ninme

Watch it because now I’m off to Walla Walla. Be back tomorrow.

Today’s Shoe:

click to enlarge (and get second frame)

I don’t usually like to upload comic strips, but after seeing this, I just had to:

Israellycool - Not-So-Fair Weathered Friends

If you select Israel, a list of cities is displayed, which includes:
• Abu Shusha, an Arab village that has not existed since 1948
• Akbara, an Arab village near Safed that has not existed since 1948
• Al Atrun, which is the Arab name for the area of Latrun
• Dayr Ayyub, an Arab village that has not existed since 1948, and where the eastern segment of Canada Park is today

Now that’s journalism!

Sure, you could be upset, like LGF is, or you could just laugh your ass off.

This is London - We’d have more power in EU if Germans hadn’t ‘reduced our population’ in World War II, says Polish PM

Given the accompanying graphics, I’d say the This is London folks are inclined to think he’s got a point.

I do love these EU summits.

Mention the world “limericks” here and you’ve got ‘em sweeping across three continents.

Pas de Francais Required - Comments

What impeccable timing they all have.

I know, it’s early, but man it made me laugh.

Update:

Link fixed. Yeah yeah yeah.

Those of you who know anything about my trip to Vegas last year will know why I find this so funny:

TMZ - Who Wants to Go Down … Under?

If you’re a guy who isn’t completely comfortable with his own sexuality, don’t open this at work. Or if you’re more-or-less comfortable with it, but maybe you work in the military and want to stay working in the military and don’t want it to be taken the wrong way. Just a friendly warning. Other than that, though, SFW.

TMZ - What Are They Thinking!?!?!

No but seriously, that sucks. I like Peter Pace. He’s shiny (because once upon a time I linked to a picture of him in dress uniform and commented that he looks shiny except now I can’t find it so this will have to do to show what I mean and this though the one I thought I uploaded showed his sword).

(You might not think this is funny unless you’ve been reading TMZ all day, or unless you go to the TMZ site and see the string of entries with either pictures of Paris Hilton’s house or else screen shots of Fox News of Paris Hilton’s house.)

(Okay, now that I’ve used the words Paris Hilton, and Google knows I’m here, and this will inevitably end up like the post about you-know-which-California-trial-about-the-murder-of-a-pretty-young-pregnant-woman, I might as well say what I’m going to say:

TMZ - Dog and Beth to Paris Haters — You’re Full of It!

Beth tells us that in her 20 years in the bail bonds biz, she’s never seen anyone who committed Paris’ crime — which she calls essentially a “traffic offense” — get such a stiff sentence. “That L.A. City Attorney [Rocky Delgadillo] is a joke. Three days in isolation for a person like Paris is more than enough. What you can’t do is waste taxpayer money so a bunch of people can get their rocks off.”

TMZ - Paris Outrage Explodes, Sheriff Stays Mum

But Sheriff Baca, under fire for letting Paris go home, stood by the medical rationale, telling the L.A. Times, “justice is being served by the decision … She would still be in the county jail if it were not for the medical advice.” And as for her receiving star treatment, Baca said, “My message to those who don’t like celebrities is that punishing celebrities more than the average American is not justice.”

Now, don’t you think, and I know everyone will get mad at me for this, there’s just the slightest possibility that this is just the teensiest bit the same thing as the Duke Lacrosse Players? Everyone hates privileged rich white jocks and wants them to hang, and everyone hates privileged rich white pretty girls and wants them to hang, and that maybe there’s a lot of prosecutorial time and energy being used here that might be more industrially spent elsewhere…? Even if it is just a matter of 30 days in jail for something she did do rather than the entirety of the rest of their lives and reputations for something they didn’t. Anyway.)

Update:

Oh man, it gets funnier.

Times Online - Media hysteria as Paris Hilton faces justice

Keep in mind this is a European newspaper:

News channels abandoned all coverage of the G8 summit, before reluctantly tearing themselves away from the live coverage of Hilton’s front door to report, briefly, that America’s top general had resigned. And now back to the “breaking news” on Paris Hilton, where an excited TV reporter was pointing out the expensive homes of nearby celebrities such as Rod Stewart and Britney Spears, adding: “Some of the houses date back to the 1920s!”

Oi, what must they think.

I laughed long and hard reading this:

The Times - It’s Mrs Merkel in the library as Cluedo sets tone for farce, by Roger Boyes in Heiligendamm

World leaders filed into the most luxurious and secure seaside hotel in Germany yesterday, having been flown in by helicopter over the heads of thousands of G8 protesters.

As they settled into Heiligendamm – a whitewashed Baltic resort used by Hitler, Mussolini and the tsars – it became clear from their sleeping plan that they could be about to take part in a Whitehall farce.

President Bush checked into a 94 square metre (1,010 sq ft) suite in the orangerie, the former telegraph house of the resort, and discovered that he had been billeted in the farthest corner from Vladimir Putin, the Russian President.

That’s where I started laughing.

The two men, at odds over US missile defence systems in Eastern Europe, are being kept at arm’s length at least until they have what promises to be a frosty bilateral meeting tomorrow.

All the leaders were due to dine together last night at a 300-year-old estate 15 miles (25km) from the compound, accompanied by their spouses. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has ordained that no shop is to be talked.

“This is to be a musical evening, with Bach, Beethoven and Mendelssohn-Bartholdy,” said Ulrich Wilhelm, chief government spokesman.

But the chief protagonists could bump into each other if Mr Bush chooses to use the cross trainer and exercise bikes in the gym. That is in the Severin Palais, where the Kremlin leader is housed. Mr Putin likes to swim a few lengths before breakfast and so the two leaders could yet bump into each other in the changing room.

Mrs Merkel is based in the Burg Hohenzollern, a Disney-like reconstruction of the 19th-century original. Its advantage for the German Chancellor is that she can reach Mr Bush, unobserved, by the back door.

Downstairs there is a library, with Cluedo and Monopoly boards as well as a chess set, all somehow appropriate for G8 club members. To secure a breakthrough on climate change it may be necessary, diplomatic observers speculate, to talk to one leader in the library and another in her suite upstairs, and make a quick foray through the back door to the Americans. It all sounds a bit like Brian Rix or Benny Hill.

You really get the feeling he’s enjoying writing this.

Most of the leaders, including Tony Blair and Nicolas Sarkozy, are staying in the Kempinski Grand, closer to the Russian leader than to the German. Their suites face the sea but are half the size of Mr Bush’s quarters. Their likely rendezvous point is the Nelson Bar – an unhappy name, perhaps, for the French leader – which boasts a jazz pianist and stuffed leather armchairs.

The Nazis turned the 18th-century buildings into a popular spa for deserving comrades. During the war it became a military hospital and was painted black to protect it from British bombers. When the Third Reich collapsed, the Red Army moved in and eventually handed it over to the East German health system. After communism collapsed, it was sold.

German leaders in the past have had a foible for sauna diplomacy. Mrs Merkel is also a sauna fan. Her hotel has a mixed-sex hamman (Turkish bath) that may prove a suitable place to discuss climate change.

The day I see something that creative in an American newspaper is the day I take it all back.