"Was it prurient? I don't know what to tell you."

I mean, seriously, is bestiality ever prurient?

I'll back up.

A federal appeals court judge has a family Web site, complete with all the standard stuff -- family photos, legal writings... and a video of a man "cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal," according to the AP.

Alex Kozinski, 57, the chief judge of the federal appeals court in California, was forced to suspend an obscenity trial yesterday after the L.A. Times reported that his Web site featured pornography.

"Is it prurient? I don't know what to tell you," he told the L.A. Times. "I think it's odd and interesting. It's part of life."

From the L.A. Times, which reported the hell out of the story:

Among the images on the site were a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal. He defended some of the adult content as "funny" but conceded that other postings were inappropriate.

More:

The sexually explicit material on the site was extensive, including images of masturbation, public sex and contortionist sex. There was a slide show striptease featuring a transsexual, and a folder that contained a series of photos of women's crotches in snug-fitting clothing or underwear.

Kozinski told The Times that he began saving the sexually explicit materials and other items of interest on his website years ago.

"People send me stuff like this all the time," he said.

Among the sexually explicit material on his site that he defended as humorous were two photos. In one, a young man is bent over in a chair and performing fellatio on himself. In the other, two women are sitting in what appears to be a cafe with their skirts hiked up to reveal their pubic hair and genitalia. Behind them is a sign reading "Bush for President."

"That is a funny joke," Kozinski said.

Here's his quote to the New York Times:

“I guess I should be more careful about access and all,” he said. “I didn’t put anything on there I think would be embarrassing.”

From the AP:

He suspended until Monday the trial of Ira Isaacs, who is charged with obscenity for selling movies depicting bestiality and extreme fetishes involving feces and urination.

Now. Kozinski, who was seriously considered by H.W. for the Supreme Courts seats that ultimately went to Souter and Thomas, is no Larry Craig (or Clarence Thomas, for that matter) -- this is a guy who has always been an avid supporter of porn.

In 2001, he fought federal court administrators in D.C. over porn-blocking Web filters that they installed on government computers. From a government computer room in San Francisco, he personally disabled the filters for three appellate circuits and began a back-and-forth with the court administrators. They caved.

From the AP:

He has written video game reviews for the Wall Street Journal, and his prolific commentary on everything from the death penalty to the use of Yiddish in the law has appeared in legal journals and mainstream media alike.

I'll keep you people updated on this stuff... or you could just read the LAT........

Ryder

As promised, I'm posting more photos of Ryder. I should, in fact, be working on something else, but instead I decided to optimize 75 kitten photos and place them in different locations throughout the Web. Because I use my time efficiently.

Earlier today I decided to go to the pool in Woodbridge, because it is 90+ degrees today and they are one of the few pools in the area that doesn't require membership (although they charge a pretty hefty daily fee). So I drive all the way up there (OK, it's six miles, but if you knew Route 1...) and see a sign saying the pool is open only to members until next weekend, when they will start admitting the general public.

So now I am covered in sunscreen, all packed for the pool, and tanless. Which makes me sad.

But kitten pictures make me happy. So:

In his spot in the bathroom...

In the arms of the One Who Was the Giant Douche. At this point he has already fallen in love.

Meeting Gizmo for the first time (after feline AIDS and leukemia tests came back negative). A.M. is sitting on the futon hissing.

Hanging out on my lap at Liza's house. The initial photo had me in it, but I had 17 chins and therefore cropped myself out.

Being the sexiest man in the world. That's Liza's coffee table above him. It has bars underneath it which he likes to try to walk on. Unfortunately for him, he is very wobbly and falls constantly.

We came back from Petsmart to find him chillin' here, on top of her couch. He started acting like he owned the place within minutes.

We were amused by this photo because Liza is clearly elated and Ryder seems so uninterested.

My turn to be all excited about Ryder while he is not interested.

He slept with me at Liza's!

Satisfied customer photos, as requested by Sara.

Making faces through a horse collar

So for the few of you who don't know, "Gurning" is the art of making grotesque faces while sticking your head through a horse collar. Here, the queen is greeted by the world champion of Gurning, Tommy Mattinson. She doesn't look happy about it.

Ryder!

My coworker Gene was driving home at rush hour yesterday when he saw a tiny orange kitten standing, terrified, in the middle of the street. Cars were going by in both directions and the kitten was completely trapped in the street because it was walled by concrete barriers (not sure how he got there in the first place).


So picture Gene, a 6-foot-8 man, darting around in traffic, knocking on people's car windows asking, "Did you see which way the kitten went???" Finally he found him -- the kitten had made his way to the center divider and was standing up against it, shaking. Gene scooped him up and called me.

We named him Ryder because Gene found him on Ryders Lane.


I took him home and put him in my bathtub like I had done with Fiver and all his brothers and sisters. He was purring within the hour, and he is a total attention whore. I took him to the vet today and they said everything looks healthy. The vet thinks he's about 6 weeks old (I had guessed 8 weeks). Got his vaccinations and everything.


Luckily, I knew two people who wanted a kitten. One was initially a Giant Douche (you know who you are), but then as soon as he met Ryder he completely fell in love and wanted to take him home. Unfortunately for him, being a Giant Douche, even if it was just for a few minutes, precluded him from getting the kitten. So I am driving Ryder down to D.C. for Liza tomorrow.
javascript:void(0)
Save as Draft

More pictures to come soon.

Hooray!

Worst lead ever, and more

• The New York Times ran a story in its Science section with the following lead:

Senator Barack Obama likes to joke that the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination has been going on so long, babies have been born, and they’re already walking and talking.
That’s nothing. The battle between the sciences and the humanities has been going on for so long, its early participants have stopped walking and talking, because they’re already dead.

Now. I would imagine that your first question relates to whether this story deals with the presidential race. It does not. The story is, I *think*, about an education curriculum that blends quantitative and qualitative subject matter to engage artistic/creative-minded students in the hard sciences. I say "I think" because the story has no nut graf and is wholly unclear about its intention.

After those first two grafs it proceeds to discuss the history of science education for three looooong grafs before going into the first quote, from a biology professor.

*My* point is that I can't believe the New York Times is running stories like this. I recognize that I, too, am burying the lead -- but a) this is a ranty, rambly blog with no editing process and no expectations, and b) at least I have a lead, even if it is all the way down here.

I'm not sure if this rambling and unstructured story is a reflection of the newsroom cuts or just an isolated incident of bad writing combined with lazy editing (I'm not denigrating the reporting here -- although the writing isn't even good enough to determine whether the reporting is sufficient or not). But I think it's likely a predictor of the future of newspapers.

The one thing newspapers have always had over the Web is the vigilant editing process that keeps reporting (mostly) accurate and the writing well-structured and clear. As newsrooms slice down layers of editors and overwork reporters (although I'm sure this one is a freelancer), they're inevitably going to lose that edge.

If that happens (and one bad story in the NYT does not equal a sweeping trend), this industry is in even bigger trouble than it wants to admit.

• In other news, two pretty competitive colleges have eliminated the SAT/ACT requirement for admission. At Smith College and Wake Forest, incoming students will no longer have to take the the SAT or ACT beginning with the incoming 2009 class.

Gina V. made a good point -- that kids can avoid the SAT anyway by going to community college for just a year.

I'm not sure how I feel about it. On one hand, upper-middle class kids can have their parents buy good scores with test prep classes, so it can become a measure of money rather than aptitude. But on the other hand, making the test optional means the school will weigh the test less heavily (students can still submit scores, and in most cases do at test-optional schools). That means that a low-income kid with bad grades but a high level of aptitude may not be admitted under the new rules.

Always interested to hear what you people think about this stuff...

• Why I love Jack Shafer: In his column yesterday, he goes on a rant about "unspeak," euphemistic lexicon making policy arguments impossible to argue. He concludes:

Affordable housing, like other virulent forms of unspeak, disarms its critics before they have a chance to argue. Anybody against affordable housing must be for unaffordable housing, i.e., homelessness, and hence a real shit.

Where Things go to die

Update: 6/11/08, 2:15 p.m.:
Daniel has requested that I run an update regarding the place where things go to die. Effective Saturday afternoon, I now have replacement cupholders to cover the big hole. Daniel ordered them online and had them mailed to me.

The plan last night was for Shruti to come over and for us to spend an hour or two rolling up the programs for her engagement ceremony and placing them in little gold rings.

So Shruti comes over around 9:30 p.m. and shows me the folder of programs that we are going to roll up. Then she opens her bag to get the little gold rings and realizes she left the little gold rings at her office in Princeton.

OK.

Princeton is only about half an hour south of here so I figure, no problem, we'll just take a ride down there and pick up the gold rings. Great, Shruti says, we just have to stop off at my apartment and get the key to the office.

So I drive her over to her apartment and she disappears for about 10 minutes while she searches for the key. She comes back out to the car and says she can't find it anywhere, and I look through her purse while she goes back into the apartment and searches more. It's one of those gray magnetic keys that opens electronically locking doors. About 15 minutes into the search, she finds it.

And promptly drops it into the hole in the center console of my car.

While I was living in Boston I left the car parked in my mom's space in California and left Daniel with the key. During that time, the cup holders once located in the center console disappeared. (Daniel insists that someone broke into the car, stole the cup holders, locked the car back up and left without taking anything else.) So what remains is a big hole where the cup holders used to be.

This is apparently where Things go to die.

First Shruti tried to reach through the jagged hole and succeeded only in pushing the key deeper down. Then I thought I'd be more successful and succeeded only in completely losing sight of the key. I spent the next 45 minutes reaching around in there, cutting up my hands and wrists. First I used the tire gauge, then a pen, then the broken end of sunglasses, in an attempt to reach further in. Shruti went inside her apartment and got scissors and a flashlight. We drove back to my apartment and got pliers and a coat hanger.

I found pens, Really Old French Fries, a pair of sunglasses I'd been looking for, a year-long parking pass to Mount Rushmore, a slew of different scraps of paper with directions, lots of coins, lots of sticky things that I'd rather not think about, plastic things that may or may not be part of the car, two chapsticks, and more. But no key.

The driver's seat was filled with sticky, sticky Things. So after 45 minutes of this treasure hunt, I got a screwdriver and disassembled the center console and pulled it over the parking brake.

As I pulled the center console off, I heard Shruti on the phone. She was talking to her dad, who she had been visiting about 45 minutes away before she came over.

"Did I leave bags of gold rings in your car?" she asked ... "Oh, they're in your trunk?" ... "Oh... no, you don't have to drive all the way back here." ... "No, that's OK." ...

I found the key lodged in the carpet under the console. But the rings weren't at her office.

At this point it was nearly midnight and if we drove to her dad's house we wouldn't get back until nearly 2 a.m.

So I reassembled my car and we drove to the only 24-hour store in the area, a Shoprite. (Every WalMart and Target here closes at 10 p.m.) We figured we'd buy some gold curling ribbon and use that instead. They, of course, didn't have gold curling ribbon, which left us exactly where we were at the beginning of the night -- nowhere.

So that's where we are. I took Shruti home and told her I didn't want any more of her crappy-ass luck and that I'd go to Michael's today and roll up the programs myself. So if anyone's in the mood to come over and help before Sunday.......

The adventures of Nicole and her in-laws, Part II

You might remember that I posted a few months ago about Nicole's mother-in-law, who visited her and Dave in Puerto Rico and spent the entire time whining that the presence of mosquitoes was all Nicole's fault. She then proceeded to tuck dryer sheets into every crevice of her clothing and body because she'd heard somewhere that mosquitoes don't like dryer sheets.

In any case the in-laws have returned for another visit, and as soon as they arrived the mom decided that a tick had burrowed its way into her ear or something, forcing Dave to take her directly from the airport to the doctor. From a gchat with Nicole:

Nicole: btw dave's parents are here and already his mom is convinced she has to go to a clinic to get a tick removed that she JUST discovered on the plane. so she is now at a pr walk in clinic. that is not going to go well

4:04 PM oh and they got here 2 hours ago

So as you can see from the timestamp, this was around 4 p.m. yesterday. At 6:56 p.m. I got the following text:

She's carrying the tick head in a baggie in her fannypack!

I haven't heard from her since.

Gay marriage temporarily OK'd in California

California's Republican-dominated Supreme Court ruled today that limiting marriage to a man and a woman is unconstitutional. In L.A., that means the decision will take effect in 30 days, according to the L.A. Times. But then it's going to be temporary -- anti-gay-marriage groups are already circulating petitions to place a question on November's ballot that would amend the state Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Last time a gay marriage question went before the voters, in 2000, 61 percent voted to ban it.

What's interesting about the California court is that six of the seven justices were appointed by Republicans. In the decision, the majority writes that this case is different from cases in other states that have banned gay marriage. They emphasize that their decision has nothing to do on policy opinion, but simply whether "the failure to designate the official relationship of
same-sex couples as marriage violates the California Constitution."

You can find the decision here, but read on for excerpts.

It also is important to understand at the outset that our task in this proceeding is not to decide whether we believe, as a matter of policy, that the officially recognized relationship of a same-sex couple should be designated amarriage rather than a domestic partnership (or some other term), but instead only to determine whether the difference in the official names of the relationships violates the California Constitution.

Here's a pretty representative part of the decision:

Furthermore, in contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights. We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.

Further, the decision says, calling it a civil union instead of marriage would violate the state's equal protection clause because there's no compelling state interest in different treatment.

Finally, retaining the designation of marriage exclusively for opposite-sex couples and providing only a separate and distinct designation for same-sex couples may well have the effect of perpetuating a more general premise — now emphatically rejected by this state — that gay individuals and same-sex couples are in some respects “second-class citizens” who may, under the law, be treated differently from, and less favorably than, heterosexual individuals or opposite-sex couples.

In a Rehnquist-esque dissent, Justice Marvin Baxter accuses the majority of creating a constitutional right out of "whole cloth." (think back to every anti-abortion opinion on the Supreme Court)

I cannot join this exercise in legal jujitsu, by which the Legislature’s own weight is used against it to create a constitutional right from whole cloth, defeat the People’s will, and invalidate a statute otherwise immune from legislative interference.

Here is the amendment being proposed in the petition by protectmarriage.com, a group of California activists "who believe that marriage’s foremost purpose is the raising of healthy children in a family with a mom and a dad," according to their Web site.

Wow. I write a lot when I don't want to write what I'm supposed to write.

Update on anti-gay HR woman

The University of Toledo fired Crystal Dixon, the associate vice president of human resources who wrote a guest column in the local paper stating that homosexuality is optional. I blogged about her last week. She is considering legal action, possibly on First Amendment grounds, according to Inside Higher Ed.

From Inside Higher Ed:

An assistant to Dixon’s lawyer said that she was considering suing the university, either on First Amendment or other grounds. A statement from the university defended the dismissal saying that Dixon’s views were “in direct contradiction to university policies and procedures, as well as the institutional core values as defined in our strategic plan, and called into question her continued ability to lead a critical function within the administration as personnel actions or decisions taken in her capacity as associate vice president for human resources could be challenged or placed at risk.”

Here's the student paper's story on it.

How can I get one of these jobs?

From Eduwonkette:

What Can $7,789,623 Buy in New York City?

A) 3,894,812 subway rides
B) 15,579 pairs of Prada heels
C) 1812 hours with the Emperors VIP Club
D) 315 years of education at the Brearley School
E) 18 staff for the New York City Department of Education's Division of Assessment and Accountability

"And I'm little, and I'm different."

In Oregon, the Democratic nominee for Senate may be Steve Novick, who is 4-foot-9 and has a hook for a left hand. He also has the greatest campaign commercial ever:

He currently holds a narrow lead over state House Speaker Jeff Merkley, his closest competitor for the nomination, according to Politico, which quotes him saying:

“We think people are looking for something a little different. And I’m little, and I’m different.”

"I am a respectable lady" (and more)

First, this from the AP:
A woman paid off a $1 parking ticket from 1976 with $20 and a note:

"I always had good intentions of paying it. I put it aside and every once in a while I would come across it and said 'someday I'm going to pay it.' Now I think it's time."

The woman apparently hopes the matter is closed. There's no return address on the envelope. And the notes says, "Please don't try and track me down. I am a respectable lady."

Secondly, this from Scalia's dissent in Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party, in which the majority found that it was constitutional to allow candidates to list their party preferences with their name on the ballot, even if they don't have the party's backing. In a concurring opinion, Roberts said that calling the law unconstitutional would be like telling someone they're not allowed to say they like Campbell's soup, giving Scalia prime fodder for his dissent. The ruling was handed down in March, but I just found this part of the text (via Dahlia Lithwick's story on Scalia's new embrace of the media). Without further rambling...

If we must speak in terms of soup, Washington's law is like a law that encourages Oscar the Grouch (Sesame Street's famed badtaste resident of a garbage can) to state a "preference" for
Campbell's at every point of sale, while barring the soup company from disavowing his endorsement, or indeed using its name at all, in those same crucial locations.
Reserving the most critical communications forum for statements of "preference" by a potentially distasteful speaker alters public perceptions of the entity that is "preferred"; and when this privileged connection undermines not a company's ability to identify and promote
soup but an expressive association's ability to identify and promote its message and its standard bearer, the State treads on the constitutionally protected freedom of association.

And finally, this entertained me, mostly because I like to think about what happened after the famous boombox scene in Say Anything. So he stands there for 3½ minutes, a neighbor probably yells from an upstairs window, "TURN THAT DOWN!" But John Cusack continues to stand there, waits until the song ends, maybe calls her name once or twice more before deciding his grand gesture was ineffective, probably mumbles to himself something along the lines of, "Well that didn't work," puts the boombox back in his car, gets in the driver's seat and drives away, all sad. But they don't show that. Which makes me sad.


OK, writing now...

Prejudice vs. free speech

A vice president at the University of Toledo was placed on paid leave after this guest column appeared in the local paper, denouncing the protection of gay people under civil rights policies. She argues that homosexuality is a conscious decision, not a genetic trait, and that homosexuals therefore should not be entitled to the same protections as other minorities:

As a Black woman who happens to be an alumnus of the University of Toledo's Graduate School, an employee and business owner, I take great umbrage at the notion that those choosing the homosexual lifestyle are "civil rights victims." Here's why. I cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a Black woman. I am genetically and biologically a Black woman and very pleased to be so as my Creator intended. Daily, thousands of homosexuals make a life decision to leave the gay lifestyle evidenced by the growing population of PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex Gays) and Exodus International just to name a few.

She goes on to say that homosexuals do not face discrimination (or at least I think that's the implication) -- a point she backs up with this:

Economic data is irrefutable: The normative statistics for a homosexual in the USA include a Bachelor's degree: For gay men, the median household income is $83,000/yr. (Gay singles $62,000; gay couples living together $130,000), almost 80% above the median U.S. household income of $46,326, per census data. For lesbians, the median household income is $80,000/yr. (Lesbian singles $52,000; Lesbian couples living together $96,000); 36% of lesbians reported household incomes in excess of $100,000/yr. Compare that to the median income of the non-college educated Black male of $30,539. The data speaks for itself.

So. This woman is obviously deeply, deeply confused and needs to read a science journal or two... or maybe get a lobotomy. But that's not the point.

The woman, Crystal Dixon, is the associate vice president of human resources at the University of Toledo, making her the school's top HR official. She wrote this guest column for the local paper as an individual (she identifies herself as a graduate of the school -- not an employee), and the tagline says nothing about her position with the university. So what are her rights under the First Amendment? If she had expressed this opinion in a more casual setting, she probably wouldn't be in danger of losing her job. (the paid leave is pending possible further action, according to Inside Higher Ed)

Gay rights groups are calling for her firing, and they have a Very Good Point -- obviously, the fact that she is an HR person makes her stances dangerous. One law professor at the university questions that point in an EdgeBoston story, saying "she cannot do her job effectively."

I guess the story is relatively new (the student paper reported it Saturday, but it just started making national news today), but I haven't seen anyone broach the free speech side of the issue. It's obviously a complex issue -- there's a lot of overlap between free speech advocates and gay rights advocates. So which right wins out here? Or is that not the point? Maybe the point is that she disclosed a bias she should have disclosed in her job interview anyway, and it'd be sort of like writing a column about lying on your resume -- firing would be imminent and free speech wouldn't be an issue.

Any thoughts?

I still want a lion

Again, courtesy of Gina:

From Reuters... turn up your volume all the way.

The power of Fox News et al

So apparently 15 percent of people believe that Obama is a Muslim. I guess this shouldn't surprise me given that about half of Americans don't accept evolution, but it sort of serves as a reiteration of the power of Fox News.

There are people who would never vote for a Democrat anyway, and their reasoning then is moot, I guess. (The same poll found that 8 percent of respondents admitted they wouldn't vote for Obama solely because he is black. And that's just the people who admitted it. They, I guess, were never going to vote Democratic.)

But I do wonder if any of these respondents are independents, and ultimately decide not to vote for Obama because they think he's a terrorist.

Everyone's talking about the importance of substantive debates, but the swing voters are probably paying a lot more attention to misleading photos than to policy differences.

I worked two years for G-nett and all I got was this stupid T-shirt

AngryJournalist.com is apparently trying to figure out how make money without ads. Here's what they're selling (there are a few, but this is my favorite):
(Incidentally, our Christmas bonus last year was a CJmoms hoodie. I would have rather gotten this)

How to become a viable presidential candidate:

Find yourself a sugar daddy.

Since I blogged about the Clintons' tax returns a few weeks ago, I figure I'll post something on the McCains as well. Like in the Clintons' case, the non-candidate makes significantly more than the candidate. This comes as a surprise to no one (and frankly, some of you may find the cunt thing or the recipe-stealing thing more interesting), but I thought I'd give you some numbers anyway.

Assets (from Politico):

Assets held exclusively by Cindy are worth at least $9 million, and those held by her and the McCain children are worth at least $15 million, according to John McCain’s disclosure statement filed last year with the Federal Election Commission. His assets were worth less than $81,001, according to the FEC disclosure.

Alimony (from Politico):

John McCain paid $17,700 in alimony last year stemming from a 15-year marriage that ended in divorce in 1980, the same year he married Cindy.

Taxes (from johnmccain.com)

For 2006, Senator McCain paid $72,771 in federal income, alternative minimum, and self-employment taxes (LINES 57 and 58) on taxable income of $215,304 (LINE 43), which is a 33.8% tax rate. View
For 2007, Senator McCain paid $84,460 in federal income, alternative minimum, and self-employment taxes (LINES 57 and 58) on taxable income of $258,800 (LINE 43), which is a 32.6% tax rate. View

As for details about Cindy McCain's finances, they're not releasing them. (They file their taxes separately so there's little connection) I don't think this is a big deal, but the GOP did attack Kerry in 2004 when the campaign declined to release Teresa Heinz Kerry's returns. The DNC is trying to draw attention to it, but they're just not as good at this as the Republicans are.

McCain supporters want more fiber in their diets

From the New York Times:

If there’s butter and white wine in your refrigerator and Fig Newtons in the cookie jar, you’re likely to vote for Hillary Clinton. Prefer olive oil, Bear Naked granola and a latte to go? You probably like Barack Obama, too.

And if you’re leaning toward John McCain, it’s all about kicking back with a bourbon and a stuffed crust pizza while you watch the Democrats fight it out next week in Pennsylvania.

It's a political strategy called microtargeting, where pollsters try to find a connection between your political allegiances and everyday things like food, magazines, hobbies, etc. It's not a new thing, but Karl Rove brought it to a new level in the 2004 election.

Its reliability as a valid indicator is still being debated. Mark Penn thinks it's a good strategy and James Carville think it's a colossal waste of time. I don't know how I feel about it. Some of the supposed connections fit for me and others don't, which is probably consistent across the board. Try it yourself.......

Here are some of the established connections (all from the NYT story):

Dr Pepper is a Republican soda. Pepsi-Cola and Sprite are Democratic. So are most clear liquors, like gin and vodka, along with white wine and Evian water. Republicans skew toward brown liquors like bourbon or scotch, red wine and Fiji water. When it comes to fried chicken, he said, Democrats prefer Popeyes and Republicans Chick-fil-A.

As for the candidates...
Clinton supporters:
elliptical trainers
Boca burgers
honey as a sweetener
fig newtons
Whole Foods
Kashi GoLean cereal
Luna bars
Odwalla Super Protein drinks
Amy's frozen pizza

Obama supporters:
trail running
burgers made from grass-fed local beef
Sugar in the Raw
soft chocolate chip cookies
Bear Naked Granola
olive oil
Wolfgang Puck all-natural frozen pizza

McCain supporters:
fishing
corn-fed beef burgers
Splenda
crunchy chocolate chip cookies
Fiber One cereal
Power Bars
DiGiorno's stuffed crust pizza

More on murderous old ladies

Two Los Angeles women in their late-70s are on trial for killing homeless men to collect on their life insurance plans.

I'll back up. Helen Golay, 77, and Olga Rutterschmidt, 75, allegedly befriended two homeless men and took out at least 19 life insurance policies on them worth about $2.8 million. Then they had them run over in hit-and-runs.

Each woman's defense is to blame the other woman. Essentially, they're admitting to insurance fraud but not to murder. The initial plan, they claim, was to befriend old homeless men who were going to die soon anyway -- so there would be no need to kill them.

Golay's attorney says Rutterschmidt was responsible for finding old homeless men to insure but suddenly started finding younger men:

From the AP:

"We'll concede it's pretty sleazy what's going on here with the insurance,'' Diamond (Golay's attorney) said. "These two little old ladies embarked upon a cockamamie insurance fraud scheme. ... The theory was if you insured an old, sick homeless person, that person is likely to die more quickly.... That's insurance fraud. It certainly isn't a murder scheme.''

But he said that when Rutterschmidt, who was to recruit old homeless people, began recruiting younger homeless men for insurance policies, "Maybe Olga had her own scheme to have these people killed.''

Rutterschmidt's attorney paints her as a hopeless half-wit who simply did whatever Golay told her to because Golay drove a Mercedes and owned property in Santa Monica.

From the L.A. Times

Olga Rutterschmidt lacked savvy, was "simple-minded" and even "stupid," said Michael Sklar (Rutterschmidt's attorney).

"I can't tell you how a person can be that stupid. I can only tell you that she was," Sklar said, alleging that co-defendant Helen Golay, 77, planned the murders but kept Rutterschmidt in the dark throughout the scheme that spanned at least eight years and targeted several men. The evidence shows that Golay committed McDavid's murder, Sklar said.

There are all kinds of other twists in this story (like the accusation that Golay's daughter killed at least one of the men), which has been covered closely in the L.A. Times since it first started to unfold. You can read any of those previous stories here.

Ann Coulter has giant--

The Wall Street Journal is reportedly running around New York, trying to buy up every copy of the Wall Street Journal parody being released this week. The parody, which was written by Daily Show writers, Onion writers, and others, has the tagline "We Distort, You Decide" and includes a full-page spread of a topless Ann Coulter in the traditional speckled WSJ style.

From Poynter:

The seeds of My Wall Street Journal took root in 1982, when Blum, then a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, decided to lay waste to his business journalism career by parodying his own employer. Edited by Hendra, the former editor of National Lampoon and Spy Magazine, the debut issues featured contributions by a now-illustrious mix of media stars including Jeff Greenfield and Kurt Andersen. The parody, and a follow up issue, sold more than 650,000 copies and landed Hendra on the cover of Newsweek in 1983.

It is apparently published every 26 years, and was slated for release today (but some newsstands started selling it early).

It's being sold at newsstands around New York that haven't already had all their copies bought up by Murdoch. If you're interested, you can find Romenesko's summary here.

If you were uglier then maybe this wouldn't have to happen

The subway groper, who has a 57-page rap sheet mostly full of rubbing up against women on subways, got out of prison last month. And immediately got on the subway to grope more women.

MTA cops were following Freddie Johnson one day about two weeks after his release, and found him rubbing up against a woman on a crowded 6 train. He kept his messenger bag in in front of him, swung it to his back to rub himself against her, and then quickly swung it in front of him again.

From the Daily News:
"The detectives said, 'Not so fast, Freddie,' and grabbed me, but I didn't touch her," he insisted. "I was trying to get out."

Johnson is supposed to stay off trains as a condition of his parole, but his ankle bracelet doesn't work underground, so the only way to enforce it is if subway cops recognize him.

The Daily News got a jail interview with Johnson, who is about as insane as a drunk donkey on crack (I'm sticking with it).

Apparently, the genesis of the creepy came in 1982, when Johnson saw a guy saw another man rub up against a woman on a train and run away at the next stop. He said the woman didn't even notice, convincing him this was a victimless crime.

"I was curious," he said to the Daily News.

Anyway, he said, the women should expect to be groped.

"When there's this many attractive women in the city and on the subways, don't they know [this will happen]?"

What you never knew about your mother

While cleaning out her dead mom's closet last week, a West Virginia woman found a decomposing body wrapped in clear plastic wrap, blankets and a sleeping bag, according to the Associated Press.

The mom, who was in her early 60s, had died of a stroke and head injury, and the daughter was in her house the next day cleaning things out. She called the cops when she and her husband were overwhelmed by a noisome smell emanating from the closet, and police found the body of an elderly woman wrapped up on the closet floor.

The daughter told police that whenever she visited, her mother never let her inside.

“We’re trying to rule out all aspects of homicide and foul play,” the detective told the local paper. “It looks like natural causes but I can’t say for 100 percent certain. We’re treating it as a suspicious death.”

Because that's what I do when someone dies in my apartment. Wrap them in saran wrap and shove em in the closet. I mean, are there other options?

Story from the Martinsburg Journal News here.

Intelligence/proximity to a cat

This from xkcd.com:

CAT PROXIMITY

With unemployment at 5.1 percent, somebody's gotta pay for the war

I'm sure you people have seen this elsewhere, but just in case...

The Clintons made $109.2 million over the last seven years.

Most of that came through Bill Clinton's speeches and book earnings. He also got $1.2 million in presidential pension. I guess we can't have ex-presidents mooching for change on the street corners.

In any case the way this tax return thing has unfolded has been strange. In fact, it's really unusual for a candidate to release the returns during the primary, but I don't think a lot of people realize that because Obama made such a big deal out of the fact that he released his returns and Clinton didn't. I'm not sure why the Clinton camp decided to do it now after putting this off for so long -- I guess it's because Jay Carson wanted the opportunity to say things like this (via the Clinton Web site):

The Clintons have now made public thirty years of tax returns, a record matched by few people in public service. None of Hillary Clinton's presidential opponents have revealed anything close to this amount of personal financial information.

In a nutshell, the Clintons paid $33.78 million (31 percent of their adjusted gross income) in taxes and gave $10.26 million (9.5 percent of their adjusted gross income) to charity. That's almost exactly like me. *I* made a little more than $30K last year and gave $25 a month to charity, so that's, like, the same thing, percentage-wise, right? Maybe I'll run for prez -- I could definitely use that presidential pension.

Anyway, here's the breakdown (appropriated from the Huffington Post, which pulled from Clinton's Web site):

Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign has released her 2000-2006 joint tax returns, showing nearly $109.2 million in income over the last seven years.

The key details from Clinton's website:

TAXES PAID: $33,783,507

The Clintons paid $33,783,507 in federal taxes - 31% of their adjusted gross income. According to the most recent data available from the IRS, in 2005 taxpayers earning $10,000,000 or more paid on average 20.8% of their adjusted gross income in taxes.

CHARITABLE CONTRIBUTIONS: $10,256,741

The Clintons donated $10,256,741 to charity - 9.5% of their adjusted gross income. According to the most recent data available from the IRS, in 2005 taxpayers earning $10,000,000 or more contributed 3.1% of their adjusted gross income in cash contributions to charity. Information about the Clinton Family Foundation, including a list of charities to which the Clintons contributed through the Foundation, is available online in the Foundation's publicly available tax returns (www.foundationcenter.org).

AFTER TAX EARNINGS: $57,157,297

CUMULATIVE TOTAL(GROSS) INCOME: $109,175,175

Including, among other items:

* Senator Clinton's Senate Salary: $1,051,606
* President Clinton's Presidential Pension: $1,217,250
* Senator Clinton's Book Income: $10,457,083
* President Clinton's Book Income: $29,580,525
* President Clinton's Speech Income: $51,855,599

There's always Emerson...

So I probably wouldn't get into any school if I were applying now. The top Ivy League schools accepted fewer than 10 percent of their applicants this year. Harvard accepted 7.1 percent of its 27,462 applicants; Yale 8.3 percent of 22,813; and Columbia 8.7 percent. Back when we were applying, those schools were accepting more than twice that, percentage-wise.

The dwindling acceptance rates are a product of huge applicant pools -- that could stem from the larger number of kids going to college, the ease of online applications, and the end of early admission at schools like Harvard and Princeton, according to the New York Times.

Anyway the low admissions rates at top schools are must be trickling down to other schools, so B students are probably getting screwed. In other words, if I were eight years younger I'd probably be going to University of Phoenix.

Awwww, snap

In keeping with the Spitzer theme that has been so popular in the recent weeks, and ignoring the inevitable ennui that goes along with seeing the same story over and over again...

The following ad for New York Sports Clubs ran in our paper today:

$29 to join

That's about $79,971 less than Spitzer's "workout" budget.

I'm Hillary Clinton, and when I'm not dodging invisible sniper fire I like to answer random Hillarys' cell phones

I posted last week about a schlub reporter in Ohio who mistakenly identified a freshman congressman's press aide for Hillary Clinton over the phone, then wrote a story quoting her as if she were Clinton.

This is stupid enough.

The argument was that he called the congressman's office and the press aide, whose name is Hillary Wicai Viers, answered the phone by saying, "This is Hillary." Because Clinton had previously visited that congressman's office, he assumed the Hillary he was speaking to must be Clinton. (apparently forgetting that Ohio had already held its primary, and not even getting suspicious when this Hillary said she'd be following the congressman for his entire statewide economic tour)

Now, it turns out he called the press aide on the aide's CELL PHONE.

Here's the aide's response on Poynter.

I want a lion

Courtesy of Gina...

These two British guys brought up a lion cub and then put him in a wildlife sanctuary in Africa when he got big enough. A year later, they went to visit him and they were told he wouldn't remember them.

Here's how that meeting went:

How to access Wall Street Journal articles for free

I have a WSJ subscription, but the discounted rate will probably run out soon and I'll need this, too. In any case, here's how:

The Wall Street Journal site, which I'm sure you all know requires a subscription, is set up to allow access through Internet news searches. Presumably, this is because more and more people are getting their news through Google News, et al, instead of choosing one or two favorite sites and sticking to them. This was the ultimate reason the New York Times scrapped its Times Select plan -- because it wanted to allow people to access stories through Web searches.

So anyway, if you Google News a Wall Street Journal article and click through that way, you will be able to access the site. It's only when you try to click through on the WSJ splash page that you're required to log in.

That means you can circumvent the subscription process in one of two ways: First, if there's a story you want to read and know the headline, you can Google News the headline and click through that way. But according to Salon, the search engine doesn't always bring up the story.

The other method (and this is also pulled from Salon) is to *convince* the Wall Street Journal that you're clicking through a news search engine. You can do this by downloading a Firefox add-on, which you can access here.

Once you install it, you'll see this addition to the Firefox toobar:
Then go to wsj.com, and follow these directions from Salon's machinist:

• In the refspoof toolbar's "spoof:" field, type "digg.com."
• Also in the refspoof toolbar, click the R icon, and select "static referrer."

By doing this, you fool the paygate into thinking you are accessing the site through digg, another news search engine.

And the machinist assures us that it's totally on the up-and-up, noting that if the Wall Street Journal didn't want you to have free access to its stories, it wouldn't provide that free access through search engines. They say it better than I can:

I'll grant you that setting your browser to spoof Digg is slightly deceptive. But it's a minor fib, on the order of, say, handing a cashier an expired coupon. The Journal adds Digg buttons to all of its stories, encouraging you to open its articles to everyone (including you) for free; by pretending that you're coming from Digg, you're simply taking advantage of that implicit offer.

The Journal no longer really has a pay wall. It's a pay curtain, useless and flimsy, and you're committing no transgression in dancing around it.

So there you go. Have at it...

Wait, why would I make my tax returns public?

A reporter at an Ohio paper called the Tribune Chronicle accidentally quoted a PR lady as Hillary Clinton because the woman answered the phone at a local congressman's office, saying, "This is Hillary."

The Tribune Chronicle published a correction yesterday saying:

Reporter John Goodall, who was assigned to the story, spoke by telephone with Hillary Wicai Viers, who is a communications director in U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson’s staff. According to the reporter, when Viers answered the phone with ‘‘This is Hillary,’’ he believed he was speaking with the Democratic presidential candidate, who had made several previous visits to the Mahoning Valley.

You can find the full story, which the paper pulled from its Web site, through Google's cache here.

Clinton was apparently in Washington when this guy thought he was talking to her in Ohio.

And the guy apparently never asked a question relating to her chances at the nomination... unless he was under the impression that Hillary Clinton speaks in the third person...

But I mean, seriously, who wouldn't assume that Hillary Clinton would be answering the phone at a random congressman's office after that congressman's state had already held its primary?

Because it's been too long...

...since you've seen pictures of my cats. And I don't feel like studying Econ and doing laundry. So to begin with, I bought them an "activity cube," which Giz thinks is awesome, both for playing and relaxing.

***

For a while, A.M. liked hanging out in my closet (I think she's over it now). She made a huge mess, but it was OK because she tended to look very sexy in there.

***

Here she just looks majestic, which makes me happy since she's normally not very photogenic.

***

And then there was the day when they were lying on the bed completely parallel. I was impressed.


OK, I'm seriously going to study now. I have my priorities...

The $4,300 Woman

Spitzer's ladyfriend has stripped down (bad pun intended) her MySpace page, but thanks to Google's cache, you can still access it here. It's relatively non-descript, but there are some funsies about the 22-year-old "musician." (The picture to the right used to be her profile picture, but has been taken down)

From her About Me section, with my own parenthetical points included...

• I live in New York and am on top of the world (and the governor). Been here since 2004 and I love this city (in addition to anyone willing to shell out $1,000 an hour), I love my life here.
• I spent the first two years getting to know the music scene, networking (if you know what I mean) in clubs and connecting (penally) with the industry.
• What we Want is my latest track. It’s really about trust, something my past has made very difficult for me to feel. This one was inspired by a guy (named Eliot), who taught me not to confuse my dreams with the sounds of the city (or the sounds of the city's governor grunting loudly on top of me)…I hope you like it.

I do feel badly for this kid. She's had a tough life and suddenly got caught in the center of a giant scandal, and she's been bombarded by media since her name went public.

That said... according to the NYT, Ashley Alexandra Dupré's story is pretty sad. She is a Jersey Shore native who left home at age 17. The Times described her latest track (which you can no longer access, even through the cached page) this way: “What We Want,” an amateurish, hip-hop inflected rhythm and blues tune that asks, “Can you handle me, boy?” and used some dated slang, calling someone her “boo.”

She hasn't been charged with anything. The guy she was living with recently walked out on her after she discovered that he fathered two children. She told the NYT she can't afford her rent anymore, and that she's considering either waitressing or moving back with her family in Jersey.

The Times story is here. You can listen to her song through the New York Post site.

How many diamonds is your hooker?

I wanted a more creative headline, but "Eliot Mess," "Ho no!", "Addicted to love Gov" and "Spitzer swallows" were all taken, and "Spitz likes tits" wasn't creative enough to justify the profanity. Or was it? As for "Spitz's ditz," that just makes unfair assumptions about this "Kristen." Especially since the Emperor's Club site says their ladies are well-educated.

In any case, I figured it was only proper to provide my own pun-filled take on the ins and outs of the Spitzer scandal. I'll preface this by saying I feel really badly for his daughters and his wife, but I'm assuming none of them read harbatkat so I'll soldier on.

If anyone's unfamiliar with the situation because they have apparently been living in seclusion this week, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer on Monday was implicated in a high-end prostitution ring. Spitzer's involvement was discovered after his bank filed a "suspicious activity report" because he had broken up a $40,000 transfer into a bunch of smaller transfers and then asked the bank to remove his name from the transactions.

Investigators were expecting to find fraud -- kickbacks, bribes, etc. What they found instead, through an investigation of financial records and court-approved wiretaps, was that he'd transported a prostitute named Kristen from New York to D.C. when he was on a business trip there.

It gets even ickier because Spitzer was apparently in D.C. to testify Feb. 14 before a congressional subcommittee that hadn't invited him to testify. He apparently had to convince the subcommittee to let him speak on Valentine's Day. Knowing this, his wife has to stand behind him at the podium throughout this ordeal, seemingly showing her support in both his apology and his resignation.

In 2004, he signed into a law a bill raising the penalties for patronizing a prostitute. And transporting the prostitute to D.C. is a violation of the Mann Act, a 1910 law that made it illegal to transport individuals over state lines for the purposes of prostitution.

According to the New York Post, he has spent $80,000 over as long as 10 years on these services. His most recent transactions have been with Emperors Club VIP, an international prostitution ring that rates its ladies from three diamonds up to seven diamonds. Ratings are based on the "individual education, sophistication, and ambiance created by each of our models," according to the site, which has been taken down.

Spitzer's girl, Kristen, was probably a three-diamonder, since she cost $1,000 an hour (He paid $4,300 for two hours, but he's just a good tipper). Hourly prices range from $1,000 for three diamonds to $3,100 for seven diamonds. Salon has a good story on it, cum-plete with rates and screenshots from the site (I told you to expect bad puns).

According to an AP story, Kristen was warned about Spitzer's shenanigans:

The agent said she had been told the client "would ask you to do things that ... you might not think were safe ... very basic things,'' according to the papers, but that Kristen responded by saying, "I have a way of dealing with that ... I'd be, like, listen dude, you really want the sex?''

And if you're so inclined, you can access a broken-up version of the page through Internet Archive, a free service that provides old versions of Web sites that have been taken off the Web. Just type www.emperorsclubvip.com into the "Way Back Machine" search box and choose a date. Warning: it can be slow.

The worst youth basketball team in America

Here they are. The 2008 Villanova Wildcats: 0-8Top row, from left to right: Brent shoots the ball like he's a quarterback throwing a 50-yard pass; Ariel is the one I'm gonna be coaching individually starting next week; Ishi always does the jump ball for us but never jumps; Jason is the greatest defensive player ever; Jisu thinks I made up the concept of boxing out; Colin is the son of the other coach; Alan is the other coach.
Bottom row, from left to right: Max has been known to spin around in place for minutes at a time during games; David really enjoys the armpit-farting game; Mordy, who I couldn't tell apart from Ariel for at least the first half of the season.

So that's it. Tomorrow is the end-of-season celebration, so you will no longer hear about my team's inability to shoot, dribble, pass, rebound or score. Although the coach's game is tomorrow, so you may be hearing about my own inability to shoot, dribble, pass rebound or score. Fun.

Is that a peek-a-boo dance dollar in your 10-year-old's garter?

Apparently this made international news back when it happened in 2006, but in case you're like me and missed it...

A toy company in the U.K. began selling this toy about a year and a half ago. If you think you're seeing it wrong, you're not. The £49.97 kit comes with an 8½-foot chrome pole, complete with play money, "a sexy dance garter," and an instructional stripping DVD for aspiring young strippers.

The toy company, Tesco, advertised this on their Web site with the following:
"Unleash the sex kitten inside...simply extend the Peekaboo pole inside the tube, slip on the sexy tunes and away you go! Soon you'll be flaunting it to the world and earning a fortune in Peekaboo Dance Dollars."

After public outrage from parents who for some reason didn't want to encourage their 8-year-olds to become strippers, Tesco removed the toy from the "toys and games" section of its Web site but said it would continue selling it under the "fitness accessory" category.

Wombat sex

Somehow, my coworker Gene and I got to talking about wombats. I think for some reason we were discussing that fetish where people dress up in animal costumes, and Gene's mind immediately went to the wombat. Then we realized that neither of us knew what a wombat looked like.

So I ran a Google image search for "wombats," and the first result was an Australian newspaper article with the headline, "Secret sex life of wombats."

Perhaps if American newspapers had stories this awesome, they're circulations would not be declining at the rate of a female wombat running a figure-eight around her potential mate.

Intrigued yet?

A study was released in December 2005 detailing the sex life of wombats, a previously unexplored phenomenon. Turns out, they're way into the Kama Sutra.

"It appeared to be a physically demanding process, complete with chasing, biting, grunting and loads of heavy breathing," said biologist Clive Marks, the author of the study.

After prolonged copulation, Marks said, the female pulls away and begins trotting in figure-eights around her mate.

"The male chased her, following closely behind, and then bit her on the rump," Marks wrote in the study, published in Nature Australia.

"She immediately stopped just long enough to permit him to roll her on her side and begin copulating again.

"If the male was slow to mount, she would kick back aggressively and not let him roll her on her side again until she had run round in more circles and figures of eight. This happened seven times."

This study prompted zoos to reevaluate their wombat enclosures. Apparently, if wombats don't have enough space to trot figure-eights around their mates then they just won't mate at all.

If you're interested — and seriously, who *wouldn't* be? — here's the full study, entitled "Wombat Sex. It includes gems like:

But in an obtuse if not flippant sort of way, Australians have always nursed a fascination for the sex life of wombats. If only I’d been given a dollar every
time I was asked the question: “Is it true that a wombat eats, roots and leaves?”

If you read it, try not to judge the dude for his overuse of exclamation points. He's just really excited about wombat sex.

www.AngryJournalist.com

'Nuff said.

Wait, why is this entire column written in Latin?

I must have missed this story from the GRE bubble I was living in last week:

President Bush's social and religious liaison who sometimes writes guest columns for an Indiana newspaper was forced to resign Friday after a blogger discovered that he plagiarized. From the Pope.

Tim Goeglein had been working for the Bush administration since 2001 and was a top aide for Karl Rove. He was largely credited for garnering the evangelical vote in 2004, according to the New York Times. He had been writing columns for the News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne, Ind., for more than a decade.

He plagiarized from an array of sources (the Pope is obviously my favorite), and an internal investigation revealed that 19 of his 38 guest columns over the years contained plagiarized material.

A former columnist for the News-Sentinel broke the story in her blog.

Pulled straight from her blog:

On April 6, 2005, Roger Cohen wrote in The New York Times: “It was based in the belief that, as he (the Pope) once put it, ‘a degradation, indeed a pulverization, of the fundamental uniqueness of each human being’ was at the root of the mass movements of the 20th century, Communism and Fascism,”

In a column published Oct. 18, 2005, Goeglein wrote: “A degradation and pulverization of the fundamental uniqueness of each human being was at the root of the 20th century, the twin evils of communism and fascism.” No attribution is given to the Pope or to Cohen in the column.

Well I guess if you're gonna plagiarize, there's really no one better to pull from than the Pope.

No more GRE!

I am officially done with the GRE. I will never have to look at another permutation or isosceles triangle or strange algebraic equation again. I am also free to forget the 600-some useless words I learned in the process of studying.

Oh, and in case you people are wondering, I am awesome at English and not-quite-awesome at math. I'll take that...