These are from the same photo set on Flickr, taken at a local beach here in Orange County: Any questions? See Also: Why Asian Girls Like White Guys II Read more →
Author Archive: Hostile Witness
People I Thought Were Dead
Art Buchwald – columnist Mike Douglas – TV talk show host Lena Horne – singer E. Howard Hunt – Watergate conspirator Bil Keane – cartoonist, “The Family Circus” Deborah Kerr – actress Jack Klugman – actor Lyndon LaRouche – U.S. presidential candidate Claude Levi-Strauss – anthropologist Herbert Lom – actor, “The Pink Panther” Rose Marie – actress/game show panelist Dick Martin – TV host, “Laugh-In” George Martin – music producer, The Beatles Harry Morgan – actor Edwin Newman – newscaster Maureen O’Hara – actress Jane Russell – actress Gloria Vanderbilt – fashion designer Kurt Waldheim – U.N. secretary-general Esther Williams – swimmer Efrem Zimbalist Jr. – actor Updates Art Buchwald – died 1/17/2007, age 81 Mike Douglas – died 8/11/2006, age 81 Lena Horne – died 5/9/2010, age 92 E. Howard Hunt – died 1/23/2007, age 88 Bil Keane – died 11/8/2011, age 89 Deborah Kerr – died 10/16/2007, age… Read more →
15 People Who Make America Great
Ruby Jones, 67, worked in the hospice unit at Lindy Boggs Medical Center in New Orleans. Last August, as Hurricane Katrina was zeroing in on the city, she elected not to evacuate, but to stay with the eight dying patients under her care. She has been recognized by Newsweek as one of “15 People Who Make America Great”: Read more →
My New Dream Girl
Somebody was retelling a Margaret Cho joke about getting a boyfriend to help out around the house. The punch line: Read more →
People I Thought Were Dead
George McGovern – U.S. Congressman, Senator, and Democratic presidential nominee. Updates George McGovern – died 10/21/2012, age 90 Read more →
Antiwar Myths About Iraq Debunked
A lie told often enough becomes truth. — Lenin OH YEAH!? Not if I have anything to say about it, comrade! Not only do lying liars rely on Lenin’s repetition principle, they rely on people being generally inattentive, uniformed and eager to believe anything consistent with their existing opinions. I say that as someone who’s as inattentive and uninformed as anyone on most topics. But I do know a couple of things, and I set them forth herewith. Read more →
HW Explains the U.S. Newborn Mortality Rate
Just in time for Mother’s Day, Save the Children has published its seventh annual State of the World’s Mothers report on newborn mortality. As usual, the U.S. takes a beating: Read more →
Why God Builds Gated Communities
I’m looking over this flyer for a church group meeting that my son’s going to next week. It’s being held at a member’s house in a gated community, so the flyer has directions, as well as an entry code for the security gate. “Jesus wouldn’t like gated communities,” I say. “He was very welcoming to all people. This is racist. They’re trying to keep out blacks and Mexicans.” Read more →
Notes from the Asylum
My son’s on spring break and my wife — a moderately functional paranoid schizophrenic — is taking a day off to spend some time with him. Read more →
Building a Boat
Two men within a mast length of Rick Hedrick’s homemade 32-foot sailboat have toiled away on their boats for 30 years each. Another for 25 years. Another recently died before his life’s work saw the briny sea. By comparison, Hedrick, 61, of San Clemente, has practically set a land-speed record. He only had to give up 17 years – working every weekend and two or three nights a week after work to complete his life’s dream. . . . “Yes, I’m anxious,” Hedrick said last week at the Boat Yard, where men dream of water, sometimes for half their lives. “The only thing I have ever wanted to do is go sailing. But now that I’m here, I’m reflecting on everything. I’ve spent so much of my life here. I haven’t lived a normal life. I’m never home. I’m 61. I wonder, did I pay too great a price?” —… Read more →
Cartoon Violence
Of course you know this means war. — Bugs Bunny Muslims are offended by cartoons portraying them as violent fanatics. Naturally, they’ve responded with violent fanatacism. I’ll say one thing for these people, they know how to stage a lively protest. Yesterday, a few protestors got so enthusiastic that they had to be killed. Hamshahri, a prominent Iranian newspaper, has launched a cartoon counter-offensive: a competition for Holocaust cartoons. Hey, I’ve got an idea! You have a drawing of Hitler standing at a podium, big swastika behind him, addressing a packed hall of Nazis, and he says “I think I may say, without fear of contradiction . . .” HA HA HA HA HA! (Okay, I stole that from an old New Yorker cartoon, but how many people in Iran take the New Yorker?) Read more →
Heisman Hijinks
Texas QB Vince Young was visibly unhappy about finishing second to Reggie Bush in the Heisman balloting. “I’m just basically emotionally upset about that,” Young said. News flash: Everyone who doesn’t win is upset about it, but the protocol is this: Congratulate the winner and move on. Have some class. Grow up. You’re not in third grade anymore. I’m Vince Young. I’m upset because I didn’t win. Boo-hoo-hoo! Man, I hope the Trojans kick his ass in the Rose Bowl. Read more →
Hunter Thompson’s High-Caliber Doldrum-Buster
Rolling Stone magazine has published Hunter Thompson’s suicide note, which he titled “Football Season is Over.” Thompson wrote the note last February, four days before fatally shooting himself in his kitchen. Douglas Brinkley, Thompson’s official biographer, writes, February was always the cruelest month for Hunter S. Thompson. An avid NFL fan, Hunter traditionally embraced the Super Bowl in January as the high-water mark of his year. February, by contrast, was doldrums time. I don’t understand “avid” sports fans — they depress and frighten me — but I’d certainly encourage other sports enthusiasts to consider Thompson’s high-caliber doldrum-buster . . . Read more →
HW Solves the Problem of Poverty in America
According to a U.S. Census report released yesterday, the nation’s poverty rate rose in 2004 for the fourth straight year. Read more →
Not a Grim Task at All
They [Islamist radicals or, as Hitchens calls them, Islamo-fascists] gave us no peace and we shouldn’t give them any. We can’t live on the same planet as them and I’m glad because I don’t want to. I don’t want to breathe the same air as these psychopaths and murderers and rapists and torturers and child abusers. Its them or me. I’m very happy about this because I know it will be them. It’s a duty and a responsibility to defeat them. But it’s also a pleasure. I don’t regard it as a grim task at all. — Christopher Hitchens Read more →
Remember
As time goes on, we will naturally start to forget what happened on September 11, 2001 . . . Read more →
I Hate Travel
A lot of people seem to love travel . . . I hate travel. I start out thinking I’d be happy if I could just be somewhere else but when I get there, I’m the same person with the same problems, and now I’ve spent all this time and money in another failed attempt to get away from myself . . . Read more →
Often-Repeated Lies
A lie repeated often enough becomes truth. — Lenin As the GOP drifts further to the right, and becomes more starkly the party of the wealthy, it is gaining support among the working class. I have never seen a wholly satisfactory explanation for this trend, which now spans two generations. . . . Republicans, of course, will argue that it’s simply the working man’s understanding that the GOP has the better argument, i.e., that the best way to help the working class is to shower the rich with tax breaks. But the Bush administration has been showering the rich with tax breaks for more than four years, and the working class has nothing to show for it. — Timothy Noah, “Conservatism As Pathology” Read more →
The Great Chair Race
We’re having a fundraising event at the office today. Executives will race around the parking lot in office chairs. Wagering is permitted, with proceeds going to the United Way. Here’s how I handicap it: The CFO is pretty fit and looks like a winner. On the other hand, the Sales VP is a Snidely Whiplash type who’s probably loosening the wheels on the other guys’ chairs as we speak, which makes him a dangerous guy to bet against. No one else in the race looks remotely capable of winning any sort of athletic contest. It would be fun to run a side pool on which fat-ass will be the first to go down with a torn ACL or other crippling injury . . . Read more →
HW’s True Hollywood Stories
Florence Lawrence: The First Movie Star Interesting fact: Prior to 1910, movies did not list the names of the cast members! Actors were just nameless faces on the screen . . . Read more →