CFNS: Old lady mace story hopitalizes 3 at country club

2011/11/17

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SAN CLEMENTE, CA–A southern California emergency room handled three patrons from a nearby country club who “laughed themselves into lightheadedness” late Wednesday afternoon.

Apparently, the laughter was in response to the news item of an 84-year-old protester who was maced in the face by police officers in Seattle during a city crackdown against Wall Street protesters.  The three unnamed victims–all aged in their forties and with net worths well beyond six figures–complained of abdominal soreness, facial cramping, cigar-burned clothing, shortness of breath, and stiffness from buckling knees following a hearty laugh about the woman, Dorli Rainey, of Seattle.

Ambulances were summoned to the Vivaldi Spring Meadows Country Club–famous for its real-life posing stable boy statue–by other patrons laughing about the incident.  Several other patrons complained about how being overcome with laughter was damaging their putting game.

“They shouldn’t put items like that in the news,” said Winston Updyke, a 20-year patron at the country club.  “I think the damned liberal media is trying to kill some of us with this material!”

One unnamed patron plans to sue some of the major media news outlets after losing his Macanudo cigar in a water hazard during a laughing fit on the country club’s 13th green.  “I had 300 smackers riding on that putt I missed!  I’ll have their publication licenses for that!”  the man bellowed angrily between chuckles, while shaking a golf-gloved fist.

The incidents at Vivaldi Spring Meadows was the latest in a day-long series of accidents and emergencies across the nation, related to wealthy citizens laughing hysterically in reaction to the maced woman.  One man fell off his 67-foot luxury yacht off Broward County, Florida, and required rescue from Coast Guard authorities.  Witnesses there say the man fell overboard after slipping laughingly on cocktail onions spilled by yet another laughing boater.  A convention of CEOs at a reception hall in Montauk, New York, treated three of its patrons for laughter-induced trauma.

“That kind of laughter simply isn’t healthy for a person in his sixties,” said one Montauk attending physician.  “This country really needs to recapture some of its humanity.”

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Hey PETA! Levity isn’t your strong suit (pun Nintended)

2011/11/17

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Apparently, the folks at the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals aren’t just out to ruin your fun, dictate your lives, and splash you with fake blood.  Now, they wanna tickle yer funny bone!

At least that’s what they’ll have you believe following the fiasco from their latest campaign against Nintendo.  PETA squawked that the wearing of a “Tanooki” suit by the Super Mario character in the game “Super Mario 3D Land” for the Nintendo 3DS entertainment system transmits the message that “it’s OK to wear fur” and somehow supports the animal fur industry.

That declaration earned them a massive public blowback.  A Yahoo! poll asking, “Is PETA right to attack Nintendo for Mario’s fur suit?” yielded a “no” vote from 96 percent of its 113,000-plus respondents at current, who feel that “it’s just a video game!”

Once the counter-flap became evident to PETA, they kindly informed us that we have no sense of humor.  According to them, the outcry against Nintendo was “a publicity stunt”.  PETA announced the creation of a parody video game titled “Super Tanooki Skin 2d”, which features a skinless Tanooki chasing Mario to get his fur back.  Apparently, the spoof “game” is asplash with blood and other unpleasantness meant to make you feel like an asshole for enjoying the new Mario game.

In essence, says PETA, the whole thing was a joke.  A laughable escapade.  A jaunty jocularity.  An elbow to the ear.  A nudge to the ribs.

Please stop, PETA.  My sides are hurting.

In fact, let’s consider expanding on the “stop” idea.  STOP staining the liberal political perspective with your fanatical animal hugging.  STOP irritating the shit out of the world with your scheming self-righteousness.  STOP humiliating yourselves with these embarrassing crusades to ruin everyone else’s lives to suit your values.  STOP calling me a cannibal because I like a hamburger once in a while.  STOP prioritizing the lives of animals ahead of human beings–especially if the animals are digital.  STOP seeing the rest of us as complicit animal-abusing assholes.  STOP bawling us out for not having your level of outrage or empathy about mistreated animals or vanishing species.  And STOP wiping the egg off your faces by calling us stupidly ill-humored.

We Americans have enough to deal with.  We live in the most powerful economy in the world, but yet over 50 million of us are slumlorded for effective health care.  Half a million of our war veterans are living at-or-below the poverty line.  Two million of our kids are going to bed hungry every night.  None of us have ever heard you speak out against any of that kind of inhumanity.  But you’ll step over all these folks to defend the rights of a non-existent video game creature; label us as stupid enough to support the fur industry and other forms of animal cruelty because of it; and then insult our intelligences when we call you out on your collective insanity.  Just STOP, PETA.  Shove a sock in your kitty-cat kissing pie-holes before somebody firebombs your offices (metaphorically speaking, of course).

Like Dennis Miller once said:  If you PETA freaks channeled your house-pet energy into helping to tidy up the human condition, maybe we’d all be a little bit better off.

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Ireland slams the door in Vatican’s faces

2011/11/06

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The Vatican found out something this week that was almost a universal given:  Crossing the Irish comes with some pretty heavy circumstances.

That giant door-slam you heard last week was the jaw-dropping decision by the Republic of Ireland to close their embassy with The Vatican, the prelate epicenter of the Global Catholic community.  Though Ireland closed three embassies largely because of economic constraints, the selection of The Vatican–alongside human rights-challenged Iran and East Timor–is an impossible-to-ignore decision that sent some Vatican mitres spinning.

The closing of the Vatican embassy is seen as a response to the recent wave of child sexual abuse cases by various members of the Catholic clergy that swept across Ireland over the better part of the last two decades–and the Vatican’s stubborn insistence on protecting the the guilty offenders from prosecution.

The Vatican was “stunned”, “extremely irritated”, and “profoundly disappointed”.  Ireland’s staunch adherence to the Catholic tradition as been both the cornerstone of their culture and the bane of their existence since St. Patrick, among others, converted the country to the Christian faith in the 5th Century.

“This is really bad for the Vatican because Ireland is the first big Catholic country to do this and because of what Catholicism means in Irish history,” said one anonymous Vatican spokesman.  That’s a ballsy quote, considering there seems to be no mention of what Ireland means to the history of the Catholic Church.

Through the ages, Ireland stuck its neck out big time for the Holy Roman Church.  Irish prelates led the spread of Christianity across much of Europe during the Dark Ages.  The country lost millions to wars, executions, and famines brought about by their refusal to surrender their Catholic beliefs to abusive Protestant superpowers from neighboring England.  Ironically, it is the Irish who today make up among the biggest enclaves of Catholics throughout the Angloid World, from Britain to North America to Australia and New Zealand.

And how was Ireland repaid?  The Vatican obstructed practically every attempt by Irish investigators to identify and legally process church clerics who were guilty of committing sexual abuses against children and other victims.  The Vatican shell-gamed pedophile priests all over the country, moving them to different locations instead of cooperating with Ireland’s authorities.  What usually resulted was a resumed pattern of sexual violations by the offending clergy members in their new area of address.  To add to all the fun, The Vatican began to mouth off out loud about Ireland’s child protection codes, labeling them as abusive.

Nicely done, Vatican.  You could hardly come up with a better way to crap on one of your best salesmen.  And give Ireland credit:  They’ve got some serious sack.  There’s no question that the Catholic Church is going to come under even more scrutiny now that one of their biggest clients has severed its connections.

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Reagan worship accelerating America’s demise

2011/11/01

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A recent 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll has confirmed, among other results, that American society has brain cancer.

According to this poll, 36 percent of responding Americans think that Ronald Reagan would be just the president to lead our nation back to economic health.  Reagan was rated the highest of the other presidential names offered in the poll, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Thomas Jefferson, and William Henry Harrison, a president who served only one month before dying in office.

Reagan’s 36 percent outranks those who selected FDR, at 29 percent%.  14 percent believed that Thomas Jefferson, who died over two hundred years, 33 U. S. states, and ten wars ago, would be the guy to lead us out of these trying economic times.

This explains why America is the laughingstock of the world nowadays.  This is what 36 percent is telling us, essentially:  “Forget about the failure of Reagan’s “trickle down” economic model, that stole from the poor and gave to the rich; put aside the fact that the Reagan Era tax cuts have created the current mess where the nation is essentially held debt-hostage by big business; never mind that Reagan’s overseas policies led to our last three wars and an unprecedented terrorist attack on our homeland; Reagan is the kind of leadership our country needs right now, because he made me feel good about America!  Yeah!  That big dick in my ass?  I want the guy who first put it in there!”

And this corresponds with yet another push to carve Reagan’s likeness into Mount Rushmore, as if that granite was dense-enough to replicate that guy’s cranium.  If we insist on playing the worthlessly-speculative game of Fantasy Presidency, I think the best selection is already on Mount Rushmore.

I’m talking about Theodore Roosevelt, Rushmore’s “guy with the glasses”.  As president, Theodore Roosevelt circumvented partisan bickering and welcomed the hatred of the massive corporate trusts of the time, whom he sought to disarm, break down, and regulate.  Roosevelt effectively de-monopolized the U.S. economy and established a regulatory structure for the nation’s railroads, then the major conduit of inter-regional commerce.

But of course, to TR’s discredit, he fomented revolt in Panama against Colombia so that the Panama Canal could be built.  That may have opened an ideological can of worms that haunts us to this day:  The one that says it’s okay for the U.S. to assert our influence into the affairs of other sovereign nations to suit our own best economic interests, without concern to the outcome for the folks living in those nations.  Teddy, maybe you lose points for that one, but you’re still a damn sight better than Reagan.

 

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PETA jumping shark with SeaWorld lawsuit

2011/10/26

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When it comes to inspiring people to hate the liberal perspective in this country, PETA has once again sailed into new waters.

The group–People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals–are now asking a federal U.S. court to extend the 13th Amendment ban on slavery to include five performing orca whales at two SeaWorld locations.  PETA asserts that keeping the animals in captivity and having them perform for paying customers is in violation of the anti-slavery ideals of the 13th Amendment.

What a crock of shit.

PETA seems bent on riding the crackpot curve well beyond the bounds of reasonable sanity, with no real concern for its impact on practical American liberalism as a whole.  There’s something really annoying about what this gang of idiots have turned into.  They seem to advocate the notion that animals and humans are equals on every level.  And they’ll articulate that point no end, even if it means stepping over millions of Americans who have no affordable access to effective health care.  They’ll put the well-being of five orca whales ahead of some 400,000 war veterans in this country who are living at-or-below the poverty level.  And in a country where tens of millions are being taken to the cleaners by the rampant misdeeds of big business, PETA gleefully ties up valuable court time by trying to assert that orca whales in captivity are in reality the equal of African-Americans working in bondage and brutality in pre-Civil War America.

But PETA does have a point.  It’s obvious that these orca whales are in their own unique hell.  They’re forced to live in tanks, sequestered from an ocean of predators, diseases, parasites, pollution, and trawlers with Japanese flags.  Their life expectancies are forcibly lengthened by round-the-clock access to veterinary care.  And there’s no denying how grueling it is to live in a climate-controlled environment with a diet of readily-available ample nutrition amid a sub-race of smaller beings willing to rub your belly to your heart’s content.  Oh, the cruelty.

And it’s not like these whales don’t have any veto power or accelerated rights.  One of the whales in the complaint, Tilikum, famously grabbed a trainer in February, 2010, and dragged her to the bottom of a tank until she drowned.  Try getting away something like that in this society as either a bengal tiger or a 175-pound man.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but in Tilikum’s case, if you can’t tell the difference between a chew toy and a female human being in a wet suit, that tends to indicate an intellectual drop-off when compared to humans.  Orca whales might be brilliant compared to most other species, but I’ll just bet their SAT scores aren’t all that.  Arguing the two as being equals where slavery is concerned seems to bring the argument right back to the status of “fucking stupid”.

I’m all for minimizing animal cruelty and respecting our animal kingdom brethren.  To that point, I offer the fact that I referred to the species in question as “orca whales” as opposed to “killer whales”.  But it sure would be nice if the kind crusaders at PETA would, in Dennis Miller’s words, steer some of that house pet energy of theirs into helping us tidy up the human condition, so that we might all be a little better off.

 

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CFNS: Economic recovery “think tank” announces layoffs

2011/10/21

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A Washington D.C.-based think tank committed to remedying the U.S. economy and improving consumer confidence has stated that it will lay off 30% of its workforce in the next 30 days, the Chuck Foxtrot News Service has learned.

The analytical group America Still Works, Damn It! (ASWDI!) announced the “staffing adjustment” in a quiet press communique Friday morning.  According to the press release, the think tank will be laying off about 30 per cent of its staff of 250 workers by November 20, just before the company hands out its annual Thanksgiving holiday boneless turkey roasts.

ASWDI! said that the 75 employees to be affected by the layoffs will be notified by the end of next week.  ASWDI listed financial constraints and operating expenses as the reasons driving the need for the layoff.  The group states that those laid off will likely come from the logistics, data processing, fact-checking, and custodial departments, but will not likely affect business staff departments such as hot-tub maintenance, greens-keeping, fact-spinning, money-laundering, or accounting.

“To describe this as a tragic blow to our internal vision is an understatement,” understated Claire Greenleigh, public liaison for ASWDI!, while still dressed in her early-morning polo-league attire, complete with accompanying mallet.  “But we are confident that the streamlining of our staff will help improve our endeavor toward mapping out a better economic model for America.”

The blow could not have come at a worse time for custodian Todd Rigel, 29, who had just moved into a one-bedroom apartment for the first time in his life two months ago.  Rigel received one of the first round of layoff notices.

“This is the first time I’ve had a place where my TV and my bed were actually in separate rooms,” lamented Rigel.  “Now, I won’t be able to afford the place.”

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CFNS: Gadhafi didn’t “sweep up spotlight” before execution

2011/10/21

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Sirte, Libya:  The Chuck Foxtrot News Service has confirmed that, contrary to earlier reports, Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi was not dragged into a local equity-waiver theatre in Sirte and forced to “sweep up a shrinking spotlight beam” on stage with a broom and dustpan before being shot in the head.

While details are still sketchy concerning the last moments of Gadhafi’s life and 42-year reign of the North African nation, the local curators of Sirte’s local community equity-waiver theatre claims there is no accuracy to the rumor that such a scene–a common skit for concluding circuses and vaudeville shows–was played out in his venue.

“We don’t even have a spotlight,” says Jabir Nabarit, spokesman for the Local Theatre and Vaudeville Troupe and Company of Sirte.  “We donated it to the rebel movement earlier this year.  They used it mostly for signaling NATO planes and heating up leftovers.”

Earlier accounts placed Gadhafi on the stage of the ornately-decorated theatre with several swarthy gunmen, where he was forced to use a broom and dustpan to “sweep together” a shrinking spotlight beam on the stage before the spotlight was shut off.  A gunshot to Gadhafi’s head supposedly flashed on the dark stage one second later.

“If only it had occurred here to that effect,” said Mr. Nabarit of the false story.  “It would’ve been our best draw in years.”

 

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Suicidal exotic animal collectors: Some handy tips

2011/10/20

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In the wake of the recent news item involving a collector of exotic animals who turned his carnivorous quarry loose on the populace of Zanesville , Ohio, before committing suicide, it seems that a few handy suggestions might be in order:

http://gma.yahoo.com/last-escaped-animals-being-hunted-down-zanesville-ohio-074109844.htm

One Terry Thompson, a 61-year-old animal-lover of sorts, had collected over 50 zoo-type animals from all over the world, including bears, wolves, lions, tigers, cheetahs, camels, and giraffes.  Through the years, Thompson had also accumulated various citations, fines, and arrest warrants for various animal and abuse charges; and also had just completed a one-year prison sentence for a federal firearms violation.

For reasons not fully understood at the current time, Thompson released the animals from their containments and then committed suicide.  Zanesville, Ohio–a city of some 25,000 residents–turned into an overnight Serengeti, and law enforcement and wildlife officers scrambled to eliminate the more dangerous animals by the most regrettable shoot-to-kill means necessary.

Since this isn’t the happiest ending in the world, it seems that a few helpful hints might be just the elixir to keep this sort of thing from happening again.

First of all, and I think I speak for a lot of folks here . . .  Some animals just aren’t meant to be pets.  That’s why we live in a society with dogs and cats, because dogs and cats are controllable most of the time.  Every so often a couple of pitbulls or a rottweiler gets loose and eats a four-year-old kid, but that’s usually a rogue occurrence.  A lion is a different story, because it’s their nature to chase, maul, kill, and eat whatever’s weak and vulnerable.  It’s what they do.  It’s what got them here.  We understand the difference, don’t we?

Second, if it’s a nickname or mascot for more than one college or professional sports team, it probably shouldn’t be a pet.  See, sports teams pick these nicknames in order to seem ferocious and intimidating, which is a hint to the animal itself.  That’s why you don’t have an NFL team called the Cincinnati Plants.  Nobody is afraid of plants.  What the hell is a plant?  It grows.  You mow it.  It grows back.  You run from it.  It doesn’t chase you.  If it attacks you at all, maybe you get a rash.  That’s not scary.  That’s why Cincinnati’s NFL team is called the Bengals.  Bengal tigers are intimidating, ferocious, extremely dangerous, and ergo, probably not an ideal pet.

Third, if a guy who owns a whole bunch of tigers, cheetahs, bears, lions, and wolves is accumulating several citations and acting erratically, it’s a good time to move in and confiscate the animals.  We try to limit firearm access to people with criminal backgrounds and mental health issues.  The same should apply to dangerous animals.  If it helps, try thinking of a Bengal tiger as an independently-mobile self-firing gun that shits.  Besides, you shouldn’t have a whole bunch of these animals unless you’re a zoo.

Fourth, try to bear in mind that many of these exotic animals come from places where folks don’t spend three or four months every year shoveling snow.  Lions, for instance, come from equatorial Africa; and they probably don’t adapt too well to the harsh winters in places like, say, Eastern Ohio.  That means you’ll have to provide some sort of heated shelter for them.  Lions like to roam around wide-open outdoor spaces like the Serengeti, where you see nary a heated pole barn.  In fact, as I’m sure anyone who’s been on safari on the Serengeti can attest, you don’t see hardly any settlements at all.  No houses or water towers.  Nothing.  Nobody lives out where the lions are.  That’s a funny thing about human nature.  People frown upon the idea of living somewhere where they can get mauled and eaten at any moment without notice.

In fact, that’s a pretty good rule of thumb to go by when you consider adopting a four-legged friend:  Think about where they come from, and how locals react to them.  If the locals tend to stay clear of a certain species and react toward it with a certain attitude of extreme caution, chances are it’s not an ideal household pet.  And if you think that it’s an ideal pet anyway, there might be a little something wrong with you.

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Help! I’m being stalked by freak internet animals!

2011/10/20

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We no longer rid ourselves of the grotesque Heidi the cross-eyed possum, and a new freak emerges into the pop-web fore:  The one-eyed shark.

I’m not sure how everybody else feels about mutant animal specimens lurking around the newsites, but personally, I could do without this macabre parade of zoological zugzwangs.  I have a hard enough time sleeping at night after encountering the occasional giant spider in my living room.  Last week, I had one that was so big that it wrestled the flyswatter away from me and chased my ass around the house with it for a while.

Now I get visions of various cross-eyed, one-eyed, and Marty Feldman-eyed sugarplums dancing in my uneasy nocturnal mind.  I’m tired of it!  I don’t want to see the kitten with two faces!  I don’t want to check in on the six-legged goat, and how splendid of a ballroom dancer he’s shaping up to be.  I just want my various sports scores, and skim through the day’s top wag-doggers.

I mean, I get it.  Nature’s genetic codes get a little screwed up once in a while.  It happens in the human world.  Sometimes you get a Bobby Fischer, and sometimes you get a drooler.  It happens.  I can do finely with just an occasional glance at a genetic freak or mutation.  I don’t need it as a screen-saver.

Do you want my opinion of what to do with the one-eyed shark?  I dunno.  Get it a freaking monacle.  Just quit chasing me around with it!

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Are we ready for another Earth-like planet?

2011/10/17

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The science world seems to be in love with the growing possibility that another “Earth” might be rolling around out there, just waiting for us to show up.

For a few reasons, I’m less than thrilled about the idea.

According to the users of the latest generation of observatories and orbital telescopes, some nearby star systems have planets which can resemble Earth, in its ability to sustain life such as we know it.

And, usually, the articles and documentaries that explore the topic are somewhat giddy about the possibility of an entirely new “Earth” out there, waiting to be discovered, explored, and colonized.  To a lot of folks, this sounds romantic.  You arrive in some space-going vessel, step off, take a deep breath, and then spend the next several days running around with your pants off.  Whoopee.

If ever another Earth is discovered (we’ll call it “Earth II”, for the sake of conversation), and it’s confirmed through exploration and examination to be suitable for human settlement, I would expect a few cans of worms to pop open.

First, what purpose will befall the new planet?  Will it be developed as a mining and extraction interest?  Will it be vacation property?  Will we colonize?  And just how, exactly, will that be supervised?  The ensuing land rush could ignite wars and bloodshed the likes of which we’ve never seen in our history.  I mean, if we can’t sort out who has dibs on the Golan Heights, what makes us think we can administer an entirely new planet without a bloodbath?

Second, what’s going to happen to the home world?  A new planet to escape to could lead to a lot of environmental concerns going right out the freaking window.  Air quality standards could drop.  Mining and deforestation could expand unchecked and unslowed.  Population control initiatives could get tossed in the trash.  Global warming?  Nuclear testing?  Over-farming?  Over-fishing?  Who cares?!  Don’t worry about wiping your asses with this place.  There’s a whole second planet out there to escape to!  Why mow the lawn and spray for roaches when your moving?

How about the Pandora’s Box that is religion?  Every major religion in the world is going to interpret the presence of the new planet in their own particular way, and probably assert that the value systems on and usage of Earth II should be based on their own belief.  That’s not good news, seeing how we haven’t done a good job reconciling geo-religious differences to the present time.

And suppose on Earth II, the element of gold is as common as granite.  The value of gold plummets to about 23 cents for every ton, and every economy in the world collapses due to the worthlessness of the gold standard.  Better stock up on those ramen noodles now.

Then there’s the possibility of some lovely Andromeda Strain waiting for us on the new planet–some communicable pathogen that seals our doom as an over-curious species, for which we have neither the resistance nor the scientific knowledge to defeat.  Not only does it wipe out everybody on Earth II, but makes its way to Earth I on the explorational commute back home, and starts to wipe out the entire male population.  And what a fun disease, too!  First, it starts out with the sniffles, accompanied by lots of farts.  Next comes severe urinal tract pain that lasts about a week and leaves every guy with an embarrassing prolapsed urethra that leaves his penis looking like a half-inflated tube balloon.  This is the dormancy phase.  Then suddenly, the victim sneezes, his prostate falls out his pant-leg, and his vital organs dissolve into liquid raw sewage.  Now, a planet with no guys around sounds like Heaven to a lot of you ladies, I know.  But once all the guys are dead, you’ll have to kill your own damn spiders and fetch shit off the top shelf for yourselves.  And, oh yeah, after the sperm banks are empty, humanity ends when you’re gone.

And that’s if that new planet is merely some giant unoccupied paradise, drifting beckoningly around its sun.  What happens if some dominant species inhabits the planet?  I realize that the film Avatar covered this notion in some depth, but suppose the occupant race is only almost as smart and as developed as we are.  Let’s say they sort of look like a race of Alfred E. Neumans.  What if they would be somewhat easy to subdue, somewhat gullible, and easily trained?  Where would slavery ethics come into play?  What?  Us worry?  Would we be as high-minded on behalf of the Neumans as we are about ourselves?  Or would we find ourselves at Sixteenth Century thinking all over again?

Nope.  I hope I’m long gone before these kinds of interplanetary issues emerge.  I don’t see us ready to deal with the blatant self-gain-oriented carnage that would materialize in the event of a second Earth being discovered.  Andromeda Strain or no, it could hasten our demise as a species, and by our own hand, no less.

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