According to TMZ, Michael Jackson has died following a heart attack

Breaking: Michael Jackson in critical condtion following heart attack?

Michael Jackson in critical condition? http://bit.ly/15PFWv

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Both Mark Sanford and John Ensign called for Bill Clinton's impeachment following the Lewinsky revelations

By Pablo Fanque
All This Is That National Affairs Editor



Governor Sanford weeps at a press conference yesterday. He also claimed he spent five days crying in a Buenos Aires hotel room after ending his affair.


John Ensign and his playmate (an employee and wife of a friend)

In the days of the Lewinksy-Clinton scandal, both Mark Sanford and John Ensign called on Bill Clinton to resign the Presidency after his affair. So far, they don't appear to be following the same advice. . .aside from resigning from a few positions and committees.

Elliott Spitzer talked about family values. John Edwards talked about the sanctity of his marriage. Both Sanford and Ensign have said plenty of sanctimonious things in their careers. We won't call them former careers quite yet. At least Sanford followed the fifty mile run and took it out of the country. Ensign's affair was with a family friend.


Neither of the two currently in the doghouse have indicated they might Do The Right Thing. Oh, and hey, Mark Sanford. . .did you really spend five days in your hotel room in Argentina crying? Were you crying over having to break it off with the hot Argentine babe, or about having to go home to your wife. And the voters?
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Poem: Sailing To Naxos, or, The Vortex

By Jack Brummet

Sailing the poly-blue Aegean
On a hot day in a steamy haze,
Our ship makes a wide looping turn
A few kilometers off
The white house-dappled shore
Of Naxos, parked in the sea
Like a gem in a finding,
The houses and villas
Strung along the shore
And two layers above
Like a three strand pearl necklace
On the stout and broad neck of a Cyclops,
Waiting to leap from the sea,
And use our ship to beat the sea
Into a churning and foaming
Soup of whirlpools and funnels
That suck everything in sight
Into a sapphire blue vortex,
The water cooling each meter,
As it swirls down and cascades
Into Neptune's drain and picks up speed
As it descends into the dark
And lonely bottom of the sea.
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Digital Art: Frunobulax from Zeta Reticula

click to enlarge

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Up in smoke: Republican Gov, Mark Sanford's Presidential Dreams and another nail in the coffin of "Republican Family Values"

By Pablo Fanque
All This Is That
National Affairs (and we do mean affairs) Editor


The beleaguered governor and the Ex-President

That wacky Republican, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, 'fessed up Wednesday to an affair. Not only an affair, but an affair with a foreigner. He also just resigned his position as chair of the Republican Governor's Association. All this follows a strange week in which he dropped off the map, and his staff was lying about his whereabouts. During this period, when he could not be located, he was actually south of the border, playing hide the salami with his "girlfriend."

A local newspaper, The State, obtained and reprinted one of his emails to "Maria":

"You have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself ... in the faded glow of the night’s light ... despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul.”

Sanford and his no doubt soon to be filing for divorce wife

“I have been unfaithful to my wife. I developed a relationship with what started out as a dear, dear friend from Argentina,” Sanford said in a rambling and often emotional news conference at the state capital in Columbia.

“I’m a bottom line kind of guy I’m just gonna lay it out. It’s gonna hurt and I’m going to let the chips fall where they may,” said Sanford, who, until today, has often been mentioned as a 2012 presidential hopeful.

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Sex for (not with) chips?

An Oklahoma City woman has been fined $1,142 after pleading no contest to prostitution charges.

She was accused of accepting a box of chips for sex. The 36 year old, Lahoma Sue Smith, was busted in southeast Oklahoma City after cops found her in flagrante in a car with a man.

The john told police officers that he knew there were prostitutes in the neighborhood.

The man didn't have any money, Lahoma Sue Smith told officers, so she agreed to accept a $30 case of chips in barter. The man was not charged and, unfortunately, they did not release his name.
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Poem: Limits

Poem: Limits
by Jack Brummet


We like to believe
We could endure anything for five minutes

But that theory, cooked up
In your hermetic study or bedroom,

Comes apart at the seams instantly
When you imagine being on fire

Or having crows feast
Upon your eyes.
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Music video: The Young Fresh Fellows play The Kinks' Picture Book

The Young Fresh Fellows have been on my mind after seeing their most excellent show, and buying the just released CD--here is a bent video of their Kink's Picture Book cover. Note: the segment on the steep stairs was shot near my house...it's the stair portion of the walk to the beach at Golden Gardens.



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The best special effects. Ever.

The end of this short TV commercial is instructional--a tour de force by a special effects dynamo. Note: that whatever knucklehead posted this video assumed it was fior a mattress store! Is this a great country, or what?


Worst Special Effects Ever - Watch more Funny Commercials
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Atul Gawande - a thoughtful article on health care that BHO has made required reading in the White House

Atul Gawande has written an insightful and thoughtful article on health care, that since its publication, is purportedly required reading in The White House. Check it out here in the New Yorker.

"Providing health care is like building a house. The task requires experts, expensive equipment and materials, and a huge amount of coördination. Imagine that, instead of paying a contractor to pull a team together and keep them on track, you paid an electrician for every outlet he recommends, a plumber for every faucet, and a carpenter for every cabinet. Would you be surprised if you got a house with a thousand outlets, faucets, and cabinets, at three times the cost you expected, and the whole thing fell apart a couple of years later? Getting the country’s best electrician on the job (he trained at Harvard, somebody tells you) isn’t going to solve this problem. Nor will changing the person who writes him the check."

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Video of the Young Fresh Fellows' Tractor Tavern Show

Here is a reasonably lucid ('phone?) video of the Young Fresh Fellows from the show I saw Friday night. They play "Taco Wagon" and a great cover of The Kinks' "Picture Book."


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