And Now For Something Completely Different....

To all appearances, the bar is set pretty low for who can run for President of the US in 2008. I was thinking that between Ron Paul, Mike Gravel and my own Congressman, Urban D. K., Ross Perot looked pretty normal. Lots of people have ears like that.

Anyway, here's where you need to go to kick of your big run for office. Elect Me Tees allows anyone to order t-shirts, hats, and other sportswear for their 2008 campaign for POTUS. Most likely you'll have to go to the custom page. There you can put in the write-in candidate of your choice, either your own name or your favorite famous personality; from Jackie Mason to Yours Truly. In fact, take a picture of yourself in a "Pauli '08" t-shirt and send it to me and I'll post it on the blog!

Why I Haven't Been Doing What I Had Been Doing

I acknowledge a gentle rib there in my reference to a recent post by my pal Jonathan Carpenter. If you don't find J-Carp as humorous as I do in his quixotic relentlessness, I don't know... go rent "Borat" or something and have a little snicker whilst you sip your Beaujolais Nouveau. But call me Sancho; I can't help laughing at all the bloggers doing post after post with feigned indignation, the obligatory paranoia about so-called "cyber-stalkers" and the ironic advice to ignore "trolls". Well.. so long and thanks for all the hits.


Back to me. I'm not dead or anything that serious. I just have a new situation whereby I can't blog as much. It would be kind of like, well, oh I don't know... OK. Say I got a job as a garbage collector... not that I did get that job. But if they didn't give it to me because they thought I couldn't drive that stupid truck or lift those big cans they're idiots.... uh, a better example would be, uh, say I was elected Game Warden and had to investigate cases of satanic animal immolation and they offered me a bunch of money to do a TV show about it, you know, like COPS -- oh, I suppose you don't have a fantasy job, Mr./Ms. Grocery-Packer!

That reminds me, for several reasons of this recent Moonbones post about Amy Welborn's blog, which might be worth commenting on if that old Beaujolais piece from Slate left a sour taste in your mouth.


And that, my friends, is one flippin' sweet Volvo front-loader. What do you think? Email me or post your comments to this blog.

Yeah, Yeah, All Right... On and On and On....

My current mood.

Yoko apparently thought she was in a Monty Python skit, or something.

Eccentricity is Getting Hard Nowadays!

From the Onion: "New Billionaire Tries To Develop Eccentricities".

"When you have $975 million, you're just like everyone else," said Stern, 41, from the bow of Excelsior, a 58-person canoe that he commissioned for a world-record paddle around the world. "But I'm a billionaire now. People expect me to use my money to feed my ego to the point of borderline insanity."

Pretty funny. I especially liked the albino alligator collection and the planned lunar burial. The Ukrainian contortionists seemed kind of like a no-brainer, not so eccentric to me.

So how close is everyone to becoming a billionaire? Let's see... I need about..... approximately....... yeah, a billion dollars.

Responsum Se Dedit Flamini

Here's a fun, geeky page with link to clever Latin translations of pop songs. The meter is kept really well, plus there are transliterations, or English back translations for all of them.

A friend of mine did the chorus of "I Will Follow" by U2 one time:

Si tu ambule, ambule,
Ambule, ambule,
Ego sequar!!

Or something like that.... Have a good weekend. And remember, "What happens in Chuck E. Cheese stays in Chuck E. Cheese."

Hey, Hey, Hey, Let's Laugh at Albert!

Har. Har.

"Yeah, uh, Sen. Schumer came into my office and me for my autograph," Gonzales said while moving boxes out of his office yesterday afternoon. "He said it was for his nephew in law school, and I was like, sure! So I signed on the little line he pointed to, and he walked out of my office cackling maniacally. That's how he normally laughs, so, like, I didn't think anything of it. Next thing I know, like, someone told me I'd been fired. I was like, 'No way! George is my friend!' But they were like, 'no, dude, you fired yourself,' and they started laughing at me. Why is everybody always laughing at me?"

I agree with Pat Buchanan that the whole attack on Gonzales is based on a "nothing-burger of a scandal", but the truth is that AG has not been much of an AG, and the whole botched firing represented rank incompetence. His position does seem like a buddy call on the part of GWB. I suppose we should be glad that the man did not make it to the SCOTUS.

"After the Beach Impeach...."

I'm. Laughing. Too. Hard.

Mark Day doesn't always make me laugh, but this was a great forum for his brand of stand-up wit.


OK. Confession time. I'm not really too ashamed of my "guilty pleasures" of internet comedy, so... yeah, I admit, I dig youtube amateurs like Smosh, kind of an emo Python, and Christine of "Happyslip" fame, who is very funny and talented. (Did I leave anything out..... oh, she's kind of cute, too.)

But my favorite by far simply has got to be "Zombietime" who has provided us such great photo diaries of San Fran craziness over the years.

Wow, Feinstein's house resembles St. Peter's basilica. Or something. I also loved the Marimba band and the "COEXIST" bumper sticker.

Gaudium et Spes et Walmartum

Good piece by Father Robert Sirico on Free Economies and the Common Good. Excerpt:

When we speak of the idea of the common good, we need to also be open minded about the political and juridical institutions that are most likely to bring it about. The answer is not to be found in the "commonality of goods" but in the very institutions that the socialists worked so hard to discredit. Let me list them: private property in the means of production, stable money to serve as a means of exchange, the freedom of enterprise that allows people to start businesses to pursue their dream, the free association of workers that permits people to choose where they would like to work and under what conditions, the enforcement of contract that provides institutional support to the idea that people should keep their promises, and a vibrant trade within and among nations to permit the fullest possible flowering of the division of labor. These institutions must be supported by a cultural infrastructure that respects private property, regards the human person as possessing an inherent dignity, and confers first loyalties to transcendent authority over civil authority. This is the basis of what we call freedom and results in what we call the common good.

His conclusion is powerful, and worth noting, bold emphasis mine:

Let me close with a declaration that by the standards set forth in the first writings of the early socialists, we are all entitled to call ourselves socialist, if by the term we mean that we a devoted to the well being of all members of society. The means to achieve this ideal is the matter of dispute. It strikes me that the means to achieve this is not through the central planning by the state but through freedom itself. St. Thomas Aquinas had an axiom: bonum est diffusivum sui. The good pours itself out. The good of freedom has indeed poured itself out to the benefit of the whole of humanity.

Thanks for reading my blog. For current commentary and what-not, visit the Est Quod Est homepage