Transsexual Member of European Parliament

he/she needs to sue his/her doctor

No more Daylight Savings Time in England Could Make Soccer Watching Much Worse in America

New post up at EPL Talk. Stupid daylight savings time.

Manager: [ stepping forward] Governor, I'm Kevin O'Brien, the manager, and I just want to thank you for dropping by - again. Bill Clinton: Well, thank you, Kevin. You've got a real American family place here. Is it too late for an Egg McMuffin? Manager: Well, we stop serving breakfast at eleven.. but for you.. Bill Clinton: Thanks so much. Manager: And should I check to see if I can scare up some of those sausage patties. Bill Clinton: You read my mind!

Clinton at McDonald's

Bill Clinton.....Phil Hartman
Secret Service Agent #1.....Kevin Nealon
Cashier.....Melanie Hutsell
Female Customer.....Ellen Cleghorne
Les Holmgren.....Chris Farley
Manager.....Tom Arnold
College Student.....Julia Sweeney
Male Customer.....Rob Schneider

[ President-Elect Bill Clinton and two Secret Service agents jog into a D.C. McDonald's ]

Bill Clinton: Alright, boys, let's stop here for a second. I'm a little parched from the fog.

Secret Service Agent #1: Sir, we've only been jogging for three blocks. Besides, Mrs. Clinton asked us not to let you in any more fast food places.

Bill Clinton: I just want to mingle with the American people, talk with some real folks.. and maybe get a Diet Coke, or something..

Secret Service Agent #1: Fine. But please don't tell Mrs. Clinton.

Bill Clinton: Jim, let me tell you something - there's gonna be a lot of things we don't tell Mrs. Clinton about. Fast food is the least of our worries.

Cashier: Oh, my God! It's Bill Clinton!

Bill Clinton: Hey, nice to meet you! How are you? [ walks up to a young mother ] That's an adorable baby. What's your name, sweetheart?

Female Customer: [ holding baby ] Her name is Shakira.

Bill Clinton: Now, that means "African Princess", doesn't it?

Female Customer: Why, yes!

Bill Clinton: Well, she certainly is beautiful enough to be a princess. Are you gonna finish those fries?

Female Customer: Uh.. no. Would you like some?

Bill Clinton: Well, if you're not gonna eat 'em.. [ grabs the fries and eats ] ..Mmm, these are good. Shakira, you take good care of your mom now.. [ moves on ] Hi, how are you? Good to meet ya! How we doing over here?

Les Holmgren: Les Holmgren. Holmgren Hardware. Voted for you, sir.

Bill Clinton: Thank you, Les. So you own your own hardware store?

Les Holmgren: Yes indeed, sir. Since 1972.

Bill Clinton: Well, good for you. You know, we want to create a network of community development banks that lend to small businesses like yourself. I see your boy doesn't like pickles.

Les Holmgren: Nah, he hates them!

Bill Clinton: You mind? [ grabs the pickles ] Attaboy! So, good luck to you. We're gonna wake up everyday thinking about you. Oops! Missed one. [ grabs remaining pickle ]

Manager: [ stepping forward] Governor, I'm Kevin O'Brien, the manager, and I just want to thank you for dropping by - again.

Bill Clinton: Well, thank you, Kevin. You've got a real American family place here. Is it too late for an Egg McMuffin?

Manager: Well, we stop serving breakfast at eleven.. but for you..

Bill Clinton: Thanks so much.

Manager: And should I check to see if I can scare up some of those sausage patties.

Bill Clinton: You read my mind!

Secret Service Agent #1: [ whispering ] Uh, sir.. maybe you'd prefer a McLean burger.. or the garden salad is very nice.

College Student: Governor Clinton? I'm a sophomore in college, and I may have to drop out because my parents can't afford tuition.

Bill Clinton: [ glancing at her tray ] Speak of the devil, that's one of those McLean sandwiches. Are those any good?

College Student: Would you like to try it?

Bill Clinton: Well, just a bite.. [ takes a huge chomp ] Mmm.. that's not bad! You know, my National Service Trust Fund would allow every student to.. [ grabs her soda ] ..mind if I wash it down? [ takes a sip ] Ahh! That hit the spot!

Manager: [ returning ] Your Egg McMuffin, Mr. President.

Bill Clinton: Thank you, Kevin. You have any of that sweet and sour sauce. You know, the kind that you dip McNuggets in?

Manager: For your McMuffin?

Bill Clinton: Or the barbecue sauce. Whichever.

Male Customer: You can use mine.

Bill Clinton: Great. Just pour in right on.

Male Customer: [ pours the sauce on ] I have a question.

Bill Clinton: That's it. Just pour it all on!

Male Customer: Do you support the decision to send troops to Somalia?

Bill Clinton: [ chews his McMuffin ] Mmm.. that's a good question. Yes, I do.. and let me tell you why. See, right now, we're sending in.. [ holds us McMuffin ] ..food.. [ puts McMuffin in front of Male Customer ] ..to Somalia.. but it's not getting to the people who need it because.. [ brings McMuffin back to himself ] ..it's being intercepted by the warlords.. [ chews McMuffin some more ] And it's not just us. It's other countries, too.. [ grabs a McNugget from another customer ] Your McNugget is aid from Great Britain.. [ takes it to other customer, then gibbles it down ] ..intercepted by warlords! [ grabs someone's Filet-o-Fish ] This man's Filet-o-Fish over here is relief from Italy.. [ pops it in his mouth ] ..warlords! And you can send all the food you want.. [ grabs different items ] ..a McDLT, hot apple pie.. it's just gonna end up with.. [ puts it all in his mouth ] ..the warlords! Now, with a broad-based international military force, we can make sure that the McRib sandwich.. [ grabs one and places it on someone's tray ] ..gets to the people who need it. [ picks it up and gobbles it anyway ] Can I get a Coke?

Secret Service Agent #1: Uh, sir.. I think we should probably continue your jog. We've only gone about an eighth of a mile.

Bill Clinton: Alright. You guys up for a real run?

Secret Service Agent #1: Yes, sir.

Bill Clinton: Race you to Pizza Hut!

[ Clinton runs out of the McDonald's, as the Secret Service agents follow right behind him ]

News Flash: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is Fat

Methinks a moomoo would look more dignified. 
And Jerz' First Lady, could you please cover up those ham hocks?

I Survived Carmageddon and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

Surprise! A whole lotta hype for nothing. And all the distraction over the traffic tie-ups that never came hid the real problem, a $1 billion project to add a carpool lane that will be worthless because this is the one city with no one downtown workplace destination.


"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

Who Will Survive in America? Who Will Survive in America? Who Will Survive in America? Who Will Survive in America?

Comment #1 by Gil Scott-Heron:

The time is in the street you know. Us living as we do upside down. And the new word to have is revolution. People don't even want to hear the preacher spill or spiel because God's whole card has been thoroughly picked. And America is now blood and tears instead of milk and honey. The youngsters who were programmed to continue fucking up woke up one night digging Paul Revere and Nat Turner as the good guys. America stripped for bed and we had not all yet closed our eyes. The signs of Truth were tattooed across our open ended vagina. We learned to our amazement untold tale of scandal. Two long centuries buried in the musty vault, hosed down daily with a gagging perfume. America was a bastard the illegitimate daughter of the mother country whose legs were then spread around the world and a rapist known as freedom, free doom. Democracy, liberty, and justice were revolutionary code names that preceded the bubbling bubbling bubbling bubbling bubbling in the mother country's crotch and behold a baby girl was born, nurtured by slave holders and whitey racists it grew and grew and grew screwing indiscriminately like mother like daughter everything unplagued by her madame mother. The present mocks us, good Black people with keen memories set fire to the bastards who ask us in a whisper to melt and integrate. Young, very young, teeny bopping revolt on weekend young dig by proxy what a mental ass kicking they receive through institutionalized everything and vomit up slogans to stay out of Vietnam. They seek to hide their relationship with the world's prostitute alienating themselves from everything except dirt and money with long hair, grime, and dope to camo-hide the things that cannot be hidden. They become runaway children to walk the streets downtown with everyday Black people sitting on the curb crying because we know that they will go back home with a clear conscience and a college degree. The irony of it all, of course, is when a pale face SDS motherfucker dares look hurt when I tell him to go find his own revolution. He wonders why I tell him that America's revolution will not be the melting pot but the toilet bowl. He is fighting for legalized smoke, or lower voting age, less lip from his generation gap and fucking in the street. Where is my parallel to that? All I want is a good home and a wife and a children and some food to feed them every night. Back goes pale face to basics. Does Little Orphan Annie have a natural? Do Sluggos kings make him a refugee from Mandingo? What does Webster say about soul? I say you silly trite motherfucker, your great grandfather tied a ball and chain to my balls and bounced me through a cotton field while I lived in an unflushable toilet bowl and now you want me to help you overthrow what? The only Truth that can be delivered to a four year revolutionary with a whole card i.e. skin is this: fuck up what you can in the name of Piggy Wallace, Dickless Nixon, and Spiro Agnew. Leave brother Cleaver and Brother Malcolm alone please. After all is said and done build a new route to China if they'll have you.

Who will survive in America?
Who will survive in America?
Who will survive in America?
Who will survive in America?

ALL-CAPS versus lower case lettering for New York City street signs.

New York City will spend $27 million to replace every one of its street signs, more than 250,000 for the purposes of replacing its current ALL CAPS lettering style with signs bearing lower-case lettering.
For font-nerds, N.Y.C. will also be using Clearview, a federally-approved font for highway lettering.
In a time of great governmental fiscal crisis, it hardly seems the time to undertake such a project. Especially as it comes on the heels of the supremely wasteful switch from "Triboro Bridge" to "R.F.K. Bridge."
Some, however, cheer the move to lower-case lettering on aesthetic grounds.  I just got back from San Francisco, still sticking to their unique street-sign style.

Beautiful But Mandatory New New York State License Plate

It's been a general downhill slide for New York State license plates, from the simple orange-with-blue lettering of the late 70's/80's to the white-with-Statue-of-Liberty-in-the-middle of the 90's to the bland hard-to-see montage/mish-mash of images that's in current use.

New York State is now forcibly fazing in these beauties over the next two years. The color scheme is a tad-off, looking more like West Virginia or Michigan, but the use of color is heartily applauded, nothing is more anonymous or bland on the road than white.

Of course, this being New York State, the plate's introduction is being used as an excuse for revenue generation. In a time of great economic duress, rising taxes and fees, all drivers will be required to purchase the new plates when their registration comes up, with an extra fee to keep your current number. Stay Classy, Governor Shelly Sil---er, Patterson.

Ron Isley and Keith Sweat Mother's Day in el Bronx, Drogba and Ronaldo are Hottt in Vanity Fair, and UK Tory Leader David Cameron Looks Like a Fish in a Condom

Putting the Va-Va-Voom back in Va-Va-Various. More Rando than Rondo. Disparate Delights.
---

First up, good to see that disrespected and unappreciated legend Ron "Mr. Biggs" Isley is out of prison and back performing. He'll be bringing it this Mother's Day Sunday alongside Keith "Let's" Sweat at the Paradise Theater on the Grand Concourse in the Boogie Down Bronx. Frankly, Isley & Sweat deserve to be crooning their bangers somewhere more bigtime, but hey:

Who can love you like me? (nobody) Who can sex you like me? (nobody) Who can treat you like me now, baby (nobody) Nobody, baby (nobody) And who can do it like me? (nobody) And who can give you what you need? (nobody) Who can do you all night long? (nobody) Nobody, baby (nobody)

And if you need to chill the fuck out on a Friday afternoon, here's Ron, Ernie (the master) and the rest of the Bros. taking you on a Voyage to Atlantis. Just wait for that opening riff. Wait for it.....there it is....ahhhhhh....

-------

 Speaking of ahhhhh, here's the new Vanity Fair. Didier Drogba and Cristiano Ronaldo, letting it all hang out. Helllllloooooo, Sailor! Quite the contrast here. Drogba, frankly, looks uncomfortable, maybe cuz his Frank isn't up Ronadlo's Portuguese  Pepperoni. Poor job by VF here. With this kinda manmeat they could have produced some real amazing pics. But the lack of context, gray drapes in a studio with two studs wearing briefs/70's swimtrunks, makes the whole shebang cheap and contrived. Get them poolside!

--------

 The U.K. held their election on Thursday. Two things to admire about their system; the campaign lasted 4 weeks and third parties, as well as fourth and fifth, actually have a say. Worth mentioning again that almost every democracy in the world is a parliamentary democracy. It's just us and Mexico enjoying our State rights. Fuck Thomas Jefferson. Alexander Hamilton gave us the Post, 'nuff said. 

Anyhoo, in the UK, no party achieved a majority, resulting in a "Hung Parliament." Raunchy. 

The Conservatives are led by David Cameron, a slimy, P.R.-created modern machine. A cartoonist named Steve Bell savaged Cameron with this cartoon, comparing him to a fish wrapped in a condom:

 

Sarah Palin Bukkakke

Rare video footage of Babe Ruth playing baseball, also, Efforts to Map London, also subway maps

 Two amazing links in the Uniwatchblog ticker today. The first is super-rare footage of Babe Ruth getting hit by a pitch. Not sure exactly how much film exists of the Babe in action, so this is super-cool to see. Here is the link.

Also, an interesting/nerdy series in Slate magazine exploring signage and navigation in big cities. Kind of a poor start with a Penn Station piece, and then a better one on attempts to make useful maps of London for pedestrians. New York has a subway map that is also useful as a general map of NYC (despite its skewed orientation (and the flip side showing the regional train map is fantastic). Chicago's El map is somewhat useful for getting around town, but their system is relatively uncomplicated. (also, the trains are super slow). London, famously, has a post-modern tube map that is generally useless for navigating the city above. The planners are hoping that better signage will encourage more walking and thus remove stress on the tube system.

Then there is Los Angeles. Feast your eyes on the area's utterly insane bus+train map. The buses out here are actually pretty good, provided you only travel in a straight line. L.A.'s actually an easy city to navigate, what with the major boulevards running from the ocean eastward to downtown, major avenues running from the hills southward to the ports,  and the odd-numbered north-south freeways and the even-numbered east-west freeways. Of course, it's always depressing to see old train/trolley maps of L.A., with lines going everywhere, serving the whole region before being torn up in the 1950s. Then again, if L.A. actually had a functional and useful subway system it would instantly become the greatest city in the world and become more crowded than it already is so...

Democracy in New York

News and notes from a failed State:
1. A loser's lunch featuring Carl McCall, Charles Rangel and Malcolm Smith.

2. The most powerful politician in the State, whose mandate to rule comes from the margin of a few thousand voters from the more un-residential portions of Lower Manhattan has called for the sitting Governor to stop governing.

3. Partly because the sitting Governor used government resources and employees to help cover up a growing sex scandal.

The next time the United Nations sends an observer mission to oversee some election in some far-off land to make sure democracy is spreading they should visit Albany. The next time we talk about foreign affairs or national politics let's turn the talk to matters in our own backyards, to elections where our vote actually matters.

As Fiorello LaGuardia said; "There is no Democratic or Republican way to pick up garbage." The two most ungovernable states in the union, New York and California, are two of the most politically aware and educated states in the union, but not enough people in those states care enough about their own local politicians.

Or as R. Kelly said, "they don't sleep with us, they don't eat with us, besides, what they eat don't make us shit." Real talk.

David Patterson Vows to Stay in Office; New York is a Failed State; Open Primaries and Single Transferable Votes

Tell me, just how does my ass taste?

David Patterson, he doesn't deserve the formality of being called 'Governor,' has vowed that he will not resign his office despite his personal indiscretions and his far more serious complete inability to govern. "The only way I'm not going to be governor next year is at the ballot box, and the only way I'll be leaving office before is in a box," he said, defiantly. It would make for one farcical campaign. He can point to no achievement, major or minor, and he stands strongly on no issue save gay marriage, which is likely a subterfuge to draw attention from his complete lack of accomplishments and a State Legislature that openly defies him at every turn. Such dysfunction is nothing new. Joe Bruno, pictured above, was State Senate Majority Leader for 14 disastrous years until he was forced to resign in the face of corruption charges that he was eventually convicted of last year.

And he had the nerve to complain about his portrayal on Saturday Night Live

The poverty of New York State politics seems indicative of a failed state. When governmental institutions fail they must be taken over from the outside. Two prominent examples that come to mind are the consent decree entered into by the U.S. Department of Justice and the L.A.P.D. in 2000 that lasted for nine years. Closer to home New York State was forced to take over the City of Buffalo in 2003 to avoid the city becoming bankrupt.

Election reform is needed. Too many districts are 'dead districts' where incumbents or single parties reign for decades on end. Voter turnout in statewide elections continues to trend down toward nothingness. One interesting idea would be to scrap the 'winner-take-all' system we currently have for statewide elections in favor of a system that encourages more parties or at least more choice for each party. Bloomberg has called for "open" primaries. Really, why have primaries at all? If there are three great Democratic nominees for an office, and no great Republican ones, let them duke it out in November rather than having to duplicate efforts and elections. With more than two candidates on a ballot a 'single transferable vote' or 'alternative vote top-up' system could be implemented where voters could rank or weigh their choices.

Really, almost any change would be better than the current sytem of rampant corruption, disastrous budgeting, clandestine decision-making, voter apathy and criminal investigations of politicians years after the damage is done.

Democracy in Amerikka; Almost Every Major New York Politician is Unelected

Go Fuck Yourself

Nice little nugg in yesterday's NY Post on the sentencing of former New York State Assemblyman Anthony Seminerio to six years in the clink on corruption charges related to his "consultancy" work for area hospitals , work he carried out while still holding office. Seminerio was caught on tape saying to Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver, "I don't give a f--- [if] you close down every hospital in the city -- you leave my hospitals alone."

Worth remembering the state of New York politricks right now:
Governor-Unelected (Patterson replacing Spitzer)
State Comptroller-Unelected (DiNapoli replacing Hevesi)
Junior Senator-Unelected (Gilibrand replacing Hillary after months of dithering, chicanery and delay by Patterson, somehow we survived all that time only having one Senator)
New York City Mayor-Elected to third term by slim margin only after spending more than any campaign in history and overturning two public referendums on term limits through City Council backroom dealing.

Kinda stunning to see in print. I feel like this info should be put in a box and placed somewhere on the front pages of the NY Times, Daily News, NY Post and Newsday everyday. It's the kind of eye-opener that makes you question the very need for government. If the State Assembly and Senate were to disappear tomorrow, would New York City slide into the sea?

Life would go on, our garbage would get picked up, kids would get taught, cops would bust boombaclot heads, and train service would be nonexistent on weekends, while more than $6 billion of our tax dollars every year would continue to go to just pay off debt for past failures. When the State and City income tax go up, when the sales tax goes up, when every fine and fee goes up, when the subway fare goes up, when mysterious surcharges are added to the cost of every mundane parking ticket, when libraries are open five hours a day five days a week, when there are no crosstown buses, we have to ask if the people in charge tried their hardest to save, and we have to ask just who it is that's actually making the decisions over our lives. Maybe it all sounds a tad Tea Party-ish, but looking back up at the list of major unelected players should cause any person, regardless of party affiliation, great concern.