Charlie Sheen has the best agent in the world

A Two-fer

Number 1: This is actually quite clever;

Number 2: You get to say the word "Fleming," which is always fun. Well, sure, it's not as fun as saying "Walloon," but still . . . .

You don't suppose . . . .

Washington Post headline: "George Clooney arrested in Washington at Sudan protest."

So, while George is being arrested, does anyone else wonder where Matt Damon and Brad Pitt are, and what they're stealing?

Speaking Truth to Power

Reporter asks Michelle Obama: "How do you respond to critics who say the government should not be telling people how to eat or to stay active?"

Reporter is 11 years old.

"I got walked out on on a date . . . because I said I didn't like french fries."

A Treasury of the World's Worst Online Dating Stories.

"Female sexuality... the timeless mystery."

Responding to the headline, "Grey ties are flying off the shelves as wives take inspiration from X-rated bondage novel to dress up their men," Ann Althouse wonders: "So... is this new-found, book-driven desire a desire to get tied up or to get their men to wear ties? Female sexuality... the timeless mystery."

The Ghost of Oscar Wilde

This just in:

Rush Limbaugh has drawn the ire of celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred, who sent a letter to the Palm Beach County state attorney requesting an investigation into whether the popular radio host should be prosecuted for calling a law student a “slut” and “prostitute” last week.

[snip]

In a letter dated March 8, Allred, writing on behalf of the Women’s Equal Rights Legal Defense and Education Fund, requested that Palm Beach County State Attorney Michael McAuliffe probe whether the conservative radio personality had violated Section 836.04 of the Florida Statutes by calling Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke the two derogatory words.

The statute stipulates that anyone who “speaks of and concerning any woman, married or unmarried, falsely and maliciously imputing to her a want of chastity” is guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree.

The statute, dating from 1883, reads in full as follows:

836.04 Defamation.—Whoever speaks of and concerning any woman, married or unmarried, falsely and maliciously imputing to her a want of chastity, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.

It seems to us that there is presented no question of fact as to whether the derogatory statement "imputed to her a want of chastity." Thus, the question to be presented to a jury would be whether that derogatory statement was made "falsely."

We can't help but wonder if Ms. Allred has thought this through.

Coppin' some 'tude? That's a cuffin'

A Colorado television station reports:

ADAMS COUNTY - Children who cop an attitude at school might want to think twice. Eleven-year-old Yajira Quezada, a sixth-grader at Shaw Heights Middle School, was handcuffed and taken to a holding facility for disobeying the orders of an assistant principal during lunch and being "argumentative and extremely rude," 9Wants to Know has learned.

An Adams County Sheriff's Office incident report says the assistant principal found Yajira walking in the hallway during lunch because the girl claimed she was cold and needed to get a sweater from her locker.

The report says the assistant principal was in mid-sentence when Yajira, "turned and walked away saying, 'I don't have time for this.'"

When intervention efforts with a counselor failed, Yajira was handcuffed and put in the school resource officer's patrol car and taken to a juvenile holding facility called "The Link."

"She told me that I need to quit giving her my attitude. Why would they handcuff me? I'm not the type of girl to get arrested," Yajira said.

Sheesh. Things sure have changed since I was in sixth grade. Back then, if every kid with attitude had been cuffed, the Sheriff would have had to bring the big jail transport bus to the school.  So I guess after all the studies and seminars and mountains of Ed.D. degrees handed out in the last 50 years, they've done away with detention, suspension, or calling dad to come pick up his mouthy kid.

Andrew Breitbart (1969 - 2012)

Anima eius et animae omnium fidelium defunctorum per Dei misericordiam requiescant in pace.

"gunna be at west hall today"

Back in the day, I used to type things on a typewriter. The only check on my spelling was a secretary who -- fortunately -- could spell a lot better than I. Then came word processing, to which was quickly added automatic flagging of misspelled words. Of course, this feature gave a false sense of security, since every time I typed "Untied States," the program properly failed to report that I didn't really mean that.

But then came "autocorrect." No need to scan the document, no need to judge what flagged words were supposed to be. Some computer code and a database and you were good to go.

Also back in the day, on those unusual occasions when I really wanted to communicate with someone right now, I'd dial the telephone. Now and again I'd dial a wrong number. No big deal (so long as I didn't instantly say "Hey babe!"), just apologize and dial more carefully.

These days, of course, we have email, instant messages, and texting. Hit the SEND button, and the message is away, beyond recall, whether you've dialed the wrong number or not.

So what happens -- here in the second decade of the 21st Century -- if you text "gunna be at west hall today" to advise one of your buddies that you'll be at West Hall High School today? What if you text it to the wrong number, and it's sent to a stranger? What if autocorrect gets hold of "gunna" and corrects it so that the message, sent to a stranger, reads: "gunman be at west hall today."

The Gainseville (Fl.) Times reports:

An autocorrected text message, accidentally sent to the wrong number, was the catalyst to a lockdown Wednesday at West Hall middle and high schools.

Just before noon, law enforcement and school officials issued the lockdown after a West Hall community member reported a threatening text message.

The text, saying "gunman be at west hall today," was received and reported to police around 11:30 a.m. But after police tracked the number, they learned the autocorrect feature on the new cellphone changed "gunna" to "gunman."

The message being sent to the wrong number added to the confusion.

As law enforcement learned of the text message, the schools were notified to go into lockdown as they investigated the origins of the message.

Every day, in every way, things get better and better.

"We sure put dad through the wringer those last few months."

An interesting reflection from the Washington Post:

With unrealistic expectations of our ability to prolong life, with death as an unfamiliar and unnatural event, and without a realistic, tactile sense of how much a worn-out elderly patient is suffering, it’s easy for patients and families to keep insisting on more tests, more medications, more procedures.

Doing something often feels better than doing nothing. Inaction feeds the sense of guilt-ridden ineptness family members already feel as they ask themselves, “Why can’t I do more for this person I love so much?”

Opting to try all forms of medical treatment and procedures to assuage this guilt is also emotional life insurance: When their loved one does die, family members can tell themselves, “We did everything we could for Mom.” In my experience, this is a stronger inclination than the equally valid (and perhaps more honest) admission that “we sure put Dad through the wringer those last few months.”

Employee Sucked Into Aggregation Turbine

A horrible and tragic accident:

NEW YORK—Shocked and saddened witnesses at the Huffington Post's news-aggregation facility have confirmed that employee Henry Evers, 25, died Wednesday after being sucked into the website's powerful news-repurposing turbine, where his body was immediately torn to pieces.

The 200-ton content-compiling device, developed by Greek multimillionaire and site co-founder Ari­anna Huffington, sucks up original articles from around the web with its massive rotor assembly, re-brands them with the Huffington Post name, and then spits them back out on the company's home page.

Workers said that when the machine ground to a halt at approximately 11:30 a.m., Evers reached inside to dislodge a particularly thoughtful 700-word Christian Science Monitor essay on the unrest in Syria that had become jammed.

Apparently unprepared for the aggregator mechanism's quick restart, Evers was gruesomely dismembered by its rapidly spinning blades, which soaked the room in blood and unprocessed news content.

Resolutions

We know we've been lax around here respecting end-of-year reviews, lists of the 10 best cat videos of 2011 and suchlike. But we'd not like it thought that we were without resolutions for the New Year.

Relationship Advice

From the Washington Post.

Sounds to us like performance art

We're keen students of the "alcohol may have been involved" genre, and so certainly didn't miss this:

A Colorado woman dropped her pants at a museum and rubbed her rear end all over a painting valued at $30 million, according to police.

Carmen Tisch, 36, was arrested after scratching, punching and, well, rubbing her butt against Clyfford Still's "1957-J no.2" and causing an estimated $10,000 damage to the artwork at the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver. Police believe she was drunk during the late December incident.

[snip]

The oil-on-canvas abstract expressionist painting was spared additional damage when the woman tried to urinate on it but apparently missed.

"It doesn't appear she urinated on the painting or that the urine damaged it, so she's not being charged with that," Kimbrough said according to the Denver Post.

We expect at any moment the announcement that Ms. Tisch is herself a noted performance artist, and was actually acting pursuant to a substantial Government grant. In fact, we think that the posterior polishing of abstract art makes a profound artistic statement.

If you're wondering, here's the painting in question, although we have no idea whether this image is before or after the "damage." Without a side-by-side comparison of before-and-after, it's unclear how one could tell.

I am reckless, incorrigible and lazy, most likely male, and

The Second Amendment

Via Reddit

First, just watch . . . .

Then, read more.

Dare to Dream

"When he was very young, Tommy's parents had drilled into him the belief that if he just put his mind to it, there was NOTHING he couldn't do."

Can't we all just get along?

​"Jasha Lottin says she can't understand why people are so interested in why she bought a horse, killed it, gutted it, then posed naked for photos inside the carcass and posted them on the Internet."

Caution: LGT story that includes NSFW pics (particularly if you work with a lot of people who've never seen a naked girl). More important, they're WAY over the "Not Safe For Lunch" line.