Meet the Mets?

The New York Mets apparently failed to check this Wikipedia article before doing irreparable, if hilariously ironic, damage to the phrase "written in stone."

TALES FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE!

Extra Salacious Edition

First up, we have this headline from Reuters: lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital. Let that one simmer in your frontal lobe for a while. Kinshasa's Chief of Police had this eminently reasonable reaction to the sorcerer-related breakdown in social order: "I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke, but when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'how do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it.'" My inner undergraduate wants to advance some theory about reactions to modernity, etc, but he's too busy laughing beer out his nose.

In the "old but still good" category, we have Yglesias reporting on the trials and tribulations of Finland's Prime Minister: "Matti Vanhanen, 52, prime minister since 2003, has been enjoying a wave of support since the disclosure that he likes to take a sauna before sex and enjoys his favorite meal of beef and baked potatoes afterward." The second commenter really sums up the position of all men on this important political issue.

Edit: How could we forget Pen Island!

Now, on to murder. Metstradamus reports the following quote from a Mike and Mad Dog segment on the slumping Carlos Delgado: "there's not a solution in sight for the first half of the season ... maybe in July they can get a first baseman, they could kill him, they could bench him, they can do a million things then." C.C., you may wish to purchase security ahead of your inevitable arrival in NYC. That 10.13 ERA shit isn't going to fly in the Big Apple.

Finally, we have a few YouTube clips for your perusal. As you may or may not know, Thomas Friedman, he of "Suck. On. This." fame, was recently given a pie to the face by a pair of uppity Brown students incensed by his role as a cheerleader for global capitalism. For the record, this is the equivalent of placing a flaming bag of poo on the White House steps because you're annoyed at Bush's position on steel tariffs. Still, we at FTB support almost any form of abuse directed at Friedman, so click on the link and watch him almost slip on pie and fall over. Classic.

I thought long and hard about whether I could contribute meaningfully to your enjoyment of this next clip, and I've decided that nothing I say can make it any more hilarious than it already is. Enjoy.

TALES FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE!

Remember those gay porn star twins/burglars from Philly? Well, apparently their mom was a lookout for them. 

Confused about the subprime mortgage crisis? So was I, until I read this helpful guide. Apparently, the word "fuck" plays a central role in our economy.

Charlie Rose "trips" on St. Patrick's day and sacrifices his beautiful face to save his MacBook Air.

"What do they call the death squad here?" Five middle aged women , all of whom were visiting a church in their neighborhood's central square, answered in imperfect unison: "The Thundercats."

Moscow's fashionistas party in Stalin's secret command bunker. They've still got nothing on Stalin's all night "Missile Crisis" coke orgy, though. 

'Wingers finally mobilize to point out that, in fact, Barack Obama is a terrifying black dude. 

From the "War is a Fucker" file: German wartime flying ace discovers that he shot down his favorite author. 

It's been a banner week for cannibalism.  A top aide testifies the Charles Taylor ordered soldiers to eat victims. In perhaps the finest bit of cross-examination ever, the defense lawyer asks a witness "which one tasted best?"

And, while in Africa they eat people, here in the US of A we just plead guilty to "body stealing." This guy carved up Alistair Cooke's cadaver like a Christmas ham. NJ: come for the hookers, stay for the black market bone marrow.

Finally, panhandling gets a national audience as some black guy repeatedly asks nation for change.

TALES FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE!

Here at FTB, we're pioneering a new weekly segment to provide you with a roundup of quasi-informative inter-trash from the week past. We've given it an appropriately overwrought title and we hope you enjoy it:

Skywalkers in Korea Cross Han Solo. As the good people at Lawyers, Guns and Money pointed out, someone's been waiting a long time to write that headline. 

Twin gay-porn stars arrested in rooftop burglaries. Bizarrely enough, that's not the most attention-getting aspect of the story. Buried towards the end, the attentive reader finds this graph: While handcuffed in the back of the moving car, Taleon smashed out the rear window by head-butting it, police said. He then dove through the window and its steel frame, causing $1800 in  damage, Kunkel said. After landing on his face, Taleon rose to his feet and, while still handcuffed, fled on foot and into a nearby pond, police said. "He swam across like Flipper, taunting the officers saying, 'You'll never catch me.'" And they didn't. Masters of understatement, the PPD volunteered this statement: "Taleon is a bad, bad dude." 

The obsolete skills wiki is our generation's version of the slide rule lecture. Someday, I will give my children a long demonstration of how to properly load film into a camera. Of course, they'll have 50 megapixel cameras built into their eyes, so, like all good parental lectures, it'll involve a lot of blood and tears. 

WaPo continues its reign of mediocre journalism with this article which sets a pretty high bar for mainstream misogyny, surpassing even the Chris Matthews horizon. Feministing doesn't disappoint with its reaction -- Washington Post: Bitches Ain't Shit.

Xerox gets pissy about Clinton's comments during Thursday's debate. Xerox, or Xerox Corporation (as they prefer to be called), is apparently pissed that their name has become synonymous with with one of the ubiquitous tasks of modern office life. Their desire for proper nomenclature has overwhelmed their love of free advertising. Surely, the end is near.

The Burmese junta  has started bagging on Rambo's saggy he-tits. It's just shy of "you're so fat that when you surround our murderous paramilitary death squads, you surround our murderous paramilitary death squads!" 

In the "old but still good" category, we have the tear-jerking story of Canadian troops routed by 10-foot marijuana plants. Due to the superior "dankitude" of this Afghani ganja, the Canadians were unable to penetrate the forest with thermal sensors. Attempts to burn the plants produced, as might be expected, unfavorable results: a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects, and [we] decided that was probably not the right course of action. "Ill effects" included spontaneous drum circles and harebrained metaphysical debates. 

Obama continues to gather momentum in Texas following his Thursday debate performance, locking up the much-coveted mariachi vote ahead of the primary contests on March 4, 2008. In an environment where politico-musical abominations are like this are commonplace, I don't think I can justifiably get snarky. 

The New York Times reports that more an more Americans are moving away from our most beloved non-sport, the ancient and subtle art of golfing. I, like many Americans, eagerly await the day when the only use for a putter will involve brightly-painted windmills and the potential to earn a free milkshake at the 18th hole.