Is it any wonder why people like me despise advertising? It completely insults my intelligence. Now, it’s one thing to entertain. I get a huge laugh out of those employment commercials where the guy works in an office full of chimps. That’s fun. But it’s another thing entirely to expect me to believe nine out of ten doctors agree on anything. And if you know anyone who actually believes drinking a particular brand of beer will attract super models please do the gene pool a favor and run them over with your SUV.

Internet advertising is even more aggravating than ads on TV. (Don’t even get me started on pop-up ads.) Keyword based advertising is supposed to connect ads with the people interested in them. But what it really does is show just how stupid advertisers think the people are.

Case in point, I was reading an article about the mold problem along the flooded gulf coast. The keyword ad engine saw “mold” on the page and chose to display this ad for mold test kits. Now click on the thumbnail and see if your intelligence is not insulted.

The following link is rated R for foul language. I don’t generally post such gratuitous linguistic crimes, but this one is worth it.

Penn and Teller have a show called… well… Bull[Poop], on which they expose the lies behind some of our societies odd behaviors. They’ve covered topics from alien abduction to recycling programs. Penn uses lots of foul language, but makes very valid points (although I don’t agree with every topic they’ve covered).

They did a scathing expose on PETA which you can view here. (This is the rated R link I talked about.)

If you’d rather protect your virgin ears, I’ll sum up the finer points of the video.

Simply put, PETA thinks animals are more valuable than people.

• They’ve run campaigns comparing chicken and beef processing to the Holocaust. So chickens are at least as valuable as Jews.
• They espouse and financially support terrorist who firebomb medical facilities that use lab animals for testing. So mice are more valuable that the millions of humans who benefit from modern medicine.
• They insist on “total animal liberation” including the abolition of pet ownership, which they call “slavery”. So gerbils deserve the same rights as African Americans.

What this video does best is expose the wild hypocrisy of the militant animal rights movement.

• The vast majority of PETA’s contributions come from animal lovers who own pets. PETA would make it illegal to own pets.
• PETA holds protests at animal shelters where sick, injured, and stray animals are euthanized. PETA’s own shelters euthanize two thirds of the animals they receive.
• PETA would outlaw medical testing on animals and the use of animals to produce medicine. The vice president of PETA is a diabetic who uses insulin that was developed through animal testing (on dogs) and was produced with the use of animals (probably pigs).

Ahh, I love the smell of bacon in the morning. That and the sound of “activists” eating their own words.

Through a link of a link of a link, I came across an article written back in 2000 by the founder and former director of Greenpeace, Dr. Patrick Moore. Moore does a great job debunking the current enviro-nazi rhetoric and defacing 21st century environmentalist movement.

I now look at the mainstream environmental movement that I loved and can barely recognize it. Why? Because it has abandoned science to follow agendas that have little to do with saving the earth.
…
We have an environmental movement that is run by people who want to fight – not to win.

Please read the complete article here.

(via TenNapel)

Let’s call this a “toofer”. The title qualifies as a Conversation Enhancement, as it is an opprobrious epithet for French people. Oooh… There’s another Conversation Enhancement! (Opprobrious epithet means rude put-down. Does that make this a “threefer”?)

And now, on top of all that, I offer this week’s WBQotW.

For the next few weeks, I will be posting quotes from my wife’s favorite movie (and the one chick-flick I really get a kick out of), French Kiss. Kevin Kline, who is very American, plays the best creepy French guy I’ve ever seen on film. From this film alone, I learned how to do a great French accent. Here he questions the logic of Meg Ryan’s character’s fear of flying. (Please read with your best creepy French guy voice.)

What do you think, the plane is going to crash and we are all on the ground in a thousand pieces dead? I promise you, if it happens, you won’t feel a thing.

This week’s WBQotW comes from a very odd source. The film version of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was released on DVD this weekend (much recommended). While doing some internet investigation, I came across the official web site of Douglas Adams, the creator of HHGttG. There are a few “rare” pieces of Adam’s work posted there, short stories and such. One of them is “The Private Live of Genghis Khan”, a rather coarse bit of literature that ends with an alien named Wowbagger brow-beating the great Khan with some unusual put-downs. One of them was so odd, I had to immortalize it on my white board.

You are a very tiny piece of turd. Thank you.

<sarcasm>
Thanks to the vigilant efforts for earth-loving folk and the Marine Mammal Protection Act that our caring federal government enacted in 1972, the California Sea Lion has been saved from extinction. Imagine what your great grandchildren could have missed out on if the green minds had not prevailed! Now the population of sea lions on the west coast is nearly half a million! Oh, praise Gia.

To show their appreciation of the benevolence of mankind, hundreds of thousands of these two to eight hundred pound balls of love have descended on various harbors along the west coast. Marinas seem to be their favorite hang out now, where they can be close the good-souled people who put conservationism above capitalism in order to save these cute little critters.

Sea lions are now showing love to their sapien counterparts the only way they know how; “trapping people aboard boats, attacking city workers and defecating and vomiting on docks.” Those crazy rascals have also “attacked swimmers, chomped boogie boards and even yanked people off boats.” They also spend the wee hours of the night serenading area residents with their songs of thanks. One resident described the melody: “A barking dog doesn’t hold a candle to this. It’s like 40 barking dogs – in SurroundSound.”

Over a dozen sea lions gathering on the deck of a 37 foot sailboat in Newport Harbor actually swamped the boat and sank it. But that was just their way of giving us a little reminder of how conservation is more important that capitalism. It’s just boat, after all.
</sarcasm>

You can read more at the LA Times.

Once again, I find myself five posts behind and several days late on the latest news. Jeez, this information age keeps burying me in information!

So, today, I am forced to do another bulk post to get myself caught up. I now present this week’s Non-News Update! <Big Fanfare />

The pundits that be continue to butt heads regarding the tragedy du jour, Hurricane Katrina. In one of the saddest displays of unbrained journalism I’ve ever read, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Bruce Babbitt in which Mr. Babbitt insists that Congress must determine whether or not to rebuild New Orleans. He states, “New Orleans will survive only as an island surrounded by miles of open water.” I don’t even know where to begin debunking this pile of monkey hurlage.

First, Congress (as in the legislative branch of the federal government) should have absolutely no say in the future of New Orleans. New Orleans has its own city and county governments, not to mention the State of Louisiana, all of which are rightly in charge of their own jurisdiction. You would think Mr. Babbitt, who did time on President Clinton’s cabinet, would understand that we live in a federal republic where state’s rights are held sacred… most of the time.

Second, New Orleans is still there. Yes, there is much damage and muck to be dealt with, but Mr. Babbitt makes it sound as if the city had been scraped into the sea.

Third, Mr. Babbitt bases his hypothesis on the scare-tactic rhetoric of tree-hugging, global warming, fear mongers (of which he is a shining example) who have been proven wrong scientifically over and over again. The theory that “sea levels are likely to rise two to three feet in this century.” is based entirely on the fuzzy math of ice cap depletion.

None of this should come as any surprise given Mr. Babbitt’s track record (which you can see more of here). This guy is an A-1 eco-nazi nut-job.

Now, allow your gaze to drift to the right were the other end of the political spectrum has discovered some striking evidence in defense of our good Mr. Bush.

As you may know, President Gee-Dub, speaking the press, accepted responsibility for the quality of the response to victims of Katrina. What you may not know is that the quality of the response was, in fact, better than that of previous hurricanes. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published an opinion piece which includes a remarkable quote from an Army National Guardsman who has been deployed in many similar disaster relief efforts:

“The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne.”

The article goes on to point out that, after Hurricane Andrew, it took five days for the National Guard to organize and arrive on the scene in Florida. In Louisiana, however, the guard was there in only three days. So, if the government was racist in its Katrina recover effort, then the 2002 government must have really had it in for all those poor, elderly, caucasian retirees in Florida!

A former Air Force logistics officer is also quoted with regard to the MSM‘s false charges:

“We do not yet have teleporter or replicator technology like you saw on ‘star Trek’ in college between hookah hits and waiting to pick up your worthless communications degree… You cannot just snap your fingers and make the military appear somewhere.

Strangely, the media has not made much of the roughly 2,000 municipal and school buses in New Orleans which were not utilized to take people out of the city before Katrina struck.

The Mexican Army is on American soil for the first time 150 years, but this time it has nothing to do with the Alamo.

45 trucks crossed the border last Friday carrying about 200 military personel (and about 800 “undocumented volunteers”… Juuuust kidding!). Fifteen trucks are loaded with water, which, of course, hurricane victims have been warned not to drink. (Pah-dum-tshh) Click here to see exclusive pictures of the convoy just before crossing the border.

The Mexican government also announced that it had dispatched a Mexican Navy cruiser to the Mississippi coast, pictured here.

In a follow-up to several previous posts, the woman who claimed to have found a human finger in her Wendy’s chili, along with her co-conspirator husband, pled guilty to attempted grand theft and other charges relating to her false claim.

David Boyd, from the District Attorney’s office, said, “Thankfully, law enforcement thwarted their successful efforts at theft.” Uhhhh, right. I think he means that the cops discovered the plot before it succeeded. Anyway…

Anna Ayala faces up to ten years in prison for her failed fast food finger finding fraud. (Oooh! Impressive alliteration!) Several employees of the San Jose Wendy’s franchise were laid off after sales dropped 70% in the wake of Ayala’s false claim.

Her attorney voiced her remorse. “There are a lot of people that work for Wendy’s that were harmed. She always felt a lot of remorse about that.” Umm… “She always felt a lot…” Googly moogly, don’t you have to take a couple of English classes to get a law degree?

Richard Hatch, the openly homosexual winner of Survivor’s $1 million prize, has learned that, even if you survive Survivor, you can’t survive the IRS.

Hatch got slammed with a 10-count federal indictment for tax evasion and mail, wire, and bank fraud. The fed offered him a plea deal back in January for lesser charges, but he reneged on that deal. Free advice of the day: When the fed offers you a plea deal, take it!

You can read the full indictment over at The Smoking Gun.

Turns out the harmless gay millionaire hired an accounting firm to do his 2000 taxes in 2002 (just a wee bit late). The firm gave Hatch the return form which said he owed Uncle Sam over $400,000 in taxes and fees. Naturally, he wanted a second opinion, so he hired an independent accountant to crunch the numbers. Only problem is, he forgot to mention to this accountant several sources of income. This accountant figured that Hatch owed over $200,000. Better, but not good enough for Hatch.

He asked the accountant to draw up a return not including the $1 mil from Survivor. The accountant did this only after Hatch signed an agreement that the return form was for informational purposes only. This last return was more what Hatch was looking for: a tax return of $4400. Much better. Hatch signed the fraudulent return form and mailed it in.

Now, ripping off Uncle Sam is one thing, but American’s most famous “snake” didn’t stop there. Ripping off charitable donations is so much more fun!!

He was invited to be on a pilot episode of a reality show about giving money to charities. Naturally, a show about giving to charity doesn’t want to pay a millionaire to be on the show. Instead, they agreed to pay Hatch’s share to a charity of his choice. Hatch gave them the name of his favorite charity, Horizon Bound, which at that point did not exist. Hatch then ran down to the town hall and shuffled the paperwork to create his very own non-profit organization named… you guessed it… Horizon Bound. The $25,000 check to Horizon Bound landed in Hatch’s mail box. Not satisfied with mail fraud, Hatch decided to add bank fraud to the list when he altered the check to include his own name. Then he deposited the check in his personal account and, naturally, failed to declare any of this on his taxes.

All of this was in 2000, after Hatch’s Survivor claim to fame. I won’t even go into his 2001 tax evasion (where he failed to claim over $360,000 in income and several thousand dollars of “contributions” to Hatch’s favorite charity… himself).

When all is said and done, Hatch could face several years in prison and oodles of fines after which he’ll be lucky if he if he can call himself a thousand-aire. On the up-side, being a homosexual in prison is like being a fat guy at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Bon appetit, Mr. Hatch.

While things at work have been very hectic the last few days (Honest, they have!), I have been falling further and further behind on my usual daily reading and even further behind on my blogging. I did manage to pick up on a couple of articles yesterday and wanted to pass them along.

The hurricane has been dominating the news lately. (While I really enjoy Fox News’ political and war coverage, I truely hate their habitual sensationalism.) We’ve seen everyone from Rev. Jesse Jackson to the average Joe sleeping under an over-pass pointing fingers this way and that over Katrina and the resulting devistation. News flash!! George Bush didn’t create this hurricane. I’m not even comfortable calling it an “act of God”. If you know much about theology than you should know that all natural disasters are the result of a sin cursed earth, but I digress.

My hero, Ben Stein, wrote a short column (which you can read here) clearing up the muck of passing the buck for Katrina.

In other non-news, a friend sent me a great article on “Peace Mom” Cindy Sheehan. I know she’s been out of the public eye for a week or so. (Thank God Almighty!) But this was just too good to pass up. Mark Steyn’s piece on the “Peace Mom” is really well written and makes tons of sense. (He fails to mention the rumors I’ve heard about Sheehan calling Bush a “Zionist” and the fact that her sit-in is inspired more by anti-semitism than by pacifism, but, like I said, that’s only a rumor… for now.)

My long awaited expedition to Grand Teton has come to an end. It was quite an adventure, if not a complete success. You can read my also long awaited write-up of the trip here.