Well, it's been over a month since I've written a Mixed Bag article, did you miss me? Apparently not. Anyway they are reporting on the news that Saddam Hussein's two sons are dead, killed in a firefight in Iraq. Does this seem anti-climactic to anyone else? I mean, here we are, months down the road from the "war" and now all of a sudden they are dead. They've been on our list for a long time, but there was no word or rumors or anything. Then they are dead. I suppose that is realistic, and maybe there is more to the story that will come out of this, but I was really hoping for a prolonged standoff that ended with somebody like Wesley Snipes busting in there and wacking them both with a pencil and a folding chair or something. It doesn't help that we are talking about Saddam's sons instead of the man himself. If we could have captured the face of evil himself, maybe it would be a little more exciting. Oh yeah, and if there were actually Weapons of Mass Destruction found, that might make it easier for everyone to get excited about this too. As it stands, we are really starting to look like a bunch of bullies.
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What really sucks is that they French may have a brand new reason to be smug and arrogant.
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Enough about politics, lets move on to something more tasteful - I saw the other day where the Catholic Priests in Boston had paid to molest and rape little boys. So what is it about priesthood that induces this kind of behavior. You never see a case where a priest raped a female, it's always little boys. Why is that? Is it because priests have more access to boys than girls? Or is it because at a young age these men realized deep inside that they were homosexual and they believed that society wouldn't accept them in this way, so they chose priesthood as an alternative because they figured that way they wouldn't have to have any sort of sex life, but then the drive for manly sex was too much for them? Or is it that the press only sensationalizes the priest - altar boy cases?
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Here is my evidence against the evolution of man: Reality T.V. I keep expecting that any day people will come to their senses and realize what a complete pile of crap stuff like Survivor and My Three Ugly Friends are Going to Pick My Husband is, but yet, these shows go on. I know the bottom line is money, which comes from ratings, but shouldn't the producers have some sort of moral obligation to not appeal to the lowest common denomiator? (Hypocracy Alert: I used to watch wrestling - I will now shut up).
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Researchers just released a study that shows that the state of Kansas is actually flatter than a pancake. See the related article here. I know that they state that this study was done in humor, but they also obviously spent a lot of time on it. How much do you think the government grant was for this research? Is there really nothing else more productive these scientists could have been working on? That money probably would have gone a long way towards my teleportation device.
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Whoa, I just saw a picture of one of Saddam Hussein's sons and he looks like Keith Hernandez. I always thought there was something odd about that guy (By the way, the link above is to an add for a company Keith endorsed that helped him quit smoking. That alone is pretty funny - he used to sit in the dugout and smoke cigarettes during baseball games).
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So Jessica Lynch is returning home a hero. I know this will get everyone's panties all bunched up, but why exactly is she a hero? Maybe I'm uneducated as to the facts of the situation, but this is what I think happened: Lynch was with a group of soldiers that got lost in Iraq, they were ambushed and most were killed. Lynch was injured and captured, a couple days later Lynch was rescued from a hospital by special forces. It turns out that her captors had abandoned her there and the rescue was unopposed. O.k., that's a really great story, and I'm sure she went through a lot. Where in there did she do anything heroic, though? The guys that risked their lives saving her (or thought they were risking their lives to save her) might have been heroic, but I'm not sure that it is heroic to get shot and lay in a hospital. I'm not saying she did anything wrong, mind you, or that she isn't a good person, but let's not go overboard on this homecoming thing. Or maybe that's just the cynical contrarian coming out in me again.
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Oprah Winfrey was named the top pop culture icon. What the hell? That just ruins it for everyone. Who would ever want to be a pop culture icon after Oprah Winfrey was named the top? Of course, the same listing had JFK, jr. ranked above his father, so I think we can just pretend this never happened. Oh yeah, Superman came in second. To Oprah. Superman, second. Elvis was third. Oprah tells people about books she likes and hosts a mid-day talk show. Superman is... oh nevermind.