Quote of the day

"Elitist hypocrite Obama gets a private Boeing 747 and I don’t. So unfair. Also access to nuclear launch codes." - Matt Yglesias

Five Limericks Against Christmas

The topics here has been heavy lately, so how about some levity. I give you Five Limericks Against Christmas by Anonymous. I hope you enjoy these as much as I do.

There was an old fellow of Dallas

Who was filled with atheist malice

And on Christmas Eve 

He cried, "I don't believe"

To small children, which was terribly callous.

There was an old dame of Westchester

A nasty Christmas molester

Who took refuse and piled it 

By the Christ child

And police were called to arrest her.

There was an old man of Seattle

Engaged in atheist battle

At a living nativity

He got so livid he

Wrestled the sheep and the cattle.

There were three girls of Vermont

Atheists just like their aunt

The family was famous

For no Adoramus

And avoiding the baptismal font.

There was an old man of Blue Hill

Who when church was quiet and still

At Christmas Eve mass

Liked to pass gas

Toward a candle, just for the thrill.

via Garrison Keillor

Germany v. Greece preview and some classic Python

Later today Germany will be taking on Greece in the quarterfinals of the 2012 European Football Championship. This affair held every four years rivals the World Cup as both sport and spectacle. Germany with their brand of attractive muscular football is thought by many (me included) to be the team that will take the crown from defending champion Spain, while few expected Greece to get this far, which they did by knocking out the heavily favored Russians.

This match has interesting parallels in the economic turmoil engulfing the Eurozone. The Greek economy is crippled by massive debt, and Germany is the economic superpower holding all the cards. A victory against the Germans would be a morale boost to a country desperately in need of something to feel good about. To pull off the upset the Greeks will have to rely on a stingy ultra-conservative style of football that belies their nation's fiscal reputation. Don't bet on it happening though. Die Mannschaft is just too good.

This isn't the first time Germany and Greece have met on the pitch. Here's an earlier meeting brought to you by Monty Python.

Pushing paper

Brazil (dir. Terry Gilliam, 1985)

I'll have extra cheese with my harangue

As political theater it would be hard to top the goings-on at the Capitol yesterday. I had to laugh out loud at this recap of House Speaker John Boehner's attempt to round up votes for his debt ceiling plan. As reported by Jennifer Steinhauer and Robert Pear of The New York Times:

After two hours of impassioned debate, the Capitol was braced for the grand finale of Speaker John A. Boehner’s days of strong-arming members on the most important vote of his Congressional career. Suddenly, with no warning and just minutes from a vote Thursday evening, the conversation on the House floor turned to naming post offices.

Thus began the great pizza seduction. One after another, recalcitrant Republicans were marched into Mr. Boehner’s office, where he begged, implored and, when that failed, berated them in a desperate effort to win support for his proposal to resolve the debt crisis.

Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House whip, bought a pile of pizzas, and asked those members who were against the bill to come on over for a slice, and some haranguing.

The speaker was forced to delay the vote on Thursday on his debt ceiling bill, when it became clear that his Republican members were not going to put him over the top. Some of those who left Mr. Boehner’s office looked stricken, but said they were unyielding. Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas emerged, saying he was “a bloody, beaten-down no.”

. . . .

The whipping effort had begun early in the week, and included pizza parties and one-on-one meetings with freshmen, cellphone calls and text messages from Representative Eric Cantor, the majority leader, and nice dinners over wine.

On Thursday, Mr. Boehner and his leadership team continued to press their case long before the bill was pulled, Mr. Boehner emerged from his ceremonial office to a sea of reporters, whom he met with a mild curse, grabbed members from the floor and marched them through the speaker’s lobby in full view of their colleagues for a talking-to back in his den.

When Representative Chuck Fleischmann, Republican of Tennessee, came out, he did not look as though he had been picnicking. . .

My sympathies are with Mr. Boehner, but if I had to choose my favorite politician right now it would be the independent senator from Vermont. His floor speech on Wednesday was so good I watched it twice. He is a voice in the wilderness. Alas, on other issues me and Bernie wouldn't agree, and so I still await my ideal candidate -- someone with the social conservatism of Tom Coburn and the economic populism of Bernie Sanders.

I have a feeling I'll be waiting a long time.

Dinner party on the 405

In case you haven't seen this. . .

Cold is not a flavor

A strange Glenn Miller-based religious ceremony

Barcelona (dir. Whit Stillman, 1994)

Outrageous PUNmanship

Paul Copan is one of the foremost Christian apologists and philosophers of our day. I'm blessed to count him a friend, teacher, and fellow elder at our church. Anyone who's spent any time with Paul knows he's fond of puns. Very very fond. Recently some students and School of Ministry colleagues at Palm Beach Atlantic University where Paul teaches had some fun in this hilarious satire of the A&E show Intervention. Enjoy!

When a picture says it best

Cartoon by Tony Auth via The Atlantic Wire

Lock-out

by Tom Toles

Sarah and Thomas

@ The Atlantic Wire

A lighthearted Election 2010 recap

Now that the most important election in American history is over, earnest pundits everywhere are offering theories on what it all meant. Rather than add my two cents, here's some post-election comedy.


Ballot measures were all the rage this year including one in Colorado to establish a UFO commission. It didn't pass. The Atlantic Wire has a round-up of the 8 weirdest ballot measures.

And here's a compilation of the 9 funniest campaign ads of 2010. My personal favorite is #2.

There were lots of noteworthy concession speeches on Election Night. Here's New York governor candidate Carl Paladino grabbing a baseball bat and going Al Capone on Andrew Cuomo.

And of course the question on everyone's mind is, "What's next for Alvin Greene?"



Only 733 days until Election Day 2012!

The vuvuzela goes high-brow

Happy Tax Day video

HT: Jacob Grier

Fly Turkish Air

Feel free to come up with your own slogan . . .


HT: The Daily Dish

Apologies to Spielberg and Williams . . .

but this is a well done spoof!

What they're watching in Malawi

More hilarious bootleg DVD covers here

Sometimes sarcasm says it best

Lewis: "The deadly power of rushing about"

I number it among my blessings that my father had no car, while yet most of my friends had, and sometimes took me for a drive. This meant that all these distant objects could be visited just enough to clothe them with memories and not impossible desires, while yet they remained ordinarily as inaccessible as the Moon. The deadly power of rushing about wherever I pleased had not been given me. I measured distances by the standard of man, man walking on his two feet, not by the standard of the internal combustion engine. I had not been allowed to deflower the very idea of distance; in return I possessed "infinite riches" in what would have been to motorists "a little room." The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it "annihilates space." It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given. It is a vile inflation which lowers the value of distance, so that a modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimage and adventure than his grandfather got from traveling ten. Of course if a man hates space and wants it to be annihilated, that is another matter. Why not creep into his coffin at once? There is little enough space there.

C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life