Everybody’s favorite band of crazy people, the Westboro Baptist Church, is planning to protest at Steve Job’s funeral.
It’s not exactly clear why, but trying to figure out what motivates these attention whores, other than, of course, attention whoring, is futile.
Anyway, Margie Phelps, daughter of the head wingnut, Fred Phelps, made the announcement via Twitter. Check it out:
Note how the Tweet was sent.
Irony is not only dead, it’s starting to smell bad.
Pinellas County in Florida, responding to the wacky concerns aired by the local Tea Party people, has voted to remove fluoride from the water supply.
It’s pretty funny stuff. I mean, what kind of nuts wouldn’t put fluoride in the water…Oh. Never mind.
Anyway, my favorite part of the story is a quote from the local Tea Party poobah, who says, “This is all part of an agenda that’s being pushed forth by the so-called globalists in our government and the world government to keep the people stupid so they don’t realize what’s going on. This is the U.S. of A, not the Soviet Socialist Republic.”
You know, we used to laugh at these wingnuts. Now, they are making policy.
In this week’s edition, Tom and I talk about deer at Gettysburg and how they should have to wear period-correct costumes before being shot by Park Service employees.
Just saying.
That, and we start out by giving movie recommendations. Couple of sneak previews: We’re talking about killer mutant zombie sheep and a hobo with a shotgun.
And now, the jokes.
First, off in South Carolina, the state that exists to make Mississippi feel good about itself, the governor has ordered state employees to answer phones by saying, “It’s a great day in South Carolina!”
The governor said it was intended to raise the state’s self-esteem and improve morale of state employees. Somehow, I think it may have the opposite effect.
Here’s the joke:
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has ordered state employees to answer phones by saying, “It’s a great day in South Carolina!” The state has the country’s fourth highest unemployment rate and in among the highest in the percentage of citizens living in poverty.
What have we learned?
That’s better than how they answer the phones in Philly. “What do you #%&*$@ want?”
Or, “It’s a great day in South Carolina! Your unemployment benefits have expired! Have a super day!”
Moving on, the deer joke.
The National Park Service plans to kill 150 deer living on the Gettysburg battlefield in the next six months. The hunts will be conducted by Park Service staff in areas closed to the public and come as part of an annual effort to thin herds.
What have we learned?
It had to be done. The deer kept beating the Union re-enactors.
Or, This solves one mystery: George Meade killed Bambi’s mother!
Or, Do they have to dress the deer up in Civil War-era uniforms?
And finally, a Florida joke, because you can never have too many Florida jokes.
Florida’s House speaker said Wednesday that his state likely will move its GOP presidential primary to Jan. 31.
What have we learned?
Shortly afterward, all of the leading Republican contenders announced that the gravest problem facing our nation is a lack of subsidies for orange growers, which is probably Fidel Castro’s fault.
It probably is.
Saw a commercial for this show, a sci-fi deal in which humanity, to save itself from ecological disaster, goes back in time to live among the dinosaurs.
I don’t think they thought this out very well.
For one thing, living with dinosaurs would seem to be kind of risky. For another, didn’t the people who made the way-back machine hear about the big comet, or asteroid, or whatever, that collides with the Earth and kills all the dinosaurs? Wouldn’t that also kill all of the human beings too?
And then, they show the time-traveling pioneers buzzing around on what look like Humvees. Where do they get gas? The world’s petroleum supply, in dinosaur form, is still walking around.
And what about spare parts? Tires? Windshield washer fluid?
Tom and I discuss a lot of things — flooding, Penn State’s offense, why it’s a bad idea to bathe in a tub filled with eels.
Listen to it here.
One of my favorite things to do at the York Fair is to check out the artwork on display in Old Main and rest assured that, even though we don’t have fluoride in our water, we most certainly have psilocybin.
I mean, check it out.
OK, right here, there’s supposed to be a photo of a painting from Old Main. I think my computer ate it.
Anyway, that picture is an orange thing. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be. It looks like it has blue flames on its head.
And then, there was a blue cat with a huge triangular head and yellow eyes — a cat in need of a new liver, apparently.
Then, there was a green guy with red eyes wearing what looked like an orange hillbilly hat.
Down the wall was a monkey on fire, or at least it looked like it was on fire.
Those were all done by kids displaying very creative and original artistic visions.
Along the other wall was the work of grownups. And among that stuff was one of the scariest paintings, ever.
It depicted Santa Claus with Charlie Manson eyes and a demented grin. It looked like the kind of Santa Claus that John Wayne Gacy would paint.
With Santa were two kids, one holding a candy cane in an unfortunate place.
Check it out. Let it permeate your nightmares.
Every year, I check out the weird vegetables at the York Fair because, well, they’re weird and they’re vegetables.
Yes, I know, at this point, I will pause to allow you to make your own horribly insensitive, politically incorrect wisecrack about weird vegetables at the fair and give you some time to e-mail them to me.
In the past, we’ve had a bounty of weird vegetables, which makes you wonder just what is in our soil. What kind of chemicals or radiation or perhaps radioactive spiders such as those responsible for creating Spiderman are lurking in the ground, mutating and perverting our innocent vegetables?
There are some expectations when you check out the mutated vegetables. It seems every year there is a tomato that resembles Richard Nixon — although some have a different interpretation, describing the ski-jump-nose-appendage in different anatomical terms, if you catch my drift.
And there almost always seems to be enough potatoes that mutated into spudly Mickey Mice and Plutos and Goofies to create a full-employment plan for attorneys hired by Disney to write threatening letters to gardeners.
And there almost always seem to be a bunch of zucchini that appear to be afflicted with a particularly virulent STD and squash afflicted with a zombie virus.
And, almost always, there are some vegetables that, due to their general shape to begin with, take on the characteristics of things you wouldn’t expect to find on display at the fair. Certainly, fair-goers are not generally a squeamish bunch and you would think that seeing anatomically correct vegetables on display would not faze them. I mean, seriously, a person who would eat a deep-fried Twinkie cannot possibly be easily offended.
But this year, we have a winner, a vegetable that belongs in the weird vegetable hall of fame. One that should cause the category to be retired, for an achievement of this level would be unattainable by any means short of fertilizing your garden with plutonium.
I am going to try to describe it in terms that I can use in the paper without prompting an avalanche of letters, e-mails, Facebook comments, Tweets and whatnot complaining about the jerk who put the word “penis” in print. That word tends to make a lot of people uncomfortable, even though roughly half the population possesses one.
We have a winner.
Every year, we check out the weird vegetables at the fair and every year, we’re pretty amazed at the mutation that our soil can cause.
But this year, this year, I’m kind of speechless.
Stay tuned for more and a photo, if the powers that be determine that it’s not obscene, which it is.
We made the Weather Channel. This is a big deal for a lot of people, well, for my wife, who loves the Weather Channel.
Anyway, the Weather Channel showed video of Mount Rose Avenue near the cemetery. The road was flooded and people were trying to drive through it.
The Weather Channel person said, something to the effect, look at these dumbasses, driving through deep water.
So there’s that.
Mike Argento, a York native and graduate of York Suburban Area High School and Penn State, first came to the York Daily Record in 1983. He even had gray hair back then. After stints covering everything from cops to city hall to state government to the environment, he began writing a column for the paper, three times a week, in 1989. His column can be about anything and so is his blog, which encompasses life in York County and beyond. And, for the record, as he told his wife the other night, he wishes people would stop asking him, 'What's wrong with you?' He really doesn't know.
