From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE
I Believe the Children Are Our Yadda Yadda Yadda…
Hi, kids! Hey, shaddup and siddown and turn off your #!%#!@ phones. I got a brief spiel that'll help you get through, y'know, school and stuff or whatever.
You've probably already gotten plenty of advice from grownups about "studying hard" and "paying attention in class" and "thinkin' about your future" and "helping others" and "Carpe Diem!" and "keeping your pants up" and all that. It's crap, most of it, and the sooner you develop a natural gag reflex to such drivel, the better.
Yes, you need to listen to your elders. But you must carefully choose the elders to which you listen. If you choose wisely, you can party your ass off and glide through life on a fluffy cloud of ignorant bliss. If you choose poorly, you'll be doomed to a life of thoughtful analysis and good works and fact-checking and reality-based reason, and I think we know where that leads: SOCIALISM! So here are some time-tested strategies you can use to befuddle your liberal activist teachers into giving you excellent grades in exchange for, well, for you not making their life a living hell. Here we go:
- For reading assignments you don't feel like doing, repeat after Senator James Inhofe: "I don’t have to read it, or know what’s in it. I'm going to oppose it anyways."
- When presented with a confusing or uncomfortable fact that might require you to broaden your mind, repeat after Congressman Joe Wilson: "You lie!"
- When you get an answer wrong in front of all your classmates and you look like an idiot, follow the example of Senator Jon Kyl and insist that your remark "…was not intended to be a factual statement."
- When your teacher reminds you he or she can send you to detention for your armpit farts and/or flicking boogers at the blackboard, remind him or her of the words of the current Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, John Boehner: "Hell no you can't!"
- When your teacher assigns homework, follow the example of House Majority Leader Eric Canter and insist that any new homework you receive must be offset by cuts in existing homework.
- And if all else fails, take a page from the playbook of Senator John McCain and blame all your problems on illegal immigrants.
Keep these tips handy and before you know it you'll be badgering, bullying and confusing your schoolmarms and masters to straight A's and domination over your scholastically-curious (blech!) peers.
Good luck during your school year, and...GO [YOUR TEAM HERE]!!!
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Note: Today's note walked out due to a particularly nasty subject-verb disagreement. We regret the inconvenience.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Talk Like A Pirate Day: 6
Days `til the 23rd annual Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival in Tunbridge: 17
Number of people who watched President Obama's jobs speech last Thursday evening: 31.4 million
(Source: Nielsen via MSNBC)
Percent of senior managers in, respectively, China, the U.S. and Britain who are women: 32%, 23%, 19%
(Source: The Economist via The Week)
Percent of the U.S. population over 12 that currently smokes pot: 6.9%
(Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration)
Percent chance that calling occasional pot smoking "substance abuse" and/or a "mental health" problem is highly misleading: 100%
(Source: The real world)
Percent of Americans who have, respectively, a fish or a bird as a pet: 11%, 7%
(Source: Parade)
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 184 (including 4 Plagues and 1 youthful indiscretion). Soul Protection Factor 12 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Milk Bone Jenga Tower!
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CHEERS to a "battle royale." That's how The Boston Globe describes the showdown between Democrat Elizabeth Warren and Republican Scott Brown for the U.S. Senate next year, assuming Warren wins the Democratic nomination. This morning, she's making it official:
“The pressures on middle class families are worse than ever, but it is the big corporations that get their way in Washington,” she says. “I want to change that. I will work my heart out to earn the trust of the people of Massachusetts. Declaring, “I‘m going to do this,“ she said those families have been “chipped at, hacked at, squeezed and hammered for a generation now, and I don’t think Washington gets it.”
Behold the---and these are the coolest words I'll type all week---official Elizabeth Warren for Senate campaign web site. My laptop just gave me a pop-up message: "Ow ow ow---stop squeezing me so hard!" Sorry.
CHEERS to setting the record straight. Ronald Reagan's daughter, Patti Davis, watched the GOP debate at her dad's library/museum last week, and we're glad to see she's not letting them get away with hijacking his legacy. From her essay in Time:
Note to Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and especially Newt Gingrich---you can invoke my father's name until your tongues fall out, but you will never be anywhere near his shadow. This isn't a political pronouncement on my part. I didn't agree with all of my father's positions and policies, and I would never consider myself a political commentator. I'm the daughter of a man with deep character, who left a huge imprint on this world. […]
The moment that would have broken my father's heart was the moment when applause broke out at the mention of more than 200 executions ordered by Rick Perry in Texas. It was stunning and brought tears to my eyes. This is what we've come to? That we applaud at executions?
No, ma'am. Not we. Just them.
JEERS to same bigotry, different day. This time it's North Carolina's turn to vote discrimination against its fellow citizens into the state constitution. The Senate approved the move yesterday 30-16. Of course, all those odious amendments will be voided once the Supreme Court gets hold of the Prop. 8 case and rules it unconstitutional. (Anthony Kennedy is actually enlightened on this issue, plus California Judge Vaughn Walker's Prop. 8 ruling is so potent you have to wear welder's goggles just to read it.) Meanwhile, not to be outdone, a letter writer to The Portland Press Herald has hit on a magic mushroom-induced brilliant idea---albeit one with the oddest conclusion I've seen in a long time---for accommodating those uppity equality-seeking Americans who happen to have been born gay. He suggests implementing…
…what we have in the Armed Forces. They have a rank called warrant officer. It is above enlisted and below commissioned; however, it has all the privileges, legal and otherwise, associated with an officer. … In my opinion, we should have a "warrant" plan for homosexual couples. It would provide them with what they want under the law, but it is not marriage, because, by definition, marriage is the union of two opposites. I have never seen two light bulbs touch each other and work.
Well, then, honey, you really need to focus on relaxing your sphincter. But I definitely give your "warrant plan" two snaps and a twist. A sea of men and women in uniform at gay weddings is like a dream come true. (Who knew right-wing nuts could be so creative!)
CHEERS to understanding the gravity of the situation. This is cool---NASA is sending a couple satellites to the moon to map out its gravitational field, and they're letting school kids in on the action:
And in a twist, the satellites are also each carrying a MoonKAM, NASA's first-ever equipment dedicated to solely to educational outreach, which will allow middle school students around the country to make special requests of which areas on the moon the satellites should photograph while they're up there.
The #1 request so far: "Teacher's butt!"
CHEERS to real men in the big chair. On this date in 1901, 42-year-old Vice President (and one of People magazine's Sexiest Hunks of the New Century) Theodore Roosevelt became Commander-in-Chief when William McKinley died from a gunshot wound. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm really, really, really glad Bush stayed healthy.
JEERS to ClipGate. I swear, the Murdoch empire can't melt into the primordial ooze fast enough. Problem is…the ooze doesn’t want 'em, either. Their latest idiocy: the New York Post and Fox News are blaming the White House for the American Jobs Act. Not the contents of the bill, mind you, but the fact that a draft of it was held together with a clip. Yes, President Obama was criticized for holding up a bill held together with one of those ubiquitous black metal clips, which all great American institutions, large and small, use every day to bind documents and receipts and reports and analyses and memoranda and, yes, sometimes to hold flimsy coffee filters in place in the break room. In fact, let's take a look at where binder clips and the Murdoch empire appear on the list of Things People Find Useful:
1. Duct tape
2. Swiss Army knife
3. Binder clips
4. WD-40
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450,628. Toe jam
450,629. Murdoch empire
450,630. Muammar Khaddafi's "Get Out of Jail Free" card
Well, in their defense, at least they're not dead last.
P.S. Dammit---upstaged by Belgium AGAIN!!!
CHEERS to the most mangled lyrics in music history (if you don’t count Feliz Navidad or Louie Louie). On September 14, 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote The Star Spangled Banana after witnessing the British bombardment of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, which apparently ran just a teensy bit overtime. When he signed the 1931 law making it our national anthem, Herbert Hoover performed his greatest act of compassion while in office. Namely, not making us sing the other three frickin' verses. Much obliged.
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Five years ago in C&J: September 14, 2006
JEERS to yesterday's You Can't Be Serious moment. Hey everybody, look! George "Macaca" Allen is hosting an ethnic rally! Cool---my ancestors are Swisscaca. What kind of Caca are you? More important, how come the food's late?? (I can't help it---my people are sticklers on punctuality.)
JEERS to touchy madmen. Goodness gracious, Saddam, where are your manners? At his trial yesterday, confined to a giant gerbil cage, he said---quoting here---"We will crush your heads!" My question: who's "we?" No Doritos for you tonight with that snippy attitude, buster.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to a further de-escalation of hostilities. Well, folks, the world is one Civil War-era cannonball safer today, after Fort Wayne police bade an explosive farewell to a six-incher that sat in a farmer's barn for 50 years. No one knows how the hell it got there, but they dated it to 1861. To everyone's relief, it turned out to be ammunition for Jefferson Davis's doomed "Confetti Cannon Brigade." Now you know why they so quickly relegated him to ribbon-cuttings.
Have a nice Wednesday. Ponder your place in this crazy world. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
In a series of reports in today's edition of the journal Science, researchers describe Bill in Portland Maine as having a curious mix of primitive and modern features that could prompt experts to redraw the human family tree.
---The Los Angeles Times
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