Kanye got it wrong. The Midwest is fried food, abused farm animals, delicious enormous vegetables, and people moving slowly around aisles of schlock. And the best example of all of this begins today. Today is the first day of the Minnesota state fair. What does this mean? It means lots of fried foods on a stick. It means lots of judging who has the best zucchini, whose apple pie has the best crumb topping, and which pumpkin is the largest. It means booths where you can learn about safety in the agricultural field, watch a goat give birth (animals give birth frequently at the fair…and this is a draw), eat a pronto pup, get all you can drink milk for fifty cents, look at butter sculptures of farm wagons, watch an old lady make a seed art picture of Goldy Gopher, all of that stuff. People come from all over to this fair, it’s a huge draw, makes huge money, and many people throw up huge over the course of the 12 day event. Each year several new fried foods get introduced – this year two of the biggies are fried bananas foster on a stick and fried spaghetti and meatballs on a stick. I am told that fried snickers bars are fantastic. I do not believe that. I am going at least twice this year – on Tuesday to work the University of Minnesota booth (we give out free rulers and people flock to get the damn things – we even call it Education on a Stick ha ha ha oh my pancreas), and today just to walk around and see what the hell is going on. It is Thrifty Thursday, after all, and admission is discounted.

I will bring my digital camera to take pictures of lots of weird things and hopefully post. I think you would all enjoy this event. It is so utterly ridiculous. (I resisted using the word ‘udderly’ in the last sentence…just barely.) Last year I went to the piggie birth booth and when a bunch of Minnesotans were looking at a new porky I swiped a line from Dave Attell and said, “Look at it lying there…deliciously.” People were horrified.

Time to raise the cholesterol count. I can almost guarantee that I will have diarrhea this evening. I will be disappointed if I don’t need some bismuth later.

By the way, on the left is the promo poster that people are buying up. It is by Mary Grandpre, the artists on the U.S. Harry Potter books, who used to live in St. Paul. I thought it was a goat, then a cow, and now I just think it is a retarded dog.

Microsoft spokesperson Ryan Hamlin:

says the New Zealand Government’s Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill is “too broad” and could impinge on “the amazing vehicle of e-mail marketing”.

He also wants definitions in the bill changed so that companies would be able to e-mail information about new products and services to customers, even if they had opted out of receiving e-mail about other services they had bought from the company in the past.

Yeah, that sounds reasonable. So for a company that sells more than one single product, the customer would have to opt out of spam for each one individually. They’ll also have to stay on their toes because the company might start selling something new.

Roe v. Wade is in constant peril, people. Should you doubt it, check out this story which illustrates how American women who are insured by Medicaid are not reimbursed for abortions, even when the fetus suffers from profound genetic abnormalities.
Link is here

Before he can, let me post it.

Really, though, were we ever under the impression this guy was smart? This is further evidence that his support for stem cell research does not come from any scientific reasoning, but rather concern about Asian governments cornering the embryonic market.

Thank you Frist for showing that doctors truly are human repairmen, rather than intellectuals interested in the pursuit of science. And by the way, conceptualizing discussion about intelligent design as necessary to understand important debates is so circular as to resemble a fucking mobius strip.

A radio show was cancelled in Kentucky for saying the word, “breast”. Yes that’s ludicrous, but it gets better. The show that was cancelled was The Writer’s Almanac hosted by Garrison Fucking Keillor!

This site made me chuckle: http://www.turdwords.com/top10.cfm

Many, but not all, have to do with the ol’ Number 2. Definitely not work-safe, in a text-based sort of way.

I can’t wait to give someone a Credit Card:
Definition 1: To catch an unexpecting person bent over, you proceed to swipe your hand from the bottem through the crack of their ass.
Usage Example: Jimmy bent over to pick-up his breifcase and I gave him the old “credit card”.

From the WP:

Bush told Texas newspaper reporters in a group interview at the White House on Monday that he believes that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as competing theories.

Here’s the best bit, though:
Gary L. Bauer, a Christian conservative leader who ran for president against Bush in the 2000 Republican primaries said:

With the president endorsing it, at the very least it makes Americans who have that position more respectable, for lack of a better phrase.

From New Scientist:

Airport security guards already use hand-held electromagnetic wands to detect metal hidden under clothing. The same wand can also sniff for traces of the gases some explosives emit into the air.

If the passenger is a suicide bomber who realises the wand has found something, the guard might not have enough time to pull out handcuffs or a gun. So the new wand will have a hidden secret – a transformer which steps the detector’s battery power up to 100 kilovolts and feeds it to disguised metal electrodes at the end of the wand.

If the wand gives a silent warning of explosives, the guard can then subtly slide the pads onto the passenger’s neck or hands and press a shock button. The patent reassures that the effect is “temporary and reversible”.

“Hidden Secret”? Guess what? They know now!

No, it sounds like a good idea. Passengers will line up to get accidentally electrocuted by some clumsy TSA employee. Soon they’ll even have their own code words for their faux pas like “fried eggs” or “Abu Ghraib”.

Since the cat’s out of the bag, why not just put sniffy bits at the end of a loaded rifle and rub that over passengers?