Bristol Palin Quits Dancing With the Stars

LOS ANGELES- Fans of the popular ABC show Dancing with the Stars were shocked to learn of Bristol Palin’s decision to quit the show earlier today. Palin had been a finalist for tonight’s showdown and was widely expected to do well, but has elected to let her understudy go on in her stead.

Pastor: Burn a Koran Day a Big Misunderstanding

Controversial pastor and local firebrand Terry Jones announced today his “Burn a Koran Day” was a hoax. It turns out the entire weeks-long episode was a stunt designed to promote his brother-in-law's Bar-B-Que eatery.

Mythical Murderous Mountain Monkeys

A story 'broken' by a Chinese news organization claims the Taliban are teaching legions of monkeys to wield automatic weaponry against their invading infidel rivals. Like mushrooms after a June downpour, the story is sprouting up in every corner of the digital universe. But is a word of it true? Who cares- as a story it's dynamite.

Visions of rampaging monkey hoardes dropping from tree limbs to pour hot lead onto unsuspecting platoons of tow-headed Rangers? That's just good television.

You can almost imagine the chimps meeting up after the ambush to exchange high fives and lice removal. Just like at every monkey enclosure at every zoo, there would be an aged, scarred patriarch quietly brooding off in the corner while the others cavort and carry on like the band of fuzzy gallutes they are. But in the Taliban Monkey squad, this grizzled fellow dons an eyepatch and smokes cigarettes pilfered from the corpses of his fallen victims. A string of human ears decorates his chest in a literal fuck-you to evolution.

The aftermath of a chimp ambush can be even more horrific than a strictly homo sapien fray, thanks primarilly to their tendency to hurl handfuls of shit when their weapons run out of ammo. Teaching a monkey to fire an AK-47 is one thing, teaching it to reload is another.

Training monkeys seems like something right up the Taliban's alley. Their recruiters have a decent track record with the below average intelligence crowd. Convince them they'll receive 72 bananas when they die in battle. Or virgins if they're bonobos.

But pity the unlucky Talib that draws the short straw to hand out the loaded weaponry for the first time, hoping the simian pupils aim at the poster of a snarling GI and not his junk. "Just toss them the rifle and get behind the rock, Omar!" Woe to any that try to get between a monkey and his bang stick before it runs out of bullets. A Nordic berserker knee-deep in enemy entrails would scarcely compare to the furious outburst of an armed chimp maddened with blood lust. And all the while the things are screeching with wild-eyed inhuman laughter. If there's one thing television has taught me about monkeys, it's that they enjoy their hijinks.

Suspiciously the dire report arrives less than a month on the heels of a published study detailing organized chimpanzee patrols and warfare. I’m roughly 99.999% certain the entire “monkeys with machine-guns” thing is total malarkey. Handguns, sure I might buy that. We've all seen and loved the picture by now. But a machinegun? Do they think we were born yesterday?

There's a big part of me that desperately wishes it was true. Because if monkeys have mastered firearms there is nothing stopping them from taking humans down a notch. We've taught them to drive go-carts, wear cheap sunglasses, and flip the bird. Guns were the one thing keeping us the master species. Our kind has royally screwed up everything we've touched. It's time to give another branch of the Tree a go at the top.

Some of the monkeys I've seen seem happy enough, swinging from the truck tires in their enclosures, eating peanuts, sleeping, whacking off. I've spent less productive Sundays. If the monkeys manage through hard work and some masterful strategy to enslave mankind, I for one would shrug and accept my fate. Who doesn't like free peanuts?

St. Petersburg Council: Sanitizing the Streets for Your Comfort

This Sunday brought a frown to my usually chipper morning face. My weekly ritual of bicycling down to the corner of 66th and 38th for the Sunday paper was thrown for a loop. Instead of a brightly festooned paperboy manning each corner, there was a ghost town.

A harbinger of a simpler time, I enjoy the weekly chat with my paperboy. (I say paperboy even though Steven is probably a good thirty. There's simply no better term I know of.) There are few more dedicated scholars of the weather, for who could better tell you what the sky might do that day than a paperboy doomed to stand beneath it.

He was still there this Sunday, but today was trying to hawk the Times from back in the gas station parking lot. His fiancée had joined to lend a hand with sales, but business looked slow. Only the more dedicated will spend the moment however fleet to enter a parking lot for their paper. They had tried selling from the supermarket parking lot, but were promptly shown the other side of the road by management, shooed away like an unwanted caste.

Resembling an effort to manage an unwanted natural resource, the aim is they'll shuffle off to another town, like a flock of dejected migratory beasts in search of rumored promise. Or scuttle beneath bridges to fight over whatever scraps of society that despite the best efforts of mankind's inherent greed, somehow managed to trickle their way down to them.

I pedaled back to my air conditioned home, sipped my coffee and read Prince Valiant and Peanuts to my boy. And Steven sweated away in the oily parking lot, hoping folks would go a little farther out of their way to keep him relevant. And with that, St. Petersburg got a little less personal, and a little more barren.

Next time you see them you should thank the City Council for their campaign to spare you, a delicate citizen, the momentary inconvenience of seeing a homeless person and the pang of sadness about the world such a shock produces, however quickly evaporated. Just how comfortable does my life need to be?

300 Mile Island

What are the odds that such a disastrous slip up occur the same month as the biggest coal mine collapse in forty years? Two and a half million gallons so far. Could God be telling us, Fuck fossil fuels? He might swear, you don't know he wouldn't say that. Regardless of the vernacular, it seems someone is trying to tell us something.

In another week the oozing blob dancing its way across the Gulf of Mexico could become known as 300 Mile Island. The metaphor is apt. The situation is a lot like that little close call in the shadow of a Pennsylvania cooling tower back in the days of disco. Thanks to a single stuck valve on reactor number 2, you can count the number of new nuclear plants built in America since then on my old shop teacher's right “hand”. Bell-bottom pants went away, returned, went away again, but even now new plants are just daydreams in some engineer's head.

One of the main factors cited in the incident was human error and lack of training. That's right, we were just one Homer Simpson away from disaster.

Can we expect a similar death knell for the vocal push for sensitive drilling? The causes of the slow slide of public opinion toward acceptance of drilling anywhere a rig could be jammed were driven by a number of factors, but forefront was slick marketing on the part of the extractors and the politicians paid by them. Add to the stew a whining desire of many to maintain the cheap gas fantasy. What you end up with is the situation where even a “notoriously liberal” President ends up conceding on drilling to appease the masses.

But now it's settled. The oft recited talking point that 21st century drilling is cleaner than a nun's tongue and safer than a Volvo wagon is now being washed away by the barrel full. With no end in sight.

In the next few days, some technical point of failure will be identified. Some sheared pin, rusted flux capacitor, or some such mechanical detail. Already Halliburton's name has surfaced, adding more love-to-hate-them spice to the mix. The only thing more damaging to BP's bottom line would be a revelation that Goldman Sachs executives were somehow involved and you've got your headline of the year.

The pro-drilling cheerleaders have been silent the past couple weeks. Apparently even the likes of them know when to shut up. But it won't be long before they attempt to reshape the argument into the need to simply enforce the already onerous rules already on the books. Their (hypothetical) words. They will say that this fail safe should have been in place already under current regulation, but this was an unforeseen, one-of-a-kind circumstance. An oil rig gone rogue. Or that's what they'd have you think.

Then these people will go after some underfunded governmental agency that was to have been monitoring the mechanical doo-hickey in the first place, and blame the incompetence of government in general. The spill doesn't change anything, it was lack oversight by Washington that caused this! Accidents happen! Keep drilling! These too will be the same folks that argued for years self-enforcement by industry is the only way to go.

But now you may laugh in their faces. For they have been shown to truly not know what they're talking about. Or shown to just not care. In any event, they've had their say. Now it's time to see what the real cost of these cheap fuels really are. I had hoped the bill would be immense. Catastrophically expensive for those responsible. In the tens of billions. It pains me to see such destruction, but if that is the bitter pill needed to finally end this push, the price may be worth it. Besides, BP was paying.

But the truth is, there's a liability cap of a measly $75 million excluding cleanup costs. So sorry to the fishermen, boaters, tourism operators and all the people about to get rained on. 75 mil goes awful fast these days. The term paltry comes to mind. Which means that once again, Uncle Sam foots the bill for a private corporation's risky operations. But we're surely getting used to this by now.

Last year's burst well in the Timor Sea didn't make big news here. It helps when these things conveniently happen on the other side of the planet and everyone is busy barking about death panels. But Florida in springtime is a beautiful place, and journalists couldn't have asked for a better place to setup their cameras. People will soon be getting a full taste of what today's clean and safe oil industry is all about, live and in HD.

Coincidentally the newly proposed nuclear plants are supposed to be very clean and safe, too. Sleep well, America.

The New Phone Sex

Before you ask, no I don't want to see your new iPhone app that reads your palm. Nor do I want to see how your Google phone can find me the shortest line for a Subway sandwich within a 5 mile radius. I simply don't give a holy, flying goddamn, but thanks anyway. It's not that I don't think some of those things sound kind of interesting, it's that I don't want to be one of those people. You know, the ones convinced everyone around them secretly wants to see the latest useless thing their gadget can do.

You know the people in the iPhone ads that cheerily believe they are evolving into a higher species thanks to the sheer usefulness of their little magic box? Those ads make me want to take a hammer to my TV.

I don't have an aversion to technology per se, in fact I can understand their affliction to a degree. I've owned a couple of Palm pilots in my time and initially enjoyed slapping on whatever free application I could scrape up. Even if they were primitive by comparison to today's touchscreen time-killers, my able little Tungsten was able to display a color map of the New York City subway system years before anyone riding on it had even heard of an iPhone. To be fair there may be something of a been-there-done-that mentality at work behind my bah-humbug attitude.

So why do still I refuse to join the dark side? First of all, I'm too cheap to piss away another 30 bucks a month for a data plan. I mean I don't even pay for garbage collection, thanks to a convenient and little known dumpster at an undisclosed location between my house and the office.

But it's more than just my frugality that keeps me in the stone age with a phone that can merely play solitaire and take crappy photos. The true reason is I don't want it to capture my soul. Comparing your phone's capabilities has become a modern day pissing match, one in which normally stable people are reduced to showing how cool their phone is to anyone that will listen. And if their phone is cool, then by the new logic, they must be cool. And isn't that what everyone really wants deep down anyway? Oh Fonzie, if only you knew how diluted that word has become.

I once thought this phenomenon was restricted to the techy world. We expect people with Dilbert calendars on their desks to spend way too much time fondling the gadgets attached to their belts like so many holstered pistols. However these souls were but the vanguard of the smartphone addiction.

Now the mainstream has fully joined the phone wankfest, a fact made very clear to me at a recent dinner party. At one point when a guest stopped mid-conversation to check his email, or his text messages, or feed a virtual pet for all I know, the other three at the table followed suit like a pack of Pavlov's dogs. It was Friday evening, there were cocktails, and everyone's kids were safely playing in the den. But all these accomplished executives and soccer moms wanted to show me was a game where you direct a stream of virtual urine into a bowl. And one where you could play a cheesy little ukulele. One showed me an app that simulates a level. I am firmly convinced that he will use this “tool” to do nothing more than show others he has, anytime at the touch of his fingers, a level.

Studying their faces as they stared into their little screens, mesmerized, I was briefly reminded of Gollum stroking his Precious. “So beautiful. So thin. Feel it. Now give it back to us!” It's only a matter of time before a retractable phallus or its mirror complement is offered with these things so the relationship can finally be consummated. It's the logical progression.

After a few minutes my wife God bless her, whipped out her distinctly primitive Nokia and bragged “Thirty five dollars, used. No contract. Good reception.” The crowd stared up at her puzzled, their appreciation for irony already atrophying faster than high school French. There was no iPhone app for a witty retort. I soon excused myself to have an actual conversation with the smokers outside, a Bosnian couple who also liked to talk about booze and make fun of the rat race.

Flash forward to this evening at a red light when I saw a kid waiting for the light on his bicycle. He was right in the middle of the oncoming turning lane, zombied-out on his phone. A homeless guy with a sign on the corner told him to watch it, that he was going to get run over. The space cadet slowly glanced up, graciously removed one of his ear buds for a moment, then shrugged and sank back into the world of his digital master. I realized I would need to stifle my laughter if he was hit by a car. Other bystanders might not appreciate the Darwinian process in action as juicily as I, and laughing at a bloody kid on the road is generally frowned upon.

I don't want something with that kind of hypnotic power tethered to me. I want a phone that when it is dropped I will just shrug and blow off the dirt, not something I will ask if it is alright. Sometimes I drop mine just to remind it who's boss.

We already waste enough time on television, games, porno and the Internet. Yours truly is no exception. But the powers that be want you to be reading, viewing, playing, talking, texting, and jacking off to some electronic device at every waking moment, preferably if it scrapes a few bucks off you. And a year from now they want you to think the device you are currently reading, viewing, playing, talking, texting, and jacking off to is laughably inadequate and in need of replacement and a fresh spanking new contract. And chances are you will agree with them.

This is why 90% of the conversations I overhear drifting over cubical walls center around consumer electronics and media. The other 10% is split fairly evenly between traffic, kids, politics, and where to go for lunch. For this reason, I covet my noise-canceling headphones at work. Yes I know, they're technology that I'm hooked to. But at least I don't talk about them. Excepting this case, of course.

Now the thing about these apps is that anyone with some programming know-how can write them. And anyone with a good enough idea and some luck can even sell them. I've been writing programs for a long time. Back in the 90's I even did a working Monopoly video game for a college class. Like many others I too have kicked around the idea of writing one in the hopes of getting rich quick. Of course I'd be like the dealer that wisely doesn't touch his own product. Maybe I'll write an app of a simulated person that appears interested when you show them all your other apps. *Cha-ching*

Shaun White Announces Tricks for 2014

VANCOUVER- Snowboard aficionado and two-time gold medal champion Shaun White announced he is already working on a series of new tricks for future competitions. "You gotta keep up the heat or you fall behind, man" White told a press conference this morning.

Despite the secrecy afforded his previously unseen tricks, White outlined some of his ideas stating this time he was unconcerned about other humans being able to copy and perform such "Freeky Deeky" feats. White hopes to have the new moves perfected in time for the 2014 Olympics in Sochi. Some highlights:

"Tomato Spritzer"- White sprays a stream of urine onto his competitors from a midair height of more than 30 feet

"The Gambler"- At the top of his arc White performs a card trick, all while donning a Kenny Rogers mask

"Changeup"- This impressive trick involves White quickly removing his shirt midair, turning it inside-out, and redressing before touching down

"Changeup 540"- Changeup with 1 ½ rotations

"Pull!"- Two shotgun-wielding marksmen fire rounds at White as he performs a double flip, which he will catch in his bare hands. During training, rubber bullets are planned to be used for safety.

"Ten Mississippi"- After launch, White will scream out "One Mississippi..Two Mississippi.." to a full count of ten before landing

"Cinco Rio Grande"- Similar to a Ten Mississippi but recited in Spanish, while wearing a sombrero

"The Mountaineer"- White will jump a large group of kneeling sherpas arranged along the top of the pipe in a pyramid

"Pole Position"- A 20 foot tall vertical pole will be mounted at the top of the half-pipe, which White will land his snowboard upon, perform that day's New York Times crossword puzzle while balancing in position, then perform a soft landing

"Rocky Mountain Straight"- White will perform a trick while not totally high

Only 364 Days Until Groundhog Day!

This is not a reviews blog. In fact I can't remember ever reviewing a movie on here before. There are plenty of other stops out there for you to get your fill of that. But I recently felt the need to speak of the joys that one can get from repeated viewings of Bill Murray's 1993 classic 'Groundhog Day'.

For the uninitiated, the movie centers around Phil Connors, a weatherman for Channel 9 Pittsburgh. When we meet Phil, Murray plays him at his prickish best, oozing contempt for the masses surrounding him as he bides his time awaiting a network honcho with the proper sense and purse strings to notice his genius. He's tired of filing the same small-time stories day after day, year after year. He goes through the motions of his 'final' Groundhog day report, happy to be done with the podunk town once and for all. But the universe has different plans for him.

The roads are snowed in (a pride-damaging wrong prediction) so the Channel 9 Action News weather team is forced to retreat back to Punxsutawney, where Phil must spend at least one more night in the God-forsaken town. But come morning it becomes plain something has gone very wrong. Phil is the only one that notices everything seems a bit familiar. He's stuck in the same day, again and again. Just not figuratively this time.

Every night it's back to the same bed and breakfast with no hot shower. Every morning he wakes to Sonny and Cher on the alarm clock. The repetition makes the film not only re-watchable but a continuity watcher's delight. The same car stalls in the same place each morning. The same townsfolk gather at the same restaurants. Phil begins to notice the clockwork and turns it to his advantage.

As he gets to know every corner of Punxsutawney proper he avoids the normal pitfalls of everyday life. Phil takes joy in his newly found Godliness, as the mortals around him plod through their day as predictably as rats through a maze. “I don't have to worry about anything,” he confesses to his skeptical producer Rita. “I don't even have to floss.”

Not flossing is the least of the fun Phil squeezes out of his odd new life, and his antics run the gamut from robbing an armored car to playing chicken with a train. The way in which he cons the town dressmaker into a night of hanky panky is a thing of genius. And yet everything gets boring given enough time.

The wrench in his works becomes his producer Rita, played by a perky and pleasant Andie MacDowell, whom he grows to know and love through the sheer repetition of her company. Come morning he returns to his role of mere work acquaintance, all his work from the night before evaporated. But each evening he tries to make their date just slightly better than the last, with a tweak of a toast here, a change in dinner topic there. The ultimate realization that despite his most heroic efforts he will never win her heart, breaks his spirit. Cue the despair. And numerous suicide attempts. To be fair, the attempts are actually successful, but even loosing his mortal coil isn't enough to break the spell.

It turns out to be the bum on the corner he ignored countless times that breaks him free of his funk. Phil tries in vain to help the old man, powerless to prevent the man's death. There is a power in this lesson of life's preciousness that causes him to reevaluate his own.

No longer is his self improvement done solely to manipulate others. Echoing the earlier advice of Rita, the world begins to look more promising to Phil as his predicament shifts from curse to gift. Like the Buddhists say: 10,000 joys, 10,000 sorrows. It just takes him a while to figure this out.

I can think of no better story of personal transformation. It's an inspiring ride watching Phil's progression through bafflement, panic, depression, playfulness, despair, inspiration, and finally mastery.

What would you do with eternity? Would you have the nerve to do anything you wanted if no one would remember tomorrow? The themes the film explores are universal. This may explain why the DVD has subtitles in more languages I've ever seen (seven).

It's not my favorite film, but it's up there. There's just something about it that lends itself to repetitive viewing. Plus it's one of the rare ones with claim on an actual date that can be used as an excuse to do so. Thus every February 2nd I pour a tall drink, fix a snack, pop in the DVD and plop down into the recliner. It's a ironic ritual I've been carrying out for about a decade now.

We are creatures of habit, often to a comic fault. Recently I noticed that each time my lunch crew and I visit Chik-fil-A, I choose not only the same meal, but the same table and seat. It is so easy to slip into our little ruts that we don't notice them until we see how deep the wagon wheels are riding along the trail. But if anything, this is one habit I think helps keep things fresh and reminds us to use our time just a little more wisely.

And there's a reason this is being written on February 3rd. Yesterday I had to watch not only Groundhog Day, but the season premiere of Lost. It was a late night and writing fell victim to sleeping. So I invite you to take up the tradition yourself, 364 days from now.