Favre Set to Un-Retire From Two More Teams

GREEN BAY, Wisconsin.  Angered by the Green Bay Packers’ refusal to give him his unconditional release, quarterback Brett Favre today announced he would un-retire from two other teams, Hancock North Central High School in Kiln, Mississippi, and Southern Mississippi, where he played college football.

#10, Brett Favre

“I don’t care how many teams I have to un-retire from,” Favre.  “I’m going to be playing football come August 18th,” when two-a-day football practices can begin under state interscholastic athletic rules in Mississippi.

Favre started as an 8th grader for the Hancock North Central baseball team, but played only three years of varsity football during which he averaged five passes per game in a wishbone offense.  Under Mississippi High School Athletic Association rules, he accordingly has remaining eligibility of either two years or 680 passes, whichever comes first.

Southern Mississippi Golden Eagle:  “Brett’s back!”

Favre frequently played with a hangover at Southern Mississippi, including a thrilling 1987 come-from-behind victory over sixth-ranked Florida State, and will seek a do-over for any game in which his blood alcohol level exceeded .04.  “Brett can play better hungover than a lot of guys can sober,” said Favre’s agent, James “Bus” Cook.  “Carson Palmer’s always calling me asking me what he drinks.”

Arab Street Erupts Over New Yorker Obama Cover

HALAB, Syria.  Angered by a cover of The New Yorker magazine that shows Barack and Michelle Obama dressed as terrorists, demonstrations erupted here and elsewhere throughout the Arab world due to lack of anything better to do.

The offending cover

“Michelle Obama is shown without a burqa, in violation of hijab,” said Hosni Abdu Saleh.  “Also, that Afro makes her look like Minnie Riperton, or maybe one of The Delfonics.”

Minnie Riperton, The Delfonics

The Arab world has taken a keen interest in western journalism since a 2005 incident in which the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammed, in violation of some interpretations of the Koran.  Arab leader Anwar Hemeti said he had reviewed the cartoons in the offending edition of The New Yorker, and found them “troublesome”.

New Yorker cartoon

“I don’t get them,” Hemeti said.  “Usually there’s a guy on a psychiatrist’s couch, or maybe a talking dog.  It’s not at all like Ziggy, which is my favorite.”

His friend, Saad al-Sabah, echoed those concerns.  “They could have put the Obamas in one with a panhandler on the curb holding a sign that said ‘Donate to Obama ‘08 here or on-line’, something like that.  That would have been a lot funnier.”

Arab demonstrators:  “Who the hell is Eustace Tilley?”

The crowd dispersed after a while when television crews from western media outlets began to pack up their equipment in order to meet deadlines for 7 o’clock news broadcasts back in the U.S.  “What are you gonna do tonight?” al-Sabah asked some of his colleagues.

“I don’t know,” Hemeti replied.  “I could either go demonstrate against a Commentary symposium on the future of Israel, or there’s a photo spread on Jamie Lynn Spears’ baby in this week’s People Magazine that kinda ticked me off.”

Dems, GOP Wary of Misanthropy Party in Swing States

WASHINGTON, D.C.  Democratic and Republican party leaders are growing increasingly concerned that a new third party, the Misanthropists, will hold the key to victory in swing states where neither of the established parties have an edge.

 

“The great state of Idaho casts its votes for its favorite son, Duane Dowagiac!”

“Ohio, Texas and Florida all have a large number of electoral votes, and all are in play,” according to pollster James Delozier, a professor of political science at the University of Illinois.  “If it comes down to a tight race, you don’t want some third-party wingnut drawing off a single-issue voter, or even a double-issue voter.”

“No I don’t want to kiss your ugly baby.”

And so the Misanthropists, a party whose only platform plank is a mistrust and dislike for their fellow human beings, threaten to become a spoiler as voters become increasingly alienated from the political process.  “I say to hell with all of you,” said Misanthropy Party presidential candidate Lloyd Llewelyn at a recent gathering of grass-roots supporters as he made his way to the buffet table and stuffed his pockets with finger foods and cookies.   “You people ask a lot of damn fool questions.”

Perot:  “My bad–the giant sucking sound I heard was actually a Dust Buster.”

In recent elections third party candidates have derailed the presidential ambitions of both Republicans–think H. Ross Perot–and Democrats, who blame Ralph Nader for victories by George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.  Misanthopists say they aren’t out to sabotage either party’s prospects–they just want to take their rightful place in the American political spectrum.

Peters:  Sick of politics, but has no life.

 ”We’re knee-jerk moderates,” says Wanda Jean Peters of Keokuck, Iowa, who hosted the coffee for Llewelyn and his running mate Clint Fitzsimmons.  “I am just so sick of all the corruption in Washington, I felt I had to do something about it, even if it was really stupid and pointless.”  Peters says she would have embarked on a cross-country hike to call attention to the problem, but decided not to for health reasons.  “I have fallen arches, and could not find a pair of comfortable walking shoes.”

“This says its good for a large cheese pizza and a two-liter bottle of Sprite, but it expired in 2005.”

In states where races are expected to be close, a one-vote margin would be sufficient to push a candidate over the top, and a two-vote margin would probably survive a recount such as that which gripped the nation in Florida following Election Day in 2000.  The Misanthropists’ ticket will include two eligible voters, but vice presidential candidate Fitzsimmons says he’s taking nothing for granted.  “I vote for the best man regardless of party,” he says.  “I’ll probably vote for myself, but I’m not sure about the top of the ticket.”

Copyright 2008, Con Chapman

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UN Says Summer Reading Lists a Human Rights Violation

NEW YORK.  Acting on complaints by American high school students, the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights today announced that she would take action to end required summer reading lists in the U.S., saying they are a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. 

 

Arbour:  “Do you honestly believe that I’ve read all those books behind me?”

“Children should be free to play while the sun is shining,” said Louise Arbour.  “If they want to take a book to the beach, fine, but don’t keep them cooped up in a musty old library all day reading ‘My Friend Flicka’.”

Margaret Spellings:  “Now that I’m an adult, I can read whatever the hell I want.”

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings criticized the move, saying it was the product of anti-American bias at the U.N. and not founded on concern for America’s children, who for the most part ignore summer reading requirements in order to concentrate on their tans, which are more likely to result in successful employment.  “I want to be a hostess in a nice restaurant when I grow up,” said Denise Haley, who will be a senior at the Dennis Rodman Consolidated Regional High School in Dearborn, Michigan, this fall.  “Nobody will care whether I ever read Oliver Dickens by Charles Twist when they want to get a table for four in a hurry.”

Restaurant hostess:  Smoking or non-smoking, fiction or non-fiction?

Summer reading lists typically include a number of works chosen from different categories such as fiction, history, biography, poetry and science.  Teachers who work in schools where corporal punishment is banned use the lists to spoil summer vacation fun by casting a pall over a student’s every waking moment between Memorial Day and Labor Day. 

Eddie Cochran:  “I’m gonna take my problem to the Yoo-nited Na-tions.”

American teenagers have contemplated international sanctions for reading lists since the late 1950’s, when Eddie Cochran hit the airwaves with his song “Summertime Blues” and threatened to take his problem to the United Nations.  “That was the first time a rock ‘n roll singer had appealed to the conscience of the world,” says music historian Grant Ross.  “When you’re a teenaged boy, there’s nothing worse than a pile of books standing between you and a girl with a pair of bodacious knockers.”

Bush Considering End of Term Pee-wee Herman Pardon

WASHINGTON, D.C.  White House sources say the Bush administration is close to a deal that would grant a Presidential pardon to Pee-wee Herman in exchange for Herman’s 8-foot high aluminum foil ball, which would become part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution.

“Listen, P-man, it’s the whole foil ball or the deal’s off.”

“It’s time for America to put the past behind us and honor one of our greatest living artists,” said Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, who brokered the deal.  “Should someone be banned for life from hosting children’s television shows just because he likes to play with himself in movie theaters?  I think we as a nation are better than that.”

Herman’s foil ball: Not shown actual size.

Herman was arrested in 1991 on charges of lewd and lascivious conduct after he was caught masturbating in an adult theater during a showing of the Nurse Nancy, a pornographic film.  He paid a fine and made several public service announcements, but the arrest and resulting charges have not been expunged from his record. 

Herman:  “I’m really sorry–okay?”

Pardons granted by U.S. presidents in their last year in office are often controversial because the incumbent does not face reelection and thus has latitude to do something really stupid.  Notorious pardons include Bill Clinton’s pardon of his brother Roger Clinton for cocaine possession, and Gerald Ford’s pardon of former President Richard Nixon for wearing wing-tip shoes on a federally-protected beach.

Nixon:  “I could say ‘Yippee’–but that would be wrong.”

Herman’s foil ball is reputed to be the largest of its kind in the hands of a private collector, and has been coveted by Bush since he first saw it in an episode of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse”.  “It’s the Holy Grail of foil balls,” said Eric Montrose of Sotheby’s, a fine art and collectibles auction house in New York.  “You would hate to see it broken up into smaller pieces, or used to wrap hamburgers or fish and thrown in a freezer.”

Study Says 9 Out of 7 Americans Lack Basic Math Skills

WASHINGTON, D.C.  A new report issued today by the American Society of Arithmetic Instructors reveals that innumeracy–mathematical illiteracy–has remained stubbornly resistant to efforts to improve Americans’ math skills.

“Copying from each other isn’t going to help–you’re both idiots.”

“Many Americans lack the basic skills to understand NFL point spreads or to subtract cents-off coupons in checkout lines,” said Wilson Rath, a fourth-grade math instructor at Bernie Carbo Elementary School in Seekonk, Massachusetts.  “Our productivity suffers because of toll takers who can’t make change.”

Bernie Carbo:  “Is 2 an even number after Daylight Savings Time, or does it go up?”

The study was based on a survey that asked adults basic math questions posed to contestants on the Fox Network’s “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?”  “We asked people how many places they could carry pi out to,” says Norman Salkic, who co-authored the study.  “Eleven percent said 3.14 was as far as they could go, 21% said they didn’t serve pie, 47% said they didn’t offer take-out, and the rest claimed we had the wrong number.” 

Pi are square, but pie is round.

Educators such as Rath blamed the tendency of local politicians to name schools after sports heroes rather than scientists and mathematicians.  “Bernie Carbo once blew a sign because he didn’t know whether 2 was an even or an odd number,” he notes of the former Boston Red Sox outfielder for whom his school is named.  “Our youth baseball programs are at risk of falling further behind the Japanese, who win the Little League World Series every year anyway.”

While the final numbers have not yet been tabulated because researchers used solar-powered calculators indoors, Salkic says it appears that nine out of every seven Americans may need remedial help in computing numbers.  “That’s 1.2857%,” he observes, “which is a lot.”

A Canary in the Coal Mine of Fashion

I have an unerring eye for fashion, if I do say so myself.  Which I just did.

Resort wear:  To be worn only as a last resort.

If you want to know what’s “happening” in men’s fashion, look at me.

Then wear something else.

I’m like the canaries that coal miners take down into mine shafts to detect poisonous gas.  The little birds have such sensitive lungs that when they keel over, the humans know they’ll be in trouble soon.  When you see me wearing, for example, pleated pants, you need to run, not walk, to the nearest clothing store to buy a pair of plain fronts.

“Why did that dork have to go and buy a jacket like mine?”

Whither I goest, fashion doth not follow.  To put it as Webster’s Dictionary might, fashion is what I’m not wearing.  If you see me wearing epaulets–don’t.

I mention this because of an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal to the effect that fashionable men have started to wear their pants high off their ankles, a la Pee-wee Herman.  The style has come to be known as “floods”.  In order to secure my rightful place in the history of fashion, allow me to describe my role in this tectonic shift in haberdashery’s foundations.

Pee-wee Herman, showing some ankle.

For many years I resisted the so-called “European” hemline for pants, which uses excess fabric to form a slight drape over the shoe.  I took grief for this from family members, both biological and marital.  I didn’t care.  With all the fabric I saved manufacturers, you could have clothed an Eskimo village.

“Hey mister–aren’t your ankles cold?”

From my point of view, the extra-long pant leg revealed not fashion, but insecurity.  The style seemed to be most pronounced among used-car salesmen, maitre’d’s of overpriced restaurants and real estate developers looking to make a fortune with borrowed money.  The “high-water” look, by contrast, was a mark of the old-line Yankees of New England who wore them on the off chance that they’d see a snowy egret on their way into work, and would be prepared to get off the train and traipse into a marsh to get a better view of it.  These men didn’t care about fashion because they didn’t need to impress anybody.

“Your cuffs are even higher than mine!”

The turning point for me came when I was in an inner-city McDonald’s buying hamburgers for students at a school where I volunteered, and overheard a stage-whispered conversation by three girls that, I came to understand, was intended for my ears.

“Is it raining outside?” one asked.

“Is there a flood coming?” another said.

“Maybe a levee broke somewhere” the third said.

I looked at them, noticed them giggling, then looked down at my pants.  They were a little high.

It is one thing to endure criticism from your wife or your older sister–you know they’ve got it in for you.  But when unknown teenage girls start to laugh at you, it is time for a serious reappraisal of the fashion choices you have made.

I decided, after a long, dark night of soul-searching, that perhaps I’d been wrong.  Maybe longer pant legs weren’t so bad.  Who was I to buck a fashion trend that had been adopted by millions of men at the behest of sophisticated European designers?  “Get down off your high horse”, I said to myself, and “Who died and left you boss?”  Also “Get with the program.”

I slowly began to replace my high-water pants with the longer-legged style, and eventually joined the community of right-thinking men who realize that it’s just plain wrong to show your ankles in public.

Unless, of course, you want to be fashionable.

In US First, San Francisco Will Create Mime-Free Zones

SAN FRANCISCO.  Alton Birdsell, Jr. will admit that what he was doing on Telegraph Avenue last Saturday night wasn’t exactly appropriate for a public street, but it was something that had to be done.  “I always forget to clip my fingernails before I go on vacation,” says the community banker from Leavenworth, Kansas, here for a convention.

Telegraph Avenue, San Francisco

Birdsell purchased a pair of fingernail clippers with an embossed image of the Golden Gate Bridge on the leatherette holster at a souvenir store and had begun to clip his nails over a trash can when he was “accosted”, as he puts it, by an aggressive mime imitating his actions.  “Frankly, I was embarrassed as hell,” he says. “It made me mad.  It’s none of his damn business what I do on vacation.”

“Why don’t you try these clippers, banker boy?”

But the mime, Jacky Tressel, thinks differently.  “These people come into one of the most beautiful cities on earth and act like they’re back home in their bathrooms,” he says.  “Mimes can be the first line of defense against offensive public behavior.”

“He’s going to the movies later–that’s why he was picking his seat.”

But the San Francisco Convention & Tourism Council became concerned that “mime-sliming”, as the artists describe the practice of holding a mirror up to habits that non-mimes practice in public but should keep behind closed doors, was driving away business.  “The endoproctocologists cancelled,” says Herman Stone, executive director.  “Then the chiropodists cancelled before I even had a chance to look up what the first group did,” he notes with exasperation.

“Seriously, dude–are you going to wait on us or not?”

So beginning August 1st, vacationers will be able to wander in and out of designated mime-free zones around the city where they can pick, scratch, tell offensive jokes and otherwise enjoy themselves while away from home without fear that they will ridiculed by a mute artist in whiteface. 

Moscone Convention Center

“Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery,” says Vernon “Chip” Thomas, Southern Midwestern Regional Vice-President of the Soybean Growers of America, which will meet for a plenary session at the Moscone Convention Center in August.  “But I still don’t like it.” 

Stunned by Poll, Obama Interviews Possible Pets

WASHINGTON, D.C.  Stunned by an Associated Press-Yahoo poll that shows him trailing John McCain by five percentage points among likely pet-owning voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama today intensified the vetting process that will result in the selection of his pet running mate.

“I should have never thrown out that Ant Farm.”

“Frankly, we were caught off guard,” said Melanie Davis, an Obama staffer who is supervising the candidate’s consideration of potential pet candidates.  “John McCain has a freaking menagerie–two dogs, two turtles, a cat, a ferret, three parakeets, tropical fish, a rhinocerous and a partridge in a pear tree.”

McCain’s ferret:  Key to the all-important albino polecat demographic.

According to the American Pet Product Manufacturers Association, 63% of American homes include at least one pet.  A five-point swing among such households could spell a landslide victory for McCain, who trails in polls of human animals.

“Senator, do you plan to remove tariffs on Chinese-made chew toys?”

Obama’s campaign released a questionnaire that all pet candidates will be required to complete in order to move to the next stage of the process, a personal interview with Obama and his two daughters, who will reportedly wield veto power over the candidate’s preliminary pick.  Sample questions include:

“Formal dress for White House state dinners?  Not a problem!”

1.  Have you ever had sexual relations with any member of the executive, legislative or judicial branches of government?  If not, why not?  Everybody else is doing it.

2.  Are you paper/kitty-box trained?  If the answer is “no”, do you scratch at the door when you need to be let out, or do you sit patiently and whine when someone walks by?

3.  The president has a busy travel schedule.  If left alone in the White House for long periods of time, would you chew or sleep on furniture?

4.  Wet cat and dog food is disgusting.  Please submit references confirming that you can subsist on dry food only.

“The cat vomited on the carpet!”

Congressman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), a supporter of Obama who is sometimes called upon to deliver hard-edged criticism of his rival, accused McCain of trying to be all things to all pets.  “Buying a Noah’s Ark works in the primaries, but he can’t hold this coalition together for the general election,” Emanuel said.  “They’ll be fighting like cats and dogs.”

Join the French Foreign Legion of Coffee

Lately, a lot of people want to know my name.  The “barista” at Starbucks.  The guy behind the counter at Peet’s Coffee.  “Can I have a name for that order?” he asks.  I look around the place at 6:30 in the morning.  “I’m the only one here” I note, but I give in and tell him my name.  It’s just easier.

Don’t cause trouble.

Boston is the city that had the fictional bar–Cheers–where everybody knew your name.  I’ve been in the real-life counterpart of Cheers–the Bull & Finch Pub–and not only did nobody besides my date know my name, nobody even asked.  I prefer it that way.

Bull & Finch Pub:  Actually, nobody knows your name there.

The problem is–my name.  “Con” is rare in America, although fairly common in Ireland (Con Melody, an Irish immigrant to Boston, is the protagonist of Eugene O’Neill’s “A Touch of the Poet”).  ”Con” rhymes with Don, Hans, John, Juan, Lon, Ron, Huan, Tom and Vaughn, among other first names, so giving my name to a barista usually sets off a back-and-forth worthy of a vaudeville comedy team–Con/Ron?/No, Con/Don?–until she finally gets it right.  If she repeats the sound correctly, she usually says “Kahn–and your first name?”  If I’m coming from the gym, my hair is often blown dry by the hot, impatient sighs of the people in line behind me.

Buster Crabbe in “Captain Gallant of the French Foreign Legion”

Throw in the insults that can be concocted out of my name–con-man, ex-con–and it adds up to a lifelong aversion to giving my name.  Thinking back on the slings and arrows from the tongues of young smart-alecks that I suffered as a kid the other day reminded me of an old TV show of the fifties–Captain Gallant of the French Foreign Legion, starring Buster Crabbe–that inspired a solution to my problem.

“My name?  Uh, you can call me ‘Aloysius’.”

As you may know, the French Foreign Legion (Legion Etrangere) is an elite unit of the French Army that was originally made up of foreign volunteers, many of whom were criminals who joined to escape their former lives.  Historically, a Legionnaire could choose a pseudonym–a “declared identity”–and thereby emerge from his service with all traces of his past erased.  Now, every one who applies to the Legion must change his name so that there is no stigma attached to those who want to start their lives over.

“I know you are lying.”

So every morning I now look the barista in the eye with a cool, detached gaze when she asks me what my name is, and I say–”X”.  It sounds cool and somewhat menacing to me, like Malcolm X, or The X Files.  I’m lying, of course.  The barista knows it, I know she knows it, and she knows that I know that she knows it–I think.  There is a tense moment as she looks at me first with pitiless contempt before a touch of admiration at my decision to live a secret life begins to creep across her face. 

The corner of her mouth turns up to form a narrow little smile, and she gives me a conspiratorial glance.  “You want an extra shot of espresso with that?” she asks.

“Non, mon cherie,” I say.  “But do you have any Sweet ‘n Low?”