CASPIAN AIRLINE FLIGHT RECORDERS FOUND

CAPTAIN MAJINADAD: What is this?

FIRST OFFICER HASHEMI: I do not know. Some Russian technician has left it.

CAPTAIN: It is a clear liquid in a bottle.

FIRST OFFICER: It is probably a whiskey the Infidels drink to nerve themselves for their whoring.

CAPTAIN: Really? This is alcoholic beverage? I have never tried any, Allah forbid. We should notify someone.

FIRST OFFICER: What are you doing?

CAPTAIN: I must ascertain if you speak the truth.

FIRST OFFICER: Why would I not speak the truth?

CAPTAIN: Because you are Shia. They never speak the truth.

FIRST OFFICER: Give me that bottle, Sunni pig!

CAPTAIN: Why, so your mother can become intoxicated and mate with Satan's dog?

[Sounds of breaking glass]

CAPTAIN: Clumsy Shiite animal! See what you have done! You have spilled the alcoholic beverage everywhere! I need a cigarette.

THE FANS STRIKE OUT, OR SOMETHING

SENATOR DINGBAT. Justice Sotomayor, you'll agree that the center-fielder caught the hitter's pop-fly.

JUDGE SOTOMAYOR. Yes, that's what happened.

SENATOR DINGBAT. And yet you called the hitter out.

JUDGE SOTOMAYOR. Of course I did.

SENATOR DINGBAT. I have the hitter here in this chamber today. He was grievously wounded by your decision.

JUDGE S. Can't help it.

SENATOR DINGBAT. You'll observe, of course, that he's white. A white hitter.

JUDGE S. Doesn't matter. Center fielder caught the ball. He's out.

SENATOR DINGBAT. He's crying. His wife is crying.

JUDGE SOTOMAYOR. Sorry.

SENATOR DINGBAT. But you would have felt differently if he were a Puerto Rican, right?

JUDGE. Maybe I would have felt differently, but I'd still have called him out.

SENATOR DINGBAT. Well, let's suppose in the future there's a lot of dust on the field because it's been dry and the dust kind of gets in your eyes and the center fielder claims he caught the ball but the ball fell in a part of the field where it would have taken him too long to get there and the hitter is white. Will you promise not to call the hitter out then?

JUDGE SOTOMAYOR. I'm not promising anything.

SENATOR DINGBAT: But you would tend to favor a Puerto Rican hitter, right? You do admit that, don't you? That you'd favor a Puerto Rican hitter? Admit it! Admit it! You'd favor him! You might call the Puerto Rican safe! Maybe, right?

JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: It would be improper of me to promise to decide something in advance, Senator.

SENATOR DINGBAT: Slippery. Very slippery. All you affirmative-action Latina lawyer types are slippery. And you know what? That bugs the hell out of me.

SOTOMAYOR HEARINGS: TOLDJA

SEN. GRASSLEY: Judge Souter talked a lot about maybe the courts needed to fill vacuums. Do you agree with Justice Souter? Is it appropriate for the courts to fill vacuums in the law? Not to mention the vacuum at my house you should be running?

Okay, okay, I made up the last sentence.

WHAT A LOAD

This whole "the judge is just an umpire" thing is a crock. You could replace the umpire with some cameras, motion sensors, and a computer. Hell, that would actually be an improvement, because baseball is nothing but physics. How high, how low, how far, trajectory, termination points, time comparison of two termination events (the ball into the first baseman's glove vs. the runner's toe onto the bag). How in hell would a machine call the admission into evidence of an out-of-court statement by a dead witness who might possibly (or possibly not) have been murdered at the defendant's order?

Okay, if you know more than I do about baseball, which is not a very hard thing to do, tell me I'm missing the subtleties.

FOUR THINGS TO REMEMBER WHEN YOU GO ON VACATION WITH YOUR WIFE AFTER SHE'S CAUGHT YOU PUTTING THE PORK SWORD TO SOMEONE YOUNGER AND CUTER THAN SHE IS

Congratulations, Governor Sanford! We're glad to learn you and your wife are going away together. The harm your marriage has suffered is grievous, and it is to your credit that you both wish to make the effort to salvage it--to bind your wounds and begin anew. As a man who occasionally reads magazines in the checkout line, I have become something of an expert in these matters. My advice to you, like all advice everywhere, can be expressed in some words with numbers stuck in front of them.

1. This is your wife's time, not yours. If she wants to go in an antiques place, you go in the antiques place. If she wants to see some sappy chick-flick, you see a sappy chick flick. If she wants to know which of ten shades of green would go best with the dining room curtains, study the problem carefully before answering, then say "you know, let's take a sample home and if we both like it we can order it online." Then imagine you're fucking Maria.

2. Do not hum "Guantanamela." Just imagine you're fucking Maria.

3. Come to think of it, don't hum anything. Your wife won't know what you're thinking.

4. Remember that this is a chance for you to reconnect with your wife--to renew and repair damaged trust and to begin the long and often arduous process of healing and rebuilding, even though compared to Maria, your wife is a skinny boring skank.

These challenges may seem daunting. Nobody said this is easy. But remember that we all have very few chances for real happiness in this life, and you have missed yours. It is therefore best to accommodate yourself to reality as soon as possible.

SOTOMAYOR CONFIRMATION HEARING TURNS UGLY

WASHINGTON (July 13)--Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor said at her Senate confirmation hearing today that she would "not take any of this bolillo [cracker] bullshit" from Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) after Sen. Cornyn told her she could spend part of the hearing "running his vacuum cleaner."

"We don't want no damn Puerto Rican trash on our Supreme Court," the Senator said in his opening remarks, adding that Judge Sotomayor "would probably hang around the Supreme Court building in a leather jacket, spray painting 'fuck you' on the wall."

"I cut open your face," Judge Sotomayor responded, flicking open a gravity knife. "I cut your face so wide open you shit through your ear."

A rumble then ensued, with music by Leonard Bernstein and choreography by Jerome Robbins. Republicans did not participate as they could not dance.

THE TROUBLE WITH SCIENCE

So a new study shows people don't like science very much. That is not surprising. People have questions, and science doesn't have any answers. That's science's whole thing, is to not have any answers. The best science will do for you is a theory. Gravitation is a theory. Germs causing disease is a theory. Evolution is a theory. Nothing in science is ever proven. It's the nature of the beast.

Now just think how annoying that is. Suppose some scientist is sitting next to you in the train station, and you ask him whether the 10:16 is on time. He will say that based upon previous data there is a decent enough likelihood that the train may arrive around 10:16; but none of that (he will go on) can be said with certainty. He also has a hypothesis (he will continue) that the train is artificially scheduled, a hypothesis that appears to be so well borne out by the available facts as to perhaps one day qualify as a theory. But as to whether the train actually is a human artifice, and especially as to whether it will arrive at 10:16, he will not tell you. So you punch him.

Now you approach a man in a clerical collar, and you ask him the same question. He will say that the train is due to arrive at 10:16, and will do so, God willing. This will satisfy you at once. Why not? It is practical and reassuring. If the train does arrive on time, that's excellent, and the discussion is at an end. If the train does not arrive, there is simply nothing to be done about it, and life will go on, somehow, and above all one's beliefs about the nature of the universe will remain as before.

Who would not prefer the cleric's answer? Who enjoys being told that things may not be as they seem? Or are probably not as they seem? Humans want predictability and regularity and all that other stuff you get from prune juice. They want to know where they come from and where they are going and they don't want any goddamn surprises. And if you can't tell them that stuff, they'll find someone who will.

That is why science is unpopular, and always will be. Science is always the geeky kid in class who gets the teacher pissed off and gets beat up at recess. Science will never get the girls. Scientists are always pictured as insane, pouring stuff from one test tube into another and cackling. I suspect (though I cannot prove) that there is nothing to be done about this. If it's your job to annoy, you can't complain of the result.

STUFF PROLONGS MOUSE LIFE; MICE ANNOYED

WASHINGTON (July 9)-- Rapamycin, a medication prescribed for transplant patients, has prolonged the lives of several mice by as much as 25%, causing lines for the revolving treadmills in mouse cages and otherwise inconveniencing the younger mice.

"We really can't believe this," said one mouse who asked not to be identified. "These old crock mice used to die and get taken out of the cage by little kids who would bury them in the back yard while the kids' parents gave little sermons on death and stuff. Now these mice just hang around the water bottle and fart."

Other complaints by younger mice have involved mice who get old-mouse smell into the cedar shavings, mice who fill up the food-hoard with prunes, and mice who hold up the line for mouse pellets while they haggle over coupons.

BERNIE MADOFF WON'T APPEAL HIS 150-YEAR SENTENCE

Moby Dick makes me hungry. I always want to eat a bowl or two of chowder when I read it. Other than that the book is horribly overdone and ought to be boiled down, as many others have noted, for oil.

The book does contain a first-rate sermon, however, which takes up all of Chapter 9, by which time I think Ishmael has gotten around to packing his socks. He wanders into a church. The sermon is on Jonah, and is given by an old salt preacher named Mapple:

For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment.

That's a nugget, isn't it? Well, Bernie Madoff just got sentenced to 150 years. He won't appeal the sentence--told his lawyers not to do it. He wants nothing so much as to do what he has been sentenced to do, which is die in prison.

There is a contrite man. Take note of it. You won't see it again very soon.

MY DAY IS MADE

A gay friend writes:

Well, as I always say, the Mormon the better.

WHY SARAH PALIN QUIT: A NO-BRAINER

She quit because she owes $500,000.00 in legal fees, is why she quit. It's a debt that's not going away and that the lawyers won't settlle. I wouldn't, if I were them. It was a pisspot of work--very good work, too, considering the stupidity of the client in getting herself into the Troopergate mess and everything else--and they billed it fair and square. (You can bet they will charge interest, too.)

How in hell will she pay them half a million bucks? Not out of her measly pretax $125,000.00 a year as governor she's not paying them--not with a special-needs kid, and a bunch of stupid upcountry relatives always hanging around with their palms stuck out, not even with the free house. Not to mention that her legal bills will continue to climb. There is simply no way she can afford to stay in her job and not end up in bankruptcy.

Unlike most people stuck with a gigantic uninsured bill they can't pay, though, Sarah Palin has a perfectly sound Plan B. On the right-wing lecture circuit she can earn five figures per appearance--possibly even more--and on the book deal even more (just ask the Clintons)--much more. She can't do all that and be governor. It's true the book will be ghosted, but that is not to be held against her. So was Hillary's, and it made Hillary rich.

Not to mention the legal fees will stop.

It's important to remember that Palin has to do this now, while she is a hot property. If she waits, if some stupid investigation catches up with her (catching her, for instance, re-doing her house at public expense), if time dulls her shine with the Stupid Right, if some better sexier and above all smarter person miraculously appears to scoop up the GOP standard, then she will be stuck in Juneau or Anchorage or whatever the fuck the capital of Alaska is with her legal bills and her governorship, which is just another way of saying that she will be fucked.

In short, it's a no-brainer. There is nothing cunning or complicated or mysterious or mavericky or whacky about it.

Of course it would be nice if she would just say that. "Here are the numbers, people. The fact is, I can't afford to be your governor. I really wish I could, but life's life and I got bills to pay." But she won't, because her mystique just now comes from being crazily unpredictable, in much the way that Frank Sinatra's mystique came from his association with the Mob.

Of course there was a difference. Frank Sinatra could actually sing. Sarah Palin can't do much of anything. But I suspect she knows that, and knows that she's in over her head, and that she's got one shot, just one, to save her ass, and so she is taking it. You and I, gentle reader, would do the same. Also.

As to the Presidency, though, forget about it. America would never elect an ignorant religious whacko of grossly limited intellectual capacity to the White House. It has never been done, and it never will happen. Not even once.

M.E.: MICHAEL JACKSON DIED OF BOREDOM FROM READING ABOUT G-8 SUMMIT

LOS ANGELES (July 8)--The Los Angeles County Coroner's office released a preliminary report today laying the death of the King of Pop squarely at the doorstep of the Group of Eight, or G-8 as it is known, accusing the international consortium of industrialized nations of boring Mr. Jackson to death.

"Mr. Jackson apparently was reading about the G-8 Summit and suffocated," the Coroner told reporters. "The Group of Eight, or G-8, is a forum of eight--formerly six--governments of Northern Hemisphere nations scheduled to meet regularly in rotating Host Nation venues to discuss law enforcement, labor, economic and social development, energy, environment, foreign affairs, justice and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz."

The Coroner was later revived with ice water. His written report concludes that "several persons present tried to get to Mr. Jackson with some interesting drugs, but it was too late."