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Sunday is Chinese New Year. It's the "Year of
the Pig" Lunar 4704-5
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Yup.
Must be warming
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From
Bill
Texas
State Trooper
Two men from back east, were driving through Texas when they got pulled over by a State Trooper. The cop walked up and tapped on the window with his nightstick.
The driver rolled down the window and
WHACK, the cop smacked him in the head with his nightstick.
"What the hell was that for?" the
driver asked.
"You're in Texas, son," the trooper
answered. "When we pull you over in Texas, you better have your
license ready by the time we get to your car."
"I'm sorry, officer," the driver said,
"I'm not from around here."
The trooper runs a check on the guy's
license--he's clean and gives the guy his license back. The trooper
then walks around to the passenger side and taps on the window.
The passenger rolls down the window
and "WHACK", the trooper smacks him on the head with the
nightstick.
"What'd you do that for?" the
passenger demands
"Just making your wish come true,"
replied the trooper.
"Making WHAT wish come true?" the
passenger asked.
"Because I know your type," the
trooper says, "two miles down the road you're gonna turn to your buddy
and say, 'I wish that ass hole would've tried that shit with me'!"
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Nora,
the pianist cat
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From
Bill, who says
This
comes close to being porn, but not quite.
Have your sound on.
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A
Fred-On-Everything
FRED
Columns Theater of the Absurd, by the Absurd, for...
Ionesco
as Political Consultant
February 16, 2007
Every time I go to the United States
(I have just returned from two weeks in Washington), I am astonished by
the antic security, by the proliferation of admonitions and alarms and
inchoate fear. Now it is illegal to carry toothpaste on airplanes. I
find myself wondering: Is this just another spasm of periodic hysteria,
like Prohibition, the Sixties, and a Commie Under Every Bed? Or is it
calculated political programming?
Most of it impinges at best lightly
upon reality. For example, measures for security at airports are
largely useless—if their purpose is to increase security. Think about
it. Time and again the public-address system warns that vehicles left
unattended in passenger-loading zones "may be ticketed and towed.” Why?
By the time anyone notices that the truck is unattended, by definition
the driver will be somewhere else. He will certainly be able to walk a
hundred yards before the tow-truck arrives—and push the button. Boom.
In the case of a suicide bomber (which is what we are worried about,
no?) it doesn’t matter anyway. Boom.
For that matter, at any airport you
can drive up, load a hundred pounds of suitcases containing god knows
what onto a baggage cart, and go into a crowded waiting area. Boom. You
probably couldn’t get them onto an airplane. Why would you need to?
Terroristically, killing two hundred people in the airport is as good
as dropping an airliner.
Most of security is just theater. Over
and over, the PA system tells you not to leave baggage unattended or it
may be destroyed by security personnel. This doubtless serves to make
legitimate passengers watch their luggage. Who cares? A suitcase full
of bras and socks isn’t perilous. But none of this keeps a terrorist
from leaving a baggage cart and walking for two minutes, far enough to
be outside the blast radius.
No, I’m not giving ideas to
terrorists. Everything in this column is obvious to anyone with a
three-digit IQ.
It gets sillier. If you ride Metro,
Washington’s subway, you will incessantly hear things like,
“Passengers! Look up from your papers occasionally. Be alert! Report
any suspicious behavior to Metro employees.”
Yeah, sure. As a security measure,
this is worthless. Why? First, a terrorist would be careful not to look
suspicious. Second, what is suspicious behavior on an urban subway?
You’ve got rastas, Goths, spike-haired young in leathers,
semi-derelicts, blacks from the slums, people from India, Guatemala,
Morocco, drunks, stoners, people talking to Mars through the
transmitters the CIA put in their teeth, and swarthy men speaking
languages you can’t identify. What’s suspicious?
So how do report any of this? You
could get off the train at the next stop, go up the escalators, and
find the Metro kiosk by the exit gates. You find a bored guy inside
waiting for his shift to end.
“Hey, I saw this suspicious guy on the
train!” you say.
“Yeah? What was he doing?”
“He had a backpack, and he was looking
around a lot like he was nervous, and I think he was sweating.”
Oh. By now the train you were riding
has left. The attendant has two choices. He can call in an emergency,
have the train halted at the next stop, tie up the whole system at rush
hour, and have police search the train, for a guy who looks like he
might be sweating. Now, that’s a career-enhancing move. Or he can brush
you off. Real world: Which?
Have you ever been on an urban subway
at rush hour—which of course is when a terrorist would strike? They are
madhouses. People are packed so tight they can hardly move. Everybody
is thinking, “Come on, come on, get this damned thing moving.” Suppose
you are aboard, and you see what appears to be a forgotten briefcase.
What do you do?
The train is now sailing through the
tunnel between Rosslyn Station and the Pentagon. Nobody can move an
inch. You could scream, “Bomb!” However, the odds are much better than
999 to 1 that it isn’t. Years have passed since 9/11, with no terrorism
on Metro. People leave things on trains all the time. Let’s say that
you do scream. Chaos results, people very possibly are crushed to death
in the panic, and someone pulls the Emergency Stop handle. You have
just shut down Metro in rush hour. Further, you are in mid-tunnel. Oh
good. The briefcase turns out to contain two sandwiches and a report
from Agriculture on locust infestations in Chad. You probably go to
jail.
And of course a terrorist would leave
the briefcase on a timer to give himself a few minutes to leave Rosslyn
Station and be walking innocently up Wilson Boulevard when the thing
went off. Say, five minutes. Real world: What are the chances that
anyone will notice the briefcase, take it seriously, and clear the
train, in five minutes? Zero.
It’s theater. If people actually
reported strange behavior however defined, or if Metro cleared trains
for forgotten briefcases until the bomb squad arrived, trains would
never run.
Are security measures going to keep
terrorists out of the US? I just finished reading De Los Maras a Los
Zetas, by a Mexican crime reporter. (I don’t think it is available in
English.) He talks mostly about the drug trade, but mentions the
smuggling of illegal immigrants. In particular he tells of a tunnel
going under the border (estimating that at any one time about forty
such tunnels are active) through which, he says, about 150 illegals a
day passed. All it takes is $2000 or so any you are in the US. There is
no border security, boys and girls. Not against anyone serious. There
really isn’t.
Now, yes, we may well see more
terrorist attacks on the United States. We certainly ask for them. Or
they may be prevented by other means. But dramatic announcement on the
subway are going to prevent nothing. Nor are color-coded terror alerts
that you hear every five minutes in airports. What does anyone do
differently when the level is orange instead of green? Cancel
reservations? Wear body armor?
On examination, most of the measures
purportedly taken to stifle Terror don’t. Opening mail without a
warrant? It’s pointless once the terrorists know you are doing it, but
effective in intimidating honest citizens. The same is true of
warrantless wiretaps and searches. Does the gutting of habeas corpus
make us safer against terrorists? Or merely suppress dissent by
citizens?
The whole business looks
remarkably like malign vaudeville, like mummery intended to accomplish
two things. The first is to persuade the foolish that the nation is At
War. Actually only the president is at war. The second, and I would
like to be wrong about this, is to train the public to obedience. The
formula is simple: Keep’em scared and you can do anything. It works.
Americans are rapidly becoming accustomed to Soviet-style surveillance,
to the state’s power to search and spy without restraint, to being
barked at and ordered about by low-level federal employees.
People deserve what they tolerate.
©Fred
Reed
www.FredOnEverything.net
www.FredOnEverything.net
------------------------------------------------------
From
GCFL
While carpenters were working outside the old house I had just bought, I busied myself with indoor cleaning. I had just finished washing the floor when one of the workmen asked to use the bathroom.
With dismay I looked from his muddy boots to my newly scrubbed floors. "Just a minute," I said, thinking of a quick solution. "I'll put down newspapers."
"That's all
right, lady," he responded. "I'm already trained."-
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The Top Signs You're Out of Shape
1. You've ever torn something just trying to turn
off the alarm clock.
2. People at work only refer to you by saying "Hey fatso!"
3. You've thrown your back out by carrying a bag of groceries.
4. Random strangers come up, poke you in the stomach and expect you to giggle.
5. Your record is 34 Pushups and you could have done more if the Ice Cream Man would have taken plastic.
6. You get the Christmas gift of Jigglin' To The Oldies.
7. You cramp up while watching the New York City Marathon.
8. Watching Rocky 5 is your idea of a workout video.
9. The sales clerk nicely but firmly pulls you away from the jeans rack and whispers "Its Sansabelt Time, Tubby"
2. People at work only refer to you by saying "Hey fatso!"
3. You've thrown your back out by carrying a bag of groceries.
4. Random strangers come up, poke you in the stomach and expect you to giggle.
5. Your record is 34 Pushups and you could have done more if the Ice Cream Man would have taken plastic.
6. You get the Christmas gift of Jigglin' To The Oldies.
7. You cramp up while watching the New York City Marathon.
8. Watching Rocky 5 is your idea of a workout video.
9. The sales clerk nicely but firmly pulls you away from the jeans rack and whispers "Its Sansabelt Time, Tubby"
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"NASA has just announced that it has suspended astronaut Lisa
Nowak for 30 days. Everyone should rest easy knowing that the crazy
diaper lady won’t be operating spacecraft until March 10 at he
earliest." --Conan O'Brien
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"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and
nobody wants to read." --Mark Twain
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"Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as
success - yours or his." --Franklin P. Jones
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rerun, partly
NO PARENT LEFT BEHIND. I promise you cannot read
these and not laugh out loud. These are real notes written by parents.
Spellings have been left intact.
1. My son is under a doctor's care and should not take PE today. Please execute him.
2. Please exkuce lisa for being
absent she was sick and i had her shot.
3. Dear school: please ecsc's
john being absent on jan. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 and also 33.
4. Please excuse gloria from jim
today. She is administrating.
5. Please excuse roland from
p.e. for a few days. Yesterday he fell out of a tree and misplaced his
hip.
6. John has been absent because
he had two teeth taken out of his face.
7. Carlos was absent yesterday
because he was playing football. He was hurt in the growing part.
8. Megan could not come to
school today because she has been bothered by very close veins.
9. Chris will not be in school
cus he has an acre in his side.
10. Please excuse ray friday
from school. He has very loose vowels.
11. Pleaseexcuse Lesli from
being absent yesterday. She had diahre dyrea direathe the squirts.
12. Please excuse tommy for
being absent yesterday. He had diarrhea, and his boots leak.
13. Irving was absent
yesterday because he missed his bust.
14. Please excuse jimmy for
being. It was his father's fault.
15. I kept Billie home because
she had to go Christmas shopping because i don't know what size she
wear.
16. Please excuse jennifer for
missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the sunday paper off the
porch, and when we found it monday. We thought it was sunday.
17. Sally won't be in school a
week from friday. We have to attend her funeral.
18. My daughter was absent
yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with the marines.
19. Please excuse Jason for
being absent yesterday. He had a cold and could not breed well.
20. Please excuse mary for being
absent yesterday. She was in bed with gramps.
21. Gloria was absent yesterday
as she was having a gangover.
22. Please excuse brenda. She
has been sick and under the doctor.
23. Maryann was absent december
11-16, because she had a fever, sorethroat, headache and upset stomach.
Her sister was also sick, fever an sore throat, her brother had a low
grade fever and ached all over. I wasn't the best either, sore throat
and fever. There must be something going around, her father even got
hot last night.
Now we know why parents are screaming
for better education for our kids.
------------------------------------------------------
Turns
out there was a young wedding photgrapher who filmed the shootng
rampage at the Trolley Square Mall in SLC. Important to me 'cuz I
used to go there a lot and used to live in Ogden. If you have broadband
and the stomach, try
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OK, move along, that's all there is,
move along please ....
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There is
only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well
please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to
take the consequences.
(P.J. O'Rourke)
Home is where the grab bars are.