Proof is in the picture —- and bear in mind, this is absolutely NOT retouched! This is the actual ad shown on the Google AdSense section of this very page on January 9th, 2006 at 11:15AM EST!

Man! Who knew? I’ll bet all those Al-Queda who went to Afghanistan to get their Terrorism Certificates really feel stupid now.

Remember, you heard it here first!

On Thursday (5-Jan-06), 700 Club spokesman and former Presidential hopeful Pat Robertson told everyone that Ariel Sharon’s stroke had one simple reason: “God’s wrath.”

Local columnist Sam Venable let him have it but good.

For a man who claims to be a purveyor of Good News, this guy has done more to turn people away from Christianity than an army of atheists.
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The 9/11 attacks?

God’s wrath.

The Gulf hurricanes?

God’s wrath.

(Athletic interpretation: God’s wrath was the reason the University of Southern California lost the Rose Bowl. It had nothing to do with being outplayed and outscored by those heavenly blessed, sin-free cherubs representing the University of Texas.)

In Preacher Pat’s line of reasoning, we should file every unpleasantness in our lives – allergies and flu, monetary and marital failures, vocational and educational woes, transmission troubles and computer glitches – under the general heading of God’s wrath for some sin, known or unknown, that we may have committed.

If so, it’s a wonder the entire lot of humanity down through the ages hasn’t gone insane from guilt.

You have to wonder which Bible it is that Pat Robertson reads, because it really seems to be missing a Testament. It’s probably fallen out with all of the bashing he does with it.

I would urge readers to chip in $0.01 each so we could buy him a new one, with a yellow highlighter marking up the first four books of the New Testament, but I’m sure he’d just hit one of us in the head with it.

Nice … Panda?

This Chinese restaurant is on Callahan Drive in Knoxville. At one point, I did try and ask an elderly gentleman why there was a picture of a Koala above the name Panda Garden. He just kept repeating, “Pan’ Ga’den,” over and over as he nodded and smiled. I tried to explain, but eventually digressed to respond in kind.

All day today, I’ve heard news reports about how “the NSA spying on ordinary Americans by installing software on your computer. Stay tuned, and we’ll teach you how to remove it!”

What a load of absolute nonsense!

The plain truth: The National Security Agency is devoted to the creation, dissassembly and translation of Codes and Cryptograms. It employs some of our country’s best and brightest Linguists and Mathematicians. It is not an organization which is remotely involved in “spying;” this myth is propagated by Conspiracy Theorists and other lunatics who have repeatedly called it “No Such Agency.”

And a Cookie? A cookie is not a piece of executable code, and certainly does not fall under the category of “software.” Cookies are small files which are stored on your hard drive by a website. The most popular example is Forum software, which greets you with, “Hello, Sam!” (or whatever your name is) when you visit. MSNBC, CNN, FoxNews, CBS and ABC all use Cookies.

Cookies are not spyware, contrary to popular myth. Cookies cannot “track your internet usage,” contrary to popular myth.

The most nasty thing a cookie can do is say, “Oh, you’ve seen this banner/pop-up ad already, so we’re going to display a different one.” Nothing sinister there, other than sometimes several sites use the same source for those ads, and they can get an idea where your IP address travels within the realm of the sites they serve. Big deal!

Basically what we had here today was, “Everything that happens in Government is the fault of the President. We have no new news with which to bash said President, so let’s make a big deal out of absolutely nothing and scare the crap out people by making something up!”

It is reprehensible that so many seemingly upstanding, impartial journalists felt that it was okay to run this completely asinine story which is nothing more than a baseless lie.

I’m all for Freedom of the Press, but at this point, it’s painfully obvious that some limits are in order. The so-called journalists who keep peddling this kind of tabloid fodder as fact have made it abundantly clear that the Media as a whole cannot conduct itself in an ethical manner.

Ok, I just lost it when Nadia showed me this great photo and caption from MSN’s 2005 Year in Review.

If this unfortunate car could talk, it would probably say, Uh-oh, looks like I’ve got a smidge of skank on my hood.

Too funny… yet, somehow, fitting.

Although, considering it’s Bai Ling, she does have more of herself covered than usual.