Today I donated blood. The nurse took one look at my arm and said “Wow! You’ve got a great vein!”

I don’t know if it was the blood-loss or the flattery that made me so light-headed.

Speaking of Amazon …

Xerox is in trouble. Why? Because they overstated their profits. Worldcom is aflame. Why? Because they overstated their profits. Enron is pretty much a memory. Why? Because they overstated their profits.

Hey Amazon.com! I got your newest ad campaign right here!

Who Can You Trust? Enron? Tyco? ImClone? WorldCom? Xerox? No. Honestly reporting our lack of profits Since 1994.

I’m not kidding, guys. This is the sort of edgy, willing-to-laugh-at-ourselves campaign that you used to employ all the time back when you could be legitimately called a “start-up.” Furthermore, you have taken way more than your share of flack for bravely telling shareholders about about your continual lack of profitability. Why not use this as an opportunity to subtly dig at your critics by saying “We’ve said all along that building a business takes time and a willingness to forgo immediate profits for longterm stability. And while hearing the truth about our debt might be unpleasant, it sure beats the alternative.”

If you incorporate this idea into a multi-billion dollar ad campaign, I expect a free hat.

Humorist John Moe has made over 70 lists for Amazon.com. Some favorites: Pronoun-palooza, Kitchen Items That Sound Like Bands, What?! Huh?! WHAT?!, Music To Repel Chicks, What My Son Looked Like When Was A Newborn, Books I Say I’ve Read But Haven’t, Bob Dole & Motorhead, and Pasty, Mopey British People.

defective yeti’s Music News You Can Use!: The number one single in America right now is the smash hit “Hot In Herre”! (Listen to a clip.) The chorus goes:

Male: Its gettin’ hot in here
(so hot)
So take off all your clothes
Female: I am gettin’ so hot, I wanna take my clothes off!
Male: Its gettin’ hot in here
(so hot)
So take off all your clothes
Female: I am gettin’ so hot, I wanna take my clothes off!

Recognize that voice? You should: the lead male vocalist is Vice President Dick Cheney, singing here with EPA Administrator Christie Whitman! At long last the truth about Cheney’s seclusion has been revealed, as the first single from his forthcoming CD “Life of Vice” has been released to the public. Each song, according to the liner notes “will emphasize to American youth the positive elements of our administration’s policy.” The release of “Hot in Herre,” for example, was timed to coincide with America’s announcement that the greenhouse effect does, in fact, exist. And, as Cheney put it in a recent MTV interview, “The more people gettin’ hot, the more people takin’ off der clothes! Iss dat simple.” The second single “Mo Money 4 Me (And Nuthin 4 The Man),” a R&B duet with Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Niell calling for further tax cuts, will be released in early July and is expected to debut at #1.

CNN is renowned for it’s ability to cram a bunch of different images into a single graphic, but they have outdone themselves with this one. Who else could get a pair of breasts into a story about a failed long-distance provider?

Today a federal appeals court ruled that the Pledge of Allegiance is an unconstitutional “endorsement of religion”. Conservative members of the House of Representatives, predictably, rushed outside, queued up in front of the tv cameras, and recited the pledge of allegiance.

I don’t like how, when confronted with a court ruling they disagree with, right-wing congressmen go on television and do the very thing that the courts just outlawed. I thought this practice was in especially poor taste earlier this week when the Supreme Court prohibited the execution of the mentally retarded.

Test Your ULQ Urban Legends Quotient

It’s a little unsettling how many of the “Urban Legends” listed on the Snopes New Addition page are actually true. So here’s a little quiz I just whipped up. For each of the “Urban Legends” listed below, choose either true or false. All links open in a new browser window.

Claim	True	False
1. Starbucks recalled this promotional ad because some customers complained it was too reminiscent of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
2. During a recent MTV appearance, singer Shakira said she’d “rather have pigs listening to her music than Israelis”.
3. In an effort to protect viewers from so-called “inappropriate material,” the ABC television network bleeped out the name “Jesus” from its daytime program “The View”.
4. You can look up anyone’s driver’s license or police records for free on the Internet.
5. Home Depot is refusing to do business with the US Government.
6. This image will be on a new 9/11 commemorative stamp to be issued by the U.S. Postal Service.
7. Coca-cola as announced that it will be donating four days’ worth of income to Israel.
8. This is an actual, unaltered photo of a bear shot in Alaska.
9. Abercrombie & Fitch had a line of shirts with Asian caricatures and slogans such as Wok & Bowl and Wong Brother’s Laundry: Two Wongs Can Make It White.
10. An upcoming film from director Steven Spielberg will document the current uprising in the West Bank from a pro-Palestinian point of view.

(Rewind is a National Public Radio sketch comedy show, and I was on it last weekend doing the “Loaded From the Get-Go” bit below. The broadcast, in RealAudio format, is available on this page. I appear about 45 minutes into the show, and talk entirely too fast.)

Your wedding is fast approaching, and the expenses are piling up. Your dress cost a fortune, the flowers are expensive, and the catering — you don’t even want to talk about the catering!  With your checking account dwindling and your Visa bill skyrocketing, it looks like you’re new life together will be one of debt.   And, worse of all, you probably haven’t even considered one of the biggest wedding expenses of all, the one the brings most American newlyweds to the brink of penury.   I’m talking, of course, about the staggering cost of getting one of your  wedding guests drunk so he can make a fool of himself at the reception.

Hi, I’m Matthew Baldwin, founder and CEO of “Loaded From the Get-Go”.  The modern US wedding  incorporates elements from dozens of other cultures, but the one, distinctive, All-American tradition is that of some guest getting really, really drunk and making a complete fool of himself at the reception.  The  problem, of course, is that no one knows in advance who the drunken fool will be — it’s not a job that any of your friends or family covet, but a task that many will gladly undertake if that’s what’s needed to give  you that “perfect” wedding.  So your reception guests drink themselves to the edge of intoxication, all waiting for someone else to step up to the plate, each willing to do so if no one else rises to the challenge.   And although someone will eventually take the plunge and allow the rest of the guests to relax (knowing at last that all the wedding rituals have been performed),  just think of all the money that’s wasted as dozens of guests consume glass after expensive glass of pricey liquor, all to ensure that someone shoulders the burden.

That’s a cost you don’t have to pay.  When you hire me, Matthew Baldwin, I come to your reception already loaded, and begin making a fool of myself even before the bride and groom arrive.  Just lookat all the benefits Loaded From the Get-Go offers:

• The foreknowledge that you’ll have a guaranteed, professional drunken fool takes the pressure off your other guests.  You don’t even have to serve alcohol — a savings of  hundreds of dollars!
• I get drunk on nothing but the cheapest of domestic malt liquors — and pass the savings on to you!
• Not knowing the guests in advance and secure in the knowledge that I will never see them again, I have no inhibitions about what I say, what I do, or whom I make passes at!
• I bring my own poorly concealed “strategic reserve” of red wine to ensure that I am fully loaded at all times and all the way to the end of the reception. No premature sobriety and weepy apologies here!
• I will pass out in the restroom after last guest has left, sparing you the needless worry about my driving home drunk.

Best of all, I come equipped with a full repertoire of drunken antics I can perform upon request, from knocking over the wedding cake, to making long, incoherent toasts, to insisting the band play backup while I slur my way through “House of the Rising Sun”.  All my drunken shenanigans are guaranteed to generate colorful stories that your guests will tell and retell for years.  And isn’t that what you’re wedding is really about, the memories?

Call, or visit my website at loadedfromthegetgo.com.  Free estimates, references upon request.

“Loaded From the Get-Go:  Make Your Wedding Inebri-great!”

Terror Warning System Converts to Summer Colors Today

Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge announced today that the "Terror Warning System" he unveiled in March would be converting to summer colors today. "Preparedness is never out of season," Ridge told the joint session of congress, "and that as why we will be tailoring our schema for the upcoming months." In the following Power Point presentation, Ridge revealed that Green will be replaced with "Mint," Blue will become "Cornflower," Orange will make way for "Putty," and Red, the highest level of threat, will henceforth be "Brick". The conversion is estimated to cost $47 million, and is expected to be every bit as comically useless as the old system. Ridge reassured the nation that, despite the recent fears of a July 4th attack, "we remain on Maize Alert."

Hi! Well, as you probably noticed I haven’t updated my blog in a few weeks, and I’m totally sorry cause I know that when you come here every day you expect to see updates on how I’m doing and what’s up with me and that girl from the Expresso stand and how my pet snake is doing and stuff, but I’ve been REALLy busy the last few weeks that’s why I haven’t been updating as much as I shoudld. Work has been a total drag — I’m SO backed up right now — and I’ve been playing a LOT of “Grand Theft Auto III” so I haven’t really had time to work on my blog. And then i was going to post something last Sunday, but, like, 20 minutes before i sat down at my computer all the power in my house went out. I checked the fuses and it wasn’t that, so I went down into the crawl space under the house and found that our power line had been completely chewed through and there was this fried, dead rat right next to it (it smelled AWFUL!) but it was huge and had a face like a person and instead of paws in had tiny hands. and then i saw another one go into a hole at the end of the crawl space so i checked that out, and through the hole i could see a small room, so I cleared away the dirt and found a trap door and whent down into the room. It was like a libary, with all these voodoo books with titles like De Vermis Mysteriis and The King in Yellow and stuff, and when i took this one big black book off the shelf the whole bookcase swung open and there was a passageway behind it. So I walked down it for a while and wound up in this underground temple where a bunch of guys in black robes were inside a big pentagram and doing some chant where they said ” Nyarlathotep” a lot. And then this big mist started to appear it was sort of shaped like a man, but then one of the robe guys saw me and stopped chanting and jumped towards me, but he scuffed the chalk pentagram marks which I guess is bad because the mist person thing started eating all the guys, I think (I don’t know because I left then, but i could hear screaming all night long). But anyhow, the next day i electrical taped my power cord back together and then went to do that update, but by then I totally forgot what I was going to blog about (wouldn’t you know!). So anyhow, that’s why i haven’t been updating every day, but I’ll try to do better, i promise. That’s all i have to say for now, cause nothing much has happened recently, but I’ll write more tomorrow. Bye! Oh, PS: I’m selling some voodoo books on Ebay today, check out my auction!