A. Sign up for the local Adopt-A-Highway program outside Salem, OR like the American Nazi Party did. You get your own green signs, orange litter bags, and all the white trash you care to collect from your clubhouse.

B. Offer to share your bottle of fish wine from the Dalian Fisherman’s Song Maritime Biological Brewery in China, a company that plans to “clean, boil, and ferment fish for making wine.” A 40-ounce bottle wrapped in a paper bag, of course.

C. Go to Disneyland, because it will be filled with losers instead of winners. For the first time in 20 years someone from the winning Super Bowl team won’t shout, “I’m going to Disney World!” for a TV commercial. Maybe they’re going to Oregon with a bottle of fish wine.

D. All of the above

E. True.

When Richard Kral found himself trapped in his Audi, buried under an avalanche in the Slovak Tatra mountains, he started digging out with his hands. Remembering that he had 60 bottles of beer with him because he was going on vacation, he started drinking them…and urinating on the snow to melt it. Rescue teams found him drunk and staggering along a mountain path. (Note to self: Learn to like beer, it could save your life.)

First several Christian “family values” groups decided that the squishy SpongeBob SquarePants is gay because he sometimes holds hands with his pals Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy. C’mon now, even his name says he’s square. Then the new Education Secretary (bonus points if you know his or her name!) coerced PBS into not distributing an episode of the series Postcards From Buster because the animated bunny went to Vermont and ran into two highly animated — though not in the cartoon sense — lesbian couples. Now Stan Lee, the man who created Spiderman and the Hulk, says he’s going to animate Ringo Starr by turning him into “an evil-battling, Earth-saving though reluctant superhero with a great sense of rhythm.” A great sense of rhythm, huh? *wink* wink* Tinky Winky and Barney must be rolling over in their Pottery Barn-furnished love nest.

Seven elephants in Chiang Mai, Thailand are being potty trained. Handlers are teaching them to sit on “giant white toilets that can be flushed by pulling on a rope with a gentle tug of the trunk” to help rid the touristy elephant camp of unsightly droppings. All they need to make this work is a large bag of 30-lb M&Ms as incentives, a pallet of Kirkland toilet paper delivered daily, and a plunger that would make Al Bundy jealous.

– Scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have created petrified wood in a couple of days, a process that takes pokey ole Mother Nature, oh, a few million years. No word on what they’re going to do with the time saved, the petrified wood they made, or the government grant money they’re going to have to return when it’s discovered that this has no military significance.

– Dennis Bosley sent a postcard to his mother 37 years ago and it was just returned to him by the Post Office. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory thinks they can speed this process up so next time he’ll get it back in a matter of months.

– Drivers who are in a rush in Norway will soon have to pay $1,300 if they’re clocked doing 75 miles an hour in a 55-mph zone. Unless, of course, they can prove they were on the way to a Texas Longhorns football game (see below ), had to get home before their wood house petrified, or are delivering returned mail for the U.S. Postal Service.

Norwegian newspapers say people there are upset because during President Bush’s inaugural parade he and his family held up their right hands with their index and pinky fingers raised. To Norwegians this is the sign of the devil. To heavy metal fans it’s the same thing. To the Bush’s apparently it’s a sign of solidarity with the University of Texas Longhorns marching band.

NOTE TO NORWEGIANS: Don’t feel bad. To everyone outside of Texas (and possibly the red states) it’s considered the sign of the devil too.

Two Bundles of Joy – A woman in Brazil gave birth to a 16-pound 11-ounce baby, twice the size of your usual bundle of joy. To put this in perspective, that’s about the same weight as a bowling ball, a 6-month-old baby, two and a half full grown Chihuahuas, or enough coffee to make 1,068 cappuccinos.

Don’t Look Now – Marching band performers in yesterday’s inaugural parade in Washington, DC were told “Not to look directly at Bush while passing the presidential reviewing stand, not to look to either side and not to make any sudden movements.” Just in case standing behind a bullet-proof glass screen, riding in an armored limo, and having 10,000 security officers hanging around wasn’t enough to keep him safe.

First Jerry Springer-The Opera played to SRO (Screaming Room Only) crowds in London. Then BBC Two broadcast it despite what a spokesperson said were “fewer than 300 obscenities, even using the broadest definition of an offensive word.” Inspired by this success, producer Mark “I’m a Survivor” Burnett is threatening to turn Donald Trump’s The Apprentice into a Broadway musical. Mix a little bit of Hair with a touch of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and before you know it the audience will be leaving the theater humming, You’re Fired! George Hamilton, call your agent quick!

President Bush got a brand spanking new Cadillac DTS limo – the first one off the line, in fact – just in time to ride in the inaugural parade and wave like a queen. I mean, The Queen. Okay, like Paul Rogers being surrogate Freddie on the upcoming Queen reunion tour.

Meanwhile the Pope was given a new flame red Ferrari. Sure it’s only a toy, but hey, it will go great with his Popemobile Hot Wheels. vroooOOOOMMMM!

Airbus, hoping to keep a lock on the most appropriate airplane manufacturer’s name, threw a party to show off their excitedly named A380. It seats 550 people, with each person having less seat space than the Pope’s Ferrari. At least you don’t have to drive.

First there was the man in South Korea who last month had a 2-inch nail removed from his skull, one that had been there for four years without his knowing it. Now a man in Colorado had a 4-inch nail removed from his skull, though it had only been there for six days. At least he thought he had a toothache and went to the dentist. Entries for the Barely Human Pincushion Contest are still being accepted.

It was revealed yesterday that the Education Department (a wholly owned division of the United States Government) paid $240,000 to syndicated commentator Armstrong Williams to plug, promote, and otherwise shill for President Bush’s No Child Left Behind education program on his radio show and in his newspaper column. Why should he be the only one? I’m selling a blog item to the highest bidder. Don’t delay, go bid here.

No. 1 reason to show up at the presidential inauguration a half hour early – As a warm up to the swearing-in ceremony, Guy Hovis, a former singer on the Lawrence Welk Show and the director of Trent Lott’s Mississippi senate office, will perform Let the Eagle Soar. In case you were too busy being arrested and held without anyone letting you contact your lawyer to notice, this is the song written by outgoing Attorney General John Ashcroft which he sang in a video that became one of the most forwarded and laughed at Internet jokes, not to mention a high point of the soundtrack of Fahrenheit 9/11, though oddly it wasn’t included on the album. Go figure.

Here’s a video of the original performance

Contest winner – The sign on the toilet brush says: “Do not use for personal hygiene.”

One baby at a time – Chinese boy is the country’s 1.3 billionth person, 20 years after a one-child policy was introduced.

Watch what you eat, but don’t eat what you watch – Viewer sues Fear Factor for $2.5 million because he bumped his head on a doorway after watching contestants eat dead rats.

We definitely need better, more direct warnings – “WARNING: Reading these warning labels while standing on this ladder may cause injury or death.”

Amber Waves of Green – The ink hasn’t dried on the verdict and already the Fresno Massage Therapist has a book out about her affair with the Modesto Fertilizer Salesman. Witness: For the Prosecution of Scott Peterson by Amber Frey is the #2 book on amazon.com. No thanks. I’m waiting for the Collector’s Edition Boxed Set complete with tell-all books by her, each of the twelve jurors (including the two who were dismissed), and the guy who sold Peterson the cement. Now you know what to get me for my birthday.

Weather You Have a Job or Not – I’ve always said being a weatherperson is the world’s best job. Can you screw up at work 365 days a year and not only keep your job, but get a raise? Now it turns out this isn’t always true. The director general of Thailand’s Meteorological Department was fired yesterday for not issuing a tsunami warning. Expect to see him doing the weather on the 11:00 News on Channel 5 any day now.

Kelly Freas, who for years drew Alfred E. Neuman for Mad magazine, died yesterday. You remember Mad, it came before the TV show. Before the web site. Yes, it was even before Paul McCartney’s pre-Wings band. Hell, it was even before The Nation appropriated Alfred’s grin for George W. Bush. Just the other day the name Fester Carbuncle came to mind — please, don’t ask why — and I’m pretty sure it was a character out of Mad. Probably from Don Martin. Hey, it’s been a long time. But these things stick in our minds, cluttering it up and leaving little room for anything important like phone numbers, shopping lists, and our middle names. Some days I’m sure if one more thing sticks in my head my social security number’s going to fall out the other side. To this day when I walk into a bathroom with a paper towel dispenser that has a lever to unwind it off a roll I think of the Mad cartoon where the man walks into a bathroom and sees the sign that says, “Pull down. Tear up” so he does — he pulls down the dispenser and tears it up. You had to be there.

I tried to introduce the Tacky Xmas Decoration and Grand Highly Illuminated House Tour to San Francisco with limited success. I started it in Richmond, VA years ago and it’s become a huge Christmas tradition. Go figure. The Bay Area houses aren’t anywhere near as big, though there are some good ones. Check ’em out here. I posted the list on Craig’s List and only had a few responses. The media didn’t care. Except in Richmond and Charleston. Lets call it an out of town opening.



– Article in Richmond Times Dispatch

– Another in the TD

– One in the Charleston Post-Courier

Welcome to my brand new blog. Hard to say what will end up here, but hey, I guess we’ll find out. It’s an offshoot of The Mad Dog Weekly, where my weekly humor column has been appearing for eons. Or so it seems. Okay, 465+ columns over 10 years. Hey, how do you think I feel?