MAKE IT RITA

Not Philippe. We're so out of it.

Rita makes us think of Meter Maids and that woman on MSNBC. Her husky voice and barely masked hairiness scare us. Here's hoping the storm of the same name doesn't do likewise.

PHILIPPE ON THE HORIZON?

Not yet a tropical storm, much less a hurricane, a low-pressure system still 170 miles east-northeast of the Turks and Caicos Islands is already raising warning flags for south Florida. The National Hurricane Center on Saturday issued an interesting "special weather statement" about the storm:

THE SURFACE LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM ... HAS CONTINUED TO BECOME BETTER ORGANIZED TODAY AS IT MOVES WEST-NORTHWESTWARD AT 10 MPH. THIS SYSTEM IS FORECAST TO AFFECT SOUTH FLORIDA MONDAY AND TUESDAY AND THERE IS A CHANCE THAT IT COULD DEVELOP INTO A TROPICAL DEPRESSION OR EVEN TROPICAL STORM BEFORE THEN. INTERESTS ACROSS SOUTH FLORIDA SHOULD CLOSELY MONITOR STATEMENTS ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER AND THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE OFFICE IN MIAMI IN CASE THIS SYSTEM DEVELOPS.

If the storm grows it will be Philippe, a soft, non-threatening name. So was Katrina.

GO COCKS GO

The Ozarks is proud home to Licking, the best-named town for lewd sports headlines. Licking girls take on Salem evokes a visual -- actually, several visuals -- that are best left untyped.

A story from New Zealand takes matters to a completely ridiculous level. Seems a badminton team is being urged to drop its nickname: Black Cocks.

It was supposed to be a "gimmicky label to attract sponsors and fans," according to a report in The Register. But things came to a head when the president of Badminton NZ, Nigel Skelt, was at the New Zealand Open. "[C]rowds were yelling out 'c'mon the Black Cocks,'" he said. "If you're over in China and you get introduced as the Black Cocks, it raises some issues."

The nickname might be ditched during a November meeting of the 27 regional associations of Badminton NZ. If only a local school district would pick up the Cock and play with Licking.

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY E. TRAEGER

For God's sake, this woman needs a cool towel for her forehead. She's burning up from the fever, doc. The fever of partisan hate. She's so delirious that she doesn't even know she's contradicting the president she blindly loves.

Traeger, a resident of Forsyth, Mo., is a frequent letter writer to the Springfield News-Leader. As such, she often spouts inflammatory rhetoric designed to provoke a response.

But in Friday's N-L, Traeger seems to have taken a big dive off the high board, right into an empty pool. Normally a right-wing partisan, Traeger must have missed the remarks by President Bush, in which he admitted the feds screwed up their initial response to Hurricane Katrina.

In her highly hilarious rant, Traeger opines:

The media have the inane notion that the federal government has a magic wand that can grant anything. In most national disasters it takes about three days to start helping victims.

Traeger overlooks the "national disaster" that was Sept. 11, 2001; if the feds had waited three days to "start helping victims" at the World Trade Centers, Traeger would have been the first one bitching (of course, she would have found a way to blame Bill Clinton).

Mary, Mary, so contrary. And so far off the radical right's script. Someone get this woman a clue, and fast.

DEMON CHILD BORN

Britney Spears has given birth to a boy. Baby Federline has arrived. God help us all.

CAT STEVENS NOMINATED FOR ROCK HALL

So claims Fox News. The network says Yusuf Islam has been "nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame," and he's allegedly got a lock on getting in.

We are confused, thinking that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame requires inductees to, um, rock.

AUTHORITIES SEAL MISSISSIPPI TOWN WITH BARBED WIRE

CNN reports that "miles and miles" of barbed wire -- up to four miles, according to the network -- went up around Long Beach, Miss.

Reason? Authorities expect to find dozens of bodies in the rubble. Officially, they say they're worried about looters.

BRING BACK THE ISADORA DUNCAN SCARF

Fashions surge, fashions abate. But they seldom vanish forever. What was Now in our youth is now Retro, and will made a return engagement as Vintage in 2011. Dammit. We hadn't planned on Vintage status until at least 2021, but the lull between fads is shorter than ever, like contractions. Good thing we're fully dilated.

We're also ready to welcome back an old fad that deserves new life -- the long, trailing scarf look, made popular by Isadora Duncan, a dancer. She sported the style until the day she died, 78 years ago today.

On Sept. 14, 1927, Duncan was wearing one of her trademark scarves when she stepped into the passenger side of a Bugatti in Nice, France. The dancer waved toodles to several curbside friends. The driver stepped on the gas pedal. The end of Duncan's scarf caught the car's rear, open-spoked wheel.

Just because someone died while styling doesn't mean the whole fad should be abandoned. Fifty years ago this month, James Dean exited in a Porsche Spyder, and sports cars are still popular. Go ahead, wear a long scarf while riding in a Porsche Spyder and congratulate your faddish, bad-ass self. Just watch your neck.

FLORIDA MOM WANTS BOOK BANNED

Vikki Reed has a daughter in the 11th grade in Deland, Fla.

The daughter was assigned to read "Cracking India," a 289-page novel written by Bapsi Sihawi.

But four of those pages are porn, Reed claims. She told WKMG-TV that the "real issue is a 9-year-old girl having or being introduced to oral sex by her cousin who is going through puberty. To me, that is totally inappropriate. I don't know where learning about India would involve learning about oral sex."

Reed complained to the school board; the board, in turn, created a committee to "study" the flap. The committee will report its findings in a month -- a timetable every Deland High School student should remember the next time they're assigned a book report.

Read the whole story here.

'FOOTBALL SEASON IS OVER'

The last piece of writing by Hunter S. Thompson. Written Feb. 16, 2005, four days before he shot himself with a .45-caliber pistol.

No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun -- for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax -- This won't hurt.

The last 12 words are especially true.

AURORA ALERT

Sunspot 798 is to blame, throwing a coronal mass ejection -- you know, one of them there CMEs -- at the Earth.

The upshot? A potential for auroras in the night skies on Wednesday and Thursday. Go to Space Weather to learn more. Do not run. Do not hide.

N.Y. TIMES TRIES TO BREAK INTERNET

Starting on Monday, Maureen Dowd is gonna cost you fifty bucks a year -- a solidly cheap rate if she was a hooker, but a little pricey for someone who types her opinions for a living.

To the conservatives: Same goes for David Brooks. He's become a Timeswhore, too.

The newspaper of record will start charging for its columnists via a new program called TimesSelect. News will stay free -- for now -- but if Net traffic for the columns doesn't drop much, expect to see the Times start charging for other content.

Editor & Publisher has a write-up here.

Screw this noise. No offense to Dowd or Brooks or Paul Krugman or Tom Friedman or even the windy Frank Rich (who insists on writing 3,000 words when 775 will do), but this is a tremendously stupid idea.

JOHN ROBERTS IS INSANE

Check out this Reuters photo of the future chief justice, taken during the second day of his confirmation hearing. Roberts was being quizzed by Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware).

Full-blown insanity, or Roberts scored some really good weed.

REALLY PERSONAL BEAUTY PRODUCTS

Collagen treatment to keep your skin looking youthful? It's made from humans.

This does not appear to be an urban legend. The Guardian reports:

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered.

Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is "traditional" and nothing to "make such a big fuss about". With European regulations to control cosmetic treatments such as collagen not expected for several years, doctors and politicians say the discovery highlights the dangers faced by the increasing number of Britons seeking to improve their looks. Apart from the ethical concerns, there is also the potential risk of infection.

MPs on the Commons select health committee are to examine the regulatory system and may launch an investigation and question ministers about the need for immediate new controls. "I am sure that the committee will want to look at this," said Kevin Barron, its Labour chairman. "This is something everyone in society will be very concerned about."

Beauty products from China, shrimp from the Louisiana Gulf Coast -- it's all about people.

WILL STRIPPERS RETURN TO NEW ORLEANS?

The manager of Big Daddy's -- the famously gaudy strip club in the French Quarter -- says he's determined to open the business. All he needs is electricity and water.

Strippers, too.

Big Daddy's was known for the mechanical women's legs in high heels, slowly kicking to attract customers. If you've been to the Quarter, you've seen Big Daddy's.

Saint Jones, the manager, says he has fresh water in bottles and a generator. He told The Associated Press that finding strippers is the next step:

"It shouldn't be too hard. Everyone's going to come back in town and want to work. You know, if you've got 50 dancers in Houston and they're not making money, they're going to spread out," he said.

Judging from the number of military and police vehicles which stopped or slowed passing Big Daddy's, they'll have plenty of customers. It didn't seem to occur to the men in uniform to enforce the evacuation order in effect on the city -- they preferred to ask when the strippers would be back.

One army Humvee, carrying a team of Puerto Rican troops, stopped so that a soldier could pose with his M16 rifle by a life-size picture of a naked blonde while his buddy took a photo.

Jones gave them vodka on the rocks in plastic cups, which they enjoyed before hopping back in the Humvee.

When Big Daddy's opens, you'll know New Orleans is back in business.

ONE MAN'S MEAT ...

... is another man's person. Proof can be found at Cryptome, where you'll find an archive of photos from post-storm New Orleans.

Perhaps this cutline from an AP photo explains it best:

Dogs are seen near a human corpse in New Orleans.

Definitely not a page for the easily queased, but certainly food for thought.

MIKE 'HECK OF A JOB' BROWN LOSES JOB

The director of the Federal Emergency Management Association quits on Monday, just before he is kicked to the curb. This comes a week after President Bush praised Brown and told him he was doing a "heck of a job."

Note to potential Bush appointees: Do not let the president give you a nickname and praise your work.

THE DANDIEST DANDY GUY

Marty Eddlemon died on Saturday. He was 78.

Anyone with ties to the Ozarks knows the name. Eddlemon was the sports columnist for the local newspaper until his retirement in 1993, and kept a presence in the section until being hospitalized earlier this year.

Steve Koehler -- another well-known writer -- remembers Eddlemon in a keeper of an obit. Here's how Koehler describes Eddlemon:

In the morning, he would sit at his desk in the middle of the sports department, an eraser-less pencil tucked behind an ear, coffee at his desk. He'd greet co-workers or guests to the office the same way. "Dandy Guy!" would bellow from his lips and through the newsroom.

Just from those words we could instantly recall the scene and the sounds. Marty Eddlemon was a dandy, all right.

BEHIND THE SCENES AT BLUESFEST

The 9th annual Greater Ozarks Blues Festival wrapped on Saturday night with a blistering set by Buddy Guy. From our tiny perch, a few impressions:

•The site -- a Positronics lot along Campbell Avenue, just south of The News-Leader -- was BTE. Friday night saw the stage-end bowl full; the newspaper had a crowd estimate of 3,000. By the time Guy took the stage on Saturday night, the bowl had expanded past the asphalt, across the gravel and well onto the grassy side of the lot. The estimate is 5,000, which seems a little low from what we saw. But hey, it was in the paper.

•Speaking of the daily: We chatted up Michael Brothers, the paper's entertainment columnist, as he roamed the grounds on Friday. Boffo guy, good taste in music. Taller than his mugshot.

•Speaking of media types: The inside site buzz was all about Downtown Now, a new glossy monthly -- not so much the mag as the current issue, which was No. 2 in more ways than one. The cover story was a curiosity, discussing Buddy Guy, Springfield's whiteness and the 1906 lynchings. And that was just the lede. The rest of the ramble had people shaking their heads in disbelief; more than one person said any hopes for a honeymoon period with the mag was over.

•Speaking of Downtown Now: A man claiming to represent the mag wandered into a VIP tent set up for the main Bluesfest sponsor. The man asked if this was the "media tent," because "usually there's a catered media tent, right?" Umm, wrong. He was pointed to a public tent but sniffed with disdain, "That's for the public." He then declined an offer to be escorted out of the VIP tent -- "I can walk myself out" -- and was last seen scanning the horizon, looking for the enchanted, catered media tent.

NAME MATCHES OPINION

Saturday's Springfield News-Leader has the best damned letter to the editor in recent history. We say "recent history" because once upon a time, the Saturday paper published unsigned LTTEs, and anonymous broadsides are always much more delightful.

But today's letter about so-called intelligent design gives us a double blast of hilarity. First, it's written by someone who actually believes intelligent design os a valid scientific theory. Second, it's written by a guy named Paul Tardo.

(Normally, we find it beneath us to poke fun at someone's name. That said, when Bob Torp ran for state lawmaker last year, we were the first to say a guy named Torp couldn't win. We were right.)

Mr. Tardo opines on the value of Jonathon Wells, an anti-evolutionist who was educated by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.

You know -- Moonies. Here's what Wells has to say about Moon:

Father's words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.

Mr. Tardo doesn't seem to care (or know) about the Moonie connection; he's all hung up on Wells having a "double Ph.D." and thus being smarter than everyone else. That sort of thinking is quite retarded.

WHERE DO STUDENTS COME FROM, MOMMY?

Ah, nothing like the last few grafs of a school story to get the blood flowing. Especially when the story delivers news you can use -- information that's vital to your everyday life.

A story in Friday's News-Leader, by Ryan Slight, is the perfect example. Writing about the Nixa School District, Slight banged out a kicker that should be required reading for all budding journalists:

Nixa Superintendent Stephen Kleinsmith gave board members a demographic presentation. The district now has about 4,800 students — an increase of more than 300 from last school year, he said.

"That's tremendous growth and a great deal of change, and we must be proactive in our thinking" to accommodate it, Kleinsmith said.

The superintendent partly attributed the student growth to Nixa's large number of women of child-bearing age.

Sperm also contributed to the increase in the number of students. Just FYI.

BLUESFEST TIME

The Greater Ozarks Blues Festival hits Springfield on Friday and Saturday. Buddy Guy is the 2nd-day headliner.

Like an orphan, Bluesfest keeps getting moved from one spot to another. This year the festival takes place along Campbell Avenue, between Olive Street and Chestnut Not-An-Expressway.

Maybe someone with some authority will realize that Hammons Field is a logical permanent location for Bluesfest and make it happen.

Anyway, if you get the chance, roll on out this weekend. Click here to learn more.

REPORT FROM OKLAHOMA FEMA CAMP

We submit for your inspection and analysis an alleged first-person account of a visit to a Southern Baptist church camp in Falls Creek, Okla. The writer reports on trying to take clothes and supplies to the camp, only to be greeted by warnings and lots of "you can't do that" responses.

One graf for a preview:

The occupants of the camp cannot leave the camp for any reason. If they leave the camp they may never return. They will be issued FEMA identification cards and "a sum of money" and they will remain within the camp for the next 5 months.

You will find the report on a forum board at Above Top Secret. Click here to go there.

It sounds true. Our first impression is that the writer viewed events through a lens of mild paranoia (that, of course, does not mean they aren't after you). But the report gives us some detail on what is clearly a camp for storm survivors, a sort of forward glimpse into what will be making news over the next few weeks. Heads up.

SECOND AMENDMENT SUSPENDED IN NEW ORLEANS

If ever there was an issue to rile conservatives, it's this. From The New York Times:

Waters were receding across this flood-beaten city today as police officers began confiscating weapons, including legally registered firearms, from civilians in preparation for a mass forced evacuation of the residents still living here.

No civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns, or other firearms, said P. Edwin Compass, the superintendent of police. "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons," he said.

But that order apparently does not apply to the hundreds of security guards whom businesses and some wealthy individuals have hired to protect their property. The guards, who are civilians working for private security firms like Blackwater, are openly carrying M-16's and other assault rifles. Mr. Compass said he was aware of the private guards, but that the police had no plans to make them give up their weapons.

Nearly two weeks after the floods began, New Orleans has turned into an armed camp, patrolled by thousands of local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, as well as National Guard troops and active-duty soldiers. While armed looters roamed unchecked last week, the city is now calm. No arrests were made on Wednesday night or this morning, and police received only 10 calls for service, a police spokesman said.

The city's slow recovery is continuing on other fronts as well, local officials said at a press conference late this morning. Pumping stations are now operating across much of the city, and many taps and fire hydrants have water pressure. Also, tests have shown no evidence of cholera or other dangerous diseases in flooded areas, though health officials have said the waters contain levels of E. coli bacteria and lead 10 times higher than what is considered safe.

As one might expect, Freepers are stirring with resentment. Check out this thread to learn more.

We happen to be fans of the Second Amendment. We can't be any other way, given our love for the First, Fourth, Thirteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth amendments.

DICK CHENEY ...

... before he dicks you.

We've been waiting for a chance to use that line today, and along comes the opportunity -- courtesy of the veep himself, a man who seems to appreciate the joys of cussing.

Cheney traveled to the Gulf Coast to see the tragedy, mutter sympathetic words to shell-shocked locals, scare the occasional child. While in Mississippi, Cheney was talking with reporters when someone in the crowd of civilians yelled out -- once, twice:

Go f--k yourself, Mr. Cheney! Go f--k yourelf!"

Not quite "Go, John Glenn," but definitely delivered with enthusiasm.

A reporter asked Cheney if the comment was typical of what he was hearing from residents along the ruined coast. "First time," Cheney replied, his voice a little too hearty.

Back in "The Situation Room," Jack Cafferty, iconoclast of CNN, helpfully noted that Cheney is no stranger to the F-bomb, having dropped one last year on Sen. Patrick Leahy. "So how can it be his first time hearing it?" Cafferty asked.

"First time he heard it in this area," Wolf Blitzer replied.

Cafferty got it one last dig: "I'm sure it won't be the last."