President Obama wasn’t the only big news in Ireland this week. Who knew that genital diseases had a patron saint? Regardless, you can buy his holy relic–severed head–for an estimated €800 to €1,200 this week in Co Meath. Perfect for the man who has everything: including a couple of things he’d like to get cured of.
“I glanced behind me and a guy was ambling down the street holding what I assumed to be a joke head, by the hair.”
The head was real and had previously belonged to a 60-year-old woman shopping for groceries.
Clive James’ review of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film demonstrates the well-written long piece still thrives in the era of tweets and microblogging. An example of the quotable prose:
Whatever the subject, a real critic is a cultural critic, always: if your judgment doesn’t bring in more of the world than it shuts out, you shouldn’t start. Writing at his best, Thomson is well qualified. You have to know about more than just the movies to see the “nobility” in Denzel Washington’s best acting; to isolate Al Pacino’s characteristic of “outrageous inner size,” you have to be up to speed with short-legged Napoleonic warlords since Alexander the Great; evoking Warren Beatty’s “puzzled look” is a nice way of describing catatonia, but it proves that the critic’s eye for aesthetic value can penetrate a surface; and it takes a knowledge of the American class structure to make the correct observation about Katharine Hepburn that she “loved movies while disapproving of them.” Thomson just loves them, but he knows there is a world elsewhere.
Besides enjoying the review, I went straight to Amazon and ordered the book.
If we are to believe the latest statistics from the Congo, the rate of rape has reached astronomical proportions:
The analysis, which will be published in the American Journal of Public Health in June, shows that more than 400,000 women had been raped nationwide during a 12-month period between 2006 and 2007.
That’s 1 in 42 women. Presumably some of those women may have been raped more than once, considering how often it happens.
AP looks at the statistics only in terms of the women, but what do the numbers tell you about Congolese men? More than 2 percent are rapists?
If it’s not nailed down, it’s theirs:
“We appreciate your honesty,” said Dallas police spokesman Senior Cpl. Kevin Janse. “We’re going to put the money to good use. It’s not going to be wasted, but put to good use for the City of Dallas.”
We’re from the government, and we’re here to help you…by taking that troublesome cash off your hands.
The criticism of the air-brushing of the female participants in the Bin Laden security meeting has focused on the issue from a feminist perspective. Unfortunately, this ideological argument devolves into a question of values as one side says it’s “protecting the modesty of women,” whereas the other says, “the presence of a woman, any woman…was too much for the editors.”
Don’t even the most religious of people believe, however, that truth is what it is? In other words, Hillary Clinton and Audrey Tomason were in the room, regardless of what a newspaper does to the photograph. Publishing the modified photo, therefore, promulgates a lie.
If the editors don’t want to show the room as it was, then don’t use the photograph, but how can they as journalists manufacture a scene that never happened?
Color me skeptical:
Rita Chretien shot up from her spot in the 2000 Chevrolet Astro’s backseat when she heard them outside, mustered her lingering strength to open the door and step out shoeless. She waved.
Three days later, she was resting comfortably in an Idaho hospital, spending Mother’s Day with her children.
“Right now, we’re just celebrating,” said her son, Raymond, on Sunday.
Even the doctor who oversaw Chretien’s care at St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center in Twin Falls, Idaho, acknowledged it was not easy to explain how a 56-year-old woman could have such a positive prognosis and demeanor given what she’d gone through.
I bet there’s more to this than meets the eye. Where’s Lieutenant Columbo when you need him?
It’s a plot not even David Lynch could come up with: a dying 94-year-old amputee, her scheming husband with dubious claims to royal lineage, and a divorcee of a world wrestling champion all conspire to produce a surrogate child. It’s just another day in the life of Zsa Zsa Gabor, Prince Frederic von Anhalt, and Hulk Hogan’s ex-wife, Pamela Bach.
With the help of a couple of black Democratic votes in the state house:
Oddly enough, when it came to the override, four Democrats crossed over to vote for the map, thus overriding the veto! Oddly enough, all four are African-Americans (who readily admitted that they were protecting Clay’s and Cleaver’s seats)! And oddly enough, Russ is not taking it well! And by ‘not taking it well’ I mean ‘engaging in profanity-laden, bitterly sarcastic invective’….
He can try his luck elsewhere, but faces an uphill battle that will likely be polarized by race.
I hear Charlie Sheen is in need of a new goddess. And although Halyna Kolotnytska isn’t that much of a looker anymore, being a nurse has to carry some cache. Something tells me Sheen might have a use for medical services from time to time.