The State of Reporting Today

1.The news: Doomsayers Say Benedict Fits World End Prophecy

2. The research:" 'His reign will only last a few years at most. This signals that we are living in what may be the end of days as we know it,' said one Web Site entry by someone calling himself SmartBob."

3. The intellectually rigorous analysis: "The prophecy -- widely dismissed by scholars as a hoax -- is attributed to..." Yeah, that makes it all better.

I have a suggestion for Reuters. How about you change the headline to, "First Article Ever Written Without Speaking to a Single Person"?

If I knew all it took to write a wire service article was cobble together a bunch of quotes from people posting with fake names on different web sites, I would have become a reporter long ago. Heck, I am a reporter. I'm putting it on my resume. Have you ever posted a comment on Pancake City? You're a source! I hope you don't mind if I use you in my next article, "People on Web Page Comment on Shit".

And as for the doomsday people: how about this. We'll make a deal with you. Gather together and agree on one day, any day you want, for the doomsday to occur. Heck, pick a week. It's cool. But if that time passes and the four horsemen are still in the stable, then you have to shut the f--- up forever. Forever ever? Yes. I thought that was the deal in 2000, but here we are again.

The Wiz

The silver lining in the Bulls-Wizards series is that it will motivate them to work on their defense next year like no regular season loss could. Have you ever had a bad habit that you told yourself you could change anytime you wanted to, and then when circumstances spurned you to change you found it was much harder than you thought?

It's the same with defense in sports. Quick improvement is impossible. In the playoffs, it's not something that can be boosted solely through effort. It takes months of practice, and I think losing their first playoff series in eight years is probably the only thing powerful enough to inspire them to work on it next year.

They shouldn't be faulted for playing mediocre defense this year. You can only fix so much at a time, and for the past two years the focus has rightfully been on the offense. And while I hope I'm proven wrong and they somehow come back from a 0-2 deficit in the series, I'm happy enough to see them in the playoffs after all this time and win a game or two at home.

On the telly with the Mom

I was chatting on the phone with my Mom, who was at work, when I heard some commotion in the background.

ME: "It sounds like there's a fight going on."
MOM: "I know. I want to join in." [click]

What? My Mom just hanged up on me so she could go brawling? I didn't even know moms could do that.

It is said that a boy only becomes a man when he acknowledges the possibility of his own death. For me, it's going to be when I have to bail my Mom out of jail.

Immature Tuesday: Part 2 of 2

Peru is behind the times. A 15-year-old girl offered to sell her virginity and it spurned a national debate. It's so 1998-Ebay.

The titillating headline, drawn from a minor detail buried several paragraphs later, did its job though and got me to read the article: Peruvian virgin turns down $1.5m.

Allegedly, in the process of soliciting bids, a man offered her $1.5 million. She said she decided to reject the bid and all others and not go ahead with the plan.

I say allegedly because of this hypothetical question, for both men and women:

• Would you, with the guarantee that there would be no pictures or recordings, have sex with a ho rse for $1.5 million?*
  

Seriously. I know it's a horse, but you'd never have to work another day in your life. You might think it's disgusting now, but wait until your alarm goes off Monday morning.

Okay, you wouldn't, but we all have a friend that probably would, and he or she already has a car. And she turned down $1.5 mil. for a person?

But let's say her story checks out. Do you know what this means? The first person to have sex with her is screwed. There's no way he's going to be able to give her a $1.5 million lay. He's going to be traumatized. She's going to have sex with him and ask for change.

Well, that ends Immature Tuesday. Methinks this won't be a regular feature.


* Nothing engenders affection like implying your readers would have sex with a horse for money.

Immature Tuesday: Part 1 of 2

My friend, Amy, forwarded me this video with the comment "Cat unlikely to be adopted." The video is of an animal shelter worker holding and describing a cat, Pinky, the Pet of the Week.

After ten seconds, I knew what would happen. The guy's getting it in the balls. People don't send video clips of cats and men that end up snuggling together, unless the snuggling is the precursor for some claw-on-ball action. I still watched it, of course.

The video is like a microcosm of a summer action blockbuster. You know the good guys are going to win, and you can usually predict the whole movie after the first five minutes, but it's still fun to watch the debacle unfold.

Go ahead. Try not to watch the video. Stay at home for Episode III. Tell yourself you're going to accomplish something by 40. Many an empire were built on a foundation of lies.

Test Babies

One of my favorite features in The Washington Post is Unconventional Wisdom, a summary of the more interesting findings from the social sciences. It appears biweekly in the Outlook section, except for that time when the University of Michigan was studying the relation between routine and stress and got the Outlook editor to print it at irregular times for a few months.

This week's findings included a study that examined the effects of noise on infants language development. They studied 100 babies and found that noisy environments can interfere with language development in infants younger than 13 months.

Which brings me to a question I have every time I read about a study like this: where are they getting the babies from? I thought childbirth creates a powerful, unbreakable bond between mother and child. Yet I've been reading Unconventional Wisdom for many years, and every now and then there's a study like, "Jackhammers Make Babies Cry" or "Shake n Bake: Both Bad for Babies."

What are these mothers thinking? Scientists aren't loading up into a Humvee and doing drive-by baby snatchings. The mothers had to sign at least a few forms. Any parent who sees the words "detrimental," "baby", and "?" in the same sentence should drop the clipboard, remove the baby from the locker, and walk away.

Although I am being presumptuous in assuming these studies are being fueled by mothers' desire for free baby sitting. Maybe it's a lackadaisical father, well-intentioned to give his spouse a day off and then he gets a call from a friend, "Hey, do you want to go golfing?"

At Delinquent Fathers Headquarters, a bulb on the national map lights up, a retrieval unit is dispatched, and five minutes later a Humvee pops up on the curb and a team of scientists jumps out with a clipboard and a six-pack of Corona. Problem solved, even as he can hear his wife's squeaky voice nagging him in the back of his head that their child is not a problem why aren't you listening to me wah wah wah...golf.

Oops, I Did It Again

Louis Armstrong: truly ahead of his time.

Okay, One More Post...

Evan, my sister's beau, got linked on BoingBoing again.

Be Back in a Week

I wish I could say I'm off on an exciting trip, but the truth is more mundane. My creative energies are being sucked up by a script I'm working on for a local cable access show. The result is that I've been feeling guilty about neglecting the blog, but not guilty enough to post more than a few times a week. So I'm taking a break. I'll get back to posting next Monday.

Just Another Wholphin

Do you know what's wrong about our society today?

Whale-Dolphin Hybrid Has Baby Wholphin

That's a recent news headline. Or it's something I just made up. What's wrong is that there's no way to tell just by reading the headline.

There's a GEICO commercial about a fake reality show called "Tiny House" where a couple has to live in a house where the ceilings are four feet from the floor. A network executive saw the commercial and bought the rights to the idea from them. It's coming out as a four-episode special this fall.

Or am I making that up?

What can humanity do in the face of the wholphin?

We live in a society where absurdity has permeated every aspect of our culture. Where our action heroes are our governors, today's joke is tomorrow's product, and yesterday's news is today's entertainment. Life and art are no longer imitating each other, they're humping.

How did we get to a point where knowledge is called bias? When did entertainment get powerful enough to rival soma?

My memory is poor. I have no anchor to hold onto. I find myself choosing Netflix over reflection. Some days, when my mind breaks through the static, I wish I could find the road less traveled--another choice between confused and sedated.

Jesus Juice

I know it's been a couple weeks, but I can't get over Michael Jackson's name for wine that he served a kid. (Allegedly. Can't forget the allegedly). Right after the wording came out, at least one child molester slapped his head and said: "Jesus Juice! Why didn't I think of that? It makes Happy Sauce look like Homework Helper." Allegedly. The hypothetical child molester may have been too busy taking notes from the trial to be slapping his head. "Ms. Jones. Parent. Not bright. Trusting of people with Ferris wheels."

(The Ferris wheel was invented by George W. Ferris and unveiled in the 1893 World Fair. George Ferris invented the ride to give children of all economic groups a cheap way to soar high above the ground and hover above the city landscape, where he could then molest them).

I almost never pay attention to celebrity trials, but I'm having trouble resisting this one. Every time I think the spectacle can't get any more bizarre, something loonier happens. It's like the witnesses are having a contest where they are trying to out-loon each other. From the AP today:

SANTA MARIA, Calif., April 14 -- The mother of Michael Jackson's accuser told jurors Thursday a bizarre story of weeks during which she was shuttled around by Jackson's associates, made a virtual prisoner and warned that "killers" were after her.

The woman said that, during the entire period, she never tried to call police because "who could possibly believe this?"

Yes, indeed. Who could?

DC Cherry Blossom Parade

I put my photos from the DC Cherry Blossom parade on Flickr. I got to help carry one of the parade balloons, Arthur. The next button is under the thumbnail on the righthand side.

Jared

I awoke this morning to a radio interview with Subway Jared. "I used to wear XXXXXX-large shirts. That's six Xs. I was a big boy."

I felt sad hearing that. Not out of sympathy for his former plight, but that a shirt maker had three inches of tag to work with and all he could think of to do was add more Xs.

Six Xs is two-porno-movie large. It's "I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you You just want to be friends NOOOO!" large. It's "Machine wash cold--if you can fit in the washer! Hi-o!" Shecky-large.

Or forget the tag. If you have to wear a shirt that large, the tag should be a scratch-off ticket. Everyone deserves some magic in his or her life, and the Subway job is already taken.

Pilgrims to be told 'Nope' when asking to see the Pope

Over a million people have waited in line to see the body of Pope John Paul II. The current wait is 24 hours. Italian officials are going to stop new people from entering the line tonight. A few questions.

1. Who's going to be the last person in line? The last ordinary person ever to see his body lying in repose.

1a. Does she get a T-shirt?

2. Who's going to be the first person to be cut off from seeing the Pope? The person who's going to have the velvet rope strung in front of him by a burly security guard. "Sorry, no Pope for you."

2a. Is that person going to convert to Judiasm?

3. How many hell points do you get if you cut in line?

Gold Toe

I may explain the genesis for this post at a later date, but for now, the important part is that this is an excerpt of an Austin Powers parody made with sock puppets.

Austin Powers 4: Gold Toe

SON: Dad! Austin Powers has discovered the compound. He's heading this way.
GOLD TOE: Don't worry. He vill never get pass our security system. Vatch the monitor. Security on!

Suspenseful music plays as we see the menacing, dark enclave that guards the entrance to Gold Toe's lair. The music crescendos, and a single laser turns on.

SON: That's it? One laser?
GOLD TOE: That is just the beginning. Ven Powers trips the laser, a grate holding 100 tons of molten lava vill--
SON: If Powers trips the laser. What if he doesn't trip it?
GOLD TOE: Vell, how vould he do that? It is right by his knees.
SON: I don't know. He trips and stumbles over it? He's in a good mood and decides to gallop the way here?
GOLD TOE: Please. Nobody gallops anymore.
SON: That's not the point. The point is you spent 10 million dollars on a security system with one laser.
GOLD TOE: Don't be absurd. The system has over four dozen lasers.
SON: Then why aren't you turning them on?
GOLD TOE: [sarcastic] Oh, yes. Vhat a good idea. I vill turn on all the lasers. Next, I vill open all the vindows with the air conditioning on. Oh, I am thirsty. I vill get a soda from the fridge. No, no reason to close the door. Father Gold Toe vill pay the bill.
SON: Dad, that's not fair.
GOLD TOE: Do you know how much it costs to run a laser? Do I vork for the electric company?
SON: Well, actually, yes, you do. You took them over an hour ago.
GOLD TOE: Oh. I...well...okay, you got me there. Turn on the rest of lasers!

Good April Fool's Jokes

"H-h-h-hi. D-d-d-d-do you have any t-t-t-t-t-t-t-two bedroom apartments a-a-a-a-a-a-a-available?"
"Is this a joke?"
"Y-yes, it is. April Fool's!"
"I knew it! I knew you didn't really stutter."
"No, I do. The A-A-April Fool's is that I don't really care about y-y-y-y-your crappy apartment."

Bad April Fool's Jokes

"Hi Mom."
"Bret! You haven't called in a while. How are you?"
"Good. Hey, Mom. I just want you to know: I love you."
"That's so sweet--"
"April Fool's!"

"Doctor, what's the news?"
"I have some good news. All the tests came back negative. You're good to go."
"YES! I was so worried. Last night, I couldn't--"
"April Fool's! You have cancer."
"--sleep last night, and I've been crying all the time. My kids keep asking me, 'What's wrong?' and I've been brushing them off, and--"
"Didn't you hear me? I said you have cancer."
"But you said I was fine."
"I know. But after that, I said "April Fool's."
"I...I...me? But, I thought...oh, no."
"Well, this is awkward."

FOX NEWS: "We repeat, there is a plane headed towards the Empire State Building..."