from The Onion:

I have finally put the finishing touches on my novel, Westbound 90, and though it took forever, I am extremely pleased with the end result. It's a modern-day Candide, a coming-of-age tragicomedy in which the reader is taken on a great journey, both geographically and emotionally. I am confident it will be widely appreciated, as it addresses themes that speak to the human condition and, coincidentally, has loads of fucking.

Sometimes I am on the verge of tears. I can feel that salty pressure building behind my eyes, but I have no idea why I'm so upset. Perhaps that is irrelevant. People can be happy, and even though someone might ask "What are you so happy about?" they can go on being happy without really feeling the need to explain or justify their emotions. Maybe I can just go around being sad. Maybe that's normal. Hundreds of years ago I would have been diagnosed as suffering from "passion," and they probably would have prescribed a course of leeches applied to the small of my back.

Naturally I find it more than a little troubling when I'm driving along and I suddenly start to cry. Luckily it only happens when I'm alone, so I haven't ever had to explain it. But with the increased frequency it's been happening lately--once on the way to work, once climbing up a hiking trail, twice just walking around town--I'm starting to wonder about my mental health. I've long suspected that I suffer from some minor form of bi-polar disorder or mild depression, but I've always brushed it off, not wanting to look like an Oprah bleeding heart. Anyone with ideas out there?

A bouquet of posies.

Turning tides by bedtime.

Here's a site where you can make your own Red Meat comics. Most of the ones on the site are about sex, racism, and incest. Here are mine, not on those topics.

People ate my monkey.

Pay the nice man.

From The Onion

Georgia School Board Bans 'Theory Of Math'
COGDELL, GA—The Cogdell School Board banned the teaching of the controversial "Theory Of Math" in its schools Monday. "We are simply not confident of this mysterious process by which numbers turn, as if by magic, into other numbers," board member Gus Reese said. "Those mathematicians are free to believe 3 times 4 equals 12, but that dun [sic] give them the right to force it on our children." Under the new ruling, all math textbooks will carry a disclaimer noting that math is only one of many valid theories of number-manipulation.

People who are critical of Bush often dismiss him as being stupid. As Mark Crispin Miller and others have pointed out, this is far from the case. He is willfully ignorant, which is much, much worse. He doesn't care enough to be informed about foreign policy, the plight of the homeless, or many other topics that are outside his own experience. However, he is very knowledgeable about death penalties, oil prices, and golf.

So when he misspeaks it is not so much that he is stupid, but that he simply cannot be bothered to speak correctly. So certain was he of assuming the presidency, and so certain is he now of maintaining it, that he doesn't have to be articulate at all.

Bushisms

"This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating." —George W. Bush, as quoted by the New York Daily News, April 23, 2002

"And so, in my State of the — my State of the Union — or state — my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation — I asked Americans to give 4,000 years — 4,000 hours over the next — the rest of your life — of service to America. That's what I asked — 4,000 hours." —George W. Bush, Bridgeport, Conn., April 9, 2002

"We've got pockets of persistent poverty in our society, which I refuse to declare defeat — I mean, I refuse to allow them to continue on. And so one of the things that we're trying to do is to encourage a faith-based initiative to spread its wings all across America, to be able to capture this great compassionate spirit." —George W. Bush, O'Fallon, Mo., Mar. 18, 2002

"I understand that the unrest in the Middle East creates unrest throughout the region." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., March 13, 2002

"My trip to Asia begins here in Japan for an important reason. It begins here because for a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times. From that alliance has come an era of peace in the Pacific." —George W. Bush, Tokyo, Feb. 18, 2002

"We are fully committed to working with both sides to bring the level of terror down to an acceptable level for both." —George W. Bush, after a meeting with congressional leaders, Washington, D.C., Oct. 2, 2001

"Well, it's an unimaginable honor to be the president during the Fourth of July of this country. It means what these words say, for starters. The great inalienable rights of our country. We're blessed with such values in America. And I — it's — I'm a proud man to be the nation based upon such wonderful values." —George W. Bush, visiting the Jefferson Memorial, Washington, D.C., July 2, 2001

"Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" —George W. Bush