I'm sticking with the idiots on this one...

A ballot question in New Jersey's November election will ask voters if they want to reword the part of the state Constitution that says an "idiot or insane person'' cannot vote, and replace it with a "person who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting.''

Reminds me of the Chinglish rules and regulations posted alongside the Mandarin rules inside taxis in Shanghai, mandating that "psychos", "psychopaths", or "schizophrenics" may not ride taxis without supervision. (Actually, each taxi used only one of the three options... I spent my time there looking for one that said "crazypants" or something equally amusing)

The joys of Highland Park

So with everything else I've had going on over the last couple of months, I let the California registration lapse on my car. Interestingly enough, I actually had every intention of obtaining a Jersey registration -- and driver's license -- on Monday.

Of course, Highland Park cops sometimes get bored of sticking their thumbs up their asses and one of them had another idea.

I was on my way to my assignment this morning when I got pulled over about a quarter mile from the bridge to New Brunswick. I actually wasn't speeding for once.

The cop took his sweet time before asking for my license, registration, proof of insurance -- your standard crap. He asked if I knew my registration was expired. I was very polite, apologized profusely and reassured him that I would renew it on Monday. He asked where I was going. I told him I was on my way to an assignment in New Brunswick. He said I'm not allowed to drive a car with an expired registration. I reassured him againt hat I had every intention of renewing it on Monday. He said he couldn't let me drive without the registration. I told him the truth about why I'd been so busy for the last two months and didn't get the registration renewed. He either didn't believe me or didn't give a shit. He reminded me it's illegal to drive with an expired registration.

I promised I would get it renewed first thing Monday. He said that was too late. I said there were no other options.

Apparently, there were.

Despite my stomach-curdling politeness through the whole ordeal, Douchebag Cop had my car towed to an impound lot. The impound lot, of course, is closed Sundays, which means they can charge me up the ass when I go to pick it up on Monday.

Douchebag Cop also, incidentally, called Douchebag Sergeant somewhere along the line for backup, because he felt I was being disagreeable. Well. No. Shit.

And this little piggy went ALLLLLL the way to the state Supreme Court

An oral surgeon in Washington state was just awarded $750,000 from his insurance company by the state's highest court after the insurance company refused to cover a lawsuit filed against him when he implanted temporary tusks in the mouth of his assistant whose family raises potbellied pigs. Here's the back-story:

The oral surgeon, Dr. Robert Woo, implanted two tusks in his assistant's mouth while she was under anesthesia to replace two of her teeth with implants. He snapped photos of her with the tusks -- some with her eyes propped open -- and then removed the tusks and finished the procedure normally. When she woke up, everything was normal, but eventually the photos made their way around the office and back to her. She quit. And sued.

The insurance company refused to cover the lawsuit, saying that practical jokes aren't covered by his plan. Dr. Woo settled out of court and paid the woman $250,000.

Then he sued the insurance company.

A county superior court jury ordered the insurance company to pay Woo $750,000 plus the out-of-court settlement.

The insurance company appealed. The state Court of Appeals sided with the insurance company, agreeing that the prank had nothing to do with Woo's dentistry.

Woo appealed. And on Thursday, the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of Woo. In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that that "Woo's practical joke was an integral, if odd, part of the assistant's dental surgery and 'conceivably'' should trigger the professional liability coverage of his policy," according to the AP.

The death cat

A cat living in a Providence hospice can apparently predict death.

From the AP: The 2-year-old feline was adopted as a kitten and grew up in a third-floor dementia unit at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The facility treats people with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and other illnesses.

After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He'd sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours. Full story here.

Shea cats

Shea Stadium houses a feral cat colony with 20 to 40 cats, according to a cat rescue group founder quoted in the New York Times. Here's the story.

Photo from the AP via the New York Times.

Bust out your balls and find a blower

For the record, the machine that tumbles bingo balls around is called a blower. And I really wanted my lead for this story to be, "The balls are back in the blowers and bingo is back in Edison." Unfortunately, I don't write for the New York Post.

Edison seniors again yell "Bingo"

Because everyone loves a naked old guy

An old man strolling down the street in nothing but sandals and a fanny pack spurred an emergency ordinance banning nudity in certain public places in Brattleboro, Vermont.

The Brattleboro Selectboard voted 3-2 Tuesday night to pass an ordinance "prohibiting people from going about in the nude," according to Reuters. Anyone caught violating the ordinance faces a $100 fine.

The ordinance applies only to certain main corridors, and doesn't include breastfeeding mothers.

"I'm not looking for a townwide ban in every nook and cranny," one Selectboard member was quoted as saying in the Brattleboro Reformer. "We thought we would start in a smaller region. This is the primary area of concern."

The genesis of the naked trend came during a hot spell last summer, when "a couple of dozen teens took to holding hula hoop contests, riding bikes and parading past stores wearing only their birthday suits," according to Reuters. Town officials assumed the nudity would dwindle with the temperatures, but it returned with a vengeance this summer. Officials decided to take emergency action after a senior citizen from Arizona visited Brattleboro specifically to stroll naked through Gallery Walk, the town's monthly art exhibit along Main Street.

At Tuesday's Selectboard meeting, one woman spoke against to the ordinance. Her son had been arrested for lewd and lasciviious behavior when he was caught dancing naked in a puddle: "He is a kind-hearted young man," she was quoted as saying in the Brattleboro Reformer. "He just wanted to express himself as a human being."

Brattleboro Reformer story here. Reuters story here.

All the polite people...

I'm wearing a new shirt today, and I just realized that I've been walking around all day with an "XS" sticker smack in the middle of my left boob.

That is all.

Rupert Murdoch and full disclosure...

Those of you who read Jack Shafer have probably already seen this, but just in case...

In his take on how the Wall Street Journal would respond if News Corp. got control, he talks about the already-unusually-long disclosures the Journal runs in any story that mentions an organization associated with Dow Jones. According the the WSJ stylebook, the writers have to explain the extent of any such business relationship. So then, what would happen if News Corp., which owns half the world, also acquired Dow Jones? What disclosure would have to be tacked on to the end of every story?

Shafer writes:

News Corp. publishes the Wall Street Journal and its international and
online editions, Barron's, the Far Eastern Economic Review, MarketWatch, Dow
Jones Indexes, and the Ottaway group of community newspapers. News Corp. owns
Factiva and co-owns SmartMoney with Hearst Corp. News Corp. owns 20th Century
Fox, Fox Searchlight, Fox Broadcasting Company, MyNetworkTV, Fox Sports
Australia, television stations of the Fox Broadcasting Group, as well as
stations in Eastern Europe and other cable channels around the world. News Corp.
owns or has large holdings in the satellite broadcasters DirecTV, STAR, BSkyB,
Foxtel, and Sky Italia. News Corp. owns or has large holdings in a dozen cable
channels, including Fox News Channel, FX, Speed, Fox Reality, Fox Sports Net,
Fox Movie Channel, Fuel TV, and the National Geographic Channel. News Corp. owns
two dozen newspapers around the world. News Corp. owns or has large holdings in
the Weekly Standard, Gemstar-TV Guide International, and many magazines. News
Corp. owns MySpace, FoxSports.com, and many other Web sites. News Corp. owns
HarperCollins Publishers, Zondervan books, MySpace Records, and News Outdoor
Group (billboards). News Corp. has a large holding in the National Rugby League.
News Corp. also owns businesses too obscure to describe here, such as
Broadsystem ("Closer contact. Great insight."), Milkround, and NDS.

Why can't *my* sources be this concise?

Jeremy Roenick announced his retirement by texting a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, "I'm retiring; is that still news?"

Roenick, a center, was most recently with Phoenix; before that he spent three seasons with the Flyers, and has also played on the Blackhawks and Kings. If you're interested, the full story's here.

Now, I know most of you pnineple don't follow hockey at all -- I clearly don't either... Roenick announced his retirement 10 days ago. But I still think every other source should take this as a lesson that texting is much better than calling a reporter and yapping for an hour about various aspects of life.

That is all.

In case you were wondering if I could get any cooler...

Gizmo's "Catster" page: http://www.catster.com/cats/581780
A.M.P.M.S.'s "Catster" page: http://www.catster.com/cats/581793

At the time of this post, they have 16 friends each, but I'm hoping their many pending requests will be accepted, as they're much more creative than other cats "I think we'd make purrrrr-fect friends!" messages.

Oh, and in case you're wondering... You're right -- Giz *doesn't* write that well. A.M. wrote his profile so potential friends wouldn't think he was a tard-cat.

Signs of the Times (and more)

From an AP story on how many newspaper editorial pages have taken the leap from just criticizing the war to calling for an immediate pullout:

On the Times Web site Monday, Sunday's editorial was only the fifth
most e-mailed article, topped by an article about hip librarians and one on wine
tastings. By Tuesday afternoon, it was knocked out of the Top Ten; two of the
Times' 10 most e-mailed articles were about fictional wizard Harry Potter.

And speaking of Iraq, Everyone's Friend Cindy Sheehan has announced that she plans to run as an independent against Nancy Pelosi in 2008 if Pelosi doesn't move to impeach the president. This comes less than two months after Sheehan announced she was ending her role in the antiwar movement and cutting ties with the Democratic Party.

Now. I'm sorry her son died, but why don't these people realize there are effective ways to accomplish things, and then there's flat-out stupidity... Why do they always choose the stupidity?

In completely unrelated news, Merriam-Webster will add "ginormous" to its latest collegiate dictionary, coming out this fall. There are people who are *very* angry about this decision: More pilfering from the AP:

One of those naysayers is Allan Metcalf, a professor of English at
MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., and the executive secretary of the
American Dialect Society./p ""A new word that stands out and is
ostentatious is going to sink like a lead balloon,'' he said. ""It might enjoy a
fringe existence.''

I mean, seriously. Those dudes at Merriam-Webster are being ginormous douchebags. Someone oughta put the smackdown (also being added in 2007) on them.

Remember "Operation," where you had to use those electrified tweezers to pull the bucket out of the knee?

As I'm sure most of you don't know, I've been having a lot of trouble with my left knee for almost two weeks now. I'm pretty sure I sustained some sort of injury, but I have no memory of anything happening.

So when I woke up one morning with my knee swollen to twice its normal size and lots of hurtiness, I figured I'd give it some time to get better on its own. When it didn't, I went to an urgent care facility on July 4. The "doctor" there told me I had "inflammation of the knee." Then he proceeded to try to prove to me that I had inflammation of the knee. He held my hand against my inflamed knee and said, "See? You can feel how it's inflamed, right? That means you have inflammation of the knee." I asked him what this meant. He told me it meant my knee was swollen. I rephrased and asked him what was causing the inflammation. He told me it was a big mystery, gave me an anti-inflammatory and sent me on my way.

Five days of anti-inflammatories later, nothing was getting any better. So I went to my regular doctor today, who told me the urgent care guy was full of shit.

Apparently, I'm full of something else.

My regular doctor sent me to an orthopedist, who stuck a giant needle in the side of my knee and drained out 60cc of pee-looking fluid.

So the urgent care doctor may be full of poop, but me -- I'm full of piddle.

Tiger-petting, here I come!

I have officially booked a trip to Thailand for Sept. 12 through 24.

There's gonna be, like, so much tiger-petting, it'll be craaaaazy. Oh, and I'm open to any suggestions for non-tiger-related activities as well.

Huzzah!

I shit you not.

A 6-year-old Minneapolis girl had part of her small intestine sucked out of her asshole by the suction in a wading pool drain.

The girl was sitting on the drain of the wading pool when the drain's suction caused a 2-inch tear in her rectum and "pulled out much of her small intestine," according to the Associated Press.

She'll spend the rest of her life being fed through a port, which will be implanted tomorrow.

Full story here.

Sorry, grandmas

I know I could have done so much more with this, but you people will still appreciate the premise:
Edison seniors want bingo back

Freefalling

John McCain is expected to cut as many as 80 to 100 campaign staffers in the aftermath of an abysmal second-quarter fundraising effort, according to the Associated Press.

McCain raised just $11.2 million in the past three months, and has just $2 million cash on hand. Other candidates haven't released their numbers yet, but McCain will be eons behind Mitt Romney and Rudolph Giuliani. And in terms of polls, he's already trailing Fred Thompson in some of them -- and Thompson hasn't even made his candidacy official.

So none of this is a surprise given the low approval ratings for the war and the obvious backlash that goes along with the immigration bill, but it does beg the question -- With the flip-flopping Mormon from Massachusetts and the pro-abortion, anti-free-speech New Yorker having no real shot at the GOP nomination, will the Republican presidential candidate come from Law and Order?

There may be a real chance...