Chertoff's Gut Says Home Cooking Provides The Most Risk

If Chertoff's gut tells him the biggest risk of terrorism is coming from the U.S., let's bring the troops home and have them occupy the U.S. Let's fight them here so we don't fight there, or something like that.

Truth is, this administration doesn't have a fucking clue!

Another Cliff Clavin Moment: Un-freaking-believable Ways To Die

Wikipedia has accumulated a list of bizarre deaths. Supposedly somewhat factual, but some lack a certain feeling of credibility.

Wikipedia has organized the deaths in chronological order.

Some of my personal favorites are having your bald head mistaken for a stone by an eagle (458 BC), eating too many lampreys (1135), having a red hot poker stuck up your butt (1327), Jack Daniel (yeah, that Jack Daniel) dieing from kicking his safe (do you suppose alcohol was involved?) (1911), laughing yourself to death (1975, 207 BC) and being stabbed to death and eaten after you have shared a meal of parts of yourself (2001).

O death, where is thy sting? Oh, right there in 1322.

Flurry of Movie Reviews: Enchanted - Mothra 5.0, Dan In Real Life - Mothra 6.4, The Bee Movie - Mothra 6.0

For rating metrics, see post of May 2, 2007.

Enchanted - Went to this one to appease my spousal unit. Did not know anything about it. Basically it is Cinderella (are there no new ideas?) Cartoon beginning where the evil stepmother of the prince love interest throws the lovely princess down a well that delivers her into Manhattan. She's totally unequipped to survive in N.Y. except through force of her eternally sunny disposition and of course, she is unwillingly rescued by her future love interest, Dr. McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey). Her cartoon love interest pursues her to N.Y. to save her. He is altogether irretrievably optimistic, also. Did I mention that they sing and dance at odd moments? Susan Sarandon is good as the evil queen. This one is so sweet I needed an insulin shot before it was over. Unless you're a 10-13 year old girl, do not go to the theater, rent or net-flix this one.

Dan In Real Life - Dan (Steve Carell) writes an advice column, is a widower and has three daughters. Of course, even though he give advice, he can't relate to his daughters or conduct his own life. He meets the first girl he has been interested in since the death of his wife (4 years ago). She is Juliette Binoche ("Chocolat", etc), perhaps the most appealing actress on the planet. Trouble is, she turns out to be his brother's girl friend. The brother is Dane Cook. How did he start to get parts and why does he still get them? Dan learns of this problem when they are all thrown together at a big family get together. Predictability ensues. Steve Carell is pretty good and a sympathetic character except when he gets really dumb. Juliette Binoche is extremely appealing. This one is worth a rental or at least a net-flix queue. Only pay for this at theater as a date movie.

Bee Movie - Attended this one on a baby sitting gig. It's an animated feature about a bee (voice over by Jerry Seinfeld) that doesn't want to be relegated to the traditional duties in the hive. He escapes and breaks the first law of Beedom by talking to a human. The human (voice over by Renee Zellweger) takes a shine to the bee for no apparent reason. Barry the bee then learns that the humans are stealing all their honey and the bees are getting nothing for it. He files a law suit against the humans and wins and under the category of unintended consequences, all the bees stay in the hive and all the flowers die. Renee Zellweger's character is, of course, a florist and her business withers. Everything is saved in the end after homage to the Rose Parade and all the airplane movies. The trouble with this one is that the humor is geared toward adults and the movie is geared toward kids. Doesn't succeed with either. The voice overs by Puddy (Patrick Warburton) are good. Rental or net-flix only and if you are using it to subdue some kids, only count on about 30 minutes respite.

Captures the Essence of Christmas Like No Other.

Ah, smell that? Christmas is in the air.

You know, sometimes if you just started out to make something up like this, you wouldn’t be able to do it. Things that make perfect sense in other cultures just don’t compute in ours.
For example, apparently in the area of Catalan, which is in the northern part of Spain, the Nativity scenes for the Christmas season includes a little something extra. Somewhere in the traditional Catalan nativity scene, often over to the side, a small additional figure is included called a Caganer.
Caganer, roughly translated to English, means defecator and that is exactly what the statue is, a reproduction of someone taking a dump. Obviously, everybody is entitled to their own religion and beliefs and their way of celebrating but for me nothing says Merry Christmas as much as a lawn gnome dropping a Yule log just north of baby Jesus.
To make this even more bizarre to my white bread sensibilities, you can buy caganers of famous people, such as soccer players, infamous world figures and politicians (last two categories probably substantially overlap). So, you guessed it, you can get a caganer statue of such luminaries as Bush, the lesser and Pau Gasol, the pro basketball player. Apparently you could also get one for Osama bin Laden but this particular web site must have sold out due to popular demand.
One of the interesting parts of the Bush caganer is that he is carrying a globe of the world under his arm as he squeezes off a loaf. It would be more accurate if he was depicted shitting on the world.
Kind of makes you feel festive, doesn’t it?