cowperthwait | lies, evasion, spin, circumspection and cleverly veiled hype

You know, since our neighbor moved out, our elevator consistently has been wherever I left it last. I kind of like that.

There's a gay penguins-vs-Human Rights Campaign joke in here, somewhere. Something about wearing tuxedos and flapping one's wings impotently. I'll get around to writing it, but not tonight. We have another benefit tonight: I hear Ellen and Portia will be there.

To be completely anthropomorphizing, Linda seems conniving. She's got her plan. I don't think she was wanting to be a single girl for too long.

—zookeper Anthony Brown, describing the scarlet widow trollop who broke up the San Francisco Zoo's gay penguins


Reminds of the last gay penguin split:

Of late, Roy has been seen alone, in a corner, staring at a wall.

—New Love Breaks Up a 6-Year Relationship at the Zoo, New York Times, 24 Sept. 2005


Gay penguins: stop the hate!

"Do you know where y'all going?" demanded the outdoorsman squatting on a steam grate as we stomped through the hexagonal Wacker-Wabash-Water intersection, engineering a backpackcaboosed luggage train.

"Not for 27 years," I snapped.

"Emo," Colleen sniffed.

I'll go home eventually, but not today. Tomorrow doesn't look good, either.

In the future, I will I fly to work in a mink-lined helicopter, instead of braving six-hour delays in the airport lounge.

I also will hire staffers to cull my picture library for me, entering descriptive titles, recognizing and tagging all the people, and spiking the results with occasional hilarious screwups, just to keep me on my toes and feeling less guilty about not paying them enough.

Until the future arrives, at least there's iPhoto's facial recognition gizmo. For what it lacks in consistency, this handily compensates with charm. No raise for you!


clickypop


Alllso

• Faces in Places Where They Don't Belong
  
  
• 
  
  Once I finish tagging everyone, I'll make wallpaper out of these contact sheets and cover my fridge

not acceptable

Oh, look. Now I can copy and paste on my iPhone. I will use this earthshattering technological innovation to repeat "I am unimpressed. unimpressed. unimpressed. unimpressed. unimpressed." ad infinitum whilst waiting for my e-mail finally to load across a connection slower than a Bush twin.

AT&T, you can suck it.

Palin had also taken issue with an item on Letterman's recent "Top Ten List," in which he said one of the Alaska governor's activities in New York was to buy "makeup at Bloomingdale's to update her slutty flight attendant look."

"The only thing I can say about this is I kind of like that joke," Letterman said.

—CNN

On International Whores Day, prostitutes in Australia marched in protest against the high rates that local newspapers charge when advertisements are placed by sex workers. “I'm paying too much,” said whore Ivy McIntosh, “for a measly two inches.”

A French court ruled that contestants on the reality show Temptation Island are employed workers entitled to overtime payments, a 35-hour work week, and vacation. “Temptation Island constitutes a job and therefore justifies an employment contract,” said the court. “Tempting a person of the opposite sex requires concentration and attention.”

—the tenaciously reliable Harper's Weekly Review

agitating the warden for better reading materials

Did you also see he can now open the front door and saunter out into the world on his own? If he shows up at your house one day just give him some milk and the remote — he knows how to turn on a tv (that one? I have no idea, since I can barely turn it on...) — or hide remote and hand him Kerouac. He's finished with Pat the Bunny. Wants meatier stuff.

—Nolan's mother

Romantic dispatches from hither and thither:

It seemed like a fairy tale romance for Connie Lee and Brian who met on a Christian Web site. She thought he was perfect, but it turned out things were too good to be true.

...

In fact, she says, Brian was having an affair, and even more shockingly with another man.

"No way did would I ever expect that he was doing what he was doing," she said.

—Woman Duped By Spouse's Secret Sex Life, KYW-TV (Philadelphia)

Despite their 62-year-age difference, Georgi said that Hardy "made it seem like a win-win situation.

He just made it seem like, literally, you don't have anything to lose, you will have the world at your fingertips, and he promised me the world."

For a while, Hardy delivered. His new bride enjoyed worldwide travel that summer to Budapest, Madrid, Paris, Italy and London, and her 2-year-old son, Matthew, got a pet tiger.

—22-Year-Old Bride Had Brief, Wild Ride With 84 Lumber Millionaire, WTAE-TV (Pittsburgh)

It seems increasingly likely that it will be easier to change my name to Thomas than to get my alma mater to correct my name in their records. After I hooted and hollered last week about a gift receipt from March that they still can't figure out how to fix, someone from Gifts And Records Services very cheerfully sent me … yet another receipt addressed to Thomas.

I give up.

I suspect the University would've been more attentive to the matter had the decimal point been another space or two to the right. This doesn't hurt my feelings — I know that simply is how things work — but it does mean I'll just swear off making any further donations until I have that kind of money to give.

I could've taken myself out to a nice dinner for this, to the kind of place where the maître d' learns your name. Alternately, I could've bought something really obscene for my nephews: they always hand-write their thank-you notes, and never mistake me for their Grandpa.

Welcome comic relief in an otherwise utterly depressing article:

One of the rock operas, which young Russian-speaking anti-gay activists promote on video-sharing web sites, features a hero character wearing a tuxedo battling men in black tights armed with tiki torches. Over heavy-metal guitar riffs, a military-like chorus sings of "victory over the gays."

—The Southern Poverty Law Center's profile of a Latvian megachurch, in Is Homophobia the New Anti-Semitism?, The American Prospect

screenshot: chicagotribune.com, midday, 17 May 2009

Well, that's an easy fix. Obviously the cops' morale is low because they've missed their dog. Obviously.

"I don't want to alarm anyone, but after Cheney defended water-boarding, saying it yielded 'invaluable information', he asked me to get him an exact figure on how much cotton the slaves actually picked," said the aide.

"Do what it takes. I definitely fear more talking."

—Tabitha Southey infiltrates the RNC