DAILY DIRT FOR FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 2011

------BITS AND PIECES!------

• Former American Vice President Dick Cheney no longer has a heartbeat. But hold on... before you break out the bubbly and call Party Planners Inc to order the balloons, noise-makers and vanilla frosting for that celebratory bash you and your friends have been planning for years, maybe you should read the whole story...
• Bodies are piling up in Ivory Coast, which used to be one of the only countries in Africa that it wasn't completely depressing to read about. Now, thanks to some fucked up elections, people in that nation are having to pick sides between some crazy warlord mother-effer named Ouattara and some other crazy warlord mother-effer named Gbagbo. People, pick your warlord! Oh yes, it's always a grand old time on the Dark Continent, ain't it?
• The South American state of Bolivia has extended 11 "rights" to a pagan-like deity they call Pachamamma, who represents "Mother Nature" or "Mother Earth". Among these rights is included the right "not to be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities". How long you wanna bet THAT'S gonna last?
• Okay, folks, I sincerely apologize for the paltry nature of these latest Dirts, but I'm doing some freelance work to keep my head afloat financially, so I ask you to stick with me in the short term for much better blog entries in the long term! I'm also going to start running some interesting Guest Editorials soon, so keep your eyes peeled for that. And, finally, I know a few of you got back to me about recording an original Daily Dirt Theme Song a few weeks back, but I have yet to hear any recordings! You know who you are, people! Come on! I wanna hear some MUSIC, baby! Let's get this ball rolling!

-----JOKES OF THE DAY!-----

- Today's first joke comes to us from our old pal Django, and it's entitled "Diary of a Blond"...

January - Took new scarf back to store because it was too tight.
February - Fired from pharmacy job for failing to print labels. Hello! Bottles won't fit in printer!
March - Got really excited. Finished jigsaw puzzle in 6 months... box said 2-4 years!
April - Trapped on escalator for hours ... power went out!
May - Tried to make Kool-Aid. Wrong instructions. 8 cups of water won't fit into those little packets!
June - Tried to go water skiing... couldn't find a lake with a slope.
July - Lost breast stroke swimming competition... learned later, the other swimmers cheated. They used their arms!
August - Got locked out of my car in rain storm. Car swamped because soft-top was open.
September - The capital of California is C, isn't it?
October - Hate M &M's... They are so hard to peel.
November - Baked turkey for 4 1/2 days! Instructions said 1 hour per pound and I weigh 108!
December - Couldn't call 911! Duh! There's no "eleven" button on the stupid phone!

- Today's second joke was sent in by Juno Fred...

Last night my sister and I were sitting in the den and I said to her, “I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle to keep me alive. That would be no quality of life at all. If that ever happens, just pull the plug.”
So she got up, unplugged the computer, and threw out all my beer.
She's such a bitch.

- Today's worst joke was submitted by our old pal N8Possibilities, who knows better. It's a stab at "conservative humor", and by the time you're done reading it, you'll know why the right-wing doesn't really "do" comedy, beyond the unintentional variety shit out by the likes of Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and the rest.

Dan Rather, Katie Couric, and a tough Marine Sergeant were all captured by terrorists in Iraq. The leader of the terrorists told them that he would grant them each one last request before they were beheaded.
Dan Rather said, 'Well, I'm a Texan; so I'd like one last bowlful of hot spicy chili'. The leader nodded to an underling who left and returned with the chili. Rather ate it all and said, 'Now I can die content.'
Katie Couric said, 'I'm a reporter to the end. I want to take out my tape recorder and describe the scene here and what's about to happen. Maybe someday someone will hear it and know that I was on the job 'til the end.' The leader directed an aide to hand over the tape recorder and Couric dictated some comments. She then said, 'Now I can die happy.'
The leader turned and said, 'And now, Mr. Marine tough guy, what is your final wish?'
'Kick me in the ass,' said the Marine.
'What?' asked the leader? 'Will you mock us in your last hour?' 'No, I'm not kidding. I want you to kick me in the ass,' insisted the Marine.
So the leader shoved him into the open, and kicked him in the ass. The Marine went sprawling, but rolled to his knees, pulled a 9 mm pistol from under his flak jacket, and shot the leader dead. In the resulting confusion, he jumped to his knapsack, pulled out his carbine and sprayed the terrorists with gunfire. In a flash, all of them were either dead or fleeing for their lives.
As the marine was untying Rather and Couric, they asked him, 'Why didn't you just shoot them in the beginning? Why did you ask them to kick you in the ass first?'
'What?' replied the Marine, 'And have you two assholes report that I was the aggressor?'

-----THEY SAID IT!-----

"It is not necessary to make thousands of others suffer because police can't be bothered to arrest the ones who are responsible. The police may only take such preventative actions as a last resort catering for situations about to descend into violence. The test of necessity is met only in truly extreme and exceptional cases."

- Well slap me silly and call me Goofy... an actual, bona-fide court decision that declares mass-arresting hundreds of peaceful protesters for little to no reason is a BAD THING! Truly, this is cause for celebration. I've never felt so safe, secure and free! Hooray for the death of the Police/Surveillance State!

-----ON THIS DAY!-----

On April 15 in 1865, Abraham Lincoln succumbs to the wound inflicted upon his person the previous evening.

On this day in 1896, the first Olympic Games of the Modern Era come to a close in Athens, Greece, with a relatively simple closing ceremony. First-place winners didn't win gold medals, but silver ones creepily stamped with the big, staring face of Greek pagan deity Zeus. Second-place winners got copper medals. Third-place got a handshake and a signed, autographed picture of His Royal Majesty Lord Jack Fucking Squat.

On this day in 1912, two and a half hours after hitting an iceberg, the Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic with 1,517 people still on board. The wreck would not be located until 1985.

On this day in 1947, Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking baseball's color line, not to mention the brains of, like, a dozen million racist assholes.

On this day in 1952, a prototype B-52 Stratofortress super-bomber -- known inside the military as the BUFF, which stands for Big Ugly Fat/Fucker/Flying/Fellow, depending on who you ask -- takes off from Boeing Field in Seattle to Larson Air Force Base, Moses Lake, Washington, with test pilot "Tex" Johnston at the controls, and if this brings to mind the movie Dr Strangelove or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb, that's probably not a coincidence. B-52s would circumnavigate Soviet airspace with redundant nuclear payloads for years, refueling in mid-flight, staying up in the air for weeks at a time, until Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles -- with a little help from rocket scientist and dedicated occult practitioner Jack Parsons -- made these flying fortresses obsolete.

On this day in 1955, milkshake-machine salesman Ray Kroc opens the doors to his first franchise of a McDonald's Brothers restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois. The McDonald's restaurant chain dates its founding to this day. 

On this day in 1989, 96 soccer fans die in what authorities describe as a "human crush" during the FA Cup semi final at Hillsborough Stadium.

On this day in 1989, protesters begin gathering in Tienanmen Square in the People's Republic of China to commemorate the death of the recently ousted and publicly humiliated General Secretary Hu Yaobang, who was relatively liberal and reform-minded by Chinese standards. The protests would grow and intensify until June 4, at which point all Hell broke loose.

And now for some birthday announcements!

On April 15, in 1452, Renaissance painter, sculptor, engineer, scientist, mathematician, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, inventor, musician and all-around super-genius Leonardo da Vinci is born. Seventeen years later, in the Punjab, Nanak Dev is born. He will go on to found the Sikh religion and be its first Guru. The dictionary is born on this day in 1755, when Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language is first published in London. The General Electric Company is founded on this day in 1892, and since corporations have the same rights as human beings nowadays, I guess it's only fitting that this event be listed as a birthday. In 1920, psychiatrist and humanist Thomas Szasz is born. He later emerges as one of the most eloquent voices speaking out against the mis-use and abuse of science, reason and medicine as a tool for social control. The road atlas was born on this day on 1924, when Rand McNally publishes the first book of its kind. In 1942, Bush Crime Family crony Kenny-Boy Lay is born... Enron ensues. And, finally, on this day in 1970, exactly nine months after his parents consummate their wedding vows while bathed in the flickering glow of a Niagara Falls motel room TV set reporting the stupendous news that two human beings were actually walking on the goddamn Moon... yer old pal Jerky is born.

-----ASK JERKY!-----

Dear Jerky; I am recently divorced from my fat, belligerent ParaLegal wife of 20 months. What can I do, short of stalking her, to make her realize that she's made a very poor move? And how do I go about getting my Smith & Wesson back from her seedy clutches? Signed: Irate Hubby

Dear Irate Hubby; They say that living well is the best revenge. Then again, they also say that revenge is a dish best served cold. So who the hell are THEY, anyway? As far as yer old pal Jerky is concerned, revenge is a dish best served with a side order of fries and gravy. 


As for "living well", all that really means is replacing your Gonzo Fatso with a sweet young piece of ass, and making damn well sure she gets an aggravating eyeful of your New Girl's pulchritudinous... um... pulchritude.  


Now, about your firearm. Considering the fact that someone in a household where a gun is present is almost three times as likely to be the victim of a homicide compared to someone living in a gun-free home, the most devious thing you could do is probably just to let her keep the damn thing.