The Funny Farm
Where life is beautiful all the time and I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats...
Adventures of a Basic Force For Good in Our TimeTM
[A Day Late and Dollar Short post from the Funny Farm]
Found via three degrees of blog separation: PSotD to Comments From Left Field to Honsberger is a liar all show us what's at the top of the vile spew that AnnThraxx vomits into the blogsphere (y!sctw!) on her site (no, we're not linking to her. We have to go disinfect everything now that we've returned from visiting an online source of her venomous bile):
To The People Of Islam: Just think: If we'd invaded your countries, killed your leaders and converted you to Christianity YOU'D ALL BE OPENING CHRISTMAS PRESENTS RIGHT ABOUT NOW! Merry Christmas |
Sure they would, goatlicker - all except the ones who make the per capita annual income of $780 per year or less. That sure will buy a lot of luxuries, won't it, you heartless shrew. Besides, we've seen what's on the thinking Iraqi's Christmas wish list. Those sure are some nice presents - water, fuel to run generators, some way to provide electricity* - you know, all the extravagant luxuries that Christians love to get during this festive season.
Just another example of that Compassionate Conservatism we keep hearing about...
* - say, just wondering if anyone would possibly be able to get some sort of solar energy panels to Baghdad? Quite possibly this would be an ideal testing ground to see if wholescale solar power could be viable. We hear there's quite a bit of sunshine there...
From the comments at Talk Left regarding a recent spate of post-Christmas Repugnicant trolls infesting her site:
Don't ask for whom the belle trolls ... please!
I find that by scattering a few Troll House cookies around the site one can circumduct their fustian charade and lure them back under the bridge. Of course, they probably think TL is abridged too far. |
Also, from the same commenter, a little bit farther down in the comments:
It can be about arms control or an election poll, or just reports of a glory hole, But they post, they post, the lowly troll. Whether it' s a droll troll on comment patrol, You can't reason or cajole or even extol, |
Thanks for causing an outbreak of spontaneous hysterical laughter here at the Funny Farm...
We have finally managed to get a couple of pieces of old vinyl converted to mp3 form (and thus, more easily stored and reproduced) that we have been jonesing to hear for a while*. And we gots to tell you, it is somewhat unsettling to think about these words, written almost thirty years ago, and how with a little tweaking** they can be applied to a certain Unelected Usurper and his junta:
(Through a fortunate turn of events this original transcription has been acquired of a dissertation given by the late Professor Charles Pamplemousse R.C.B. at the Eighteenth Assembly of the "Heirs of the Politzanian Empire." Professor Pamplemousse was a distinguished anthropologist of his time whom many believed to be the world's leading authority on the subject of extict civilizations. The program concludes with the singing of "The Politzanian National Anthem.")
As facts are few and far between For what appears sheer grandiosity Politzania! Politzania! Now, these ancient Politzanians Quite a ridiculous notion, granted Politzania! Politzania! Those citizens who questioned They were tested and encephalogrammed -("The Politzanian National Anthem")- Everybody now... (lyrics copyright Klaatu 1977. Reproduced without permission because we can't find them to ask for it!) |
* - trust us - you'd much rather buy the CD (if it's available) than try and convert vinyl to mp3. It is very resource intensive, and even at a ridiculously low hourly rate the cost in terms of time and effort is more than your average CD (we estimate it costs about $15 per album when you add in minor costs like CDs and CD cases). So, unless your time is worthless and/or you don't have any scratch at all, it's better to buy than it is to convert.
** - we've altered the lyrics slightly for the viewing audience. Within the Politzanian National Anthem, the original lines were:
Politzania, red, white and green
Politzania - reigning supreme.
For some strange reason, these alternative lines just popped into our head. Imagine that!
Stop me if you've heard this one before...
There are many forms of communication known to humanity. Over time, talking to one another has gotten progressively faster with the invention of new means of sending messages to one another. The telegraph came and speeded things up considerably. Then the telephone added another incremental jump in the speed of long distance communication. But now, we have raised the bar by a quantum level once again.
It appears that the fastest means of communication now known to humanity is that new development known as Tel-a-Drudge. |
[rimshot] Thanks! We'll be here all week...
A tip of the hat to Mark Kleiman for sparking our brain cells (both of them!) into this update of a very old joke with this post.
Happy holidays to all and sundry - we hope you had a good time celebrating whatever it was you celebrated in the company of family and friends.
We just wished that pRezNit Let Them Eat Depleted Uranium was imbued with that holiday spirit a bit more. Our fellow bloggers at The Left Coaster show us that the good ol' U.S. of A. is stealing Iraq's oil. Talk Left tells us about how pRzeNit Compassionate Conservatism (cough) is cutting financial aid to students. And, thanks to Calpundit, we find that BabyDoc Bush has also cut food aid for global charities. He isn't giving many pResidential pardons this year, either - but that one doesn't seem to bother us as much as it does others.
Then again, we're not among the Three Million who got huge tax breaks from pResident Unending Debt. Maybe we might have a different opinion if we got thousands more just for being part of the elite...
We recently heard one of our good friends tell us that, if he ever won it big, he's taking the family to DisneyWorld (just like in the commercials). Then, the other day, we managed to read an article saying that Disney has been charged by the SEC for failing to disclose relationships between the company and its directors. Like, for example:
- failure to disclose between 1999 and 2001 that it employed three children of directors who were paid annually from $60,000 to $150,000;
- a 50 percent-owned subsidiary employed the spouse of another director and that the spouse was paid more than $1 million per year;
- Disney failed to tell investors it paid a company owned by a Disney director that provided air transportation to that director for Disney business;
- the company also failed to disclose that it provided office space and other services valued at more than $200,000 annually to another Disney director.
"Shareholders have a significant interest in information regarding relationships between the company and its directors," said SEC Deputy Enforcement Director Linda Thomsen.
"Failure to comply with the SEC's disclosure rules in this area impedes shareholders' ability to evaluate the objectivity and independence of directors," she said in a statement.
Hmmmm. How could the average shareholder evaluate the objectivity and independence of a company's directors? Well, objectivity would be so... subjective. And since we are well aware that we are considered to be quite subjective in our opinions, we're reasonably certain that we couldn't put an unbiased discussion together about that.
But independence, now - we think we can handle that one a bit. In fact, we think it would be a good idea to show you, dear reader, how independent all of these directors are. After all, each director gets paid more than an average employee in the company for occupying their seat on the board. They have to show up at least once every other month to attend a board meeting to collect that salary. Oh, yeah - they also have to make policy decisions that affect the entire company. So it might be considered a strain on their independence if they were, say, to belong to another board of directors (or be another company's CEO or something like that). Especially if they were competitors, or potentially could work together
So, let's take a quick look at the board of directors of Disney, shall we? We're just going to point out any other connections these board members might have with another company. You know, those connections which might influence the objectivity and independence of directors.
Here's Disney's board, along with anything else they might have going these days (that we can find with very little effort online):
John E. Bryson (Director since 2000) - currently also Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer of Edison International and Chairman of the Board of SCE, Chairman of the Board of Edison Capital (a financial investment nonutility subsidiary of Edison International) (since 2000), a director for the Boeing Corporation, and a director for Pacific American Income Shares, Inc./Western Asset Funds, Inc.
John S. Chen (Director since 2004) - currently also Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Sybase, Inc. Michael D. Eisner (Director since 1984) - currently only on Disney's board. Good for you! Judith L. Estrin (Director since 1998 ) - currently also President and Chief Executive Officer of Packet Design, LLC, and a member of the board of directors of FedEx Corporation Robert A. Iger (Director since 2000) - currently also a director of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City Aylwin B. Lewis (Director since 2004) - currently also CEO of Kmart Corporation, and a director of Halliburton Inc. Monica C. Lozano (Director since 2000) - currently also Publisher and Chief Executive Officer of La Opinión, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the United States, and Senior Vice President of its parent company, ImpreMedia, LLC. In addition, she is a member of the Board of Regents of the University of California and a trustee of the University of Southern California. She is a trustee of SunAmerica Asset Management Corporation and a director of the Union Bank of California, the California Health Care Foundation and Tenet Healthcare Corporation Robert W. Matschullat (Director since 2002) - currently also the non-executive Chairman of the Board of The Clorox Company, a consumer products company, and a director of McKesson Corporation George J. Mitchell (Chairman of the Board since March 2004) - currently also a partner of the law firm of Piper Rudnick LLP in Washington, D.C. and senior counsel to Preti, Flaherty, Beliveau & Pachios in Portland, Maine. He is also a director of FedEx Corporation, Staples, Inc., and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Leo J. O'Donovan, S.J. (Director since 1996) - currently only on Disney's board. Good for you! Gary L. Wilson (Director since 1985) - currently also Chairman of the Board of Directors of Northwest Airlines Corporation, a director of CB Richard Ellis, Inc., and a member of the board of trustees of Duke University, the board of trustees of The Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and the Board of Governors of the International Air Transport Association |
Wouldn't it be somewhat of a conflict, if, oh, I don't know - maybe Disney was using Sybase software to run some of their computer applications? Or they used FedEx exclusively for their package deliveries? Or their 401Ks had to be bought from Pacific American Income Shares, Inc./Western Asset Funds, Inc. or SunAmerica Asset Management Corporation? What if the company uses Mr. Mitchell's legal firm to handle all of its legal business? What if the only cruise packages you can get from Disney Cruise Lines require you to fly Northwest?
Just another story for the Media Whores to ignore. Again. It's too bad that the closest thing we get to journalism these days is a bit of research done by bloggers in their spare time...
Finding fault with the current misadministration is kinda like shooting fish in a barrel*, but we're very impressed with what we've seen over at Uggabugga lately. This little gem deserves a spot of its very own on these pages:
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There's lots of other good stuff to look at over there, including the real numbers on Social Security. Go see for yourself...
* - we guess. Here at the Funny Farm, we'd probably put a large hole in the barrel while vaporizing the fish. And we never understood where this particular turn of phrase came from. How exactly does one go about shooting fish in a barrel? I would think a spear would do a better and easier job...
(A Day Late and a Dollar Short post from the Funny Farm)
'Cause, like, we're not sure if, like, he's got any connections to the Great White North anymore, eh? Now that, like, he's down in, like, Dee See, eh?
So, like, Fred, eh? we, like, hope you enjoy this one, eh? And, like, we hope you're not, like, on the bus, eh?
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Frelling spammers! We don't think we managed to eliminate any real comments, but if so we apologize for the inconvenience (but not in fiery letters 40 feet tall...)
Oh, yeah - and we won't be up to anything in the way of bloggy goodness until we get the junk off of our page. TTFN
Well - here we were, just about ready to begin a brief (cough) tirade about the hypocritical jongoistic Repugnicant propaganda spewing from the comments in this post over at Jane Galt's website over a throwaway stiletto directed at the wingnut's favorite target of the last decade and a half, the ClenisTM*, and the voter fraud perpetrated by the Secretary of State of Ohio as alleged in this article** by somebody with an axe to grind (gee, imagine that!)
Then we managed to make our regular pilgrimage to Jeebus' General's place. He's cranked things up a notch with his display of a mass emailing to the NRA. Isn't it nice to be able to use the internet to organize a lynch mob group of concerned citizens determined to disrupt the election enforce their will on the people make sure the vote is intimidated processed properly?
* - Thanks to XOverboard for pointing us to this juicy morsel of infotainment, Repugnicant style
** - A tip of the hat to Corrente for pointing us to the page where we got to this article.
Sigh... this is pretty much all that we'll be seeing on ice this year:
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Thanks to Aislin for the cartoon...
Of course, we have dueling headlines here to try and spin the same story in slightly different ways: Reuters says Producer Price Gain Bigger Than Expected, while AP reports that Wholesale Prices Climb 0.5 Percent in Nov. the pertinent quotes for me:
The increase in the producer price index, reported by the Labor Department on Friday, came after wholesale prices shot up by 1.7 percent in October, the biggest rise in more than 14 years.
- and - Over the last 12 months, producer prices have risen 5.0 percent, the sharpest increase since the period ended December 1990. |
Isn't it amazing that all this has gone on under the reign pResidency of the Unelectorated Usurper? And that the media whores seem to overlook or dismiss many of these seemingly endless reports of the country going to hell in a handbasket?
Just another day in paradise...
Folgers Hikes Price of Coffee 14 Percent.
Well - that takes care of that little nest egg we had saved up for a rainy day. Maybe it can provide a little impetus to get off the 1 - 2 pots of very strong coffee we use to snap the eyes open in the morning, too. Plus, now we can see some value in a pre-emptive strike on Columbia. Either that, or we can buy the loyalty of that Juan Valdez guy and get him to drop tons of java beans into the market at America-friendly rates.
Damn you, George Steinbrenner!
Do youse guys use different algorithms to rank your searches? Our humble efforts at our previous zone were ranked 4th by Google and Yahoo when searching for the Funny Farm; however, the current residence in cyber space is ranked 8th by Yahoo, but 249th over at Google. What's up with that? Maybe there were too many allusions to the competence (especially or the lack thereof) of the Deserter in Chief for our Google patriot rating to be high enough to be worthy of their attention? We wonders, aye, we wonders...
We've been working on getting a special Christmas gift catalog up for your infotainment. But in the meantime I wanted to show you another kewl toy for your all-consuming appetites:
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Here's the press blurb that alerted me to this wonderful new technological advance (cough), which you can also see by clicking on the picture above.
And here's their website. Order yours today!
Courtesy of fellow OSP member and Iron Blogger Democrat Folkbum comes a quiz:
How Much Are You Like Your Zodiac Sign?
We were born within six hours of the Scorpio/Sagittarius cusp, and though officially classed as a Sagittarian, we tend to exhibit traits common to both signs*. Amazingly enough, we managed to conform to the responses expected from both of these signs:
You are 67% Sagittarius
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You are 73% Scorpio
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We feel strangely compelled to embrace our new-found faith in this centuries-old superstition religion, and tell the world about the wonders of an astrology-based belief system. We're not sure if we're quite ready to start burning others at the stake, denying them health benefits, refusing to show commercials supporting their obviously inferior cultural traditions religious beliefs, or amending the constitution so that astrology is recognized as the one true faith that all americans are required to believe in. Wouldn't it be silly if someone actually tried to do something like that?
* - as much as anyone can be said to have similarities, or differences, to an arbitrary set of characteristics which were created to be generic enough to apply to just about everybody.
Yes, we know it's been a while since we managed to get into the pages of OSP. But there have been a number of things getting in the way, and not enough earth-shattering news to bring to you, dear reader. But get a load of this:
President George W. Bush went to Canada on Tuesday seeking better ties with a northern neighbor, but he was dismissive about Canadians' strong opposition to the war in Iraq.
"You know, I haven't seen the polls you look at. We just had a poll in our country where people decided that the foreign policy of the Bush administration ought to ... stay in place for four more years," he told a Canadian reporter. [-snip-] Bush expressed gratitude that Canada has agreed to send $200 million in humanitarian aid to Iraq and will forgive $450 million of Iraq's prewar debt to Canada. [-snip-] |
Isn't it nice that pRezNit Faith-Based Government is able to forgive debt on behalf of other nations? Maybe we can get one of our friends in Canada to forgive the debt owed by the Funny Farm to the mortgage company. Oh, that's right - we aren't letting the BFEE steal 8.8 Billion dollars in oil money from under our property like the Iraqis are*.
A tip of the hat goes out to Corrente for leading us to the story about the (lack of) accountability of the junta with regards to Iraqi finances.
This entry cross-posted at Open Source Politics.
* - Okay - we're using a little poetic license here. The Iraqis aren't exactly letting the BFEE take their oil money - they have little say in the process.
Editors' Note: we didn't mean to imply that BabyDoc could magically forgive other nations' debts at a whim. Yet. We merely wanted to point out that it's awful nice that The Emperor With No Clothes is kind enough to thank others for their charity while giving none at home.]