The American Spectator

The bleak consequences of 130-degree summers in sunny L.A. as extrapolated by lachrymose Beach Boy Brian Wilson in RS, handbook for the arrested adolescent:

A few days after his 66th birthday, Brian Wilson cruises along Mulholland Drive in his black Mercedes coupe, listening to an oldies station and thinking about global warming. There’s a heat wave on in L.A., with temperatures in the high 90s and wildfires burning up the coast. “It’s not supposed to be this hot in June,” Wilson mutters. Hot wind blows through the car’s open windows, and torn-up receipts fly around the floor. “What if it gets to be 130 degrees in July? Would you consider that to be a disaster? I’d say that’s a disaster.” He sighs deeply. “It could be the end of L.A.—the end of life. This could be it! Oh, my God, it’s terrible.”

(September 18, 2008)

(Special thanks to Wayne Gibson of Etobicoke, Ontario, which doesn’t have an oldies station.)

Memphis Flyer

Someone calling himself, herself, or perhaps itself Glinda Watts sends an obvious crank epistle to the editor of the correspondence page of MF and the credulous galoot actually publishes it:

I have been intimately involved with local plant populations for nearly 20 years. I have obtained food, medicine, oxygen, and sustenance for the soul from the plants of our region. I have watched in sorrow as their numbers, their diversity, and their habitat have all declined. Whether the rest of us realize it or not, all of life is dependent on the green world. Life on this planet would not be possible if not for plants. They even learned how to have sex before we did!

—Glinda Watts, American Herbalists Guild, Memphis [Makes you want to reach for a bottle of Roundup Super Concentrate or your handy cordless weed whacker, no?—Ed.]

(September 11-17, 2008)

(Our thanks to Steve Palmer of Germantown, Tennessee, for this bouquet.)

MSNBC

Keith Olbermann leads Chris Matthews in a duet for stooges minutes after the Prophet Obama subsides at a recent reenactment of the Nuremberg Rallies:

Olbermann: For 42 minutes—not a sour note and spellbinding throughout in a way usually reserved for the creations of fiction. An extraordinary political statement. Almost a fully realized, tough, crisp, insistent speech in tone and in the sense of cutting through the clutter….I’d love to find something to criticize about it. You got anything?

Matthews: No. You know I’ve been criticized for saying he inspires me, and to hell with my critics!…You know in the Bible they talk about Jesus serving the good wine last. I think the Democrats did the same.

(August 28, 2008)