washingtonpost.com - News Front Since the attacks, Americans have been reaching beyond themselves.

Dr. Crankypants says: Insert own joke here.

Nine Day Nation finally available to clamoring public
I just posted Part I of the travelogue from my trip to Cal a few weeks ago. That's the trip where I flew out to San Francisco and drove back to Maryland with my bro Chris. Check it at http://originalcopy.com/caltrip/pt1.html. -- Mr.Joel

I have nothing to say about this:

I bought this magazine on Ebay. Does that make me a bad person?





Get it, it's Adam Magazine

Chicago Tribune | Minister guilty in nudity case A Pentecostal minister from Carpentersville was convicted of disorderly conduct Friday and sentenced to 2 years of probation for asking two teenage girls for directions while he was naked on a road in Palatine.

Rev. William Michael Poole, 51, pastor of the Calvary Church of God, was found guilty by Cook County Judge Francis Glowacki after a bench trial in the Rolling Meadows courthouse.\
The judge also ordered the minister to perform 30 hours of community service, have no contact with the girls and undergo sex-offender evaluation and counseling.

According to testimony, Poole stopped his car at around 3 p.m. on May 3 as the two girls, ages 14 and 15, were walking home from school near Elm Street and Kenilworth Road in Palatine.

He was "completely naked, from head to toe," when he exited the car and asked the girls for directions, said Assistant State's Atty. Michael Andre.

The Onion | 26 September 2001 Bush Sr. Apologizes To Son For Funding Bin Laden In '80s
MIDLAND, TX— Former president George Bush issued an apology to his son Monday for advocating the CIA's mid-'80s funding of Osama bin Laden, who at the time was resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. "I'm sorry, son," Bush told President George W. Bush. "We thought it was a good idea at the time because he was part of a group fighting communism in Central Asia. We called them 'freedom fighters' back then. I know it sounds weird. You sort of had to be there." Bush is still deliberating over whether to tell his son about the whole supporting-Saddam Hussein-against-Iran thing.

Whatever you do, do not click on this link. Don't say I didn't warn you.

From Salon Because I doubt shallow cynicism ever really did dominate the national mood, I'm happy to join in the chorus of goodbyes to the über-smartass, the kind of "ironist" so detached that heart and head were all but amputated.
Which, hopefully, now opens the way to a golden age of irony. The real stuff. The kind of irony that drove Socrates' queries, the irony that lies at the heart of much great literature and great religion, the irony that pays attention to contradictions and embraces paradoxes, rather than wishing them away in an orgy of purpose and certainty. Whoever named Bush's still murky plan of retaliation "Infinite Justice" was dangerously devoid of irony, not to mention a sense of Islamic theology.

Here is one dictionary definition of irony: "Incongruity between actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result." That kind of irony might note that America, for all its effort to shine a beacon of freedom throughout the world, is seen as an imperial oppressor by large swaths of the Islamic world. That kind of irony would wonder if in this new battle on behalf of freedom, we may rush to strip away civil liberties. That kind of irony would wonder whether this new kind of war, waged to make us safe from terrorist attacks, might plunge the world into a far more dangerous conflagration.

To note these ironies is to engage yourself in the grave purpose at hand and take some responsibility for helping to think it through -- and that's the opposite of ironic detachment.

Call it, then, Ironic Engagement. One 20-something who championed this is Randolph Bourne, a member of Generation Lost who died of influenza in 1918 at the close of the First World War. Bourne had opposed that war and predicted a spiral of more bloodshed to grow out of it. A brilliant social critic credited by some with fathering America's counterculture, Bourne considered his sharpest tool irony. "The ironic life is a life keenly alert, keenly sensitive, reacting promptly with feelings of liking or dislike to each bit of experience, letting none of it pass without interpretation and assimilation, a life full and satisfying -- indeed a rival of the religious life."

"The ironist is ironical," declared Bourne, "not because he does not care, but because he cares too much."

Dear Ann:

"Edgar" and I are planning to marry in a few months. We both have two children from previous marriages. We want our children to get to know each other better and have decided to take them on a vacation to Europe. We have been saving money for two years and plan to go on the trip next summer.

Our children are in their late teens and early twenties. We told the kids about our plans, and they seemed very excited. We explained that we don't want anyone else to come along, which means no girlfriends or boyfriends. They all agreed to this.

My oldest son recently met a young woman and is now planning to get married at the beginning of next year. We asked him to postpone the date of the wedding until after our trip, but he refused. He wants his new bride to come to Europe with us. Ann, this is causing major problems.

The other children resent that my son has broken our agreement not to include other people. Also, the bonding experience we had hoped for will be ruined since my son and his wife would share a room and spend less time with the rest of us. We had expected to book two rooms at the hotels -- one for the boys and one for the girls. We cannot afford an additional room for my son and his wife, and I cannot imagine that they would agree to be separated.

My friends say the bride should be included because she will be part of the family. Edgar, who is paying for this trip, disagrees. I don't want to leave my son behind, since that defeats the purpose of the family trip as a bonding experience. Can you help us solve this dilemma?

Stressed in California

Huh? Wha? Sorry, I fell asleep.
--Dr. Crankypants

Two Dead After Twister Touches Down

(College Park) -- Severe weather, including several possible tornadoes, ripped through the D.C. metro area Monday, killing two people and causing severe destruction on the campus of the University of Maryland at College Park.
A flash flood warning remains in effect until 8:15 p.m. for Frederick County, Md. and Fauquier and Loudoun Counties in Virginia.
These showers and storms were producing torrential rains on the order of 2.0 to 3.0 inches in some locations.
Two died when after the storm picked up their car, smashed it against a high rise building on the campus, trapping them inside, said Prince George's County fire spokesman Mark Brady.
At least four people were hurt when trailers belonging to the Maryland Fire Training Academy near Byrd Stadium were hit, Brady said. Those injuries do not appear to be life-threatening, he said.
Some cars are turned over atop each other, and trees are cracked in half, Brady said.Prince George's County fire spokesman Chauncey Bowers said the Tawes Fine Arts Building at the University of Maryland did not collapse.
Other buildings on the campus were in the direct path of a tornado, causing what he calls "severe destruction," Bowers said.
Bowers said there are still reports of building collapses on Cherry Hill Road and University Boulevard.
The storms blew a roof of an apartment complex in Laurel. Homes also suffered damage, according to callers to WTOP Radio

Enough with the "Martin Sheen is my President" or "Bartlett 2004" stuff. Kang for President!

Jesus Effing Christ!Dow Falls Again In Worst Week Since 1933 (washingtonpost.com) The stock market rebounded from a 300-point plunge this morning but still closed down for the day, resulting in its worst week, in percentage terms, since 1933.

Media Whores Online And then, lack of courage. George W. Bush. Four days later, he arrives in New York. Couldn’t get there sooner because they were targeting Air Force One. So take another plane. This man is so much the captive of his security janissaries they had a by-invitation-only memorial service at the National Cathedral. Leaders take chances. Leaders expose themselves to dangers. Let’s rename Air Force One the White Feather Special.

Suck-o-rama

Which sucks the most? America: A Tribute to Heroes,simulcast on virtually every broadcast and cable channel, from MTV to PBS. The Miss America Pageant, with new host Tony Danza. The giant black hole at the center of the galaxy. Results

Wednesday, September 19

September 19, 2001
What to Do
By PAUL KRUGMAN
s everything different now? Yes and no. Last week's atrocity has shaken us and realigned our priorities. But many things remain the same. Among them is the basic quandary of U.S. economic policy, which has by no means gone away. It has simply become more fraught.
And if our leaders ignore that quandary — or worse yet, if they seem in retrospect to have taken political advantage of our national trauma — we will pay a large price, not only economically but in terms of national unity.
The terrorist attack has temporarily suspended the budget debate that dominated politics only 10 days ago. Nobody now thinks that we should worry about balancing the non-Social Security budget this year or next.
But the real concern in the days before the attack wasn't this year's or next year's budget. It was the truth — which had finally become almost impossible to deny, though some tried — that the tax cut had wreaked havoc with our long-run fiscal prospects. It was becoming clear that we could not pay for essential government programs and simultaneously build up the financial reserves needed to pay benefits to future retirees.
And the attack has not changed that truth. Indeed, the long-run fiscal prospect now looks far worse than before — a point not missed by bond markets, which have driven up long-run interest rates sharply since the attack. War, whatever form it takes, is a

Not the best review we've ever had.
'J.B.': Rorschach's Timely but Tedious Job

By Nelson Pressley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 19, 2001; Page C09
In the aftermath of last week's terrorism, religious figures appeared on TV toexplain where God was in all of this. At the same time, the age-old issue was being addressed theatrically as Rorschach Theatre opened its revival last weekend of Archibald MacLeish's 1958 play "J.B.," the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning modernization (in verse) of the Book of Job.
The timing is obviously accidental, as was the opening of "Equus" at the Olney Theatre Center a few days after the shootings at Columbine High School two years ago (the unfathomable violence of disturbed teenage boys being a common theme at that moment). Still, MacLeish's play is built for troubled times. It has a post-nuclear awareness, listing Dresden and Hiroshima among mankind's grievous sufferings -- God's failings, according to the play's Devil figure. Parts of the sometimes angry, sometimes remote "J.B." could be harrowing viewing right now. It may be a mercy that in Rorschach's scattered production, it's not.
This is only Rorschach's fifth show, and already the young company has established two trademarks: found spaces and tough old plays (it introduced itself to the world with Eugene O'Neill's "The Hairy Ape"). "J.B." is being produced at the Millennium Arts Center, a former school just off South Capitol Street in Southwest Washington. T

Monday, September 17

DEAR ABBY: I agree with "Whistler in Jenks, Okla." -- whistling IS a beautiful art form. How can anyone forget the rendition of "The Whistler and His Dog" performed by the world-famous Cowboy Band of Hardin Simmons University in Abilene, Texas? Or the sexy whistling lesson Lauren Bacall gave to Humphrey Bogart in the classic film "To Have and Have Not"? Or the Seven Dwarfs who found joy in whistling while they worked?
And let's not forget the traditional "wolf whistle." I'll bet there are few females alive who haven't secretly been flattered to receive one of those! There is also "whistling in the dark," and "whistling a happy tune" whenever you are afraid, and so on and so on.
The gentleman from Jenks wasn't whistling "Dixie" when he lauded this beautiful art form. -- ANITA HAMILTON, SUN CITY WEST, ARIZ
Dear Anita:
Who can't help but love the whistling as the wind goes through your cranium?
-- Dr. Crankypants

Could we get some otherwise normal humans and somehow persuade them that they are not going to die as a consequence of flying a plane smack into a skyscraper? If only! Nobody is that stupid, but how about this - it's a long shot, but it just might work. Given that they are certainly going to die, couldn't we sucker them into believing that they are going to come to life again afterwards? Don't be daft! No, listen, it might work. Offer them a fast track to a Great Oasis in the Sky, cooled by everlasting fountains. Harps and wings wouldn't appeal to the sort of young men we need, so tell them there's a special martyr's reward of 72 virgin brides, guaranteed eager and exclusive.
Would they fall for it? Yes, testosterone-sodden young men too unattractive to get a woman in this world might be desperate enough to go for 72 private virgins in the next.
It's a tall story, but worth a try. You'd have to get them young, though. Feed them a complete and self-consistent background mythology to make the big lie sound plausible when it comes. Give them a holy book and make them learn it by heart. Do you know, I really think it might work. As luck would have it, we have just the thing to hand: a ready-made system of mind-control which has been honed over centuries, handed down through generations. Millions of people have been brought up in it. It is called religion and, for reasons which one day we may understand, most peo

Saturday, September 15

Welcome to CounterPunch One very highly placed denizen of the Clinton White House is giving friends a rather different reason why Cheney is sequestered far from the press cameras at Camp David. It seems that President Bush's widely ridiculed journey from Sarasota, Florida, through Barksdale AFB outside Shreveport, Louisiana, to a Strategic Air Command bunker outside Omaha, Nebraska, took place at the urging on none other than vice president Cheney. It was the vice president, on this account, who insisted that Bush not return directly to Washington, on grounds that the journey was too fraught with danger.

Salon.com Life | Now more than ever Walking down Houston Street in New York this afternoon, in what a few days ago was the shadow of the Twin Towers, a woman lowered the umbrella that had been shielding her daughter and herself from the tapering rain. "Those were God's tears," she explained to her little girl.

My mother had a very different explanation for her daughter today. "To me, this rain is proof that there is no God," she said on the phone from Boston. "People say that God can't help terrorism, that he gives people freedom to act as they choose. Fine. But a God who would hinder the rescue workers with rain? If God can't control nature, then what's the point? How can anyone believe today?"

It's a bewildering day for us atheists, this state-appointed "Day of Prayer and Remembrance." Like the faithful, we mourn. We look for guidance. We look for answers. Our commander in chief tells us to find solace in churches and temples. In those churches and temples, people stand at podiums, survey their mass of grief-stricken congregants and intone the unfathomable words "God will protect us."

Like many New Yorkers, I've seen the shattering hell of mass destruction this week. None of this is metaphor: I have touched the ash-covered shoulders of gasping survivors. I have trudged through the debris that thickly coats the ghost town of Tribeca, staring in shock at the five-story pyre that was a tower of human life and achievement. I have watched families crumple into each other in shaking, tear-soaked sorrow outside St. Vincent's Hospital when they are told, no, there is no information about your sister, your husband, your daughter. And I have done so without experiencing what some people have described to me as a uniting surge of faith in some omniscient, everlasting force that will make us all whole again.

Friday, September 14

The New Yorker: From the Archive Soaring above the lower end of Manhattan Island is the world's largest cluster of tall buildings, whose oblongs, spires, and turrets have, since this century began, given New York the most spectacular skyline anywhere. Each one of the towers whose upper extremities pierce the clouds is rooted, below the city's surface, in a huge, unseen structure that may itself be the size of a ten-story building. The finishing touches are now being put on the biggest foundation in the world, which is below what are, as of now, the highest pair of buildings in the world. These are the twin hundred-and-ten-story towers of the World Trade Center, built for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Nine or ten good-sized office or apartment buildings could have been fitted into the hole that was dug for the Trade Center, and the foundation proper is six times as large as that of the usual fifty-story skyscraper and four times as large as its closest competitor—the basement of the neighboring sixty-story Chase Manhattan Bank Building.

The Fight Against Insanity and Stupidity Never Stops
Time to use the nuclear option -- The Washington Times The time has come for the United States to make good on its past pledges that it will use all military capabilities at its disposal to defend U.S. soil by delivering nuclear strikes against the instigators and perpetrators of the attacks against the nation's political capital and the nation's financial capital.
At a bare minimum, tactical nuclear capabilites should be used against the bin Laden camps in the desert of Afghanistan. To do less would be rightly seen by the poisoned minds that orchestrated these attacks as cowardice on the part of the United States and the current administration.

So far relatively few have used this terrible tragedy for political points. Here is what Jerry Falwell said on the 700 Club: "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way - all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'" Pat Robertson concurred: "Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted their agenda at the highest levels of our government." I cannot express how personally wounded I and so many others are by his attempt to associate many Americans - some of whom were victims of this evil and some of whom were heroes - with the demons who carried it out. It is unspeakably wrong and inappropriate. We are at war. We must stand together or we will fail.

History News Network -- 9-13-01 If bin Laden is responsible for these atrocities, he and the Taliban government that is his ally and friend are Frankenstein monsters of the U.S. rightwingers and cold warriors who trained them, armed them, and proclaimed them "heroic freedom fighters" in the 1980s. As the old German conservative Prime Minister Konrad Adenauer said to Dwight Eisenhower about Joe McCarthy in the 1950s, it is not so easy to get rid of such people once you create them (Adenauer was alluding to the German establishment's experience with Hitler). It is important that bin Laden's cold war and CIA connections not be forgotten, as were Saddam Hussein's and Manuel Noriega's.

History News Network -- 9-13-01
We always think of ourselves as innocents. Like virginity, you can lose your innocence only once. But we seem to lose ours over and over again: after World War I, after World War II, after the Kennedy Assasination, after Vietnam. We forget our own history. The history that afflicts the rest of the world--war, depression, ugly violence--doesn't happen here, we believe. History doesn't happen here. We are beyond history.

The price we have paid for our naivety has been high. In the 1930s the belief that we were independent of history led us to take seriously the claims of isolationists, who contended that we safely could ignore the rise of fascism. In consequence we let the army wither and let Hitler and Tojo build vast war machines powerful enough to threaten our security.

Osama bin Laden and his ilk are the new Hitlers. They are fanatics. You cannot reason with them. They are beyond appeals to reason. Trying to reason with them is like trying to reason with a Nazi.

We have a right to be shocked. What has been done to us IS shocking. But we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that what has happened is contrary to the laws of nature. It is our belief in our existence outside history that is unfounded. That some people want to kill us should be a self-evident proposition.

TAP: Web Feature: Fighting Fanaticism With Fanaticism. by Chris Mooney. September 13, 2001. "We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
-- Ann Coulter, on the National Review Online, September 13, 2001

A President Faces the Test Of a Lifetime Everyone wants a president to be strong in a crisis. Meeting later that day, in secret, at Capitol Police headquarters, Lott joined 70 senators, Republican and Democrat, in wishing for just that. But it quickly became apparent that no one—including Lott—had the faintest idea where the president was. Lott and Democratic leader Tom Daschle had spoken to Vice President Cheney but not to Bush himself. “People were angry and full of questions,” said a senator who was there. Senators were especially angry when White House communications aide Karen Hughes emerged in Washington to assure the nation that the president was safe. “We didn’t need her to tell us he was all right,” said another senator. “We needed him to tell us that we are all right. They missed the point.”

Wednesday, September 12

AlterNet -- A Media Day In2 Historically, when national and local media respond to a breaking emergency, speculation and hyperbole take over. On Tuesday morning we witnessed, again, how powerful media images can electrify a world instantly; and, how we in the media sometimes use our power irresponsibly.
For hours in the morning, Tom Brokaw and NBC were reporting that the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- along with Hamas, one of the two groups responsible for many of the suicide bombings in Israel -- had claimed responsibility for the attack. That unsubstantiated claim turned out to be based upon one anonymous phone call to Abu Dhabi television, but it lasted for hours, until a DFLP spokesman could call and explicitly disavow it.
That was just the tip of it. Speculation was rampant, on absolutely no evidence, that someone Islamic -- usually Osama bin Laden -- was responsible, but that speculation often broadly invoked "Islam" as responsible -- using every adherant of one of the world's largest religions, with a couple of billion believers, as shorthand for "terrorist." Pat Robertson was on the 700 Club within an hour, blaming Islam itself, and later, on Fox, talking about Satan and Arabs. It was reminiscent of what turned out to be grossly inaccurate reports, in the first few hours after the Oklahoma City bombing, that "Arabs" were behind it. If I were Arab-American, I'd be scared.

Anyone who writes or says that this is "a loss of our innocence" is guilty of committing nonsense. How many times have we lost our inncocence? When Keneddy was killed, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, when we found out about Monica? We've never had innocence -- although we have been guilty of deliberate blindness. Like when we thought supporting Iraq was a good idea, or supporting the coup against the Diem regime.

Tuesday, September 11

Pearl Harbor isn't the right analogy. New York is now one with Dresden, Hiroshima, London, Nagasaki -- cities scarred forever by death from above.


I say we rebuild on the sight of the World Trade Center. Let's build a grand structure, an Empire State Building for the new century. Make it enormous, and beautiful. Make it a memorial and a monument of defiance.

From: John Lahr
To: August Wilson
Subject: Forever Changed
Posted: Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, at 8:06 a.m. PT


Dear August:
You'll be awake in about an hour, and you'll see the nightmare pictures I've just been watching: the World Trade Center up in smoke, the imprint of the stolen small plane smudging the remaining tower. The Pentagon has been hit. The White House, the U.N., the stock market has been closed down. As I write, the TV is talking of a fourth plane heading for Washington. A moment of infamy but an image which even before the story unfolds marks the change of something. We don't know the hidden political agendas behind so many of the events that have shaped our modern life---Pearl Harbor, the death of Kennedy and King, the Vietnam "conflict." I had two twin boys who died at birth, and I know in an existential sense that life can change on a dime; I feel now like I did then--something has instantly and inexorably changed in American life. And there is no going back. What is being lost even as the BBC TV reporters try to reach America on the phone lines that have been closed down is---not an innocence (that's long lost) but a sense of containment and invincibility. Fear will now be our daily bread; and hatred has been given new license. I fear the hysteria and the distortions and the violence which will soon be acted out in all quarters.
John

MSNBC already has a logo and slogan: "Day of Terror."

Monday, September 10

Hints From Heloise (washingtonpost.com) Dear Heloise: I have a collection of the empty canisters that come with the purchase of 35 mm film. They seem so handy for other uses, but I have not come up with any.
Do you or any other readers have any inspirations? – John Arber, Via E-mail
Dear John:
Stash a little "weed" or "coke" in the empty canisters. They will stay fresh, and are much more sturdy than a plastic baggie.
--Dr. Crankypants
(Yes, I could do this with Hints from Heloise all day)

Hints From Heloise (washingtonpost.com) Dear Heloise: I enjoy reading your columns. Here is an idea you might like to use:
I am an AVID READER, and I like to underline sentences that mean a lot to me. With each book I enclose a greeting card that has been sent to me by relatives or friends. They are wonderful to use for underlining and as bookmarks.
As I reread a book or look something up in one, here is that special greeting card again, wishing me the best from a loved one! – Arlene L. Nelson, Bakersfield, Calif.
Dear Arlene:
Remember, you have to take the meds every day.
--Dr. Crankypants

There's Help for Drivers -- in the Classroom (washingtonpost.com) Dear Dr. Gridlock:
I know someone who uses the Dulles Toll Road and does the following: At the main toll plaza, where the toll is 50 cents, he pulls up to an unmanned booth and fakes throwing change into the basket.
Then he opens his door, ostensibly to pick up the misdirected change, and instead picks up the loose change lying around.
Then he throws in two quarters and pockets a buck or two. What do you think of this?
James Knorr
Dear James:
I wish I'd thought of it. Damn, I've been paying tolls like a sap for years.
--Dr. Crankypants

The Brunching Shuttlecocks | More Stuff From The Airline Catalog The Authentic Balducci Beef Wellington
I like to order items through the mail, because it involves two of my favorite things: getting stuff and not having to put pants on. Thus I am fascinated with mail-order meat. It seems to violate all sanity, and yet it compels me. Someday, someday I will wrap my bathrobe around me and sign for a box of beef wellington. I feel tingly just thinking about it. B

I missed the Redskins game, but I certainly heard about it. For those of you who don't keep up on important current events, the score was 30-3, with the Chargers (who won one game last year) winning. I have mixed emotions. On the one hand, I'm upset thatthe SKins lost. On the other, it vindicates my belief that they stink. I believe this phenomenon is what the Germans call Schottenfreude.

Thursday, September 6

Today's Daily Comment from American Politics Yet another GOP moral arbiter has been caught with his pants down (I know, I know; Republican exposed as hypocrite, sun rises in east. But I digress...). This time, the exposed Republican hypocrite is none other than the Wall Street Journal's moralist-in-chief, Council for National Policy member (and allegedly fervent anti-abortionist) John Fund.
Fund went and impregnated the daughter of an old girlfriend of his -- and then John Fund, that staunch pro-lifer, looked the other way when she aborted his child.

His Magnificent Obsession And why can George W. Bush think of nothing but a missile shield? Our president is caught in the grip of an obsession worthy of literature.
W. seemed like a simple man, who did not get ardently aroused over anything except Little League, clearing Texas brush and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
But it turns out that he is darker and more complex than we thought. He is seized by a desire that defies the laws of politics and physics, a hunger that fills him with elation and despair, a thirst for an attainment that seems so close and yet so far.
While we may not understand W.'s urgent, self-destructive craving for his ineffectual missile shield any better than we understand Scarlett's urgent, self-destructive craving for her ineffectual Ashley, we must stand in awe before the purity and grandeur of his obsession. He would rather risk the world being destroyed than slow his race to build something to protect it.
Consider the hurricane of global emotions that W.

Wednesday, September 5

Proof that I shaved my head just as it got uncool -- see this Cathy strip.

Tuesday, September 4

Hey, Kids!


Sometimes it's hard to figure out whether "Mom" and "Dad" are your
actual parents. Here are some things to look out for that mean you were adopted:

• You're not allowed to get a trampoline.
  
• Other family members enjoy foods that taste "yucky" to you.
  
• You're made to sleep in your own private room, sequestered from the rest of the family.
  
• Mom and Dad find occasions once or twice a year to shower you with gifts, so you won't feel so bad about being abandoned by your real parents.
  
• You don't remember your parents bringing you home from the hospital when you were born.
  
• Your parents call each other by names other than "Mommy" and "Daddy" to conceal their true identity.
  
• Your parents don't let you go out at night, when your real parents might try to steal you back.
  
• Only adopted, or "rejected," children have to brush their teeth.
  
• You don't have the same eye and hair color as your parents, and you're not the same height.
  
• Your parents sometimes go into their room and shut the door—this is to talk about whether the adoption was such a good idea.
  
• Your parents are not as nice to you as your friends' parents are to them.
  
• Your brother or sister has a nicer bicycle than you.
  
• You're not allowed to get a puppy, because the puppy could tell by scent.
  
• Once a week, Mom and Dad go to church, where they pray for a real child.
  

Remember! If it turns out you were adopted, do not misbehave in any way, or your
parents will sell you to the gypsies.

Students returned to school Monday at the Maryland Institute College of Art, formerly known as the Maryland Institute, College of Art.
The Maryland Institute College of Art changed its name as part of a full-scale self-examination for the school's 175th anniversary. The official announcement was made last week, but school officials say they've been phasing in the name change gradually for the past six months.
-- Associated Press

DEAR ABBY: The letter from the man who can't stay out of strip clubs reminded me of my husband. He goes two, three, sometimes four times a week. For a long time he tried to hide it. Now he goes openly. He says he won't change, and if I don't like it -- too bad.
Well, I don't like it. He says it's harmless -- that all his friends are there, and none of the other wives mind. (I doubt that.) I have long suspected he had a problem. After reading that letter, I know he has one.
I can understand going to a strip club once in a while as a lark, but why should a man almost 50 years old need to go several times a week to watch topless dancers young enough to be his daughters? I'm not straitlaced, but frankly, I am sick over this. He claims not to have a problem. Why do men do this? -- HURT AND HEARTSICK IN PENNSYLVANIA
Dear H&H,
Gee, why would a man want to see half-naked young women. Beats me.
--Dr. Crankypants

She was a giant.
Pauline Kael, Provocative and Widely Imitated Film Critic, Dies at 82
Pauline Kael, who expressed her passion for movies in jaunty, jazzy prose as the longtime film critic for The New Yorker, died yesterday at her home in Great Barrington, Mass. She was 82.
Ms. Kael was probably the most influential film critic of her time. She reviewed movies for The New Yorker from 1968 to 1979, and again, after working briefly in the film industry, from 1980 until 1991. Earlier, she was a film critic for Life magazine in 1965, for McCall's in 1965 and 1966 and for The New Republic in 1966 and 1967.
Enchanting her fans and infuriating her foes, rarely dull and often sharp and funny, with an intellectualism that reflected her background as a student of philosophy, Ms. Kael was never anything but outspoken.

Monday, September 3

DEAR ABBY: I am a pretty 29-year-old woman living in a conservative area in Canada. I have always been comfortable with my statuesque body. My boyfriend loves that I dress flatteringly -- or even downright provocatively!
My question is about the "do's and don'ts" of thong bikinis. We have lovely beaches here. Bikinis are common, but I have yet to see another woman wear a thong bikini. I enjoy wearing them, but I'm wondering if it's a breach of etiquette to wear one around families or children. Thong bikinis on older, out-of-shape men (eew!) are common. Abby, if it's good for the gander, what about the goose? -- TOO SEXY FOR YOUR KIDS?

Dear Sexy Canuck:

Anyone who wonders if they can wear a thong should not wear a thong.
--Dr. Crankypants

Sunday, September 2

--Cartoon Girls That I Wanna Nail-- realize that a grown man like myself should be way past his fetish for animated beauty, but I swear, the older I get, the more beautiful the cartoons get. It's disgusting. I can't wait 'til I have kids so that I can have an excuse for watching cartoons. As it is now, I am a twenty one year old "boy" who watches Batman and the X-Men 'cause they draw the breasts better in those cartoons than in others. And don't even get me started on the Sailor Scouts!! Christ almighty, I would love to dive into their little outfits!! This obsession is bad, I know this. But that doesn't stop me from picking up some new comics to see if there has been any new female characters introduced. I'm getting pathetic.

FAIR MEDIA ADVISORY: Media Downplay Bigotry of Jesse Helms As an aide to the 1950 Senate campaign of North Carolina Republican candidate Willis Smith, Helms reportedly helped create attack ads against Smith's opponent, including one which read: "White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races." Another ad featured photographs Helms himself had doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham's wife had danced with a black man. (The News and Observer, 8/26/01; The New Republic, 6/19/95; The Observer, 5/5/96; Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms, by Ernest B. Furgurson, Norton, 1986)

DEAR ABBY: My husband and I are planning to have a child. We've been told we're an attractive couple, and my husband often mentions what a "good-looking" child we will have. He also discusses the "cute pug nose" that runs on his side of the family.
When I was a teen-ager I had nasal surgery to correct a deviated septum and shorten a rather prominent nose. I've never told my husband about my surgery.
Abby, do you think I should tell him our child may inherit a large, bumped and/or crooked nose -- or take my chances and see what "physical characteristics" our son or daughter inherits? -- LOSING BY A NOSE IN PENNSYLVANIA

Dear Loser:

It's time to pack your bags and your schnozz and get out. You should have already told your husband about your deception -- he now has a suit for marriage under false pretences. Your tainted genes should not mix with his noble line.

--Dr. Crankypants