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News in Briefs
News reported while wearing underwear.


Local Teen Arrested; Authorities Investigate Possible Sarah Palin Connection

Laguna Niguel, CA—A local teenager has been arrested for shoplifting from several stores in a Laguna Niguel shopping center. According to authorities, shopkeepers had suspected the 16-year-old male for some time, but after one store owner managed to catch the suspected thief on security camera, police were able to act to arrest the boy. According to the sheriff's office, they are also investigating a possible connection to former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. During the recent midterm elections, Ms. Palin spoke frequently of the need to "take back" the house and her "kleptomaniacal rhetoric" may have spurred the boy to becoming a thief.


Link of the Day/Week/Month

John C. Wright’s Patented One Session Lesson in the Mechanics of Fiction

Far and away, the best introduction to fiction writing I've read.


Boring (Short) Political Rant
I'm going to try to post fewer of these and get back to my roots of humor, satire, and cat/baby pictures. I realized that all of my readers, save one, already agree with me. Of those that agree, they're all smarter than me anyways, so nothing I say will be particularly insightful. And the one dissenter will be unpersuaded by anything I have to say.


On the Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell


Were it not for the comment from Robert J. Wizard, a frequent and usually sensible commenter on John C. Wright's journal, that it's impossible for most men to go more than a year without masturbating, I would have a rather hard time understanding the opposition to DADT. I've always known that the sexual revolutionaries think chastity is unnecessary, or even perhaps evil. But what I hadn't clued into yet was that, at least subconsciously, they actually think it's impossible. So from this perspective, a policy like DADT, where gays are admitted to the military so long as they don't indulge their disordered desires, is akin to asking them not to breathe.

Once I realized this, I saw the mentality all over, from the opposition to abstinence-only education ("they're gonna do it anyways; might as well teach them to do it safely") to the hatred towards the Church's opposition to condoms in fighting AIDS (the Church sees the choice not to be promiscuous as safer than the choice to be promiscuous, but using condoms; the revolutionaries see the choice as using or not using condoms when being promiscuous).

But of course, this is neither here nor there. Just as the gay-rights advocates never ask what the purpose of marriage is when assuming it to be a right (to me, gay marriage seems kind of like a tampon for men), they also miss the point of the military. "The military's job," as Rush Limbaugh would say, "is to kill people and break things." The only real question is will allowing openly gay people to serve in the military help or hinder that job?

Flying Mounts Blamed for Massive Roof Damage Costs

Opponents of Flight Master's License cite one more reason to cancel the program.
By Fargo Flintlocke, Stormwind Correspondent

An increasingly common site over Stormwind's Trade District

A recent study by Elwynn University has put a price tag of at least ten million gold on the cost of roof repairs to homes and businesses in the greater Stormwind area, due to damage from flying mounts. The study is being called "the last straw" by opponents of King Varian Wrynn's controversial new flight master's license program, which allows experienced adventurers to use their flying mounts within the city of Stormwind, as well as  around the rest of the Eastern Kingdoms of Azeroth. Prior to King Wrynn's decree, use of flying mounts had been limited to the shattered world of Draenor and the frozen Northrend continent.

The study, conducted over the month since the program was instituted, was released yesterday. It surveyed several dozen local businesses and homeowners, and tracked the work orders of Stormwind's five largest construction contractors.

"We all suspected that there may have been negative repercussions from allowing flying mounts over the city," Professor Philius Fizzwink, the lead researcher of the study, commented. "But I don't think anyone on my team expected such a high monetary cost in just this one area."

The study revealed that most of the damage comes from mounts—particularly larger dragon and proto-drake mounts—landing or scraping their claws across roofs, knocking tiles and shingles loose. A further contributing factor was the increase of dragon and proto-drake guano. Unlike gryphon and hippogryph feces, dragon guano has been shown to be highly caustic, corrosive and—in the case of the volcanic stone drake popular with many adventurers—flammable.

Read more »

Too Funny Not to Link.

For you poor saps that weren't included in dad's e-mail: Dave Barry's year in review 2009.

Key quote:

In February, Congress passes, without reading it, and without actually finishing writing it, a stimulus package totaling $787 billion. The money is immediately turned over to American taxpayers so they can use it to stimulate the economy.

No! What a crazy idea THAT would be! The money is to be doled out over the next decade or so by members of Congress on projects deemed vital by members of Congress, such as constructing buildings that will be named after members of Congress. This will stimulate the economy by creating millions of jobs, according to estimates provided by the Congressional Estimating Office's Magical Estimating 8-Ball.

Catechebulary.

His Excellency Most Rev. Donald W. Trautman, bishop of Erie, has been working to prevent the implementation of the new translation of the Roman Missal. One of his concerns is over the vocabulary, and he is concerned that some of the words may be beyond the grasp of Joe Pewsitter. (What Does the Prayer Really Say has been covering the story. You can find entries here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Since charity demands that we assume that His Excellency must just simply be too busy to take, y'know, two minutes of a homily to explain what some of these words mean, F.U. News has taken it upon itself to help defuse the situation by defining these words and giving usage for each.

*ahem* Let us begin.

in·eff·a·ble (ĭn-ĕf'ə-bəl)

adj.

1. Clever; cunning: I tried to screw him over with legal speak, but he was ineffable and saw right through it.
2. Incapable of sexual attraction; frigid: I walked up to the hawt chick in the bar and tried to get her digits, but she was ineffable.
3. Able to be placed in the letter "F".

con·sub·stan·tial (kŏn'səb-stăn'shəl)

adj.

1. Of or relating to narcotics, particular those of an illegal nature: arrested and sent to prison for possession of consubstantial material.
2. The state of being on board a submarine with a guy named Stan.

in·car·nate (ĭn-kär'nĭt)

adj.

1. Having an intense fear of carnivals or fiestas: We wanted to go to the state fair, but Sue is incarnate.

v.

1. To be turned into an automobile: Steve was incarnated as a Ford Thundercougarfalconbird.
2. A word that the designers of the game Indigo Prophecy don't know the meaning of: the girl has a pure soul and has never been incarnated.

n.

1. My friend, Nate, who sits around in his car all day.

in·vi·o·late (ĭn-vī'ə-lĭt)

n.

1. The rage a conductor feels when the violist misses the entrance for his solo for the umpteenth consecutive time.
2. An early 19th century art movement that focused on producing artwork of reddish-blue and light purple hues.

ob·la·tion (ə-blā'shən, ō-blā'-)

n.

1. A type of mocking cheer practiced in some rural European areas that involves clapping while giving a raspberry: the peasants showed their distaste for the performer's interpretation with a standing oblation.
2. A perverse sexual act involving a woodwind.

ig·no·min·y (ĭg'nə-mĭn'ē, -mə-nē)

n.

1. The first word of the Sign of the Cross, in Latin: Ignominy Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
2. A shameful display of lawn ornaments, esp. one involving lots of gnomes.
3. A very small fire: After hours of rubbing twigs together, all I had to show for it was an ignominy.

adj. -ious

1. The loss of a PvP battleground to a team consisting entirely of gnomes: an ignominious defeat.

pre·cur·sor (prĭ-kûr'sər, prē'kûr'sər)

n.

1. The emptiness between each blink of a cursor on a computer.
2. The letter audible immediately before the bleep in censored dialog that is only there so you know what word is being said.

suf·fuse (sə-fyūz')

v.

1. To use a consubstantial narcotic.
2. To use some poor woman who doesn't know English very well to try and get signatures to end women's suffrage. Jimmy Kimmel is an ass.

un·van·quished (ŭn-vān'kwĭsht)

adj.

1. Never having lost to an Aston Martin Vanquish in a race: After twelve races, the Ferrari was still unvanquished.

A line from the book I'm currently reading.

"The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles—kingons, or possibly queons—that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expounded because, at that point, the bar closed." —Terry Pratchett, Mort