A cartoon a day keeps the nutjobs in play

For crazed followers of the religion of the perpetually offended there's some bad news:

It's that Mohammed guy again!

and there's some good news:

Woohoo! C'mon, guys! It beats goats.

Idle hands do the devil's work

Especially if they are the hands of lawyers - First smokes, now Cokes:

Get ready for the next mass-tort crusade: protecting our kids from the ravages of Big Cola. According to news reports, a group of lawyers is gearing up to file lawsuits that will seek to blame Coke, Pepsi and others for obesity, tooth decay and other childhood health ailments. An article in the Boston Globe Magazine has called it part of a "national legal movement to make soft drinks the next tobacco." Instead of tar and nicotine, we'll be hearing about corn sweeteners and caffeine; maybe Dr. Pepper can stand in as the new Joe Camel.

If they mess with Mountain Dew or Jolt Cola, there will be a geek revolt.

Ridiculous? More like inevitable. For some time, a noisy campaign has been underway to portray the food and beverage industry as the villain in the nation's ongoing battle with the waistline. Without the snack hucksters' machinations, it seems, we'd all eat raw bell peppers and be reed thin.

Not to mention tofu.

Backed by "progressive" foundations, nutrition advocates are demanding a national obesity policy aimed at changing our collective diet, by force of law if necessary — or quite possibly by force of litigation. As one advocate, Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, put it: "If someone is saying that a 64-ounce soda at 7-Eleven contributed to obesity, that person should have his day in court."

I hope Mikey won't take it personally if someone says that having your head up your butt contributes to an inability to see daylight. But enough of the fun stuff, let's get to the bottom line.

That brings us to Northeastern University law professor and associate dean Richard Daynard, point man in the forthcoming courtroom onslaught against fizzy drinks. Long quoted in the media as a cheerleader for tobacco lawsuits, Daynard has now set out to assemble a legal strike force to file obesity actions. He wants to duplicate the success of the tobacco campaign, whose strategies included invoking "the children" and launching scores of suits on novel legal theories in hopes that one would stick.

In the vernacular that's termed "throwing manure at the wall to see what sticks," a practice familiar to practitioners of the legal trade.

Daynard's financial stake in all this is going to deserve reporters' scrutiny too. Back in the heyday of tobacco litigation, news reports portrayed him as an academic well-wisher of the suits, with no mention of his monetary stake in them. After other tort kingpins brokered the $246-billion settlement with the states, however, Daynard claimed that he had an oral agreement with the lawyers that entitled him to 5% of their fee haul — $150 million or more. The attorneys denied making such a promise, and the dispute was later settled.

Who knew that being an annoying git was such a lucrative career?

What part of "bite me" don't they understand?

Sanction this!

OIC and Arab League Seek UN Resolution on Blasphemous Cartoons:

In response to the outrageous act of some foreign media against Islamic beliefs, OIC and the Arab League are seeking a UN resolution, backed by possible sanctions, to protect religions.

UN sanctions, cool! We know how effective they are.

The Makkah-based Muslim World League said yesterday that it had sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, urging the United Nations and its subsidiary organizations to stop smear campaigns against Islam and Prophet Muhammad.

“The MWL, which represents Muslim minorities and Islamic organizations around the world, hereby conveys to you, the United Nations and other international organizations the indignation and outrage of Muslims over the smear campaigns being launched by a section of the Western media against Islam and Prophet Muhammad,” MWL Secretary-General Dr. Abdullah Al-Turki said in a letter to UN chief Annan.

Al-Turki said the MWL had received several messages from Muslims in Denmark and Norway and other European countries denouncing the sacrilegious cartoons. He urged the UN to keep a watch on such anti-Islamic campaigns.

Sheesh, several whole messages from some folks whose caftans are too tight. I'm so upset. And then there's this:

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned that the decision by some European papers to publish the cartoons could encourage terrorists.

It doesn't seem to me that Islamic terrorists have been exactly sitting around in their undershirts drinking beer and eating Slim Jims for lack of anything to do. I always thought it was kind of like their life style, but then I don't work for an Egyptian:

The drawings, which first ran in a Danish paper in September, were reprinted Wednesday in France Soir and several other European papers rallying to defend freedom of expression.

The managing editor of France Soir, Jacques Lefranc, was fired after the publication by owner Raymond Lakah, an Egyptian magnate, employees said. No official reason was immediately announced.

That best part of all this is that the Euros seemed have developed some backbone. Good on them.

We don't see much of that around here

At the NY Times, Michelle Slatella tries to explain some sort of big city perversion involving blue jeans:

These days, when expensive designer jeans cost upward of $150, every pair requires a consultation. That's because standard-length inseams measure 34 inches or longer to satisfy the needs of even the tallest shopper, sending the average American woman (5 feet 4 inches tall) straight from the store to the tailor to lop off the same fancy stitching and distressed hemline she just paid so dearly to procure.

Can this hem be saved? Every case is different and expensive. It can cost $20 to shorten the jeans and then reattach the original hem. Some tailors painstakingly pick out the original thread to reuse on a new hem. Others issue instructions to rub a bleach-soaked cotton swab across the new hems to distress the fabric. My tailor, who has seen plenty of jeans gone wrong, specializes in reconstructive surgery to fix botched jobs.

Is any shopper immune from hem stress? "I was getting a manicure, and one of the manicurists was talking about how her tailor reattached the original hem for $6, and it looked great, you couldn't even see the seam, and it was all anybody in the shop was talking about," said Karen Bard Liszt, editor of the fashion and beauty site Splendora.com.

After that Web site published a blog item headlined "Denim Dilemma," Splendora was bombarded by readers' comments. Some wrote to complain about hems that "never ever seem to hang the same way as when I purchased them." Others begged for referrals to tailors like the one in San Francisco who, one poster wrote, "is on O'Farrell right next to the old F. A. O. Schwarz, on the second floor. He is a great guy and will turn around your jeans fast!"

A perfect hem is the biggest fashion challenge of the decade.

Who knew? The point of the article is apparently that there are various sorts of new "jeans technology" to make it easy to change the length while preserving the original hem. Gosh, what's next? Canned beer and sliced bread?

At first I really couldn't figure this out because I figured that women's jeans came in different lengths just like my bib overalls. I guess they do, unless you are a trendoid and buy real "designer jeans":

Loomstate, a five-year-old company that uses organic cotton and distributes its jeans to online sellers like Revolveclothing.com, Shopbop.com and Ronherman.com, has a different approach: an unusual kind of re-attachable hem.
...
Onto something big, I returned home to track down Scott Hahn, a founder of Loomstate.
...
While I had Mr. Hahn on the spot, I knew I had a responsibility, on behalf of all women, to ask the tough questions. So in a tone more typically associated with Mike Wallace, I barked, "Are you aware that according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the average American woman is 5-foot-4? Why are all your jeans so long?"

Unfazed, Mr. Hahn said: "You can always shorten jeans, but you can't make them longer. Ideally you'd have multiple lengths of inseams, but for a small company like us, it's difficult."

Disarmed (the jeans did fit really, really well), I politely said goodbye and headed to the tailor.

Yeah, they fit really, really well except they were way too long. Sheesh, I hope the folks at Dickies and Carhartt haven't heard about this stuff.

Why doesn't she just get back to humping Hugo Chavez?

I see that that clapped out media whore, Cindy Sheehan, was acting up during the State of the Union address. I guess the rumors about ole Hugo Chavez are true and she came back from Venezuela unsatisfied. Too bad just humping his leg and barking didn't calm her down.

(Photo hat tip: dead)

There's always a downside

Over in the UK, Pre-op transexuals favoured with twin IDs:

Many people in the UK don't want an ID card, but one group of people is getting stuck with two.

Last night, Baroness Scotland of Asthal let slip that transexuals awaiting surgery would be entitled to an ID card displaying their "birth gender" and a separate card with their "gender of designation".

So transexuals, already struggling with two wardrobes and varied shoe needs, will also have to fork out for two ID cards.

Just think of it as a fashion statement.