the rock ducks, the salmon slide over it

Hey, who am I to be the only blog in the whole wired world who doesn't post this?

Jesus actor struck by lightning

Actor Jim Caviezel has been struck by lightning while playing Jesus in Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion Of Christ.

The lightning bolt hit Caviezel and the film's assistant director Jan Michelini while they were filming in a remote location a few hours from Rome.

It was the second time Michelini had been hit by lightning during the shoot.

Neither of them was badly hurt, according to the film's producer Steve McEveety.

Michelini had previously been struck during filming in Matera, Italy, when he suffered light burns to his fingers after lightning hit his umbrella.

Describing the second lightning strike, McEveety told VLife, a supplement of the trade paper Variety: "I'm about a hundred feet away from them when I glance over and see smoke coming out of Caviezel's ears."


OK - I'm caveating that this is only actually funny until the first right-wing pundit picks it up and starts talking about Job or Calvary or comparing Gibson to Abraham and his career to Isaac or suggests he run for Senator from Utah, but it's pretty damn funny.

let's walk through this again, shall we?

KING: It's often been said that the one area you disagreed with many in the Republican Party was the question of choice.

[Barbara] BUSH: It's often been said a lot of things.

KING: What is the truth?

BUSH: It's not your business.

KING: You don't -- you don't share your feelings on it?

BUSH: Not particularly. I'm not an elected public official, and I support my husband and my children.

KING: But there are some things you won't take a stand on?

BUSH: Absolutely. I don't think that's should even be in politics, to tell you the honest truth.

KING: You don't think the question should be in politics?

BUSH: No. And so I'm just out of that. Move on.


OK, here's the thing: I knew ol' Larry would have some trouble parsing this, so let me translate:

I'm years to the north of menopause and the grandchildren have been on the pill since they were 11. I couldn't be less interested in the lives of people who don't come to my house for holidays, and I don't give a damn if they ban abortion - my family can afford to go to Switzerland. Maybe women should have thought about that back when they started not supporting my men for national office.

How tacky of you to bring it up.


via the other Citizen Kane

Meanwhile, back from the ranch

Britain's Foreign Office said Friday it believed that "terrorists may be in the final phases of planning attacks" in Saudi Arabia.

The Foreign Office gave no details about its information, but said its warning against all but essential travel in Saudi Arabia remained in place.

The Foreign Office said it had updated its travel advice, saying, "We advise British nationals against all but essential travel to Saudi Arabia. We believe that terrorists may be in the final phases of planning attacks."

A statement posted on the department's Web site advised travelers to make sure they had confidence in their security arrangements and that visitors to military buildings should take special care.

On Thursday, Australia warned that another terrorist attack was expected in Saudi Arabia and urged its citizens to avoid going there. It also authorized families of Australian Embassy staff to leave Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

On May 12, car bomb attacks on three Western housing compounds in Riyadh killed 26 people and the nine assailants. Saudi Arabia cracked down on Islamic militants in highly publicized raids after the suicide attacks.


Princess Haifa al-Faisal, the educated driver's-license-holding daughter of the late Saudi King, wife of Saudi Ambassador to the US Prince Bandar bin Sultan, direct provider of funding to the terrorists and post-9/11 presidential houseguest, was quoted (while preparing for a dinner party) as saying "You people are so totally cut off"

Her since-promoted colleague and fellow direct 9/11 terrorist funder Saleh Ibn Abdul Rahman Hussayen, who spent the night with three of the hijackers in a private house on September 10th, was unavailable for comment, having been flown out of the country while the planes were still grounded.

Hussayan, who has since been given control of Saudi charitable spending, would be responsible for carrying out this significant change in Saudi government policy.

The Pentagon, searching in vain for surviving secular governments in the region to attack in response to today's British Government warning, was also unavailable for comment, although a press attache did point out that the actions of the Saudi government were clearly a prescient response to US and international anti-war sentiment.


edit: My husband points out that Pakistan would probably qualify to serve our purposes as a cautionary target were it not that they either have or have not recently agreed to sell nuclear weapons to the Saudis. We have to keep a level head and remember who our friends are, even in these parlous times.

the war hits home again.

I have, since those horrible days after the attacks, read in an online publication the inspiring story of a net luminary who chose to send a message about american grit by ignoring those pussies in the police, army, city government, state government, federal government and national guard who begged us all to stay out of the city and going to work at their cyberjob in a transportation hub in Manhattan on 9/12.

Osama bin Laden (who follows that sort of thing), hearing that one proud man had chosen not to telecommute, promptly committed suicide.


I was, for some reason, reminded of that dazzling show of patriotism by this.

kip, a moral fellow, wants to offer Grover Norquist a chance to live his principles

Apparently, Grover (no, the other Grover), not satisfied with the effects of his other contributions to public life, has gone into the aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States business.

Doesn't it mention that in the Constitution somewhere?

Over at Long Story, Short Pier, the proprietor has some thoughts about ameliorating, at least on a cosmic level, the impact that anti-government crusader Norquist (whose pet project has, for some years, been the solidifying of conservative Islamic support for the GOP) has had on our discourse (and our safety, apparently).

I want Grover Norquist destroyed. I want him smashed like a bowl of eggs. I want his assets frozen as the IRS audits every penny he tried to squirrel away from the greater good. I want the rich clothing stripped from his back, and I want him frogmarched into the town square through a gauntlet of the people whose power he’s leached away, whose lives he’s made that much the worse in countlessly grey little ways, so that they may pelt him with the garbage of their choosing, and then I want him tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail so we can do it all over again. I want him buried up to his neck in the dirt, and I want passersby to be invited to saw at his neck with their W4 forms - their badges of honor as productive, hard-working members of a civil society. I want his face seared into the collective unconscious, so that infants weep at his approach and decent people cry out, “Dear God, what is that thing?” I want him reduced to begging on the street for his bread, so that I can walk up to him and spit in his face and sneer at him to get a job and then hand out twenties to the gutterpunks beside him. I want the name “Norquist” to be as anathematized as “Hitler.” I want his head.

That will do for a start. After that, I want him in prison. I want him held accountable for his crimes. I want him ground through the soulless, privatized Satanic mills he’s helped make of our penitentiary system with his beast-starving. I want him declared an enemy combatant. I want him pumped full of sodium pentathol so that we can wrench the names of his co-conspirators from his lying tongue. God help me, I want him tortured. I want to know he’s felt one tiny sliver of the pain he’s happily fomented.

I will leave it to better people than I can ever be to forgive him

oh, you're just going to _love_ this

You remember those illegal workers who were found at Walmarts around the country earlier in the week? If memory serves, there were three hundred of them in fifty different Walmarts. Undoubtedly the workers will be deported for their trouble, while the government is seriously considering some form of sanction for Walmart, if it comes to that.

Well, it gets even better.

Not only are there citizens in the Bush economy competing for those low-wage jobs who formerly worked in local businesses or manufacturing jobs which have been eliminated by Walmart's (and Bush's) predatory tactics, those citizens cannot compete for and win those jobs.

You can't imagine the paperwork if you try to pay a U.S. worker two dollars a day.

I propose a taxcut for retail sales stockholders.