EppsNet

Iranian envoys hoping to get a piece of American pie, or at least a hot dog, will have to wait. The invitations extended last month to Iranian officials to attend Fourth of July celebrations at American embassies have been rescinded, reports The Times’s Mark Landler.

— NYTimes.com

Credit: misscharo

I hope that’s because they continue to murder their own citizens in the streets and not just because they failed to RSVP in a timely manner.

I stand side by side with President Obama in my support for human rights and opposition to totalitarian autocracy!

NO IRANIAN DIPLOMATS WILL BE ALLOWED AT MY HOUSE FOR JULY 4 FESTIVITIES!

Oh yeah, we’re playing hardball now . . .

TIJUANA, Mexico — The bodies of four U.S. citizens were found strangled, beaten and stabbed in a van in this border city, two days after they reportedly left their Southern California homes for a night at the Mexican clubs, U.S. officials said Thursday.

— Associated Press

Hulk Hogan on his estranged wife and her new boyfriend, “some shaggy-haired pool boy 30 years her junior”:

“You live half a mile from the 20,000-square-foot home you can’t go to anymore, you’re driving through downtown Clearwater [Florida] and see a 19-year-old boy driving your Escalade, and you know that a 19-year-old boy is sleeping in your bed, with your wife …. I totally understand O.J. I get it.”

Look for the new reality show, “O.J. and Hulk: BFFs & Cellmates 4 Life,” coming soon to a closed-circuit prison camera near you.

— Wonderwall

IRVINE A man is dead — and his wife and son injured — after his daughter’s ex-boyfriend allegedly took the family hostage for five hours beginning late Friday, police said.

— OCRegister.com

That’s the second murder in town in the last two weeks!

PACK YOUR BAGS HONEY! WE’RE MOVING TO SANTA ANA!

IRVINE – A group of solemn people sat around tables at a fast-food Chinese restaurant off Jeffrey Road on Wednesday night after a man was shot and killed while sitting in a white Lexus parked behind the eatery.

— OCRegister.com

At least he died in a nice car. It’s Irvine, Jake!

This happened a stone’s throw from my house. Well, more than a stone’s throw but let’s say a hard 5-iron with a good bounce off Trabuco Road.

I’ve been to that Chinese restaurant many times. (It’s a dine-in restaurant, not a fast-food place, despite what the Register says.)

Don’t worry about me though. Irvine is still the safest city in the country.

That guy must have gotten himself mixed up in some kind of trouble . . .

And I ran up the stairs to my parents’ bedroom
Mommy and Daddy was sleeping in the moonlight
Slowly I opened the door, creeping in the shadows
Right up to the foot of their bed
I raised the guitar high above my head
And just as I was about to bring the guitar
Crashing down upon the center of the bed,
My father woke up, screaming
“Stop! Wait a minute! Stop it boy!
What do ya think you’re doin’?
That’s no way to treat an expensive musical instrument!”
“God Dammit Daddy! You know I love you, But you got a hell of a lot to learn about Rock ‘n Roll”

— Meat Loaf, “Wasted Youth”

Ouch! What did he do to people he didn’t like?

Oct 3, 1995

Oct 3, 2008

We went to Souplantation for dinner tonight. I was really hungry but when we got there, there was already a line of people at the salad bar.

I hate when that happens.

Let me tell you what I did: I grabbed a tray and came in swinging, cracked a few people in the cranium, then finished them off with a serrated-edge knife from the silverware station.

It’s a crude plan, but let me tell you why it works: the element of surprise. No one goes to Souplantation expecting to be knocked over the head and stabbed . . .

Dinesh DiSouza, a noted conservative pundit, was moved in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings to say this:

Only the language of religion seems appropriate to the magnitude of tragedy. Only God seems to have the power to heal hearts in such circumstances. . . . Atheism seems to have nothing to say to people when there is serious bereavement or tragedy.

That’s not true. For example, one famous atheist response to tragedy is this: So it goes.

DiSouza also forgot to add that if you leave out platitudes, pleasant myths and happily-ever-after fairy tales, religion has nothing to say to people either . . .

Slate has some advice.

Here’s how it’s done at USC.

Fight On!

“People don’t stop killers,” writes the Instapundit. “People with guns do.”

The idea is that if one of the Virginia Tech students had had a gun with him, he could have come to the rescue like Dick Dauntless, and shot the Korean.

Well that’s true. But what if 300 students had guns, and they were all on the look-out for a student with a gun? I’m failing to see the genius of this plan, though no doubt I’ve overlooked something obvious.

— Harry Hutton

I wish I’d thought of that.

I was just going to say that if you base public policy decisions on extreme, unrepresentative events, you may wind up with a cure that’s worse than the disease . . .

Speaking of motivation, today’s Orange County Register has a story about a guy who really knows — or knew — how to light a fire under his employees.

According to the story, Woo Sung Park, a landscaping supervisor, told day laborer Ernesto Avalos that he, Avalos, was not pulling his weight on the job. The pep talk so energized Mr. Avalos that he beat Mr. Park to death with a shovel and a pickax.

This happened right here in Irvine! Tragically, one of my rich neighbors is now two men short on his beautification project . . .

I’m in the processing of converting all the old content here into WordPress, which among other things, lets me assign categories to each item.

I filed one item, principally about a woman who ran over her husband with a car, under several categories, including Murder and Kids.

My son, who’s sitting next to me on the sofa doing homework, says, “You’re posting stuff about murdering kids?!”

I say, “No, it’s about murdering husbands.”

“You’re posting stuff about kids murdering husbands?!”

“No, it’s about wives murdering husbands, which happens a lot, unfortunately.”

“It would happen around here if Mom had a hatchet or a gun.”

“That’s exactly why we don’t have those things.”

Here’s a father-son moment I hope to avoid — telling a jury what a good boy he was during the penalty phase of his murder trial.

My workplace is teeming with idiots who know more about some steroid-amped freak and how many yards he ran with a ball in his hands than they do about their own family members and whatever babysitter is raising their kids for them.

Kee-rist!

I wish I could go back in time and strangle them all in their cradles . . .