Category Archives: Amusements

Those crazy Italians and their mighty naughty-bits:

http://www.powergenitalia.com/

(c/o NTK)

From the Boston Globe:

A huge Scituate home for Ben and J. Lo

By Carol Beggy & Al Young, Globe Staff, 4/9/2003

JUST JENNY FROM THE SCITUATE BLOCK We heard they were moving to Cambridge. Then it was Southie. But it’s Scituate. Or so Us magazine is reporting in its next edition, which hits newsstands Friday. Here’s the news: Former Cantabrigian Ben Affleck and his main squeeze, Jennifer Lopez, have ”picked out a $3 million estate.” Lovely. The couple were spotted recently on the South Shore, including house hunting in Cohasset. But it’s the secluded Scituate property that caught their attention, we’re told. The spot they’ve settled on, the mag reported, is a 5,200-plus-square-foot, 11-room house on 6.1 acres. A rep for the Grand Gables Realty Group, which is selling the property, would not comment to Us. And they were mum when called by us yesterday. But here are a few more details of the house the glam couple may one day call home: It has a reception hall, grand dining room, breakfast room, two kitchens (including a chef’s kitchen), four bedrooms (including a master suite with views of the ocean), and, yes, a large walk-in closet. (Silent scream.) The dynamic duo is hardly in need of places to stay. Affleck has a New York City loft and a house in Beverly Hills. Lopez has a house in Los Angeles and a place in Miami that is regularly described as a mansion.

“You know the world is going crazy when
the best rapper is a white guy,
the best golfer is a black guy,
The Swiss hold the America’s Cup,
France is accusing the US of arrogance,
and Germany doesn’t want to go to war.”
-Author Unknown

…who fell down the stairs.

Edward Gorey’s “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” are now online.

DEMOCRAT: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. You vote people into office that put a tax on your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay the tax. The people you voted for then take the tax money, buy a cow and give it to your neighbor. You feel righteous. Barbara Streisand sings for you.

SOCIALIST: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor. You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

REPUBLICAN: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So?

COMMUNIST: You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. You wait in line for hours to get it. It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one. You force the 2 cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows. You go to lunch. Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains. Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows but you don’t know where they are. While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman. You break for lunch. Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You have some more vodka. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka. You produce your 10th, 5-year plan in the last 3 months. The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

TALIBAN CORPORATION: You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two. You don’t milk them because you cannot touch any creature’s private parts.

POLISH CORPORATION: You have two bulls. Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

FLORIDA CORPORATION: You have a black cow and a brown cow. Everyone votes for the best looking one. Some of the people who like the brown one best, vote for the black one. Some people vote for both. Some people vote for neither. Some people can’t figure out how to vote at all. Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which is the best-looking one.

NEW YORK CORPORATION: You have fifteen million cows. You have to choose which one will be the leader of the herd, so you pick some dumb cow from Arkansas named Hillary.

“. . . you know frankly, going to war without France is like
going deer hunting without an accordion. You just leave a lot
of useless noisy baggage behind.”

               – Jed Babbin, a former deputy undersecretary of
                  defense in the first Bush administration, on Hardball

I had mistakenly attributed this to my former boss, Ross Perot. As always, Snopes knows better.

Wow, it’s really snowing outside…I feel like I’m back in Buffalo again.

One of the great joys of living on Boston’s South Shore and working in downtown Boston is that you can commute in by boat. The MBTA not only runs the subway, the commuter rail and bus lines, but also several boat commuter services. The boat service I use starts in Hingham and ends at Rowes Wharf in Boston. Normally this is a 30-45 minute trip, and is very enjoyable — relaxed, efficient, and it even has coffee and snacks in the AM and a full bar in the PM. It’s especially nice in the summer, because you can sit up on deck in the open air and enjoy the sun (or the sunset if you work late like me) with a Corona.

Things have been a bit different over the past week. Boston is having one of the worst cold spells in history, and it really really sucks to walk around downtown. It’s so cold that the harbor has started to freeze over (salt water starts to freeze at roughly 28 degress Farenheit), which is making the daily commute — well — interesting. The Boston Globe had a great picture of the commuter boats in today’s edition:

Yes…yes, he does hump things…