Sadly, No!

Zoinks.

Not that one gets surprised enough, anymore, to spill one’s herbal tea or startle the fifteen cats in the sandalwood-candle scented nook in which one surfs the Internet barefoot with a Holly Near record playing quietly, etc.

But check out the catalog text for these dorkass T-shirts:

“What Would Reagan Do” T-Shirts

The next time terrorists attack the United States, the next time the UN tries to impose its will on the US government, the next time our allies chicken out on removing a brutal dicator from power, ask yourself, “What would Reagan do?”

The next time terrorists attack the United States? Well there’s this and this and this.

There’s also this.

What would Reagan do? This.

Not to mention Bush, who’s been sort of quiet on these issues lately. You could say that he’s not taking any great pains to mount the chautauqua stump and make a resounding statement of principle.

Because actually, you probably didn’t know this, but when white American extremists blow people up with explosives, everyone who gets blown up just turns sooty and frazzled like in cartoons, and shakes their fists going, “Curses! You got me!”

Whereas, it’s only those foreign terror threats that you really have to watch out for.

Friedman:

There is no substitute for face-to-face reporting and research. But it is now much easier to do all the things that go with it. I basically did all the library research for this book on Google, and it not only saved me enormous amounts of time but actually gave me a much richer offering of research in a shorter time.

(From the inevitable Amazon interview.)

This would be with his celebrity-signature-model Thomas L. Friedman Blackberry (with the custom inlays and chrome-plated hardware) — and you know, those Blackberries have a small interface that really makes you prize concision and simplicity. (hey abdullah its tom wassup? u drivin the cab 2day? gotta bounce times needds a colmn asap) (Google search = ‘I’m feeling lucky.’)

Riverbend reams him a new one in the latest lap of the ’05 Friednapolis 500, sponsored by his new book, I Embody the Peter Principle.

[updated with more stuff]

The Poor Man has been doing a Tom Friedman poetry thing (along with some other sites — it’s Friedmania lately), and I totally got busted by Brad R. a couple days ago while sneakily hanging out in the comments there when I should have been, you know, dragging down the discourse here and chasing away the readership. The problem is that I’m obsessed with Tom Friedman.

Here’s my Friedman poem. You’ll recognize an echo of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

The world is charged with the grandeur of Tom.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

Now it gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil!

Crap. Why do men not wreck his rod?

I’m ashamed to admit this obsession. It’s unseemly.

But among the million, billion bits of Friedmanism that have exploded into the air like pollen lately (with his new book, etc), the one that’s really stands out is the Grist Magazine interview.

Not content with running around saying the world is flat (in his new book, The World is Flat), he’s got this damn-fool thing going called ‘geo-green.’ I’ve been trying to collect terms to describe this thing of his, and it pretty much beggars the thesaurus. You could say it’s ‘horseshit,’ and that’s true, but it would do less violence to sensibility and the beautiful English language to just call it “Muuuuh!” with your face all contorted and hands crabbed into I’m-a-retard claws. I’m doing that now. (Muuuuh!) It’s like four-dimensional horseshit, string-theory horseshit. It’s like slices of baloney folded into a hypercube.
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Oho! Someone finally got his site password sorted out again after a gargantuan mess of moving and a couple weeks of jet-setting in near-Seb fashion.

I visited the land of Canada, where Canadians are. On the street everyone’s a Canadian — it’s really bizarre. They look just like ordinary people.

But anyway. I notice site stats are up since my absence. I suppose I have to get to work on that….

How silly of us not to mention this earlier:

Good Vibrations Celebrates 10th Annual National Masturbation Month in May 2005

Don’t call yet, there’s more:

Masturbation Month also means the launch of the internationally loved and renowned “Come for a Cause” Masturbate-a-thon. Back by popular demand, this is Good Vibrations 7th annual marathon of self-lovin’. Participants are encouraged to recruit their friends and co-workers to sponsor them for every minute they spend masturbating.

The management will see again you on June 1.

Thanks to Chuckles for the link.

Michelle:

In this morning’s coverage of Koran abuse allegations at Gitmo, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Boston Globe, Reuters, and Associated Press all mention in their lead paragraph that the Pentagon found no credible evidence that a guard flushed the Koran down a toilet. The Washington Post, on the other hand, does not bother to mention the Koran-flushing incident until its fourth paragraph and does not note until the thirteenth paragraph that the detainee who made that allegation has retracted it.

The Associated Press:

In Washington on Thursday, investigators confirmed five cases in which military personnel mishandled the Qurans of Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay since 2002. But they said they found no “credible evidence” that a holy book was flushed in a toilet.

Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, the Guantanamo Bay prison commander who led the investigation, said five of 15 alleged incidents were substantiated. Four were by guards and one was by an interrogator.

Hood said the five cases “could be broadly defined as mishandling” of the holy book. He refused to discuss details but said two of the cases apparently were accidental.

And I’m sure by “mishandling” it, they mean it wasn’t kept in a special plastic Qu’ran baggy.

“But oh, oh, oh!” I can hear Michelle saying now. “They only said it was ‘mishandled,’ not flushed down the toilet! Newsweek lied! Internment rocks!”

Again, I don’t really give a shit about what interrogators did to the Qu’ran, but would it kill Michelle to admit that the military has confirmed that an interrogator desecrated it to break detainees? Seriously, after all the pictures from Abu Ghraib, is Qu’ran desecration really that unimaginable?

Here’s some classy commentary from Amber Pawlik’s old haunt, Men’s News Daily:

(I’m gonna put this below the fold because, trust me, it’s not for the faint of heart, and not in an “oy this is stupid” sort of way. It’s seriously extremely offensive. You have been warned.)
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Matt Furey’s latest scam might just be his most bizarre yet (and yes, that includes his seminar on Kung-Fu Love-Making).

Exploiting the hype surrounding the last Star Wars movie, Matt offers to show Newsmax readers how to become Jedi Knights… by breathing (yes, you read that correctly).

“Your BREATH is Your POWER … and The Force is With You!”

NOW is the Time for YOU to Make a Deeper, Stronger, More Powerful Connection to “The Force” that Penetrates Everything in the Universe

I really hope he’s not talking about his penis.
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You really couldn’t top that, could you?

Michael Jackson’s lawyers rested their defence yesterday after comedy actor Chris Tucker described the mother at the centre of the child molestation case as “possessed”

Comedy actor Chris Tucker. Stick a fork in Michael because he is done.

I promise I’ll stop writing about Pastor Swank soon, but he’s already written SEVEN columns today, and they’re all really funny.

Column #1– “PEACE MUSLIMS MUST SLAY MAD MUSLIMS: IRAQ”:

Those in New Iraq who are peace-loving Iraqis must slay the Muslim killers international.

It’s kinda strange to ask peace-lovers to go on a killing spree, don’t you think?
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