Holy smokes!
This year just flew by. So it’s time to recount the events of 2003 before another war breaks out and no one has time
to laugh. So sit back, enjoy yourself, and get that image of Britney Spears kissing Madonna out of your head.
Or don’t. That’s none of my business.
War is hell, and funny as hell
There’s no question the top news event of 2003 was Operation: Iraqi Freedom, but to many anti-war women, opposition meant much more than carrying picket signs. It meant getting naked.
 ‘No Bush’ protest in New York City |
Leave it to the fruitcakes in New York City and West Marin, Calif., to strip themselves of all clothing and use their bodies to spell out messages such as – I kid you not – “NO BUSH.” I can only assume they’re referring to our president.
An account of the “New York strip” posted on the Bare Witness website, states: “As we lay in the snow we screamed sentiments like ‘Read my lips, Bush!'”
I couldn’t make this stuff up. News just doesn’t get much better than that.
But a careful examination of the photo reveals the letter b is not capitalized, so the slogan actually reads “NO bUSH.”
Yes, irony can be pretty ironic.
 Reports of ‘Evil Bert’ in spider hole with Saddam still unconfirmed (StrangeCosmos.com) |
The crowning glory in the “bush” theme came when Saddam Hussein was finally caught sporting his new Rip Van
Winkle look in the “spider hole.”
Maybe it’s just me, but I thought I saw someone on a street corner recently bearing a striking resemblance and
carrying a cardboard sign reading, “Will terrorize for food.”
‘I triple guarantee you’
The comedic star of the war itself was the loveable liar, Muhammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, also known as “Baghdad
Bob” and “Comical Ali” for his entertaining way of stretching the truth.
Sahhaf became an international star in the final days of fighting, making hard-to-believe claims about Iraqi
successes and U.S. failures, including:
- “Let the American infidels bask in their illusion”;
- “My feelings – as usual – we will slaughter them all”;
- “We have placed them in a quagmire from which they can never emerge except dead”;
- “God will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of Iraqis”;
- “I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad.”
Sahhaf becomes ‘Joe Isuzu’ of marketingSahhaf’s image was snagged by advertisers to push budget Irish airline Ryanair and an Australian ski park, and a
U.S. dollmaker added “Bob” to its collection of newsmaker
figurines.
In an April WorldNetDaily column, I wondered if
Democrats and the Hollywood elite could improve their public image by being a bit more “Sahhaf-spoken.”
A few examples:
- Richard Gere: “I was just kidding about all that Buddhism stuff. I’m really a Muslim.”
- Rosie O’Donnell: “God will roast my stomach in hell.”
- The Dixie Chicks: “Our initial assessment is that our careers will all die, but we’re still ecstatic. Performing at
-
birthday parties is a much more intimate and rewarding experience than having millions of adoring fans filling our bank
accounts.”
And speaking of the Dixie Chicks, the country trio became embroiled in controversy after singer Natalie Maines – a
Texan – told a crowd of London concertgoers, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is
from Texas.”
The controversy landed them in Entertainment Weekly, and they raised a few more eyebrows by posing nude on the
strategically positioned cover.
Dixie Chicks on Entertainment Weekly coverThe provocative display was quickly spoofed on the Internet, with a mock version of the magazine titled Airbrush
Quarterly, making light of the hefty job allegedly needed to make Maines appear pudge-less.
Spoof cover mocks Natalie Maines’ pudge (StrangeCosmos.com)Homeland insecurity
The war on terror prompted the federal government to step up warnings on how Americans should handle potential
disaster scenarios, so it created a Ready.gov website featuring numerous symbols
with emergency instructions.
According to the U.S. politics forum, “the fun thing is
that these pictures are so ambiguous they could mean anything.”
Disaster advice: Conserve oxygen by not fartingFor instance, one government illustration tells people what to do if trapped by debris in an explosion: “Avoid unnecessary
movement so that you don’t kick up dust.”
But others suggest an alternate meaning: “If you are trapped under falling debris, conserve oxygen by not farting.”
Breaking news: Tales of flatulence
This year was literally a gas, with an unusually high number of stories about breaking wind.
In October, a British man carring a toy dog which breaks wind
caused a major security alert at the airport in Norfolk, Va.
According to the BBC, Dave Rogerson “was questioned by FBI agents and looked on in amazement as they took a
series of swabs from the mechanical toy’s rear end.”
“They told me it is the highest reading they had for explosives and they took it very seriously,” Rogerson said. “They
were very jumpy and convinced there was something explosive in the dog.”
Better check its diet.
Biologists also linked a mysterious, underwater flatulence sound to bubbles coming
out of a herring’s anus, reported New
Scientist magazine.
“It sounds just like a high-pitched raspberry,” said Ben Wilson of the University of British Columbia.
Not without a sense of humor, the team handling the discovery named it a Fast Repetitive Tick, or FRT, for short.
Just for the halibut, I admit I never really wondered if herrings had an anus.
Real-life flatulence ended up with an $80,000 award to a man unjustly fired for ripping a colleague whom he
believed floated an air biscuit intentionally.
“My colleague was absolutely aware of the awful smell. It was pure provocation,” computer technician Goran
Andervass told Aftonbladet. “I felt provoked by
the fart at 7:30 a.m. and it made me terribly angry.”
An official with the Swedish Work Environment Authority said, “If a fart is done on purpose when going into
somebody’s office, it is important that management takes the matter seriously.”
The scoop on the poop
I’ve heard the expression “waste not, want not,” but what’s happening in the Pacific Northwest is, for lack of a better
word, wrong.
It seems people are leaving thousands of plastic jugs and bags on the roadside filled with their own urine and feces.
“Several years ago, we started finding them and didn’t know what to do with them and left them,” Karen Cagle, a
highway-cleanup supervisor told the Tri-City Herald in Washington.
“It’s incredible what’s out there. Where is it going to stop?”
Government ‘waste’? Actual ad to deter bottled urine“We call them ‘trucker bottles,'” said Megan Warfield with the state department of ecology, “but we’ve done surveys
and people have admitted to doing this when they don’t want to stop.”
Not only is taxpayer money hard at work conducting surveys about the No. 1 and No. 2, but government workers
are “doo-ing their duty” by advertising to stop the problem.
A full-page newspaper ad includes a photo of a urine-filled plastic milk jug, along with the message: “Okay, one
last time: This is not a urinal.”
Just wild about Harry
‘Dobby,’ Putin separated at birth? (Ananova)The Harry Potter juggernaut continued to roll in 2003, causing some embarrassment at the Kremlin as Russian
president Vladimir
Putin was said to bear a striking resemblance to “Dobby,” the computer-generated elf character in the “Chamber of
Secrets” sequel.
Potter websites and chatrooms were reportedly flooded with angry Russians blasting suggestions of a likeness.
Apparently, image is everything in the former evil empire, and not just with Potter and Putin. Ex-president Mikhail Gorbachev decided to trademark his
famous forehead, name, and nickname of Gorby.
“It especially bothered him that his image was being used on vodka,” Gorby spokesman Vladimir Polyakov told the
Moscow Times. “He will only allow his name to be used on respectable products.”
Busted!
Last year, Attorney General John Ashcroft came under fire for covering up bare-chested statues at
the Justice Department. While some felt he was acting like a boob, his actions were echoed in 2003.
In Kent, Ohio, someone called the cops on Crystal Lynn for building a snowwoman in her yard which may have
been a little too, shall we say, built.
“Celery for the eyes, a carrot for the nose and two blobs of snow for the breasts,” is how the Akron Beacon Journal described it. No
word if the cold weather was having extra impact.
An anonymous caller complained about the “inappropriate snow figure,” and a police officer showed up at Lynn’s
door just after her masterpiece was completed.
“He said that I should cut off her breasts, but I said no woman wants that,” Lynn told the Journal.
Lynn didn’t have a shirt big enough to cover the busty snowbabe, so she pulled an Ashcroft and draped a tablecloth
around the snowy shoulders.
Meanwhile in Norway, an advertisement was busted not for its image, but the words which accompanied it,
according to Aftenposten.
‘Attractive and well-tended, including new balconies and easy access’(Aftenposten)
“The image of a well-endowed woman with a low-cut shirt that bared her belly, was coupled with real estate text
offering a property that was ‘Attractive and well-tended, including new balconies and easy access,'” the paper reported.
Officials felt implanting that message was a little over the top.
Do the ‘Funky Chicken’
Sometimes news gets so bizarre, it can really ruffle some feathers. In San Francisco, it did just that, literally.
It seems police patrolling a local park knocked on a car window, only to discover a man inside with two chickens –
one on his lap, the other in the passenger seat.
“What’s with the chickens?” the officer asked, according to the San
Francisco Chronicle.
“I’m going to take them home and eat them,” the driver replied.
Then, in a scene reminiscent of a fast-food commercial reminding us that chickens don’t have nuggets, the cop
ordered him to “lift up the chicken.”
When the man did, he was flapped into custody and the hens were given a sexual battery exam. A law-enforcement
source clucked that the killer part of the trial would be the “other evidence: a 15-ounce jar of Vaseline … with three
feathers in it.”
Heavy-hearted, among other things
We found out just a month ago that Monica Lewinsky, the former White House intern whose sexual relationship
with ex-President Bill Clinton led to his impeachment, is having
man trouble.
In an interview in GQ magazine, the 30-year-old lamented the difficulty she’s had in dating men.
Lewinsky: Please like me (BBC News)While she says she’s gone out with a number of people, she admits it’s a hefty task for gents to get over her troubled
past.
“If I were a guy and I’d heard all those things about a girl, I don’t know that I’d want to take her out,” Lewinsky told
GQ. “I want to shake them and say, ‘C’mon, just like me! Do what I say!”
I’m not trying to be mean, but perhaps the reason lies elsewhere. One glimpse of Lewinsky makes me think she has
an appetite for things other than romance.
One day at a time, Sweet Jesus
‘Last Supper’ bars too tempting? (Bucks County Courier Times)Speaking of appetite, in Pennsylvania, Jesus became the subject of a holy war over candy as chocolate lovers
questioned whether they should consume bars featuring the image of the Son of God.
“I just don’t think that you should eat anything that’s Jesus,” Liz Samuel told the Bucks County Courier Times. “It’s
OK to eat the cross as long as God is not on it.”
Chocolatier Pamela Roberts told the paper she was reluctant at first to sell “The Last Supper” bars: “Sometimes I
think it could be a sacrilege. But the nuns just love them.”
Talking to the walls
In the realm of home decor, the thought of Martha Stewart in a jail jumpsuit certainly brought a chuckle to many
this year, but a more fascinating item came out of Germany, where lonely singles are now putting up wallpaper with life-size fake friends to relieve their
solitude.
‘Friends’ can get plastered without trashing your home (Ananova)“They can be pulled off and stuck back on as often as needed,” reports Ananova.
Creator Susanne Schmidt says, “The friends we provide are not very talkative, but they are guaranteed not to argue
with you at Christmas, promise to be there all the time and don’t leave dirty dishes or argue over the TV remote
control.”
So help me, God
In Ozark County, Mo., a man charged with tampering sought help from the highest court in existence by requesting Jesus Christ to be his attorney.
Not too unlike the rest of us, Richard Adams refers to lawyers as “devils.” Judge John Moody actually told Adams
he had no problem with Jesus as chief counsel, as long as Christ were licensed to practice law in the state.
Smirking their responsibility
We’ve all heard tales of government officials not doing the job they were elected to do, but in Palo Alto, Calif., the
clowns running the city actually sought to create a “no-frown zone.”
Fed up with a lack of civility at city-council meetings, officials wanted a code of conduct prohibiting non-verbal
forms of “disagreement or disgust.” That meant no rolling eyes, shaking heads or frowning.
“I don’t want to muzzle my colleagues,” Councilmember Judy Kleinberg told the San Jose Mercury News. “But they should
try to act like adults. I don’t think the people sitting around the Cabinet with the president roll their eyes.”
University of Kansas politics professor Burdett Loomis called the idea “bizarre.”
“When is someone frowning?” he asked. “Maybe that’s their ordinary look.”
Beam me up, Scotty
And if you think the doofuses in government are found solely in California, think again. In Portland, Ore., officials
seeking to help mental patients advertised for workers who were fluent in Klingon, the fictitious language spoken by
aliens on “Star Trek.”
The future of your government?“There are some cases where we’ve had mental health patients where this was all they would speak,” said the
county’s purchasing administrator, Franna Hathaway, according to the Associated Press.
Franna must have been hit with a phaser set for stun.
After headlines across the nation ridiculed the suggestion, the county
admitted “it was a mistake, and a result of an overzealous attempt to ensure that our safety-net systems can respond
to all customers and clients.”
‘This game is da shiznit’
In the ever-growing effort to celebrate cultural diversity, David Chang, an immigrant entrepreneur from Taiwan,
became part of American pop culture by marketing a Monopoly-like game with a modern urban theme called Ghettopoly.
The game requires “playas” to steal and sell drugs while building crack houses and public housing. It features
endorsements by the likes of “Master B.” who says, “This game is da shiznit.”
Some of the cards in the game read:
- “You just got yo face jacked by a couple of neighborhood gangsters. Stumble back 4 spaces”;
- “Your hoes had a very good night. Collect $150”;
- and “You got yo whole neighborhood addicted to crack. Collect $50 from each playa.”Dark forecast
Finally, for the color-conscious zealots in America, you’ll be proud to know you have at least one member of
Congress fighting for your concerns.
Sheila Jackson Lee: ‘Lily white’ hurricanes should be more blackThe congressional newspaper the Hill reported Rep. Sheila Jackson
Lee, D-Texas, felt the current names for hurricanes were too “lily white,” and demanded the storms be given names that sound “black.”
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas“All racial groups should be represented,” Lee said, according to the Hill. She hoped federal weather officials
“would try to be inclusive of African-American names.”
Reactions poured in from all over the country.
“You know nobody’s very excited when a hurricane’s heading their way, and yet here she is demanding that
hurricanes be named after black people,” opined radio host Rush Limbaugh.
Others wrote WorldNetDaily to suggest naming the storms after gang members, infamous criminals and even the
French, so the fear of hurricanes would finally be put to rest.
I’m not sure if there’s a quintessential black name to help the congresswoman out, but after racking my brain for all
of 10 minutes, I think I came up with a good one:
Hurricane Buckwheat.
I don’t know a single lily-white person whose name is Buckwheat.
The thing is, Buckwheat from “The Little Rascals” is such a well-recognized and beloved figure. The name would
instill much less stress on the public in harm’s way. I mean, after all, who would be terrified by Hurricane Buckwheat?
So, thank you, Ms. Jackson Lee for outlining your concern in such a black-and-white manner, and for reminding us
all why members of Congress are held in such high regard.
There you have it, another year has come and gone, and Al Gore is still failing to collect any royalties for inventing
the Internet. Keep in mind 2004 is an election year, so he can at least get an early start on “counting all the
votes.”
Previous columns:
2000: All the news that’s fun to print
Democrats to adopt Iraqi ‘super lies’?
Related stories:
Springsteen backs Dixie Chicks
Monica Lewinsky: I can’t get a man
‘Black’ hurricane names brewing swirl of dissent
