National Pork Board – Lola's Curmudgeonly Musings

I Beg Your Barton . . . Just Because

“I always knew I shouldn’t have said that.” ~ Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

If it’s Friday, it must mean leftovers . . .

Boy oh boy. Where do I start? It’s been quite a week for inanity in action (say that three times in a row really fast: inanity in action inanity in action inanity in action). The Tea Party, the oil spill, the Republicans, the African lions, the Wal Mart shoppers . . .

Attention Wal Mart shoppers: In Salinas, California, police have arrested a couple who tried to sell their six-month-old baby outside a Wal Mart. Going price? Twenty-five dollars. Just how much meth does $25 buy? It goes without saying that the two were high when police got to their home.

In Kingsport, Tennessee, a woman being charged with DUI told police that she would test possible for a few drugs: Xanax, Lortab and Phenergan. Okay, let me just say right here that Lortab and Phenergan are on my daily medication list, and neither one of those affect me. Well, phenergan sometimes makes me sleepy. I once joked with my PCP that if I ever got stopped, I would have the police call him to verify that the medications found in my bloodstream are all prescribed . . .

The National Pork Board (yes, there is one) attested that they know that unicorn meat isn’t real. Wow. That’s a relief. Seems that Pork Board people got put out because an online retailer called ThinkGeek was selling fake unicorn meat and marketing it as “the new white meat.” The canned meat is described as being an “excellent source of sparkles. The Pork people sent a Cease and Desist. Seems they didn’t understand the whole concept of April Fool’s.

Word of warning: Don’t get on a pool float if you are smashed. Seems a man at a Tampa Beach in Florida passed out while on a float and drifted about a mile offshore into the Gulf of Mexico. The U. S. Coast Guard rescued the man after receiving a report from a boater who saw the unconscious man. I wonder if he got any oil spill on him . . .

Those whacky Arizonans are at it again: A restaurant in Phoenix is serving burgers made of African Lion meat. The restaurant ordered 10 pounds of the lion meat from a USDA-regulated, free-range farm in Illinois. Il Vinaio restaurant owner Cameron Selogie claims that he researched to make sure they were humane. I feel so much better now.

“For me it was just exciting to see fake news catching on like that. We don’t . . . you know, it’s interesting. I think we don’t make things up. We just distill it to, hopefully, its most humorous nugget. And in that sense it seems faked and skewed just because we don’t have to be subjective or pretend to be objective. We can just put it out there.” ~ Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

Senatorial candidate (R-KY) Rand Paul (so glad he’s running because he is great for fodder), has a bright new idea: He wants to build a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Heard it before, right? Wrong. Paul wants the fence to be underground and electrified: “My plans include an underground electric fence, with helicopter stations to respond quickly to breaches of the border.”

Half-governor Sarah Palin must give back more than $386,000 in contributions to her Alaska Fund Trust (AFT), which she set up as a private legal defense fund while she was governor of Alaska. According to the AFT website, the trust is “the official legal fund created to defend Sarah Palin from an onslaught of political attacks launched against her, her Family, and colleagues (sic).” What’s wrong with that? Well apparently it’s a question of ethics: The trust website quite openly uses the governor’s position to solicit donations, and “There is probable cause to believe that Governor Palin used, or attempted to use, her official position for personal gain in violation of Alaska statute. Shame, shame.

“We don’t consider ourselves equal opportunity anythings, because that’s not—you know, that’s the beauty of fake journalism. We don’t have to—we travel in fake ethics.” ~ Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

Speaking of politicians using things for personal gain, Eliot Spitzer, former governor of New York and Client No. 9 of the Emperor’s Club escort service, fancies himself a political pundit. Spitzer has been selected to star in CNN’s 8 p.m. time slot with Kathleen Parker, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist. The show will not be called “Crossfire,” the long-running show that originally featured Pat Buchanan and Tom Braden. Giving Spitzer the 8 p.m. slot formerly occupied by Campbell Brown has caused more than a few raised eyebrows. Felix Gillete and Reid Pillifant of Media Mob had this to say: “The truth is, a solid foundation in scandal has come to be a perfectly respectable starting point for any small-screen aspirant hoping to break through in an age of hundreds of channels and on-demand everything. Whatever else his qualifications, Mr. Spitzer has proven in recent times to have a knack for one of the more prized skills in cable news-namely, polarizing audiences.” Personally I just don’t like the guy.
In the 1990’s, Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle belonged to Nevada’s Independent American Party. Noteworthy is that in 1994, the party placed a sixteen-page advertising insert in Nevada newspapers promoting an amendment to the state constitution that would explicitly permit discrimination against LGBT people by businesses and government. The anti-gay insert portrayed LGBT people as “sodomites” and child-molesting, HIV-carrying, Hell-bound freaks and brazen perverts. How absolutely delightful.
Coming to a theater near you: One of my favorite politicians, Michele Bachmann, is slated to star in “Socialism: A Clear and Present Danger,” a documentary that explores the dangers of socialism. Bachmann is touted to be an anti-socialism expert. Must be the crazy eyes that give her such insight.

“No. I’m not going to be your monkey.” ~ Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

And finally, Stephen Colbert took a look at Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul’s dissident ophthalmology re-certification group, which Paul created after a dispute with the national board.

Fiona Apple’s “Across the Universe”