Down Under.
Given that I am not long on content at the moment, I thought I would pass this along. I received it from a friend, and it cracked me up. Supposedly these questions about Australia were posted on an Australian website, and the answers were provided by an Aussie with a terrific sense of humor.

Enjoy.

1.Q: Does it ever get windy in Australia? I have never seen it rain on TV, so how do the plants grow? (UK)
A: We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around watching them die.

2. Q: Will I be able to see kangaroos in the street? (USA)
A: Depends how much you’ve been drinking.

3. Q: I want to walk from Perth to Sydney – can I follow the railroad tracks? (Sweden)

A: Sure, it’s only three thousand miles. Take lots of water.

4. Q: Is it safe to run around in the bushes in Australia? (Sweden)
A: So its true what they say about Swedes.

5. Q: It is imperative that I find the names and addresses of places to contact for a stuffed porpoise. (Italy)
A: Let’s not touch this one.

6. Q: Are there any ATMs (cash machines) in Australia? Can you send me a list of them in Brisbane, Cairns, Townsville and Hervey Bay? (UK)
A: What did your last slave die of?

7. Q: Can you give me some information about hippo racing in Australia? (USA)
A: A-fri-ca is the big triangle shaped continent south of Europe. Aus-tra-lia is that big island in the middle of the pacific, which does not… oh forget it. Sure, the hippo racing is every Tuesday night in Kings Cross. Come naked.

8. Q: Which direction is North in Australia? (USA)
A: Face south and then turn 90 degrees. Contact us when you get here, and we’ll send the rest of the directions.

9. Q: Can I bring cutlery into Australia? (UK)
A: Why? Just use your fingers like we do.

10. Q: Can you send me the Vienna Boys’ Choir schedule? (USA)
A: Aus-tri-a is that quaint little country bordering Ger-man-y, which is…oh forget it. Sure, the Vienna Boys’ Choir plays every Tuesday night in Kings Cross, straight after the hippo races. Come naked.

11. Q: Do you have perfume in Australia? (France)
A: No, WE don’t stink.

12. Q: I have developed a new product that is the fountain of youth. Can you tell me where I can sell it in Australia? (USA)
A: Anywhere significant numbers of Americans gather.

13. Q: Can I wear high heels in Australia? (UK)
A: You are a British politician, right?

14. Q: Can you tell me the regions in Tasmania where the female population is smaller than the male population? (Italy)
A: Yes, gay nightclubs.

15. Q: Do you celebrate Christmas in Australia? (France)
A: Only at Christmas.

16. Q: Are there supermarkets in Sydney, and is milk available all year round? (Germany)
A: No, we are a peaceful civilisation of vegan hunter gatherers. Milk is illegal.

17. Q: Please send a list of all doctors in Australia who can dispense rattlesnake serum. (USA)
A: Rattlesnakes live in A-meri-ca, which is where YOU come from. All Australian snakes are perfectly harmless, can be safely handled and make good pets.

18. Q: I have a question about a famous animal in Australia, but forget its name. It’s a kind of bear and lives in trees. (USA)
A: It’s called a Drop Bear. They are so called because they drop out of gum trees and eat the brains of anyone walking underneath them. You can scare them off by spraying yourself with human urine before you go out walking.

19. Q: I was in Australia in 1969 on R+R, and I want to contact the girl I dated while I was staying in Kings Cross. Can you help? (USA)
A: Yes, and you will still have to pay her by the hour.

20. Q: Will I be able to speek English most places I go? (USA)
A: Yes, but you’ll have to learn it first.

Thanks to Barbara for passing this along.

Broadway Show Recommendation.
Next time you find yourself in New York City, or if you are planning a trip there. You absolutely have to go see this show. It is pee in your pants funny.

Governor McGreevey – Reaching New Heights in Low Class.
Just when we thought our governor could not be more of a national embarrassment, it gets even worse. It turns out that the International Longshoremen’s Association (“ILA”), the labor organization that paid for the six-day vacation in Puerto Rico for the Gov and his family (see yesterday’s post), is under investigation by four (count ‘em) four federal and state agencies for possible connections with the Genovese crime family.

The President of the ILA, John Bowers, announced at the start of the organization’s convention in Puerto Rico (the event attended by our governor) that he expects that the ILA may soon be named in a federal racketeering suit. Presumably the suit he referred to is an outgrowth of the investigation being jointly conducted by the New York Statewide Organized Crime Task Force, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, and the FBI.

This certainly is not the first time that organized crime has been linked to the ILA. In the 1970’s fully 117 ILA officers, dockworkers and shipping executives were successfully prosecuted, fined or jailed for racketeering. In fact, reports The Star Ledger, “Four straight general organizers, the third-ranking post at the ILA, were toppled by racketeering or corruption charges.”

Mr. Bowers, prior to the current investigation, was no stranger to law enforcement agencies. In 1990 Bowers settled a suit brought by the Justice Department to remove the influence of the Gambino and Genovese crime families from New York and New Jersey’s ports. Bowers settled the suit and relinquished one of his three presidencies.

Much of Bower’s current trouble apparently stems from the testimony given by a former Genovese crime family member who turned state’s evidence and testified about the cozy relationship between Bowers, the ILA and the Genovese crime family.

McGreevey’s press secretary (not an enviable job these days) issued the following spin, “The governor’s trip is not about whether one officer is under investigation. The governor’s trip is about the thousands of people who work in the ports of New Jersey.” I guess if you get paid to be the governor’s press secretary, you have say something.

However, in a twisted sense, he is partially correct. The governor’s trip is not about one officer being under investigation. Rather it is about the governor’s shamelessly accepting large gifts from an organization with a long, sordid history of close ties with organized crime families, whose members over the years have been successfully prosecuted for racketeering, shakedowns and various other crimes including conspiracy and arson.

In the end, it won’t matter. He’ll get a pass from New Jersey’s democrats.

It’s sickening.

You simply cannot make this up.

How would you like to fly to Puerto Rico and spend six days with your family in the Caribe Hilton Hotel? The resort boasts “17 acres of lush tropical gardens beachfront” and is located on a private peninsula. Every room has an ocean view, and, of course, your stay includes meals and a rental car.

How much might such a wonderful vacation set you back? I’m not sure. However, if you are the Governor of New Jersey, it won’t cost you a dime.

It seems that the International Longshoremen’s Association, a large democrat party campaign contributor, is picking up the tab for this trip. It’s also paying for the hotel rooms of a Governor’s staff member and a couple state troopers.

All the Gov has to do to earn this free family vacation is to make a speech at the Longshoremen’s Association convention.

Of course, the Governor’s staff is already out there trying to put a positive spin on the trip – a trip that anyone with three living brain cells instantly knows stinks to high heaven. Get this: The Gov’s spokesperson said that the “trip is important to New Jersey because we have such a large Puerto Rican population. I think it’s important to have good relations because so many New Jerseyans still have familial and cultural ties to the island.”

What??? The Longshoremen’s Association is paying for this trip, and the Governor and his family are taking this trip, because New Jersey has Puerto Rican residents?? Did this spokesperson recently suffer massive cranial trauma?

What about the conflict of interest inherent in taking big gifts from groups with a distinctly political agenda (and, I might add, a most unsavory history)? Jersey’s conflicts=of-interest law clearly prohibits state employees from accepting gifts or any “thing of value.” Last time I checked, the Governor is a state employee, and also last time I checked, a six-day family vacation in Puerto Rico, with airfare, meals and car included is a “thing of value.”

No problemo. The Governor is relying on an exception to the law that permits the acceptance of “reasonable fees” for making speeches.

What??? The price of a six-day family vacation constitutes a “reasonable fee” for making a speech? Even granting that idiotic proposition for argument’s sake, do we want our Governor in the speech selling business? I think we have a right to expect the Governor to devote all his time to … well, …governing.

One would think that after taking a beating in the press for spending the state’s taxpayers money for a lavish trip to Ireland, which included a family reunion dinner party, he would have a little more sense.

I can only assume that he thinks this latest jaunt is O.K., because it isn’t the taxpayer, but rather a large campaign contributor that is footing the bill. Does he believe that we are dumb enough to think that he will not be beholden to the Longshoremen’s Association when future port-related legislation surfaces.

He most certainly does believe that, and the said thing is that he is right. The majority of New Jersey’s voters are that goddamned dumb. They elected him, didn’t they?

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Seltzer Rum.
Craig at mtpolitics pointed to this site, where one answers a series of questions in order to have one’s pirate name chosen in a most scientific fashion.

Craig ended up with a cool name, “Dirty Jack Cash.” I wanted a cool name too.

I headed to the site and answered all the questions, including the one about the parrot and the one about penguins. Mind you, I took this test without studying even a little bit, which is pretty gutsy for me.

I finally reached the point where I was one click away from getting my really cool pirate name. I paused before clicking, hoping that I got a name as cool as Craig’s.

I clicked.

My pirate name? “Mad Morty Cash.” Morty??? A Jewish pirate? I can hear it now. “Oy, ye stinkin’ sea rats. I’ll keelhaul the next man who I sees eatin’ meat and dairy together!”

I suppose this could mean that Craig and I are related. Jack and Morty Cash sailing the seven seas in search of the perfect pastrami.

Oy.

Update:
After reading this, Craig (the seadog Mensch, a/k/a “Dirty Jack Cash”) took things one step further and wrote “The Adventures of Jack and Morty Cash, P.C.,” the story of the pirates who insist that everything be glatt Kosher.

Swallow your coffee before you start reading.

A Bit of Housekeeping.
What with the departure of Life After Fifty and Mean Mr. Mustard, I have removed them from my blogroll. I’ll keep a light on for them, should either decide to return.

I’ve added two new links, both of which have been bookmarked for a while. I think you’ll like them.

Side Salad. Regular doses of fun stuff, with creative use of images.

Bloviating Inanities. Great writing that is laugh out loud funny. Anyone who can find hilarious things to say about nose hair and gout definitely gets blogrolled.

Enjoy.

This just made me laugh.

Thanks to my friend Ron, the Brown Water Navy vet and retired cop.

Golf Outing.
I got to play golf today in an outing that was attended by a bunch of these guys. Matt Snell was in my foursome. Here he is (no. 41) about to score a touchdown in Super Bowl III. What a nice guy (and he can hit a golf ball a mile). Oh yeah, this guy was also there and still looks damned good.

People who know me know that I am not much of a sports fan, but it was quite something to be among these guys, all of them still friends and all of them gentlemen.

The outing was a fundraiser for Freedom House, an organization that provides a no-bullshit residential rehabilitation program for men who are addicted to alcohol and/or drugs. Many of the program graduates were in attendance, and they are living proof of the excellent work that Freedom House does.

I had planned to write some thoughts on golf from the perspective of a lousy golfer, but I’m a tad tired, so I’ll save that for another day.

Fore!

RSS Feeds and Aggregators –Talk about making my hair hurt!
The other night, a reader dropped me a line suggesting that I really ought to have an RSS feed. I bared my clueless soul and confessed that I had heard the term “RSS” before and I had even seen those three letters smooshed together on other people’s blogs, but I had no idea what RSS meant. How could I even begin thinking about having an RSS feed when I didn’t know what the hell an RSS feed is?

The patient (and by now sorry he mentioned it, I’m sure) reader wrote back and explained that, with an RSS feed people like him who have “aggregators” to get the RSS feeds can see instantly which of their favorite blogs have been updated, and they can even read a bit of each updated blog to see if it is “clickworthy” (my term – he was being nice). He even sent me a link about “aggregators.” This was a good thing, because “aggregators” are as foreign to me as are “RSS feeds.”

I figured, hell, I should just go out there on the web and get me one of those RSS feeds and one of those really cool aggregators.

I went to this site. The site has five pages, and this appeared on the first page.

For rss2html.pl to work on your system, you should have a recent version of Perl installed, 5.003 or better. 5.005 is recommended. You will also need the XML::Parser and XML::RSS modules installed.
To install the modules on a *nix system, type:
perl -MCPAN -e “install XML::Parser”
perl -MCPAN -e “install XML::RSS”
If you’re using a win32 machine (Win95/98/NT), you have a recent installation of Activestate Perl. If you don’t have a recent version, visit http://www.activestate.com.

What?????

I clicked my way through the next four pages, becoming more depressed and lost with each click.

I did, however, get the sense that in order to talk RSS, one must know what XML is. So, I went to this site, where I was enlightened by:

XML specifies neither semantics nor a tag set. In fact XML is really a meta-language for describing markup languages. In other words, XML provides a facility to define tags and the structural relationships between them. Since there’s no predefined tag set, there can’t be any preconceived semantics. All of the semantics of an XML document will either be defined by the applications that process them or by stylesheets.

You’ve GOT to be shitting me.

OK, so what about aggregators? Maybe if I got one of those, this RSS and XML stuff would make more sense. So, I went here and saw this:

First of all, before installing Syndirella, you will need to have the Microsoft .NET Framework runtime version 1.0 installed. This is a 20 Megabyte download. If you do not already have it, you can either install it through Windows Update or download it from the Microsoft web site.
The latest beta version of Syndirella is the version 0.9b beta, released on January 19th, 2003. You can download it here:
· Syndirella 0.9b (250K)
· Source code of Syndirella 0.9b (101K)
· List of changes in version 0.9b

On second thought, I think I’ll just go into the kitchen and put my head in the farookin’ oven. I don’t have to download anything to do that.

Oh no, Mr. Bean.
I survived this year’s cold rain-soaked, non-spring in Jersey.

Summer came like a sucker punch, bringing with it sweltering days with suffocating humidity. Finally, we were treated to a couple nice (albeit hot) weekends, and we are bracing for yet more hot days, possibly into mid September.

So, what comes in the mail a day or so ago? The L.L. Bean FALL Catalog.

Fall? Did you say Fall? No way, Mr. Bean. I’m just not ready.

Page 4. Long sleeve turtlenecks. Nice colors, but not now, please.

Page 14. Adirondack Barn Coats Coats?? Hell, I just broke out the sunscreen two weeks ago!

This baby goes to the back of the bathroom reading basket until the frost is on the punkin’.

Maybe then we can talk coats. Right now, I’m thinking shorts and tank tops.