FEDS: NO ZOMBIE VIRUS

A guy in New Jersey guts himself and throws his intestines at cops. And, of course, there's the dude in Miami who decided to snack on someone's face.

Of course it's not zombies — or we'd like to think so, except the government is now telling us it's not zombies. Which makes us wonder: zombies?

The Associated Press gets in on the action:

The Centers for Disease Control (used) the "apocalypse" as the teaser for its emergency preparedness blog. It worked, attracting younger people who might not otherwise have read the agency's guidance on planning evacuation routes and storing water and food. 

(Now) chatter had become so rampant that CDC spokesman David Daigle sent an email to the Huffington Post, answering questions about the possibility of the undead walking among us. 

"CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead," he wrote, adding: "(or one that would present zombie-like symptoms.)"

That's it. If the feds say there is no zombie virus, there is a zombie virus. We are so hosed. We're moving here.

NOM NOM NOM, FACE

A follow to our post about the face-eating naked guy in Miami who refused to stop munching and was shot dead by cops.

Our friends at Gawker have published what may be some photos of the victim. Given that much of his face became a snack for a wack, it isn't pretty. But God, so graphic!

Click at your own peril.

ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE BEGINS IN MIAMI

So this is how it begins.

Police in Miami, Fla., shot and killed a man who was eating the face of another man on a causeway ramp.

Yeah. Seriously. According to the Miami Herald:

"A road ranger saw a naked man chewing on another man’s face and shouted on his loud speaker for him to back away.Meanwhile, a woman also saw the incident and flagged down a police officer who was in the area. 

The officer, who has not been identified, approached and, seeing what was happening, also ordered the naked man to back away. When he continued the assault, the officer shot him, police sources said. The attacker failed to stop after being shot, forcing the officer to continue firing. Witnesses said they heard at least a half dozen shots."

The coppers are blaming cocaine, of course, because they don't want us to know the truth.

WHO FIRED THE HOUSEKEEPER?

Man, the dust in this place really built up over the past (nearly) three years. That's the last time we hire legal citizens to do the cleaning. From now on it's all undocumented workers and sketchy homeless people.

Hiya. We've decided to kickstart this old house after a lengthy 'net coma because some events in our recent past (as documented here in the Act Your Old Age blog) suggest we need to get back to living, and fast. The spiffy AYOA condo is meant more for writing; CHATTER will resume its normal programming of this, that and the other thing — a sort of Seinfeld hodge-podge of everything about nothing, which it's been since its start back in 1991 (yes, this blog was born as a daily column in something called a newspaper, an arcane and nearly extinct form of media that was printed on actual paper by tree-hugging liberal types who didn't see the delicious hypocrisy of killing trees to make their bones).

Since that time in the black-and-white days, CHATTER has gone on to dress up and be part of a magazine, and then went all downscale to guest-host an alt-monthly tabloid called THE PULP, before segueing onto the net in 2006 and becoming a go-to place for stalkers and gawkers to try to discern what the hell the Chatterboy was trying to say. We have a hint for you: It's like Gertrude Stein said — there is no there, there. Anyone seeking deeper meaning from a blog called CHATTER needs to locate a life. This place is the equivalent of Springfield-style cashew chicken: it won't kill you, but if you're looking for fine dining, might we suggest Flame?

There's your background. Thanks for stopping by. We'll be renovating the blogroll and updating the curtains in the next few days, so if you have any suggestions, drop us a comment. We'll do our level best to post the bizarre shit that's always been our sweet tooth. Be safe.

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.

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.

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.

INK-STAINED WRETCHES, MOURNED

We may live long enough to see the extinction of the daily newspaper. The thought evokes emotion but it doesn't bring joy.

Revenues fall. Publishers and those who should know better react to reduced revenue by cutting staff and shrinking newshole. Smaller product interests fewer readers. Smaller circulation means less interest from advertisers. And so it keeps going.

Newspaper revs dropped by 18.1% in the third quarter, compared to the same period in 2007, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Media Post tells it this way:

On the print side, the news was bad across the board, with a 31% decline in classified revenue, an 11.7% decline in retail, and an 18.4% decline in national advertising. Within classified advertising, the automotive category was down 29.2%, real estate was down 38.6%, and employment was down 43.6%.

Thus, the employment category has almost pulled even with real estate in terms of actual dollar amounts lost year-over-year, with a decline of $385 million versus $395 million for real estate. The accelerating losses in both categories reflect the unfolding of the economic downturn, which began in the housing market before spreading to other sectors of the economy.

Online newspaper ad sales were down, too. Migrating to the Internet has not stopped the bleeding. This is black and white and red all over.

THE KHALIDI CON

Barack Obama's friendship with Rashid Khalidi is no surprise, even though it is October. The frantic right wing of the GOP wants to turn that friendship into a last-play game changer that propels John McCain and Sarah Palin to a destiny that is not dusty.

Before Tuesday you will hear more than you ever thought possible about Khalidi and how he ties in to scoundrel William Ayers, the former bomber linked to Obama in a convoluted political version of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Added bonus: Media cover-up! Stop the presses! Roll the breaking news animation! Newsteam, assemble!

The conservative media and its pundits are acting like they've hooked King Kahuna. They see Khalidi as the best way to turn niggling doubts about Barack Obama's unusual name and heritage into fear. To them, because Khalidi is pro-Palestinian and a critic of Israel, he's a scary bad man who might hurt you and everything you love, including your country, the flag, apple pie and that new song by Pink.

And right there with the terrorists/guys with weird names is the evil media, covering up the secret ties between Obama and Khalidi because reporters are having Obamagasms at the thought of a black Democrat in the White House.

Listen to the right's latest shout: The Los Angeles Times is trying to suppress proof that Obama and Khalidi are thisclose. The proof is a videotape of a dinner, five years ago, where Obama paid tribute to Khalidi and his wife.

The McCain camp says the Times is "intentionally suppressing information that could provide a clearer link between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi."

National Review pants over the Times' "refusal" to hand over the tape.

The Times has a copy of the vid and won't hand it over to the demanders. That's absolutely true. But how does everyone know the Times has the tape? Because the newspaper already told us what's on it.

The Times published a long story about Obama's friendship with Khalidi. It's been out there since April. You can read it right here. It's true: Google can be your friend.

The lede on that newspaper story comes from the video. So does this description of what Obama said:

A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.

His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. ... It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."

So clear now, eh? Obama is the Antichrist. Damn the Times for trying to cover up the Khalidi scandal and refusing to give the American people what they need in these last hours of Vote 2008 -- red meat to rip, and more political ads with grainy images of Men You Should Fear.

Another distraction in what's supposed to be an election about ideas, not innuendo. Meanwhile, the Phil Spector retrial starts Wednesday, and Court TV is sorely missed. Trial coverage on the rebranded truTV ends at 2 p.m. in the Midwest. Any hope of seeing Spector in all his glory, dashed.

ONLY THE SHOUTING REMAINS

A little less than a month before the presidential election and the result is already becoming clear -- Barack Obama is going to win. The latest polls show him hovering at or above the 50-percent mark, ahead of John McCain by a half-dozen points and winning the perception game. Many McCain supporters expect Obama to triumph, even though the feeling is acid to their intestines. Lost faith, abandoned hope.

Only a cataclysm -- the proverbial dead girl or live boy -- can keep Obama from winning on Nov. 4. He'll be nicked and bloodied plenty before the votes are cast, but McCain cannot stop him. Neither can Sarah Palin, no matter how loud her bark. Devoid of discussion about their plans for our future, the GOP ticket has been reduced to incessant yapping about the badness of their opponents. They are Bob Dole without the humor, Walter Mondale without the eloquence. All they can do is smile and bray and pretend the hurricane hammering the screen door is only a drizzle.

Pretending -- or, as they like to call it, creating a new reality, a master trick of this century's Republican Party. As one of President Bush's senior advisers said in 2002:

"[W]e create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

People attached to that "senior adviser" (read: Karl Rove) are now in John McCain's campaign posse; their greasy thumbprints are all over the place, instantly recognizable to the naked political eye.

They're rolling out the dogeared book of dirty tricks and pulling out their favorite reality changers. The biggest crowd-pleaser, naturally, involves demonizing The Media. Rolling Stone publishes a solid on McCain's unflattering past, but most conservatives won't bother to read it -- they're convinced the mainstream media is out to get their guy and his purty sidekick, dadgummit, so you can't believe anything The Media says.

This, of course, is a reliable hypocrisy from the camp that loves to hate. In their twist on twisted reality, The New York Times is a vile snakepit of liberal Obamabot liars, except when they write about Obama's connections to '60s radical William Ayers. That's when the Times is gospel money.

(One of our favorite conservative alternate-reality pranks is the "you won't see this in the mainstream media" snipe hunt. About once a month somebody will send an e-mail with a story or pictures about a heartwarming, positive story, datelined Iraq, with the header: You Won't See THIS In The Mainstream Media. The story, without fail, was written by The Associated Press and published across the country.)

The neo-reals have also uncorked the "some say" genie, a cousin to "fair and balanced." The latter claims "both sides" need to be heard, even if one side insists science is valid and the other clings to supernatural magic. Thank God the people who spew this line weren't reporting in 1945; they would have asked the Nazis for their side of the Holocaust -- you know, just to be fair and balanced.

Their "some say" attacks are clumsy but effective. "Some say Barack Obama is a Muslim." "Some say Obama is a sleeper agent for Al Qaeda." "Some say Obama is actually Osama bin Laden's second cousin, once removed." It might be bilge water, sure, but some say it's true, so why not have that debate? We don't expect McCain to go that far in his Tuesday debate with Obama, but anything is possible when a certifiably insane man runs for president. There could even be knives, though we suspect the debate commission will probably run both candidates through metal detectors before they take the stage.

McCain has no choice but to throw the long, noxious pass -- think of it as a Hail Mary stinkbomb. If it lands just right it will cover Obama in muck so deep and vile that every other Chicago politician will seem spotless by comparison. And even that might not be enough to stop Obama.

This is John McCain, distilled. Half a lifetime spent gladhanding and grinning, plotting and attaining, now reduced to one last gambit that probably won't work. Purgatory can be peculiar, especially in an unreal reality.

WELCOME TO THE EVOLUTION

Monday marks the 173rd anniversary of the fateful landing of the HMS Beagle on the Galápagos Islands. Aboard that day in 1835 was Charles Darwin, whose five-year journey would bring us natural selection and the rise of the neocreationists.

Monday will include a clearer picture of the messy natural selection well underway on Wall Street. Bank of America Corp. will buy Merrill Lynch & Co. for about $29 a share, according to The Wall Street Journal. BofA paid a premium, of course, because it's only money, scads of money. No one outside the loop understands how BofA, a company with declining profits and an albatross named Countrywide Financial in its portfolio, can afford to pay $29 a share for Merrill Lynch, a company trading at $17 a share on Friday. Such is the weekend deal.

Lehman Brothers is in the toilet. Washington Mutual and A.I.G. could be goners by the end of the week. Britain could soon slide into recession.

A "once-in-a-century" financial meltdown, Alan Greenspan says, and "it still has a way to go." Already a notch past the teeter stage, we've yet to see the bottom. Extinctions will continue.

We will evolve and the good guys will win. Now we wait for someone to win, so we can call them good.

PEACE, LOVE, KNOWLEDGE

Barack Obama campaigned hard to end politics "as we know it" -- a kōan perfect for the picayune American mind obsessed with change. Too many Americans are blissfully ignorant about politics (one in three can't name the governor of their state, and three in 10 can't name the vice president of their country). They want to change politics as they don't know it. Maybe then they'll pay attention.

But then again, no. Attention requires effort requires sacrifice, and we're just not into that. What, we should search for information and actually read it? Exercise the big muscle between the ears? Maybe if you bring it to our (desk)(couch)(bed) and hand it to us with the really important stuff highlighted. So, you know, we don't have to work at it.

And slap a slogan on it. We love slogans. "Change We Can Believe In." "A Leader We Can Believe In." "Ignorance Is Strength."

The men who would lead our country appreciate and rush to the lowest common denominator. They talk good, high-minded games to the faithful in their flocks, but they cater to the people who know Peyton Manning but draw a blank on Vladimir Putin, the folks who can't name the Sunni branch of Islam (to them, probably, all Muslims are sweaty, swarthy terrorists).

They follow another time-honored kōan: Keep it simple. Don't bother with facts. Nugget-sized platitudes and zingers, hold the sauce. Don't discuss the difficulties in the Middle East, the complexities of the U.S. relationship with China, the fact that Americans pay half as much (or less) than Europeans at the pump. Don't make people think. Hurts. Brains.

John McCain comes to Springfield on Wednesday. He's supposed to talk about energy and the economy. Avid Republicans will eat the sweets (even though they don't especially care for the confectioner). Avid Democrats will naysay his offerings as leftovers from the Bush kitchen.

Everyone else will wonder why traffic around Missouri State University is bollixed up, but only if it's inconvenient to them. What they know about John McCain and Barack Obama would fill a bumper sticker but not a brochure. They will decide this election based on the last, best slogan they saw on a 30-second ad, sometime in late October.

"The darkness of insanity," as the immortal poet-philospher Declan Patrick MacManus put it. Don't bother looking for a switch. The strong and the trusted like it better with the lights out.

FEAR AND CLOTHING

Michelle Malkin, the blogger, has gotten her way. Dunkin' Donuts is now safe from terrorism, Rachael Ray is a left-wing apologist, and anyone wearing a black-and-white silk scarf is Against Us.

Dunkin' Donuts ran an ad featuring Ray wearing a scarf with a paisley design, "selected by her stylist for the advertising shoot," according to DD (mmm, double-Ds).

Malkin started ranting and said the scarf looked like a keffiyeh: "The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad ... the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant and not-so-ignorant fashion designers, celebrities, and left-wing icons."

According to the Boston Globe:

[Dunkin' Donuts] at first pooh-poohed the complaints, claiming the black-and-white wrap was not a keffiyeh. But the right-wing drumbeat on the blogosphere continued and by yesterday, Dunkin’ Donuts decided it’d be easier just to yank the ad.

Said the suits in a statement: "In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. ... Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, given the possibility of misperception, we are no longer using the commercial."

Dunkin' Donuts caves, Malkin crows, idiocy reigns. Soon the clock will strike 13.

WRITER WITH A REAL VOICE

It pays to be bland.

Exhibit A: Steven Barber, former student at the University of Virginia's College at Wise. He turned in a short story for a creative-writing class. His instructor freaked out at the story's violent tone. Barber, 23, was forced into a psych bin, then expelled.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

"It had to be acted on immediately," says Christopher Scalia, the instructor. He alerted administrators, who reacted swiftly, searching Mr. Barber's dorm room and car. Upon discovering three guns, they had him committed to a psychiatric institution for a weekend. Then they expelled him.

Yet the psychiatrists who evaluated Mr. Barber during his hospitalization determined he was no threat to himself or others. Mr. Barber says the guns were for protection from threats such as school shootings. He maintains that his story, titled "Sh---y First Drafts," was merely a fictional attempt to address school shootings such as the April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech massacre, which left 33 dead, including the gunman. The story "was supposed to show how disturbed people are who do that," Mr. Barber says. ...

The problem for Mr. Scalia, the instructor, was the story's references to the class and its assignments and to the murder of a professor called Mr. Christopher, a name identical to his own first name. Mr. Barber, a Navy veteran who served in the Iraq war, wrote of stockpiling alcohol and drugs for a binge and sleeping with the "cold and heavy steel" of a gun under his pillow. "I knew I had a choice," he wrote. "Murder or suicide. Either way, death was imminent."

Scalia is the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He believes Barber's story was about him.

Barber gave the school enough ammo to shoot him. He was already on school probation for booze and for possession a nightstick-like weapon. He also had a 3.9 GPA and was on the dean's list. He says he'd write about "butterflies and rainbows" if he had a second chance at Wise.

The WSJ hed: Schools Struggle With Dark Writings. The real struggle seems to be with common sense.

WIKIPEDIA MONKEY BUSINESS

Someone within the Department of Justice wants to mess with our heads. A typist using an IP address belonging to DoJ made edits to an article about the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, also known as CAMERA.

The scrubbed info: How CAMERA was trying to "cooperate with prominent Wikipedia editors to promote a Zionist viewpoint and oppose pro-Arab viewpoints on Wikipedia."

The Wikimedia Foundation has been all over the story. According to this report from mister-info:

After the IP address belonging to the DOJ was blocked, Wikipedia editors informed the Wikimedia Foundation's Communications committee about the incident. Both Wikinews and Wikipedia are projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. In addition to the DOJ IP address, several Wikipedia users determined to be cooperating with the CAMERA campaign to influence Wikipedia had also previously been blocked by Wikipedia administrators.

Wikinews requested a statement from the Department of Justice on the edits to Wikipedia, but as of this article's publication had not received a response.

The (for now) anonymous DoJer also made edits to articles about Tracy Jordan, Roger Ebert and James E. Akins.

The DoJ address was blocked for "repeated vandalism," but someone else in D.C. is also making the same edits to the CAMERA article. Nice to know CAMERA is a government front, and we always suspected there was something odd about Roger Ebert. But Tracy Jordan? Maybe the Black Crusaders are real.

TWO DAYS, TWO DOOZIES

Reading opinion letters in the local paper can be a dangerous mission. Sometimes the missives are so hilarious that one suspects they were created by spoofbots cranked to the "ridiculous" setting. This would be much better than the reality -- that living, breathing people actually harbor such thoughts.

A Saturday letter from Edith Kaiser, an associate professor of Bible at Global University in Springfield, claims -- without much logic -- that "the Earth is not billions of years old." Kaiser tees off on writer Bill Fuenfhausen for invoking science to stand up for evolution:

You talked about the evidence from various scientific fields. Where and what are they? Did you know that scientists came up with the age of the Earth based on tests done on meteorites? They tested them four ways and came up with four different answers and just arbitrarily took one number! If my students came up with four answers to a question, I would mark it incorrect! Also if the fact that the magnetic force around the Earth is deteriorating is figured in the equation, the mathematical equation is changed and the dating is in thousands and not billions! In fact, modern scientific investigation is challenging all carbon dating methods.

Such blatant dishonesty by an alleged academic would be funny, if Kaiser wasn't filling minds with her nonsense. One can only hope her students wake up, realize their instructor is duping them, and do some outside reading. Maybe then they'll see that Kaiser's exclamation points only prove she'd rather shout than think.

Sunday, Nancy Harmon of Springfield opined that moving to the city was a huge mistake:

My husband and I moved here from South Dakota a little over two years ago. What a mistake! Missouri has higher taxes, higher insurance and higher utilities. South Dakota also has no state income tax or personal property tax. We traded in a car this year also and had to pay 7 percent tax on the difference here in Missouri rather than 3 percent on the difference in South Dakota.

A shame that Harmon and her husband apparently did no research about state-by-state taxation before moving from South Dakota. No shame the Harmons will soon be leaving the Ozarks.

TRAIN IN VAIN

Some things you can explain away, as the still-living Mick Jones and unfortunately dead Joe Strummer once wrote. A 22-year-old woman probably doesn't know who Barney Fife is because she was born 18 years after The Andy Griffith Show ended (and those last three seasons had the sucky color episodes with a scant six cameos from Barney, so they barely count).

But that's pop culture -- handy to have in a game of trivia, worthless in The Big Scheme of Things. The 22-year-old couldn't care less that the nicotine patch was patented the year she was born. All that matters is that it exists now for her fag-addicted parents.

But that same woman almost certainly knows who Abraham Lincoln was. She knows that the Statue of Liberty is in New York; that George Washington was the nation's first president; that JFK was shot by a bunch of crazies led by Tommy Lee Jones in a bad wig. Back and to the left.

That stuff is history, the umbrella of facts protecting us from hailstones of ignorance, each the size of a Yankee pot roast. Get thwacked with enough of them and society disintegrates to a mush that looks suspiciously like rutabaga floating in the roast's greasy excretions.

We're already partway there, close to being overcooked in our own juices. And for once it's not tabloidism feeding the fire under the pot; this time it's political zeal.

Barack Obama's followers -- and that's what many of them are -- see his campaign for what they want it to be. Even though they're not political virgins they want to be deflowered by a sweet-talking man who says it might hurt, but only for a minute, and then everything's going to be different, you'll see. No more politics as usual.

They think it's the first time that something like a contested primary has every happened, and goddamn that Hillary Clinton for getting in the way of Change. Bitch. She can't clinch the nomination so she should drop out. And who cares if he can't win the nomination, either. It's all her fault.

They want this experience to be neat and tidy and not too taxing. They want a political coronation, not a convention, and their bowels are in an uproar because they're choosing to ignore history. Politics is football played with knives and the occasional smuggled handgun. Even the saint from Chicago knows the bloody backstory.

His followers doesn't want a convention fight because, on some level, they know their Leader will be seen by all for what he already is -- a politician full of hubris and mostly false platitudes who happens to give one helluva speech. Everyone already knows that's what Clinton is, minus the speech thing. Better the general public finds this out about Obama before the fall campaign.

If Dems are lucky this year's convention will be more 1952 than 1968. A contested contest and plenty of drunken courtesans. Maybe a knife wound or two, but no fatal gunfire. Scars heal, and the winner will face John McCain, a crazy pirate with plenty of his own scars, seen and unseen. The Democratic nominee should be equally battle-hardened. A Gonzo tattoo would be a nice touch.

For now, Democrats need to be democratic and let this slasher-flick of a primary season play its course. Let it go to the convention in August. Democrats who want to short-circuit the season say it's unnecessary roughness. Tell it to Michael Myers and his fellow travelers. It's past time to remember that this is politics, nobody's a virgin, and your candidate is probably going to be sodomized. Enjoy the show.

In the touchingly dark film No Country for Old Men, an older, wiser lawman chastises the sheriff played by Tommy Lee Jones for overworrying about the violence of the current world:

What you got ain't nothin new. This country is hard on people. Hard and crazy. Got the devil in it yet folks never seem to hold it to account. ... You can't stop what's comin'. Ain't all waitin' on you. That's vanity.

Up till now the Clinton-Obama battle has been relatively bloodless. The timid want it to stop. If they will just get out of the way, captive bolt pistols will be brandished and real mayhem can begin.

HATING MUSLIMS

Every now and then you run across someone or something that affirms your faith in the lowest common denominator.

Witness the latest example -- this enlightened motorist and his/her collection of bumper stickers. The only thing missing is an I slam, you slam, we all slam for Islam sticker.

A LOVER, NOT A BOWLER

Sen. Barack Obama's new brand of politics is now stuck in the old brand of reality. Witness his weekend humiliation at a bowling alley in Altonna, Pa. Not quite Mike Dukakis in a tank, but memorably bad.

Obama bowled a 37 and looked prissy while doing it. According to the Detroit Free Press:

"My economic plan is better than my bowling," Obama told fellow bowlers Saturday.

"It has to be," a man called out.

Pennsylvania holds its primary on April 22. Tip o' the pinhead to Mayor Dan.

11-YEAR-OLD TASERED

In Florida, in an elementary school classroom. Incredible. A deputy in Orange County says she had to do it, especially after taking a punch to the nose.

WFTV reports:

The girl at Moss Park Elementary punched the deputy in the nose so hard the deputy went to the hospital. While an 11-year-old shocked by a Taser sounds extreme to some parents, other parents told Eyewitness News the girl deserved it. ...

According to the arrest report, before school Thursday morning, another student told teachers at Moss Park that Thaliamar [Jimenez] pushed a boy into the street. When teachers tried to talk to the girl she became combative, started pushing her desk and chair and even spit at the teachers.

The school resource officer, Orange County Deputy Donna Hudepohl, tried to take Thaliamar to the principal's office and that's when the child started swinging, hitting the officer in the nose. Hudepohl was transported to Florida East Hospital. She sustained severe bruising to the nasal cavity as a result of the injury. ...

Jimenez was transported to Florida East Hospital to have the Taser prongs removed, but she had no other injuries. She was arrested and charged with battery on a law enforcement officer, disrupting a school function as well as resisting with violence.

Mom says the girl has a learning disability. The Taser probably won't help.