SARAH THE SCOUNDREL

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is about to become an author. Her memoir is “Going Rogue: An American Life.”

According to Politico:

Publication is being moved up from spring to Nov. 17 in order to catch the holiday book-buying season. The former Alaska governor has been in huge demand as a speaker, and continues to harvest a bounty of media attention.

A mammoth first printing of 1.5 million copies has been ordered — the same first run as “True Compass,” the memoir of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Palin had a deadline of Sept. 15 for her manuscript and turned it in a bit early. Copy-editing and fact-checking are now underway in a race to meet the crash publishing schedule, which has been accelerated four or five months because of the huge anticipated demand.

Going rogue, is she? Do you think she understands the definition of the word "rogue"?

–noun
1. a dishonest, knavish person; scoundrel.
2. a playfully mischievous person; scamp: The youngest boys are little rogues.
3. a tramp or vagabond.
4. a rogue elephant or other animal of similar disposition.
5. Biology. a usually inferior organism, esp. a plant, varying markedly from the normal.
–verb (used without object)
6. to live or act as a rogue.
–verb (used with object)
7. to cheat.
8. to uproot or destroy (plants, etc., that do not conform to a desired standard).
9. to perform this operation upon: to rogue a field.
–adjective
10. (of an animal) having an abnormally savage or unpredictable disposition, as a rogue elephant.
11. no longer obedient, belonging, or accepted and hence not controllable or answerable; deviating, renegade: a rogue cop; a rogue union local.

Ever the maverick, you betcha.

RETURN OF PEE-WEE

The mid- to late-80s: We remember it well, especially Saturday mornings, when we'd stumble downstairs, plop onto the purple leather couch and fire up the tube to watch the best kids show to ever hit TV.

The creator of that show now plots a comeback. One question: Will Cowboy Curtis return with that magnificent hair?

COME SEE THE SQUID

Wake the kids, pack the car and go west, young man. Squid on the beach.

The Oregonian has the story:

"I haven't confirmed it, but we are hearing reports that dozens are washing up," said Chris Havel, spokesman for the Oregon State Parks & Recreation Department. "They are probably Humboldt squid, which are much more common in warmer waters around Santa Cruz."

The squid are about two feet long, and have a life cycle of only a year or two, Havel said. They may be dying because they are at the end of their life cycle or it could be food related or a disease, he said.

"If you get a chance, go look at them," said Havel, who suggested Washburne State Park would be a good starting point. "Bring your camera, take some pictures. This may be your only chance to see a Humboldt squid lying on the beach."

Or you can check out this pic of said squid and freak out.

DESTRUCTION AS ART

Who knew fire could be so cool? Click here to watch the vid in HD.

ELVIS PRESLEY, PART II

Michael Jackson's death has the cable pundits speculating on parallels between the King of Pop and the Queen of Pulp, Anna Nicole Smith. Both so sad, the talking heads say. Both so alike.

Gah. Let the heads blather with their short-term memory. Jackson's death is simply Elvis Presley, Part Two. We have a Memphis newspaper from Aug. 17, 1977, the morning after Presley literally left the building. The early word then was that Presley died of a heart attack. Heart just stopped. Nothing to see here, so take care of your own business and move along.

Hindsight gives us the real story -- Presley keeling off the toilet, colon clogged from too many years relying on a bad diet of fatty foods and tasty prescription pills. "Cardiac arrest" was only the technical cause of death, and there was nothing natural about why Presley's heart stopped after a brief 42 years.

Michael Jackson died Thursday of cardiac arrest at 50. Another ticker technicality. In recent years, Jackson admitted under oath that he'd replaced Bubbles the Chimp with a new monkey, this one biting into the back of his neck thanks to doctors willing to write 'scripts to a musical genius. No useless filler, like those pesky street bags of smack. Only the best legal high for pop-culture royalty.

Friends say Jackson was clean and working hard, preparing for his ironically named "This Is It" concert tour. The tox reports may show nothing acute. The damage was chronic.

The thirty and fortysomethings are freaked out tonight, just like our older siblings and parents were when Elvis died. And like Godfather II, EP2 is better than the original. Elvis could sing and swivel, but he couldn't write a decent song. MJ walked around with "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" percolating in his head. He was the most magnificent entertainer in the last half of the last century, and maybe that's why he was such a freak. Great genius, great madness. A thinner line than the one separating love and hate.

Elvis Part II is a story so massive, MTV broke format on Thursday and started playing Michael Jackson videos. Imagine -- videos on MTV. If that's what it takes, get Madonna on an experimental plane, stat.

FRANCISCO FRANCO'S TESTICLE IS STILL DEAD, TOO

Spanish dictator Francisco Franco had one testicle.

Australia's News.com reports:

It is believed his loss stemmed from a war injury in 1916 when Franco was wounded during battle at El Biutz, near Ceuta, which today is a Spanish enclave on the Moroccan Mediterranean coast.

On June 28-29, 1916, Franco, then a captain, led an attack in the region which was then a Spanish protectorate and was hit in his lower abdomen and seriously wounded.

The paper, citing several authors of Franco biographies, added that such an injury would have affected Franco's reproductive organs and made him sterile.

Some of us are not too young to get the joke.

DON'T LOOK BACK IN ANGER

Time to dance.

UNIQUE, JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE

Work e-mail includes unintentionally hilarious line:

Brian Wismer is a multi-faceted unique entertainer formally trained by Ringling Bros., making him an event personality who's one of a kind and often compared to Robin Williams or Jim Carrey.

Unlike Jim Carrey, Brian Wismer is getting work.

CROSS PLATFORM DRESSING

This is a test of the Touch to Blogger tiny keyboarding system. For now, this is only a test.

Man, this little keyboard bites.

-- Via Touch

AKIKO HIRATA, 81

The matriarch of the CHATTER typing clan died Monday, March 30. She was diagnosed with lung cancer last summer.

A service will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at Pershing Memorial Hospital in Brookfield, Mo., where Mom worked for many years.

Many people in Brookfield knew her by her American name, Jo Ann Davis. Everyone knew her as a big heart inside a tiny body.

It'll be OK. She said so herself.

NATASHA RICHARDSON, 45

The actress died Wednesday, according to WCBS:

"Liam Neeson, his sons, and the entire family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha. They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time."

Richardson died of an apparent head injury from a skiing accident.

SNIFFING DRANO, MAKING METH

Police in Buford, Ark., bust an 18-year-old who'd allegedly been sniffing Drano and guzzling booze. Too bad he forgot about the handwritten meth recipe -- and crystal-making ingredients -- also in the house.

From the KSPR story:

A sheriff's deputy says Ball was "huffing Drano and consuming a large amount of alcohol."

"While at the residence, which belongs to the man’s parents who assisted with the investigation, the deputy observed several substances commonly used in the manufacturing of methamphetamine, as well as a handwritten 'recipe' for cooking methamphetamine," the Baxter County Sheriff's Office said in a news release.

Huffing Drano?

CAUGHT UP IN MADNESS

Springfield police are looking for a teen who's reportedly tagging downtown businesses.

From the cops:

The damage is the result of a suspect(s) tagging businesses with the words KEY, BOBE or KSB. The suspect(s) is using either black spray paint, or white shoe polish or marker, to tag the outside of businesses. Investigators do not believe that the tagging represents any gang affiliation. Investigators believe the suspect(s) have been involved in 22 incidents of property damage. Most of the incidents occurred in January and February.

At least he's not painting "CUIM" on buildings. Caught Up In Madness, indeed.

Police say the tagger is a teen, between 5'-8" and 5'-11", weighing 135-150 pounds. Got a clue? Call the cops at (417) 869-TIPS.

POOR STEPHENS WOMEN

The Columbia, Mo., school plans to shut down two dorms next year. A hundred women -- and 40 pets -- will be displaced, according to The Associated Press:

The work at Searcy and Prunty halls will cause a temporary shuffle that will displace about 100 students and roughly 40 pets.

The residents will live in other dorms, but where the pets will go is unclear. The two dorms are the only ones on campus that allow pets.

Oh, the humanity. And the students, too.

CHILLING CHIMP READ

The April 2009 issue of Esquire includes a story by Rich Schapiro. It's about a man attacked by chimps in 2005.

Here's a graf from the Esquire piece:

There's a two-inch hole in the heel of his swollen left foot, and he is confined to a wheelchair. He has no nose, only a red, raw, exposed septum, surrounded by narrow openings. At the top are three tiny magnets designed to hold in place a crude silicone prosthesis, which is constantly falling off. His right eye is gone, replaced with glass. The skin on his face droops like candle wax because so many bones around his cheeks and eyes were broken. His mouth, which has been completely reconstructed, is stuck in a frown. On his left hand, his index, middle, and ring fingers are stumps. His right hand is much worse. He has a misshapen hunk of flesh for a thumb, which appears as if it were lumped onto his wrist with clay. His index and middle fingers are gone; his ring finger and pinkie are immobile.

The piece's title? "The Worst Story I Ever Heard." It'll keep you up.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS, 149

Two months shy of its 150th anniversary, the Colorado newspaper announces its own death:

Rich Boehne, chief executive officer of Rocky-owner Scripps, broke the news to the staff at noon (Thursday), ending nearly three months of speculation over the paper's future.

"People are in grief," Editor John Temple said at a news conference later.

Boehne told staffers that the Rocky was the victim of a terrible economy and an upheaval in the newspaper industry.

"Denver can't support two newspapers any longer," Boehne told staffers, some of whom cried at the news. "It's certainly not good news for you, and it's certainly not good news for Denver."

Reaction came from across the nation and around the block.

"The Rocky Mountain News has chronicled the storied, and at times tumultuous, history of Colorado for nearly 150 years. I am deeply saddened by this news, and my heart goes out to all the talented men and women at the Rocky," U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet said in a statement. "I am grateful for their hard work and dedication to not only their profession, but the people of Colorado as well."

The last issue of the paper is Friday.

Founded in 1859 by William Byers, the Rocky won four Pulitzers in the past decade.

MOURN THE CHRON

This is the year daily newspapering descends into a coma. This week the Philadelphia Inquirer went bankrupt. Now, word of two significant dailies possibly going nips-up. As Reuters reports:

San Francisco may lose its main newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, as owner Hearst Corp cuts a "significant" number of jobs and decides whether to shut or sell the money-losing daily. The privately held New York-based publisher already is considering shutting a second West Coast paper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, in the face of a devastating decline in advertising revenue and big losses.

Wingnuts on both fringes will cheer the decline of American newspapering. They will realize, too late, that killing the tree means no fruit for anyone.

FOUR YEARS GONE

Hunter S. Thompson killed himself on Feb. 20, 2005. No sense mentioning the bats.

The Edge ... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others -- the living -- are those who pushed their luck as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In.

Some may never live, but the crazy never die.

SOCKS, 19

The cat that lived in the White House during the Clinton Administration died Friday. WCSH reports:

Socks had been suffering from cancer of the jaw. The cat lived in Washington with (Bill) Clinton's former White House secretary, Betty Currie.

Socks was the grand marshal of a parade in 2002, and was a fixture on the White House lawn with Buddy, the Clintons' dog.

Curry said she planned to have Socks cremated.

RIP, kitty.

WEAVE SAVES THE DAY

Story o' the day, courtesy of The Associated Press and KSHB-TV:

Kansas City police say a woman's tightly-woven hair weave probably saved her life. KSHB-TV reports that the woman's boyfriend fired a shot through the back window of a car late last night. Police say the woman's hair weave stopped the bullet, and she wasn't hurt.

Yet another reason to salute the weave.

TRAVIS GOING APE

More on Monday's chimpanzee attack that nearly killed a woman.

Travis was the chimp. His owner was Sandra Herold. He attacked Herold's friend, Charla Nash.

From The Associated Press, these new details:

In recordings of calls to 911 dispatchers released Tuesday, Travis' grunts can be heard as a frantic Herold cries that her pet is "eating" Nash and must be killed. The attack lasted about 12 minutes.

"The chimp killed my friend!" says a sobbing Herold, who was hiding in her vehicle. "Send the police with a gun. With a gun!"

The dispatcher later asks, "Who's killing your friend?"

"My chimpanzee!" she cries. "He ripped her apart! Shoot him, shoot him!"

After police arrive, one officer radios back: "There's a man down. He doesn't look good," he says, referring to Nash (a woman). "We've got to get this guy out of here. He's got no face."

Travis brushed daily with a Water Pik and knew how to use the toilet. In the end, he was still a chimp.

VOTE EARLY, OFTEN

Nominations are posted for this year's Blogaroni Awards, the local equivalent of nothing else in the known universe.

This Simple Thoughts post has the contenders.

CHATTER and its bastard stepchild blog have five nominations, all in the Blog Post of the Year category.

We're partial to a couple of things written (as opposed to typed) this year -- this piece from last January about the presidential candidates and their oh-so-sexy natures; and this column from June about slogan-happy voters.

So if you're a local blogger and have the super-secret access code, zip over to this site and vote.

Congrats to all, luck to all.

SUBSTITUTE FROM A GROUP HOME

A couple weeks ago at a South Bend, Ind., middle school, students acted like they were fighting -- for at least seven minutes, because that's the length of a student-shot video that was posted for a short time on YouTube.

According to the South Bend Tribune, there's a good reason the teacher let the students roughhouse in class:

[T]he substitute lives in a local home for people with chronic mental illness. The residents have bedrooms, eat meals together and enter the community daily on their own. She moved into a home like this in 1999.

She says she was diagnosed with paranoia. At age 60, she also touts a master’s degree. She has experience teaching in the classroom ...

The sub never told the district about her mental illness, though she worked in South Bend schools for more than a decade. The district never asked. It fired the substitute after the YouTube video surfaced.

The student who shot the video -- most likely on a cell phone -- is suspended; the school principal wants him expelled. Cell phones are prohibited in middle school.

WAS HIS LAST NAME BICKLE?

A pet chimpanzee attacks a woman he's known for years, tearing off her face and then attacking a cop.

Travis, 14, was shot dead Monday in Stamford, Conn.

The New York Times tells it this way:

The woman, Charla Nash, 55, a friend of the chimpanzee’s owner, was being treated at Stamford Hospital and might not survive, the authorities said. ...

The attack, in the driveway of a sprawling home in a densely wooded neighborhood on the north side of Stamford, also brought a brutal end to the life of the chimpanzee, Travis, 14, a popular figure in town who had appeared in television commercials and often posed for photographs at the towing shop operated by his owners. He had escaped before, and in 2003 playfully held up traffic at a busy intersection for several hours, but had no history of violence, the authorities said. Travis’s social skills included drinking wine from a stemmed glass, dressing and bathing himself and using a computer.

Travis’s owner, Sandra Herold, 70, had raised him almost as one of her own children, but found herself lunging at him with a butcher knife on Monday to protect Ms. Nash ...

A police officer shot Travis after he opened the car door and attacked the cop.

KEY OF THE BOTTOMLESS PIT

For a little night reading, few things are better than Revelation. Acid without the blotter's metallic aftertaste, and just as challenging.

And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;

And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:

For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

Just wait till the wormwood hits the river. You'll be begging for a flaying.