Happy Birthday to Mary C! From Bill S!

Our friend and longtime Wo'C contributor Bill (the S! is for Sass!) S. is kind enough to do the honors again this year:

Today marks the birthday of the lovely MaryC, and I am once again stumped as to what would be a suitable gift. So, I find myself returning to the catalog for Carol Wright Gifts. After all, I unearthed so many interesting finds there last year -- and by "interesting," I mean they're items one would never, ever think to give as gifts. Surely there's something just right...right?

FRUIT SALAD TREE-5 DIFFERENT FRUITS ON ONE TREE! (1 tree, $24.99)
Extra-Large "Sweet & Juicy Peaches
Giant Purple plums Up to 1/3 of a pound
Super Big Golden Apricots
Lush and Tangy Nectarines
Apple-Sized Red plums
At its easy-picking growth height of 12-15 feet, enjoy the feat of fruits...Each sapling you receive stands approx. 3-4 feet high.
(Sorry, this item cannot be shipped into CA, OR or WA.)

Aw, shoot, Mary lives in California. Guess I'll have to find some other genetically modified plant. The catalog also offers "GIANT BLUEBERRIES-BLUBERRIES AS BIG AS QUARTERS" (2 plants, $9.99), KING KONG STRAWBERRIES AS BIG AS PEACHES! (6 plants $8.99), and, "As Seen On TV", a tomato plant that "Grows 8 feet in just 90 Days!" (Only $9.99). Hmm, 8 feet in 90 days? At that rate, by next year it'll be 32 feet high. That's a long way to climb for a salad ingredient.

Perhaps flowers might be better:

"SOUTHERN BELLE" HIBISCUS (3 plants only $7.99)
Spectacular Blooms Up to 10" across!

Hmm, looking at the photo in the catalog, it looks large enough to devour a small child. As a teacher, Mary might find it useful in classrooms with particularly unruly students.

SOLAR POWERED TULIP LAWN STAKES (Set of 4 only $17.99)
Automatically turns on at night & off during the day! Solar powered No electricity needed.

I think I like these best, as they're the easiest to care for.

TERRY TURBAN (As low as $4.99)
Whether you wear it as a cover-up or a fashion accessory, this terry turban with ultrachic front knot and gathered back is sure to turn a few heads in your direction.

Especially at a revival screening of Sunset Boulevard.

TROPICAL ROMPER* (As low as $12.99)
Have fun in the sun in this easy-to-wear strapless romper, designed in brilliant tropical print... Polyester. Imported.

Because domestic polyester would be just tacky.

*When I read the phrase "tropical romper," it sounded like some kinky sexual position to me. And now that I've said that, it will to you as well.

32-MELODY WIRELESS DOORBELL (Only $14.99)
This wireless doorbell plays your choice of 32 melodies-from old favorites like "The Yellow Rose of Texas" to Christmas carols and classic chimes.

"Classic chimes"? Gee, there's an oldies station I've never tuned in to. I'd recommend finding the melody that will scare away Mormon missionaries and Jehovah's Witnesses the quickest.

TALKING CALLER-ID SPEAKERPHONE WITH TIME AND DATE (Only $29.99)
Announces the phone number of Who's Calling Before You Answer the Phone.

Ooh, so close. It would be perfect if it said things like, "That bitch you can't stand is trying to call you again!" in a Karen Walker voice.

FUCOXANTHIN PATCH-CR (tm) Set of 30 ($19.99)
Lose weight even while you sleep with these time-release, all-natural fat-burning patches...No shakes, no extra-large pills to swallow. Just apply one patch a day.

Methinks this could be a scam. I suppose its effectiveness depends where you put the patch.

BUTTON EXTENDERS (Set of 2 only $2.99)
Keep your favorite pants without costly tailoring. Slip over existing button and add a full inch to waistbands.

Hey, it's cheaper than the patch. And probably works better.

Cologne to UNLEASH YOUR SENSUALITY (note: the boxes are displayed in the catalog, but I can't make out the brand name due to the size of the pictures, and it isn't listed elsewhere) $14.99
This pheromone based cologne attracts members of the opposite sex like a magnet...Men's original scent and the women's unscented...

Wait, "unscented" cologne? Isn't that just called "water"? Anyway, this sounds like a product for single people. Single, desperate people. Single, desperate, gullible people...

DO IT YOURSELF LEGAL WILL KIT (Our price $6.99)

Now, THAT'S a cheery gift idea!

SOBAWAKA CLOUD PILLOW (Only $19.99)
The last pillow you'll ever need to buy!

Is that a threat?

REFLECTING GUARD OWL (Only $5)
Deter garden pests with this light-reflecting guard owl. He has realistic eyes and a holographic design that creates the illusion of continuous movement. Weatherproof plastic with a loop for hanging and a weighted bottom that keeps him from flying away.

Because fake owls are always trying to escape their masters.

LUCKY LOTTO TICKET SCRATCHER (Only $5)
Scratch your tickets with this "lucky coin" and WIN, WIN, WIN!
Genuine U.S. minted penny and a pewter shamrock.

Five dollars for a one cent coin to scratch off a $1 lotto ticket? I'm not looking anymore, I've found the perfect gift!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARY! Hope it's everything it should be!

-Bill S.

From Scott:  Well, with that entry, I think it's pretty clear to all that Bill S. has won the Essay Contest, and there's nothing much for me to add, except the obligatory Topless Nathan Fillion shot, this year hoisted fresh from a screencap of Serenity:

Happy birthday!

Doctor Who IS Mike Nelson in SEA HUNT!

In a recent email exchange with our compatriot Engineer Vosburg, I mentioned that I'd done some diving off the Channel Islands, and Chris, always quick with the Hollywood trivia, whipped out a hyper-obscure hunk and tied it in nicely with Moondoggie's scarf-modeling headshot below.

Take it away, Chris:

If -- or when -- diving off Catalina, keep an eye out for this spherical artifact, an aluminum-sheeted “diving bell” prop left there in 1957 by Jerry Warren while shooting The Incredible Petrified World. I don’t think he ever said exactly where he left it, but he needed it on the bottom for shots of the cast “leaving” the bell in SCUBA gear (four of them—like the Tardis, it’s much roomier inside than you’d think), and told schlock movie historian Tom Weaver that he didn’t bother to haul it up when the film wrapped. Litterbug.

Also, Natalie Wood’s sunglasses.


Since the Doctor’s Tardis got a mention in the comments at the most recent WOC pussycat post [spitting the p’s like Sylvester would], I thought I’d include a pic.

The exterior:

And the roomy interior:

See? Plenty of space. And then to top it off, the crew, in SCUBA gear, exits through a hatch in the top of the bell (note ladder). While on the bottom of the ocean. At several hundred feet. Okay then.

And then it gets really goofy.

Post-Friday Beast Blogging: the Cat Hobbies Edition

"I don't suppose you'd like to join my Doctor Who cosplay group..."

Tucker Queen's Mystery Magazine

When I first read this comment, it got me to thinking about the 1975-76 Ellery Queen TV series.  If you remember this show (and if so, you should probably be taking Lipitor and making sure your Roth IRA is fully funded), star Jim Hutton would break the fourth wall at the end of each episode (a device that paralleled the "Challenge to the Reader" that appeared in the penultimate chapter of the early Queen novels) and say, "You've seen all the clues, you have all the information.  Do you know who the killer is?"  And I imagine a certain percentage of the audience -- the same people who now weave elaborate eschatologies about flying demons colliding with 747s so they have more airspace to wrestle with Jesus, and deposit them in forgotten threads on obscure  blogs -- responded to the TV by shrieking, "the Illuminati!" or "Fluroide!", when it fact the culprit was merely that week's guest star Ray Walston, Joan Collins, or obvious sociopath Ken Berry.

 This in turn put me in mind of a Woody Allen essay that first appeared in Playboy back in the early 70s, called "Match Wits with Inspector Ford"...

The Case of the Murdered Socialite

Inspector Ford burst into the study.  On the floor was the body of Clifford Wheel, who apparently had been struck from behind with a croquet mallet.  The position of the body indicated that the victim had been surprised in the act of singing "Sorrento" to his goldfish.  Evidence showed there had been a terrific struggle that had twice been interrupted by phone calls, one a wrong number and one asking if the victim was interested in dance lessons.

Before Wheel had died, he had dipped his finger into the inkwell and scrawled out a message:  "Fall Sale Prices Drastically Reduced--Everything Must Go!"

"A businessman to the end," must Ives, his manservant, whose elevator shoes, curiously enough, made him two inches shorter.

Inspector Ford goes on to solve a series of absurd crimes by making abrupt, senseless deductions bearing no relation to the evidence, which doesn't exist anyway -- so it all makes perfect sense.  Now Tucker Carlson -- the Greg Marmalard of New Media -- has hired his own consulting detective, Jamie Weinstein, who, in his brief time at Tucker's Weakly Reader (as TBogg calls it), writing their daily blast spam, the "DCMorning," has already done the impossible:  he's made Jim Treacher seem funny.

Not that Jamie's comic bona fides aren't impressive.  In addition to spicing up the Daily Caller's quotidian plea for attention, he's also "the winner of the 2011 'Funniest Celebrity in Washington' contest."  And that's a city which has witnessed the comic stylings of Dick Nixon, who hilariously invited the country to "Sock it to me?" while Obama, supposedly the hip and cool dude, won't even deign to note that da judge is approaching.

But today, Jamie isn't concerned with making us laugh.  No, today he's all about the serious business of Connecting the Dots and Laying the Pipe.  But since this is a classic "Fair Play" mystery, we will have all the same clues Jamie does, so let's see if we can't solve the case first.  Are you ready to...Match Wits with Inspector Weinstein?

So, Junior Detectives, how did Inspector Weinstein deduce from the evidence above that Sandra Fluke not only supports Charlie Sheen for public office, but has ever even heard of him.  Wait!  Before you answer, let's look at the actual article Inspector Jamie's email is flogging:

Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke said on Tuesday that candidates running for office should have to pass a pro-woman litmus test in order to get elected.

Fluke, an advocate for the Obama administration’s plan to force health insurers to cover birth control, was on Capitol Hill for a forum on “Opportunities and Challenges for a New Generation of Women,” in celebration of Women’s History Month.

“There should be a litmus test that they be pro-women so our votes have to include that requirement at least,” Fluke said. “And it should be a litmus test that applies to male candidates as well.”

She also spoke about the possibility of running for office in the future:

“Numerous American women have actually written to me in the last few weeks saying that I should run for office, and maybe someday I will."

So that's it.  You have all the clues...

Now if you've been watching -- closely! -- you have all the information you need.  And you should be able to deduce that the victim -- Facts -- was actually killed by the detective (just like in The Mousetrap)!  Or perhaps it's just a lazy, farfetched bit of hackery by a misogynist, entitled asshole.  As another famous literary sleuth observed, "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

So, I'm going with the Asshole theory.

We Just Live in It

I'm trying out on a new comments format on the advice of counsel, so please let me know if this causes, or solves, any problems.

Huge deadline crunch for a project due Thursday afternoon, so this week's theme is "Pull Things Out of Your Ass," which was my favorite part of The Mickey Mouse Club, after "Anything Can Happen Day," and "Annette's Training Bra is a Brutal Taskmistress Day."  Hopefully the extracted items will be mostly things like cat photos, and not be accompanied by Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

Satire or Too Much Alex Jones? You Make the Call!

Update below:

As you know, we don't use a moderation queue for comments around here (although sometimes Blogger goes rogue and sequesters comments on its own, triggered by mysterious factors and algorithms I can only guess at, although I've noticed the word "panties" is often involved), largely because s.z. long ago established the precedent of never censoring the debate, and also because everyone who comments here is smart and funny, and we only very rarely get trolls.

But comments submitted on posts that are more than two weeks old are automatically held in moderation as an anti-spam measure, even though they're seldom spam.  Usually, they're the outraged thoughts of non-Wo'C readers who arrived months late to the party (and only showed up at all, thanks to Google), and often they're defenders of Dr. Professor Mike S. Adams, Ph.D.  When I get an email notifying me of a tardy addition to a long dead thread I routinely approve it, thereby allowing the commenter to both publish and perish at the same time.

But this one (responding to an old post on Ellis Washington's conspiracy theories about the Georgia Guidestones) was too good to keep to myself, and I wanted to toss it up for discussion.  So what do you guys think?  Throwaway gag, or meticulously thought-out cosmology?

Jesus created a set number of angels. all angels are male. 1/3 of all angels rebelled against Jesus. Jesus turned the rebels into spiritual darkness (aka demons) and expelled them from heaven down to earth. all demons are male. demons disguise themselves as ghosts, aliens in ufos, greys, spirit guides, ascended masters, pagan gods and goddesses, channeled entities, dead relatives during seances, ouija board movers, psychic's sources, medium's source of info, astrologer's helpers, seer's well of info, oracle's guide, automatic writing spirits, meditator's cohabitors, and, of course, as the "good fellas" (angels of light). the only way to fight demons is to be a christian.

-demons will land their ufo ships on the streets and will invite people to be healed. whoever goes in, comes out a zombie.
-80 foot dinosaurs will come out through lakes and sinkholes to eat us.
-evil red-eye antichrist with white powder on his face will come to power. this clown is gay. whoever worships this clown, goes to hell.
-evil electronic 666 tattoo by lasers with small grey world passport will become mandatory. whoever gets it, goes to hell.
-whoever gets chipped is easily tracked to get lasered. so, avoid getting lasered by not getting chipped.

1)demons have 4 ufo bases:
a)moon
b)inside mountain kailas
c)underneath mariana trench (atlantis is here)
d)lake baikal
2)airplanes that go down are hit by demons because they need the airspace to fight Jesus.
3)ufos are powered by diamonds.
4)whoever goes inside a ufo ship to be healed by demons, comes out a zombie 

If it's satire -- nice job.  If it's a sincere description of a deeply held, personal theology, then I guess I owe a thank you to Senator James Inhofe for finally delurking.

[By the way...  Bill S. thanks everyone for the birthday greetings.  He would have offered his gratitude personally, but he hasn't been able to post here for the past few weeks (he said, "If I click on a blog post, I can SEE the comments others have posted, but when I click to post a comment, the little box refuses to display anything...I get some error message").  I'm not at all savvy about Blogger -- which you might have noticed from the frequently screwy formatting around here.  Do you guys have any idea what goes going on, and how we might fix it?  Thanks.]

There Are No Words, But Terrible Found Some

Several friends of Joanna (our own Anntichrist S. Coulter) wrote to tell me that her beloved niece Jada has passed away at the age of 4.  I don't know how this month could get any worse, and I don't want to know.  Joanna is without internet at the moment -- I don't know if her appeal failed, and she's been evicted, or if it's a computer problem -- but I figured you guys would want to know.  And if she's able to borrow a connection and make it over here, I want her to know that we're thinking of her.

The obituary that appeared in the Times-Picayune is below.  Click to enlarge to a more readable size.

I don't know what to say, so I'm just going to quote Terrible's brief, but eloquent words at Mark of the Beast:

Those of us who know Annti know how much she cared about Jada and how she felt about her never having a chance for a wonderful happy life. And our hearts and thoughts go out to her. If there is a souls journey after death may Jada’s soul have that childhood she never had the chance for here.