January brought gratifying news to Hindu skiers
living in the economically vibrant Indian subcontinent and for that
matter to the elusive Abominable Snowman (Yeti), wherever
he might be hanging out. The predicted meltdown of the Himalayan
glaciers contained in the United Nations’ 2007 report from its
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been exposed
as the work of mental defectives. Among the Nobel Prize-winning
report’s colossal errors is its claim that the Himalayan glaciers
“will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square
kilometers by 2035.” The nitwit UN scientists’ measurement of these
delightful ice lumps is off by 467,000 square kilometers! The
glaciers actually cover only 33,000 square kilometers. Yet Hindu
skiers continue to have a hell of a good time, skiing up and down
the slopes in their loincloths. Many continue to top off their
après ski with a frosty seidel of human urine, à
la former Indian prime minister Mr. Morarji Desai, now
deceased. Actually a generation from now the Himalayan glaciers
might be a very promising site for the Winter Olympics, if Indian
sharpshooters can keep an eye on the stealthy Yeti. Contrary to the
idiotic UN report, the Pindari Glacier was not shrinking by 135.2
meters annually between 1845 and 1965 but by a paltry 23.5 meters;
and that Hindu glaciologist who reputedly predicted doom for the
glaciers is actually indignant, claiming he was misquoted in 1999
by the journal New Scientist. So let the good times roll,
and remember the IPCC shared its 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace with
Mr. Al Gore, possibly to pave the way for former president Barack
Obama’s 2009 Peace Prize.
On January 19, Massachusetts state senator Mr.
Scott Brown, a Republican, won a special election for the Bay
State’s Kennedy family seat, thus evaporating the Democrats’
supermajority in the Senate and causing Mr. Obama’s early
retirement. Mr. Obama did remain in Washington to deliver his State
of the Union address on January 27, and most members of Congress
showed up, though many were photographed asleep and Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton left the country. Youthful activists from
both ends of the political spectrum were in the news. On the right,
25-year-old Mr. James O’Keefe, who posed as a pimp in last year’s
sting at ACORN offices across the country, was arrested for
presenting himself under false pretenses in the New Orleans offices
of Louisiana’s callipygian Senator Mary L. Landrieu. On the left, a
23-year-old as yet unnamed young man was arrested in Cairns,
Australia, for repeatedly breaking into a local sex shop and having
sex with an inflatable doll (female). Back in the States, former
Bush II speechwriter Mr. David Frum continues to be the center of
speculation that he is an illegal alien. Apparently the rumors
originated in London, where it is reported that Mr. Taki
Theodoracopulos, the London Spectator’s “High Life”
correspondent, is preparing another of his “world exclusives,” this
time on Mr. Frum.
Mr. Frum was born in Canada and claims to have
become an American citizen about the time he worked for President
Bush. Yet there is much about the expat that does not ring true. In
his 2003 book, The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George
W. Bush, Mr. Frum appraised the 43rd president as “nothing
short of superb.” Then in another book four years later he claimed
Bush “led his party to the brink of disaster.” Finally, there is
his retreat from claiming authorship of the Bush-era term “Axis of
Evil” to his more modest assertion that he assisted in
creating the term. Even in a government bureaucracy, how many
writers are needed to create a three-word phrase? Among literary
sleuths, eyebrows spiked upward on January 27, when it was reported
that the reclusive novelist Mr. J. D. Salinger, author of the
masterpiece The Catcher in the Rye, had expired just hours
after the death of the popular left-wing historian Mr. Howard Zinn,
author of A People’s History of the United States. Mr.
Salinger has not been seen in public for decades, and Holden
Caulfield, the troubled 16-year-old protagonist of
Catcher, did sound very much like the voice of Mr. Zinn
whining in his puerile history of the Great Republic.
In Wellington, New Zealand, Mr. Hans Kurt
Kubus, 58, a German national, was sentenced to 14 weeks
incarceration and a $3,540 fine after being caught boarding an
international flight with 44 small lizards secreted in his
underpants. Authorities at Christ Church International Airport
became suspicious when Mr. Kubus appeared at the boarding gate with
a broad smile on his face. According to New Zealand Department of
Conservation prosecutor Mr. Mike Bodie, Mr. Kubus could have been
sentenced to a much longer stay in prison and a heftier fine, but
he seemed like a nice person and frankly people in the courtroom
liked him. Moreover, he had not damaged the 44 geckos and skinks
that officials liberated from his nether regions, though their
condition would have changed markedly when he got back to Germany,
where the tiny reptiles fetch as much as $2,800 apiece and are
often served in tossed salads. In an unrelated incident, Mr. Tiger
Woods, the lapsed golfer, checked into a Hattiesburg, Mississippi,
sex rehabilitation clinic, where he will be treated for what locals
call Clinton Syndrome (CS). It is hoped he will be sufficiently
well to return to the PGA circuit soon, possibly with endorsements
from Victoria’s Secret and the William J. Clinton Presidential
Library.
Following up on last month’s report that an
English cleric, the Rev. Tim Jones, advised his parishioners during
a Christmas sermon to shoplift, we can now report that in January
the Rev. Jones was accosted by an enraged parishioner, who
assaulted him with a bucket of ravioli. The parishioner, Mr. Martin
Stot, explained that he considered his pastor’s sermon “appalling,”
but British ethicists remain perplexed. Why ravioli? Why not
linguini or tortellini? Perhaps there will be an update next month.
Two thousand ten was shaping up as a particularly hectic year for
the late Mr. Saddam Hussein’s cousin, Mr. Ali Hassan al-Majid,
known in Iraq as “Chemical Ali” for his administrative role in the
1988 gassing of more than 5,000 Kurds. Last year he was handed down
three death sentences by hanging for his misbehavior, and on
January 18 a court gave him yet another death sentence, which could
have proved to be a scheduling nightmare. Fortunately, on January
21 he died with a jerk.
More than a decade after the fall of Communism
there appears to be a vigorous new proletarian movement. On January
10, hordes of intellectuals participated in what is billed as “No
Pants Subway Ride” everywhere worldwide, though curiously not in
Islamic nations, where sharia law appears to frown on the movement
and subways are scarce. Streaming into subways in their underwear,
the New Comrades seek to cause what the organization’s website
calls “scenes of chaos and joy in public places.” “It’s a place to
meet people that’s not your traditional bar scene,” attested Mr.
Brady Kirchberg, 26, or maybe it is Miss Brady Kirchberg. It could
be either. Many women are participants. Said Miss Ashley
Kemp, 24, “I just wanted to do something fun and spontaneous.” Try
it in the Holy City of Qom, you dinkelspiel.
