First off: This is no joke, people. “The Brave Little Toaster” is a really funny movie (the cast includes Jon Lovitz and the late Phil Hartmann) that my daughter and I watched over and over. Here’s the story from IMDb: “When a young boy and his family go on holiday, their household appliances, led by the toaster, think they’ve been abandoned. They decide, rather than be left alone in the house for who knows how long, to try to find him. So begins a dangerous and amusing venture through the city and countryside.”
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Toaster: You know, we could use someone who’s really… strong!
Lampy: And loud!
Blanky: And grumpy!
The Radio: And oblivious to reality!
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Speaking of oblivious to reality, did you know that Donald Rumsfeld is a poet?
Slate has published a small collection:
The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.
–Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
Glass Box
You know, it’s the old glass box at the–
At the gas station,
Where you’re using those little things
Trying to pick up the prize,
And you can’t find it.
It’s–
And it’s all these arms are going down in there,
And so you keep dropping it
And picking it up again and moving it,
But–
Some of you are probably too young to remember those–
Those glass boxes,
But–
But they used to have them
At all the gas stations
When I was a kid.
–Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing
On her page of “Favorite Things,” BlondeGeoPrincess lists “Donald Rumsfeld…always refreshing,” along with GOD, my flute, Barbie dolls, the “Lethal Weapon” series, peacock feathers, Nina Gordon songs, the Doll Palace, and of course Dan Abrams.
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The Radio: Come over here and say that, crome dome.
Kirby: WHAT?
The Radio: Oh sorry about that. I meant to say, “Vacuous vacuum.”
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“Morning Sedition” is the best show on Air America Radio, but it airs 3AM-6AM PST so I listen to the archives.
It’s Easter weekend, so today’s snarky “Liberal Agenda” includes:
- Prepare for Easter. Make sure your children’s Easter eggs are free range.
- Hemp Easter Bonnet, tofu ham.
- Eliminate Easter egg hunt because it discriminates against kids who are “directionally-challenged”.
- Resist the urge to refer to Easter as “the Christian co-opted pagan spring fertility festival.” That’s insensitive.
- Today’s phrase, just drop it into conversation: “It’s Easter, hey that’s great. I guess you’re going to honor Jesus by doing something to help the POOR and not just sit around in new clothes eating chocolate all day. Right? Right? Wake up, sheeple. The Bunny’s stealing your soul!!”
The substitute host for vacationing comic genius Marc Maron is cartoonist Ted Rall, so the conversation is fast, bright, funny, and highly informed.
The featured guest, Rev. Barry Lynn, talks at length about the Terri Schiavo broohaha, and brings up a rightwing radio host, Glenn Beck, who’s raising money — almost $2 million to date — to pay Michael Schiavo to get a divorce. Beck, says Rev. Lynn, got a caller who also offered to give Michael Schiavo a lifetime supply of his own low-fat cheesecake.
I’ve never heard of Glenn Beck so I visit his site, and note he’s sponsored by the Premier radio network. In billboard-size letters on the home page, there’s “The Michael Schiavo Starve My Wife To Death Countdown Clock.”
Then there’s an ad for a t-shirt, a keychain or a mug.
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Blanky: Do we have to stop here?
Toaster: Only for a while.
The Radio: Just long enough to lose our minds! We’ll be cannibals within a few days, I’ve seen it happen!
Kirby: And you’ll be the first to go, dial-face.
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And I promised you more farting fish-type experiments from the real world of science.
- “An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces.”
- “Navigation-Related Structural Change In the Hippocampi of Taxi Drivers,”
- Yukio Hirose of Kanazawa University conducted a chemical investigation of a bronze statue, in the city of Kanazawa, that fails to attract pigeons.
- “”The Relationship Among Height, Penile Length, and Foot Size.”
- “Chewing gum flavor
affects measures of global complexity of multichannel EEG” - Carl J. Charnetski and Francis X. Brennan, Jr. of Wilkes
University, and James F. Harrison of Muzak Ltd. in Seattle,
Washington, discovered that listening to elevator Muzak
stimulates immunoblobulin A (IgA) production, and thus may help
prevent the common cold.
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Air Conditioner: The whole bunch of you gotta have a combined wattage of maybe five, maybe less. It’s scrap metal time.
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