Both Bozo the Clown (Larry Harmon) and Jesse Helms died this week. 

Some more-flattering Helms quotes may be seen in a 2001 New York Times article by Kevin Sack.   Less-flattering quotes here.  My opinion of the gentleman may be seen in this cartoon (”One Trick Pony”).

I imagine you’re aware that the year changed. Famously, this is noted by whack-jobs in New York City looking in abject glee at a big lighted ball crawling down a pole in Times Square. As they’ve been doing it for a century (judging by Dick Clark, alone), much of North America is content to watch along with ‘em. I don’t see the attraction, but there must be something thrilling about it all — throw me a note or comment if you have a reasonable explanation for all the hoo-haw.

Speaking of comments, WiseandFoolish gets about 150 or so spam ‘comments’ daily. Happily, I typically don’t have to deal with them; Akismet, a life-saving WordPress plug-in, just shovels the digital feces into a ‘Caught Spam’ section, which can be viewed (if necessary) and trashed in a second. Highly recommended.

After poring over W&F’s 2007 logs, I’ve come to the realization that no-one’s reading this. I’m not completely convinced of this, but I do suspect most — if not all — of this site’s ‘hits’ are spambots. There are advantages to this . . . I could run a contest, for instance, and keep the prize. ‘Bots have been known to enter contests, however, and I don’t want to have to ship a prize to a dark alley in China’s Hunan province.

I think instead over the next few months I’ll scan and post some of my published work from the 1980s and ’90s.

That’ll fix ‘em.

Saith Mr Brain’s Faggot Family,

“The great British faggot is full of flavour and a great belly warmer at this time of year.” — BBC

. . .

. . .

Steve Olson decries a once brave and sure people well en-route to becoming a surveillance state.

. . .

Would you believe . . . a Cane toad with five legs?

It’s 2007, now, and it’s therefore clearly time to take mindless Internet quizzes. This particular bunch hail from GoToQuiz.
Typically, the quizzes’ results are shown with a bar graph; the CSS therein doesn’t work with the WiseAndFoolish WordPress theme.

Click the links to take ‘em yourself. You know you want to.

Quiz, the First: What American Accent do you have?
(I thought this one would be a hoot ’cause I’m Canadian. Turns out there’s no foolin’ ‘em, though)

Quiz, the Second: Do you deserve your high school diploma?

Quiz, the Third: Are You Gooder at Grammar?
(It brought out the editor in me)

Remember William Shatner’s classic remake of Rocket Man?

Well, Tom Baker — arguably the best Doctor Who ever* — has been mixed with the Kinks’ You Really Got Me to interesting effect. The purpose behind this is a Christmas drive for UK charities Shelter and Focus Ireland.

A teaser may be heard at British Telecom’s TextAid site, wherein lucky British subscribers can send text-to-voice messages to UK landlines in Tom Baker’s voice. Two pence from each message goes to the aforementioned charities, and BT reports the £100,000 target may well be met by Christmas.
. . .

* Recently, according to the BBC, Doctor Who Magazine reported that — after reader votes were tallied — Tom Baker was replaced by David Tennant as the best Doctor Who. A vote widget on the BBC News website, however, begs to differ . . . as do I.

Last Friday was the 13th, and — while I don’t typically believe in such things as a specific date being intrinsically ‘bad’ — I have to concur that Friday, October 13th was pretty awful at work; I spent the entire day on a conference call with a bunch of other folks who were having an equally unpleasant day. 7-1/2 hours of conference call. Not recommended.

This Friday, alles ist guet. Go figure.

On the other hand, the news is fascinating.

1. The scales fall off George Bush’s eyes, and he sees the parallel ‘twixt Iraq and Viet Nam.

Oh. So that’s what everyone meant.

It was four years in coming. And what, pray, does the leader of the free world intend to do now that he can see clearly?

More of the same, ‘course. When you have a winning strategy, you stick to it, right?

Why he’d want to replicate America’s failure in SE Asia and concomitantly turn the US into pre-1939 Germany escapes rational analysis. Why he hasn’t been impeached escapes me. Given what prompted impeachment procedings for Mr Clinton, one can only assume Mr Bush has America’s blessing.

2. A lovesick teenaged girl decides to end it all by driving Daddy’s Mercedes into an oncoming car, killing the driver and injuring the occupant . . . the driver’s 6-year-old daughter. 16-year-old Louise Brunstad has — not surprisingly — been charged with murder; as she turned into oncoming traffic, she was texting a countdown to her anticipated death to the girl who’d rejected her.

That she’s gay is immaterial . . . that she killed someone in an effort to kill herself is unconscionable.

3. California’s women exhibitionists — and there’s at least one of ‘em — no doubt hailed Superior Court Judge Robert Armstrong’s ruling that gender-specific text within the law means only male public nudity can be defined as indecent exposure. Subsequently, 40-year-old Alexis Garcia’s full frontal display before a 14-year-old boy (she had an issue with the noise his playing basketball made) didn’t break the law.

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(Source: AP)

A 24-year-old Israeli woman’s breast implants prevented rocket shrapnel from killing her, says a hospital spokesperson.  (Reuters via MSNBC)

Do you find your parents and grandparents to be extraordinarily screwed up?  Every generation embraces weird in its own way.  In mid-century, people dealt with strangeness by eating it.

The Gallery of Regrettable Food, a selection (with intelligent commentary) of unfortunate foods from the 1950s and ’60s. Not just Spam in Jell-o . . . darned frightening things that people actually prepared and ate in those decades long gone.

See if you can find the boxed, frozen rabbit (or the boxed ‘mature’ half-rabbit), the rabbit bits . . . and be certain to click the link when you see it. Brr.

The LILEKS (James) Gallery of Regrettable Food.  Buy the book, gnaw on the filtration organs.

Acting on a complaint, police in London, England recently ordered Ms Janet Grove to remove a sign reading . . .

. . . from her garden gate.

Woman in doghouse over Jehovah’s Witness sign - Yahoo! News

. . .

[funny_untrue_bit]

Autopsies on the dogs disproved the allegation. “Nothin’ but girl guides and Fuller brush men,” said the coroner.

[/funny_untrue_bit]

Though we’ve seen the Weinermobile hurtling down the highway ’round these parts, the Oscar Mayer “Sing the Jingle, Be a Star“ contest doesn’t accept entries from Canada.

Or from anyone who isn’t American.

Or from felonious Americans, even:

Furthermore, any entrant who has ever been convicted of a felony will not be eligible.

If you aren’t excluded by any of the above, however, check it out; it looks like a hoot.