Nasty bootleggers. Hacking XBOX games is ok. But get thee away from me sandwich!! Eat this.

City officials in Salem, Massachusetts want to erect a bronze statue of Samantha from the TV show Bewitched. The idea (and money) comes from TV Land, the network behind the statue of Honeymooner Ralph Kramden at NYC’s Port Authority and Sheriff Andy Taylor and son Opie in Raleigh, North Carolina. Witches in Salem are not pleased. From the Los Angeles Times article:

“It is kind of disrespectful, because we are striving to get away from that TV image,” said Melissa Coombs, 23, who said she has been a witch since she was 14.
Coombs, who works in a witch store, said: “This is a religion, not something to make fun of. As it is, people come into the store and think we can make stuff move for them…”
“Our network is all about celebrating classic television. We put them on the air, and in these cases, we literally put them on pedestals,” said Robert Pellizzi, TV Land senior vice president, in New York. “It’s a fun way to get people to smile and think about their favorite TV shows.”
Pellizzi said a trip to Salem last Halloween convinced TV Land executives that the “Bewitched” statue belonged there. He said the statue was aimed at “fun, pop culture” and was not a statement about history.
“This is not about 1692,” he said, referring to the year when 19 citizens accused of witchcraft were hanged in Salem.

Fall 2005 will see new parenting products. First up is the O’Pair (how clever). It’s a tot harness that tries to soften the stigma of the kiddie-leash by combining the implied greater social acceptability of an umbilical cord with the fashion sense of a fanny pack.

Here’s another, the Take Out Time Out. It’s a mat that parents schlep around with them and toss to the floor to provide a space for the child to sit when he/she is told to take a “time-out”.

Cual es mas creepy? Hard to say.

When asked at yesterday’s press conference about Amnesty International’s report criticizing America’s treatment of detainees, President Bush called the claims “absurd.” According to the White House transcript, he also said:

In terms of the detainees, we’ve had thousands of people detained. We’ve investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of — and the allegations — by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble — that means not tell the truth.

What, Dubya? You’re trying to trying to dispel the widely held opinion that you’re a rube? And you think that you can achieve that by appearing professorial as you use a word in a speech that you assume people don’t know, then define it for them? Well, OK, that tactic may seem condescending and blatantly transparent, but you’re the prez. There are just one or two things you may want to consider:

• Make sure you use the right word-definition combination. For instance, disassemble does not mean to “not tell the truth”, but dissemble does.
• To lessen the transparency of the definition tactic, it might be a good idea to not use “Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day” from the previous fucking day.

How did you get into Yale? Oh, never mind, I remember.

AP has a story about the conservative Christian group, American Family Association, who has begun a new boycott of Ford Motor Co. because Ford promises to give up to $1,000 to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination for every Jaguar and Land Rover it sells. This is the same group that just ended their unsuccessful boycott of Disney. Here’s to similar effectiveness.