Respect for one's neighbor's political opinions...

...is admirably demonstrated over at Politics of the Peril.

I wish I was in the market for a mobile home...

...just so I'd have an excuse to buy it from Robert Lee (not the name of the cute chick you see before you hit the button; her name -- I kid you not -- is Star, or possibly Starr, and alas, she already has a boyfriend 'cause I done checked):



Hat tip: Ace.

I think the same guys also did this classic, which includes the untoppable line, "We had a guard dog...but somebody stole it":

Wendy's Assistant Manager "Did I Say That Out Loud?" Moment of the Day

So I'm at Wendy's, and the lady at the cash register is in her first day at work and doesn't really understand the cash register yet and has only rudimentary English skills, and the young assistant manager knows no Spanish at all and is trying to get something accomplished in the kitchen, and the upshot of it is that it takes five minutes to get from Point A ("I'd like just a hamburger by itself, no combo") to Point B ("Okay, sir, your total is $4.37"). But I was the only customer in the place at the time, and wasn't in a big hurry; so I wasn't stressed out or anything. This is greatly appreciated by the staff, and the assistant manager goes out of her way, bless her heart, to thank me:

YOUNG ASSISTANT MANAGER: Sir, thank you so much for being so patient.

PERIL [cheerfully]: Oh, no problem, I have nine kids and that'll teach you all the patience you need in a hurry.

Y.A.M. [wide-eyed]: You have nine kids??

PERIL [not feeling up to explaining "Well, I have four biological kids and four adopted kids and one foster daughter who still lives with me; so in effect I have nine"]: Yep.

Y.A.M. [in open astonishment]: Didn't y'all even have television back then?

---

As tempting as it is to end the post with that outstanding punch line, I have to add that as soon as the words were out of her mouth you could see in her eyes that unmistakable expression that says as plainly as words ever could, "OMG, did I just say that out loud??" And she immediately started babbling an apology. So I had to reassure her, "No, no, no need to apologize, that was a great line...the line of the day, in fact. Well done..."

Huge, huge load off my shoulders

That situation I couldn't talk about?

Resolved. With the absolute best of the possible outcomes. Can't say much more about it but thanks more than I can ever express for the prayers.

A very bad seven months now largely closed out...and as I told my friend Jennifer over lunch, I suddenly realized that for the first time in probably five years there's no looming crisis in my life.

JEN [laughing]: So how about you keep it that way for a few months, for your own sake?

ME [also laughing, but meaning every word all the same]: Yeah, that's a REALLY good reason to wait a few more months before letting anybody talk me into going out on a date...

The Line of the Day So Far...

...may be found in a politically-charged blog post here (don't bother following the link if you don't like politics; the politics aren't the point):

"It would be hard to pack so much ignorance into one short paragraph if one were really trying. We can deduce that Landesman doesn't even have to try."

Dad gets ripostéd

The Peril is imparting wisdom to twelve-year-old Rusty, as the two of them (being the only morning persons in a generally morgenmuffle household) drive to the coffee shop early Saturday morning...

RUSTY: Dad, why does "Sweet Sixteen" have to be such a big deal?

DAD: It isn't really all that big a deal, son, except that every now and then every girl likes to feel like she's the most important person in the world, and "Sweet Sixteen" is as good an excuse as any.

RUSTY: I mean, I sort of get the quinceañera thing...

DAD: See, it's just that Mexico has decided that fifteen is a good time to let a girl feel like she's the center of the universe, and in America it's Sweet Sixteen; but the main thing is that you just have to understand that every so often girls like to pretend they're more important than anybody else. I mean, you might as well know right now that on the day you get married, you're going to just be an accessory. It's going to be all about the girl you're marrying...it's not going to be about you, or even about the two of you; it'll be Her Day. Nobody's going to tell you it's your day, 'cause it won't be; it'll be all about her...but, look, it's no big deal. If you're a wise man, you know that every so often the girls in your life like to feel like they're the most important person in the world, and you let them have their days.

RUSTY [with a wicked gleam in his eye]: Oh, you mean like you do with Kinya every day?

---

Later on, after we quit laughing, I pointed out to Rusty that we guys all know that in fact we guys really are the most important people every day; so it doesn't hurt to let the girls pretend every now and then. Helps keep 'em in line...

---

And to anybody panting to inform me that riposté is already the French passive participle as it stands and doesn't need a final d...look, don't bug me, man; if you were a real linguist you'd be able to tell the difference between French dialects...for example, the Metropolitan French of Paris, the Aostan French of Italy, the Acadian French of some parts of Canada, etc. And in that case you wouldn't need to be told which French dialect is used in the title of this post, as it is obviously le français du cou rouge.

In Texas, we solve our own damn crime problems

Though perhaps not always conventionally.

HT: Dave.

Pick On Someone Your Own Bra Size Dept

Dave Barry passes on this article, with amusing accompanying surveillance video, of two British yobs who picked a fight with the wrong cross-dressers.

Quarterback: Smartest Guy On The Team Dept

Unless, of course, you're talking about the Cowboys' quarterback...

Aw, Tony, you make it too easy...

Chris Rock on Roman Polanski, Michael Vick, and "snitch-a** dogs"

Oh, just go watch it. (I don't know how to embed this one.)

Maternal Mastermind Of The Day Dept

In a variant on our running "Criminal Mastermind Of The Day" Dept, we have Jackie Denise Knott, whose solution to hauling the big cardboard box that wouldn't fit into her minivan was as follows:

1. Tie the box to the top of the minivan with what WAFF (Huntsville, Alabama) reporter Barbara Czura calls a "wire close hanger" (for you Gentle Yankee Readers, that's a wire clothes hanger, which every redneck knows can be untwisted and then used as a handy substitute for balin' wire).

2. Have your 13-year-old daughter sit in the box so that it won't blow off the roof.

3. Set off merrily on your way down U.S. Highway 431. There, you fixed it!

HT: Jammie Wearing Fool.

He refers, of course, to a basketball bat...

Noted, highly partisan, and very self-impressed Pundit A, speaking disdainfully of the intolerably partisan (for the Wrong Side) and self-impressed Pundit B who has somehow come to have much more influence than Pundit A despite having, so far as Pundit A can see, only one-tenth Pundit A's IQ:

"I'll tell you another thing about [Pundit B]: he wouldn't know the difference between a football, a bat and a hockey court."

HT: James Taranto.

Congratulations to Chicago

And I mean that seriously -- if I were to find out tomorrow that Houston had won the 2020 Olympic Games, I would start tomorrow laying plans to make sure I lived anywhere in the world rather than Houston, by 2018 at the latest. (Okay, fair enough, I already plan to live anywhere in the world rather than Houston by the end of 2018, but I'm trying to make a rhetorical point here.)

Here's an article that puts it well, and does so while staying admirably neutral on the question of whether Obama or Bush was more to blame for Chicago's "loss." (My personal opinion: Chicago was perfectly capable of losing on its own, for heaven's sake -- who in his right mind, when asked, "Let's see, I can spend three weeks in Rio, or in Chicago...hmmmm...." picks Chicago????? Chi-bleeping-cago? You kiddin' me? You gotta be kiddin' me, right? Now, if it was Chicago against Detroit, then, well, sure. But...Chicago over Rio? How the heck did Chicago even get 18 votes? I say it must have taken a lot of Chicago bribe money just to avoid getting outright skunked.)

Anyway, here's my favorite bit:

Getting the games means a city sacrifices considerable control over its financial future. If your vacation turns out to be more expensive than you planned, you can always cut it short and go home. But if the Olympics run over budget, you don't have the option of bailing out. You spend what you have to spend, whether you have the funds or not.

Olympics do run over budget, as a rule. Montreal, which hosted the 1976 summer games, just paid off the last bills in 2006. Athens, the 2004 site, spent three times as much as it had planned.

The 2012 summer games are still three years away and yet London's obligation has already quadrupled, to $15 billion. The former head of the agency set up to handle construction for the London Olympics says that before they are done, the cost may reach $40 billion. That's as much as was spent in Beijing, whose Communist form of government allowed it to dispense with fiscal sanity.

...

It's no fun to get jilted in front of the world. But the only thing worse than losing an Olympics bid is winning one.

Or, to cite that wisest of '80's movies -- I refer, of course, to War Games -- sometimes "the only way to win, is not to play."

Especially if you're Chicago...



...going up against Rio, which has awesome scenery, whether you prefer this kind of scenery...



...or this kind (the shot is from the Hotel Fasano):



And since you're not exactly allowed to hang-glide off the Sears Tower, you're certainly not, in Chicago, going to be able to get this view:



Actually, I just put that last one in so that I could pass on the caption from the site where I found it (which I encourage you to visit since it's a professional photo that I've copied): "Advertising photo of naked couple on hang gliding, windglider, over São Conrrado Beach in Rio de Janeiro,Brazil. Bikini added in computer."

Hmm, you're a potically well-connected, well-bankrolled middle-aged guy on the IOC, and you're choosing between (a) Chicago and (b) a place that has naked-couple-hang-gliding...

...and Mayor Daley thought Chicago was going to win?????

A political post my Democrat friends will probably be on board with...

...may be found here.

New policy

Political humor -- even if I'm just posting it because I think it's funny -- will now go on the politics blog, out of deference to the "safe zone" principle. My attitude has been that I don't mind people making fun of my politicians as long as they're genuinely being funny while they're doing it, and therefore there's no problem with my poking fun at their politicians. But I've been thinking...

1. The apparent symmetry of the "I'll make fun of yours but you are welcome to make fun of mine" isn't really symmetric because, with the exception of Sarah Palin, there's no such thing as "my" politician -- I despise pretty much all of the rest of them. So, while it's perfectly true that my principle is an honest one (see, for example, my link to the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator, it calls for a way bigger sacrifice on my friends' part than it does on mine. Not actually fair. Argument abandoned.

2. I think people were Messiah-level invested in Obama, and therefore I think the disillusionment process may be much more painful than usual. So, you know, I have friends who at least used to be big Obama fans, and I largely try to avoid the topic with them in person because why kick somebody while they're down, and I think I want to extend that safety net to this blog as well.

3. I was tired of my own shameless racism and was in danger of having to ban myself.

Okay, so I couldn't resist that one last snark (which of course is a running Ace gag that I'm shamelessly stealing)...but that's it. No more Obama jokes here; they've been banished to the Politics of the Peril GULag.

Must-Read Feel-Good Romance Of The Season Dept.

Rick Reilly helpfully reviews Chad Ochocinco's memoir, coming to this moving conclusion:

Mr. Ochocinco may flip off the reader on the cover of it, but inside he arrives at a sweet, confident crescendo: "I love me some me."

And who doesn't treasure a love story, even if it's just a man and his mirror?

Kanye West interrupts Roman Polanski's extradition hearings to say...

..."I'm happy for you and I'mma let you finish, Roman, but R. Kelly has the greatest underage sex prosecution of all time. Of. All. TIME!"

HT: Ace.

Top Ten Reasons Chicago Didn't Get The Olympics

One of Rich Lowry's e-mailers came up with the first version of this, which I felt I could improve upon...but I'll give credit for the inferior first draft where credit is due.

At any rate, here are the Top Ten Reasons Chicago Didn't Get The Olympics:

10. Dead people can't vote at IOC meetings.

9. Obama distracted by 25-minute meeting with Gen. McChrystal.

8. Who cares if Obama couldn't talk the IOC into Chicago? At least he has talked Iran out of building nukes.

7. The impediment: Israel is still building settlements.

6. [Omitted due to failure of teleprompter.]

5. Let me be clear: as I said at the time, Chicago doesn't want the Olympics.

4. This isn't about the number of Olympics "lost," it's about the number of Olympics "saved" and "created."

3. Not enough wise Latina judges on the committee.

2. The IOC is racist.

And the #1 reason Chicago didn't get the Olympics:

1. It's Bush's fault.