. However, Easterbrook is so fucking stupid about so many other things, it's difficult for me to give him credit, even when he's clearly right. So I'll just move on to Easterbrook's dumbassery in action. Here's an example of Easterbrook's idiocy from the same column:

Of course, one must suspend disbelief when it comes to superheroes. But what TMQ always wonders about X-Men, Superman, the Flash and the rest is: Where are the body organs that support their powers? I'm willing to believe a superhero can fly, but where is the organ that provides propulsion? Supposedly Earth's yellow star activated in Kal-El powers that he would not have had under the red sun of Krypton. But still, some internal organ must produce the energy for his heat vision and the thrust for his flying and so on. In "Superman Returns," Supe can even fly faster than light, a power he lacked in the comics; apparently some organ too small to even bulge under his skin propels him to warp speed. Really, there must be some physical point of origin for a superhero's power. Storm must have a body organ that projects force fields that control weather. Iceman must have a body organ that can reduce temperature very rapidly, plus shed heat so Bobby doesn't boil. Where in their physiques are these organs?

Beyond that, the X-Men premise defies scientific thinking about natural selection, which holds that new organs develop very slowly across hundreds of generations. Assume some body organ can allow Shadowcat to walk through walls or Colossus to change his skin to steel: it's unimaginable such an organ could arise de novo in a single mutation. Many generations of relatively minor mutations would be required before a novel body organ could come into full functionality. Biologists from Richard Goldschmidt of the early 20th century to Stephen Jay Gould of the late 20th have speculated there is an as-yet-undiscovered natural mechanism that enables accelerated evolution. Otherwise it's hard to imagine how creatures lived through long chains of generations with still-evolving incomplete organs, since incomplete organs should be a fitness disadvantage and thus render their possessors less likely to reproduce. Unless the X-Men are an argument for intelligent design! The intelligent-design crowd believes natural selection can produce minor alterations in existing forms but cannot produce new organs or new species; a higher intellect controls that. The sudden, drastic evolutionary jumps depicted in the X-Men movies and comics sure feel like intelligent design. In fact one of the most interesting X-Men, Nightcrawler, asserts that the very rapid evolution he and his friends experience could not occur naturally and must be the result of God intervening for reasons not yet known. (Emphasis mine)

What the fuck?

Why is this bullshit in the middle of a column that's supposed to be about this weekend's NFL action?

There's so much wrong with this, it's hard to know where to start. Easterbrook likes to show us all that he has a soaring intellect, and that he just can't be tied down to the pedestrian task of sportswriting, I guess. He's a douche. First of all, it's a goddamn comic book movie. You take biology lessons from comic book movies at your own peril. Second, there isn't any differential reproduction in the "X-Men" world, from what I understand, so you don't have to worry about the evolution of complex organs. The "mutations" that give these characters their superpowers are, essentially, just MacGuffins. Third, he grossly misrepresents SJ Gould's "punctuated equilibria" idea as being some sort of "undiscovered natural mechanism that enables accelerated evolution." Huh? That's not what Gould meant at all! Fourth, he repeats the stupid saw that can be boiled down to the dumb-ass question "What good is half an eye?" It's better than none at all, you stupid bastard! Geez. Smarter people than I have addressed this question many times, and you'd think that bullshit question would've been put to bed by now. Finally, he gets around to making a case for Intelligent Design. What a fuckhole.

You know what really makes me want to cry about all of this?

Slate.com employs Easterbrook as a science writer. Even though he's been fucking savaged by people who actually know what they're talking about.

Can I have one of Easterbrook's jobs? I promise to be shallow, incurious, and incompetent, and I'll work for half his salary.

Geaux Saints II

Thoughts from the game:

1. This one caught me off-guard. I hadn't seen the Falcons yet this year but their rushing stats were obscene. I figured them for a double digit win and good thing I don't have a bookie yet. The Saints obliterated them on both sides of the ball.

2. Deuce is still the real deal.

3.Bush is the real deal, too.

4. The Stallworth Trade was great for both teams, but his scratch this week is true to form. He's not durable -- not dependable.

5. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck. Tony K., Stu Scott, and Tom Jackson are all 1000% more stupider that I could have ever imagined. A reverse is when the QB hands off to Player 1 running to one side who then hands it off to Player 2 running in the opposite direction. Yet all of these announcers call this a "double reverse." Reverse means you reverse the field and run the play to the opposite direction from where it was initially headed. For fucks sake where is the "double?" This just breaks my heart.

6. Not related to the Saints game: but Chris Simms broke his spleen this week . . . and kept playing . . .and almost won. Pretty fucking impressive, but not really worth talking about. But this is the QB who got slammed by Jason "I'm a fat stupid fuck who couldn't play football and sure as hell can't write about it nor am I remotely amusing or interesting on any level" Whitlock just a couple of weeks ago. "Playing quarterback is the hardest thing to do in sports. It requires a mental and physical toughness that most rich kids simply cannot develop." What a mega asshole. I hope he overdoses on twinkies. Don't read his column. Do spit on his offspring.

7. Finally, If you saw the Saints game, everything Tony said before kickoff is a 100% true (because he wasn't confusing end-arounds and reverses). New Orleans needs everyone back, and the tourism parts of the city are back, even though many homes aren't. So come on down and buy my a hand grenade and let's talk about double reverses.

8. It was phenomenal being around this city tonight. Absolutely electric, I can't describe it. The blocked punt touchdown literally gave me goosebumps.

9. Who Dat!

Geaux Saints!

Who Dat?

Yes yes, everyone. The New Orleans Saints are back at home. Jon, I hope you're going to this game, or at least one of them this year.

This game is important, even if you don't like football. It's important to the rebuilding of New Orleans. Now let's hope that prick Tom Benson doesn't move the team.

Home again, home again.

I've watched the Saints for many years. I've been there for the Aint's, the Bag Heads, the Who Dats, the Cha-Ching days, and all that. I've seen Bum Phillips, Jim Mora, Archie Manning, Craig "Ironhead" Heyward, Bobby Hebert, and Ricky Williams come and go. This year's decent team (Thanks, Houston Texans, for passing on Reggie Bush! Dipshits.) looks like it might have a chance at the playoffs. However, having watched and cheered them for so many years, I know better than to hope for that. Still, a win tonight would be almost magical.

You can read much more eloquent perspectives about tonight's game and what it means here and here.

Atrocity

Defined Here and Here.

TV

Here's an interesting piece on one of the best TV shows around. I don't have much else to say.

Shocking News

I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you!

Business students are cheats.

Graduate business students in the United States and Canada are more likely to cheat on their work than their counterparts in other academic fields, the author of a research paper said on Wednesday.

The study of 5,300 graduate students in the United States and Canada found that 56 percent of graduate business students admitted to cheating in the past year, with many saying they cheated because they believed it was an accepted practice in business.

Who knew? Who could possibly have seen such an outcome on the horizon? Who, I ask, who?

I suppose next we'll find out that law students have a poor grasp of morality.

Sorry, Jon. That was a really cheap shot, I know.

Vacation Plans

If only Shackleton had waited a hundred years.

If you're interested in something fun, why not try sailing to the North Pole?

European scientists voiced shock today as they viewed pictures which showed Arctic ice cover had disappeared so much last month that a ship could sail unhindered from Europe's most northerly outpost to the North Pole.

The satellite images were acquired from August 23 to 25 by instruments aboard Envisat and EOS Aqua, two satellites operated by the European Space Agency (ESA).

Perennial sea ice – thick ice that is normally present year-round and is not affected by the Arctic summer – had disappeared over an area bigger than the British Isles, ESA said.

Vast patches of ice-free sea stretched north of Svalbard, an archipelago lying midway between Norway and the North Pole, and extended deep into the Russian Arctic all the way to the North Pole, the agency said in a press release.

"This situation is unlike anything observed in previous record low-ice seasons," said Mark Drinkwater of ESA's Oceans/Ice Unit.

"It is highly imaginable that a ship could have passed from Spitzbergen or Northern Siberia through what is normally pack ice to reach the North Pole without difficulty."

Spitzbergen is one of the Svalbard islands, which are Norwegian.

"If this anomaly continues, the Northeast Passage – or Northern Sea Route between Europe and Asia – will be open over longer intervals of time, and it is conceivable we might see attempts at sailing around the world directly across the summer Arctic Ocean within the next 10 to 20 years," Drinkwater said.

The images are for late summer. In the last weeks, what was open water has begun to freeze, as the autumn air temperatures over the Arctic begin to fall, ESA said.

Regular satellite monitoring over the past 25 years shows the northern polar ice cover has shrunk and thinned as global temperatures have risen.

Seriously, something's fucked up here.

Oh, and if you think that article is bleak, try this one on for size.

Then maybe you'll rethink the idea of vacations altogether. As well as long-term investment.

It must be hard to be a climatologist. People always cheer for you to be wrong.

Prodigal Son

Indeed, I have returned. Slaughter the fatted calf! It's nice to have internet again. It would be nicer to have some time to blog. I've thought of 100 things to blog about in the last month, but none of them are springing to mind right now.

Oh wait - this is a great story. Maine has racists? Who knew? When I went I just saw outlet malls and minor league baseball.

Oh and this one - Muslims firebomb churches because . . . the Pope called 'em violent. It's this kind of thing that highlights the unbelieveable lack of understanding the west has for Islam. I cannot wrap my head around this whatsoever.

Ahoy!

Ye seen me colors, now ye best make sail.

Ahoy, mateys and lubbers! It be Talk Like a Pirate Day!

The best day o' the whole blasted year!

Now look lively, scurvy dogs, and get t'yer line or gun! The Spanish Main's sails are on the horizon! If we don't catch 'em by sundown, I'll split ye from scupper t' scupper and larboard t' starboard! I'll hand the man who spills a breath of wind from me sails, from the foretop t' the main!

Seize yer weapons, ye bloodthirsty savages!

In Praise of One Bad Motherfucker

Get ready for a beatdown, little man.

ESPN's Bomani Jones notes that some sportswriters are saying that Tiger Woods is the most dominant athlete of all time.

Jones calls bullshit.

He reminds us all of Jim Brown, former Cleveland Browns running back. And he makes some very good points.

If, upon waking, you knew that you were to engage in an athletic contest with Tiger Woods later that day, you would not fear for your life at all. If, however, you remembered that Jim Brown was gonna run straight at you (and over you) for a few hours, then you'd be much more reluctant to get out of bed.

Jim Brown, singlehandedly defeating the German Army.

Honestly. Let's cut the fucking bullshit for a minute. Tiger Woods, the "Most dominant athlete ever"? I mean, the guy's good. Really good. But is he The Best Ever? The larger point is that these comparisons are just stupid. Like the idea of giving out a "best picture" award every year. Some things you just can't compare.

However, since the wise and learned sportswriters decided to begin the comparisons (your humble host would never presume to undertake such a task), please take one more look at Jim Brown, in a photo taken last year.

Still a bad motherfucker.

Jim Brown was 70 years old when that photo was taken--last year.

Seventy, and he looks like he could clean out your bar any night of the week. I wouldn't put any money on Tiger in a brawl now. In forty years? Hell no.

And Tiger never took out a room full of Wehrmacht officers and Telly Savalas in the same evening.

That's fuckin' dominant.

(edited for clarity)

This Story Won't Die. But You Might.

From now on, I sticks to me fried chicken for me muskles.

What's wrong with our weak-ass FDA? They can't order a recall when there's a known case of coliform bacterial contamination in a food substance?

Federal officials said today they do not have the authority to order a recall of spinach sold in supermarkets, even though it is being linked to an E. coli outbreak that has made more than 100 people ill so far, and has claimed one life.

But officials of the Food and Drug Administration say they are recommending that consumers not eat any uncooked spinach, in bags or loose, until they determine the source of the illness.

"A recall cannot be ordered until the source of the bacteria is found," Dr. Robert E. Brackett of the Food and Drug Administration told CNN this morning. “Now, we can seize the product if we know that a particular brand or a particular lot is contaminated, but we don’t know that yet exactly which part we would take action on. So we’ve had a broad appeal to the public to just abstain from consuming it until we figure out where the contamination originated.’’

Even though the F.D.A. reported that by Sunday evening 109 people have fallen ill from E. coli, some supermarkets are still selling spinach in bags or in bundles. Federal officials say they can only ask the companies to withdraw the products even as they continue to investigate the source of the contamination.

Illinois today became the 20th state to report a case of E. coli infection apparently linked to the outbreak. State health officials said an elderly woman who became sick in late August had the same strain of E. coli, and the same history of having eaten bagged spinach, as the victims in other states.

On Sunday, the F.D.A. said that a second company in California has been implicated in the E. coli outbreak.

Can the Republicans run anything right?

Okay, that's an easy question to answer.

Run for Your Lives!

The nerds are coming! Leave all snack foods and Japanese cartoons inside!

One Decade

Did you realize that it's been ten years since Tupac died?

Damn.

Sunday Surprise

Another Ram Offense you didn't see Sunday.

Holy crap. The Rams showed some defense? And won by kicking field goals?

They might be an interesting team this year. Oh, and Jon's fantasy team stunk up the joint. Bad.

Jon, your analysis?

Busy Day

So I don't have much.

However, you should check out Jon Swift. He might have a few modest proposals for you.

Notable Birthdays

Oooooh. Fancy.

The list of people born on 6 September includes:

the Marquis de Lafayette, who soldiered with Washington in the American Revolution;

John Dalton, famous chemist;

Jane Addams, feminist, pacifist, and humanist;

Joseph Kennedy, profiteer and patriarch;

Jane Curtin, actress and comedienne;

Keone Young, actor (plays Mr. Wu on Deadwood);

and, most importantly, Bethel Sharma, soon-to-be famous chemist and absolutely wonderful human being.

That's right. It's Bethel's birthday. Wish her a happy one, or I'll have the voodoo lady put a gris-gris on your ass. And that, you don't want.

The Bestest Headline of the Year

"Women's soccer team looks to fill holes."

Seriously.

Beat that, New York Times!

Your President: Petty or Stupid?

If I can't have it, nobody can!

Why not both? Apparently, according to Sidney Blumenthal's new book, George Bush is both petty and stupid. I know this comes as a shock to no one, but check this out.

In "How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime," former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal recounts a November 2004 visit by Bush and his political guru Karl Rove to the William J. Clinton Library in Little Rock, Ark., on the banks of the Arkansas River.

"Bush appeared distracted and glanced repeatedly at his watch," Blumenthal writes about a presidential tour during the library's dedication. "When he stopped to gaze at the river, where Secret Service agents were stationed in boats, the guide said: 'Usually, you might see some bass fishermen out there.' Bush replied: 'A submarine could take this place out.'"

The author muses: "Was the President warning of an Al Qaeda submarine, sneaking undetected up the Mississippi, through the locks and dams of the Arkansas River, surfacing under the bridge to the 21st century to dispatch the Clinton Library? Is that where Osama Bin Laden is hiding? Or was this a wishful paranoid fantasy of ubiquitous terrorism destroying Clinton's legacy with one blow?"

And this guy is in charge of the US military? What kind of submarine could get all the way to the Little Rock riverfront, anyway? None that I know of, that's for sure. Maybe this guy could get it done:

Ha ha! Now I got you, Klin-ton!

Christ. Bush musing about terrorism, submarine capabilities, and revenge fantasies all at once. It's enough to make the blood run cold. Here's something that he needs to take a look at, but it might be a little over his head.

In other submarine-type news, the USS Dolphin only has a few more weeks as a commissioned vessel. If you don't know what the Dolphin is, then it's my duty and pleasure to tell you that she's the last diesel-electric submarine in the US Navy. She's had quite a career, and it's sad to see her go. But a 38-year career is pretty impressive.

Fair winds and following seas.

Note that she only draws 18 feet of water (surfaced), which gives her capabilities that the nuclear boats don't have in shallow water. A 688-class boat needs ten more feet of draft. The Seawolf and Virginia class boats need at least 28 feet (surfaced), I believe, if not more.

The DoD needs to get cracking on some new diesel-electric boats. But good luck finding the money.

Setting Things Straight

The promised land

I have been remiss here at Punch and Jude. For several years now, I've been enjoying it, but I haven't publicly mentioned the best bar in the universe.

That bar is, of course, the Echo Tap.

If you like bars, and you haven't been to the Echo Tap, then you really need to get off your ass and correct that situation. Soon. You can stay with me. I live just around the corner.

Consequences

What, you thought you could get away with being a lapdog forever?

Tony Blair will be resigning in a little less than a year. Why? Well, the article cites some domestic scandals, but Blair has taken big hits in his popularity because, well, he's been George Bush's bitch with respect to the giant shit sandwich that is Iraq.

Blair's just lucky that the Tories are a rump party, and that there's really no alternative to Labour in national elections. Otherwise, he might face a Kissingerian future.

Link Update

For those of you who care to know, Cranky-Ass Brenda is back, and she's living in Arkansas. You can check out her new rantings at Yee-Haw Arkansas!

Enjoy!

Just in Time for Lunch

And you thought you had bad luck with the opposite sex.

Sexual cannibalism. And it's not even a story about Germany! Man, this stuff must make evolutionary biologists happy. The unlucky male insects & arachnids? Not so much.

Across the eastern United States, a gruesome ritual is in full swing. The praying mantis and its relative, the Chinese mantis, are in their courtship season. A male mantis approaches a female, flapping his wings and swaying his abdomen. Leaping on her back, he begins to mate. And quite often, she tears off his head.

The female mantis devours the head of the still-mating male and then moves on to the rest of his body. “If you put a pair together and come back later, you’ll just find the wings of the male and no other evidence he was ever there,” said William Brown, an evolutionary biologist at the State University of New York in Fredonia.

--snip--

Some sexual cannibals, including female Chinese mantises, actually eat a lot of males. “One study estimated that 63 percent of the diet of females are male mantids,” Dr. Brown said. “So they’re the main food source.”

Wow. Sixty-three percent. Still, you gotta admire the male mantis' sense of purpose. Headless, and he still gets it on.

I could go on here about how this is a good illustration of the power that genes have over behavior, and how they are more interested in their own survival than that of the bodies in which they inhabit, but I won't.

You may breathe a sigh of relief now.

Today's Unsurprising Yet Still Sad Headline

"Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin killed by wild animal.

Crikey.

It's a pretty improbable death, really. Stingray barb to the heart? Shit.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

The Man

That's right. It's football season.

It starts Thursday.

Prepare yourselves for Jon's ramblings and his bitching about his team. It's coming.

What the Fuck?

Disgusting Shit

Pizza Hut is introducing a lasagna pizza. I can't imagine how bad this is going to be.

At least, though, it won't be as bad as Kentucky Fried Chicken's "Famous Bowls."

Cheese and fried chicken? Are you fuckin' high?

Ha Ha Ha!

You know, I'm no fan of Tennessee (sorry, Shawn). But I do appreciate the ass-whuppin' they handed UC Berkeley today. It was 35-0 at one point.

I hope Jeff Tedford gets his balls punched for this embarrassment.

Hard.

Really, really hard.

Draft Day

Everyone wish Jon luck. That fool's gonna need it.

Dispatches from the Crescent City

Wouldn't it be nice to get some? I mean, wouldn't it be great if one of the contributors to this little popsicle stand lived in New Orleans, and could inform the rest of us about what's happened, what is happening, and what needs to happen there?

Wouldn't that be great?

Ah, if only one of us lived in New Orleans!

Oh, Jon? That's your cue, ya douche.