On a beauty shoppe in Saco, Maine.

No it's not a sonnet (no!), it's just, well, this.

What would you find in a T-station supply closet besides Jeb Bush?

I don't know. I'm just asking here. Brooms and mops, I suppose, or something.

Whatever. In Pittsburg yesterday when YA Bush (we just never seem to run out of them) turned up to boost Ricky ("Rooster") Santorum he got run off by a bunch of protesters and stuffed in the supply closet by the cops. For safekeeping. Or so they claim. I'm not kidding. You can read all about it here.

Woohoo! Another one!

Barton was referring to Democratic Reps. Gerry Studds of Massachusetts and Dan Crane of Illinois, both of whom were censured after having sexual relationships with 17-year-old pages. Crane lost his re-election bid, while Studds survived the scandal.

This is way cool! Dan Crane was never a Democrat, I can guarantee. Not even, I can also guarantee, close. Do these newsbimbos (in this case, CNN) pay any attention at all? Will there be any Rs left by election day? Stay tooned!

A YAME public service.

News addict? Here's a sure-fire cure.

(Careful. Send the kiddies out of the room first. It's video.)

At least it's better than Msnbc.

Here's some guy in Mississippi who names his kid Espn. Right. Espn. And it turns out this is not the only kid named Espn - there are at least three others, two in Texas and one in Michigan. Turns out, too, Espn is pronounced "Espen" whereas Msnbc would be pronounced "Emenessbesee." So you can see it's better right there. "Emenessbesee" sounds like a girl.

And I guess today's the day, Marky boy.

"Oh, thank God," Foley responded. "Send me that photo, I might need it someday."

This really is funny, I don't care. (It's from the LA Times so you have to register, yada yada). I'm trying, really I am, honest I am, to refrain from writing about all this but it's too freakin' hilarious to ignore. It really is.

Yes. Looks like a designer flak jacket there. If that's not progress, what is?

BAGHDAD, Oct. 5 — Wearing a helmet and a flak jacket and flanked by machine-gun-toting bodyguards to defend against insurgents, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came here Thursday, insisting that there were new signs of progress in Iraq and that the Bush administration had never sugarcoated its news about the American occupation.

You mean...then...I'm not...

There is no proof the Moon makes people crazy.

...oh. But it's not the moon's fault. I get it now.

I kind of liked it when it was the moon's fault, though.

Amazing Nebraska woman dies three times.

3rd E. coli death confirmed in Neb. lady

Or, possibly, amazing AP headline writer loses count.

Transmission failed. Right.

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - A 22-year-old man attempted to drive 310 miles in reverse on a remote Outback highway after his transmission failed, blocking his forward gears, police said Friday. The man was stopped by Western Australia state police on Thursday afternoon after they spotted his car roaring in reverse down the highway at about 40 mph, according to a statement.

What I'm betting is this was one of those kids who was brought up riding backward in a car seat.

Time to outsource the FCC.

Reports Editor & Publisher:

Two FCC public hearings on the topic Tuesday resembled baseball playoff games with attendees whooping, clapping wildly and even booing as the five commissioners sat quietly and listened for more than seven hours.

We could get some monkeys to do this for a fraction of the pay, no sweat.

Noted by the YAME health desk:

Cuba's high number of centenarians say their longevity is down to laying off alcohol, but indulging in coffee, cigars and sex.

The findings are the result of a study that looked into the lives of 54 out of the more than 100 centenarians who live in Villa Clara province.

(From the BBC)

Whoa, dude, this'll be bigger than oat bran even.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) -- Good news for aging hippies: Smoking pot may stave off Alzheimer's disease.

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Here is the all too familiar trajectory of news: a juicy story begins all flashbang 24/7 on cable news and ends, later, as a note on a blog somewhere in the obscurity of cyberspace, forlorn and abandoned as Abishag (that withered hag):

No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard,
Or keeps the end from being hard.

Thusly:

John Karr was flown to the United States from Bangkok in police custody to face an accusation that he kidnapped and killed Jonbenet Ramsey, only to be released from Colorado custody after DNA exonerated him. (TalkLeft coverage collected here.) Then Karr was taken to California to face charges that he possessed child pornography.

Those charges were dismissed today after prosecutors conceded that Karr may never have accessed pornographic images on his computer in California. Police lost the computer after they seized it.

Ah yes, the villainous John Karr, the man who was served prawns (oh gnashing of teeth), released, uncharged of any crime, by both states in which he faced authorities, Colorado and California.

But don't expect to hear a blatherning newsbuffoon say "I was wrong." We're on to new entertainments now - Ds being mean to Rs! - and "I was wrong" would spoil the fun.

Stay under your bed! Don't come out now!

Bush [that would be George H.W., the daddy one] says that if we have some of these "wild Democrats in charge of these committees, it will be a ghastly thing for our country."

Ghastly wild Democrats, woohoo! Pushing"crazy legislation"! Weird, wacky stuff! I mean, what's the ghastliest thing you can think of? How about making it illegal to arrest guys and toss them in jail without a trial? Yes! That ghastly! Maybe even worse!

How about having another Bush for president? No. Not that ghastly. Even Democrats are not that weird.

Ig Nobel Peace Prize goes to inventor of electromechaical teenager repellant.

PEACE: Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, for inventing an electromechanical teenager repellant -- a device that makes annoying noise designed to be audible to teenagers but not to adults; and for later using that same technology to make telephone ringtones that are audible to teenagers but not to their teachers.

Mathmatics prize goes to Australian scientists for calculating the number of pictures necessary (almost) to ensure no members of a group will have their eyes closed; award in chemistry given to Spanish researchers for their study, "Ultrasonic Velocity in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature." And more.

Winners were announced Thursday, Oct. 5, at Sanders Theatre, Harvard. A webcast of the award ceremony - and a full list of winners - is available at the Improbable Research web site.

Finally! An end to all the confusion.

They own the Internet.

So the next time you hear somebody from New England talking "green"...

The [New England] region, comprising nine of the 50 U.S. states, is critical, since it alone is the world's seventh-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, just behind the entire nation of Germany and ahead of all of Canada, said Cameron Wake, a University of New Hampshire climate scientist and a co-author of the report.

(Reuters)

Way, way cool.

DC Comics super hero stamps. POW!!! BOP!!! And not only cool, they're big! ZAP!!! And they don't cost any more either, so how can you go wrong? SMACK!!! Also I've had a crush on Wonder Woman since I was in the forth grade.

Only problem is, I hate to waste them on the oil company. Probably I should write a letter to somebody. What do I need for that, a pencil or something? Probably Google knows.

So I'm just playing around with a video aspect ration here...

...nothing terribly exciting, but a whole new compositional challenge. Fun.

Can't wait for the movie! Woohoo!

The Great Spinach Caper! Comin soon!

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

At about 9:30 a.m., agents from the FBI and the Food and Drug Administration served search warrants at Natural Selection Foods LLC in San Juan Bautista and Growers Express in Salinas. Employees were asked to leave their work stations and visitors were barred from entering as investigators, donning rubber gloves, searched the facilities. ...

"We are investigating allegations that certain spinach growers and distributors may not have taken all necessary or appropriate steps to ensure that their spinach was safe before they were placed into interstate commerce," said U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan of the Northern district of California in a written statement.

I don't really want to bring Bill Clinton into this but...OMG! There he is!

(Or, well, there he was. There was a YouTube video in that space but it went away. I didn't know YouTube videos ever went away but they do. They go away. Sean Hannity was in the video but I don't think he went away. Nothing's ever perfect, is it?)

Oh spare us the flourishes, PI.

Seattle PI:

The organization, funded by downtown businesses to clean and patrol streets, wants Seattle to flush the state-of-the art toilets...

I'll be surprised if they can drive them at all.

Cleanup-minded council moves to drive junk vehicles out of city (Boston Globe)

Some of them are up on blocks, the story says, some are mostly just a bunch of parts. But hey, at least it gives the council members something useful to do.

Are we talking a lot of sometimes here, or just a few?

In Spokane, cops trash the wrong house in a porn raid, confiscate videos of The Lion King and Snow White. "Sometimes things like that happen," the sheriff says.

I'm not saying Dennis Hastert reads this blog.,,

...or, for that matter, the Associated Press. Maybe I was just having a moment of psychic clarity yesterday when I suggested, just a couple of posts down, that maybe all the Rs should claim to be Ds and then run against themselves. But whatever the case may be, over at Crooks and Liars this morning is this image of a Google search revealing that both Mark Foley and Dennis Hastert are now Ds.

Whatever the case may be, I say. Now if we can only get all the Ds claiming to be Rs (we'll call it the Lieberman Effect), DOOFUS could become the first president ever to be impeached by his own party.

Whoa, wait a minute. Is eating rice balls fair?

TOKYO (AP) - A Japanese mental health counselor recited pi to 100,000 decimal places from memory on Wednesday, setting what he claims to be a new world record....

Haraguchi, a psychiatric counselor and business consultant in nearby Mobara city, took a break of about 5 minutes every one to two hours, going to the rest room and eating rice balls during the attempt, said Naoki Fujii, spokesman of Haraguchi's office.

Sort of seems like a cheat to me. Peanut butter sandwiches might be OK. But rice balls, I don't know.

Cheats cheat. Who woulda guessed?

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German plastic surgeon who was cheated out of payment by several women has given pictures of their enlarged breasts to police, in the hope the photos will help trace them.

Cops are having a good time, though.

Unclear on the concept.

"Fish are like canaries in the coal mine," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.

So...

...we have it now from some guy named "Hewitt," whoever this "Hewitt" may be, just YA idiot as far as I can see...but anyway, we have it that if a regular all-American straight guy, presumably a Republican straight guy, sends suggestive (ooops, sorry Tony, that's "naughty") emails to a 17 year-old kid, well, that's perfectly OK.

Hastert did not know that Foley was a predator, only that Foley had sent a too-friendly e-mail to one teenage page, the sort of e-mail that would have been completely unremarkable if it hadn't come from a gay Congressman.

OK, and completely unremarkable. At least for an R, I guess, I don't know, except I have a strong suspicion that if I did it, not being an R or even a member of the US Senate but instead living in the Commie pinko libsymp state of Massachusetts I'd find my name on some sex-offender list or other. Would be my guess. I'm just saying here.

But, you know, if you haven't already figured this thing out you're not just paying attention and anyway there are far, far more important things we should be talking about, like, for instance, Paris Hilton getting punched by a former beauty queen. That, you see, would be real news.

Still, though, it might be a pretty good idea.

No doubt everybody's heard about this already but it's an ideal opportunity to mention the name of the blog Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O'Reilly, Intl., which sums up thusly:

Tonight on three separate occasions, during two different segments, Bill O'Reilly showed video of his fellow culture warrior, boy-crazy Congressman Mark Foley, with the tagline "Former Congressman Mark Foley (D-FL)."

Et cetera. But see, what I'm thinking is maybe they've come up with something good at "The Factor" (that's O'Reilly's TV show, the one that sweet Jesus I hate too), namely, maybe they could all claim to be Democrats and then run agains themselves and win again. IYSWIM.

I mean, think about it - Ken Lay was a Democrat, Abramoff is a Democrat, Trickshot Dick is a Democrat, Rummy is a Democrat, Dennis Hastert is a Democrat, "Scooter" - no, wait a minute, it's "Rooster" Santorum is a Democrat ("Scooter" is the other one), yada yada, hell, even Karl Rove is a Democrat - pretty soon everybody votes for the Rs. And, surpriiiiiise! And we get them all again. There. That's WIM.

What I personally think is, I need to be getting to bed earlier.

Sounds like a bargain to me.

If it's gonna cost us $20 mil for a victory-in-Iraq party (see below) the mere $1.76 mil Neiman Marcus wants for a six-person holiday in space sounds like a steal. Better yet, maybe we could get a bulk rate and ship the whole freakin' congress into orbit.

But of course they would never spend your money to...

TalkLeft:

Tucked away in fine print in the military spending bill for this past year was a lump sum of $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation's capital "for commemoration of success" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

...oh. OK then. I guess they would.

Where's the duct tape, dude?

Article in Slashdot points to this story on wallets for geeks. Cool, yeah, sort of. But how can you have a geek wallet story without the most obvious, most excellent of all, the self-repairing (well, almost) duct tape wallet?

The title has been changed but the URL remains the same.

It's a "." not a "dot," but the URL (the site address) remains http://76003dot1414.blogspot.com/, same as always, just so there's no confusion here.

:Later: OK. Well. Looks too big somehow. And if it looks big on a Mac it'll sure look big in Windows. Of course, maybe it was just too small before. Or something. Seems a lot easier to play around with, though, this new version, And if there's something to play around with, hey, I'm your guy. Stay tooned.

:Later later: Yeah, the editing is a whole lot better but my editor, ecto, the outside one, the third-party one, doesn't work with this at all. So I'll have to get back to posting from Firefox until a new option comes along. So that means things will look different.

But wait! They already do!

:Later later later: In case you're wondering why I put a colon in front of ":Later later:" and ":Later later later:," it's so you think I did it on purpose when I typed ":Later:," which I didn't.

Heh.

Well it's easier to read, you've got to admit that much. And it seems to get rid of some of the weird kinks that've been annoying me. And since, hey, I was planning to get organized today anyway (right after lunch), why not? I will be fiddling around with it to see what else can be done, so hang on.

Well OK then.

The day has apparently arrived, the day we've all been waiting for. Or, well, not. And no, I'm not talking about the day we're finally going to get organized. We are going to get organized, but not til after lunch.

Oh no. I'm talking about the day we switch to the new Blogger beta. Or maybe it's the beta new Blogger. I have no idea what will happen, things might get messy for a while. We will see.

But it's new. And new is irresistable. And that's the way it is.

Oh yeah. And more.

SouthofBoston.com: News from the Associated Press:

"People ask me, 'Do we really want to elect a clown for mayor of the city?'" he said.

We do. Real clowns would be an improvement. And not just in City Hall - in Washington too. At least we'd get a better show.

Maybe, in fact, we should just quit having elections (take that, Diebold) and hold auditions instead.

Just not my day, I guess.

So I'm at the grocery store today picking up some chips and a couple of other things (next time I go out of town I'm locking the chips up where the staff can't find them) and I buy a package of dish cloths, figuring maybe washing the dishes one of these days might be a good idea. And I get them home and look on the label, it says "machine washable." Damn. I wanted the kind you dry clean. Don't they make those any more? And then they're all stuck together with those little plastic staples like they use on shirts. WTF, they're dish cloths! Maybe I'll just use paper plates.

Anyway, I check my account at freeshell.org (which is a cool thing if you want a Unix account to play around with, BTW) and deleted 825 spams from the email there. OK, I haven't checked in a while. But this is an email account I've never used for anything, except probably two or three messages to the system administrator in as many years. Sigh. (Just practicing my chat talk there. *sigh*)

Speaking of which - spam, not chat - I'm going to going to fix the comments settings here at YAME so comments will no longer be moderated, they'll just appear right away. Like it used to be. In the bygone era. If it starts accumulating spam again maybe we'll try that gadget where you have to type something that's on a little picture - you know what I mean, like when you sign up at Yahoo(!) or something. That always makes me craZy.

Heh.

Technorati Tags: Natterabilia

There'll always be an England.

Etiquette guide offers sleaze tips for posh girls - Yahoo! News:

"Avoid dark-alley gropery and unladylike fumbling in the
back of a cab," the guide says on the subject of one night
stands. "Discuss the necessaries to avoid planting any love
children or disease, and you're away."

Technorati Tags: Curiosa

Oh. The car.

Wife accused of chasing husband with ax - Yahoo! News:

Police said that while chasing her husband, Masse destroyed several things inside their home, including a glass door and his car.

Well that was a big deal then.

Technorati Tags: Curiosa

Deep think tank thinkers spend too much time in thought.

U.S. middle class far worse than any time - Sep. 28, 2006:

Middle-class families are struggling to pay for a home, health insurance, transportation and their children's college with wages that have not kept pace with higher prices, according to the study by a think tank headed by a former top aide to President Bill Clinton.

Hellooo.

They let you ride bikes in airplanes now?

UNDERNEWS: THE 12 POUND FOLDING BIKE:

"It's for people using planes, trains, buses and boats," said a company source. "It's not a replacement for your normal bike, it's for the starting part and end bit of the commute." . . .

Only if you don't bring water, maybe.

Technorati Tags: Curiosa

Recovered gadgetry news.

BenQ pursues painted ladies with butterfly-branded handset | Reg Hardware :

"Delicate purple butterfly motifs adorn the shimmering white casing of this compact slider phone, making the mobile into a top-fashion eye-catcher – and not just for romantic women either... both in Eastern and Western cultures, the butterfly is regarded as a symbol of evolving femininity."

So for unromantic women too then? Cool.

Technorati Tags: Noted

Doesn't look too bad when you can't see it.

Blogger compares iPod to Zune.

Ev'ning summer breeze / The warbling of a meadowlark / hip hop in Vermont.

Burlington Free Press.com | Local/Vermont:

WILLISTON -- Sarah Cover cannot stop whooping.

Technorati Tags: Noted

Environment committee?

The Raw Story | Video: Senate Environment Committee chair says global warming is media hysteria:

Global warming is a myth created by media hysteria, says Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). Inhofe, who is Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, went on Fox ["]News["] to counter the "lies" told by most of the media.

Technorati Tags: Nitwitology

No! Neither am I!

Bay State not ready for a flu epidemic - The Boston Globe

Technorati Tags: Journoterrorism

Teachers and homos, says Stein.

The American Spectator:

We have a Republican man in Congress who sent e-mails to teenage boys asking them what they were wearing, and an entire party, the Democrats, whose primary constituency, besides the teachers' unions, is homosexual men and lesbian women.

Ben, honey! Wow!

Ben says on the one hand, batting for the Rs, we have "we have a poor misguided Republican man who had a romantic thing for young boys," and on the other, in the box for the Ds, we have CLINTON, who got a - OK legal but just barely legal - blowjob. Surely you can see the difference there.

Good for you.

Technorati Tags: Nitwitology

Really, you have to admire it in a sick sort of way.

Firedoglake - Firedoglake weblog » The Eggman Says Kids Were “Egging the Congressman On” :

And if anything, these kids are less innocent — these 16 and 17 year-old beasts…and I've seen what they're doing on YouTube and I've seen what they're doing all over the internet — oh yeah — you just have to tune into any part of their pop culture. You're not going to tell me these are innocent babies. Have you read the transcripts that ABC posted going into the weekend of these instant messages, back and forth? The kids are egging the Congressman on!

The way these Rs can spin. Spin. As in turn around real fast. I mean, only yesterday it was protect the darling kiddies from the mean old men on the internets. Today it's protect the poor old men from 17 year-old beasts on YouTube.

Beasts?

Ah. Well. Whenever there's a juicy story out of D.C. the first thing to do is ask yourself what else is going on they'd rather you not think about (look! over here! something shiny! shiny! look!). There've been several candidates suggested in this case - the recent national security report on the Iraq war is one. But here at YAME we go with Jon Stewart's take - we say it's the outlandish and outrageous "detainee bill" that trashes the Geneva Conventions and strips non-citizens of habeas corpus rights (we believe in the "rule of law," but only for ourselves).

But, hey, what the hell. "Habeas corpus" is Latin and who speaks Latin any more? It's the 21st Century, dude. R u wearing boxers?

Technorati Tags: Buffoonaria

How freakin' bizarre is this?

Newsvine - Frist: Taliban Should Be in Afghan Gov't:

QALAT, AFGHANISTAN — U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily and urged support for efforts to bring "people who call themselves Taliban" and their allies into the government.

Woohoo!

The Tennessee Republican [that would be Bill Frist, make-believe MD] said he learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated on the battlefield.

And with a straight face too, apparently.

Next he'll be saying there should be some Democrats in the Senate.

A little automotive advice from the Asylum Street Spankers.

There'll always be an England.

Man's Best Friend to Best Man

Church of England priests have been given the power to include dogs in the wedding service. A spokesman said: "While it would be inappropriate for a dog to replace (the) father of the bride, there would be no sensible grounds for objecting to it taking the role of ring bearer."

Naughty emails, oh my!

Think Progress » Snow on Foley Scandal: ‘Simply Naughty Emails’:

“I hate to tell you, but it’s not always pretty up there on Capitol Hill. And there have been other scandals, as you know, that have been more than simply naughty e-mails.”

That's Tony Snowjob's tired old joke ("promise him anything but give him our page") scandal, which of course is not at all about emails, it's about hitting on kids. Child abuse, one might say. In fact, one's saying it right here and now. In fact if the selfsame emails were authored by, say, a priest Snowjob's brethren at Faux News would be all over it, 24/7.

And BTW, you can't say I'm not a conservative myself, not after the way I just conserved that stale old joke. You saw it yourself, with your own two eyes.

Technorati Tags: Buffoonaria

File under Last Guy to Get the Word.

Sectarian feud threatens Iraq coalition - The Boston Globe

Technorati Tags: Journoterrorism

LOL

Former Pages Describe Foley as Caring Ally - New York Times

"Caring ally," indeed.
These kids are not even old enough to vote and already they're freakin' politicians.

Technorati Tags: Nitwitology

And BTW, staff...

...just because the CEO* is out of town for a few days doesn't mean everybody gets a week off. Look at this place - hardly a post all week. Disgraceful is what it is. I'll do something about that after I get home from work (oh no! work!). And, well, take a nap. Whatever.

*That's Chief Empire Officer, and don't forget it.

Technorati Tags: Natterabilia

Either that or...

Rumsfeld says he has Bush's confidence - Yahoo! News

...well, never mind. Let's not speculate on exactly what of Bush's Rummy has. Surely we would be the last to speculate on anything here at YAME. Anyway...

Rumsfeld is in Managua for two days of meetings with defense officials from more than 30 South and Central American countries. He was more eager to talk about the importance of continuing military relationships with those countries, including military training programs.

...the real question is, what of Rummy's does the US arms industry have?

Technorati Tags: Buffoonaria

Cross-dressing cheats?

Ethnic games tainted by cross-dressing cheats - Yahoo! News:

Results of the women's dragon-boat racing event were
reviewed after athletes complained of "big women with Adam's
apples," Xinhua said.

OK, maybe it's not redundant in Chinese.

Technorati Tags: H00t

By absolutely, 100% mostly popular demand.

Yes! Still the same age! (National security considerations prohibit us from revealing the exact numbering system from which the candle count of 1 is derived.)