NY Post breaks news of impending apocalypse

Katie Holmes is dating Tom Cruise. Locusts, beasts, etc. soon to follow, but really, they will seem pretty anticlimactic after this.

What's a little assault in an employment relationship?

I thought this whole thing about whether John Bolton was unfit to be ambassador to the U.N. because he's a bullying, egomaniacal boss was interesting because when else has somebody gotten publicly criticized for being a bad boss? It seemed kind of like a triumph for oppressed underlings everywhere. Except when you actually read about the kind of stuff he has done. Like, he "became so angry at a government contractor that he chased her through a Moscow hotel, hurling objects and verbal threats, and later spread rumors about her." Calling this a problem with his "management style" seems kind of like calling Nick and Jessica's marriage a communication problem.

Hot, Nasty Abstinence (or, Do Not Look at This Site at Work)

The whole world has got to check out Abstinenceonly.com. It's a spoof site that's both hilarious and extremely uncomfortable--sort of like The Office (British version) and Curb Your Enthusiasm, except with more information about God's opinions about your panties. I especially like the "Ask Dr. Frist" section. An excerpt:

Dear Doctor Frist, You recently implied it was possible to contract AIDS through tears and that simply touching another persons genitals could result in pregnancy. Is this true?Signed, Young and Scared
Dear Young and Scared,When I said that you could get AIDS from tears what I meant was that getting AIDS could make you cry. Also, you CAN get pregnant from simply touching another person's genitals, providing they're ejaculating and you're touching them with your cervix. I hope this clears things up for you. Remember also that whenever you masturbate, God kills a kitten.Yours Truly, Senate Majority Leader, Dr. Bill Frist

Apparently this is barely a joke--as Wonkette reports, Stephanopoulos asked Frist this week whether he thought AIDS could be transmitted through sweat or tears, and Frist said he didn't know. Kind of like I don't know whether becoming Senate Majority Leader can turn your brain into a solid block of ice. Except, oh yeah, unlike a person getting AIDS from tears, the majority-leader-ice-brains thing has happened at least once.

Museums in Seattle? Surely you jest!

The author of "Apple's America: A Discriminating Traveler's Guide to 40 Great Cities in the U.S. and Canada" gave this interview on NPR the other day in which he claimed that large cities other than New York have cultural attractions. Yes he did! Wait, that's not all--he said they have symphonies in Houston and art in Cleveland. Bwaa ha ha! NPR has now officially gone over the edge in its attempts to be red-state friendly.

Gonzales: "It's not you, it's me"

One of President Bush's judicial nominees, Priscilla Owen, has the distinction of having been called a "judicial activist" by none other than the current Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, when they served together on the Texas Supreme Court. In a case in which a minor sought judicial permission to get an abortion without telling her parents, Owen dissented to write that pregnant teenage girls should essentially have to prove they are experts in philosophy, medicine, and comparative religion before getting a judge's permission to terminate their pregnancies. (The dumb girls, apparently, should go ahead and become parents.) Gonzales wrote a concurrence arguing that this would "create hurdles that simply are not to be found in the words of the statute" and would constitute "judicial activism."

Now that President Bush has nominated Owen for a promotion, however, Gonzales is twisting himself into a pretzel to explain away his earlier statement. A press release by the Committee for Justice cites at length from Gonzales' testimony during his confirmation hearing to become A.G. this fall. In it, he says that when he called Owen an activist, he was actually talking about himself. What? Yes, that's right, he was talking about himself because he felt that if he had ruled the way Owen did, that would have been activism for him--but if she really felt that way, then it was not activism for her. It's all very creative and postmodern, but it's not any more convincing or reassuring than "It's not you, it's me" in its normal "I'm dumping you" context. Here, its meaning is more "I'm dumping all credibility."

My first post!

Here is my first post. It is not substantive.