The Michael A. Naso Institute of Comedy

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

My mother is a great gal. To answer your question, it's no.

So, Naso is a son of Fawn Hall?

[Landslide Lyndon]

In conclusion,

[they don't love you like i love you]

On Halloween night 94, I dressed up as a: ghost.

I'm not sure how I feel knowing that Naso was dressed as a ghost the day I was born.

[Joe Republic]

Whoa, you're right!  He totally looks French.

[Grumpier Than Thou]

I wish I was cool enough for the Michael A. Naso Institute of Comedy

[Paul Kemp]

I wish I was cool enough for the Michael A. Naso Institute of Comedy

Crying about it certainly won't bring you some humor, child.

[Grumpier Than Thou]

I wish I was cool enough for the Michael A. Naso Institute of Comedy

Crying about it certainly won't bring you some humor, child.

Goddammit...I was hoping it would bring me a zebra...

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

A few months from now:

BREAKING: MICHELLE BACHMANN WINS IOWA CAUCUS

Bachmann - 29.6%
Paul - 35.8%
Perry - 18.16%
Romney - 15.2%
Other - 1.24

[Joe Republic]

How does one "look French", exactly?

Well, let's discuss why the others aren't French, to give you some background.

Michele Bachmann, despite having a name that would serve well in Strasbourg, has big hair. Big hair  post-1970 is un-French.

Herman Cain is black. Black people are un-French.

Newt Gingrich has incredibly good teeth for his age. Good teeth are un-French.

Rudy Giuliani is incredibly French on the surface, but unlike a true Frenchman he prefers to divorce and remarry rather than maintain mistresses.

Jon Huntsman is weedy, but doesn't have a moustache. Weediness without a moustache is un-French.

Gary Johnson looks French.

Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house. La Russie is extremely un-French.

Ron Paul dyes his eyebrows. Dyed eyebrows are French, but only on women.

Rick Perry is Texan. Texans are un-French. They don't even eat cheese unless it has a Mexican name.

Rick Santorum never surrenders despite the impossibility that someone of such low moral rectitude could win the primary. This is very un-French; there he'd either surrender or get elected.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Jesus H. Christ, he's taking longer to make up his mind than it takes him to climb a flight of stairs.

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

Dixieland will hold the nose and vote for a n against that damn Mormon Yankee!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The FDP's current main priority is getting more than 5% in Schleswig-Holstein next May. If they have to destroy the global economy to achieve this, so be it.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Third option: the penalty for first-degree murder should be gay marriage with no possibility of divorce.

[Tender Branson]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Mitt Romney, quoted by Politico, on David Axelrod's comment that Obama's re-election was going to be a "titanic struggle."

[Antonio the Sixth]

You know, I'm tired of this roll-eyes thingy. I don't even use it all that often.

[Platypus]

srly stop it

[Paul Kemp]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/29/us-bristolpalin-idUSTRE78S69L20110929

In case you haven't seen the video, the guy went off on Bristol about her mom. The guy is a 47 year old gay man.

During the confrontation, which occurred while Palin was filming for her upcoming reality series for BIO, Bristol asked Hanks if he disliked Sarah because he's gay.

"Is it because you're a homosexual? …that's why you hate her?" Palin asked.

When Hanks asked Palin how she knew he was gay, Palin replied, "Because I can tell you are."



Maybe he's mad because America has decided they don't want to change the definition of marriage...

[Antonio the Sixth]

please gather some info before posting....

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

The boy broke his left arm Friday.  The radius, to be exact, which is the larger of the two long bones in the lower arm.  His school called me in my office around 12:30 and said he was on the playground just after lunch and was going across that thing where you climb up a ladder and make it across using your hands.  (modular overhead challenge for building upper-body strength)  Apparently he'd gone across it several times.  One too many, I suppose.  Usually, when he gets tired, he just drops to his feet, and they have this thick foam rubber pad under it, so it's not a problem, but I guess he was in mid-swing or something and landed on his left arm.  Anyway, so I got on my bicycle and dashed home, got the car, drove the three blocks to his school and picked him up and called the nurses station at his pediatrician and she said to give him 10 mL ibuprofen suspension and take him to be X-rayed. 

I thought about taking him to the nearest hospital emergency entrance, but figured we'd be better off at the clinic nearby.  It turned out to be a good decision.  They have X-ray capability there, and clearly his radius was broken.  And both the GP who initially saw him and the orthopedic surgeon were older guys, which is always best, and it wasn't very busy, so there was no wait.  And the nurses were mostly old as well.  He had a good attitude about the whole thing, surprisingly, and wasn't crying.  Even wanted to play with the Megablocks in the waiting room, while we waited for the X-ray technician to input the files into the system, but he was using his right hand and his teeth to put them together and I was worried about all the snotty children who'd played with them before him, so I made him stop.  Anyway, once the orthopedic surgeon started to manipulate his arm he started wailing.  So they said they could do a total anasthetic or a shot of lidocaine in the arm.  We opted for the lidocaine.  After that, he went numb, kept grabbing his left thumb and saying that it "feels like somebody else's thumb" and all that.  But he and the nurse tortured it and got it all straight, so they were able to set it without operating inside, which is good.  And the post procedure X-rays showed that it was very straight.  All in all, it seems to be a good alignment job.

Nowadays, they let you choose your cast color.  He chose red, of course.  Everything is red.  When we see the balloon man he wants a red sword or a red hat, and when he gets a new bicycle he wants red.  Always red.  Ah, well, my last two cars were red.  Maybe it runs in the family.  Anyway, there was only one color cast when I was 6.  It was white.  You could color it, paint it, get your chums to sign it, but when you left the clinic it was white. 

Also, they don't have a regular X-ray on a plastic sheet that you can photocopy anymore.  It's just an image on a screen.  A centralized system so you could look at it on any computer in any facility in the Wheaton-Saint francis system, but when I asked for a photocopy of the X-ray to show my wife, they said that they don't have a convenient way to print it out, so I ended up having to use my mobile phone to photograph them so I could show her.  I ended up calling her around 3:30 after they finished the cast.  I'd avoided worrying her as long as I could, as I knew she had meetings that afternoon and I didn't, and there's wasn't much she could do except worry.  She was edgy and pretty hard to get along with for about 24 hours, as I expected, but seems to be relaxed now.  Luckily this happened on a Friday, so he could stay high on painkillers for the first couple of days, and so we could use the weekend shopping for shirts that had arm-holes large enough to admit the cast but small enough so they wouldn't hang down to his knees.  Not an easy thing to find, by the way. 

We go for a follow-up exam and X-ray at one week.  And, if all is going well, the cast will be on for 4 weeks. No soccer, no swimming, and no bicycle during that time.  What a drag.  And, no piano for at least a week.  I'll have to call his teacher and cancel the next lesson or two.  He may or may not need a smaller, shorter forearm-only cast for a couple of weeks when this one comes off, but I'm told that the short one will be waterproof so we can start taking him back to the big pool.  We're making him drink lots of Calcium- and Vitamin C-fortified orange juice, and eat lots of tofu, meat, calcium pills, mango, brocolli, blueberry muffins, yogurt, and whatever we can find that has lots of Vitamin C and citrate/phosphate salts of calcium ions.  And a fair bit of codeine for the first couple of days to help with the pain and itching.  We're trying to go easy on that though.

Anyway, on the way home from the orthopedists, he says, "why did the dinosaur cross the road?"  And I think for a while and tried to come up with something clever.  He tells lots of corny jokes now so I'm used to it.  Finally, I say, "why did the dinosaur cross the road?"  And he says, "Because the chicken hadn't evolved yet!"  He was quite proud of that one.  "Get it?  Get it, Daddy?  The chicken is a bird, so it is the descendant of some Triassic reptile who gave rise to all ornithischian dinosaurs as well as birds."  Okay, I'm probably paraphrasing a bit.

But the jokes are becoming a bit more sophisticated.  He's also into word play now.  Lots of bad puns.  And, of course jokes about farts and pee are always a hit. 

It all put me in the mood for another Roberto Rosellini movie.  After all, I knew we wouldn't be going out much this weekend, and I should get some inside entertainment for all of us.  I ended up getting Era Notte a Roma.  It features a very attractive 25-year-old Giovanna Ralli in a prominent roll as Esperia, who at first seems to be a young nun, but is later revealed to be a black-market supplier of goods to the Romans.  She finds it easier to move about in the countryside, procuring prosciutto, wine, medicine, and other goods dressed as a nun, and a very pretty one at that.  The film was a weird combination of neo-realism and didactic, with a good measure of melodrama thrown in for good measure.  Fall 1943.  Three escaped prisoners, one US, one UK, and one Russian, make their way into hiding in Esperia's attic, and much of the action takes place there.  The buxsome young hostess can't speak English and the soldiers can't speak Italian.  The Russian is the loneliest of all, as he can speak neither Italian nor English.  There's much focus on how folks communicate with each other when they can't speak one another's language.  It's all pretty believable, but confusing when the scene goes from that attic to the house of a prince where they hide after Esperia is captured and tortured.  Definitely interesting, but somewhat hard to follow at times. 

[Antonio the Sixth]

This is the most tl,dr-ish post I've ever seen...

[Platypus]

Read it, is good n shet.

[Joe Republic]

Yeah, I can rarely make it past the first paragraph of any of angus' posts at the best of times.  The reward doesn't justify the effort put in.  There's no way I'm scaling that wall o' text.

[Holmes]

Print it and read it while you're on the can.

[Grumpier Than Thou]

I sat and read every word of Angus's post.

It was the best decision I've ever made.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

My favorite part was about the cast color.