Well, given all the kidnappings and executions going on over there, at least it sounds fun:

NEW YORK - A New Jersey game called “Wack the Iraq,” where players fire paintballs at people dressed as Arabs, has drawn ire from Arab groups after the city failed to convince the operator to change its name this summer.

The City of Wildwood, a seaside resort in southern New Jersey popular with summer vacationers, said the game would continue to operate until the end of this summer holiday season, but would change its name when it returns next year, according to Fred Wager, commissioner of public affairs and public safety for Wildwood.

“We didn’t like it because we were getting a lot of complaints about it,” Wager said in an interview.

File this under the “How do we teach our children not to cave into peer pressure when adults do it all the time in the name of Political Correctness” Department.

In the interest of open-mindedness (and because I got a free copy), I spent last week wading through Bill Clinton’s book… and marvelled that, for the want of a good therapist, so many trees had to die.

This weekend, I’m reading the Swifties’ book about John Kerry, Unfit for Command, despite wondering why it takes 256 pages to say what the title so aptly conveys.

As always, get your own copy because I don’t lend out books and, besides, I have a feeling I’ll need my close at hand. Have you seen how many liberals I’m surrounded by? (And they call this “paradise"….)

I used to have a deep fear that one day I’d die alone and, because I’m such a loner, nobody would know. So I’d spend days rotting, my cat feasting on my corpse. By the time anyone thought to look for me, I’d be unrecognizable. Of course, then I got married and had kids. Now I’d kill for a moment alone.

This guy wasn’t so lucky.

Police found grisly mummified remains of a Canadian man nearly two years after he died at a posh condominium, spooking neighbours who thought he was on vacation.

“He was in bed covered by a sheet with his head up and arms folded on his chest like he was sleeping,” said chief medical examiner Thambirajah Balachandra. […]

A newspaper dated November 21, 2002 was found on his dining table and a calendar on the wall opened to the same month led officials to believe that he had been there since.

According to one recent survey, Democrats out-perform their Republican counter-parts in the sack by a two-to-one margin. Of course, the survey was conducted by Match.com, so the demographic consisted of lonely people with the chance to pre-screen their potential dates on a variety of factors - including their political leaning - before ever exchanging a word. Presumably, if a prospective date’s political orientation was objectionable, they wouldn’t make it past Square One.

What does that mean? Well, maybe that Republicans don’t need to pay for help finding their future lovers.

So let’s conduct our own survey, shall we?

I’ve heard of having one’s head in one’s ass, but a jaw in the back? It’s a perfect example of the importance of ongoing stem-cell research.

A German who had his lower jaw cut out because of cancer has enjoyed his first meal in nine years – a bratwurst sandwich – after surgeons grew a new jaw bone in his back muscle and transplanted it to his mouth in what experts call an “ambitious'’ experiment.

According to this week’s issue of The Lancet medical journal, the German doctors used a mesh cage, a growth chemical and the patient’s own bone marrow, containing stem cells, to create a new jaw bone that fit exactly into the gap left by the cancer surgery.

Tests have not been done yet to verify whether the bone was created by the blank-slate stem cells and it is too early to tell whether the jaw will function normally in the long term.

But the operation is the first published report of a whole bone being engineered and incubated inside a patient’s body and transplanted.

I’ve never been one to carry pictures of my spouse and kids in my wallet, but after reading this I might change.

The Cambridge University team which discovered that sheep prefer happy, smiley people has once again pushed back the envelope of ovine understanding with the revelation that sheep cheer up when they see snaps of friends and relatives.

According to the Telegraph, team supremo professor Keith Kendrick reckons that “seeing a face picture of a friend or family member would be the most effective way of reducing separation anxiety".

The Cambridge sheep worriers proved this by locking their guinea sheep in a darkened barn and showing them various faces. Stress was monitored noting “the number of times each sheep bleated, its movement within the barn and its heart rate". This being real science, the sheeps’ levels of cortisol and adrenaline were also recorded.

The results of the experiment were apparently significant: “When the sheep were shown faces of sheep familiar to them, they became less stressed and showed fewer signs of agitation than when they were shown goat faces or triangles. The areas of the brain which control fear and the stress response also showed reduced activation,” the paper reports.

Less stress? Less fear? Just from looking at photos of loved ones? I may just have to order new checks with my kids’ faces on them to reduce the stress of paying bills.

Let’s hope it’s true about music taming the savage beast(s):

The classic band Queen, fronted by gay icon Freddie Mercury, has become the first rock act to receive an official seal of approval in ayatollah-strong Iran, reports BBC Online.

News value? Western music is strictly censored in the Islamic republic, where being gay is considered a crime.

I swear sometimes I think the forces of the universe conspire to piss me off or, at the very least, to pester me with unanswerable questions at the precise moment that I’m trying to focus my thoughts on a complex task. In the immortal words of Rosanne Rosanna Danna: “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”

For instance:

Why does anyone make a size-22 string bikini?

Why can’t female hairstylists understand that “just one inch off the ends” means just one inch off the ends? (Ironically, every gay male hairstylist I’ve gone to has never, ever, ever misunderstood this instruction.)

Why do people crank their car stereo volume to the limit and then drive with their windows down?

Why am I “crazy” if I think mundane inanimate objects like my coffee table are talking to me, but perfectly “normal” if I hear the Twinkies in the kitchen calling to me at midnight?

Why do so many men complain about the pain of shaving their faces yet eagerly urge the women to shave, wax or otherwise denude their oh-so-much-more-sensitive genitals?

Why, if stereotypes are bad, do so many people who live in trailer parks look like they should live in a trailer park?

Why are priests called “Father” when they’re not allowed to procreate?

Why is it that when I dream at night about exercising I’ll wake up as tired and sore as if I’d spent the last 8 hours running… but not one single pound lighter?

Why do people refer to the “nearest convenience store” because, really, if it’s not the nearest one it’s not convenient?

Why do doctors say “This won’t hurt a bit” when they know better?

Why do people hire doctors or lawyers when, after all that education, they’re still “practicing"?

But most of all…

Why, in a Presidential election that matters more to national security than any in the past 60 years, is it all coming down to “You dissed my service record!” “Did not!” “Did too!”

Bush to Kerry: Touché.

Well, it only took 1 and 1/2 years, but I finally got a link out of Frank at IMAO.

Oh, wait. Nebbermind.

Thanks, Harvey. I always was a sucker for guys who set a Bad Example.

Back in my single days, I learned a variety of ways to avoid giving out my phone number to guys who just didn’t know how to take a hint. My girlfriends and I actually made a game of it by seeing who could top each other by being devious without causing actual offense.

My friend Jill, undeniably the nicest among us, was initially appalled with our deceptiveness. “Just be honest,” she scolded us. Then one night while we were out clubbing, a man who’d been eyeing her for nearly an hour sent a round of drinks to our table. When he stumbled up to us five minutes later and asked for her number, Jill politely explained that she didn’t like to give it out to men she’d just met. He shrugged, nodded, and stumbled off. “See,” Jill said, “Honesty is the best policy.” Three months, twenty-seven “love notes” left on her doorstep, four slashed tires, two frantic calls to 911 and one restraining order later, Jill changed her opinion and joined in our “game.”

Ok, I’ll confess that sometimes I’d just dash off the name and phone number of whatever woman had stolen away my last boyfriend, then make a mental note that my girlfriends and I needed to find a different club for the next month or two. But my usual method of handling such requests, the old “My phone was shut off because I forgot to pay the bill” excuse, worked well enough in my college days because it was perfectly believable coming from a struggling student. Of course, there was always an occasional pest who still wasn’t deterred and asked for my address instead. (These requests inevitably prompted the now-wiser Jill to reach into her purse and announce “I’ve got mace!!!")

Of course, that was before technology became so integral to our lives. Now, there’s rejection by cell phone or land line, or by business card. The latest entrant to the apparently burgeoning “technorejection business” is rejection by email.

Attention, ladies: If that guy hitting on you just won’t quit until you surrender your e-mail address, feel free to call upon Paper Napkin.

Billed as an e-mail rejection service, Paper Napkin will tell your persistent suitor to buzz off when he comes calling electronically.

Here’s how it works: Give out any e-mail address with “PaperNapkin.net” after the “at” sign. You don’t need to register the address ahead of time. When your suitor tries to contact you for a date, he’ll instead receive a form letter stating in part, “Maybe you’re just out of your league here.”

Josh Santangelo, a Web developer in Seattle, said he got the idea over lunch last week after a discussion on dating turned to the New York Rejection Line — a phone number women can give out to reach a generic recording of rejection. He thought there ought to be something similar for e-mail, and he wrote the code for it that afternoon.

Sheesh. You know that society is becoming too de-personalized when we’re now paying for technology to do what good friends used to do for free.

Happy birthday to Michele, whose birthday present to herself is a much-needed hiatus. Here’s to hoping for many happy returns… in October.

Yep, any second I expect to hear President Bush saying to John Kerry: Read. My. Lips..

At long last, the truth is finally out. Wacko Jacko has had 6 - count ‘em , six! - nose jobs, not the two he claims. The latest for the morph-faced man involved putting a piece of his ear where the tip of his nose once was.

‘We decided that Michael Jackson, in reconstructive surgery of the nose, should get ear cartilage,’ Professor Mang told American TV documentary-maker Daphne Barak.

‘You make a cut on the skin of the ear and then you take out a big piece of the cartilage on the side. Then you make a cut on the nose and put the cartilage there. It’s a wonderful material to reconstruct noses and repair them.’

After the two-hour operation, Jackson’s nose was in bandages for about two weeks.

‘The nose of Michael Jackson is now fine,’ said Professor Mang. ‘No silicone. It’s ear cartilage and it will be okay.’

Now, if only they’d remove his penis.

This blog entry is brought to you by Allah, because my brain just exploded.

I thought my husband and I had taken “Modern Love” to a whole new, ridiculous dimension when we began text-messaging sweet nothings to each other’s cell phones… while sitting next to each other on the sofa, watching a movie with the kids.

But this takes the cake:

She needs to be coddled with sweet talk and pampered with gifts, but you’ll never see her in the flesh, says a Hong Kong company that’s developing a “virtual girlfriend” for new cell phones with video capability.

Artificial Life, Inc.’s electronic love interest will appear as an animated figure on a telephone screen. But she’ll require a lot of attention, involving virtual flowers and diamonds, company spokeswoman Ada Fong said on Monday.

The gifts will keep the relationship going from one level to the next – and even though it’s all made up of cold, hard data, suitors will have to pay cold, hard cash for the gifts.

The amounts have yet to be determined, Fong said.

Question: If the Venomous Hubby gets one of these, should I feel jealous?

Could someone please explain to me why answering “Yes” to the following question indicates that you’re a sex addict?

Do you feel shame about your body or your sexuality, such that you avoid touching your body or engaging in sexual relationships? Do you fear that you have no sexual feelings, that you are asexual?

Am I missing some connection here, because it seems to me that the definition of a sex addict would entail, well, someone who doesn’t avoid sex. (Or should I now rethink my respect for Mother Teresa?)

A mention of my Hawaiian Potato Salad in one of last week’s entries prompted a slew of emails asking for the recipe. Evidently, quite a few folks figure that something billed as “Hawaiian” means it must have pineapple, papaya or some other tropical fruit. Not so. (C’mon. Do you really think pineapple, potato and mayo sounds good? Ew!)

What follows is a recipe I found in a cookbook published by the Kamehameha Schools for their annual fundraiser. It’s some of the best potato salad I’ve ever had. It’s also some of the best macaroni salad I’ve ever had. In other words, like a lot of my favorite local foods, it’s very carb-heavy. Unfortunately, now that I’ve stopped eating potatoes and pasta and have drastically cut my fat intake, I can’t eat this anymore.

So, if you make it, have two scoop for me. Oh, what the hell, it’s your waistline, not mine. Have three!

Hawaiian Potato Salad (Serves 12)

Ingredients

4-6 potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
6 hardboiled eggs, chopped
1 1/2 cup uncooked elbow macaroni
3 tsp. green onions, chopped
1 stalk celery, minced
1 jar green olives, drained and sliced
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
2 tsp. French’s yellow mustard
1 tablespoon minched fresh parsley
mayonnaise (1 cup or more, to suit)
salt & pepper to taste

Directions

1. Boil potatoes in large pot filled with salted water until fork-tender. Do NOT over-cook! Strain then toss with green onions.

2. While potatoes are cooking, boil macaroni in a separate pot until tender. Drain. Rinse with cold water until cool.

3. In very large bowl, combine all ingredients except the mayonnaise. Chill for 2 hours.

4. Shortly before serving, add mayo beginning with 1 cup and using more until salad reaches creamy consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Can be stored in air-tight container in refrigerator up to 4 days. Do not allow salad in serving container to reach room temperature.

Once Six Apart began positioning itself to take over the blogging world with MT and TypePad and that Typekey ID thingie, it was only a matter of time before the conspiracy theories surfaced.

Don’t miss your chance to go on record with your insider knowledge about the Trotts’ nefarious plans. Enter the First Annual Six Apart Crack-Pot Conspiracy Theory Contest today!

Now, who said war is “good for absolutely nothin’?”

A Washington state soldier has married the Iraqi woman he met and fell in love with while in Baghdad.

Robert Hall, 23, says he knew within a month that he would marry Vivian Mansour, 21, of Baghdad, even though at first neither spoke a word of each other’s language.

Hall, an Army reservist who earned a Bronze Star for meritorious service during his one-year tour, said he’s never been happier. The two were married here Saturday.

Talk about winning hearts and minds…!

So much for the best laid plans of mice and me.

On Thursday, I had a nice, long list of things to accomplish over the weekend: work out, pay the bills, work out, clean the house, work out, get a template done for Madame Butterfly, work out… et cetera, et cetera.

But Thursday began with yet another debilitating bout of GI problems. By the time they lessened that evening, my laptop’s hard drive had come down with a malady of its own, making it impossible to accomplish most of my other tasks.

On the plus side, the Venomous Hubby ran across a great deal on new carpet, which our house has been sorely needing since… oh, the day we moved in. Our old carpet was on its last legs when we bought the place and had only grown worse but the coup de grace came when Hubby spilled an entire can of wood stain in the middle of the living room - which he didn’t think looked that bad. Luckily, our realtor and I were finally able to talk him into replacing it. The crew came on Friday morning and were done in six hours. And it looks lovely!

So, at last count, we’ve now fixed 7 of the 9 things we’d planned on fixing immediately when we bought the place. Too bad it’s too late now. I’ll almost miss this place when I move. Almost.

Hm. On second thought… no. No, I won’t miss it at all.