Oklahoma: It's always somethin'

If you're considering pulling up stakes and pointing your Sooner Schooner toward Tulsa, Okla., you may want to delay your trip until after cold-and-flu season.

Or indefinitely. Whatever.

Hey, I'm just passing along what's out there on Facebook. And if it's on Facebook, it must be so.

Just because, OK?

This Kansas City star is just as big a head case as his newspaper-management brethren.

Just eminently more likeable.

"Kansas City star, that's what I are." Now that's writing. No, seriously.

A date that will live in the infirmary

It's a day that will live in infamy, and a day that Greg Camp's aging father has never forgotten.

That's why today, Camp will sit down for lunch with his 92-year-old dad and four more survivors of the brutal Dec. 1, 1941, aerial attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese bombers.

-- Story in Columbus, Ga., Ledger-Enquirer

SURE, it's fun to cut school and smoke weed all day long, and there's always someone you can pay to take the ACT for you . . . but then you end up getting a job at a newspaper in BF Georgia, and you can't pay some smart dude to write your feature story for you because there aren't any, and there you are.

Stuck.

"Pearl Harbor Day . . . Pearl Harbor Day . . . that's like in December, right? That crippled president said something famous about Pearl Harbor back in the day, dude.

"Uhhh . . . 'Tuesday, Dec. 1, 1943, a date that will live in the infirmary . . . .' THAT'S IT!

"OK, I got this. Kewl."

FILE UNDER: If You Can't Laugh . . .

Faster than a speeding wedding planner. . . .

A) This is the awesomest engagement photo ever.

B) Let's see what she thinks in five years.

An important reminder

Advanced pickups aren't just good in bars and nightclubs. They're absolutely crucial on phonographs.

That's why it's important not only to play your Miracle Surface long-playing records only on the best equipment, but to make sure you're playing your stereophonic albums on the right equipment.

















After all, an RCA "Living Stereo" LP with the advanced Miracle Surface is a terrible thing to waste.

This important hi-fi reminder comes to you courtesy of Revolution 21 and 3 Chords & the Truth.

If Otter were Romney's debate coach. . . .

Greg Marmalard, who goes by Barack Obama these days, thought he was being smart in the foreign-policy presidential debate Monday night.
 
And Pinto just sat there and took it up the wazoo with that "horses and bayonets" bit o' condescension. I blame it all on that wussy little angel hovering over his one shoulder.

The one that told him he shouldn't hire that disreputable Eric Stratton as his debate coach. Who would have had Pinto, who goes by "Mitt Romney" these days, riposte with something like this:

"Ladies and gentlemen, the issue here is not whether we have these ships that planes can land on or boats that can go under the water. We do. The issue here is that we have the president of the United States of America -- The commander-in-chief! -- comparing the United States Navy to horses and bayonets like it's some irrelevant and antiquated entity.

"Can you imagine, the commander-in-chief looking upon our brave sailors as if they were something quaint from an exhibit at the Smithsonian put together by a bunch of liberal eggheads? If the commander-in-chief can cast aspersions upon and ridicule the entire United States Navy, what's to stop him from disrespecting the United States Marine Corps?

"And if he can disrespect the United States Marine Corps, the Army and the Air Force surely will be next! How do we know he hasn't already? We don't! And he probably has! I mean, if you can disparage the United States Navy -- if, indeed, you can give up the ships -- there's no reason why he wouldn't go after the grunts and the devil dogs and the airmen, too!

"And if Barack HUSSEIN Obama can belittle the military he unjustly commands, he'd just as well disown the United States of America! And when you have a president who disowns the United States of America, ladies and gentlemen, what you have is a fifth column at the heart of the American government.

"And if you have a fifth columnist at the heart of the government of this venerable and God-blessed republic . . . I cannot bear to repeat the word one would use to describe such an individual.

"I put it to you, Mr. President - isn't your statement a repudiation of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to me, but I'm not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!"

AND THEN "Pinto" Romney would lead half of the debate audience out of the hall, humming the Star-Spangled Banner.

Yeah, that would have been a debate worth watching. 

As opposed to what we actually got.

So, I'll just give my fellow Americans my standard advice. What we need to do now is to start drinking heavily. No one should have to sit through the last two weeks of this election sober as a judge -- it's in the Geneva Conventions.

Vote for Pedro Mike

Listen, we're royally hosed no matter who wins between Romney and Obama. The only distinction is in the particulars of the civic molestation.

Ipso facto, your vote doesn't matter. We are screwed regardless.

Mike, back in the day

On the other hand, here is an election that matters -- best college mascot. And there's only one mascot out there who can bust a move like Napoleon Dynamite. That would be Mike the Tiger of Louisiana State University.

Mike's opponent, Truman the Tiger from Missouri, just looks like a cereal-box reject. And he's from MizzouRAH. Eww.

I mean, with the reception Missouri's football team is getting in its first season of SEC competition, the poor thing probably can't even bear to look. Maybe Truman's special talent is rolling bandages, I dunno.

Anyway, do your patriotic duty. Vote for Mike -- it's important.

MAD strikes again

Leave it to MAD to come up with the ultimate spoof of Crapple Maps . . . uh, I mean Apple Craps . . . er, Apple Maps.

At least that's the way I see it sitting in my houseboat here on Park Avenue in Omaha, by God, South Dakota.

What if. . . ?

What if a local TV station locked out its real meteorologist and brought in a "replacement weatherguy" to tell us what it's going to be like out there?

And what if the word out there is that the weatherscab producing your "Pinpoint VIPIR AccuNow forecast" was let go by the Lingerie Weather Channel because he, well, sucked?

 As NBC26 in heartsick Green Bay, Wis., showed us Tuesday, it'd go something like this:

The Green Bay Packers became the latest NFL team to lose on a highly questionable call by the league’s replacement referees last night. WGBA, Green Bay’s NBC affiliate, poked fun at the situation this morning, bringing in a “replacement weather guy” to handle the forecast.

“It’s pretty bad out there people,” the replacement weather guy said (video above). “200 degrees below we’re looking at, and it’s really going to heat up. It’s going to be like 346 degrees by noon.”

WOW! If it's going to get up to 346, the station probably ought to let all the female anchors and reporters go on the air in just their lingerie. It would be just too darn hot to wear anything else.

Yeah, that's the (replacement) ticket!

And it would make the adjustment from the replacement weatherguy's previous gig a bit less daunting.

Shine + meth = this

Back when I was a little bitty boy down on the bayou, my daddy gave me some advice I've always tried to live by, lo, these many years.

"Son," he says to me -- that's what he always called me, "Son" -- "now don't you go mixin' no corn liquor with no crystal meth." And I remember asking "How come, Daddy?" You know how 4-year-olds are . . . a bottomless font of questions.

Right then, though, Daddy backhanded me right across the chops.

"Because mixin' corn liquor and crystal meth is bad sh*t, that's why!" 

Message received. 

A lot of folks in Kentucky never got that message, I'm sad to have to tell you. I mean, look at this YouTube video by some poor soul with chemically induced Swiss cheese for brains.

APPARENTLY, he's calling himself the Blue Nation Clown, and given a certain resemblance as noted on the Dr. Saturday blog, if I were he, I'd avoid midnight movies for fear of nervous types with concealed-carry permits. Or, this being the South, steel magnolias who don't need no stinkin' concealed-carry permits to keep "jes' the cutest little .22" in their purses. 

But back to the video . . . ewwwwww. Can you imagine anyone getting into such a state over Kentucky football? Geez, if Kentucky basketball ever starts to stink up Rupp Arena, this guy will be legion.  

And the Dynamic Duo will have their work cut out for them.

Because, son, mixin' corn liquor and crystal meth is bad s***.

Teacher! There's a bug in my soup!

Guess who came to lunch today at some Omaha-area elementary schools.

Er . . . make that what.

The Omaha World-Herald reports that the unplanned-upon addition to kids' daily dietary requirements really bugged the lunch ladies.

A surprise ingredient in the soup caused a buzz Wednesday in one metro Omaha school district.

Bugs were discovered in some batches of soup delivered to the lunchrooms at nine Papillion-La Vista elementary schools and St. Columbkille Catholic School.

District spokeswoman Annette Eyman said possibly up to 150 students ate the soup before school officials discovered the contamination and recalled the soup.

The soup was prepared at Papillion-La Vista South High School. Food service workers found bugs in a pot of soup there before it was served to any students, Eyman said.

The bugs were discovered during lunch at Carriage Hill, Patriot and Golden Hills Elementary Schools, she said. No bugs were seen in the soup at the other seven schools, but it was removed anyway.

Officials took samples of the bug to the Douglas-Sarpy Cooperative Extension Service for identification.

It was identified as a sawtoothed grain beetle, she said. “They’re very common, and they don’t carry any diseases,” she said. “They’re not harmful if they’re consumed.”

ASKED FOR COMMENT on whether feeding beetles to kids was an appropriate function of local governments, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney saw the incident as yet another spasm of bitching and moaning by the "47 percent." 

"Listen, let me be clear," Romney said, clearly agitated by the query. "If you're going to be dependent on government and expect that taxpayers, the 'makers' of our society, have a responsibility to feed you at school every day, you can't be that gosh-darned picky about how you get your protein."

One 7-year-old boy at a Papillion-La Vista grammar school, was sanguine about the lunch controversy and the ensuing political scuffle upon hearing of Romney's comments.

"I like bugs," he said.

NEW AT 6 on your First Eyewitness Action News station, Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle eats some maggoty gruel, vows to "work the process" of keeping his lunch down.

T e s ate of lab r to ay

Labor Day -- that 24-hour period every year when we say kind words over the bloated corpse of organized labor in America -- is over.

Now it's back to reality for the Nebras A S Ate Education Ass Ciation and other similarly discombobulated labor unions. As they say, "reality bites." In fact, it even may have consumed education's rear end.

You know what else they say: "First they came for the teachers, but I wasn't a teacher. . . ." Well, I say we're all teachers now!

Ye who labor in America, stay strong! The ass you save may be your own.

Get on the stick

Hidey ho, neighbors!


Welcome to the Iowa State Fair!


Here, food comes on a stick. Even food that wouldn't seem to be particularly stick-friendly.

I'm guessing PBJ on a stick is heavy on the PB and light on the J.


In Iowa, even salad dressing and juice come on a stick.


Not to mention origami.


Look, even Cajun "cheeze" comes on a stick, cher. I think Cajun cheeze must be cheeze that you roll around in "garlik" and "kayenne" pepper and call it "Cajun" -- and "cheeze."

I wonder whether "cheeze" is to cheese what "krab" is to crab.


But if you think "cheeze" on a stick might give you a heart attack on a stick, you certainly can opt for salad on a stick.


Or perhaps some fruit on a stick.


Or . . . you could just go for the original stick food.

I won't tell your cardiologist.

What I learned at the fair

Everything is better on a stick.

Even this meatball-and-melted cheese sandwich on focaccia that I just made. And consumed. After removing the stick.

I'm not that dumb.

Today's picture from Mars

The NASA rover Curiosity continues to send back breathtaking panoramas of the Martian surface -- this latest one from just a day ago. You'd think, if you didn't know better, that the spacecraft was in the Arizona desert, or maybe the Nevada desert near Las Vegas.

Yeah . . . Las Vegas for sure.

I don't know why; it just looks that way to me.

He's on a mission from Jah

Scott Wheeler, Northland Journal

Working in a stout former bank building with windows closed and air conditioners humming, Orleans County, Vt., sheriff's deputies didn't know what was happening in their parking lot until a neighbor called 911. A man on a big farm tractor, angry about his recent arrest for resisting arrest and marijuana possession, was rolling across their vehicles -- five marked cruisers, one unmarked car and a transport van. By the time they ran outside, the tractor was down the driveway and out onto the road.

With their vehicles crushed, "We had nothing to pursue him with," said Chief Deputy Philip Brooks.

Thursday afternoon's incident ended when city police in Newport, the county seat of the northern Vermont county, caught up with Roger Pion, 34, a short distance away.

No one was injured. At least two deputies had gone inside a few moments before after washing their vehicles, officials said.

"Nobody was hurt. That's the thing everybody's got to cherish," said Sheriff Kirk Martin.

Vermont State Police said in a statement that Pion would face seven counts of felony unlawful mischief, one count of misdemeanor unlawful mischief, one count aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, one count of gross negligent operation, and one count of leaving the scene of an accident.

-- The Associated Press

The cops forgot to add the one count of AWESOME!

I mean . . . ummm . . . in the most unfortunate, deviant sense of the word.

Um hmm. Yeah, that's the ticket.

My blood runs cold . . .

My memory has just been sold . . .

My hi-fi is the centerfold . . .

Hi-fi is the centerfold.

SOME MEN take pictures of topless women. Others gawk at the pictures the first men took.

One thing is certain, though. The gawkers will never have a shot at the angel with staples somewhere near her waist.

You can take that to the bank. Certain media moguls already have.

NOT ONLY THAT, the angels that some of the no-chance voyeurs already have are bound to be less than thrilled with their obsession with the angels they cannot -- they will not -- have.

Ever.

And consider this -- you never need to Photoshop high-fidelity gear from 1956 after the shoot is done. Reality is good enough.

I know this because I am a geek. An audio geek, which totally trumps "dirty old man" in most societal measures of respectability.

And as a geek, I take artsy-fartsy pictures of my old audio gear when I'm bored late on a Saturday night. Which I then post on my blog, which is a whole 'nother world of geekery right there.


YOU KNOW what else is great about taking cheesecake shots of old tube hi-fi gear?

For a few bucks at an estate sale or on eBay, the object of your lust can be yours. And your wife will be tolerant about that.

Within reason.


BESIDES, unless the human centerfold of your X-rated desires spent a lot of time at Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima, chances are she won't glow in the dark. Because that would just be wrong.

No, vacuum tubes are where it's at. Trust me on that.

There's a thin line between love and hate

I think you might call this TV commercial from the Netherlands . . . a Dutch treat. Even though this is the English-language version.


HAT TIP: The Browser.

It's not consumerism if you need it

This right here is just what the missus and I always have needed -- dueling collegiate toasters.

In the morning, she can have her inferior, bland Cornhusker toast -- the Big Ten effect, no doubt -- and I can smirk at her as I enjoy my stylish and much more flavorful LSU Tiger toast. All I need is to click on an Amazon button . . . and wait for the parcels to arrive.


YOU WILL NOTE that the LSU toaster is more expensive than the NU toaster. My lovely wife likely will say that's due to kickbacks that have to be paid to somebody in the Gret Stet.

That's because she slept through economics, not to mention many of her other classes at Lincoln.

I attribute the price discrepancy to simple supply and demand.

Geaux Tigers.

Why my arms are always sore

It's not easy going around all day, every day with your arms in the air, making every interaction a show tune -- and not only that, but performing the entirety of your life as a never-ending grand finale.

Frankly, if I could put my arms down, I would listen to some Stan Freberg as I drank a cup of Butternut coffee and gazed at the Omaha Moon.

Which, unfortunately, also shines on those hillbillies in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where the meth-ravaged, trailer-dwelling populace routinely tolerates gnomelike Mexican dwarfs dumping all their Butternut into the Mighty Mo and hanging the empty tins in the city's trees.

Ahamo! AAAAAAAAAAA-haaaaaaaaaaaaa-MOOOWWWW!!!