Did I misspeak? No, moron, you L-I-E-D.

It's Friday, and I'm too lazy for a proper post. Mea culpa. Instead....we can watch someone embarrass herself (itself?) Ohhhhh how I love karma. Watch Senator Clinton's bravery under fire....snort, snort. This is just what American needs, right? More lying leaders! Woohoo!

TSA = T&A?

Today I am going to dive into the deep well that constitutes my own personal reservoir of WTH moments. While researching flight options for my latest business trip, I took a moment to reflect on the joys of air travel. Growing up overseas, I was used to flying on planes even before I could walk. Big planes, little planes, well-constructed planes, malfunctioning planes - you name it, I've flown on it. I've flown over hurricanes (not fun), on flights where some of the plane's engines failed (thank you, China Air, for another memorable experience), and on planes where the food they serve rivals the food whipped up by the likes of Wolfgang Puck....merci beaucoup, SingaporeAir first class cabin.

But I digress. Many people have a fear of flying, but for me the biggest hassle is just getting on my flight. (My three day honeymoon spent waiting on the cold floor of JFK Int'l in New York last summer - sans luggage, of course - only reinforced this little truism.) But of all the weird things that have happened to me in airports, I think this one might take the cake. (And, no, I am not the woman from this article....I have more taste, at least.)

It was just after 9/11 when airport security was ramped up to absurd levels. I was flying back from Berlin, through Detroit, and I had to re-enter a metal detector (even though I'd just been on a plane for the past 9 hours and had never left the confines of the airport - good thinking, guys). My carry-on bags scanned fine, but when I walked through the metal detectors, they went haywire. The TSA agent, a friendly and (bless her) infinitely patient Southern woman of perhaps 55, made me remove my shoes, belt, jewelry, jacket, ad nauseum, and still we could not figure out the source of the beeping.

By this point, airport security is examining me with newfound interest, and they're getting ready to pull me off to one of these creepy little rooms....visions of strip searches danced unpleasantly through my head. The woman is now patting me down, as I stand there in jeans and a tank top, trying not to look concerned, while a crowd of gawkers (and pissed off travelers, I suppose) amassed to check our the Terror Suspect du jour. Finally, the woman's face lights up, and in a very relieved - and very loud - voice that showcases her definitely-not-from-Detroit Southern accent, she exclaims, "Good Lord, Heaven of Mercy, Chile', it's your bra!!!"

Oops. I survived my mortification long enough to unhook my bustier so it could be put through the x-ray machine....but an indelible lesson was left with me that day. Do not, my dear ladies, wear underwire bras on planes. It is a recipe for embarrassment, at best, and at worst, you could end up on one of the Homeland Security Department's endless list of Terror Suspects. Right along with, ya know, Cat Stevens.

Illiteracy is alive & well, kiddies

The below news article, captured in all its idiocy for posterity, made me go utterly apoplectic with rage when I read it. Take a look and I'm guessing you can tell me why (and it has nothing to do with the content of the article....):


MSNBC - what were you thinking!?!? Have you ever heard of a copy editor? A proofreader? How about hiring journalists that understand the basic grammatical rules of English? Let me settle this duh-bate once and for all:

ORIENTATE is NOT A WORD!!!!!

The word is orient, as in, position something or gain one's bearings. O-r-i-e-n-t. Like what they used to call China, ya know? Not orientate. It's not a word - or at least, not a word in acceptable standard usage of English grammar. It's bad enough that it appears in the text of the article (as a quote, which could at least be chalked up to the incompetence of the interview subject....although you'd think a kind copy editor would at least correct this mistake). But they actually use it as a boldfaced headline!!?? What the hella??? GAH! Not even an altruistic dolphin can save us from the slow and steady erosion of the English language.....

This is just embarrassing.

Wow. How pathetic can you be? Apparently humanity's potential for suckdom has hit (quite literally, in fact) new lows. A New York businessman has apparently filed a lawsuit against a stripper who supposedly gave him "serious injuries" sustained during her lap dance.

Incredible. First, my take on the matter is.....you live by the sword (or in the case, perhaps "pole" would be the more appropriate term), you die by the sword. You pay for a lap dance, you suck it up when her stripper shoe hits you in the eye.....right? Apparently not. Instead, our asshat du jour Stephen Chang files suit. I have to ask....where is your sense of shame, Mr. Chang??? You are a securities trader. You can afford to be a member of an exotic dance club that is the self-described "Playboy Mansion of Manhattan party lofts" (excuse me while I grab my smelling salts and swoon with excitement). The court fees and retainer for your attorney alone will far exceed whatever damages you win - if you win, and who better to sway a jury (or a judge!) than a stripper, folks? - from someone who has to make her living dancing on a pole and in ugly men's laps.

My only guess is that Mr. Chang was a securities trader at the venerable financial institution Bear Stearns, and he thinks his only guaranteed source of income after this week is to abase himself by whoring himself out to someone in a more fortunate financial position than he is in.....kind of like a stripper does, come to think of it. Oh, karma is such a bitch.

It can always get worse

Sorry for my French leave.....I've been living in a WTH delirium as of late, thanks to the dumbass that ran a stop sign and wrecked my beloved car on the way to work on Monday. I'm more or less okay - (the more or less depends on how many pills I've taken to address the ouchiness of my back/neck/spine/ribs) - but I suspect the real headache is just beginning.....insurance and the like.

Anyhow, this story cheered me up....sort of. More to the point, it reminded me that no matter how unpleasant things can get, they can always get worse. Case in point: this woman in Kansas has been sitting on a toilet seat for two years. No, that is not a typo. After 1 year and 11 months, her boyfriend calls the sheriff to report that "something is wrong with his girlfriend." Ya think!!?? Um, she had been there for so long that her skin had grown into the plastic seat. (This, in a yucky but funny way, reminds me of the iconic tongue on flagpole scene in the holiday classic A Christmas Story...)

When the po-po arrived, the woman insisted "that she was OK and didn't want to leave" - if your definition of OK includes having atrophied leg muscles, mental disorientation, open sores on your ass, and a toilet seat stuck to your posterior, then I suppose she was right as rain. Luckily for Kansas (a state that loves to teach creationism in public schools....go figure), the wisdom of the police prevailed and the unfortunate woman was whisked away to the hospital, toilet seat still hanging from her derrière.

Now the sheriff is recommending that this woman's boyfriend be charged, although it isn't exactly clear to me what statute would apply here. The boyfriend insists that he tried to cajole her out of the bathroom each and every day, and her reply was always, "Maybe tomorrow." (Paging Scarlett O'Hara...)

The most disturbing part of this case - aside from the obvious - is the comments made by some of the citizenry. "She obviously wasn't keeping herself up," the sheriff notes with stunning insight. But the creepiest comment of all comes from a long-time acquaintance of Toilet Woman. "It really doesn't surprise me," her friend Ellis says. Uh.....um......I may be jaded, but not that jaded, because this story rates pretty damn highly on my what-the-hella-meter.

Asshat of the Week Award

I've always thought that golf was kind of boring (except when Tiger Woods plays, mostly because he's pretty foxy). However, I would prefer boring to morally depraved any day of the week. That's why, the Asshat Award goes to Mr. Tripp Isenhour (an asshat name if e'er I've heard one).

This PGA pro golfer got annoyed while filming a golf show [insert zzzzz here] by a hawk that was, apparently, commenting on his golf game. Its squawking, he alleges, upset his swing, so he commenced hitting balls at it where it sat in a tree 300 yards away. Now, let me note, this would be dumb enough if it was a live tournament or something, with no do-overs. But this was being filmed for a tv show....all they had to do was roll tape again, no harm, no foul. But apparently it's more fun to hit birds with golfballs.

When the hawk flew closer (wanting revenge? I know I would), the golfer remarked, "I'll get him now!" and, a few shots later, hit the hawk in the head, where it fell to the ground, bleeding out of both nostrils. It died shortly thereafter. How people can take pleasure or amusement by tormenting animals always puzzles me, but this is especially ass. In his defense, the awkwardly named Tripp says, "There was no deliberate intent to hit the hawk. I was merely trying to scare it into flying away." Let me get this straight. For a living, your job is to aim small white balls at small targets hundreds of yards away. You're apparently good enough at this to do it as a day job. And I'm supposed to believe that you don't think you're capable of hitting a larger target from well under driving range distance? Either you have serious self image problems (I would too with a name like Tripp) or you're a lying rat. Let me guess which I believe....

No bad deed goes unrewarded, though, and in addition to getting his bitch self fined, I think that - in his case - revenge will look something like this:

Sort of like Russian stacking dolls ...

What. The. Hella. ??? If you knew a gigantic snake was stalking your wee yippy little creature, wouldn't you think to - oh, I don't know - supervise your Chihuahua mix? Especially if you knew the snake had been stalking your dog for several frickin' days??!

Now, I am intimately acquainted with animals that digest strange objects. I joke that my beast of a Sheltie, Pushkin, is the $10,000 Dog - because the intestinal surgery that he had to have following ingesting a small piece of plastic while at a boarding kennel cost precisely that much. A few weeks ago, when I turned my back on him for 20 seconds (literally), he swallowed 2 socks and had to go to the vet to barf them up. Just....swallowed them, no chewing, no shredding. So the whole "animals eating weird stuff" phenomenon is nothing new to me. But WTH....if you knew your pup was being stalked by a predatory snake, wouldn't you take some precautions??

As a side note, I'm glad the snake wasn't killed and is being re-released into the bush (presumably away from domestic pets....) It isn't the damn snake's fault that Fido went down the hatch - it's rotten luck or, more likely, poor supervision of one's pets.

It ain't what ya do ....

I don't think I even need to explain this., which was brought to my attention elsewhere and is too good not to highlight here. It's both funny and self-evidently what the hella fodder. I know my fellow equestrians will get why this is so bad, but my inkling is that even those of you WTH fans who have never so much as sat on a carousel horse - let alone ridden in jumpers shows - can see that this is not the way good riding looks. Also, extra points for the music.

More later. I may have a WTH moment to share with the greater world this afternoon, Christ knows.