“Who’s Tony Blair? Oh yeah….he’s, like, your president? I don’t know what he looks like.”
-- Paris Hilton, to British GQ.

“Bllllaaaaughghhrp….caaghrrrach……Benjamin Disraeli. ”
- Someone who looked like Paris Hilton but obviously wasn’t, trying to discuss Benjamin Disraeli while vomiting in a St. Tropez parking lot.

Let us now praise great magazine covers, like the September issue of Vanity Fair, featuring mondo-sexy, timeless-looking style-icon Kate Moss in that fur hat, Vaseline, Brazil-wax-and-hipwaders look that young Hollywood is so into these days.

She looks terrific.

And then, you plow in to the magazine, and sample some of the other 361 pages of Kate Moss ads, you think….wait a minute….

…is it just me, or is it not abundantly clear that Kate Moss has that walleyed, halibut look that people get when they do too much horse, smack and goofballs and their optic nerves go all fritzy? I mean, she’s obviously still got it going on, but it totally looks like she’s trying to read the graffiti on both sides of the stall at the same time. Maybe she just has so many contracts she always needs to look bored, stoned and pouty at two cameras simultaneously. Maybe Louis Vuitton owns her right eye and Calvin Klein owns her left.

Maybe she’s just exhausted from making all that money for doing too much blow.

Speaking of money, serial-dating baseball cad Derek Jeter is hopping on the personal fragrance bandwagon. According to the Star, geriatric cosmetics megacorporation Avon is launching Jeter’s scent, “Driven” this November……a collection of “after-shave balm, body wash and deodorant” products that smell like Derek Jeter are to follow.

The scent is presumably some sporty mélange of grass, leather, wood, Courvoisier, whey protein and Mitchum. Smells like….Daddy.

Well, who knows about Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn – are they on or aren’t they? Nobody can agree. US says they’re getting married. Jen says they aren’t, and is apparently giving advice to Kate Hudson, now that she has left her husband, The Unabomber, in order to schtupp Owen Wilso...as if Jennifer Aniston was in any position to give relationship advice.

Further product notes:
You too can have an anti-Semitic phone! According to US magazine, a copy of Mel Gibson’s anti-Jew spew can be downloaded as a ringtone from oasysmobile.com

I’m hoping for a ringtone of Virginia senator George Allen’s “Macaca” slur, so I can impress Nazis with my knowledge of the French-Tunisian N-word.

The UK Observer said that the new Beyoncé video, “Check it Out,” caused “an outbreak of epileptic fits in British television viewers” – which means I definitely want it as a ringtone, because I can’t afford a new battery for my stun baton.

So…Mel Gibson is still in deep water with Jewish people… and now Madonna is in deep macaca again with God (and/or the Vatican) for hanging herself from a mirrorized cross. Cardinal Ersilio Tonini, “reportedly speaking with the approval of Pope Benedict,” sayeth US magazine, “has demanded that the singer ‘be excommunicated.’”

Here’s where Mel and Madge can help each other. Since Madge/Esther is so totally down with Kabbalah, maybe she can get a few Jews to forgive Mel….in the meantime, maybe some of Mel’s freakball extremo friends over at Opus Dei can get the Pope to look the other way on her little crucifixion stunt. Hollywood deals, just like Holy Wars, are all about teamwork.

At least JonBenet Ramsey can now stop tossing over and over in her tiny grave, now that that ghastly, downy-faced pervert has been arrested in Thailand.

One can only speculate that if JonBenet had lived she would have grown up to be Jessica and Ashlee Simpson, at least judging from the icky weirdness of their dad Joe Simpson. Their dad gave both Simpson girls “chastity rings” when they were 12, and has inadvertently released such skin-crawly statements as “(Jessica’s) got Double-D’s! You can’t cover those suckers up!”

Maybe they’ll get him a nice bottle of “Driven” for father’s day.

Which takes us back to Paris Hilton, whose mom is still dressing like JonBenet and if you think about it, that pretty much explains everything. Maybe we should fix her up with Joe Simpson – and the snake will swallow its own tail, and the world will vanish with a loud, wet, POP!

The trash, compacted for you, Mein Fiends. You’re welcome.

Here’s the most dangerous quote in the world, from the WEEK:

“Hezbollah may be the A-Team of terrorists,” said Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, in 2003. “Maybe al-Qaida is actually the B-Team.”

Uh oh.

That would make Shiekh Hassan Nasrallah officially Mr.T, at least in the eyes of the Department of Defense. Not the growly-but-harmless Mr. T of TV-fame so much as the angry, ghetto Mr. T of Rocky II fame.

Mel Gibson, at least, seems to be all juiced to take sides in this Lebanon thing.

Buzzle.com’s ‘Redwolf Hesster’ adds his own sneevy kindling to the fire:
“A couple of years ago Gibson gave an interview to Reader's Digest. Gibson's comments may shock you. On the issue of the holocaust Gibson commented ‘I mean when the war was over they said it was 12 million. Then it was six. Now it’s four. I mean it’s that kind of numbers game.’"

I have a question: if Mel Gibson hates Jews and Hezbollah hates Jews, and al-Qaida is really only the B-Team, does that mean Mel Gibson is a terrorist?
Do I smell a Road Warrior IV: Beyond Guantanamo?
In any case, Nasrallah is reported to be in talks to replace the Danny Glover character in Lethal Weapon VII.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, commented that anti-Semitism "cannot be cured in one day and certainly not through a press release."
Mel, mindful of this, wants to meet with Jewish leaders, just as soon as he’s not drunk. He will don the painful yarmulke of thorns.
I think that as an apology, Mel should have a public bris. The Chosen People need to demand Mel’s foreskin, to appease Yahweh. This alone will restore peace.

IN other news, a Doberman killed Elvis’s teddy bear. (Moment of silence.)

According to the Associated Press, David Hasselhoff’s publicist Judy Katz vigorously denied reports that The Hoff was too drunk to board a plane from Heathrow Airport to LA last week. She said that reports that he was so -faced that he couldn’t stand up "totally untrue."

Hasselhoff was not drunk. He might be a notorious, falling-down alcoholic who has flunked rehab several times, and his divorce to Pamela Bach, his wife of 16 years, may have been finalized mere days previous to the allegation, and he may have been loudly and publicly lamenting this fact to any member of airport staff who would listen...but that certainly had nothing to do with drunkness.

Hasselhoff, according to Katz, was under the influence of “strong antibiotics.” Yes. “Strong antibiotics,” for a “recent arm injury.”

And don’t think that just because there were reports that Hasselhoff was so trashed he had to be removed from the All England Club (home of Wimbledon) earlier this month means that he was drunk then, either. He already denied that he was drunk that time, and so, that wasn’t what you thought it was. It wasn’t.

No, at Heathrow, Haselhoff apparently took enough Cipro to catch the kind of buzz that makes you fall down, wet your pants and and slur your words to the point where the only thing coming out is stuff like: “PAMELA……grrrhhhhmmm….uorhms…..fummgh…..harmmhefuggh….
PAMELA.” But he wasn’t drunk.

Now, if I had only known I could catch that kind of rolling blackout-buzz from antibiotics, I would have run out and caught a venereal disease years ago. Think of all the amoxicillin I threw away after the intestinal amoeba I picked up in Cabo San Lucas! Dumb! Dumb!

Last month, Hoff “sliced four tendons and an artery” in a “shaving accident” at his London hotel. He was, no doubt, under the influence of a powerful, mood-altering yogurt. We can only hope that Hasselhoff isn’t going into one of those probiotic/antibiotic speedball tailspins. Pretty soon you’re selling your TV, your phone gets turned off, and they find you wandering around drugstore parking lots in the middle of the night, swilling kefir straight out of the carton and haplessly sucking on depleted tubes of Neosporin.

Be afraid, fiends. And forewarned.

For example: Anorexia. Anorexia seems to be positively rampant among today’s sub-size-0 starlets, yet oddly….none of them have it. The thing that is somewhat confusing about this…. is the fact that all of them have it.

74% of InTouch readers decided this week that Kiera Knightly is now “too thin.” InTouch also provided readers with a handy chart of 2006’s Anorexia All-Stars:

Nicole Richie: 5’1”, 93 pounds.
Kate Bosworth: 5’5”, 100 pounds.
Victoria “Posh” Beckham: 5’6”– size 23 jeans. “That’s the size that Dakota Fanning’s little sister, Elle, would wear,” they said.

They all denied allegations of eating disorders, and in some states are now required to ride in safety seats while driving.

Because….they’re so small. The airbags. OK, it was a stretch. Let’s just say they are constantly in danger.

Ashlee-e-e-e Simpson got half of her nose removed, recently, and has been airbrushed to the same golden-brown, tater-tot color as her sister Jessica, who has been painted to be the exact same coco-Latin color as Pam Anderson. Ashlee has stopped admitting she has had a nose job, because, sayeth an InTouch insider, “She doesn’t want to encourage young, impressionable teenage girls to have plastic surgery.”

Well, it’s too damned late. The nose is gone, and the rewards are obvious.

“Ashlee’s new, sophisticated style has already boosted her career. She’s set to become the new face of Victoria’s Secret Pink collection,” gushes the magazine.

Who is corrupting the youth of today? It’s a chicken-or-the-egg question: Is the nose job that gets the contract to blame, or the contract that hires the nose job? But the bigger question is, why do these girls need to be painted the color of homeless beach people?

Pam Anderson, it should be noted, now no longer attempts to appear to be anything, career-wise, other than a host-system for her ballooning, pumpkin-sized mega-teats. Kid Rock has also apparently also offered to aid in being supported by them. Perhaps their reality show could be called ‘Pimp My Bride,’ and Pam’s breasts can be taken to Southern California to get windfoils so they don’t catch air.

Lindsay Lohan also denied allegations this week that she has “given herself an a special (20th birthday) present by boosting her assets from a sizable C to a D-cup.” She attributed her suddenly enormous new breasts to the fact that she’s totally not anorexic.
“The truth is I got my boobs back because I got healthier,” says Lohan, although all her other body parts are suspiciously the same size they were when she was supposedly “unhealthy.” Hmmm.

I blame the Administration. Get the D-cups, then we’ll spin them into an inspirational message against eating disorders. Perfect. You need any help vomiting that salad? It was just like when President Bush addressed the NAACP and somehow spun the need for inherited black wealth via home ownership into a brazen, nakedly self-serving pitch to abolish the inheritance tax. At least he stopped short of trying to get blacks to vote for re-enslaving themselves.

And Suri Cruise is either the product of L. Ron Hubbard’s frozen sperm, or doesn’t exist, depending on which tabloid you believe. US Weekly is a bit more forgiving, choosing to believe that Tom and Katie are just too…uh…busy to prove they are concealing a live human infant in one of their many homes.

“(Katie) wakes up, nurses Suri, reads her Scientology books, nurses Suri again and while the baby naps, has Scientology lessons from a church staffer at their home…She’s trying to learn as much as possible.”

One thing is for sure – by the time Tom and Katie get through with Suri – if she actually exists – she certainly won’t be anything like a human baby anymore.

The shame, fiends.The terrible shame.

Ken Lay, you felonious old scamp. Skittering off behind the great mortal curtain right at payback-time. Come back here and eat your big plate of dung right this second.

Lucky, lucky Kenny, indecently dying of a massive coronary like that while still hoarding $43 million in old-lady quarters that he leeched off of Enron. In the meantime, he’s so dead now that all his charges are dropped.

So now I get why Republicans are so concerned with kissing up to their homeboy Jesus, because after making the most of their Last Armegeddon Tango in Corporate America, they really require a duty-free afterlife. It all makes sense.

Lay’s lawyers are now faced with the prospect of suing his estate to get their money. One can only presume this has come to the attention of fellow artery-sucking Texan and Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, who has already paid his lawyers $40m, and still owes “multiple tens of millions of dollars” to his legal reps….Skilling, according to The WEEK, “is now asking the government to release $60m in personal assets that were frozen when he was indicted in 2004.”

Ha ha ha, fellas, give Daddy back the money, now. That’s Daddy’s personal money.

No more vodka-urinating ice-sculptures of Belgian infants at the big Texas bar-mitzvahs.
It was a good deal while it lasted. Lay, Lay, DeLay. Goodnight evahbody.

Speaking of overrated virtues, Hillary Duff, Hollywood’s oldest virgin at 18, intends to keep her hymen intact until she is married, according to the WEEK. This is apparently because she is the Anti-Lohan, and therefore must ideologically protect all tweens from That Devil Intercourse. Note Duff’s demure, cable-knit, non-Lindsay poncho. Note her apparent disinterest in anorexia, and hence expanding Duff. Duff’s ex-boyfriends will surely not be discussing her pubic hair on video whilst Paris Hilton snickers in the background.

Duff, it seems, is not as idiotic as she sounds. The enormous demographic of “SRT’s,” or “Silver Ring Teens” who have taken chastity vows, are apparently more concerned with whether or not their recording artists are chaste and/or virgins than they are concerned with their actual music…. which explains some of the deeper mysteries of recent popular culture.

Jessica Simpson, e.g., was a publicly abstinent “virgin” before her telemarriage.

"I promised God, my father and my future husband that I would remain a virgin until I got married,” she said, way back then.

I only regret that MTV didn’t bother to show us the bloody sheet after her wedding night.

Britney Spears was a virgin, way, way back in 2000, and the bloody sheets are still being displayed in the tabloids. Actually, they are the tabloids.

According to a fairly old article by Russell D'Arby, on the Swift Report, the chastity factor was allegedly responsible for record producers “pressuring Britney to marry.”

"You saw her popularity really beginning to slide as her young teen fans perceived that she was 'giving it up for free’…The Jive (Records) executives have seen the writing on the wall: virginity sells. So they married her off as quickly as they could," some “insider” told D’Arby.

I remember when Brooke Shields trumpeted her virginity on record, back in the stone age, but it was more interesting then, because it was a cognitively dissonant counterpoint to her posing as a topless hooker at age 12, in a film directed by accused statutory rapist Roman Polanski.

Wait, is it really so different?

“Reclaimed virginity” apparently also works wonders for healing the sexual disgrace of teen idols like Xtina Aguilera…but, really, Xtian charity notwithstanding: would you buy a used virginity from Britney Federline?

Would you buy a Christian redemption from Jeff Skilling? Hmmmm.

Speaking of boycotts, TIME sez Jay-Z is also fighting the good fight: he is making his nightclubs boycott Cristal after the expensive champagne company described its popularity among hip-hop stars as a “curiosity.”

Jay-Z resents his tastes and his peeps being referred to as a “curiosity.” This angered and offended Mr. Z. Cristal sales are now expected to fall dramatically, unto the plight of
Zima Clearmalt or the particularly detested Seagram’s Peach Gin-n-Juice.

And finally, speaking of product death, we bid a fond Dreg-u-sational farewell to Tylenol, the non-aspirin pain reliever we’ve all been taking for our hangovers for years….which now has been proven to be way worse for your liver than all those Pucker Sour Apple shooters.

It’s a cruel world, fiends. Repent.

Ken Lay, you felonious old scamp. Skittering off behind the great mortal curtain right at payback-time. Come back here and eat your big plate of dung right this second.

Lucky, lucky Kenny, indecently dying of a massive coronary like that while still hoarding $43 million in old-lady quarters that he leeched off of Enron. In the meantime, he’s so dead now that all his charges are dropped.

So now I get why Republicans are so concerned with kissing up to their homeboy Jesus, because after making the most of their Last Armegeddon Tango in Corporate America, they really require a duty-free afterlife. It all makes sense.

Lay’s lawyers are now faced with the prospect of suing his estate to get their money. One can only presume this has come to the attention of fellow artery-sucking Texan and Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, who has already paid his lawyers $40m, and still owes “multiple tens of millions of dollars” to his legal reps….Skilling, according to The WEEK, “is now asking the government to release $60m in personal assets that were frozen when he was indicted in 2004.”

Ha ha ha, fellas, give Daddy back the money, now. That’s Daddy’s personal money.

No more vodka-urinating ice-sculptures of Belgian infants at the big Texas bar-mitzvahs.
It was a good deal while it lasted. Lay, Lay, DeLay. Goodnight evahbody.

Speaking of overrated virtues, Hillary Duff, Hollywood’s oldest virgin at 18, intends to keep her hymen intact until she is married, according to the WEEK. This is apparently because she is the Anti-Lohan, and therefore must ideologically protect all tweens from That Devil Intercourse. Note Duff’s demure, cable-knit, non-Lindsay poncho. Note her apparent disinterest in anorexia, and hence expanding Duff. Duff’s ex-boyfriends will surely not be discussing her pubic hair on video whilst Paris Hilton snickers in the background.

Duff, it seems, is not as idiotic as she sounds. The enormous demographic of “SRT’s,” or “Silver Ring Teens” who have taken chastity vows, are apparently more concerned with whether or not their recording artists are chaste and/or virgins than they are concerned with their actual music…. which explains some of the deeper mysteries of recent popular culture.

Jessica Simpson, e.g., was a publicly abstinent “virgin” before her telemarriage.

"I promised God, my father and my future husband that I would remain a virgin until I got married,” she said, way back then.

I only regret that MTV didn’t bother to show us the bloody sheet after her wedding night.

Britney Spears was a virgin, way, way back in 2000, and the bloody sheets are still being displayed in the tabloids. Actually, they are the tabloids.

According to a fairly old article by Russell D'Arby, on the Swift Report, the chastity factor was allegedly responsible for record producers “pressuring Britney to marry.”

"You saw her popularity really beginning to slide as her young teen fans perceived that she was 'giving it up for free’…The Jive (Records) executives have seen the writing on the wall: virginity sells. So they married her off as quickly as they could," some “insider” told D’Arby.

I remember when Brooke Shields trumpeted her virginity on record, back in the stone age, but it was more interesting then, because it was a cognitively dissonant counterpoint to her posing as a topless hooker at age 12, in a film directed by accused statutory rapist Roman Polanski.

Wait, is it really so different?

“Reclaimed virginity” apparently also works wonders for healing the sexual disgrace of teen idols like Xtina Aguilera…but, really, Xtian charity notwithstanding: would you buy a used virginity from Britney Federline?

Would you buy a Christian redemption from Jeff Skilling? Hmmmm.

Speaking of boycotts, TIME sez Jay-Z is also fighting the good fight: he is making his nightclubs boycott Cristal after the expensive champagne company described its popularity among hip-hop stars as a “curiosity.”

Jay-Z resents his tastes and his peeps being referred to as a “curiosity.” This angered and offended Mr. Z. Cristal sales are now expected to fall dramatically, unto the plight of
Zima Clearmalt or the particularly detested Seagram’s Peach Gin-n-Juice.

And finally, speaking of product death, we bid a fond Dreg-u-sational farewell to Tylenol, the non-aspirin pain reliever we’ve all been taking for our hangovers for years….which now has been proven to be way worse for your liver than all those Pucker Sour Apple shooters.

It’s a cruel world, fiends. Repent.

Is it me, or has Jesus actually killed the world’s sense of humor for some higher purpose? It is hard to believe that at 47, Madonna can still pull shock out of the Christians, but, plucky Madge – God love her – built herself a big crucifix out of disco-ball tiles and hung herself from something that looks like men’s room fixtures. It looked like something you’d see if Busby Berkeley directed “The Passion of the Christ.”
“She’s a phony, desperate has-been,” one clearly important showbiz “insider” told the Globe.
“It’s extremely disappointing that Madonna feels that entertaining means belittling Christ in such a belligerent way,” said Randy Sharp, director of special projects for the American Family Association.

The AFA, as you may know, hates The Gay and wants the Constitution to reflect this. The AFA also initiated, along with 20 “pro-family groups,” a boycott against Ford motors (which also makes Jaguar, Volvo, Land Rover, Mazda, Lincoln and Mercury), because they promote civil equality for their GLBT employees.

Hey, that’s good for America, if you like economic terrorism. “GLBT”, in case you weren’t hip to these things, is an acronym for Gay, Lesbian, Bacon and Tomato – and they have been a nutritious staple of autoworkers since the early 1950’s.

Christian American families just can’t abide the idea of a gay person having installed the brake proportioning valves in their Mercury Grand Marquis – and frankly, if I were a gay person, and I knew I was installing brakes for the AFA, I can’t say I’d do the very best job I could do.

English professor Dr. Mel Seesholtz of Penn State, on civilrights.org, writes that the message of discrimination and intolerance put forth by groups like the AFA is not being lost on the youth: case in point, a 20-year old student of Seesholtz expressing this sentiment most succinctly in an essay on gender psychology:

"I have beaten up faggots before, and I used to feel guilty - not anymore! Bush says fags don't count, so I guess it's cool to do it." ...

Indeed.

Seesholz sez, of the AFA, “Their dogmatic theo-economic agenda is as megalomaniacal and blind as the theo-political one.”
Which makes total sense.
Introducing my new insult-comic mascot: Theo! The Megalomaniac Conservative Politico-Economist Dog.

We….you mean….you’re saying….we….we could own THAT? THOSE? THEM?
We could….actually…. CHARGE MONEY for….TH-TH- THE….EVERYTHING?

(Dull, glazy-eyed silence as Telecom grows dazzling, brick-hard erection for Free Market.)

Humma humma, (collar loosening) well, TERRORISM being the incredibly serious THREAT that it is, and er,uh, yes, of course, Mr. Beelzebub, Sir, you can have all those millions and millions of little tiny phone records in the interest of National Security, so that ye may protect our wives and daughters from murderous jihadist swine. And….God BLESS you, sir.

(Climax in Dockers and Sans-A-Belts, boardrooms nationwide.)

Sickening, I tell you. Nearly as bad as the sight of today’s CNN broadcasting – as actual, hard-hitting, fast-breaking news, mind you – breathy, slavering anticipation of “American Idol” -- replete with polls and pundits and discussions and etc. Because a larger number of people voted for Taylor Hicks than they did for Al Gore when he ran for President.

Therefore, we have the television, I mean the President, that we deserve.

If you were reading The NewStandard instead of watching American Idol, you’d have read this hair-raising wad of staff reportage (which has a wisely anonymous byline since the Patriot Act is now being used – not just against Innnocent Americans -- but also against mainstream journalists, in order to root out their leak sources, via phone and cell-phone records….I just called to say I love you, Mary McCarthy…oops…. )

“Telecom giant Verizon is refusing to confirm or deny participation in the illegal National Security Agency (NSA) wiretapping program…The company further claimed such information is protected by the ‘state-secrets privilege.’”

Oooooh! I LIKE that. State secrets! That sound too important for the likes of YOU, childlike American public. You can’t eat that information, honey, it’s too spicy. Eat this nice hypo-allergenic Carrie Underwood chew-toy. Mmmmm. It squeaks!

What is the “state-secrets privilege,” you may well ask?

“The state-secrets privilege allows the government to invoke a national-security risk to avoid disclosing documents. In April, the Department of Justice said the Bush administration intends to use that privilege to intervene in a class-action lawsuit against AT&T in California regarding wiretapping.”
Oh that is SO COOL.
Daddy, I want a State Secrets Privilege, NOW. Or I shall scream.
Yes, Verizon, Darling, Daddy will buy you one immediately.
The NewStandard goes on:
‘We were surprised to see Verizon make the state-secrets argument because only the government, not private entities, can assert that privilege,’ Shenna Bellows, executive director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, said in a press statement. ‘Use of the state-secrets argument indicates that Verizon lawyers may have worked closely with federal government lawyers in drafting a response to the commission.’”

Ah! The snake swallows its own tail, and ring-around-the-Rose-Garden.

On a vengeful note, the Globe cover claims an impending “BUSH MARRIAGE BREAKUP!” citing “NASTY FIGHTS” and “BOOZE PROBLEMS.”

But really, Fiends, who could blame Miss Laura. 64% of the rest of us want to break up with him, too.

I say we use the same strategy on the NSA that George Clooney was suggesting celebrities use to stop Gawker Stalker: if every American started randomly prank-calling any number in any phone book from Korea, Pakistan, Darfur, Indonesia, Iraq, Venezuela…or any number of dozens of other wobbly little countries….then they’d be so swamped mining scads of worthless information, they could never find out where we’re scoring our medical marijuana and/or obtaining our heedless, cosmetic thrill-abortions. Just a thought.

No, it’s not “Democracy” vs. “Petro-Authoritarianism” – although we still enjoy bullying the buhjeezus out of Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria, Russia and the Sudan….(note to Russia: quit bragging how much oil you have in your pocket, man ---you’re in a bad neighborhood, get me? If I were you I’d cover that shite with a wildlife reservation and drop some rare pandas on it, as quickly as possible. I hear China has two or three left…and quit saying you’re a superpower again. On second thought, find your own pandas, I don’t think it’s a very good idea for you and China to be hanging out together.)

And no, it’s not the NSA vs. USA Today, although it is pretty impressive when you think about the fact that Nixon only bugged the Democrats -- Bush II is bugging every single last freaking one of us. Thanks, technology! Thanks, telecom companies! And we thought you were only giving out all our private information to people who want to sell us home delivery of the New York Times and interest-only second mortgages.
Now I am going to be even less likely to support the telecomopolies in their sly, backdoor bid to privatize the entire internet through hyper-aggressive lobbying of their crony friends. Not that I’m not prepared to chain my naked body to my computer terminal and refuse to log off of My Space in protest, if that nasty little pork-blizzard goes through...

It’s definitely war between the White House and the intelligence community. Heads are rolling, and The Beltway is leaking classified dope like an old Buick radiator. I’m loving this whole Dusty Foggo stepdown -- the #3 guy at the CIA, hanging out at (gasp) poker parties with those bad, bad, generous defense contractors. Mercy. Shock, horror. Whoda thunkit.
Kind of like that old Kids in the Hall skit: Sure, Mr. Negroponte, we’ll collect the human intelligence (HUMINT) data to help spread democracy to those godless, sister-shooting Petrogoths. But first....the whores!

But that still isn’t what In Touch is talking about.

It’s not Fossil-fuels v. Hollywood, either, although George Clooney did appear in Vanity Fair driving his emission-free, electric Tango, and in the Star accompanying his dad at the SaveDarfur.org rally in Washington DC… George is out kicking some major policy-fanny, since none of the Democrats seem willing or able to do it. But he should be careful.
When all of our engines are converted to vegetable fuel, I envision a crazy, eco-conscious Mad Max world, in which convoys of 18 wheelers are all pulling up to the kitchen door of the same truck stops with assault rifles, demanding buckets of used corn oil from the hapless Guest Worker, trembling in his hairnet….George better stay thin enough to get back into his Batman suit, that’s all I’m saying. And speaking of artist/activists, shouldn’t the artist Christo be abandoning his Big Orange Flags Around Central Park-type stunts and concentrate on stopping global warming by wrapping the Antarctic in millions of those empty Coors cans that are supposed to stay cold by themselves? He could probably get half of the cans he needs just by following Kevin Federline around with a shopping cart for a few days.

“(K-Fed) just goes to the bank every morning, withdraws cash, and then drives around all day doing whatever,” says a pal to InTouch, obviously in admiration of Mr. Federline’s chronic lack of ambition. Note that Federline, a staunch American-way-of-lifer, drives whatever the hell he feels like driving. But I guess he can’t drive a car that runs on vegetable shortening since his wife has taken to eating it all. Hell, you could light up Vegas with all them Twinkies.

No, the real war on all our minds is: Heather Locklear vs. Denise Richards, now that Denise has run off with Richie Sambora, Bon Jovi guitarist and ex-Mr. Locklear. How could she, those of us living in Wysteria Lane are asking. That TRAMP. “HEATHER PLOTS HER REVENGE,” vows InTouch. All parties involved will soon be enjoying a pleasant boost of their otherwise sagging careers….but what’s our TomKat, Brangelina name for the new Richie-Richards sex merger? Denbora? Sounds like a Splenda-substitute….better than her last relationship, DeniSheen, which I used to bleach my teeth with this morning. Or for that matter, Ms. Locklear’s last relationship, Heathbora, the Malibu-based Palestinian terrorist organization.

And in another example of life imitating art imitating life imitating….wait….lost track…can’t tell which is which anymore…. InTouch reports that CSI star William Peterson was recently accosted by an angry, heckling fan who screamed “Why don’t you go to Aruba and find Natalee Holloway?!”
Silly girl. Doesn’t she know that Natalee is only a TV show?

Please, fiends, change the channel, and make Condoleezza go away. At least strand her on a desert island with Alexis Arquette or something. That would be fun.

Clearly, celebrities have a hard road in this world – the neck-lifts alone are frightening -- but I truly fear for their children. We must save the Hollywood babies.

Tom Cruise is has begun vocally denouncing his abusive, alcoholic father…apparently to turn the tide of tabloid opinion and make the public feel sorry for him, since there has been little support for “Cruise Control” since mate Katie Holmes has begun to resemble the psychological equivalent of a bonsai tree.

“So many times the big bully comes up, pushes me. Your heart’s pounding, you sweat and you feel like you are going to vomit. I don’t like bullies,” Tom is quote as saying in the Star.

I like Tom’s crafty use of the present-continuous tense – it’s more action-oriented, and gives you the spin that he’s still being beaten right now – and I also like his use of the second-person singular, so that you, the reader, feel like you too are presently being beat up by Tom’s dad…. even though said dad died alone and destitute in 1984.

Tom needs your sympathy and understanding right now.
“Maybe another pair of shoes will make me happy,” says Life & Style’s fake caption next to a picture of a hugely pregnant and clearly miserable Katie Holmes, pre-silent gag birth, shopping alone at Barney’s. “Katie who?” reads the fake caption next to Tom, photographed out on yet another marathon re-carpet appearance, dazzling the multitudes with his giant teeth while promoting his new movie.

“90% of readers polled say Katie is better off alone,” said Life & Style.

Tom, perchance, might be thinking the same thing – but he’ll be keeping the baby, thank you very much – full custody.
“(Tom) simply said flat-out that the baby would be his if they broke up,” said a source in the Star. “Katie’s trembling over what Tom has in mind for the pre-nup.”
This perhaps explains why he wants daughter Suri Cruise, aka the Second Coming of L. Ron, not to drink Katie’s tainted, inferior human breast milk, opting instead to feed his child the Scientologically approved but controversial baby formula of “barley water, milk and corn syrup.” This mixture will apparently give baby Suri all the nutrition she needs to offset eternal damnation, since Tom has also decided she will not be baptized.
Daddy knows best.

Pray also for Brangelina, who, despite the “FIGHTING, CRYING AND SWELTERING” they are constantly doing, according to the Star, have opted to have a “water birth” in Namibia, after a wedding ceremony performed entirely in the Bantu dialect. Security guards for the couple, according to the Star, were directed to “shrink-wrap” the entire Namibian hunting lodge they rented, for the occasion – a security measure so intense that it has excluded even views of the ocean -- reportedly the lodge’s best feature -- suggesting that Brad, like Caligula before him, has declared a cold war against enemy King Neptune.

The Globe describes the setting for the blessed event: “In a cell-like room with bare walls, [Angelina Jolie] will lower herself into a deep stone bathtub and work with gravity to ease the pain.” Which sounds pretty Spartan until you consider that at least she will be surrounded by African ladies chanting birth-mantras, and she will not require a rubber gag.

The Star kindly suggested some creative, celebrity-ready names for the couple’s baby, since there were rumors afoot that Brangie “is considering a native Namibian name for her child.” Two of the tabloid’s favorites: Ndahepuluka, meaning “I became richer,” and Kaunadodo, meaning “The world has no stairs.” I also like the name “Xochuascachitl” which sounds Mayan, but actually it’s a name I just made up that means “Likely to have drug problems.”

But we need to feel sorry for them.
“We’re getting tired of Brad and Angelina hijacking our lovely country,” the Star quotes one local Namibian as remarking. “They should go back to Hollywood and get on with the life they’ve made for themselves there.”

But feel sorriest for Sean Preston Federline, child of Britney. Young Sean Preston has been the subject of numerous tabloids speculating that he might have brain damage, since he has been prone to falling on his head and face numerous times in the last several weeks. The most dramatic of these falls involved a nanny/highchair mishap, which left young Federline with a hairline skull fracture and minor bloodclots. Presumably his future run-ins with the law will be blamed on this tragic occurrence .

All this begs the obvious question: which would be worse? Having a baby in complete silence, replete with rubber dental gag, and then surrendering it over to Tom Cruise….. or having a baby in a windowless cell in rural Africa? Or being repeatedly dropped on your head and face by Britney Spears? Or being named by Gwyneth Paltrow?

See….we need to do something. Maybe Bono can help.

Given the rash of recent cellphone beatings doled out by such high profile women-of-color as supermodel Naomi Campbell and congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.), there is a clear need for a product that can provide high-quality mobile telephone and text messaging service, and also cut heads back to the fat meat. I envision something sleek – like the Motorola Razor, but that weighs a solid four-and-a-half pounds, with brass-knuckle-style ergonomic finger-holes, for when fools need to step off. Security guards will think twice before following carriers of the SistaFone into the hair and makeup aisles of local drug and discount stores, particularly when they are accompanied by such trendy downloadable rings as “QUIT TOUCHING ME!” and “I SAID, QUIT F%$#*@ TOUCHING ME!”

Tom Cruise, according to OK! Magazine, has completely co-opted and now fully controls all functions in the mind of Katie Holmes. “ Tom’s controlling behavior is all-encompassing, and it’s leaving Katie with few decisions to make on her own.”
The Cruise household, OK reports, recently received a shipment of “Be Silent, and Make All Movements Slow and Understandable” posters in order to instruct all the people trying to be ultra silent during the birth of the hapless “TomKitten.”
“Understandable?” I don’t get it. Does that mean the silent birth is on, or off?

According to the Star, “In keeping with a Scientology silent birth, Tom is prepared to do whatever it takes to muffled Katie’s moans and groans during the delivery.” So Tom recently visited an orthodontist to have a special “personalized pacifier” -- read, “rubber muzzle” -- made for his quasi-bride, specially molded to her teeth, which is supposed to help her maintain a proper Scientological quiet while birthing. Awwww. That is so sweet. I wonder if she gets special molded leg- and wrist- cuffs too, just in case she is in any danger of being tempted to make non-understandable movements.

Katie, meanwhilst, is reportedly spending “up to 8 hours a day” at the Scientology Celebrity Centre -- insiders speculate this is because she is “resisting” something in the teaching, leading me to speculate that they’ve got her on a Katherine Wheel or a Lazy Susan or something.
I like how they spell it “Centre.” I wonder if they eat a lot of crème there, in which case it would be a crème-filled centre.

But it gets weirder. “One insider insists that Tom’s having Katie read Scientology literature to her baby bump every night before going to bed…Tom hopes the baby will be the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard.” Boo-yah! There we have it. The messiah cometh. No wonder the mother requires bondage.

I only hope the kid is able to live up to Daddy Cruise’s ambitions, because only L.Ron knows what kind of infernal restraint contraption he’ll stick it in if it doesn’t. If worse comes to worse, the whole family could show their devotion by all getting portrait tattoos of L.Ron Hubbard. They couldn’t be any worse than Tori Spelling’s fiancée Dean McDermott’s portrait tattoos of Tori Spelling.

“The first one he got was on his wrist, and it says ‘Truly, madly, deeply, Tori.’” Ms. Spelling told OK Magazine. “He added a second one that goes up to his elbow. It is the back of an angel, naked, with wings, because he calls me his angel. It looks like me because it has long blonde hair….The portrait is new. It’s a picture he took of me the night we got engaged.” Why do all portrait tattoos end up looking like Woody Allen?

But back to Tom Cruise. Rumors flew last week that Tom Cruise is trying to get Scientology to buy Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, which has fallen into abject disrepair. Giraffes wading around in mysterious pools of blood. “Apparently, now that the ranch is over 15 years old, [Michael] Jackson just isn’t interested in it anymore,” commented David Spade.

TomKat in Neverland – the snake has swallowed its own tail, fiends. I don’t know if Nostradamus predicted it, but it can’t be good.

Who knew Ambien was such a party in a bottle? Sleepdriving, sleepeating….you could take the car through the BK drive-thru and do both simultaneously...
This opens up so many possibilities. I have big plans for sleep-drinking, then sleep-dialing ex-boyfriends and hollering at them incoherently, sleeplifting top-dollar items from Prada, and finally sleep-killing-that-dog-across-the-street-who-never-stops-barking. And then I shall sleep-sue Big Pharma for the emotional distress my Ambien-related behavior has caused me.
But I am pitching a hot new Ambien-inspired video game: GRAND THEFT AUTO: SONAMBULANCE DRIVER.

Who knew that “Butcher of the Balkans” Slobodan Milosovic was the sweetest, most romantic guy ever?
Despite his predilection for offing hundreds of thousands of Bosnians, Croats and Serbs, Slobo apparently nursed a lifelong passion for his little wife, Mira. Before Milosovic’s trial in the Hague, they had apparently never been apart for more than a few hours since they first fell in love, in high-school.
“Alone and unloved,” quoth the WEEK of the lovers, who were both orphans, “they created their own world, a world that had little to do with reality – a pathological world.”
Milosovic apparently missed his wife so much that he became uninterested in his own defense at his trial, and took drugs to worsen his heart condition -- in the hopes that he would be sent back to Russia and reunited with the only woman on earth who ever really saw things his way.
That’s just adorable. Kind of Bonnie-and-Clyde meets Hitler-and-Eva, adapted from a Nicholas Sparks novel.
I smell a Lifetime Television docudrama. Slobo could stands outside of her onion-domed turret window and serenade her by holding a gun to the head of a blindfolded, balaclava-strumming Bosnian, sort of like Johnny Cusack in “Say Anything” but way more deserving of a supersize, Soviet-heyday-style bronze victory statue.
Poor Slobo. He was depressed.

And speaking of depression, Isaac Hayes must be kinda bummed out that the Scientologists decided he wanted to quit his South Park job, and allegedly did it for him while he was incapacitated from a stroke. Maybe Chef actually quit himself, but maybe it doesn’t count, because he was sleepquitting and accidentally sleepotaged his career.

And speaking of the South Park Super Adventure Club, Mr. and Mrs. Tom Cruise apparently are already married, according to the Enquirer, but they won’t tell the rest of the world because it’s a secret. Because they’re in the Extra Special Holy Person club and you’re not. You’re too polluted with body thetans to understand, so don’t even try.
They did it on a yacht, with nobody in attendance save for obese Jenny Craig spokesperson Kirsty Alley, pilot-drag-loving John Travolta, and Katie Holmes’ omnipresent Scientology “handler”-barnacle, Jessica Rodriguez, who, I guess, needed to observe with unsmiling super-scrutiny that Katie made no disruptive sounds during the wedding-night ritual. Sayeth the Enquirer, re: the Cruise-cruise:
“They exchanged rings which had engraved triangles inside them. Scientologists call it the ARC triangle, for Affinity, Reality and Communication.” These spiritual super-pioneers have eliminated the need for Love and Honor -- and bully for them, I say. As for Reality, it’s good that they’re finally trying to work towards it.
Still, it’s not as romantic as Slobo and Mira.
They created their own world, a world that had little to do with reality – a pathological world…

There is hope for those of us who can’t afford to be Scientologists: According to the Enquirer, there is “new hope for 10 million Americans who suffer from chronic depression and do not respond to medication” or other therapies. The new “Vagal Nerve Stimulator” implant, inserted in the chest like a pacemaker, delivers “mild electrical pulses” to the vagus nerve, which connects to the mood-part of the brain and could soon make people happy all the time….

…Though perhaps not so happy as the “vomiting religion,” otherwise known as the Amazonian shamanic ritual drinking of ayahuasca. According to an essay in the WEEK by Kira Salak, ayahuasca, which is made from a carefully concocted array of plants and contains a mind-smearing amount of DMT, was studied by a professor of psychiatry from UCLA and discovered to give users “a greater sensitivity to serotonin…by increasing the number of serotonin receptors on nerve cells.” Ayahuasca, the article goes on to say, creates a state of altered consciousness profound enough to lead to “temporary ego disintegration,” which led the writer to experience an “exorcism”: “On and on it goes. The screaming, the wailing. My body shakes wildly; I see a great serpent emerging from my body….after what seems like an infinite battle of wills, the creature leaves me. I grab the vomit bucket and puke for several minutes.”

Afterwards, Ms. Salak goes on to say, “I woke to discover that the severe depression that had ruled my life since childhood had miraculously vanished.”

And she didn’t even need to hang out with Jessica Rodriguez!

At the moment, I can’t take any responsibility for this column, because I am sleepwriting.

Night-night, Fiends.

For LOVE, sayeth the Globe. He was protecting the OTHER WOMAN in his life.

Bloggers (and the Globe) are wildly theorizing that Cheney was having a “STEAMY AFFAIR” with Ms. Pamela Pitzer Willeford, a big booster for Bush/Cheney back in the campaigning days, who, as a reward for her exceptional fund raising (and more….tender antics, perchance?) was given the coveted ambassadorship to Switzerland. Word in the gutter has it that Cheney’s Swiss Miss…missed, while shooting ducks, and shot the lawyer instead, and Cheney ‘took the bullet’ for her because it would have looked better for him to have shot the guy than for his mistress to have dunnit.

Juicy.

But I have to say, appealing as it is, as gossip, it doesn’t really make any sense, because in order for there to be another woman in Cheney’s life, he’d have to have enough human blood pumping through his implanted heart-defibrillator to engorge specific parts of his body that he probably hasn’t even seen in seven or eight years.

Besides, Pamela Pitzer Willeford is a frosty old Texas matron who has that Sandra Dee-Day O’Connor look, like she wears those big nylon over-the-navel panties, and you gotta figure that if Swingin’ Dick Cheney ever really stepped out for some Strange, it would probably be with a great big, powerful, ballbreaking sexpot like Chynna, the wrestler, or maybe Dennis Rodman.

But it’s a nice thought, and nearly humanizing of Vice…. but we have to remember that the only time the press ever connected the words “Love” and “Cheney” in a sentence were in connection with the time he accidentally shot someone in the face.

And speaking of that kind of love, Jennifer Aniston is spitting and spraying black jets of hate at my friend Nancy, her ex-roommate, because Nancy did an innocent, truthful, funny little piece about someone she called “Jane” at a reading in New York last week.
Aniston called Nancy “mean-spirited” and “opportunistic,” which was totally unfair, because the piece was mainly about how “Jane” gave Nancy all these wicked beauty tips – like, serious hermetic Secrets of Being Attractive that only a gold-digging shrew like Jennifer Aniston’s mom could ever be seriously expert at:

1. Ice nipples before acting auditions.
2. Make sure bangs are not frizzing and always, always blow dry.
3. Stuff bra at all costs with anything available including chicken cutlets (?!) from Food Emporium (which are apparently breast-shaped, being made of breast-like objects and who cares how you smell after the audition).
4. Be nice and friendly and happy and f***able and don’t be an angry person.

I mean, this is all actually good advice. Every aspiring actress should have a helpful, backstabbing, attention-sucking, blow-up girlfriend like “Jane” in their lives, to tell them the powerfully manipulative secrets of cuteness. She was right, that was the main thing. That is how you get famous. Oh, and dump all your old friends really brutally once you get successful. Duh.

Aniston will, no doubt, be glad to know that there is a special, new, dangerous mutant chicken she can stuff her cutlets with. According to the WEEK, these chickens, due to a mutation of the talpid2 gene -- which was meddled-with by German scientists -- are growing “alligator-like teeth.” 70 million years of evolution reversed! Mammaria Dentata! Now THERE’s a whole new Freudian problem to unleash on society. Leave it to the Germans.

And speaking of Freudian problems, Aicha El-Wafi is quoted in TIME as saying, “This is no longer my son,” re: Zacarias Moussaoui, her son, after he shouted during his trial, “God curse America! Bless Osama bin Laden!”

Which is so typical of the narcissistic mother and/or Jennifer Aniston – tote my beliefs or you’re on your own, kid. To quote the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire (which is not the official airline of the Islamic Jihad movement – in fact, I bet if Will Smith were ever in prison, they’d probably make him join either Cosa Nostra or Aryan Nation, just for being too ‘jiggy’….), Parents just don’t understand. Let’s hope there’s enough light in the hole they put Moussauoi in for the rest of his life for him to read “Drama of the Gifted Child.”
Maybe his mom was just trying to make nice with the Department of Homeland Security, but still. What about Moussaoui’s needs? What teenager hasn’t grown up to kill over 3,000 people in one way or another?

Tina Fey said it best: “The FDA has approved the first ever transdermal patch for the treatment of depression. Simply remove the backing and press the patch firmly over your mother’s mouth.”

Here here, Tina. If you can’t trash Mom, who can you trash.

OK, Jennifer Aniston. But still.

“I am the Jesus Christ of politics,” sayeth the supreme and majestic Lamb of God better known as Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berluscioni, according to TIME. The Holiest Prime Minister has also described himself as a “martyr for his nation” and compared himself to Napoleon and Winston Churchill recently, as he is up for re-election soon.

I think it is absolutely GREAT that Jesus has returned, and he went right to the Vatican-area, and skipped Jerusalem altogether. Ciao, Temple-on-the-Mount. Scusi.

I think that “Left Behind Games”- CEO Troy Lyndon should turn Silvio into a kick-ass Christian video game, like he did for Tim LaHaye’s “Left Behind” series. The game, “Left Behind: Eternal Forces,” features, according to TIME, “a level of violence reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto. The game revolves around New Yorkers who are ‘left behind’ after the Rapture.”

And you know it’s going to get ugly, because when the Rapture hits and the Saved start ascending bodily into heaven, you know that I and a whole lot of my fellow snarky, left-behind New Yorkers are just going to regard them as skeet.

This is pretty much the level of violence to be expected from the “Eternal Forces” game, which CEO Lyndon has aimed at those who “didn’t mind the gore in The Passion of the Christ….megachurches are very likely to embrace this game.”

Jesus Christ is coming back to NYC and boy, is he awesomely pissed!

You talketh to me? Huh? You talketh to me, ye punk?You must be talketh-ing to me, because I don’t see anyone else standeth-ing around here.

And then Silvio Berluscioni produces a large sawed-off shotgun from his holy robe and blammo.

Too bad Jesus couldn’t save the Winter Olympics from sucking this year. They sucked so hard, in fact, that wrist-slashingly talentless but extremely beautiful Padma Lakshmi, the “actress” and “writer” (read: “model” and “decades-younger wife of Salman Rushdie”) graces the cover of Newsweek (instead of, say, a victorious Sasha Cohen) -- as their image chosen for “THE NEW INDIA” – but I suspect it’s because Newsweek was really just scrambling around for something Fareed Zakaria could write about that might make him momentarily stop bitch-slapping the Administration. In any case, Padma’s cover definitely sends the positive message to Indian ladies everywhere: “Hey, Indian ladies! Bully for your up-and-coming homeland, and we are pleased to announce that now that most people are off-brown…. you’re hot too! Just make sure you look exceptionally sexy and marry really well, preferably someone a lot older than you who is perhaps famous. Go easy on the ghee.”

And speaking of wrist-slashingly talentless models: according to the Globe, Tyra Banks “has recurring dreams since the age of 12 of whales and dolphins bumping into her legs while she is in a pool – causing Tyra to have a fear of fish in real life.”

The Globe’s special dream analyst, Quinn Loewenberg, explained that the whales and dolphins symbolize Tyra’s “creative ideas,” which is enough to give me a lifelong fear of fish. I mean ideas. I mean Tyra Banks. Let’s face it: Tyra Banks probably wouldn’t know a good idea if it bashed into her legs, but if she had one, I’d be afraid of it.

I far preferred Madonna’s recurring dream in the same article. Madonna “reportedly has dreams of being harassed by a knife-wielding dwarf.” I don’t think it means anything psychological: I think she should beware of dwarves. Let’s face it, we all should. As an Italian-American, I think she ought to light some candles and pray to Silvio Berluscioni for protection.

And that’s la trash, mio fiendos.

Charlie Sheen, for example, feels completely entitled to a steady diet of hookers, despite efforts to fix his marriage. Dick Cheney seems to have a kooky yen for inflicting gunshot wounds. Cher’s appetite for face-lifts has given her face unnatural creases, like her head was placed in the refrigerator to congeal and now bears the contours of the saran wrap that covered it. The list goes on and on.

Enquirer readers feel a gnawing desire for dead blondes – they can’t get enough Natalee footage now, much as they once craved bad news about Elizabeth Smart or re-hashings of tragic JonBenet. They also like suicidal blondes, in the form of deeply unflattering photos of Courtney Love or Tara Reid, because they are altogether too screwed-up, according to the dictates of the mass cultural psyche, to be famous. Courtney and Tara therefore fulfill the important role of being our societal whipping-blondes, so that all Enquirer readers can feel superior to them, while still being morbidly obese.

Karen Hughes, the cobra-like Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, has an insatiable need for spin ( a show of hands: how many Dregulator readers know that “Propaganda” was officially renamed “Public Diplomacy” in the 1950’s, to avoid the hefty stink of Soviet-style PR-cleansing?[parenthetical within parenthetical: See what a late-night addiction to Googling Under the Influence will get you, besides arrested?]). Hughes told TIME some interesting things, while on their “10 Questions” hot-seat, especially concerning her being widely hated by Saudi women, during her Middle East tour last year:

“When I was in Saudi Arabia, women there kept saying, ‘Your media said this, your media said that.’ I finally realized they were talking about an Oprah Winfrey show about domestic violence in Saudi Arabia. Because they don’t understand the independence of our media, they thought I put Oprah Winfrey up to that.”

Let us admire and praise how Karen Hughes artfully and strategically positions herself , in this statement, as somehow miraculously capable of sculpting Oprah’s opinion, in anyone’s opinion, while also somehow simultaneously blaming her lack of popularity on Oprah. One must admire the evil brilliance of this Hamill-Camel of a spin. (Karen Hughes was actually put up to that preposterous statement by The Dregulator, for our own amusement. Thanks, K-Hugs.)

The NRA is addicted to protecting your right to shoot your co-workers. According to TIME, the NRA has encountering a little trouble from Big Business while trying to get an innocent law passed in Florida, which would guarantee your right to take your gun to work – even though, technically, you would have to leave the gun in your car, where it’s perfectly safe. “Uncooperative employers would be hit with felony charges.” Now, when it’s illegal to prevent your employees from having guns on your own company premises, you know you’ve got Freedom, American-style. Would John Wayne prevent people from having guns in their glove compartments, if he ran a Miami parking garage? I don’t think so. It would be un-American, and the Commie pinko so-and-so’s who resent murderous employee resentment should invest in a little Kevlar or face prison time. End of story. I like it. It smells like….victory. Or maybe long-pig, the cannibal-pork. Or maybe….chicken.

And lastly, a word of hope from former Comedy Central superstar Dave Chapelle, who is quoted in Newsweek explaining why he walked out of his $50m contract:

“I felt like some kind of prostitute or something.”

My Fiends, if self-professed ex-cooz-hound Dave Chapelle can swear off ho’s, then so can you. His higher power was Allah, and bully for him.

Just don’t get a bomb in your bonnet, like that pesky cartoon. At least until the NRA makes it legal.

Paris Hilton has apparently been leaving her territorial mark anywhere she feels like it – just because she feels like it, and she can do anything she wants to — so there. The New York Post reported in October, that Paris had “an accident” in the corridor of a Las Vegas hotel. Mike Walker of the Enquirer wrote that a couple of weeks ago, Maui cab driver Harden Jamison picked Miss Pis up late one night with Greek man-o-kopeta Stavros Niarchos. While he drove, Jamison claims, the heiress hiked up her blue satin dress and relieved herself in his back seat. Jamison had the good fortune to serendipitously run into Paris the next night, and he confronted her. She whined outraged denials. Jamison reportedly screamed, “I kept the towel….I’VE GOT THE DNA!” One of her entourage tried to buy him off for $200.

Fiends, I heard from a friend of mine who knows these things that Paris pulls them down and goes wherever she likes regularly….like, in restaurant booths…because she’s that awesomely contemptuous of silly little rules laid down for boring, ordinary people. “I’m peeing now,” she allegedly says, with a bored expression, making a golden puddle magically appear under your table. I think it’s fabulous, like when rich people used to ride their horses through medieval villages and bash peasants in the head with polo mallets, for fun. Come on, when you’re that rich and that drunk, it’s just fun to regard everyone else as your personal whipping-underclass. I can’t wait to see what Paris does next. I’m thinking of sending her biographies of Caligula and Idi Amin just to see if their whimsical despotism can inspire her to genocide or something. I at least hope that she and Prince Harry go out in Nazi uniforms together some night and wet themselves all over town, then make a nice porn film in St. Paul’s Cathedral with Harry playing the Archbishop of Canterbury.

And the moral of the story is, never let a celebrity heiress sit on your good couch, unless you lay down newspaper first.

The WEEK reported that Sir Bob Geldof’s daughter, Peaches Honeyblossom Geldof – “sister to Fifi Trixibelle, Pixie, and Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lilly” issued a public plea to celebrity parents not to give their children heartbreakingly stupid, teacup Shi-Tzu names like hers, and those belonging to her siblings. Her unusually dimwitted name, said Peaches Honeyblossom, “has haunted me all my life.” Moon Unit Zappa had it easy, particularly when you consider that Apple Coldplay’s little brother is supposedly being named Capone…Britney’s baby Sean Preston got off scott free, name-wise, but recent pictures in the Enquirer reveal a different kind of tragic celebrity baby handicap: the youngest Federline, sadly, is…quite unattractive. He’s one of those bulldog-faced infants that looks like he was born under an anvil. He looks like an undercooked version of Paul Sorvino with a Hitler haircut. A scowling little bruiser who probably has a birthmark in the shape of the Coors logo. That would at least guarantee that his father paid some attention to him, at least until Kevin got frustrated trying to pop his top off with a house key.

And speaking of celebrities and their problems with names, Michael Jackson is changing his, according to the Enquirer….to Muhammad. Yes, I said Muhammad.
“Michael feels Islam is the answer to all of his problems,” revealed an insider, when speaking of Michael’s recent conversion and trip to Mecca.

Michael ought to be careful. In Mecca, if he wears those particle masks like he wears sometimes, he could be mistaken for a cross-dresser.

Does this mean that his two children, Prince Michael Jackson I and Prince Michael Jackson II are going to have to change their names to Muhammed II and Muhammed III?
The good news is, at least Michael’s daughter Paris is already trained to live under a veil. We can only pray that she is also housebroken, unlike some other famous people named after French cities we know.

But I am frightened by this turn of events. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time until Michael straps on a bunch of C4 and drives his tricycle into the American Embassy in Bahrain. After all, we done him wrong. That’s one terrorist America could never claim it didn’t breed.

And that’s the trash, Mein Fiends. Oy!