substitute

Tonight I almost ran over an entire pack of ironically metalled-out 20somethings who were tittering across the street after a Scorpions concert at the fairgrounds. The cops were having a joyous time arresting them all for misdemeanor irony. Aren't the Scorpions, like, 60 years old now?

Looking through the police blotter I see that:

• There was a drive by shooting around the corner from my house (East Bay St.)
  
  
• Someone found the remains of a bound and decapitated lamb, which appeared to have been sacrificed by some loons celebrating the Solstice (way to handle your GOTH PARTY, assholes!).
  
  
• Some local buffoons put an ad on Craigslist selling very illegal fireworks and all got arrested. Bonus points: the ringleader, teen henchman #1, and teen henchman #2 all have Myspaces so we can laugh at them.
  
  
• A local couple were convicted of slavery this week. That'll look awesome when you apply for a job at Wendy's after you get out. Please list your felonies on this form.
  
  
• There are two separate ongoing criminal cases at once right now of guys who licked people's feet.

On the plus side, my friend Craig made it into the Weekly for being a 581% insane hardcore bicyclist. He's clearly made from liquid metal.

Courtesy jenlight. For me this brought back a memory of my time at the newspaper. Our typesetter hated the food writer's prose with a passion. Due to irrepressible immaturity he would insert uncomplimentary things about her and her writing in the copy while setting it. We in Editorial would then have to find and remove them. It was really funny the first time.

Greenpeace's fill-in-the-blank public relations meltdown

Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing.

"This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet decrying the "threat" posed by the Limerick reactors Bush visited.

But a factoid or two later, the Greenpeace authors were stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor.

We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."

Had Greenpeace been hacked by a nuke-loving Bush fan? Or was this proof of Greenpeace fear-mongering?

The aghast Greenpeace spokesman who issued the memo, Steve Smith, said a colleague was making a joke by inserting the language in a draft that was then mistakenly released.

"Given the seriousness of the issue at hand, I don't even think it's funny," Smith said.

The final version did not mention Armageddon. It just warned of plane crashes and reactor meltdowns.

-Jeff Shields

...the ads you get are kinda funny.

( selections from screengrab behind the cut )

Deep digger falls out of the sky, sticks in the ground, and then uses a cannon to chew through concrete before it explodes. It can grind through at least 10 meters of concrete while reporting its progress and coordinating with other burrow bombs to meet and greet and blow up.

I think it's behind me right now.

1:04 : ignatzmous : al'Powar-point: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/print?id=1537040
1:06 : zeb : I wonder if it says "al'Qaeda Confidential - Do Not Distribute" at the bottom of every slide
1:07 : ignatzmous : In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, here is my presentation entitled: Communicating Bad News
1:07 : You couldn't use "confused guy" clip art because it's an entire stick figure dude, either
1:08 : "Here I illustrate the necessity for the total destruction of the Great Satan with an amusing cartoon, in which all the heads have been removed."
1:08 : zeb : "This is the roadmap for 2006-7, as you can see many exciting developments coming in the jihad, and this is only what is disclosable, and Allah knows best"
1:10 : And it is Allah's law that whole-page wipes are halal, and the clockwise wipe is haram, and the dissolve is mukrooh, and so it shall not be done, says Allah (His Name Be Praised)
1:12 : ignatzmous : Insh'allah, the details of implementation and the timeline for rollout and most of all the pricing shall be revealed, but not in this day or this time, and certainly not by the the humble servant of Allah who brings only this presentation.