Well, at least the rats like the place

If I still were a student at Baton Rouge Magnet High School, I would be dreaming of climes far distant and repeating "It's always darkest just before dawn" with the same kind of urgency that propelled Dorothy to furiously click her rubied heels and incant "There's no place like home."

I've written much about my old alma mater in this space. And much of that writing has been about how the educational powers that be in Baton Rouge allowed the place to become a crumbling dump unfit for animals, much less a city's best and brightest teenagers.

Eventually, it came to pass that those school-board powers that be were forced to recognize that something had to be done -- that something drastic had to be done, because the campus was too far gone for going along to get along.

That meant razing the whole campus, save the historic main building, and starting over. And that meant finding a temporary home for Baton Rouge High for a couple of years.

THAT NEW HOME turned out to be the recently abandoned Lee High School, killed by the soft bigotry of low expectations and the inevitable consequence of low performance. The school board shuttered Lee before the state Department of Education could take it over.

To be succinct, the former Lee High is a dump -- as evidenced by these clippings from the BRMHS student newspaper, Campus Currents. In some respects, it's apparently a worse dump than the old joint. And it's fitting, on so many levels, that a school named for a man revered in the South for battling human rights and history to the Confederacy's last breath should be a big, mid-century modern slave cabin.

Complete with the rat droppings.


NO ONE EXPECTS that people charged with the education and welfare of a city's children should turn a school's temporary quarters into the Taj Mahal. One would expect, however, that any administrator who gave a rat's ass about children under his care would at least get rid of rats' feces before the Baton Rouge High move-in date.

One would expect that the gym would be bee-swarm free. That the football field wouldn't be infested with fire ants.

In most places in these United States, you'd expect that. Baton Rouge isn't one of those places.

Baton Rouge is one of those places where people -- more specifically, white people -- complain about how high their low taxes are, then happily pay thousands per year in "private-school taxes," which simultaneously allows them to destroy public education, not worry about having destroyed public education, and keep their kids away from the Mad Max moonscape they made of public education.

IN OTHER WORDS, no one cares whether anybody cleans up what the rats left behind.

And no one can say with any confidence that the brand-new Baton Rouge High -- awaiting the next crop of a city's best and brightest come fall 2012 -- won't, in due time, be just another neglected dump that teachers have to muck out before their students show up.

Simply '70s: Raydio rules the radio

Let's just say that Raydio -- eventually to be known as Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio --kicked serious butt in 1978. Here's "Jack and Jill" . . . on Simply '70s.

Boogie on. We insist.

3 Chords & the Truth: Doo WHACK a doo

It's been a long week, and another big episode of the Big Show is in the can.

You might have to whack it on the side a time or two, like this old radio of mine, but it should play just fine after you do. Such is life at 3 Chords & the Truth.

The Big Show is a classic, and it's an adventure, but sometimes you just have tuf gi9b itioe oasf j a sheporuj odwpd kd -- WHAP! -- you just have to give it a sharp rap on the top of the cabinet when it aioDUY DWEPIE Kopejf wpqoie jfdu r acct ewoip u -- WHAP! -- starts to act up.

THEN YOU'LL be good to go.

Really.

I promise.

Is there anything more I need to say about this week's episode of 3 )PUEd ipoidsdixm mp3oi2urdfpxocr31209 nm wskqjdalmd qoiu02p o 3rp00234pirpo3 -- WHAP! -- 3 Chords & the Truth, your bastion of good music and eclectic playlists on the Internets?

I didn't think so. Carry on.

Download.

Listen.

Ebnoyw dk Engoo -- WHAP!

Enjoy.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be theefkj e3wlw -- WHAP! -- there. Aloha.

Hail to the Rubber Band Man

Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer might run for president?

Cancel! (snap) Cancel! (snap) Cancel! (snap) Cancel! (snap) Cancel! (snap) Cancel! (snap) Cancel! (snap) Cancel! (snap) Cancel! (snap) Cancel! (snap) Cancel! (snap) Cancel! (snap)

FROM the Monroe (La.) News-Star:

Former U.S. Rep. and Gov. Buddy Roemer said he will announce within the next month whether he will be a candidate for the Republican nomination for President in 2012.

He said he’s “doing my homework,” but Roemer talks in an interview as if his mind is already made up. He’s discussed it with his family and board members of his Business First Bank and even has lined up a vice president to run the bank in his absence while campaigning.

“I’m getting ready to make my case with the American people,” he said Friday.

Roemer, who served one term as governor, 1988-92, before being squeezed out of a re-election bid by two candidates on political extremes — former Gov. Edwin Edwards and neo-Nazi and ex-Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke — said he’s working on a message that he believes would “wake America up.”

“As a banker, as a businessman, I thought I’d read President Obama’s budget a couple of months ago. It was a mistake,” he said. “He’s got a deficit every single year, smaller ones at first but three-quarters of a trillion dollars in the third year. By the 10th year the deficit is $1.4 trillion and the deficits are higher in the out years.”

This is a coffeepot

This is a coffeepot.

A coffeepot is what one uses to brew coffee. Not a "coffeemaker," a coffeepot. On a stove.

Making coffee in a coffeemaker is like leaving your children to be reared by a nanny. They might come out OK, but why did you bother having them in the first place?

Coffeepots are hands on. Coffeepots, especially in this Coffeemaker Age, make a statement. They stand out from the robotic hustling mob.

COFFEEPOTS are sacramental. Coffeepots are all about pouring a cup with the communion of saints, many of whom boiled a kettle of water and poured it into a coffeepot, where the hot water kissed the chocolate-hued grounds, then dripped into manifest destiny.

A coffeepot is grandma and grandpa. A coffeemaker is . . . is what, exactly?

This right here, friend, is a coffeepot. It seems to long predate Joe DiMaggio's first commercial for Mr. Coffee (he says, spitting on the ground, but never the grounds).

NOT ONLY is this a drip coffeepot, this is the finest example of a drip pot I've ever seen. It's made of heavy aluminum, and it wasn't made to wear out. Ever.

Mrs. Favog and I found it last weekend at an Omaha estate sale. The price -- $10. And now it once again fulfills its manifest destiny.

That would be making a damned fine cup of joe.

The 3rd I yi yi

Sometimes, having 20/20/20 vision isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Ask that Iraqi-born professor at New York University -- the one with a camera in the back of his head. Actually, make that the art professor and performance artist who used to have a camera implanted in the back of his head as part of a little something he's calling "The 3rd I."

Like I said, sometimes 20/20/20 vision isn't all that.

HERE'S THE LATEST on the trials of being a performance artist, as reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education the other day:

An NYU professor triggered a debate about campus privacy in November when he decided to implant a camera in the back of his head for a year-long art project.

Now the professor, Wafaa Bilal, faces a much bigger obstacle than students who might not want their pictures taken. His body is rejecting part of the implanted device.

The Iraqi-born artist underwent surgery on Friday to remove a section of the camera apparatus, which is rigged to snap a picture every 60 seconds and publish the image on a Web site set up for the project. The pictures are also displayed on monitors in a physical exhibit at a museum in Doha, Qatar.

“I’m determined to continue with it,” Mr. Bilal, an assistant arts professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, said on Monday.

Under its initial configuration, the camera was mounted on three posts. Each led to a titanium base that was implanted between Mr. Bilal’s skin and skull. The procedure was done by a body-modification artist at a tattoo shop in Los Angeles. But the setup caused constant pain, because his body rejected one of the posts, despite treatment with antibiotics and steroids. So Mr. Bilal had that post surgically removed, leaving the other two intact.

THE COMPLICATIONS involved in attaching a camera to one's head have been well known for at least five decades, though miniaturization and advanced technology have made the procedure more and more feasible.

Above, we see a photo of an early attempt at what Bilal is attempting. Unfortunately, this late-1950s subject did not survive the surgery to remove this RCA TK-41 color camera.

Kinescopes at 11.

Simply '70s: Turning the world on with her smile

Fall 1970: I dunno . . . yeah, Mary Tyler Moore was great as Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show a few years back, but is anybody really gonna buy a show about a "career woman"?

I give it half a season.

Who dat mad about dat Saints coach?

Sean Payton bought a house.

Well, lots of people buy houses, albeit lots fewer than before the economy blew up. But what makes this deal by the New Orleans Saints head coach stand out has to do with that old real-estate saw -- "Location, location, location."

In this case, the location of the Payton family's new residence is suburban Dallas.

But, according to Payton and the Saints, the coach isn't going anywhere. Well, professionally. Physically, the fam is hauling butt to north Texas, while Payton keeps a New Orleans-area place to crash during the workweek.

Most places, this isn't a massive issue. Bad PR form on Payton's part, but not a massive issue.

Then again, most places ain't Louisiana, and especially ain't New Orleans.

YOU'D EXPECT a certain amount of fan grousing anywhere. That's what sports fans do -- act like total fanatics. Likewise, everywhere has a certain set percentage of cranks and doofuses.

It's just that, in the Gret Stet, the percentage is a little on the high side.

OK . . . a lot on the high side.

You can tell that when you're reading stuff like this in the newspaper. By someone employed there. Paid good money (well, at least money) to produce stuff like this.

Thus, we have the spectacle of a "sports correspondent" for the Houma Courier/Thibodaux Daily Comet writing with such vehemence agin' a carpetbaggin' coach that one almost can picture Red Man juice flying from his twitching lips as he beat the hell out of his keyboard:

It seems the Paytons never wanted to live in Louisiana from the outset.

As a life-long Louisiana resident, this move by the Paytons tells me that they never liked our state or our way of life.

We have to deal with hurricanes and the BP oil spill has hurt our economy, but Louisiana always bounces back.

It is going to be hard to believe Payton when he promotes New Orleans or Louisiana when his family lives elsewhere.

If I was a Louisiana company that uses Payton as a spokesman, I would drop him immediately.

THAT'LL SHOW that Yankee son of a bitch! I bet he thinks he's better'n us.

Oh, wait.

I don't look at this move as Payton's first step to eventually working with the Dallas Cowboys. I look at it as an insult to New Orleans and our state. I guess we are just not good enough for the Paytons.

THERE you go, podna.

Of course, by that line of reasoning (such as it is), you also could argue the Gret Stet and its benighted citizenry "are just not good enough" for thousands upon thousands of its native sons and daughters -- and I am among that ever-growing number -- who willingly have chosen to move not only their families but themselves the hell out of not only New Orleans, but out of Louisiana altogether.

It happens . . . particularly in states that live their civic lives (such as they are) at the top of all the bad national lists and the bottom of all the good ones.

In other words, fat, disproportionately violent and uneducated is no way to go through life. Or have your kids think is normal.

That's a cruel way to put it, but what the hell other verdict is being delivered by the cold, hard facts of demography? What other verdict is being delivered by the history of a state perpetually unable to effectively govern itself?

What other verdict is being delivered by endemic political corruption? By lack of opportunity for its college graduates (underrepresented though they might be as a percentage of total population)?

AND THEN you have the disaster area that is New Orleans. Oh . . . and there was a hurricane there, too.

Listen, all you have to do is look at the state budget, and then look at the kind of racial mau-mauing surrounding the potential merger of one really bad mostly black New Orleans college into a mediocre mostly white one -- and then wonder what the hell percentage is there in such a dysfunctional civic landscape?

You could, but folks in my home state would rather work themselves into high dudgeon that some fellow from California who went to college in Illinois has not come to see life in the Gret Stet as the ultimate meaning of life. Face it, some folk just ain't gonna embrace the suck.

And when you think about it -- which Louisianians don't . . . and won't -- perhaps the biggest part of that never-ending suck is that there is not one chromosome of introspection in the Louisiana genome.

Not one.

This explains a lot. Including, probably, Sean Payton's real-estate transactions.

Simply '70s: Oh, man. Like . . .wow!

The hippies were right.

The s*** really was good that year, man. I could have sworn I saw a little dude driving a motorboat around the crapper.

But, like, that's impossible, man.

Pass the Bugles and the Boone's Farm, would you?

The bosses of me

Scout the Dog (left) and Molly the Dog happily pose inside the semiwarm house Tuesday on a frigid, icy Omaha afternoon.

They tell me it beat going outside -- it was, like, 1 below zero at the time -- that it seemed to amuse me, and that they try to be indulgent toward their pets. I can't speak for Mrs. Favog, but this pet is grateful for his masters' beneficence.

Olbermann heads to Caffeine Dreams

This just in on the latest career move by former left-wing MSNBC flamethrower Keith Olbermann. No, not the Current TV gig . . . the next one:

Feb. 27, 2013

OMAHA -- Firebrand cable-TV personality Keith Olbermann today announced to passing traffic on a frigid street corner in this Midwestern city that he will stage yet another media comeback next week, thumbtacking typewritten "special comment" fliers to the bulletin board at a popular coffee shop.

The former Current TV host and longtime liberal icon said his latest basic-cable falling out was a "blessing in disguise" which would allow him to explore "the postmodern, anticontextual steam-punk alternative-media scene" at Caffeine Dreams, 4524 Farnam St.

Making an obscene gesture at a pickup truck sporting a red, white and blue "God's Own Party" bumper sticker, Olbermann said he expected to schedule his post-technological postings for Wednesdays at 10:35 a.m. -- give or take 20 minutes, depending on whether the No. 2 Metro bus makes it to the 46th and Dodge bus stop on time. The midmorning commentaries are to coincide with the onetime opinion-maker's weekly triple brevé with an extra espresso shot and fat-free half-and-half.

Olbermann exited Current unexpectedly three months ago, after calling former Vice-President Al Gore, founder of the cable channel, a "poorly-endowed, fat-ass, proto-Republican enviro-phony whose inconvenient truth, alas, was that he wasn't man enough for a fine side of Tennessee ham like Tipper." Gore immediately dismissed the outspoken TV personality after having his Secret Service detail brand "AM NOT NEITHER" on Olbermann's forehead.

That led to a monthslong disappearance for the TV talker, who previously, according to one former colleague, "napalmed his bridges" at CNN, ESPN and MSNBC before landing at Current TV in February 2011. At the time, cable-TV analysts were optimistic that Olbermann easily would be able to increase the channel's viewership a thousandfold, to a daily audience of roughly 30,000.

Those predictions turned out to be wildly overstated, and tensions between Olbermann and Gore mounted proportionately with Current's ratings disappointments.

Olbermann turned up at the Omaha Greyhound station a week ago, paying various transients a dollar to tell their "homies," as the fading TV star put it, about his post-mass media comeback on the Caffeine Dreams bulletin board.

When contacted by a reporter, a coffee-shop barista said she thought it would be all right if Olbermann posted his special comments on the bulletin board, so long as the owner OK'd it and it didn't keep customers from getting to the self-serve café Americano carafes.

Baby, it's cold outside . . .

This weather can't last . . .

(But baby, it's cold outside)

It really can't stay . . .
(But baby, it's cold outside)

Got to go away . . .
(But baby, it's cold outside)

Last few days have been . . .
(Been hoping the heat'd kick in)

Nothin' but ice . . .
(Warm air would be so very nice)

My mother will start to worry . . .
(She probably froze in a hurry)

My father will be pacing the floor . . .
(He's such a hypothermic bore)

So really I'd better scurry . . .
(Beautiful. You'd die a death quite icy)

Well, maybe just half a drink more . . .
(Turn on the weather while I pour)

The neighbors might think . . .
(Baby, it's bad out there)

Say what's in this drink?
(I thought it was antifreeze)

I wish I knew how . . .
(Your eyes are frozen open now)

To break this Arctic spell . . .
(Here's a wool cap, it'll feel just swell)

I ought to say no no . . .
(Your chattering teeth are getting worser)

At least I'm going to say I tried . . .
(But, hey, your battery died!)

I really can't stay . . .
(Listen . . . you'd freeze, no doubt)

Baby it's cold outside!

'Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?'

If a radio station doesn't make a sound because the computer crashes, will anybody be there to not hear anything?

Or whatever.

We're getting closer and closer to an answer we radio-lovers don't want to hear, I'm afraid, in this world where technology can replace human beings but has no power to replace itself when it dies.

Back in the days when Neanderthals roamed the earth and played vinyl records in broadcasting studios powered by vacuum tubes, the only thing that could keep a radio station off the air for a day and a half would be a transmitter failure, a fallen tower or the death of the mastodons running inside the giant mastodon wheels powering the generators at the electric plant.

NOW, IN OUR modern, technically advanced times, all it takes is a little computer crash to bring down a radio station like KRNU at the University of Nebraska, according to the Omaha World-Herald:

A computer error originally made it look as if the station, 90.3 KRNU, had lost everything over the weekend, said Rick Alloway, a UNL broadcasting professor in charge of the station.

While the first check of the computer system that holds all of the station’s files suggested a hard-drive crash, the error was later attributed to a more minor hardware failure.

IN RADIO, at least, progress means willingly turning oneself into a technological quadriplegic, as it were, one dead battery away from being trapped, helpless, in a marooned wheelchair. Or studio, as the case may be.

God forbid we give a live DJ a stack of compact discs, tapes or records and tell him or her to create some magic. What, did the HAL 9000 running KRNU eject all the staff out the airlock and into the man-killing Nebraska cold?

"I know I've made some very poor decisions recently," the automation probably told Alloway, "but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you."

THAT'S just what it told every other station as the bodies piled up outside the airlock.

"Daisy, Daisy . . . give me . . . your . . . answer . . . do. . . ."

Satan goes by 'Anonymous'

Click on E-mails to read.

Satan never sleeps.

That's because he's too busy leaving anonymous comments on blogs and websites.

If you're one of those people inclined to doubt the existence of hell and the devil , look at these comments I got today on what I thought was a fairly whimsical post on the Sex Pistols and the state of the Establishment, circa January 1978.


IT'S A HELL of a thing, no?

Obviously, "Anonymous" is one disturbed individual, and an angry one, too. Obviously, this is why I moderate comments to Revolution 21's Blog for the People. Obviously, these got deleted.

And -- obviously -- I'm now making an example of them . . . and the sick soul who has nothing better to say than this.

Where does such rage come from? How do you explain such an all-consuming, intense hatred of all humanity? And can anyone deny this poor soul exists in some very real, albeit private (for now), manifestation of hell?

Mental illness or some manner of deviant socialization can get you most of the way to an explanation, but not all the way to one. It doesn't -- at least not in my opinion -- get you all the way to that degree of nihilism, that level of hatred of the human race itself. Mental illness or sociological deficits can explain the brokenness, but neither can explain the phenomenon of evil.

What we have here is evil -- and all sociology or psychology can shed light upon are the fissures that allow evil to penetrate the soul and do what it will. This is what Satan looks like when he thinks the cameras aren't rolling; this is what he sounds like when he's at a loss for words.

I SUPPOSE my disturbed correspondent is some sort of punk who -- again, obviously -- takes issue with the aforementioned post. He, she or it is a cautionary tale of what can happen when one takes this punk thing entirely too seriously.

Especially that "I am an antichrist" part in the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the U.K." Not the Antichrist, mind you, but an antichrist.

The real Antichrist will be a much better writer with a much larger vocabulary.

Note to the convention and visitors people

Dear Omaha Convention
and Visitors Bureau:

I love your website. You're right, there's plenty to do and see in our vibrant city -- people will love it here. They might decide to move here, even.

Just one thing, though. You need to get folks in the door.

While I think your website does a great job in that respect, there is one glaring oversight. See that "Omaha weather" thingy at the top right of the page? Get rid of it from October 1 through May 1.

"Hey, people, come to Omaha! Look! Right now, it's 2 DEGREES!!!"

In the PR and travel biz, I think that's known, technically, as a "non-starter." Unless, of course, you're marketing our fine area exclusively to the fine citizens of Barrow, Alaska, and International Falls, Minn.

Love and kisses,

Me

Simply '70s: The fascist regime strikes back

This must have been from 1978, this Today show report by Jack Perkins on NBC. The Sex Pistols were embarking on their first American tour, amid copious Establishment wailing and cultural gnashing of teeth.

My God, what if they cursed on stage? Spat on the audience? Trashed a hotel room?

Next thing you know, they'd be shooting the telly. What? Elvis did that years before?

Oh.

STILL, THE ADULT self, some 33 years removed from his teenage hormones, suspects that Establishment Jack was pretty much on target. The Pistols were boorish, dissipated louts of limited technical ability who probably did coarsen the culture, for what that's worth anymore.

I know this; you know this. Jack Perkins certainly knew this, and wasn't shy about telling his horrified TV audience -- the one sitting at the breakfast table putting a little nip of something in the morning coffee, smoking cigarettes and plotting out how to screw that little s*** at the office.

And then that young little thing after work, being that the missus was visiting the mother-in-law.

In your heart, you know I'm right. Somewhere in my cynical, cynical heart, I know Perkins was right.

THAT SAID, how about we throw the old fascist out of a moving limo on the way to the show?

3 Chords & the Truth: All teary eyed

It would be a cryin' shame if you bypassed this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

I would imagine many tears would be shed once you found out what you missed on the Big Show -- and you would find out. I'd make sure of that.

I know where you live.

As you might have deduced, tears is the theme of our first big set on the Big Show. Tears, tears and more tears.

WE GOT folks denying them, attributing them to the Almighty, eradicating them from Earth, drowning in them and counting them. It's a veritable weep-a-thon.

Or not.

Frankly, I can't imagine anybody crying over this particular 3 Chords & the Truth, unless it's tears of joy we're talkin' about. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Cross my heart and hope to cry.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Geaux Tigers! (thud)

No, they weren't making that s*** up. At least not when they made Animal House in the late '70s.

Welcome to a slice of Louisiana State University as it was when I attended there. As a matter of fact The Real Animal House (above) was filmed there when I was a freshman. And the film didn't touch on half of the stories we heard about Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity -- the Dekes.

There was the time the Dekes got stiffed by a sorority for a formal, and then they sent over boxes of doughnuts, and. . . . No, can't tell that one.

And then, one time the Dekes. . . . No, can't tell that one either.

But there was the one thing about the deaf school and transistor radios. And the "generic" homecoming display for one (among many) of Jerry Stovall's lesser products as LSU football coach. I think that one got them on probation.

The only thing you have to know about your Mighty Favog, though, is that he considered all this pretty normal. Back in the day.

(thud)

Beware Idol dreams. They may come true.

It's not amazing that Omaha boy Tim Halperin made it to Hollywood on American Idol -- I'm sure the audition for Westside High School's Amazing Technicolor Show Choir was a more arduous affair.

No, really. I've seen ATSC in action. It's, like, the real-life Glee.

What will be truly amazing is if young Mr. Halperin survives Idol's relentless campaign to hammer round pegs into square prime-time holes in one artistic piece.


THE KID obviously has talent, and the kid probably could have a nice career in front of him.

But what the kid has to fear is the giant American Idolizer machine that could turn him into the next big star like that blue-eyed soul guy from a few years back who we never saw again and whose name I can't remember, who last was seen playing an Indian-casino ballroom somewhere in flyover country.

Tune in next week.


P.S.: Oh, wait. I remembered the guy's name. Taylor Hicks.

Top Smear

There is a good reason the entire world hated the British Empire before it hated the American one.

This is it.

Obviously, wot we have here is a typical case of unfortunate British dentistry. It has led to a nasty oral infection, which has gone straight to the collective brain of not only the cast and crew of Top Gear, but also the entire British Broadcasting Corporation.


AND NOW it'll have to come out. The procedure is known by the coalition government as "austerity measures."

Before going under the mallet, however, producers of Top Gear issued the following non-apology apology to the Mexican government, which had condemned the program as "xenophobic":

“We are sorry if we have offended some people, but jokes centred on national stereotyping are a part of Top Gear’s humour, and indeed a robust part of our national humour. Our own comedians make jokes about the British being terrible cooks and terrible romantics, and we in turn make jokes about the Italians being disorganised and over dramatic; the French being arrogant and the Germans being over organised. When we do it, we are being rude, yes, and mischievous, but there is no vindictiveness behind the comments.

“This stereotyping humour is in itself a factor in the tolerance which the ambassador states is so prevalent in Britain.

“In line with that tradition, stereotype based comedy is allowed within BBC guidelines in programmes where the audience has clear expectations of that being the case, as indeed it is with Top Gear. Whilst it may appear offensive to those who have not watched the programme or who are unfamiliar with its humour, the Executive Producer has made it clear to the Ambassador that that was absolutely not the show’s intention.”

IN OTHER WORDS, "We British are a bunch of pricks. Do you have a problem with that? Now you may resume your siesta."

Next on BBC 1, Gordon Ramsay tells Dago jokes whilst beating his kitchen help to death with a frozen haggis.

Simply '70s: The place to be

I lived in Baton Rouge in 1970. And Baton Rouge being Baton Rouge, we would not get a full-time ABC affiliate until the next October.

Therefore, I was robbed of at least one full season -- and probably more -- of classic Friday-night television goodness. But I'm not bitter.

Much.

The snow tree

Winter ain't bad, once you get used to it.

A philosopher or something once said that. My back may be up to posting an op-ed counterpoint on this subject . . . once the acetaminophen kicks in.

As red as the driven snow

It's a windy, snowy and frosty night in Omaha, where the Midwest fades out and the wild and woolly Plains take hold.

A night like this, here in the rolling hills of eastern Nebraska, reminds one of being a Who, safely stowed away in Horton's icebox. A day like the one preceding this February prairie night reminds one of . . . being a Who, safely stowed away in Horton's icebox.

With the light left on.

Horton, by the way, never defrosts his icebox. He probably should take care of that.

He probably will . . . this spring.

WHENEVER I MENTION life in the Gret White Nawth to family and friends back in Louisiana -- particularly the unrelenting rituals of the dead of a Nebraska winter, like braving the blowing snow . . . dressing in many layers . . . shoveling the snow . . . reshoveling what's drifted -- the reaction is nearly universal. Horror is what it is.

People think I'm nuts. People think the North Pole must be pretty close to Omaha, and that nobody in his right mind is gonna live at the damn North Pole.

And regular snowfall is a sure sign of God's wrath upon the terminally stupid.

Of course, this reaction comes from a state where the last white Democrat will change his party registration to "R" by 2013. That is, if the world doesn't come to an end in December 2012, all life extinguished by a rogue glacier sliding southward from somewhere near . . . Omaha.

Maybe St. Paul. All dem places up Nawth is all de same, cher -- cold, cold.

Frankly, I think the Republicanization of my home state somehow may the be source and the sustenance of the Southern horror at all things cold and snowy. Snow, after all, is socialist.

Think about it: It matters not a whit whether one has the finest, most meticulously manicured lawn in the entire upper Midwest or whether yours is a yard ravaged by crabgrass and unsightly patches of dirt the same shade of dingy brown as a 1950s Soviet apartment block. When the snow comes, it's all the same.

IT'S A PATENTLY leftist redistribution of beauty -- No Yard Left Behind. Every yard is covered by a uniform, regimented blanket of socialist snow.

The finest yard is brought down to the proletarian level of the most humble, and the most meager of lawns is -- via some sort of meteorological affirmative action -- lifted up to the same level as that of a McMansion.

Snow ain't white; it's pink. As in "pinko."

Not only that, ice is a communist plot, too, socializing the placement of asses over heads without regard to socioeconomic status, skill, income, educational achievement or race or national origin. A broken bourgeois foot is pretty much the same as a pretzeled proletarian one.

Stuff like that really pousses the cafés of the class-conscious capitalists back in the Gret Stet.

Likewise, the Northern embrace of socialist ice -- like that of pinko snow -- renders useless the advantages of a solid, upper middle-class Cadillac Escalade over that of a poor-white-trash '82 Chevy Caprice.

While the Escalade may get started quicker on an icy surface, neither it nor the Caprice will fare any differently trying to stop at the traffic light at the bottom of a long hill. Arguably, the advantage here goes to the cash-strapped mope driving the Caprice -- if he T-bones, say, an Escalade . . . so what?

ASSUMING liability coverage, the Caprice driver is out nothing but a crappy old car. The bourgeois pig in the Caddy is out . . . well, he's out the monetary difference between a heavily depreciated, really expensive Caddy and what it costs to replace it with a brand-new one. You could buy, like, six '82 Caprices with that.

Remember, it ain't "black ice" that's your problem, Buster, it's "Red" ice.

And the dictatorship of the Gret White Nawthun proletariat laughs at your pretentious capitalist illusions of superiority, Bubba.

It all makes sense if you're nuts

Punxsutawney, Pa., is all snowed in, and Phil, being a sensible groundhog, refuses to come out and see (or not see) anything, so America has been forced to go to Plan B.

So . . . Glenn Beck has come out from under the rock where he keeps his survivalist provisions, only to see the shadow of THE COMING INSURRECTION.

It works something like this. Hang on to something.

Tunisia is in flames because the Muslins are unhappy. That spread to Egypt, which is going down. That's spreading to Jordan, where there are riots, and it's going down. Libya's in flames, too, which the lamestream media isn't going to tell you about, because it's run by the Muslins, or communists, or Nazis or something.

Yemen's in flames, and so is Pakistan, but he's run out of little flamey magnet thingies to put on the chalkboard, so trust us on this. Iran's in flames, and that means they're going to come after Saudi Arabia, another of our "frenemies," because them Saudi royals are hardcore scumbags, who you know have to be shaking in their sandals while their camels are scared spitless.

And then you got Lebanon . . . in flames. The Gaza strip . . . in flames. But the Muslin Brotherhood Muslins hate the Hezbollah Muslins who are just like the Iranian Shiite Muslins, so they're canceling one another out or something . . . but they all have it in for the Jews in Israel.

SO YOU GOT the Shiites pushing on Israel one way and the Sunnis pushing on Israel the other, and the Chinamen is thinkin' . . . "WHOA! KNOCK THAT STUFF OFF, MAHMOUD!"

And then the Chinamen go "Ching chong ching chong chang bing bong sham-a-lama-ding-dong. . . ." Oh, wait, that's what Rush Limbaugh said the Chinese said, so never mind. . . .

Anyway, you got China pushing one way, and then the flames spread to Spain, which is on fire, and come to think of it, so is Great Britain and Ireland . . . FIRE! . . . and you don't think the radical Islamists in England and France are going to sit on their hands with all that fire all over the chalkboard, do you?

SEE, you got flamey chaos in the Middle East, and China's pushing west. And then you got abject flames on the chalkboard that is Europe -- no, look, there's Europe on a chalkboard -- and Russia's gonna start moving on Europe thataway, because the Muslins blowed s*** up in Moscow, and what that shows us is that what Tunisia really is is Sarajevo 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand got offed by Gavrilo Princip, which started World War I, because everybody's pushing on Israel, and the Jews got the Bomb now.

We'll have more on how This Is All Gonna Blow Up Good right after these messages from Goldline and Food Insurance.