Sorry, kids. Your Play-Doh McNuggets have been recalled. Hand them over.

11:14 PM | Link |   

Turkey and gravy soda without giblets? Gross!!!.

10:56 AM | Link |   

I was knocked on my ass the other day after watching a PBS Nova episode about the Earth's magnetic field. Apparently, we have an entirely new impending global cataclysm to watch out for. As if terrorism, nukes, and global warming weren't enough to worry about , PBS hits us with the impending flip flop of the north and south pole. That's right. Apparently, every 250,000 years or so, the Earth's magnetic field shifts from north to south. Right now, north is the positive side of the Earth's pole. But some day that's going to flip flop and our compasses are going to all point south. But before that flip flop happens, the entire planet will be riven by massive volcanic activity. And on top all that, it looks as though the magnetic flip flop is happening soon. Like... it has started!!! The Earth's magnetic field is significantly weaker and spottier today than it was just a hundred years ago. The upshot of all of this is that I have a new thing to worry about that is completely beyond humanity's control. Yes!

9:17 PM | Link |   

The new tobacco?

3:53 PM | Link |   

Gulp!

2:20 PM | Link |   

Wouldn't it be easier if we just rode bikes more?

11:16 PM | Link |   

From James Ridgeway's Mondo Washington column in the Village Voice:

It started as just another C-SPAN call-in show bright and early on October 27. Then moderator Peter Slen punched up a call from south Florida. Here's an edited transcript:

Slen: Good morning, Miami Beach.

Caller: Good morning! Thank you for C-SPAN. I watch it every day! Uh, I would like to say I had the occasion the other day to spend the entire day with troops that had come back from Iraq and had been wounded and -- I also visited troops during the Vietnam era, but the thing that I was most shocked by, as I walked into the hospital, the first person I ran into was a boy about 19 or 20 years old who'd lost both of his arms. And when I walked into the hospital and visited all these boys all day long -- everyone had lost either one arm, one limb, or two limbs . . . and there were a lot of legs that seemed to be missing. A couple of the boys told me it was because the rockets pierce their vehicles so much, it's like being kind of in a tin can. Three guys in the same vehicle have lost a leg. Another thing that I saw was that if they'd lost one leg, that the shrapnel that had hit the other leg had been so devastating that they were having to pull, like, the thigh -- you know, the muscle and the thigh -- around the bottom of the calf to try to make the leg workable. But in some cases these boys had lost one leg and the other leg was so damaged that they weren't sure what they were gonna be able to do.

Slen: Where did you spend the day?

Caller: Walter Reed [Army Medical Center, in Washington, D.C.].

Slen: And you're down in Miami Beach, back in Miami Beach?

Caller: I'm down here today.

Slen: What were you doing at Walter Reed? Are you a volunteer?

Caller: No, I was just asked to come and spend the day. I was working that day in Washington, D.C., and --

Slen: What kind of work do you do?

Caller: Um, I'm an entertainer.

Slen: Oh, what kind of entertaining? Are you USO?

Caller: No, I actually was called by the USO but I'm -- I'm just an entertainer. And I really don't want to go much past that, but um --

Slen: Is this Cher?

Caller: Yeah.

Slen: And you spent the day at Walter Reed.

Caller: Yeah. And I spent the day with -- I mean they were great guys. . . . They had the most unbelievable courage. It took everything that I have as a person to -- to not, you know, break down while I was talking to these guys. But I just think that if there was no reason for this war, this was the most heinous thing I'd ever seen. And also I wonder why are none of Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bremer, the president -- why aren't they taking pictures with all these guys? Because I don't understand why these guys are so hidden and why there aren't pictures of them, because you know, talking about the dead and the wounded, that's two different things, but these wounded are so devastatingly wounded. It's unbelievable. It's just unbelievable to me. You know, if you're going to send these people to war, then don't hide them. Have some news coverage where people are sitting and talking to these guys and seeing how they are and seeing their spirit. It's just -- I think it's a crime.



12:02 PM | Link |   

Though I'm mostly happy with the results of yesterday's New York state and city elections and I have a pretty good idea of why New York City politics works like it does, I still can't help but find it amazing that nearly every City Councilmember up for reelection won by just about the same margin that Saddam Hussein used to win his seven-year terms in office. If you're a Democratic incumbent and you didn't receive at least 90% of the vote, it was a hard-fought race. Incredible. Seemingly the only way to unseat an incumbent New York City Councilmember is to walk in to City Hall and shoot him.

1:44 PM | Link |