Bruce Mitchell wrote Sun 11/20/11 @13:30 PST:

I'm pleased to see the Matt Taibbi quote on the Occupy Wall
Street movement under "Quotations of the Week"  rather than
"Quotations of the Weak"   –  because he makes an important
point that goes against the conventional wisdom of virtually ev-
ery corporate media outlet  and commentator  ( I don't use the
term  "mainstream media"  for what are in fact nothing but cor-
porate and government shills).

Those who call for a narrowing of focus of the Occupy move-
ment onto specific issues or goals are only seeking ways to kill
them, off one by one.  As with most aspects of life,  everything
is connected.  We ignore the connections at peril of the whole.

Manhole lids were  flying in the air from underground blasts around
Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis,  and officials were looking  for
ways to lock them down before the upcoming Super Bowl.

                                                          [courtesy Indianapolis Star]

The annual state liquor license auction brought in $3.8 million as the
surging population reported in the 2010 census allowed the sale of
279 new permits.  United Package Liquors paid $450,000 for just
one license, to open a package liquor store in Brownsburg. . . .

Madison canceled its annual Christmas parade for lack of interest. . . .

Forty-eight persons,  including the administrators of four decedents'
estates,  sued the country music duo Sugarland  over the State Fair
stage collapse that killed killed seven and injured more than 40 more.

                                                            [courtesy Associated Press]

A shirtless man  wrapped in an American flag from the waist down
drove a Jeep up the steps of the World War Memorial in Indianap-
olis.
                                                                    [courtesy WTHR-TV]

Former State House Speaker John Gregg was running for governor
on  his  mustache  (that's a blue lapel pin he's holding in his left hand
in the photo).
 
                                                                    [courtesy WTHI-TV]

Miley Cyrus, 19, was listed as a "musician" in the birthdays column
of the Louisville Courier-Journal.

"It's Catch-22 cubed."
                                       – Dusty Hopkins, describing her life in a Texas prison,
                                          how she got there, and her despair of getting out

"My husband likes French silk [pie]; so if he's really good, he gets French silk."

                                                                                                            – Michelle Bachmann

"The more toppings a man has on his pizza, I believe the more manly he is. . . . A manly
 man don't  want it piled high with vegetables!  He would call that a sissy pizza."

                                                                                                            – Herman Cain

 The words:     "It's just been so crazy around here . . . ."

The squelch:    "It's always been 'crazy' everywhere, but most of us have adapted to our
                        surroundings.  Sorry you're having trouble keeping up."

                                                                                            – submitted by Ted Fiskevold

Mariel Hemingway, 50
Amy Grant, 51
Jamie Lee Curtis, 53
Caroline Kennedy, 54

More than 100,000 signatures have been collected on a peti-
tion to remove all Kardashian shows from the E! network. ...
A dog was stopped driving a motor home  down  the  streets
of Darwin, Australia. . . . Police pepper-sprayed an 84-year-
old woman, a priest, and a pregnant teenager  while  clearing
Occupy Seattle. . . . New York's Mayor Bloomberg said,  in
so many words,  that health and safety trump free speech. . . .
Vladimir Putin received the Confucius Peace Prize. . . . An au-
tographed copy of Jerry Sandusky's memoir Touched sold for
$510 on e-Bay. .  .  . PETA asked Turkey,  Texas,  to change
its name to Tofurky. . . . The Saudi Committee for the Promo-
tion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice decreed  that women
with tempting eyes must cover them up. . . . Additional  words
banned by the  Pakistani Telecommunications Authority  inclu-
ded "fatso,"  "barf-face,"  and "harder." . . . The FBI raided an
Amish cult in Ohio and arrested seven members in recent hair-
cutting terrorism. . . .  A fat man forced a seatmate to stand up
the entire  seven hours  of a U.S. Airways flight from Alaska to
Philadelphia. . . . James J. Butler received the most votes in the
tax board election in Derby, Connecticut, but he wasn't running
– the candidate was his father,  James R. Butler. . . . Alexander
Lord Bath,  the Loins of Longleaf,  took his 75th wifelet  on his
4,000-hectare estate in Wiltshire, New Zealand. . . .A wild tur-
key  crashed through a window into the Eat'nPark restaurant in
Penn Hills,  Pennsylvania,  while it was closed for Thanksgiving.
.  .  . A woman pepper-sprayed 20 other customers  on  Black
Friday in Porter Ranch,  California.  . . .  A 4-year-old girl who
ate dried fruit off a shelf was detained for shoplifting  in Everett,
Washington.

 [courtesy Harper's Weekly, Daily Snopes, MSNBC.com, AP]

What the hell?  I got married thinking I had a sure
thing, and I end up spending more time and more
money to get laid than I ever had to  when  I  was
single.  What do you think Jeanetta would have to
say about that?
                                                                  Steve

        You git no guchi?  Jeanetta's  retired.  I'm
                        forwarding your question to National Pub-
                        lic Radio's Yuki Noguchi (you see? I, too,
                        got Noguchi for you!).

• Kris exposes her secrets
• Has video proof
• More plastic surgery shockers . . .
  

Publius Leget wrote Sun 13 November 2010 @10:04:26 CST:

If only the popes and the bishops had the integrity of Joe
Paterno.

Students at Yorktown High School planned to occupy a ball-
room  for an alternative dance  after being told they'd have to
agree to a ban on  sexually  suggestive  dancing  at  a  school
dance (Supt. Jennifer McCormick said slow dancing was OK
but "grinding" was out). . . .

A 12-year-old boy drove a pickup truck in a crash in Madison
County,  injuring the woman driving the other car  and  her 10-
year old granddaughter, Isabella Krompack.

                                                     [courtesy Associated Press]

The Louisville Orchestra advertised for scabs to play its pipes
and fiddles. . . .

A Louisville radio host  who called a policeman who ticketed
him "Black Car Barney" and a liar on the air was acquitted of
speeding by a jury, which had been told of the officer's threat
to sue the radio station for libel.
                                                 [courtesy Courier-Journal]

An 18-year-old Amish man driving a horse-drawn buggy not
displaying a safety emblem  was killed when it was struck by
an SUV on Ky. 728 in Hart County, near Cub Run. . . .

An Old Order Swartzentruber Amish man filed a handwritten
brief in Graves County District Court  arguing that the orange
triangle required as a safety emblem on buggies is the symbol
of the Trinity. . . .

Clark County officials discussed replacing paper files with an
i-Pad.
                                                                      [courtesy AP]

The Associated Press reported also  that  Ashland,  Bowling
Green, Lexington, Louisville, Owensboro and Paducah were
99% occupied, but . . .

Tabloid Headlines' roving reporter failed to find anyone Oc-
cupying Bowling Green except on Facebook.

"Monday I'm going to be in Portland in the morning.  I'm going to be visiting some
 of our labs in Portland in the afternoon.  That's two.  I  can't  remember  what the
 third thing is I'm going to be doing."
                                                                – Nancy Pelosi, declining a challenge by
                                                                   Rick Perry to a debate on Monday

"Eventually the Occupy movement will need to be specific about how it wants
 to change the world.  But for right now,  it just needs to grow. . . . It  doesn't
 need to tell the world what it wants. It is succeeding,  for  now,  just by being
 something different."
                                                                    – Matt Taibbi, in Rolling Stone

"This is the two-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement."

                                                                    – Jean Cochran, National Public Radio news
                                                                           ("anniversary:  the yearly recurrence of the
                                                                            date of a past event" – Random House Col-
                                                                            lege Dictionary – italics in dictionary, not ours)

"It's 11 minutes till 4 a.m., Central time."
                                                                – Joe Corcoran, WKYU-FM radio,
                                                                   Bowling Green, Ky., at 4:49 a.m.
                                                                   CST (not the same incident
                                                                    as that reported last week)

"Good morning; it's 5 a.m., Central time."
                                                                    – Joe Corcoran, 11 minutes later

Jodie Foster, 49
Bo Derek, 55
Judy Woodruff, 65
Anni-Frid Lyngstad, 66
Petula Clark, 79

Evelyn Lauder, inventor of the pink breast cancer ribbon, died of ovarian cancer.  .  .  . Cinder blocks were thrown into Jerry Sandusky's house,  which is next to an elementary school. . . . A 10-year-old girl gave birth in Mexico. .  .  .  A John Lennon molar brought £19,000 at auction in England. .  .  . Casey An- thony's prosecutor wrote a book in which he called her lawyer "smarmy." . . .  Miley Cyrus took to Twitter to complain about people calling her fat. . . . British scientists concluded that teen- agers  with  high  IQ's  are more likely than others to use illegal drugs and become alcoholics. . . .  Soccer  hottie  Hope  Solo, booted from Dancing With The Stars,  told  the  judges,  "Kiss my booty." . . . Another burglar got stuck in a chimney,  in  At- lanta,  Georgia. . . . A woman was arrested for practicing medi- cine without a license in Miami Gardens,  Florida,  for  injecting another woman's butt with Fix-A-Flat. . . . An Arizona political wannabe wound up in a homeless shelter in the Ukraine looking for a Yulia he had met on line.  . . .  A Nebraska man who mis- takenly "texted" a state trooper, looking for dope, wound up in jail. . . .  A  former  FedEx  employee  went postal at his wife's FedEx work station in Bedford Park, Illinois (but shot only him- himself). . . . . The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority ban- ned "Jesus Christ," "wuutang," and "monkey crotch"  from  text messages,  among 1,109 English words  and  586 Urdu words. . . . American teens were troubled by "sleep-texting." .  .  . Re- lieved from his job as high school football coach in Buffalo,Wy- oming, for calling his players "queer" and "cry babies" in a "Hurt Feelings Report," Pat Lynch kept his job as a guidance counsel- or. . . . Steven Roth, a teacher in Gloucester County, New Jer- sey,  was put on paid leave for calling a "special needs" student a "tard." . . . Heidi  Kaeslin,  a 35-year-old high school teacher in Stockton, California,  was suspended with pay while officials investigated whether she violated  school  ethics  by maintaining mysluttyteacher.com and other pornographic web sites  on  her school laptop.

Renaldo Jack,        chimneysweep                Heidi

[courtesy Harper's Weekly, Daily Snopes, MSNBC.com, AP]

A Penn State ice cream store quit offering its banana-flavored
Sandusky Blitz. . . .

The Columbia University band was banned from the football
field after singing to the tune of the school song,  "We always
lose, lose, lose, by a lot and sometimes by a little . . . " in the
team's  10th straight loss  (including last season's last game),
62-41 to Cornell.

It's me again,  from  last  week.  I didn't sleep with
ANYONE on the football team. All I did was give
the water boy a hand job in the locker room,  and
the whole team burst in  at the end of the half  and
saw me.  I was MORTIFIED.

                               Broken and Getting Weaker

* Editor's note:

    Our regular, long-time advice columnist, Jeanetta Gi-
    rard,  resigned  shortly before this letter arrived,  be-
    cause of a dearth in the family.   We  were  fortunate
    to be able to fill her position with Eleanor Bigby, who
    served seven years as apprentice advice columnist at
    the Washington Post  without her name's ever having
    appeared in the paper,  even once.  We just happen-
    ed  to  get a letter of application  from  Eleanor,  who
    said  she  was  fed  up  with her lack of recognition in
    the mainstream media, the day after Jeanetta resigned.

    Jeanetta said she was happy to quit her job and return
    to her former life as a screaming Baptist.

            Oscar Ramiro Ortega Hernandez

Bruce Mitchell wrote Sun 11/6/11 @08:40 PST
re the Justin Bieber paternity suit:

¿¿ I thought Justin Bieber was gay.

Attendance and revenue  plunged  24  per  cent  in October at the
Horseshoe Casino, in Harrison County across the river and down-
stream from Louisville, as the Ohio River bridge on city's west end
remained closed for repair.
                                                          [courtesy Courier-Journal]

An Occupy Bloomington man died in a tent in People's Park.  .  .  .

An Owen County farm woman  buried  her  husband  on a hill over-
looking their home after the County took  title  to the 20-by-22-foot
burial plot as a public cemetery to avoid a state law requiring bodies
to be buried in cemeteries with $100,000 endowments. . . .

Property tax caps were  curbing  school  buses  and  closing libraries
and the state's attorney general found that  charging  for  school  bus
service is unconstitutional).
                                                            [courtesy Associated Press]

A semitrailer brushed a school bus, knocking it off I-65 near Cave City, in-
juring 19 students,  and the truck driver drove on.  State police speculated
that he might not have been aware of the contact (they did not speculate a-
bout whether he had a rear-view mirror). . . .

Agriculture Commissioner candidate Bob Farmer, who issued a comedy CD
about toothless eastern Kentuckians,  was the only Democrat defeated  in e-
lections for state offices.
                                                                                             [courtesy AP]

This photo has gone viral on the internet, with this caption:

This is the new Miss Kentucky.   The picture that will stay with   her for the rest of her life:   Makeup & hair style:  $500   New dress for the show:  $700   Giant stuffed bear:  $300   Not knowing how to hold the   bear  with  a  microphone in   her hand:  Priceless!

Only problem is, that's not Miss Kentucky.  Snopes.com has not yet re-
ported the source of this joke photo,  but you might note that the colors
are Northwestern University's, not the University of Kentucky's.

" . . . A view predicated on a belief the Pakistanis do not share – that the only way
 to bring the Haqqani to the negotiating table is to whack them.  Negotiation's cer-
 tainly worth a shot,  for Pakistan to step up to the plate and say,  'We're not sure
 we can get you there, but we're sure as hell going to try.' "

                                                                – Maliha Lodhi, former Pakistani ambassa-
                                                                    dor to the U.S. (and, since when do Mus-
                                                                    lims allow their women to talk like that?)

"Nobody knows de trouble he's seen."
                                                                – Leonard Pitts, Miami Herald
                                                                   columnist, re Herman Cain

"We are a warped people."
                                            – Jeanetta Girard

"Is God God?  Or is man God?  In God do we trust, or in man do we trust?"

                                                                             – Congressman Trent Franks (R-Ariz.),  in
                                                                                 the House debate over the national motto

"That's why our blacks are so much better than their blacks."
                                                                                                – Ann Coulter

"Events have conspired that this is an unsafe situation."
                                                                                        – Sam Adams, mayor
                                                                                           of Portland, Oregon

"Good morning; we're 11 minutes away from 4 a.m. Central time, 5 a.m. Eastern."

                                                    – Joe Corcoran, WKYU-FM Radio, at 4:49 a.m. CST (well,
                                                       maybe we shouldn't blame Joe;  maybe the station mana-
                                                       ger forgot to set the station's clock back to standard time)

"You could hear the audible gasps."
                                                            – Amy Worden, Philadelphia Inquirer

"She has very kissable cheeks."
                                                    – Justin Bieber, referring to girl friend Selena Gomez

Calista Flockhart, 47
Mackenzie Phillips, 52
Rickie Lee Jones, 57
Bonnie Raitt, 62
Bonnie Bramlett, 67
Daniel Ortega, 66
Jonathan Winters, 86

A lawyer for Chaz Bono sent a cease-and-desist letter to the National Enquirer over a headline saying  s/he  had  "Only  4 Years to Live! Liver Damage Agony."  .  .  .  Lindsay Lohan was freed after serving four hours of  her  latest  30-day  jail sentence.  . . . The new reality TV show All-American Mus- lim debuts tonight  on  TLC  (that's "The Learning Channel"). . . . An alcohol-free whisky, made in Panama by a company in Florida, was introduced in Britain.  . . . George Papandre- ou, Silvio Berlusconi and Joe Paterno resigned. .  .  . The re- lease of Silvio's latest album, True Love, was delayed by the controversy in Italy. .  .  . Former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine hired a lawyer. . . .  An Iranian soccer player will be lashed on the field for shoving his hand between a teammate's buttocks in a victory celebration  (and  so  will the teammate). ... PETA sued SeaWorld on behalf of five performing whales alleging  slavery  in violation of the 13th  Amendment  (which says nothing about people – read  it). . . .  The  Toronto  zoo planned to separate two gay penguins  to get them to procre- ate with females. . . . A pedestrian in Oakmont, Pennsylvania, was injured by drive-by  pumpkin  throwers.  . . .  A  man  in Bristol,  Illinois,  called  911  five  times  to report a broken i- Phone. . . .  An 18-year-old man who traveled from Phoenix, Arizona, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for sex  with a woman he had met on the internet was stabbed 300 times by the woman and  her  roommate  (police found a copy of The Werewolf's Guide to Life in their apartment).  .  .  .  The  satire  magazine Charlie Hebdo's offices were bombed in Paris  upon its publi- cation of a cover cartoon of Mohammed  (Muhammad?  Mo- ammar?  Abdul?   We're still looking for the cartoon  –  in the meantime, here's Edwin's again).          [courtesy Harper's Weekly, Snopes, MSNBC.com, AP]

Pennsylvania State University football coach Joe Paterno – who
did report his former assistant coach's misconduct (which he did
not witness himself) to his superiors, the athletic director and a u-
niversity vice president – took the fall  for  their  (and the eyewit-
ness's) failure to call police (the abuse of young boys by the assis-
tant coach was reported to police  in  1998,  a year before he re-
signed, but not reported to Paterno until 2002, when the ex-assis-
tant still had an office in the football building as emeritus – here's a
time line). . . .

The catcher for the Washington Nationals baseball team was kid-
napped from his home in Santa Ines, Venezuela, but rescued in a
few days.

More than 40 years ago I was the target of cruel bullying.  A
girl who hated me started a vicious rumor that ruined my rep-
utation.  She said I slept with the entire football team.  If that
wasn't  enough,  she  and a carful of girls drove by my house
one night while I was sitting with my parents and blurted out
this terrible lie.   My father went to her house and told her to
stop, but it didn't help.  My mother questioned me about the
truth of it.

This lie has trailed me my whole life.   It has haunted me for
years,  and I have moments of self-loathing to the  point  of
wanting  to  die.  This girl now is a do-gooder and the pillar
of the community, but I've been told she is hateful. How do
I get over this?  I went to therapy once but was told it was
pointless to confront this person, that she wouldn't even re-
member.
                                                            Strong but Broken

• California woman, 20, names boy singer, 17, as backstage father of 3-month old baby boy
  

• and she's being investigated for statutory rape, as the Bieb was only 16 at the time of conception

Bruce Mitchell wrote Sun 10/30/11 @12:15 PDT  re last week's
dumb news from Kentucky  that The Marriage of Figaro would
be accompanied by two pianos  and  a  harpsichord  (the "Three-
Piano Opera"),  since the Louisville Orchestra musicians  did  not
yet have a contract:

Why  dumb?  Seems like the orchestra problem has forced a
rather clever solution by the otherwise staid Kentucky Opera.
I love avant-garde productions!  (It's the  Kentucky  Opera,
by the way,  not the Louisville Opera.)

Indeed, it is the Kentucky Opera; the editors of Tabloid Headlines stand
corrected.

But if you think accompanying The Marriage of Figaro with two pianos
and a harpsichord is "clever"  and "avant-garde,"  then we must presume
that you think  also  that denying collective bargaining to public employees
in Ohio and Wisconsin is "quaint,"  that downsizing teaching staffs and po-
lice departments in California and Minnesota is "insightful,"  and that using
DJ's instead of musicians  to produce music at weddings and bar mitzvahs
is "productive"  (here's what some readers of the Louisville Courier-Journ-
al think, and here's what some others think).  – Editor

The Louisville Federation of Musicians filed a complaint with the Na-
tional Labor Relations Board against the management  of  the  Louis-
ville Orchestra, accusing it of refusing to bargain in good faith. . . .

A constable in suburban Louisville shot a shoplifting suspect who had
run over his foot with her car in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
.
                                                             [courtesy Courier-Journal]

The truck driver who caused an 11-fatality collision on I-65  last year
while using his cell phone (including his own death) was found to have
transmitted 69 calls and texts from the phone, while driving,  in the 24
hours before the crash.
                                                [courtesy San Francisco Chronicle]

 
Governor Stevie became a Dot-Head for a Day as he welcomed an
Indian  industry  to Elizabethtown  (and  caught  hell  from his Bible-
thumping election opponent).
                                                             [courtesy Courier-Journal]

Governor and Mrs. Mitch Dan- iels on Hal- loween,  as the Addams family  (or is it Sonny and Cher?) [Indianapolis Star photo]

Indiana University graduate Michael D. Higgins was elected president
of Ireland.
                                                                                  [courtesy AP]

"I hear they're working on perpetual motion."

                                            – Madry Chlopak, contemplating technological innovations
                                               from "self-cleaning" ovens to i-Phones' "auto correct"

"Thanks for tuning in on this midweek Wednesday morning."

                                                         – Joe Corcoran, WKYU-FM radio, Bowling Green, Ky.

P. Diddy, 42
k. d. lang, 50
Stefanie Powers, 69
Loretta Swit, 74
Jimmy Piersall, 92
Adolphe Saxe (1814-1894)

The  canon  of St. Paul's Cathedral resigned to avoid evicting
Occupy London from the steps of the church. . . .  A woman
was convicted of biting off her lover's testicles  in  Newcastle,
England. . . .  Financial,  sexual  and smoking scandals visited
the Herman Cain campaign. . . . A  new  book  suggests  that
Sybil did not have multiple personality disorder. . . . A dachs-
hund on LSD was killed by a car as the couple who gave him
a  gummy  worm  laced with the drug wandered the streets of
Snellville, Georgia, naked looking for him. . . . A Portland, O-
regon,  woman helped gut her dead horse after her boy friend
shot it,  and climbed inside to pose for nude photos (these are
too disgusting for reproduction even in Tabloid Headlines). . ..
Lindsay Lohan was ordered back to jail for 30 days  (but  she
has until Wednesday to turn herself in,  and  jail  overcrowding
could reduce the sentence to a matter of  hours). . . .A woman
was arrested for climbing a tree in Occupy Sydney.

[courtesy Harper's Weekly, Daily Snopes, MSNBC.com, AP]

David  Freese,  who dropped a routine pop-up in the 5th
inning of the sixth game and went on to become the "most
valuable player"  of the 2011 World Series,  was  not  the
first third baseman named Freese to play for the St. Louis
Cardinals. Gene Freese played 62 games at third base for
the Cardinals in 1958 after playing the first half of the sea-
son for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

David Freese is not related to Gene Freese, nor is he rela-
ted to Gene's brother  George Freese,  who  played  third
base for the Detroit Tigers,  the Pittsburgh Pirates  and the
Chicago Cubs (Gene played also for the Philadelphia Phil-
lies,  the Chicago White Sox,  the Cincinnati Reds, and the
Houston Colt .45's  in a 12-year major league baseball ca-
reer).

The name Freese is Frisian.  Other famous Frisians include
Mata Hari.

Does Tony LaRussa use Just For Men, or
Grecian Formula?
                                                       Steve